But leaving someone like Turner to set up for yourself wasn’t exactly straightforward, Davy’d found that out when he’d started all his little sidelines and had tried going it alone. But who was to know, maybe before his son Albie was much older, perhaps something’d happen to the drunken bastard – like him blacking out and falling down a flight o’ stairs and breaking his thick bull’s neck – and then Bernie and his boy could set up a nice little family firm of their own. It was what Bernie had dreamt of.
His son was still really only a kid at the minute, barely fourteen years old, but he was built like the side of a bloody tram and could already handle himself with blokes twice his age. They would take on a patch together over Poplar, or Bow way even; Hackney maybe. Anywhere that wasn’t bloody Aldgate.
Thinking of Queenie waiting at home for him, ready to bend his last night’s tea over his head because she’d thought – wrongly this time as it happened – that he’d been out birding it, prompted Bernie to try speaking to Turner again, louder this time in case he’d nodded off: ‘Back home then, boss?’
Turner heaved himself up to a sitting position. His eyes were puffy slits. ‘I can have anyone I like,’ he mumbled. ‘Anyone.’
‘Yes, guv,’ Bernie said, rolling his eyes. ‘I know yer can.’
‘Loyalty, that’s all I want.’
‘Right.’
‘My Moe’s loyal.’
‘Yes, guv.’
‘And Eileen. She’s been a good girl to me over the years, has Eileen.’
Without a word of warning, Turner lunged forward from the back seat and grabbed Bernie’s arm. It took all Bernie’s strength to keep the car from going out of control and hitting the kerb.
‘I wanna see Eileen,’ Turner demanded, like a petulant child suddenly discovering he needed to go to the lavatory.
‘Yes, guv,’ sighed Bernie, doing a swerving u-turn through the early morning traffic on the Mile End Road.
‘No, wait.’ Turner slapped Bernie on the shoulder. ‘I want me breakfast first, and a quick wash. I wanna look me best. I’m gonna take her out.’
‘Home then?’ Bemie asked hopefully. With a bit of luck he’d get home, collapse on the bed and forget all about Eileen.
‘No. Over there.’ Turner stuck his hand right across Bernie’s face, oblivious of the fact that he was obscuring his vision. ‘Stop at that cafe opposite Mile End station.’ Bernie took a deep breath. He was really getting to hate Turner. If something didn’t happen to the bastard soon, he might seriously have to think about taking matters into his own hands.
* * *
Cissie drew the truck to a halt outside the house in Charles Street where her parents, Ellen and Frank, had a couple of rooms in the run-down-looking terrace. She had never actually been in there but knew the address and the look of the outside of the place by heart. Her parents had moved to Stepney, from the nice little house in Devons Road where Cissie had been born, to this miserable-looking dump, just two weeks before her wedding.
Cissie had already moved out of the house in Devons Road the week before they had — as soon as Davy had got the house in Linman Street. Cissie had originally intended to keep it all above board and to go to Linman Street on their wedding day, but when she had started rowing with her parents over and over again about Davy, he had persuaded her to move in two weeks before the ceremony. Despite having been brought up to be the sort of girl who thought seriously about whether she would even let a feller kiss her, let alone anything else, before she had a ring on her finger, Cissie had readily agreed. She was only a kid, and Davy had turned her head. She had taken completely against her mum and dad for even daring to criticise the man she loved.
The one thing Cissie hadn’t banked on, however, was the fact that Lil had planned on settling into number seven at the same time. But she hadn’t liked to say anything about it at the time, as Davy had seemed so fond of his old mum.
So, not having spoken to her parents since then, Cissie had never seen inside their new home, but she had, over the years, made regular, secret trips – more secrets, she thought to herself with a sigh – to the far end of Charles Street where she could look at their place without being seen. She had never thought too much about why she did it. She just had. And even though she knew they had moved away because they hated Davy and everything to do with him, it had always puzzled her why they should move to such an awful place.
Ellen, her mum, had always been so particular indoors, and, even when times were hard, had always kept their home lovely, spotlessly clean and tidy. In fact, Cissie could never remember them having much money at any time, even though Frank, her dad, had always worked hard in his job at the sugar factory in Silvertown, and her mum had always done piece-work, machining at home for a sweatshop owner from Brady Street. But they had always been respectable.
Jumpers were darned, windows were washed, holes patched and steps polished. Cissie’s little ankle socks had been the whitest in the street and her plaits were always neatly tied with ribbons that might have come off the toot stall down Chrisp Street but were always freshly ironed.
And now they were living here. They must have been having really hard times to put up with such a place. And then they had gone and given all that money to her and the kids. It made Cissie feel so guilty as she stepped down from the truck and went round to open the passenger door for her children.
‘Come on, you two, out yer come.’ Cissie helped the sleepy pair down on to the narrow pavement. ‘Now,’ she said, brushing Matty’s floppy golden fringe from his eyes, ‘I want you two to be extra ’specially good for me, all right?’
Matty nodded, looking up at her with the heartbreaking seriousness that seemed to cloud his pale little face all too often nowadays.
Joyce just yawned, rubbed her knuckles hard against her eyes, and then lifted up her arms for a carry. ‘I’m cold, Mummy.’
‘I know, sweetie-pie.’ Cissie scooped her up with one arm and held on to Matty with the other. ‘Ready?’ she said, wondering what she was letting herself in for, and whether she had any right to be putting her children through this.
* * *
‘All right, Frank, I’ll get it. It’ll be Mrs O’Brien with her key,’ they heard a woman’s voice call from the other side of the closed street door. ‘I said I’d let the bloke what’s looking for a room in for her while she’s at work.’
The woman’s voice was as familiar to Cissie as her own.
It was her mother’s, the voice she hadn’t heard for more than six years.
As Ellen opened the door she was holding out her hand ready to take something, but instead of receiving a key, her hand flew to her mouth. Tears filled her eyes as she stood there, unable to take in what she was seeing.
‘Blimey, Ellen!’ came a voice from inside. ‘Hurry up and close that door, girl, it’s freezing in here, and I’m trying to have me wash.’
Ellen reached out and folded her daughter and her grandchildren in her arms.
* * *
‘You’ve got the place looking lovely,’ Cissie said, admiring the cosy little back kitchen that served all Ellen and Frank’s purposes bar sleeping.
Ellen smiled easily over her shoulder at her daughter as she bent forward to shoot another scoop of coal on to the fire. It was so strange. Six and a half years and it was as though they had been chatting away only yesterday.
‘Yer mean yer wouldn’t think it was as nice as this from the look o’ the outside?’ she said, straightening up from the hearth.
‘I didn’t—’
‘It’s all right, girl. Don’t you go fretting.’ Frank laid his hand gently on his daughter’s shoulder, then crouched down to his two grandchildren who were clinging close to their mother’s knees. ‘You two a bit warmer now?’
Matty nodded but Joyce turned her head into her mother’s lap.
Frank smiled tenderly as he reached out and stroked the back of her glossy dark hair that was as black as her mother’s, as black as his had once been before
he had started going grey.
‘Mummy!’ Joyce grizzled.
‘She’s shy, ain’t she,’ Cissie said, embarrassed, then added, almost shyly herself, ‘but she’ll soon come round, Dad. In time. When she gets used to yer.’
There, she’d said the words that retied the severed bonds of their relationship. The words that admitted they all had a future together.
‘Right,’ Frank agreed. ‘That’s what’s the matter with her. Shy. Just like you was, love, when you was a nipper.’
‘Kettle’s boiled,’ Ellen said, filling the pot. ‘We’ll soon have this brewed, and then I’ll make both you little ’uns a cup o’ nice milky tea. How about that? D’you like milky tea?’ she continued, taking cups and saucers down from the dresser.
None of the china matched, and there were more than a few chips and cracks in it, but it was all spotlessly clean. ‘Your mum used to drink her tea so milky that granddad here used to say yer might as well just give her a cup o’ milk with sugar in it.’
‘I like milky tea,’ Matty said warily. ‘Don’t I, Mum?’
‘Yes, darling, yer do.’
‘And me,’ Joyce whispered.
Cissie squeezed her children to her. ‘And you.’
* * *
‘Look, Mum, Dad,’ Cissie said, taking her cup over to the gleaming white butler’s sink. ‘I’ve gotta go now, cos I’ve got a lot of things to do. But I’ll be back soon. I promise.’ She set the cup gently in the blue and white enamel washing- up bowl on the scrubbed wooden draining board and turned round to face her parents. ‘But before I go, I’ve gotta say what I came here to say. I’m really sorry. About everything. And I wanna say thanks.’
‘I won’t hear no sorries,’ Ellen said firmly. ‘We all make mistakes. And we don’t need no thanks neither, we’re your mum and dad. And we’ve only done what’s right.’
‘But that money. It really helped me out. Yer can’t imagine, Mum. Honest, I dunno what I’d have done without it.’
She paused, and signalled at them with her eyes that she didn’t want the children understanding what she was about to say next, then added quietly, ‘I’d have thanked yer sooner, but someone kept it all a little secret, didn’t she?’
‘I ain’t surprised, love,’ Frank said with a shrug, ‘but we mustn’t let ourselves get bitter, eh? That never did no one no good.’
Cissie walked back across the tiny room and took her coat from the back of her chair. ‘You’re good people, d’you know that? It’s something I don’t reckon we appreciate most of the time, people being good to us. And decent.’
‘She’s a daft thing, ain’t she, Frank?’ Ellen said, beaming with pleasure.
‘I mean it. Now, before I go,’ Cissie began carefully, ‘can I ask yer something, Dad?’
‘Course yer can.’
‘When you and Mum moved from Devons Road, why did yer move here?’
‘To this dump, yer mean?’ Ellen asked, saving her husband the embarrassment.
Cissie rolled her eyes heavenwards. ‘Me and my big mouth. I’ve done it again, ain’t I? I honestly didn’t mean to say it like that.’
Frank and Ellen smiled lovingly at their daughter. ‘Don’t be silly,’ Ellen reassured her. ‘We know what yer mean.’
‘Well, why did yer?’
‘We did it to save money,’ Frank said matter-of-factly. ‘We reckoned that, you know, that if yer married…’ He paused. ‘Him. Then yer might need our help one day.’
‘And I did, didn’t I?’
Ellen reached out and touched her daughter’s cheek. ‘Don’t upset yerself, darling, that’s all in the past.’
‘All in the past,’ echoed her husband. ‘It can’t hurt yer now, love.’
‘Yeah,’ Cissie nodded as she buttoned up her coat. She felt like bursting into tears, they were being so kind, so understanding, and she had been such a cow, such a prize bitch to the pair of them. She wondered if she would be so understanding, so all-forgiving, with her children. She hoped so. She really hoped she had learnt her lesson. It had been her way for too long, taking people for granted. It was about time she did something about it.
‘Look, I really had better shift meself,’ she said, with a little sniff. ‘I’ve got ever such a lot of things to get sorted out.’
‘Well, if yer busy, love,’ Frank said warily, not wanting to overstep the mark so soon, when old wounds were still being healed between them, ‘you could leave the little ones with us, yer know.’
He smiled down at the two children who were now sitting contentedly on the hearth rug eating a slab of toast and dripping each. ‘They seem happy enough with us now.’
‘But how about work?’
‘It won’t hurt if I miss one day shifting bloody sugar.’ He grinned happily at the thought. ‘And anyway, I’m getting old, I could do with a bit of a rest.’
Cissie nibbled her lip. The tears were moving closer. ‘Yer’ll never get old, Dad. Not to me.’
Matty scurried over to his mother’s side. ‘Can we stay, Mum?’ he asked in a whisper.
‘Would yer like to?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, solemnly. Part of him was scared by the thought, but he sensed deep down, young as he was, that this was something his mum really wanted.
‘I could show him all the old photos,’ said Frank flashing a look of excitement at Ellen. ‘And how about me getting out me medals to show yer, Matt?’ he asked, turning to his grandson.
Matty’s face lit up. ‘Was you really in a war, Granddad?’
‘I was.’ Frank nodded proudly, not so much for his brave war record in the trenches of Flanders, but for the fact that his little grandson had just called him Granddad for the very first time.
‘So was my friend Terry’s granddad. He was in a war in Africa. And I’m gonna tell ’em both all about yer,’ Matty added triumphantly.
‘And I’ll tell yer what,’ said Ellen, now as excited as Matty, ‘I could get out that little doll’s pram of Cissie’s. I bet young Joyce’d love it.’
‘What, yer’ve still got me old doll’s pram?’ Cissie could hardly believe it. ‘Not the one I got that Christmas from the posh ladies down the mission?’
‘Yeah, the very same.’ Ellen nodded. ‘I mean, how could I get rid of it? It was part o’ yer, darling. Yer wouldn’t let that thing out o’ yer sight, would yer?’
Ellen looked away and blew her nose noisily. ‘And I’ve still got the little knitted rabbit what old Nellie Tillson made yer to push around in it and all,’ she sniffled into her hankie.
‘Aw, Mum.’ Cissie threw herself into Ellen’s arms and let herself be cradled just like any other lost child who had found her mother.
Chapter 23
‘Oi, come on! Move yerself, Bernie.’ Turner rapped his knuckles hard on the driver’s side window and beckoned impatiently.
Bernie groaned quietly to himself. What now? His eyelids felt as though they’d been weighed down with lead shot; he hadn’t slept since God alone knew when; he had a greasy breakfast wedged up behind his ribs, and now Turner – still half-cut but with a second wind after his wash and brush-up in the back of the cafe – was telling him to get out of the car. Surely Turner didn’t expect him to go upstairs with him to Eileen’s flat? What did he want him to do, stand there and hold his trousers for him?
Those might have been the thoughts going through Bernie Denham’s mind, but he knew better than to voice them. Instead, he rolled down the window and stuck out his head. The cool autumn air hit him like a wall. Bernie’s bulky frame shivered.
‘What’s that yer say, guv?’ he asked, the perfect picture of a respectful employee.
Turner shrugged down into his overcoat. ‘I said to move, we’re going up to see Eileen.’
‘Right.’ Bernie wound up the window again, and heaved himself out of the car and on to the pavement. Just what he needed, going up to see some old tom.
A huddle of ragged-arsed youngsters, boys of about ten years old, suddenly appeared from the slimy-looki
ng alley that ran alongside the tumbledown house in which Eileen lodged on the top floor.
‘Nice motor, mister,’ one of them piped, giving his nose a quick swipe on the filth-encrusted sleeve of his hole-ridden jersey.
Turner reached out and grabbed the skinny kid by the ear. ‘And it’d better stay nice,’ he snarled, ‘or I’ll know who to blame, now won’t I?’
The child, too well-trained in the ways of the street to complain, nodded his head in urgent agreement and waited for the man to release him. ‘I’ll keep an eye on it for yer.’
‘See, Bern,’ Turner said with a grin, tipping his head towards the boy. ‘That’s what I like to see: loyalty. Someone who does what I want without question.’
Turner opened his camel-hair coat and searched his trouser pocket for change, but he had none.
‘Bernie, give the chavvies here a few bob,’ he said, walking away from them towards the house.
Bernie waited until Turner had stepped inside the chipped and peeling street door and then clouted the kid, hard, round the back of the head with the flat of his hand. ‘Go on,’ he roared, ‘piss off out of it.’
* * *
By the time Bernie joined Turner at the top of the stairs, Turner was smacking the flat of his hand against Eileen’s door.
‘Wha’d’yer want?’ Eileen mumbled from the other side of the door. Her voice was thick with sleep despite it now being almost ten o’clock in the morning. ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me, yer dozy tan,’ Turner shouted at the keyhole. ‘Now get this door open.’
‘Bill!’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that really you?’
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