Tousled blond curls topping a small, wicked face had appeared from beneath the counter.
‘Little bleeder! Just wait till I get me ’ands on you! What the ’ell’s that you’ve got? Tobe! Give it back!’
The child gleefully slipped between them avoiding both the swift hand that Sally extended to catch him and the bellowing stall holder, a short, burly man too large to follow the child under the counter and too short of arm to reach him over the top. Sally lunged at him again, took a swipe at his ear and missed again. ‘Little bugger! Let it go!’
The eel the laughing child held wriggled and cracked like a small live whip in his hands. A woman shrieked. A man stepped hastily backwards on to his companion’s foot. Chaos threatened.
‘Toby!’
For a few more seconds Toby held on to the slippery, wriggling thing, then, unable to keep his grip he flicked it high into the air. Pandemonium broke out as the eel writhed in its flight and came to land across a man’s shoulders before slithering to the ground. Plates of whelks and winkles were hastily dropped as people leapt out of its way. The onlookers scattered. Toby took one look at Sally’s face and deciding that discretion for the moment was most certainly the better part of valour fled into the crowd.
Josie, despite herself, was giggling uncontrollably as the sweating, red-faced stall holder chased the eel across the trodden, dusty grass. ‘Oh, Sal, he’s a little devil and no mistake!’
‘Yer can say that twice,’ Sally said tersely. Grim-faced she was surveying the crowd, watching for the boy. ‘Wait till I get my ’ands on ’im. ’E won’t sit down without a cushion fer a week. Toby? Toby! Get back ’ere!’
‘Leave him. He’ll come.’ The excitement had died down. People were back with their whelks, their winkles and their cockles. The stall holder had now recovered his eel and dropped it back into the basket from which mischievous fingers had released it. Sally eyed him a little cautiously, but he made no move towards her. Around them a hubbub of talk and no little laughter rose. ‘There,’ Josie said, ‘no great harm done. Now – why don’t we go and see the freaks?’
Sally shook her head.
‘Oh, Sally, please! I don’t want to go alone.’
Sally grinned. ‘I’ll wait for you at the door. Make sure they’ll let you out.’
‘But Sally—’
‘Josie—’ Sally was good humoured, but the note in her voice was absolutely final. ‘No. Apart from the fact that I sometimes think I’m too much a freak meself to feel comfortable peering at those poor blighters, it’s threepence. And I ’aven’t got threepence. No—’ she held up both hands, palms out, ‘I already owe you fer the cockles. I’m not takin’ any more. I’ve got tuppence in me pocket. An’ I promised that little monster a go on the roundabout and a penn’orth of sausage fer supper.’
‘Sally, I wish you’d come to us – both of you – just until you—’
‘No. I know yer dad wouldn’t mind me – but Tobe’d drive ’im round the bend. And anyway, I don’t scrounge off me friends. Yer know me better than that. ’Sides, we’ve got enough ter keep body an’ soul tergether for a while yet – I earned a few bob from Patsy O’Reilly the other day lookin’ after his stall. We’ll be all right, Jose, don’t you fret. It’s just a bad patch, that’s all. If the worst comes to the worst I might try up west – one o’ those fancy shops – though what I’d do with the nipper then I don’t know, what with livin’ in an’ all.’ She stopped, her whole face changing, the lines tautening, the eyes narrowing warily. ‘Well, well,’ she said, pleasantly enough, ‘look what the cat’s let drop.’
Jackie Pilgrim, tall, lean but with shoulders as broad as any Covent Garden porter’s lounged against the stall, his cap tilted forward to keep the sun from his face. Sally lifted her face to him, smiled derisively into the astonishing blue eyes. ‘An’ ’ow’s God’s gift to the ladies this fine day? Keepin’ ’em all happy, are we?’ The low-pitched voice was harsh.
Josie pulled her arm a little nervously. ‘Sal!’
Jackie kept his own cocky smile in place. The smell of brandy was strong about him. ‘Sure an’ I’ve had no complaints.’
Her smile became sweeter, her narrow eyes more contemptuous. ‘Well, o’ course – yer wouldn’t, would yer? Unless yer’ve actually found a girl that likes ’avin’ ’er face smashed in? Are there girls like that? You’d know, o’ course. You’re the expert.’
Very precisely he spat at her feet. His smile had gone.
The air rang with her sudden husky laughter. ‘Charmin’ I’m sure! Never let it be said Jackie Pilgrim’s not a blue-blooded gentleman. Perish the thought. Descended from the kings of Ireland ’e is, so ’tis said. Descended’s the word—’
‘Piss off,’ he said. The swift-rising rage in him was palpable. It gleamed in his eyes, brought his lean, broad frame from its lounging stance to tower above the two girls.
‘Sal – for God’s sake—’ Josie hissed, truly alarmed. She’d heard too many stories about Jackie Pilgrim not to be afraid of that wicked temper.
Sally ignored her. Recklessness born of remembered pain, of squalid humiliation, of the need to hurt, of the ache to revenge engulfed her as it always did when she saw him. The beatings she had sustained from those big, shapely, dirty hands had scarred her body; but the other and worse abuse that this flawed and arrogant boy inflicted upon his women had scoured her soul and left it raw still. For a short, unbearable time she had been as abject a slave as he could have wished. She had begged for his touch, for his brutal lovemaking, had crawled to him like a bitch on heat; had degraded herself for his gratification, offered herself a desperate, willing sacrifice to his vicious pleasures. And had one morning woken up detesting and despising him and – worse – detesting and despising herself. Now the mere sight of him stirred an emotion even deeper than the besotted infatuation that had smitten her as suddenly as a summer fever and had, thank God, as suddenly evaporated. In the back streets of Poplar self-respect was a prize hard won, and for those who achieved it it was a possession as precious as any miser’s gold. Jackie Pilgrim had, for however short a time, deprived her of her pride and her dignity, and for that she could never forgive him. The fact that he had, too, physically dominated her with his overwhelming strength – as indeed any young man in his prime who is ready to abuse the gift of muscular power can physically dominate a woman – she found, perhaps oddly, more easy to live with; indeed she had discovered in that a mocking weapon to use against him. She knew well, of course, what her taunting did to him, understood better than most the risks she ran in challenging him, but it seemed that she could not stop. When, unable to believe her rejection of him he had used that strength of his to force her, she had lain helpless beneath him and laughed at him. She had spat her scorn, hissed her contempt of his manhood; and as he had thrashed her for it, defiantly mocking she had laughed still, flinging his pride in his face. ‘You’re a coward, Jackie Pilgrim! Half a man! And stupid! You’re like a stupid, brutal kid that breaks the things he can’t understand!’ And now, still, many a long month later those words and the others she had spat through bloody lips lay between them, a fierce, necessary defiance and an ever-present danger. She turned her head a little now, addressing Josie, not giving an inch to the man who towered so threateningly above her. ‘Aren’t yer glad y’er a girl, Jose? I mean, all that brute force an’ ignorance must be bloody ’ard ter live with, wouldn’t yer say? I could almost feel sorry fer the brute.’ She was aware of the strong, brandy smell of his breath, the darkening of his sunbrowned face in which the cornflower eyes were such a contrast and a strange beauty.
‘Sally – please – come away—’
He reached for her. And as he did so a small tornado hit him, sending him staggering, sharp teeth burying themselves into his thigh as, like a terrier attacking a lion, Toby flung himself to the defence of the only person in his young life who had ever shown him kindness.
Jackie yelped, and tried to shake the child off. Toby clung tenaciously. The
young man swept a huge hand down, fastened on to the boy’s collar and twisted. Choking and coughing Toby held on. Then Jackie jerked hard, and the boy dangled helpless in the air, arms and legs flailing, small face scarlet and distorted with rage, fear and lack of air.
‘Put ’im down,’ Sally said. She stood tense as an animal about to attack, dangerous as a tigress whose young is endangered.
‘I’ll kill the little devil. Do everyone a favour.’
‘Put ’im down’.’
For a moment they stood so, glaring at each other, the boy dangling between them. Then the weight of the struggling child proved too much for the threadbare material of his jacket and with a sharp sound it gave way, leaving Jackie with a handful of all but rotten material and Toby a small, snivelling heap upon the ground. But in Toby, a child of the streets and back alleys of London’s slumlands, self preservation was paramount always and could be paralysed neither by fear nor by surprise. He moved like a small rodent; in a flash he was behind Sally, the big hand that snapped out to catch him missing by a hair’s breadth.
‘Kids now?’ Sally asked, tartly scornful, one hand holding the child to her.
They were attracting attention; sidelong glances, the turn of interested heads.
Jackie took a deep breath, and the brandy fumes settled a little in his brain. How did she do it, this skin-and-bone know-nothing little cow? How did she manage to rile him so, to make him lose control – to make him, on occasion, he suspected look a fool? What he’d ever seen in her he’d never know; and what he’d ever done to earn the contempt and hostility he always saw in those odd, narrow, green-flecked eyes he’d never understand either. He hadn’t treated her any differently than he’d treated any other woman; they liked it, didn’t they? They certainly queued up for it. And whether she liked it or whether she didn’t she’d been in there with the others, queuing too, by God. The thought made him feel better. In the distance he saw an ivory parasol, bobbing amongst the flowered hats, the flat caps, the boaters and the bonnets. That made him feel better too. A real lady that one. A fancy piece if ever there was one. And throwing herself at him like any tuppenny street girl. Sure – who said Jackie Pilgrim wasn’t as good as the rest of them? He’d show them, he would – and Miss Sally bloody Smith along with them. He straightened his cap. Brushed his coat. Turned away without a word.
The two girls watched him go. Josie shook her head. ‘You’ll get your come uppance one day from that one if you aren’t careful,’ she said.
Sally was trembling a little, as if a chill wind had suddenly cooled her sunwarmed skin. Her grin was brash. ‘No chance. Take more than ’is nibs ter get me. Come on, yer little tyke,’ she hauled the child from behind her, cuffed him lightly, ‘let’s go an’ find the bleedin’ roundabout, shall we? Though what I’m doin’ spendin’ pennies on that when you’ve just ruined yer only coat I don’t know.’
II
Charlotte watched the fire-eater, a paunchy, middle-aged man dressed in incongruous leopardskin, with wide eyes, impressed as a child. ‘How does he do that? How doesn’t he burn himself?’
Wilfred, standing beside her and agonizing as to whether to take the cool smooth arm that was so tantalizingly close, shook his head. ‘I don’t know.’
‘It isn’t real fire,’ practical Cissy said. ‘It can’t be.’
‘Well, it looks real enough.’ Charlotte moved, irritably, ‘Wilfred, for heaven’s sake, either take my arm or don’t – but don’t tickle!’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I thought everyone was thirsty?’ Peter had long since lost interest in the fire-eater. The refreshment booth was close and his throat was parched. ‘Who’s for a glass of cider?’
‘Lemonade will do nicely, thank you,’ Hannah said in gently pleasant, sisterly warning.
‘Oh come on – a glass of cider won’t do anyone any harm.’ Wrangling amiably they led the way, Cissy and Ralph behind them, towards the gaily striped booth. As Charlotte turned to follow them she was prevented by the pressure of Wilfred’s hand on her arm.
‘Charlotte?’
She smiled at him, vaguely. ‘Yes?’
‘Will you – shall you be coming home with us this evening? Peter’s coming. And the Battys are invited. We thought perhaps – a musical evening? And – well – that wouldn’t be the same without you, you know. You play the piano far better than Mary Batty, and you have such a very pretty singing voice.’
Torn between gratification at his flattery and a quite unjust but urgent desire to extricate her arm from his chill and slightly damp clasp, Charlotte simply looked elsewhere. ‘Oh look, a juggler.’ A lithe young man balancing spinning plates upon chin and forehead was tossing a dozen shining coloured balls into the air, his hands moving faster than the eye could follow. ‘Oh – isn’t that clever?’
‘Will you?’ Wilfred was being, for him, unusually persistent. Normally the mere suspicion of a frown, the tiniest hint of disinterest on her part shut him up for a good half hour. She sighed exasperatedly. In Wilfred his sister’s vivid colouring had been toned from fire and cream to sand and milk, as her bright and practical personality had become in her younger brother an odd and excessively irritating mixture of assertiveness and self-conscious diffidence – each of these traits, it seemed to an unimpressed Charlotte, invariably showing themselves, as now, at precisely the wrong moment.
‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘It’s awfully hot. And it’s been a very long day.’ Could she stand an evening of sheep’s eyes from Wilfred, watched approvingly by his doting mother, of the noisy, competitive Battys, who would argue – with each other and with anyone else who cared to oblige – all night, of Cissy – dear Cissy, truly her best friend – so bright, so contented, so distressingly certain – so lacking in romance? On the other hand, could she stand the alternative? Ben, Hannah and Ralph at one of their interminable meetings. Doctor Will, bless him, puffing away at his pipe behind his open paper, or poring over some obscure medical journal – oh, Lord! what a choice! ‘I really don’t know,’ she said again.
‘Well, I wouldn’t dream of trying to make you do something you didn’t want to, of course,’ poor Wilfred said very stiffly.
‘Oh, Wilf, don’t be so stuffy! I said I didn’t know—’
‘You said it as if you didn’t want to come,’ he said, his pale, sandy-fringed eyes obstinately hurt.
She pulled her arm away from his, flouncing a little.
‘For heaven’s sake don’t be such an idiot. You make such an issue of everything. I tell you I’m tired, that’s all, and it’s really very hot.’
‘So you don’t want to come?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘As good as, it seems to me.’
‘Charlotte? Wilfred? Come along, do,’ Cissy called. The others had seated themselves by the refreshment booth, where chairs and tables had been set in the meagre shade of the single very small tree the wasteland could boast.
In a difficult silence that neither would be the first to breach they joined their companions. Charlotte, fanning herself theatrically, sank with grace amidst a pretty drift of ivory and blue into a chair between Cissy and Peter, leaving Wilfred to stand awkwardly for a moment or two behind her, turning his narrow-brimmed bowler in his hands, before he took himself with bad grace to the other side of the table where a couple of chairs stood empty. In silence he sat, ramrod straight, his pale, abundantly freckled face gloomy.
‘Right,’ Peter spun a gleaming coin into the air and caught it deftly. ‘My treat. Cider all round, right?’
‘Lemonade, thank you,’ Hannah said firmly.
He shrugged. ‘Charlotte?’
Charlotte noted with exasperation the expression upon Wilfred’s face, an awkward combination of injury and sanctimonious disapproval. She smiled brightly at Peter. ‘Cider would be lovely, thank you.’ As she spoke a fiddle began to play, wildly gay, an infectious call to dance. Charlotte turned her head, tapping her foot and swaying a little to the gipsy rhyth
ms. A child, fair haired and dirty faced fled laughing through the crowds, tripping over feet, treading on trailing skirts. Behind him came the girl Charlotte had seen in the soup kitchen, the girl she remembered was called Sally. ‘Come back ’ere, yer little devil! I’ll ’ave yer guts fer garters, see if I don’t!’
The child cast a mischief-filled glance over his shoulder and dived back into the crowds like a rabbit into a hole.
‘Here we are – cider, cool as can be.’
Charlotte gulped the sparkling amber drink. It certainly was good; cool and tart and wonderfully refreshing. She drank again.
‘That’s the girl!’ Peter was regarding her with benign surprise; behind him Wilfred scowled.
‘Have another?’ Peter asked, grinning.
Hannah lifted an eyebrow.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’d love one. Thank you.’ It might not be champagne. It might not be the subtle brews of the east. But at least it wasn’t boring lemonade. Her spirits lifted a little as the second glass of cider bubbled on her tongue. Wilfred was watching her moodily, his pale eyes unblinking, his lemonade untouched. She turned ostentatiously in her chair, putting her back to him. Really, he was like a child, a small boy refused a treat—
The fiddler came closer, drawing the crowds. A girl in a brilliant red dress was walking beside him, a tambourine in her hands which she tapped and shook as she moved, arrogantly lovely, along the path that opened before her. Every now and again she took a few, dancing steps. Not far from where Charlotte sat they stopped. The fiddler’s bow flashed, the girl lifted long, graceful arms above her head, the tambourine rattling musically, enticingly. A few people clapped. The girl began to move, slowly at first and then faster, wheeling and dipping, spinning and turning to the wild music, slim legs flashing in the swirl of her flounced crimson skirts. Her skin was smooth and dark as amber silk, her hair raven black; her body, slim and strong-looking, curved voluptuously in the dress which fitted to her hips like a second skin. In the last rays of the sinking sun she whirled and stamped, arrogant, beautiful, exciting.
Tomorrow, Jerusalem Page 5