by Sheila Riley
Evie told him everything. There was no sense in keeping Jack in the dark over their mother’s antics. If he was expecting to come home to a paragon of motherhood, he had another think coming.
‘We never saw him,’ Jack said, ‘by the time we got home he’d gone.’ Evie was relieved. Her brother was at an age where he would be a handy runner for the spiv’s illegal gambling racket. And, skinny as a whippet, Jack could nip in and out of places others could not.
‘I never thought she’d throw him out,’ Evie said, knowing her mam couldn’t manage without a man.
‘I bet that was a slap in the gob for her,’ Evie said, ‘watching him take back all that he’d provided. Well, serve her right. She should have thought about that when she gave the spiv a roof over his head. It’s obvious he would take back everything he’d supplied if he wasn’t living here.’ Evie cut more slices of bread for toasting now the fire had livened up. ‘He wasn’t in the habit of giving stuff away if he wasn’t getting anything out of it. There’s no goodness in that cold black heart of his. Did Mam say where she was going or when she’d be back?’ Jack and Lucy shook their heads in unison and as the fire thawed the icy room, the two youngsters began to relax.
‘How did you get home last night, Jack? It couldn’t have been easy.’ The dockyards were only a couple of streets away, but she knew it would have been almost impossible to get home under his own steam with an injury like that.
‘A man was passing along the dock road, he helped me.’ Jack shrugged, unintentionally pushing his lolling sister off his shoulder.
‘Did he tell you his name?’ Evie dragged a chair from the table nearer to the fire.
‘I can’t say for sure,’ he answered, giving the adorable lop-sided grin she remembered so well. ‘It was dark. I was too busy trying to stay alive…’ He shifted a little to make Lucy more comfortable.
‘Not to worry,’ Evie said, suspecting Darnel was at the centre of the warehouse robberies and capable of violence. He didn’t make idle threats. ‘Would you recognise him as part of the gang on the dock, do you think?’ Evie worried Darnel might come here, but Jack shook his head, causing his dark fringe to fall into his eyes. Flicking it from his face, he said, ‘I’m not sure what Darnel looks like, but I’d know the ugly fucker who shot me if I saw him again.’ Jack winced as he tried to move his leg into a more comfortable position.
‘Less of the cursing, Jack,’ Evie said giving him two aspirins, which Connie had left last night. ‘I understand you’re angry and you have every right to be. But you don’t have to let yourself down in front of Lucy.’
‘Sorry, Luce,’ Jack said, nodding his head, ‘I don’t indulge, but the pain got the better of me.’
‘You’ll feel better when you’ve had a bite to eat and the tablets take effect,’ Evie said. ‘I’ll make enquiries. Try to find out who he was. To say thank you, for getting you back home safe and sound.’
‘He’ll be your good shepherd, Jack,’ Lucy said knowingly, wanting to add her thoughts to the conversation. ‘Aunt Martha said we all have a good shepherd watching over us, I saw mine on the ship when we were coming home.’
‘I think mine was looking the other way when that fella let rip with the bullets,’ Jack said.
‘Good shepherd?’ Evie asked. Her young sister had grown into a character. One minute she was babbling on like a fast-running brook and the next, when she had everybody’s attention she was as quiet as a timid little mouse. Evie realised she would have to be patient, give her time.
Lucy was only a baby when she was evacuated. Reckoner’s Row was a different place to the one she had left behind nearly eight years ago. A busy port, with a rookery of streets leading up from the docks, was a world away from the tranquillity of the Irish farm she’d been accustomed to.
‘Lucy believes in good shepherds.’ Jack counted on each finger. ‘Angels. Sprites. Leprechauns. Fairies and Furies – you name it, she’s seen one, been one or spoke to one.’ He gave a tired smile. It had been one hell of a restless night. ‘She’ll try to convince you they’re everywhere.’
‘Well, if you see this good shepherd again, Lucy, ignore him.’ She was worried Darnel might be up to no good. ‘You mustn’t talk to strangers,’ Evie warned.
‘But good shepherds are not strangers,’ Lucy said, certain she was teaching her older sister something new. ‘They know everybody.’
Evie rolled her eyes. Her sister was obviously the trusting kind. ‘I can see I will have to keep a careful eye on you, Miss Adventure.’ Especially until their mother came back. ‘Don’t you worry about anything,’ Evie said. ‘I’m here now. And if Mam thinks she can waltz back in here with another man in tow, she’ll have another think coming!
13
Connie didn’t relish the thought of trying to persuade Mim to accept a stranger into the house. She would have her work cut out, for sure. She had to convince her mother that getting a lodger in was the best solution.
What choice did they have? With trade down because of the bad weather, and men being laid off? Some extra income would not go amiss. And truth be told, it would be nice to have a man about the place. She couldn’t magic the money for the jobs that needed doing on the pub out of thin air. Mim had been telling her to use her own initiative since she came back from overseas war work. So that was what she did.
‘You are the licensee,’ she said to herself, trying to drum up the courage to broach the subject with her mother. Nursing on the battlefields was much easier than this. ‘Dad left you the pub in his will.’ Albeit with a caveat that Mim would live here for the rest of her days and if the mood took her, she could even help run the pub. Not that the mood took her mother often. Connie only just managed to stop herself from groaning out loud. She knew stealth and cunning were both needed if she was going to persuade her mother that a lodger could be the answer to their prayers.
‘A lodger?’ Mim’s agitation was obvious in the twitch of the muscle in her cheeks and the quiver of her double chins. She was on her second cup of tea when Connie eventually told her.
Turned out in a woollen dressing gown, thick knitted bed socks and devoid of her usual lipstick and rouge, Mim was a million miles away from the corseted, nipped-in black dress and favourite pearls she’d worn behind the bar since her husband died. Mim would brush her pin-curled hair, which had been hennaed and wrapped in a silk scarf, into glossy finger waves when she had a mind. But for now, she was playing the martyr.
‘If you expect me to welcome any man, apart from your sainted father, into this house you’ve got another think coming!’
‘Mim, could you do me this one good turn?’ Connie asked, resisting the urge to remind her mother it was her name above the door, and she had the final say. But she knew her mother, as stubborn as a determined mule, would not want to be reminded that she had failed the licensing board examination.
‘A lodger!’ Mim was aghast. ‘And I have got no say in the matter?’
‘You have,’ Connie persisted, hugging a scatter cushion to stop herself from dragging her hair out, while Mim yada-yada-yaddaed about the injustice of Da’s bias. ‘We both decide.’
‘But you made this one all by yourself!’ You cheeky madam were the three words missing from that statement, thought Connie.
‘You didn’t give me a second thought.’ Mim was determined to get her point across. ‘What if he’s a mass murderer? What then?’ Connie ignored her mother’s hysterical ideas.
‘He’s a lodger, Mim. A paying guest. Whatever you want to call him. But he is not a mass murderer. He’s got references.’
‘Oh, well that’s fine,’ Mim said sarcastically. ‘He’s got references. So we will sleep soundly in our beds. Because nobody with references ever murdered two innocent women while they slumbered.’
‘I’m sure we will be safe,’ Connie’s fingers ached to rake the pins out of her hair and drag every single hair out by its roots, rather than listen to this madness.
‘Will we?’ Mim wailed, and Connie’
s eyes rolled heavenwards. Here we go! ‘As safe as I was when you were gallivanting off all over the world.’
‘I wasn’t having a holiday, Mim! I had to go where I was ordered. There was a war on. Remember?’
‘Oh. I remember all right.’ Mim’s nostrils flared. ‘I went through it – on me own, if you please.’ She took a large gulp of tea. Then, holding the cup out to Connie she motioned for another spoonful of sugar. ‘For the shock.’
‘You were not on your own, Mim, you were down in the cellar with a street full of pissed people.’
‘Aye,’ Mim said, ‘and isn’t it a good thing I can depend on strangers in me hour of need, because my only living daughter was off saving every other bugger.’
Connie sighed. Next it would be, those bloody Germans could have murdered me in me bed.
‘Those bloody Germans could have murdered me, as well!’ Mim’s dark eyes were wide.
‘Mim, you’ve a scream that could scare the life out of a banshee. Look…’ Connie’s voice softened. ‘I know it was terrifying for you when the bombs dropped.’ The two houses at the end of the row, next door to Ada Harris, had been blown to smithereens.
‘Terrifying, is it?’ Mim asked. ‘Well, that’s one way of putting it.’ Agitated, she had no intention of letting Connie off the hook.
‘I’m sorry you had to face the war alone – but you survived. Thank goodness.’
‘Goodness had nothing to do with it,’ Mim said, ‘and talking of being murdered in me bed…’ Her eyelids narrowed, and Connie, shrewd enough to know what she was getting at, beat her mother to the finish line.
‘Mr McCrea won’t be here long. I think it is a perfect solution.’
‘I’ve got money put by.’ Mim’s voice was hesitant. ‘We could use that… if we got desperate.’
‘I don’t expect you to keep me.’ Connie put a gentle hand on her mother’s arm, knowing she would never hear the last of it if Mim had to break into her treasured savings.
‘It’s better than having a stranger under our roof.’ Mim screwed her handkerchief into a knot. A sure sign she was hoping to win this argument with emotional intimidation. Well not this time, Connie thought. Her mother would not get all her own way.
It was hard enough trying to keep the business going in the dark, some nights working by candlelight, with only half a dozen customers. Much less than they had in the bar before the big freeze, as it was now being called. She needed help. ‘I’m sure he’ll have no intentions of ravishing us in our beds.’
‘Don’t be vulgar.’ Mim stuffed her hanky down the side of the chair, leaning towards the blazing fire and Connie smiled. Her mother had been landlady of this dockside pub for over thirty years and could handle the burliest docker, but she would never allow discourteous or uncouth language in her presence. ‘There’s been too much of that smutty talk, since the war.’
‘Yes, Mim’ Connie said, knowing she blamed everything from bad manners to the worst weather in three hundred years on the war. ‘Mr McClean was a sergeant major in the Dragoon Guards, you know.’
‘A sergeant major.’ Mim looked thoughtful, and Connie pressed her lips together to contain a smile. Her mother imagined herself to be of a higher class, because her father owned a grocer’s shop, and she had been an only child who hadn’t had to scramble for attention – or anything else. ‘What’s he doing around here, then?’
‘He’s in marine insurance. Shipping, or some such.’ Connie decided, without knowing for sure, that Mr McCrea was in that line of business, because they were the most popular office jobs around here.
‘I’ll think on it,’ Mim said.
‘Well, you’ll have to think quick, Mim.’ Connie said under her breath, feeling victorious as she went out to the kitchen to make another pot of tea.
Dithering in the arctic kitchen, Connie pulled her cardigan around her shapely figure. She lit every jet on the ancient gas cooker, hoping the slight rise in temperature would thaw the frozen water pipes, knowing it was a good thing she had filled the kettle the night before.
‘Don’t you know gas costs money?’ Mim said, dragging herself from the fire, repeating Connie’s rebuke from the night before.
‘I’m trying to get heat in the place,’ Connie answered. ‘Any lodger worth his salt will not pay good money for hypothermia.’
‘It’s not like you to be extravagant.’ Mim’s words were laced with curiosity. ‘Am I missing something here?’
‘No, you’re not missing anything,’ Connie said. ‘Can’t we be warm for once!’
‘I was only saying…’ Mim was still in her cosy plaid dressing gown and tartan bootee slippers zipped up to her shapely ankles, her clothes warming on the fireguard. She sounded most put-out.
‘No, Mim, I’m sorry, it’s just the worry of the dwindling trade getting me down.’ Connie sighed. Mim must understand her need to bring in money to keep the business going. ‘Jobs, food and fuel are more scarce now than during the war because of this bloody weather.’ She knew, even though it was possible to buy rationed goods – on the QT – they did not come cheap.
‘And we need a new back door,’ Mim said on a shiver and Connie wondered at her mother’s expectations. Everybody knew things like back doors and window frames were in short supply and difficult to come by because wood, along with most other household materials, was needed for the export drive.
‘A new door is not a priority, I’ll put a curtain up to stop the draft,’ Connie told her mother. ‘We have to make do, like everybody else.’
‘The country’s going to the dogs,’ Mim complained as they went into the front room to eat their breakfast. Connie had a thought.
‘What happened to your old lisle stockings?’ Connie asked her mother as she poured tea into china cups.
‘They’re in the dresser drawer. Why?’ Mim, insatiably curious, always answered a question with a question if she could.
‘I’ll stuff them with newspaper and plug the gaps under the doors to stop the cold wind coming in, I heard it on Household Tips on the wireless.’ Connie had a quick sip of hot tea before resting a double sheet of newspaper against the poker wedged into the fender. ‘Let’s hope this lazy fire livens up soon, but I think the wood’s damp.’ Connie waved her hand to clear the billowing smoke from the fireplace.
‘Everything is damp,’ Mim said, ‘and I’m not having my undergarments on display for strangers to see.’ She swiped her day clothes from the fireguard and, taking her seat at the table she ladled two large spoonfuls of sugar into her tea. ‘And we’re nearly out of sugar.’
‘There’s no more left in the shops,’ Connie sighed, ‘but there are other things to worry about. The roof, for a start.’ If the snow got much heavier, Connie believed, she would sleep under the stars – certain the roof tiles were not strong enough to hold much more weight.
‘You should take it up with the landlady,’ Mim said. ‘She might put a plaster on it.’ Connie sighed, knowing the whole place needed doing up, but so did the country. What hope did they have? ‘Since your father died there’s been nobody to do all the handy jobs.’
‘I’ll get someone to look at it when the snow clears,’ Connie said, putting a scrape of butter onto a piece of toast.
‘If the snow clears,’ Mim said. ‘The man on the wireless said this could last for weeks.’ Spending money on anything – even essential repairs – was anathema to Mim.
‘I can’t do all the repairs, myself.’ Nor would her dwindling takings stretch to the exorbitant cost of replacing the roof.
‘Maybe your nice Mr McCrea will do the honours,’ Mim said, cutting her buttered toast into delicate-looking triangles.
‘His money would bring in extra cash, that’s for sure.’ Connie ignored her mother’s insinuations and continued to eat her breakfast. Mim sniffed as she offered Connie some of her precious jam, brought by a cook off a visiting ship.
‘Talking about being murdered in our beds!’ she looked at Connie who was shaking her head in disbelief.
‘I thought we’d finished that conversation?’ Connie said, making sure everything was neat and tidy.
‘Ada Harris heard it on the wireless!’ Mim said. Connie counted to three.
‘If there was no news, I’m sure that woman would make it up,’ Connie said, looking at the clock on the mantelpiece. Mim loved the titbits of local gossip, gleaned from the ever-present meat and grocery queues.
‘I can’t see any other solution than a lodger,’ Connie said. ‘There’s not enough work.’ Her retort hid the worry of not being able to pay her way. The die-hard regulars spent nowhere near enough to keep the tavern going.
‘It’s the same all over,’ Mim answered over the rim of her teacup.
Connie knew this cold weather might be good for the kids to throw snowballs, but the frozen streets were now way beyond pretty. ‘Snow-capped houses are not so attractive when the gas is on low pressure and the cold weather freezes the water pipes solid.’
‘It’s the streetlights going out that bother me,’ Mim added, shaking her head. ‘It’s the blackout all over again. The snow’s twenty feet high in some places,’ Mim said, reading the details from reduced pages of The Daily Express. Connie knew her mother enjoyed nothing better than a morsel of misery to wallow in. ‘Transport’s ground to a halt, and the whole country’s come to a standstill.’
‘We’ll have no money if there’s no custom,’ Connie said, driving her point home. If only she could get her mother to see how dire the situation was.
‘I suppose it’ll put the kybosh on my nightcap.’
‘That’s the thing, Mim: how can we replenish the stock if the drayman don’t get paid?’
‘How will I sleep without me nightcap? There’s nothing worse.’ Mim looked thoughtful, blowing into her cup then taking a cautious sip of the hot tea. The conversation was going in a more positive direction, and Connie suspected her mother was about to talk herself into a lodger.
