by Jessie Keane
Clara gulped. ‘About Mum.’
Bernie nodded. There was only quiet in the flat. Deathly quiet. Noise still drifted up from the flats below: music, chatter, noises from another world.
‘What’s going to happen to us?’ asked Bernie. She was shaking.
Clara stared at her. She had always been ‘big sis’, the one who cared for the younger girl, made sure she was smartly turned out in the mornings, properly washed, sitting her up on the draining board when she was little and scrubbing at her face to get her clean and ready for the day. Bernie was delicate, needy, easily upset. She bit her nails to the quick and she cried every time Hatton came to the door with that horrible great dog of his. Bernie depended on her.
Then Clara looked down at her brother. With Mum gone, Henry was her responsibility, but how would she clothe him, feed him? She had helped Mum out on the sewing sometimes. She could do that, carry on with that, maybe get more work in.
But it won’t feed three of us, said a voice in her brain.
Well, it would have to. She could put cards in windows, tout the business about more. Mum had never really pushed much for work, not as much as Clara would have liked her to. She gazed at the old Singer sewing machine at the end of the table and thought of all the times Kathleen had sat there working, turning the fabric, chatting to her while she fashioned dresses and blouses for her limited clientele. And the family had scraped along, barely surviving.
Not that she was in any way criticizing her mother – God no. Kathleen had been a great woman, much too good and decent for that flashy waster Tom Dolan. But now it was Clara’s turn to care for the family, and she’d do it, right up to her dying breath. Her eyes filled with tears that overflowed and splashed down.
Mum was dead.
It struck her all over again, the awful gut-wrenching tragedy of it, and suddenly she was sobbing too.
‘Oh, Clara – don’t start, or you’ll set me off,’ moaned Bernie.
Clara swiped at her nose and eyes. Bernie was right. She had to be the strong one; she had to be. She turned a tear-bright gaze upon her sister. Gulped. ‘Don’t you worry, Bernie. We’re going to manage just fine,’ she promised. ‘Now run and fetch the doctor, there’s a good girl.’ She swallowed her grief. ‘There are things to be done, legal things.’
‘I want Mum,’ Henry wailed, his voice high with panic.
Clara pulled him in close to her and looked right in his eyes as she gripped his frail shoulders. ‘Mum’s with the angels, Henry,’ she said gently but firmly. ‘But listen to me. I’m going to look after you. All right?’
He nodded. Sweet little Henry, he was the most biddable, the most good-tempered child even when his world was being torn apart. Clara ruffled his copper-brown hair and he blinked up at her with big bloodshot grey-blue eyes – like Bernie’s, like Mum’s. Clara looked like her dad, she was the only one that did. And God, how she hated that at this moment. How she hated him.
Now she was remembering what they’d had to do when Gran died; they’d summoned the doctor so that he could write the death certificate. Maybe the doctor could advise them about a funeral – only they had no money to pay for one.
He came two hours later, a large moustached man, bustling into the flat with an air of brisk self-importance, wearing an ill-fitting tweed suit and carrying a Gladstone bag. Clara showed him into the bedroom. The doctor drew back the closed curtains, and in the brightening daylight Clara could see again that her mother looked awful – truly dead. All the life was drained from her, never to return. An empty shell lay there, not Kathleen Dolan. She was gone.
Clara watched as the doctor checked for signs of life, looked under the sheets. Then he glanced up at Clara. ‘Wait for me next door, will you?’ he asked a bit more gently.
Clara left the room. Bernie was sitting at the table, staring vacantly into space. Henry was there too. Clara put the kettle on for tea. They could afford that, at least. And Kathleen had baked a fruit cake last week, they had some of that still in the tin.
Mum’s dead.
Before, their situation had been precarious; now it was truly dire. Clara clenched her teeth to stop herself crying again, and made the tea, then found a little milk from yesterday which was curdled, but what the fuck. She opened the tin and cut three slices of the stale cake, and placed them upon Kathleen’s best plates, the ones she had managed to hang onto after Dad had lost all his money, the bone china ones with the lady in the pink crinoline painted on the sides.
Maybe those would fetch a few pennies? thought Clara.
Presently the doctor came into the room. Clara poured out the tea, pushed the little sugar-bowl toward him and the milk jug, and a plate with the cake on it.
‘Thank you, girl,’ he said, busy writing out the certificate.
Bernie sat looking at the cake as if it would choke her. She took a tiny sip of tea. So did Clara, as the silence in the room deepened. Finally the doctor stopped writing and put away his pen, took off his glasses. He looked at Bernie, at Henry, then at Clara.
‘How old are you?’ he asked Clara directly.
‘Eighteen,’ she lied. She had expected this. She was fifteen, but if she told him that then he would talk about taking Bernie and Henry into care, maybe even her too, and fuck that. She couldn’t let that happen. She hoped the doctor was busy, too busy to go back to the surgery and check her records and find out that she was lying. God knows the bastard had been too bloody busy to come and tend to Mum when she’d needed him.
‘And you’ve got work?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I have. Lots of dressmaking work.’
Another lie. Mum had always said she must never lie, but what alternative did she have? She didn’t want her brother and sister consigned to council care, she’d heard such tales about it. They might lose touch forever if she allowed that. So she had to appear confident of her ability to keep the Dolans afloat. Even if she knew she couldn’t.
‘And you’ll be looking after your sister, and your brother? You’d do that?’
‘I will,’ said Clara.
The doctor looked at the cake, took a bite. It was past its best and he put it back on the plate. Took another sip of the bad-tasting tea. Then he stood up, and looked down at the three of them. ‘The funeral director will be here within the hour.’
Clara nodded. She wished she’d had a better education, she wished she could be good at something. The needlework was nothing and she knew it. A hobby, at best. Not enough to pay for a damned thing, not really. Their Dad had been a rich man, and her parents had gone along assuming that would always be the case, and that neither Clara nor Bernie would ever have to work because one day they would get married and become housewives.
But what sort of men could they meet, who could be a suitable husband for either of them, around here? Eight horrible, panic-driven months since Dad had left them, and neither Clara nor Bernie had even thought about school. Kathleen had fallen into a kind of dull depression and didn’t care whether they went or not. The education authorities hadn’t bothered to chase them up, either: not here in the slums. And what about Henry? He should be starting school soon, but he probably wouldn’t. Of course, the plan had always been for Henry to follow Dad straight into the business . . . except now there was no business.
While Bernie showed the doctor out, Clara sat there, staring at her mother’s death certificate. Her head swam with the shock of it. The sheer dreadful finality of it.
‘Try and eat a little, Henry,’ she said. ‘Have some of the cake, for God’s sake. It’ll make you feel better. I’ll go in with Mum for a while, all right?’
Clara went into the bedroom and there her mother lay, her spirit, her soul, all gone. Clara closed the door gently. She went over to the window and drew the curtains closed again, plunging the room into gloom. Then she pulled up a rickety old chair, sat down beside the bed, took her mother’s lifeless hand in both of hers, and cried.
12
‘Marcus? Honey?’
It wa
s a woman’s voice. Marcus’s eyes flickered open. He pulled in a shuddering breath and sat up in bed to bright morning light and the sound of traffic outside. He pushed his hair back out of his eyes. Paulette was there, holding out a mug of tea. She had the radio on in the kitchen and he could hear the Hilltoppers drifting out, singing ‘P.S. I Love You’.
He’d met Paulette last year in the Calypso, one of Lenny’s clubs – now his – and he’d found her sexy and obliging so he’d bought her a flat, which was where he’d wound up overnight. Occasionally she slept over at his place – and she had been moving a few pieces of her clothing into his wardrobe, which didn’t exactly delight him. She was his official mistress – most of the club owners had one – but Christ knew he didn’t want to go too far down that road.
He took the steaming mug she offered. It was one of her set of two Coronation mugs with Queen Elizabeth II on it. Paulette was a fervent Royalist; the crazy cow had even camped out overnight in June with some of her mates on a rain-soaked Mall to see the new Queen pass by in the big gilded state coach.
It tickled him to think of Paulette – who’d been giving herself airs since she started being seen around town with him – squatting on the Mall in the rain. Now, she wouldn’t do that. Now, she’d want to watch from a five-star hotel, doused in the fancy French perfume he’d paid for, wearing designer dresses with big net underskirts and tight bodices, maybe a mink over the top.
Marcus looked at her in the cold light of day. Her honeyblonde curls were glossy in the first rays of the morning’s sun; her hair, he thought, was her prettiest feature. Her face was too long for perfect beauty. There was a knowing look in her grape-green eyes and her skin wasn’t the best, but she was pretty enough, and – up to now – not too demanding, although she could talk the hind leg off a bleeding donkey. She had a good body and she’d been doing a lot of modelling when he’d met her; she still did a fair bit of modelling on the side.
Undemanding, he thought. Yeah. After that dismal visit to his mother’s yesterday, an undemanding woman was exactly what he needed. His mother had no heart, no soul. Well, maybe he didn’t either.
She was returning his stare. ‘You shout out sometimes, you know. In your sleep.’
‘Do I? What do I say?’ He had dreams, he knew that. About Lenny, dead Lenny, standing at the end of his bed in the moonlight, with half his head shot away, asking why had he done it.
‘Nothing, really. You shout, that’s all. And you move your legs, like you’re running. You went to see your mum yesterday, didn’t you.’
‘So?’
She shrugged. ‘Just saying. You always come back from her with a fucking face on you.’
Marcus sipped the tea. It was hot and strong, delicious. Paulette started jabbering on same as always in her high-pitched voice, so he tuned out. Minutes later, he tuned back in. ‘ . . . So I said it wasn’t enough, not nearly enough, and he renegotiated and then I agreed. Earl’s Court Motor Show! Don’t you think that’s great?’
‘What?’ he asked.
She tutted. ‘Listen, will you. I’m going to be Miss Healey at the Motor Show.’
‘What does Miss Healey do?’
‘I lie on the bonnet of their new model car,’ said Paulette. ‘In an evening gown. It’s all very tasteful.’
‘What, every day?’
‘While the show’s on, yes. October twenty-first to the end of the month. Of course I have breaks.’
‘Well good.’
‘Is it true you’ve taken over from Lenny Lynch?’ she said, eyeing him curiously.
‘Yeah, it’s true.’ Marcus was used to Paulette’s sudden changes of topic. She hardly ever came up for air between one subject and the next.
‘I heard that blowsy tart Delilah went missing from the Blue Banana.’
Marcus’s black eyes stared into Paulette’s. ‘I heard that too.’
‘Turned up drowned, they say. Down Limehouse.’
Marcus put the empty mug aside. ‘Time I was up,’ he said, and Paulette took that as a signal that she was to drop the subject.
But Paulette was secretly delighted with this new turn of events. Lenny Lynch had been the uncrowned king of Soho. And now Marcus – her boyfriend, and God how she was going to crow about this to all her mates – was taking Lenny’s place!
Marcus Redmayne was on the up.
And by God, she was going with him!
13
Clara hated everything about being poor, but what she hated most was the constant, grinding humiliation of it. It was Tuesday. At three o’clock, Hatton would knock on the door and that would be it; they’d be out of here.
The funeral directors came, and the faces of the two men were a picture of distaste as they took in the squalor of their surroundings. They know this is going to be a council burial, thought Clara. No money in it for them. Not even a bloody tip for taking away the corpse.
She couldn’t fail to notice their sneering glances and the lofty way they talked down to her and to Bernie, who was clutching at Henry as if he might vanish, just like Mum would soon, when they took her body away.
Clara made the men a cup of tea, offered them the last of the stale cake – which they refused – and tried to maintain a dignified front as they sat at the table and prepared the forms that would consign Mum to a pauper’s grave.
With tea and paperwork out of the way, the two men fetched a makeshift coffin from the hearse and tramped up all the stairs with it. For once, the people clustered on every flight fell silent. Bernie started to cry as the men came into the flat carrying it.
‘Shh, Bern,’ said Clara, patting her sister’s shivering shoulder. Mum’s old gold wedding band, thin as wire with years of wear, glinted on Clara’s right hand. She’d taken it off her mother’s body; it was a keepsake she’d treasure. She didn’t want some morgue attendant wrenching it off her and selling it.
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Bernie. ‘I can’t. This is wrong.’
‘Mum wouldn’t want you getting upset,’ said Clara, watching Bernie with concern. Her sister had always been the caring one, the soft one; she looked like Mum and she was more like Mum in nature than Clara could ever be; sweeter, less pragmatic. Clara was the tougher of the two – more like Dad, she supposed, although she wasn’t proud of that – but right now she was glad of it. She had to be tough, to cope with all this. Life had kicked the Dolans hard, and it seemed it wasn’t finished with them yet.
She poured more tea for Bernie and when the undertakers came out of the bedroom carrying their sad burden, she showed them out of the flat. Down on the other flights, there were people still sitting, silent now as the men passed by with the coffin. Watching. Suddenly, Clara cracked.
‘Seen enough, have you?’ she yelled. Faces turned up and stared at her. She went back into the flat and locked the door and stood shaking against it.
Oh Jesus, what would they do now? How were they going to manage . . . ?
Bernie was still weeping at the table, Henry clinging on to her and grizzling. Clara went to them, her heart full of sorrow. She patted her sister’s shoulder and hugged Henry.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she said firmly, but she could see that Bernie didn’t believe it and she didn’t believe it herself, not any more.
Best to keep busy, she told herself. What else could she do? She got clean linen from the cupboard, and went to strip the bed.
An hour later, she was down in the yard at the back of the building, stuffing some of the sodden newspapers into the bin. Headlines flickered past her eyes but she couldn’t take them in. Some rich American called John Kennedy had married Jacqueline Bouvier. The whites had hung on to Rhodesia. A record number of houses were being built. None of it meant a damned thing. She put all the old soiled sheets into the dustbin too. The metal stink of the blood whooshed up as she did so, filling her with nausea. Bile surged into her throat. Poor Mum. Even if it was a wicked waste, she didn’t have the heart to wash the sheets. Her stomach turned over at the ve
ry thought.
She trudged wearily back up the stairs. The young black woman who seemed to live on the second floor, the one who had smiled at her a couple of times, looked at her as she passed, seemed almost about to speak; but Clara carried on up to the top floor and knocked three times at the door. Bernie let her in. She seemed agitated – even more than usual.
‘Clar?’ There was alarm in Bernie’s voice.
‘What’s up?’ asked Clara, locking the door behind her.
‘I dunno. I was in the bedroom, and I looked out the window, and I saw the doctor down in the road. He had two policemen with him. Come and see.’
Bernie led the way into the shadowy bedroom with its bare bed, empty of life now, all sign of Kathleen gone. ‘You can only see them from in here,’ she said, and nudged open the curtain to show Clara.
Sure enough, there they were, in a huddle on the pavement two doors down on this side of the road. Had they been standing a few yards further back, Bernie wouldn’t have been able to see them. They were talking, and the doctor was indicating their building, and the policemen were nodding, looking up at the top-floor windows.
‘What do you think they’re doing?’ asked Bernie anxiously.
Clara’s guts heaved with dread at what she was seeing. She could think of only one explanation. The doctor must have gone back to the surgery and checked his records. Having found out that she was lying about her age, he’d returned with two helpers to do the unthinkable: take Henry and Bernie away and place them into care. If she let that happen, she would never see her brother or sister again.
‘Oh God,’ was all that Clara could say.
‘What is it, Clara? You’ve gone white!’
Clara took a calming breath. Her heart was racing and she felt like she was going to pass out. She heaved in another breath. Then another.
She watched the small group move to the front of the building, picking their way through the heaps of rubbish, then they disappeared inside. Soon they would be hammering at the flat door, and if Clara didn’t let them in, the coppers would break the door down.
