‘I won’t! I won’t!’ Emma had sprung round from her crouching position now; her whole body was trembling, yet at the same time she looked taut. And now she yelled, ‘I’ll not go with you! Never! Never! I’m…I’m going to be married.’
Her statement startled not only him, but also Peggy, and it showed as surprise on Henry’s face, and she looked from one to the other, saying, ‘Yes, yes, I am. I’m…I’m going to be engaged at Christmas and married next year. And that’s for all of you. Do you hear? For all of you.’
Andrew was the first to speak: his mouth in a wide sneer, he said, ‘That’ll be over my dead body.’
‘And it could be. Yes, it could be.’
To the surprise of them all, she was on her feet now. Her body was still shaking but there was no tremor in her voice as she cried, ‘I’m marrying Richard…Doctor Langton. We arranged it just today.’ She turned now and looked at her mother, adding, ‘He…he was coming to see you at Christmas.’
Into yet another silence her father’s voice growled out, ‘If he lives that long.’ Then they watched him pull himself up from the support of the couch and, keeping his eyes on Emma until he had passed her, he strode from the room.
Emma dropped down onto the couch again and Peggy beside her, and the first question Peggy asked was, ‘Is this true?’ and Emma nodded, saying, ‘Yes, yes, it’s true, every word.’ Then in a louder voice she cried, ‘You took me to see him, do you remember? And from that day it was done for both of us.’
‘You’re not sixteen yet.’
‘Huh!’ On the word, Emma turned her head away, the exclamation saying it all.
Peggy could find no reply, no words with which to confront her daughter, such as: He’s much too old. You don’t know your own mind. You’re at a romantic stage. I’ll have to see him and talk to him.
And as if Emma had heard her thoughts she turned to her and said, ‘You can’t do anything, Mam, so don’t try. If you do I’ll just go off…and with him.’
‘Have you thought what he might do, your father?’
‘Yes, I have; but when he confronts Richard he will be told that he could be taken to court; he’s been at me for years. I’ve had to fight him off. Did you know that? Fight him off. Why didn’t you do something years ago, Mam? Leave him. You knew what he was like. You blamed Gran-Gran for being selfish, but what about you? You didn’t want to leave this house, because you would be leaving Uncle Charlie. Isn’t that it?’
‘Girl! What are you saying?’
‘The truth for once, bringing it into the open; the truth. Do you think I’m blind or stupid? Everybody knows, at least in the family.’
Peggy’s head drooped, and Henry, looking at Emma, said, ‘Well, that’s your mother’s business, after all. And who’s to blame her, having to put up with those two for years?’ He jerked his head towards the ceiling, then went on. ‘But from where I stand there’s going to be a separation in that quarter and soon…Peggy’—he put his hand out towards her—‘I’ve got him where I want him, where we all want him. There’s just one more bit of proof and that’ll be in the locked drawer of his desk, because I remember you saying he was like your father in that way: he always kept part of his desk locked up.’ He leant towards her. ‘Do you think we can get the key?’
She looked at him as though in understanding, but she couldn’t answer him for a moment for there were so many things whirling around in her mind: that doctor and her Emma…Good lord! And but for his hand going up she would really have brained him this time, and then where would she have been? And they all knew about Charlie. Well, she had guessed they would, so why was it upsetting her? It was the fact that Emma had accused her of not doing anything to prevent her being molested. And she had been…yes, she had been: she had been molested, if only on the surface. Tonight, though, it had gone further than the surface. Oh, yes, yes. What was Henry saying? Andrew had been making money on the side for years? She blinked hard, then said, ‘What did you say, Henry?’
‘I said, it all came about through the bangers in the backyard. I had given him the usual price list, you know, and we had discussed roughly what we should let them go for. And I remembered one for which we had suggested four hundred. It wasn’t at all a bad little car; a bit of rust on the bottom, but nothing that couldn’t be covered up. It’s usual, of course, to ask a little more to start things off. They’re more often than not bought by people passing through, the Sunday buyers, and they like to haggle and feel satisfied when we come down. Well, it should happen that I called in at Gibson’s to pick up a suit—I was having the trousers altered—and as I was leaving the shop one of the assistants held the door for me and said, “It’s going like a bomb. I’m very pleased with it, Mr Brooker.” I stopped for a moment and said, “Oh yes? Which one was that?” “A Ford,” he said. “Oh, the Ford,” I said, nodding at him; then said, “So it was you who bought the Ford?” as if I was talking about a Rolls, because I could see he was very pleased with himself and his buy. And that’s what I said: “Well, I hope you felt you got a good buy.”
‘“Oh yes, I did, Mr Brooker, for four hundred and seventy-five it was a bargain.”
‘We nodded at each other and I went out thinking, four hundred and seventy-five. The only other Ford we’d sold that day was a nearly new one from the front. Four hundred and seventy-five. I kept repeating that to myself. Well, I went back to the office and looked up the books, and there it was, four hundred pounds. And there was his signature and the price, four hundred pounds. He had cleared seventy-five pounds at one go. As I said, Peggy, most of that back stuff goes to passers-by, so you never see them again, unless the car turns out to have been stolen, as has happened.
‘My God!’ He put his hand to his head now.
‘When I think of what he’s been raking off all these years. Sometimes there’s as many as a dozen cars out on the back. No wonder he wanted to work on a Sunday, demanded to work on a Sunday, to please the old girl. Well, I wonder how she will take this? But first I want to get into that drawer, the one in the study he keeps locked. Have you a duplicate key?’
‘No.’
‘Well, I know a way to get in. Where do you think he’s gone now?’
‘Oh, likely up to the sanctum to tell her that I nearly brained him and to put his case first, and she’ll believe him.’
‘Yes, she likely will; she’ll believe anything except the fact that he’s been doing her for years. Oh, I’m going to be there, and so are you, Peggy, when I present her with the proof…Have you got a screwdriver?’
‘Yes; two or three of them in the tool box in the boot room.’
‘Let me have them.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Well, there’s more ways of opening a drawer than from the front, if you get my meaning. And you, Emma, stay in the hall, and if you hear him coming across the landing, stall him.’
‘What do you mean, Uncle Henry, stall him?’ There was a tremor in her voice.
‘Well, let him talk to you.’
‘I can’t. I can’t.’
‘All right, all right, don’t get agitated. Well, run to the study and give us the tip.’
Five minutes later Henry had taken off the back covering the three side drawers of the desk and had taken out the papers from the only drawer that was still locked. And as he laid them on the table he said, ‘Two bank books, look; one in the name of Milburn in a South Shields branch. Two hundred and twenty in that, look. But oh, oh, see here!’ He had pulled some documents out of an envelope. ‘These are the acknowledgements of Special Deposit, one for a monthly, and two for three-monthly accounts. The bank gives good interest on those. Just look at them, Peggy. My! My! One for three thousand, one for one thousand, five hundred. God in heaven! One for two thousand, three hundred. These are in his own name. And here—’ He opened a black-backed book, then muttered, ‘Accounts. Oh, I’m going to say it: the clever bugger that he thinks he is, is a bloody fool. Keeping accounts! Look, right back to nineteen s
eventy; what he’s made each week. And what’s more, he’s done it under my bloody nose.’ He straightened up, the book gripped in his hand. ‘You know,’ he stared at Peggy, ‘I could throttle him; on my own account, I could throttle him.’ He paused for a moment and looked first to one side then to the other, then bit on his lip before he said, ‘But he couldn’t have made all that’—he pointed to the Special Deposit accounts—‘just out of his Sunday pickings. Or could he?’ He now picked up another book, saying, ‘That’s one of the shop’s receipt books. He’s been clever.’ He flicked the stubs of the book over, saying, ‘He gives them a receipt for what he’s charging. All above board. But then he must have another book that he keeps there or somewhere else that he hands to me, and also, apparently, all correct and above board.’ Again he was biting on his lip; and now Peggy spoke for the first time: ‘Surely somebody else must be in on it; he couldn’t have done it all on his own. What about Wilkins, Ted Wilkins?’
‘Oh, Ted Wilkins hasn’t got the brains he was born with. He shows customers round, does a lot of car-talk that has nothing to do with the money part of it. He can hardly write his own name, but nevertheless he’s a good salesman. No, you can count him out. And yet, you know, looking back now to the time I offered the bold boy more Sunday help, he refused; he said, what trade there was he and Ted Wilkins could manage. I remember the words he used: there were hours when they were standing picking their nails, he said. Oh, he’s been picking his nails all right, and sharpening them in order to count the notes.’ He turned back to the desk, and gathered up the papers and books, saying, ‘I’m not going to bother putting that back on, not the night, Peggy, anyway. Come along with me.’ Then at the door, before opening it, he said, ‘Lass, if I know anything, this is going to be the end of your battle.’
They reached the hall to see Emma standing to the side of the stairs shivering. ‘Don’t worry; it’ll soon be over,’ Peggy said to her. ‘Come along upstairs and go to your room, and bolt the door. And don’t open it, mind, until I tell you.’ And she pressed Emma before her, up the stairs and to her room, and waited outside until she heard the key being turned in the lock. Only then did she nod to Henry and precede him along to the end of the corridor. And as they walked Henry whispered, ‘Lizzie should be here; I had intended that she should, but things have moved too fast.’
They paused outside Mrs Funnell’s door and exchanged glances as the low murmur of voices came to them. Then, without knocking, Henry pushed open the door and, clutching back, brought Peggy forward, and so they entered the room together, there to see the old lady propped up in bed, and seated by her side, a handkerchief wound round his knuckles, was Andrew.
Before either Peggy or Henry had time to speak, Mrs Funnell, looking at Peggy, cried, ‘I was just about to ring for you. Have you gone clean mad? Do you want to cause a murder in the house now?’
Peggy walked to the foot of the bed and, nodding at her great-grandmother, said, ‘Yes; yes, there could be a murder in the house, but I wouldn’t be the one to commit it; I’ve already missed, so it’s your turn now.’
The old lady screwed up her face and her blue lips pouted as she drew in her chin and said, ‘What’s the matter with you, girl?’
‘Nothing, Great-Gran; there’s nothing the matter with me.’
‘Nothing the matter with you, girl, when you nearly brain your husband!’
‘Oh, that’s nothing to what you’ll want to do to him in a minute, Great-Gran.’
She now watched Andrew rise to his feet. His slack mouth was wide, but his teeth were close together: he looked like a man about to spit a great distance. Turning to Henry, she said, ‘Break the news gently to Great-Gran, Henry.’
The old woman narrowed her eyes, pressed herself back onto her pillows and, looking from one to the other, she said, ‘What is this?’ and her gaze came to rest on Andrew. But he was staring at Henry, and something in Henry’s face must have warned him of approaching danger for, suddenly gripping his wrist, he turned away and was about to make for the door when Henry said, ‘Just a minute.’
‘I’ll be back shortly,’ Andrew growled; ‘my hand’s aching.’
‘Well, you’ll have plenty of time to see to that later when I’ve finished saying what I have to say to you. Just remember, under Mrs Funnell, I’m still your boss, you know. You’ve forgotten that a number of times lately, haven’t you?’
‘What you getting at…? And don’t push me. Don’t you lay a hand on me.’
‘I had no intention of laying a hand on you; I’ll leave that to the police.’
‘What!’ Mrs Funnell had pulled herself up from the pillows. ‘What’s this? What are you talking about, Brooker? Police?’
‘Yes, Mrs Funnell, I was talking about the police; unless, that is, you would not wish to press the case against him of robbing you for years.’
‘What d’you mean, robbing her for years? What you trying to pull?’
‘It’s no use, Jones. You can put all the faces you like on it but you can’t get away from the proof. You’ve been stupid, you know. You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? But when you thieve you should never put it in writing; it goes against you.’
‘What is this?’ It was a high croak from the bed. ‘What are you talking about, Brooker? Spit it out, man. Spit it out.’
For answer Henry moved up the side of the bed and, throwing the cheque book stubs and the notebook onto the bed, he said, ‘Your great Sunday business man has made at least fifty pounds a go, sometimes as much as a hundred, on each backyard car he’s sold. It’s enabled him to buy a house for his mistress and bank thousands under an assumed name. It’s all there.’
Mrs Funnell did not look at the evidence lying in her lap, but at the man she had come to love as a son almost from the day he married her great-granddaughter. She’d never had a son; she’d always wanted a son. Her daughter had given off a daughter and her daughter had given off a daughter: women…women in the house all the time. She did not consider Len Hammond, she had hated him from the beginning, but Andrew Jones was something different. He was young and pleasing and he amused her. He had kept her in touch with all that went on in the works, underground, that is.
Underground. Her eyes dropped to the evidence on the bed. She picked up one thing after another and scanned it, but her scanning was enough to prove that dear Andrew Jones had been robbing her for years. She turned her head slowly and looked at him. She had known he wasn’t a good husband. She had known he had women on the side. She could forgive all that. She could forgive the unnatural feeling he had towards his daughter. But that he would swindle her, that he would do her out of money, her money, this was another thing altogether. She knew she was an old woman and she hadn’t all that long to live, and her one regret in facing death was she’d have to leave her money behind. And she had money, a lot of money. She had accumulated it not only directly from the car business, but also from having had fingers in pies that no member of the family knew about. Only her solicitor knew the extent of what she was worth. Even her bank manager hadn’t an inkling. And how had she come by all of this money? Through being careful and wise with her investments. She had always seen to her own accounts. When she wasn’t able to get up, her solicitor came to her.
She had never believed in God, not since she was thirteen, when she had refused to go to Sunday School; but she had taken to herself a god very early on in life, and its name was ‘money’. And during these latter years, when she couldn’t get about so much, it had become her main interest in life. Even knowing that she couldn’t take it with her, she was determined to have some fun out of life; not that she would actually experience it fully, but she could allow her mind to dwell upon it and be titillated by it: she was going to leave the bulk of what she owned to her second interest in life; in fact, he vied with the first, dear Andrew.
She felt a pain under her ribs as she stared at him. His face was devoid of colour. She wanted to cry at him, ‘It isn’t true, is it? They’ve got it in
for you because I’ve made so much of you; they’re jealous.’ But his countenance at this moment could have hanged him; he couldn’t meet her gaze: his eyes were flicking here and there as if looking for a way of escape. And then she screamed, ‘You! You’ve done this to me after all I’ve…’ There was a choking in her throat, and a voice was yelling excuses in her head: well, they’re all at it. Everybody’s at it. What’s a few hundred put on a car? But he had said he only ever thought of her. He…he had, in a way, made love to her; her, an old woman: he had not only stroked her hands but massaged her; when she had cramp in her calves he had got rid of it; he had sat her up and manipulated her shoulders; he had made her feel like a young girl, while all the time he was…taking her for an old fool. The pain was getting worse. She screamed, ‘Get out of my sight! You’ll pay for this; I’ll have…have the police on you.’
‘Stop it. Don’t agitate yourself. Lie quiet.’ Peggy’s hand was on the old woman’s brow stroking her hair back. She did not turn and look at Henry when she said, ‘Ring for the doctor’; the urgency was there, and he hurried out of the room, only to come to a dead stop on the landing when he saw Jones knocking on Emma’s door, saying, ‘Emma! Emma! Open up. Do you hear me?’
‘Yes, she heard you. Now get away from there! And if you’re wise, you’ll make yourself scarce.’
Jones turned and faced Henry. ‘You’ve always had it in for me, haven’t you?’ he said. ‘Well, you can do nothing.’
‘Don’t be a fool. And you are a fool, you know, and a knave, but not a clever enough one, otherwise you wouldn’t have kept the evidence. But you wanted to be reminded each week of where you stood, didn’t you? How the sum was mounting; that’s been your undoing. Anyway, I’ll not expect you into work tomorrow. You understand? And it will all depend on Mrs Funnell where you’ll be at this time tomorrow night. You’ve cooked your goose. And I’m going to tell you another thing: if you don’t want to be up on two charges, you leave Emma alone.’
The House of Women Page 22
