The Bells of Bow

by Gilda O'Neill

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gilda O’Neill

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Copyright

  About the Book

  To the outside world seventeen year-old identical twins Babs and Evie Bell are as close as two sisters can be. In fact they are as different as chalk and cheese. Babs is the sensible one, taking on responsibility for the house, and for their dad, Georgie ‘Ringer’ Bell, who has sunk into drunken, self-pitying despair ever since his wife Violet did a runner with another man. By contrast Evie’s prime object in life is having a good time – and at the moment that involves Albie Denham, a well-known local crook. Apart from organising illegal dog racing, Albie, a natural spiv, has no visible means of support, but when war breaks out he is in his element. Babs senses Albie is drawing her carefree sister closer to the edge of real trouble. And it is not long before she is proved all too right ...

  About the Author

  Gilda O’Neill was born and brought up in the East End, and now lives in Essex with her husband and two grown-up children. She has written six other novels, the most recent being The Lights of London, and two nonfiction books.

  Also by Gilda O’Neill

  Fiction

  The Cockney Girl

  Whitechapel Girl

  Just Around the Corner

  Cissie Flowers

  Dream On

  The Lights of London

  Non-Fiction

  Pull No More Bines: An Oral History of East London

  Women Hop Pickers

  A Night Out with the Girls: Women Having Fun

  For all those London families, including my own, who put up with so much, so bravely and with such good humour.

  1

  ‘Shove over then, Babs. Let the dog see the rabbit.’

  Babs shuffled sideways on her bottom across the faded brocade of the dressing table stool and perched herself on its very edge, making room for her twin sister Evie to sit down beside her.

  Evie took a slow, deep breath. ‘Here goes,’ she said and, with her eyes tightly closed, she pulled off the knotted turban that had been covering her hair.

  ‘You’re mad,’ gasped Babs, staring at the reflected multiple images of her twin which were now grinning back at her from the triple-framed looking glass. ‘Why d’yer do it? You wait and see, when yer unwind them pipe cleaners, it’ll all fall out. Then what’ll yer do?’

  ‘Leave off, Babs, don’t spoil it for me,’ Evie snapped. She studied her image carefully as she began to unwind the make-do curlers from her newly platinum-blonde hair. She tossed a bleach-covered pipe cleaner carelessly into the pink glass tray of the dressing table set. ‘It’s only a bit of Hiltone,’ she said dismissively and ducked her chin to get a better look at the effects of the peroxide on her previously dark brown hair. ‘I think it looks great. Why don’t you do yours?’

  Babs shook her head and blew noisily through her pursed lips. ‘No fear,’ she said, opening up her mascara compact and then spitting daintily into it. As she pretended to be engrossed with the task of rubbing the little brush back and forth across the gradually softening block of eye make-up, she looked sideways through her lashes at her sister. She couldn’t keep quiet any longer. ‘I don’t think it’s me, and anyway,’ she added solemnly, ‘I’m far too sensible to ruin my hair.’ Then she spoilt the effect of what she was saying by bursting into laughter. She shoved Evie playfully in the ribs. ‘And I think one nutcase in the family’s quite enough, thank you very much.’

  Evie joined in easily with her sister’s laughter. ‘Yer not worried about yer hair, Babs,’ she said, shoving her back, ‘yer just a rotten scaredy-cat.’ Then she paused and considered her profile in the mirror. Turning to Babs, she put her hands behind her head and pouted, practising the seductive, glamour-girl pose that she had kept stored in her memory from one of their many visits to the pictures. ‘What d’yer think – good, eh?’

  ‘Yer barmy, I told yer.’

  ‘Why don’t yer just relax for once? Do something wild.’ Evie twisted round and peered at Babs over her shoulder through sultry, narrowed eyes. ‘’Ere, what d’yer reckon to this one? Betty Grable, eh?’

  ‘Shut up, Evie,’ Babs giggled, ‘yer’ll have me poking the brush in me eye.’

  ‘Mouse,’ hissed Evie and got on with unwinding the rest of the pipe cleaners from her shining, shoulder-length hair.

  Used to her sister’s taunts, Babs ignored the comment and leaning forward, got on with carefully stroking the thick black paste onto her already darkly luxuriant lashes.

  ‘Plug that lamp in, Babs,’ Evie demanded, squinting sideways at her reflection.

  ‘What did your last servant die of,’ Babs answered almost automatically. ‘Overwork?’

  ‘Go on, Babs, don’t be mean. I wanna see what it looks like.’

  ‘Yer can see already. And it won’t be dark for ages yet.’ She glanced down at the face of her marcasite wrist watch. ‘It ain’t even half past seven.’

  ‘Babs …’ Evie whined, and dragged the pale blue lamp, with its chalk base shaped like a sleeping cat, towards her side of the dressing table.

  ‘Aw, all right,’ said Babs grudgingly, and bent down to push in the plug. ‘Yer’ve always got to have yer own way,’ she mumbled from under the dressing table.

  Evie dragged the lamp even closer, as near as the already stretched flex would allow.

  ‘Mind,’ Babs warned her. ‘Yer’ll have the plug out.’

  Satisfied that the lamp was close enough to give sufficient light for her inspection, Evie tossed the last pipe cleaner down in front of her and then ran her fingers through her bright blonde halo, smoothing it down into a sleek, bouncy page boy. Looking from her own reflection to that of her sister sitting by her side, she shook her head slowly and said, ‘Yer know, Babs, after all this time of looking exactly the same … look at us now, chalk and cheese.’ She paused. ‘Just look at us – completely different.’

  Babs put her mascara block down beside the pipe cleaners and, with a frown, compared their reflected images. After a moment’s pause she spoke; she sounded confused. ‘But we’ll always have the same face.’ She paused again. ‘I reckon it’ll take a bit of getting used to, you being blonde. And, d’yer know what, Eve?’ she asked, her expression softening into a smile. ‘That’s the best reason I can think of for me to leave me hair exactly as it is. For the first time in seventeen years, I’m gonna be just me.’

  ‘What you on about?’

  ‘You know, not “twin” or “which one are you?” But just me, Babs Bell. I’ll probably get called the “dark one” or the “brunette”, but at least I won’t be just “twin” any more.’


  A slow smile spread over Evie’s face, making a deep dimple appear in the creamy pale skin of her cheek. ‘Yer know, Babs, yer’ve got something there.’ She turned her head from side to side, staring into the looking glass. ‘It’s strange though, innit?’

  Babs’s likeness gazed back at her sister from the mirror. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘But I really like the idea. I think. Mind you, we won’t be able to kid the fellers along any more.’

  Evie’s smile widened into a broad, mischievous grin. ‘We’ve had some laughs doing that though, ain’t we?’

  ‘How about when we got caught out that time?’ Babs said, her eyes wide at the thought of it. She drew her bottom lip into her mouth, suppressing a giggle. ‘When them two blokes realised our dimples was on different sides. Remember? They went crackers.’

  Evie laughed out loud. ‘Yeah, I remember. What a pair they were. And how about them horrible green trousers that one had on? What a nit. I dunno why they got so upset though. We was only having a laugh.’

  ‘They reckoned we’d made fools out of ’em, I suppose,’ said Babs, turning to her sister for a better look at her hair. ‘They didn’t need much help with that though, did they? Right pair of idiots.’ She lifted a lock of Evie’s thick, blonded hair and examined it closely. ‘Yer’ll have to watch it don’t break off, yer know, Eve. It’s gone a bit dry on the ends here.’

  Evie pulled away from her sister. ‘Don’t start with yer fussing again, Babs. It’s what it looks like what matters, and that’s the only reason I did it – to look good. When this war starts I mean to look me very best, ’cos I’m really gonna enjoy meself, no matter what.’

  Babs’s infectious laughter burst out again. ‘You enjoy yerself? Well, won’t that make a change – I don’t think.’

  Evie stood up and stretched her arms wide. ‘I’m gonna live for today and sod tomorrow. Who knows what might happen – today, tomorrow, next week …’ Then she sat down again, shoving Babs to the very edge of the seat, and began applying a thick coat of glossy red lipstick to her full, wide mouth. ‘’Cos the way things are going,’ she said through stretched lips, ‘it won’t be long before the rest of the fellers from round here disappear off into the forces. Then who are we gonna get to take us out, eh? Tell me that.’ Evie smacked her lips together and examined the results of her efforts in the mirror. ‘I mean to have a few laughs while there’s still some blokes left to have a few laughs with.’

  Babs pulled out her hankie from the cap sleeve of her dress and wrapped a corner of it round her index finger. ‘Hold still,’ she said, and dabbed at the edge of her sister’s mouth. ‘Yer’ve got a smudge.’ Babs leant back and checked Evie’s lips. Satisfied that they looked OK, she continued, ‘I dunno what yer so worried about, there’s plenty of soldiers around. The streets are full of ’em. Yer practically trip over the buggers on the way to work.’

  ‘But for how long?’ Evie answered with a sigh as she handed Babs the lipstick. She picked up her gold and black compact and dusted her face with the pale pink powder. ‘I don’t wanna wind up an old maid like Minnie or Clara, do I? Mind you, at least them two have got each other for company. Say I wound up like Miss Peters, all by meself? I couldn’t stand that, Babs, I’d go mad, I just know I would.’

  Babs paused with the lipstick inches from her mouth. ‘You? An old maid? Yer barmy, you are, Evie Bell. I told yer, yer stone-bonking barmy.’

  ‘Good, though, innit?’ chuckled Evie and went cross-eyed, making her twin erupt into another fit of laughter. ‘Come on now, girl,’ Evie said with mock severity, ‘no time for all this mucking about.’ She stood up, straight-faced, and smoothed down her brown and cream spotted crepe dress – identical to the one Babs was wearing – over her slim but curvaceous hips. ‘If we wanna find ourselves a couple of chaps in the queue to take us in tonight and show us a good time after, we’d better get a move on, or they’ll all be spoken for.’

  ‘If it hadn’t been for you, I’d have been ready ages ago.’ Babs hurriedly applied her lipstick, clicked the cap back onto the tube and stretched across to the bed to pick up her jacket and hat.

  She had no need to stand up to reach her things; the front bedroom of number six Darnfield Street was small, exactly like those in all the other houses in Darnfield Street and most of the houses in the other little turnings which led off Grove Road in Bow. Grove Road itself was lined with tall, three-storey houses with spacious basements, which had once been the homes of comfortably off City clerks and artisans. They were now mostly divided into high-ceilinged flats occupied by working-class families who made whatever, often unreliable, living they could from the docks, the local street markets and a variety of struggling factories in the surrounding area. But number six was typical of many of the side streets off Grove Road in having only two small rooms upstairs and two rooms down – the front parlour and the kitchen – plus a stone-floored scullery and a wooden shack of a lavatory out the back. The front bedroom was only just big enough to hold the walnut veneered furniture that their father had bought secondhand the week he and Violet had got married. In the room was crammed a narrow wardrobe, a matching dressing table and stool and a double bed with a salmon pink satin eiderdown that once had been shared by the twins’ parents. But their parents no longer slept in the little front bedroom of number six. Ten years ago, Violet, the twins’ mum, had left to go down the market and had never returned, preferring to leave her family and spend the rest of her life with a stall holder with a great fat belly but a pocketful of money. The girls now slept in the front bedroom while their dad, Georgie ‘Ringer’ Bell, slept alone in the back bedroom that the twins had once occupied. And since then, Ringer had been a changed man, everyone said it. The politer neighbours whispered that he was a ‘shadow of the fine man he used to be’, while the less delicate ones said outright that he had turned into a morose, self-pitying boozer, and that it was his own fault he’d lost his decent, regular job as a driver with the Union Cartage.

  ‘Now don’t make no noise,’ whispered Eve, creeping out from the bedroom onto the landing. ‘We don’t wanna wake him. He’ll only try and tap us for a few bob.’

  ‘But he’s been asleep since this afternoon,’ Babs replied, muttering the words under her breath as they stepped gingerly onto the uncarpeted wooden stairway. ‘He’s bound to be awake by now.’

  ‘Don’t bet on it, Babs. From the stench of beer on him when he got back from the pub at dinner time he’s sunk enough pints to keep him asleep in that armchair till tomorrow morning.’

  ‘But he’ll be sure to wanna know where we’re going,’ protested Babs.

  ‘D’yer reckon?’ asked Evie cynically. ‘Won’t you ever learn?’

  Babs shrugged. ‘Well, he might do.’

  ‘If he was interested, which I doubt,’ Evie answered her wearily and far more loudly than she’d intended, ‘surely even he can work out that it’s Saturday night. So where’d he think we’d be going?’

  ‘Who’s that?’ a thick, slurred voice asked from the back kitchen.

  ‘Only us, Dad,’ Evie soothed him, all the time moving carefully along the narrow passage which led towards the street door. ‘You go back to sleep.’

  Just as she reached out to put her hand on the latch, Georgie mumbled something else, this time unintelligible. Evie stopped in her tracks and waited a moment. When there was no more noise from the kitchen, she hissed at Babs, ‘Go and see if he’s gone back to sleep.’

  Babs opened her mouth to object but Evie urged her on with a quick sideways nod of her head. ‘Go on, hurry up.’

  Babs tutted and crept back down the dim passage, past the closed door to the front room, and stopped by the open doorway of the kitchen. She looked into the little room and saw her father slumped, as usual, in the high-backed carver chair that stood by the gas stove which had been fitted into the old fireplace. His chest rose and fell in time with his coarse, drunken breathing.

  Babs went over to him and touched him gently on the hand. ‘You all right, Dad?�
� she asked softly.

  Ringer groaned and shifted his large, although no longer muscular frame in the hard wooden seat, but he didn’t wake.

  ‘See yer later,’ she whispered gently. ‘Me and Evie’s going to the Troxy. We won’t be late.’ She bent forward and kissed the sleeping man’s forehead.

  ‘Babs.’

  On hearing Evie whisper her name, Babs turned round; she gasped and drew back in alarm, taken aback by the sight of her still unfamiliarly blonde sister standing tight-lipped in the kitchen doorway. ‘Yer made me jump.’

  ‘Come on,’ Evie commanded as she walked back down the passage. ‘Leave him. Or we’ll never get to the bloody picture palace.’

  She stood impatiently by the street door, waiting for Babs to join her. ‘And yes, I’ve got it,’ she said, before Babs could ask, holding up the latch key and then dropping it into her handbag which she closed with a snap of the clasp before pulling the door open wide. ‘Least it’s not raining again tonight.’

  ‘No,’ said Babs, looking up at the clear, deepening blue of the late evening sky. ‘Thank gawd for that and all. All that rotten rain was really beginning to get me down.’

  The twins stepped out from the gloomy passageway of number six into the bright warmth of the August evening and the lively, tight-knit community of Darnfield Street. Next door, at number eight, down towards the blocked canal end of the street, Maudie Peters was using a wet rag to wipe down the stone ledge of her front window.

  ‘Evening, Miss Peters,’ they called out, as though they were speaking with a single voice.

  ‘Evening, girls,’ she answered, wringing out her cloth into the pail that stood by her side. ‘This sun makes everything look so dusty. Still, mustn’t complain, it’s lovely to have some nice weather for a change.’ She looked up at the twins and a smile spread across her face. ‘You’re looking very glamorous,’ she said, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘A new look?’

  ‘Yeah, good, innit?’ grinned Evie in reply.

  ‘And you’re …’