‘Don’t think that gives you the right to do his funeral!’ The old woman jabbed a finger in my face. ‘We’ll have Cox’s undertakers, like we always do!’
‘I told the ladies that Mr Dooley died of the blast,’ Fred said, as if he hadn’t heard Vi Dooley.
‘Yes.’ I could, I suppose, have said at the time I had doubts, but I didn’t. After all, I had no real evidence that Kevin had been stabbed. His words, even though they had affected me greatly, didn’t necessarily contain any truth. And besides, the police doctor, Dr Cockburn, must have seen that small red pimple on Kevin’s torso. He must have seen and dismissed it for a good reason. Why upset these women with an unsavoury story that might well be false? Why make trouble by disagreeing with a copper? Not that I was comfortable with this, even then. Doctors can be wrong, especially when they’re as busy as they are these days.
‘He was a good son, my Kevin,’ the old woman said, as she looked down over her bosom at him. ‘Not that she ever knew it,’ she added, as she flicked her head towards her daughter-in-law. ‘Always asking for what she couldn’t have. Should’ve been grateful you should, where you come from!’
The younger Mrs Dooley, in a demonstration of great dignity, turned to me and said, ‘Do you know Mr Albert Cox of Cox and Son, Mr Hancock?’
‘Yes, Mrs Dooley, I do.’
‘Then would you mind, please, asking Mr Cox to come and collect my husband’s body and bring him home to us? That Cox’s do it is important to my mother-in-law.’
Which meant that the Dooleys were probably a docks family – Canning Town or Custom House, very heavily bombed manors. But I stopped myself asking whether they still had a parlour to place poor old Kevin in and just said I’d telephone Albert Cox to make the arrangements.
Then I started to show them out. Just before we got to the door of the shop, however, something not at all pleasant happened. The old woman, obviously nursing a grudge of some sort against her daughter-in-law, turned and pushed her jowly face into hers. ‘And don’t think you’re staying on!’ she hissed. ‘You and that basket of yours can sling your hooks!’
It was obvious to me that she was one of those women who considered themselves poor but decent. Under no circumstances would the word ‘bastard’ pass her lips.
Then Vi Dooley turned her attentions to Fred Bryant. ‘Took her in with another man’s kid, my Kevin did, and what thanks did he get? Got rid of his last nipper, that one!’
‘Mrs Dooley!’
‘I fell!’ the younger woman cried, her eyes now filled with tears. ‘It was an accident!’
‘My eye!’
‘It was!’ She looked pleadingly at Fred. ‘I’ve got ten kids, Constable, and it’s hard. It was in May. The baby, as was, was crawling to the stairs. I ran after him and slipped.’
‘You believe that you’ll believe anything! Just look at her! Calm as you like! I bet she’s glad my son’s dead! I reckon she’s relieved she won’t have to have no more kids she’ll have to kill!’ the old woman said, as she let herself out of my shop, then stood, fuming, on the pavement outside.
Grief can, of course, as I’m always saying, take people in lots of ways and this wasn’t the first time I’d seen anger. But it was the first time I’d seen such anger since the bombing raids started. Most people, for good or ill, take it out on the Germans these days. Hitler usually gets a right going over at wakes all over London. But it’s usually the Germans doing the killing now. In the case of Kevin Dooley, though, that was not, I’d begun to feel, a certainty – not that either of the women knew that. Or, at least, I imagined they didn’t.
‘Your mum-in-law’s obviously a bit upset, love,’ Fred said, smiling at the young woman in front of him.
‘You don’t believe her?’
‘Look, love, if you say you fell then you fell,’ Fred said. ‘There is a war on. Things happen.’
When she’d finally left, I asked Fred what he really thought might have happened.
He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Nothing to do with me. Up to me ear’oles in dead and wounded every night. I need a woman complaining about her daughter-in-law getting rid of a baby like a hole in the head.’
Which just about summed up what he felt about Kevin Dooley’s possible stabbing too. What Fred doesn’t see he doesn’t worry about, and he isn’t alone. There’s no time to look for trouble where it doesn’t obviously exist. But I couldn’t help wondering. Whether at that point it was just to do with what I know is my mad jealousy over Hannah or not, I wasn’t then sure. I felt I needed to know if she had been with such a person, done this thing to him, even. Perhaps because he had a name now, Kevin was taking on a personality. That didn’t help much with getting at what might have happened to him, of course. Our deserters in the first lot had had names, but that didn’t mean those in charge hadn’t lied to their families about their deaths. They’d all been ‘killed in action’ not shot by Ken White or Francis Hancock. Morale had to be maintained and to hell with the truth, or so those above us, those real lunatics, in the army and the Government had felt. Decent men killed for being afraid. The truth willingly sacrificed for something called ‘the war’. Life is difficult now and the last thing this city and this manor need is a murder. Bad for morale. Once Fred had gone I ‘forgot’ to telephone Albert Cox and went over to see Hannah.
Chapter Four
I’m not keen on markets. Too many people. Just as being underground or enclosed can make me go barmy, so can lots of jabbering people. It’s the noise, I suppose – voices coming at you from all over, muffling and distorting the words and sentences, making ordinary people sound mad. Not that Rathbone Street is anything like it once was. There’s nothing much to look at, not much to buy now. Well, not on the stalls anyway.
I know that the Duchess draws the line at knocked-off goods, but I’m no Snow White myself. And with the tea ration down to two ounces, butter down to four since June and clothes under price control, I felt I had at least to keep my eyes peeled. But there was nothing doing. Just a lot of empty tins with ‘Not for Sale’ written on them and a couple of rough-looking ’erberts flogging knives and forks. No more than twelve either of them, running wild like so many of the kiddies round here. I did think for a minute that I might ask them where they’d got their cutlery, but then I thought better of it. I hate looters as much as the next man, but when I look at some of these kids’ faces I just can’t bring myself to speak to them. A lot of the Canning Town children were half starved before the war. Now some of them look like they’ve spent a year in the trenches. Cheekbones like seagulls’ wings.
When I arrived Hannah had only just got up. Because the raid the night before had been so small, her business had been brisk. She was tired and, with her hair all over the place and no makeup on, she didn’t look her best and I could tell that she knew it too.
‘It’s all right, love,’ I said, as I took my hat off at the door. ‘I only want to talk.’
‘Thank God.’
She moved aside and I went in. Hannah, like a lot of the local girls, lives in one room. Because it’s damp, it’s cold most of the year round. Even when she makes a fire, it doesn’t do a lot. She hasn’t got much. There’s a bed, an old range, a couple of cupboards for her clothes, a table and a chair but not a lot besides. Hannah doesn’t have bits and bobs or photographs, at least not where anyone can see them. I went and sat down while she turned the gas up. Even at midday her room doesn’t get a lot of light.
‘Want a cuppa?’
I said that would be lovely so Hannah went down to the scullery to fill her kettle and put it on the range to boil. While she was busy with all that, I rolled up a fag for myself.
‘What do you want to talk about, Mr H?’
She obviously wanted to get this over with so she could go back to bed. Jealousy reared up inside me. What she’d done and with how many men isn’t something that I like to think about. Not that I can do anything about it. Hannah, like all of us, has to live.
‘You ever heard of a
bloke called Kevin Dooley?’ I said. ‘About six foot, black hair, long nose.’
Hannah shrugged.
‘Looks a bit like a fighter,’ I said. ‘Bit mean and that.’
‘Bit mean and a fighter could be almost anyone as comes down here,’ Hannah replied bleakly. ‘Why?’
I sighed. It wasn’t easy doing this, mainly because I wasn’t sure what I wanted Hannah to say. However, if I was to get any way to finding out if my own and Aggie’s thoughts about Kevin’s injuries had any truth in them, I had to ask her.
‘Hannah, love, tell me honestly, do you ever hurt, really hurt, blokes who cut up rough with you?’
Hannah, now pouring the hot water on to the leaves she tipped into the teapot, said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Hit out, maybe jab at them with something.’
‘This Dooley bloke get hurt down here, did he?’ Hannah said.
‘Well, I don’t really know . . .’
‘So why you asking?’
I sighed again. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘this bloke may have come down here three nights ago and—’
‘How do you know this, Mr H?’
I was in two minds as to whether to tell her Kevin was dead. But then I decided I had to – if she knew him or his family she’d find out anyway – so I gave her the official line on it and added on my own strange experience with the man afterwards.
Hannah, frowning, said, ‘So if this bloke died of the blast, I don’t see what your problem is.’
‘He said he’d been stabbed,’ I said. ‘And there’s a mark on his chest that could have been made by something long and thin and sharp.’
‘So? Raving, weren’t he?’ She shrugged. ‘And, anyway, even if he were stabbed I don’t get how that could mean he come down here.’
‘No . . .’ I looked down at the floor to avoid her eyes. ‘It’s said,’ I started, ‘that some of the girls down here sort of . . . they have been known to stick hatpins and other sharp things into blokes who cut up—’
I was interrupted by Hannah’s deep, throaty laugh. ‘Christ, H, there’s one girl done that a couple of times down here, but she’s long gone now. Blimey, even her, Barmy Betty we used to call her, only ever spiked rough types in the leg.’
‘Oh . . .’
‘Years and years ago some girl did kill a fella with a spike but that weren’t round here. Christ, H, I don’t know where you get some of your information from. People with pretty funny ideas, I should think.’
I’d never thought of Aggie as one to harbour ‘funny ideas’, but then the spiking notion hadn’t actually come from her. It had originated from the tough-talking, hard-drinking blokes she spent her shifts with down at Tate’s. There were, after all, always stories about places like Rathbone Street as well I knew.
‘Anyway,’ Hannah continued, ‘most girls down here got fellas to protect them these days. Only the old girls work alone now.’ She suddenly looked damp-eyed. ‘Me, Bella and Rita. Not even desperate pimps touch us old girls now. Lucky we’ve got Dot, eh?’
‘Yes, love,’ I said, with a smile. ‘Yes, it is.’
Boyfriends, these usually oily little toe-rags like to call themselves, but they’re pimps really, lurking around the back alleys at night, beating up their girls’ customers for more money when they can, smirking up against walls when the market’s on. In Hannah’s house there’s only her landlady, Mrs Harris, who’s getting on a bit now to be chucking drunks out of her place. Not that she doesn’t try. There’s two girls besides Hannah in Dot Harris’s house, none of them with pimps, so the old girl has had to be tough to carry on all these years. It’s said she used to be on the game herself when she was younger so she must have learned a thing or two in her time. It’s also said that Dot’s good to go to if a girl gets herself into trouble. Dot knows just what to do in that situation.
Hannah poured out the tea into a chipped cup, then put it down on the table in front of me. She sat on the bed, watching, as I lit my fag, which I passed across to her. She must have been quite something when she was younger, Hannah. She’s got very thick brown hair – bleached with peroxide at just below the roots of course – and her features are strong, probably because she’s got her own teeth. I like her eyes, big and very deep blue, turned down at the far corners a bit like some Chinamen’s do. I like women who look as if they’re having a go at fighting life. There’s dignity about Hannah. Seeing me looking at her, she smiled. ‘I don’t mind if you want . . .’ she said. ‘I’m not too tired for you.’
Our conversation about Kevin, spiking and death was obviously at an end.
‘No, you’re all right,’ I said. ‘Although I could do with a cuddle.’
Hannah put her fag down and lay back on her bed. I went and lay beside her and she wrapped her arms round me. ‘You’re a good man, Francis Hancock,’ she said.
‘You’re not so bad yourself.’
And then we both laughed. We laugh whenever we can. It wouldn’t do to get too serious. Things are as they are. I’m as I am and she does what she has to. And, besides, even if things were different, she’s still a Jew so we could never be more than we already are to each other.
I tried to see the Canning Town undertaker, Albert Cox, on my way back from Rathbone Street, but he was out. His wife said he was working. I told her to ask him to ring me if the telephones were working or come over and see me when he got back. Whatever had or hadn’t happened to Kevin Dooley, and I was still far from certain at that time, I’d have to get him moved or I’d have his dragon of a mum on my back.
Walking back towards Plaistow along the Barking Road, I found myself thinking about Dooley’s wife. Like Hannah, young Mrs Dooley had had great big eyes. Dark, though, black eyes and blonde hair. Hannah, as she is naturally, in reverse. If Kevin had been going to Rathbone girls with her at home, he must have wanted his head tested. But, then, who could know what was going on behind closed street doors? Maybe the old girl had poisoned her son’s mind against his wife. Maybe the younger woman had chucked herself down the stairs on purpose when she found out she was in the family way again. It’s not unheard-of, not in big families like that, and especially not now. Feeding the nippers you’ve got gives most women a headache. Poor young Mrs Dooley, if she’d done it, she had to have been desperate. But possibly not as desperate as she was now. I wondered if her mother-inlaw had made good her threat and chucked her out already. If the old girl was paying for the funeral she probably had. I lit a fag and began to consider whether I shouldn’t just forget about what might have happened to Kevin and think about more straightforward things, like replacing some of the wood the horses had kicked out during the last raid.
‘Mr ’ancock?’
No grief in her voice, just stroppiness.
‘Yes, Mrs Dooley.’ I raised my hat to her.
‘My son ain’t at Cox’s, is he?’ Vi Dooley folded her arms under her bosom and clicked her false gnashers in irritation.
‘No, Mrs Dooley,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. Mr Cox has been busy . . .’
‘I’ve chucked her out, you know,’ she said, ‘that tart!’
‘Mrs Dooley!’
‘Oh, you can think what you like, Mr ’ancock!’ she said. ‘But she was a wrong ’un. Told him, my son, I did. Orphan she was, then she gets herself married to some old bloke, that’s the basket’s father, and he dies. Tipped her cap at Kevin she did and that was him under her thumb! I don’t want to see her mug or that basket’s round here again!’
‘But there’s nine other kiddies . . .’
‘What are my Kevin’s, yes,’ she said. ‘Me and mine’ll look after them much better than she ever could. Bring them up proper we will. Her and her girl can go on the streets where they belong.’
‘I think that your daughter-in-law has a right to come to her husband’s funeral,’ I said.
‘Oh, do you?’ Vi Dooley’s downturned mouth sucked on its teeth as she looked at me with great distaste. ‘What? Even if she’s a fallen woman?’ As she leaned in towards m
e I could see that she had on a stained apron underneath her coat. ‘That one was on the game for years as a nipper,’ she whispered. ‘Up West, afore she married the old geezer. Don’t s’pose that girl’s even ’is!’
I didn’t know how to carry on, to be honest. It was all said with such spite.
‘Anyway, you get our Kevin over to Cox’s,’ she said, ‘so we can get on. I’ve got a wake to organise and it ain’t easy with all his little ’uns, his wage gone and a war on.’
And with that she stomped off into Murkoff’s. No doubt soothing her soul with mint humbugs and Five Boys chocolate bars – provided they had them, of course. She had the look of a person who ate her way out of misery.
I went back to the shop with a heavy heart. In three months’ time it would be Christmas. Still a way off, but there was so much talk about how London could ‘take it’ these days. I wondered how we’d all shape up with half the borough flat to the ground and all the food so ‘rotten’, as Aggie would say. Just keeping decent-looking was a problem for me. Climbing over tons of bricks and mortar every time you leave the shop plays havoc with your boots and, war or no war, an undertaker needs to be smart. The families expect it. And yet how much worse to be poor young Mrs Dooley! Out on her ear with a little ’un to look after, separated from her other kids with autumn upon us and soon to be winter. An orphan, she probably didn’t have family, leastways not close. Even though I knew I couldn’t do anything I wondered where she was and hoped that she was all right.
But then what if she had spiked her own husband? I didn’t know what Kevin Dooley had been like as a person. But if he’d been anything like his mother he must’ve been difficult to live with. Maybe he’d been violent to her and then maybe she’d hit out at him in the way she’d learned to do – or, rather, heard tell of if Hannah was to be believed – when she was on the game, if indeed that was true. That fiery night Kevin had never said who ‘she’, his ‘whore’, was, only that she’d stabbed him.
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