Paradise Court

by Jenny Oldfield

  Dr Fry grunted. ‘Go through and show Duke his new granddaughter,’ he advised. ‘I’ll do what I can here.’

  Duke sat with bowed head by the fire. Robert stood, elbow against the mantelpiece, keeping Ernie calm. Sadie hovered with Hettie by the kitchen door.

  Frances stepped forward. ‘It’s a girl,’ she announced.

  ‘Thank God!’ Hettie breathed She’d come in from work, full of news about the window-smashing, only to be greeted by this crisis. Jess’s time wasn’t up for another month, yet. But she found Sadie at the top of the stairs, her hands covering her ears.

  Duke looked up.

  ‘A granddaughter for you, Pa.’ She spoke softly, held out the child towards him; her own peace offering. The family would need her now, more than ever.

  ‘What about Jess?’ Duke’s face was drained, his voice cracked. ‘I’ve been praying for her, Frances. She’s still with us, ain’t she?’

  ‘She is, Pa, and she’s putting up a fight’

  ‘Has she seen the child?’

  ‘She has.’

  He nodded. ‘Then she’ll live. She’s got everything to live for now, ain’t she?’ He stood gazing down into the infant’s sleeping lace. ‘My Pattie never saw Sadie when she was born. Never ever saw her lace.’

  Sadie ran up and put both arms around him. Frances cried on Hettie’s shoulder. Robert frowned to stop his own eyes from filling up. Ernie hung his head. They waited.

  At three in the morning Dr Fry emerged from the bedroom. He rolled down his shirtsleeves. ‘Awake,’ he reported. ‘And asking for her daughter.’

  There was a cry of relief.

  ‘She’s weak. There’s a danger of infection. You must take good care.’ The doctor’s gaze took in each of them in turn. ‘I know she’s in good hands,’ he told Frances. ‘Your work at the chemists has taught you about hygiene during a recovery such as this?’

  Frances nodded. Tears streamed down her face.

  ‘Good. In that case . . .’ Dr Fry snapped his black learner bag shut and reached for his jacket, which Ernie handed to him. ‘Congratulations, Duke.’ He came and shook him by the hand.

  ‘The child?’ Duke wouldn’t let go until he answered.

  ‘Small.’

  ‘Ailing?’

  ‘No. Only weak with the difficult birth. Well need to get her weight up.’

  Duke considered. ‘Thank you, Doctor.’

  ‘Keep an eye on them both, and send for me again if you think I’m needed.’ He buttoned up his jacket.

  Hettie saw him out. Dawn streaked the sky above the grey roots as she watched the small, dark figure down the street. Upstairs, they moved quietly, careful of each other, fearful for Jess and her newborn baby.

  At seven o’clock, Frances made breakfast. She was pale but calm. The others watched her for their lead. They sat down to an edgy affair of boiled bacon, hot tea, whispers and worried looks. Sadie had filled Hettie in on the row between Duke and Frances, and they all waited nervously for some solution to this problem. Frances had never in her life before lost control like that, and no one had shown Duke such open defiance.

  But that had been before the emergency over Jess. Now Duke seemed determined to let the other matter drop. He listened quietly at the breakfast table as Rob discussed with Hettie the damage done to Coopers’ windows in terms of cost and loss of trade. Rob didn’t think any of the workers would be laid off; quite the opposite. It seemed to him they’d have to put in extra hours in the sweatshops to replace damaged stock. ‘Everything’ll be back to normal in a couple of days,’ he said.

  Frances sat and listened without reacting. During a long, brilliant dawn, measured by silence, the baby’s cries, and then the early noises of carts rattling down the cobbled street, she’d decided there was no point arguing further with Duke. She would stay on at home and try to live peacefully with him. Her loyalty was to Jess now.

  Like all the other men round here, her tamer regarded the women’s demonstration as a sideshow at the fair, performed by freaks of nature. But Frances knew different. She had the ability to think things through. There was justice in the women’s cause; they should be treated equally in this day and age. She used logic to soothe away the hurt Duke had inflicted; if she’d been a man of twenty-eight and still single, people would say she was a good catch, with her respectable job and good prospects. Just because she was a woman they said she was on the shelf. And old maids like her were regarded with mixed scorn and pity. When day broke Frances was ready to meet it, for Jess’s sake. But things would never be quite the same in the family. They would have to get used to a new edge to her, even more remote and determined.

  ‘It’s eating her up inside,’ Annie Wiggin confided to Dolly Ogden. ‘She’s turned into one of them man-haters, and it ain’t doing her no good.’

  The two women stood gossiping in the street outside Henshaw’s on a sultry August day. Their subject was the Parsons family and Frances in particular. Her long-standing row with Duke was by now common knowledge. She went openly to the suffragists’ meetings and wore their purple and green sash.

  ‘He don’t like it,’ Annie reported. She said ‘he’ in an awed tone. Duke was looked up to by many of the older women and Dolly caught Annie’s meaning right away. ‘He ain’t got no time for it and ifs causing bad feeling in the house, believe me.’

  ‘D’you think it’s brought on all this trouble young Jess had with that baby?’ Dolly didn’t really want Annie’s opinion. With her expert knowledge of the complexities of childbirth, she’d already made up her mind. ‘I mean to say, the poor girl started that very night. She didn’t have no chance to get away like she planned. Poor little blighter was born there and then, right above the pub. Sadie had to run for Dr Fry. Everyone down the court heard the rumpus.’

  Annie nodded. ‘Weeks early. By all accounts, the poor little mite was no bigger than a wax doll. Jess was in a pretty bad way herself and all. It can’t have been easy.’

  Dolly seized the opportunity to confide the secrets of her own difficult labours. ‘Take Charlie. Arse about face he was. Dr Phillips has a feel and tells me he’s lying the wrong way “hentirely”. That’s what he says. It was two whole days before Charlie finally consents to put in his appearance, all nine pounds eight ounces. He was just about the death of me, I can tell you!’ The stout woman reminisced with pride. ‘He always was an awkward little bugger!’

  Annie nodded her way through Dolly’s fascinating account, but was anxious to steer things back on course. ‘They thought they was going to lose her,’ she said.

  ‘Who, the baby?’

  ‘No, Jess. Everything went black for Duke. Course he was remembering his old lady and how he lost her over young Sadie. He heard the state Jess was in and everything went black all over again. He just put his head in his hands and sat there still as a statue, with the poor girl clinging to life by a thread in the very next room!’

  Even Dolly was impressed. She stared at Annie. ‘How come you know all this?’

  ‘Hettie told me. She came down the stall the other day and we had a little chat. Poor old man, he was in a state for days till he knew Jess was on the mend. Just sat there without moving for days!’

  ‘He never! Who looked after things downstairs then?’

  ‘Robert, of course. He ran the whole place. I’m surprised your Arthur never told you that No one expected the old man to take it so bad.’ Annie shook her head. The whole family was gutted, mind you.’

  ‘And what’s she decided to call the baby, then?’ Dolly needed to be on her way back to work. ‘Supposing the poor little bleeder decides to make it through to her christening.’

  Annie had begun serving mother-of-pearl buttons to a woman from the pawn shop. She counted them on to her palm. ‘Seven, eight, nine. Grace. That’s threepence to you, ta very much. Hettie says they’re calling her Grace. And she’s a pretty, dark-haired thing, but still sickly.’ Annie pocketed the money and watched Dolly on her way.

  Dolly too ha
d much on her mind. The chat with Annie had cheered her up, as other people’s troubles often did, but she had several of her own, over and above the usual. For one thing, it was getting too much to put up with, these constant rows with Amy over something and nothing, with Arthur putting in his own two penn’orth. Ever since the window-smashing episode Amy had been behaving like a little fool. She claimed to hate the boss’s son, but there was more to it than that. She would be always bursting into tears, turning her nose up at the food on her plate. She was getting thin; most unlike her. What’s more, she looked for arguments with Charlie all the time. It was time to put her foot down, Dolly decided.

  ‘If there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s a person who goes looking for a quarrel,’ she told herself, descending out of the sunlight into the depths of Hosiery. Cooper had long since had his windows repaired and they were good as new. The workers had put in overtime and business was back to normal, as Duke Parsons had predicted. ‘I’m going to have to have a talk with that girl when we get home tonight!’

  That morning Amy had smashed her cup into the sink and stormed off. Dolly had only mentioned in passing that the case against Teddy Cooper was coming up before the beak. One of the women in the mob had done him for assault. ‘Don’t mention his name to me!’ Amy screamed. Her face went all twisted and she dashed her cup down. Dolly had been able to glue it back together, but it’d never be the same. ‘Don’t ask me what’s up with her, but I’m going to put my foot down,’ she said again, sitting down at the long table behind her machine for knitting the hose.

  In the early afternoon, cocooned by the. network of muffled sounds that comprised her working day – the hum of the machinery, the distant yell for orders, the low chat of the women – Dolly was roused by an unexpected event. She looked up in the dim light, surprised to see Bert Buggies sneak into the workshop. He headed straight for her, a look of spiteful glee in his weasel eyes. Sticking his pointed nose right up to her face, he whispered a message.

  Dolly’s machine clattered to a halt. She launched herself off her bench, scattering bobbins of beige silk thread.

  ‘Hang on, Dolly, where you off to?’ one of the women called. Bert had already darted away up the back stairs.

  ‘Hats!’ Dolly replied, with a face like thunder.

  ‘Here, you can’t do that,’ her supervisor warned. ‘You ain’t asked permission!’

  ‘Stuff your permission!’ Dolly’s sturdy figure never hesitated. ‘My Amy’s in trouble. I got to sort her out.’

  They could tell by her tone of voice that the situation was serious. The women looked at each other, shrugged and ducked their heads to carry on with their work. What one had actually overheard Bert say was that Amy Ogden had laid into Teddy Cooper with a pair of scissors. Trouble that shape and size was best avoided.

  Dolly took the four flights of narrow back stairs two at a time in a rush of skirts and a creak of stays. Her breath came short and there was a sharp pain in her chest. By the time she reached Amy’s workshop she was clutching at her blouse and gasping. If Teddy Cooper had laid a finger on her to provoke her into having a go at him, her mother’s wrath would know no bounds. She barged into the low attic room ready for anything.

  The boss’s son was there all right. He must have grabbed the scissors from Amy, but not before she’d nicked him on the left cheek. Dolly saw the bright-red cut and the thin trickle of blood. Teddy had backed Amy away into a corner, where she cowered in a crumpled heap. She snivelled something that Dolly couldn’t make out.

  Just then Teddy made a grab for her, scissors still in one hand. Out of control himself, he jerked her to her feet, ‘Shut your face, you hear!’ The scissors were at her throat, and Amy’s head forced back against the wall.

  ‘Stay clear,’ Dora warned. The tall woman moved to restrain Dolly. They’d seen it coming for weeks, if Dolly did but know it; the barbed comments, the filthy looks from Amy whenever Teddy Cooper showed his face. ‘Let them sort it out.’

  But Dolly was a lioness protecting her cub. She roared across the room. Startled, Teddy lost his hold and the girl pulled free. He felt the full force of Dolly’s weight against him. His head cracked sideways on to the yellowed plaster, but he swung out wildly and managed to keep Dolly at bay as she moved in a second time. ‘Get these bitches off me!’ he snarled at Dora, Emmy and the rest. ‘And for God’s sake keep them quiet!’ He stood upright, trying to regain his self-control, as several women moved in to restrain the mother and daughter.

  ‘A nice bastard you are!’ Amy’s hysterical voice rose, even as Dora tried to lead her off. ‘He attacks women, he does!’ she cried to her mother.

  Dolly looked from Amy to Teddy and back again.

  ‘Shut your face!’ he threatened. His face was smeared with blood, he took deep breaths to pull himself together.

  ‘He does, he attacks women, Ma!’

  ‘I know. I was there, I seen him.’ Dolly moved in to take Amy away from Dora.

  ‘No, you never saw what he did to me!’ Amy’s body was wracked with sobs and gasps.

  Dolly’s arm was halfway round her shoulder. It froze in mid-air. Everyone else drew back. Even Teddy stopped cursing and fuming. ‘What you on about?’ Dolly asked slowly.

  ‘He don’t deserve to live, that’s what! I seen him purring the boot in on that poor girl and I thinks of what he done to me, every little thing. It all comes flashing back!’

  ‘What you saying, Amy?’ Dolly stared at Teddy. ‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’ She saw his head go down, the back of one hand against his mouth as he failed to meet her outraged stare.

  But Bert Buggies had acted as messenger again. His route took him from Hosiery to Jack Cooper’s office, where he passed on the news of trouble in his attic workshop. ‘Will you come, Mr Cooper? Only, one of the girls is a bit upset,’ he said in his oily way. Then he sneaked off ahead.

  Jack Cooper strode upstairs, coat-tails flying. Girls didn’t get upset in his workshops, or if they did he soon sent them packing. It was bad for routine, bad for discipline. The heavy man came upstairs preparing a self-important lecture on the high standards expected of those who worked for Coopers’ Drapery Stores.

  He opened the door on chaos. Not a single woman was at her workplace. The Ogden woman had stormed up from the basement. He saw her sturdy back view and someone else cowering in a corner. There was a lot of noise. Materials had been swept from a work top on to the floor. A girl was sobbing and swearing by turns. Mr Cooper advanced into the room.

  ‘What’s going on here?’ He stood legs apart, thumbs hooked into his waistcoat pockets.

  Dolly turned. The figure in the corner stepped forward.

  ‘Teddy!’ Jack Cooper’s fine speech deserted him.

  ‘It’s all right, Father, I can manage here.’ Teddy attempted to defuse the situation before it got any further out of hand.

  ‘What do you mean, it’s all right?’ Furious, Cooper strode over to Amy and pulled her upright, for the girl had slumped against her mother, half-fainting. ‘Stand up straight, for God’s sake!’ He turned to his son. ‘I’ll take over here. Let me just deal with these Ogden women.’ For the first time he saw the open cut on his son’s face. He frowned. ‘You’d better go home and tend to that,’ he said, very formal and unsympathetic.

  It gave Dolly time to gather herself. Jack Cooper meant to sack them both on the spot, it was clear. But he’d hear the full story before he chucked her out, and she wouldn’t mince words. She pulled Amy to her side. ‘You ought to be ashamed,’ she challenged. Suddenly Cooper’s flabby chin and plump, gold-ringed fingers offended her. He’d begun like all the rest down Duke Street in the battle to survive, trundling barrows. He’d done well on cheap labour and high prices, working his women like slaves in the sweatshops he set up in flea-ridden cellars, before he moved up to owning his own shop. Now he thought himself high and mighty. ‘I’ll deal with these Ogden women,’ he sneered. Dolly launched into him. ‘You and that son! Call himself a
man! And listen, you can stick your job up your arse! I wouldn’t work for you, not now!’

  ‘What are you talking about, woman?’ He could see she was incoherent with rage.

  Dolly took a deep breath. She saw the son take another step forward, and out of the corner of her eye the look of amazement on Dora’s long face. ‘Your precious son’s had his wicked way with nearly every girl in this bleeding place, as if you didn’t know. And now he’s tried it on with my girl!’ For a second her voice broke down. She took Amy by the hand. ‘Look here, Mr Cooper, you go ahead and give us the push, but you’ll hear me out. Your boy’s done my girl serious harm and he has to pay for it. Me and Amy’s going straight out of here up to the coppers!’

  They sailed out of Coopers’ for the very last time to a long, stunned silence.

  At home down Paradise Court Arthur fumed over the loss of two whole wages coming into the house. ‘What you bleeding well have to lay into the boss’s son for?’ he ranted. ‘Silly cows, what d’you expect me to do about it now, go back down the bleeding glass factory with my lungs in this state?’ He coughed raucously. ‘What’s wrong with your lungs, Arthur Ogden?’ Dolly said evenly. ‘Look, we all know we cooked our goose with Cooper good and proper, so there’s, no point going on about it.’ She sat heavily in a chair at the kitchen table. ‘Make us a cup of tea, Charlie, there’s a good lad.’

  Amy hung about miserably by the door leading upstairs. ‘What about me, Pa? Ain’t you going to do nothing for me?’

  He turned on her. ‘No, I ain’t. How could you be so bleeding silly to think a toff like Cooper would want to walk out with a girl like you? Did you think he just wanted to hold your hand then? Strum, girl, you wasn’t born yesterday.’ He ran his hand through his thinning hair. If you ask me you brought it on yourself.’

  Amy wailed and turned back to her mother.

  ‘And don’t go thinking your ma’s taking you up to the peelers, neither. We’d be a laughing stock.’

  Amy flew at him in angry despair. ‘You heard what that Teddy Cooper done to me, and you ain’t going to do nothing about it! But you can’t stop Ma and me, can he, Ma?’