Paradise Court

by Jenny Oldfield

  She hung her head. ‘It ain’t that.’

  ‘What then?’ He caught her round the waist and made her walk along the path with him again. ‘Look, Jess, I ain’t sure what’s going on here.’

  She saw it wasn’t fair; that he might think she was teasing and leading him on. So she forced herself to try and explain. ‘It’s me. I told you, you don’t know nothing about me.’

  ‘And?’ He watched her struggling to confess, felt certain there was nothing she could say which would alter this build up of feeling towards her. He held her close around the waist.

  ‘You sure you ain’t heard?’ She looked fearfully into his eyes. ‘Ain’t Dolly said nothing?’

  ‘No. Why should she?’

  The corners of her mouth went down. ‘It’s to do with why I had to come back home to the Duke in the first place. I ain’t always lived there, you know. Before you came to five in the court, I was in service.’

  ‘Don’t cry.’ He offered to wipe the tears from her cheeks with the flat of his thumbs. His voice was soft and gentle.

  ‘You know what I’m gonna say, don’t you?’

  He nodded. ‘I think I can guess what’s coming. But you gotta say it, Jess. Don’t be scared.’

  ‘All right then. I came home because of the son in that family I worked for. Gilbert Holden. He got me into trouble.’ She paused, unable to go on. Then she gathered herself together. ‘Pa took pity on me and took me back, thanks to Frances. You see, Maurice, it ain’t just me. I got a baby to think about.’

  His forehead went down on to her shoulder and he closed his eyes. ‘It’s all right, I ain’t shocked,’ he murmured.

  ‘Ain’t you? I am. I can hear myself telling you these things and I can’t hardly believe it myself. I’m sorry, Maurice. I ain’t never been more sorry in my life!’ She tried to draw away, struggling for some scraps of dignity.

  ‘It don’t make no difference.’ She was still the woman he desired. The old ‘no complications’ motto was good enough when you only felt things on the surface; easy come, easy go. But it didn’t seem to operate now that he’d met Jess.

  In some way which he couldn’t put into words, the fact that she had this baby made him want her more. It moved her further away from the child-women he came across in gaggles on park benches and on the front row at the picture house, putting her into new realms of experience for him. ‘Just tell me you like me, and you want to be with me,’ he said, gathering her to him.

  ‘Do you still want me?’ Relief flooded through her as she stroked the short hair at the back of his head. ‘I thought no one would want me now.’

  He kissed her wet cheeks, her open mouth, her long neck as she raised her head. She felt the branches of the trees shift and whirl overhead. Then a sense of being out in the open, in public, brought her back to herself. She put her fingertips over his mouth. ‘No, stop. Let’s walk on. We gotta think,’ she insisted. ‘We gotta wait a couple of days for things to settle down, see how we feel.’

  They walked on together, hands firmly clasped. In the distance, a silent, white hot-air balloon coasted gently to the ground.

  By late autumn of 1914, war talk had taken over from the Irish problem and threats of strikes in all the East End bar rooms. Their British lads had joined the French and the Belgians to become an army of moles, tunnelling into the muddy fields around Ypres, Vimy and Neuve Chapelle. The Germans had been halted short of Paris, but only just. Now the two sides fought across barren wastes of barbed wire, and the faces of recruits lining up outside Southwark Town Hall looked less than exuberant, more resigned to a hard slog in the trenches.

  Robert Parsons sent letters home, full of concern and advice over Ernie. When he addressed his letters to the whole family, he would tell of the crossing to Calais and the huge operation to shift men, horses and machines to the front. He told them to keep their chins up over Ernie; they’d have him home by Christmas once the lawyers had done their work. To himself, he hoped the promise didn’t sound as hollow as the one about the war being soon over now looked from this side of the Channel. As for the war, he said, morale was good. He wouldn’t have his pa thinking any different and anyway it’d never get past the censor. So he chatted on about meeting up with an old pal from the docks; George Mann. They were in the same regiment. George was strong as an ox; single-handedly he’d dragged a water cart out of the axle-deep mud, making him the sergeant-major’s blue-eyed boy. They hoped to get leave together eventually, and Robert would bring George back to meet the family.

  His letters to Duke alone were less gung-ho. He told him how hard it was to get a night’s rest, sharing board and lodgings with rats. A recent infestation of lice also kept them awake. They were stationed half a mile west of the front in the Somme valley. You heard the big guns go off and longed to get at the Hun. But for the time being they were stalled, waiting for action.

  ‘I got a lot of time on my hands,’ he wrote. ‘And I get to brooding about poor Ern. If I never took him up to the Palace that night, he’d never be in the Scrubs now. And if I’d not been in that scrap with Chalky White earlier in the day, I wouldn’t have had to make myself scarce and drop Ernie right in it. That’s a fact. It preys on my mind, day in, day out.’

  Duke wrote back words of consolation. What was done was done. Ernie understood Robert hadn’t dropped him in it on purpose. Now they’d have to rely on British justice to get him out. Meanwhile Robert must concentrate on the army and keep himself safe. He told him Hettie had taken the pledge and joined the Sally Army, and he sent his regards to George Mann. Frances believed she knew his sister, Susan, who came in for prescriptions for their mother.

  Everyone brought stories of the Western Front into the bar at the Duke; of cousins killed or sent home wounded. Convalescent homes were set up in great houses in the Kent and Essex countryside, where the injured men lived the life of Riley.

  ‘I ain’t so sure.’ Annie Wiggin delivered her opinion over a glass of porter. She’d taken to coming in of a tea-time, instead of scuttling off back down the court with her jug. Her ties with Duke had strengthened over Ernie’s arrest; she felt he’d appreciated her being there to lend a hand and would pick her out to confide in when the time was right. But Florrie’s arrival had put her nose out of joint. The daft ha’p’orth fancied herself as her namesake, Florence Nightingale. She treated Duke as if he was sick instead of boosting him up. Annie thought Florrie was going about it the wrong way, sighing and dabbing her eyes at every mention of the court case. So she stayed put on her bar stool, following Florrie’s every move behind the bar, looking out for Duke. ‘It ain’t no picnic over in them trenches,’ she pointed out. ‘And it ain’t a nice thing to be sitting in them hospitals with your legs blown off, even if there is roses climbing up the bleeding walls!’

  ‘That ain’t very nice,’ Florrie sniffed. ‘Them boys is heroes in my eyes. I bet they feel proud, no matter what. I’d feel proud if my Tom joined up, then came home wounded, I can tell you.’

  Annie looked sceptical. She glanced round to check that Duke was at the far end of the bar out of earshot. ‘Your Tom’s way too old even to enlist,’ she reminded her. ‘So there ain’t no danger to his limbs exactly. Easy to say you’d be proud when he’s just about ready to go down the Post Office and draw the pension what nice Mr Asquith’s handing out.’

  Florrie took the bait. Her expression flashed outrage at Annie. ‘My Tom’s fit as a fiddle!’

  ‘And not a day under forty.’

  ‘That’s a lie!’

  ‘Forty if he’s a day. And what does that make you, Florrie Searles? You’re pushing seventy for all your fancy blouses.’

  Florrie leaned over the bar towards her skinny opponent. Her bosom settled on its mahogany surface, squat and steady behind its whalebone plating. ‘Say that once more, Annie Wiggin, and I’ll throttle you!’

  ‘You and whose army? We all know you, Florrie. We remember you from the old days, poking your nose in where it’s not wanted. And just look at
you now, girl. Who you trying to kid with all them beads and bits and pieces? Come down my stall and I’ll deck you out with something more suited to your situation!’ She was scornful of Florrie’s attempts to dress like a woman half her age, and snorted whenever she saw her begin to flirt with Duke’s customers. When you were over the hill, you ought to have the guts to recognize it, Annie reckoned. As for herself, she still had a bit of life in her. Florrie Searles was a good fifteen years older than her.

  ‘Look at you!’ Florrie’s foghorn voice floated over Arthur Ogden’s head. Duke glanced around. ‘Them boots you wear is a disgrace for a start. Can’t you take no better care of yourself, Annie, and show a bit of self-respect?’

  ‘Them’s my old man’s boots!’ Annie stood up, face to face. ‘As if you didn’t know. They’re a keepsake, so you keep your nose out!’

  Florrie had hit a raw nerve, and she knew it. ‘Keepsake? What the bleeding hell do you want to remember him for? Useless article, he was, going off and leaving you in the lurch!’ Florrie’s throat and chest were flushed red with the effort of hurling insults. She’d never liked Annie’s snappy, whippet-like ways, and she liked her even less now that she’d obviously set her sights on Duke. The poor bloke needed protecting, especially since he was so down over Ernie. Annie might catch him at a low point and he’d find himself doing and saying things he’d regret.

  ‘My old man was lost at sea,’ Annie said with fierce dignity. She held her head high and her shoulders back.

  ‘Lost at bleeding sea, nothing! Lost in the arms of another woman, more like!’

  Annie saw red. But she wouldn’t descend to fisticuffs. She’d stick the knife in where it hurt instead. ‘Them who lives in glass houses,’ she began. She rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue in her cheek.

  Florrie choked. ‘You go and wash your mouth out,’ she threatened. ‘Thomas was a good husband to me before the consumption came and took him after we moved to Brighton for the sea air and all.’

  ‘Consumption!’ It was Annie’s turn to gloat. ‘Thomas Searles was a weedy little bloke all right, but it weren’t the consumption what took him off, believe you me.’ She winked at Arthur, who enjoyed this from a ringside seat. ‘Her problem is she’s got all twisted up in her mind about what’s true and what ain’t. She thinks her old man popped his clogs from consumption, she really does. She thinks she’s a widow woman of thirty, when she’s sixty-five if she’s a day. She even thinks she’s worth turning round in the street for a second look, but just have a gander at her close up!’

  ‘Oh!’ Florrie had gone purple with helpless rage. Small, strangled noises were emitted from her throat, the scarlet silk flowers in her hair trembled uncontrollably. ‘Oh, I ain’t feeling well,’ she whispered to Arthur, clutching at her bodice. And she retired upstairs hurt.

  Annie looked down her nose after her. ‘Serve her right.’

  ‘But it ain’t true, is it?’ Arthur wanted to know. He’d never fancied Florrie Searles as deserted wife material.

  ‘Every word is God’s honest truth,’ Annie insisted with utter sincerity.

  Arthur took his half-empty glass and went off to chat with Duke. ‘All over a pair of boots,’ he ruminated, eyeing the shapeless offending articles on Annie’s feet. ‘I dunno, women fall out over some bleeding stupid things once their dander’s up.’

  Arthur spoke from bitter experience. His house echoed with the small artillery fire between mother and daughter ever since Dolly had found out how badly Amy had let her down. She picked fault with the way the girl sat, ate and breathed. She criticized her dress, her manner, her laziness in not finding work. The more she went on, the more Amy dug in her stubborn heels. She didn’t get out of bed until eleven, then spent an hour or more at her bedroom mirror. Perhaps she’d meet up with her old mates from Coopers’ at dinner time, then she’d walk on alone up to other department stores to study the goods which she had no means of affording. Evenings were spent joining up with her pals again, to hang around street-corners or outside the picture houses where they hoped for someone in the money to come along and stand them a treat.

  Amy’s reputation had nosedived indeed when the truth emerged about her involvement with Teddy Cooper. He bragged about his clever way of compromising her for good on that second night, feeling that it showed his clear-headedness as well as his way with women. His own friends smirked and congratulated him, while the girls Amy hung around with turned up their noses. ‘Oh, Amy, how could you?’ Emmy protested. ‘Ain’t once on the big office desk enough for you, girl?’

  But Amy found she could ride out this level of disapproval, and even began to turn the episode to her advantage amongst girls younger than Emmy and Dora. She gave out the story that Teddy had found her irresistible, and that she’d used her charms to screw some money out of the poor sod. This hard veneer gave her a certain status with little Lettie Harris who’d taken over Amy’s job in hats, and with other girls still at school or just on the very bottom rung of the work ladder. ‘He ain’t such a catch, I can tell you,’ she intimated. ‘He thinks he’s big with all the girls, but he don’t know they only put up with him ‘cos he’s the boss’s son and they have to.’

  Outside work, the girls were bolder, especially in their street-corner gangs. Led by Amy, they stood outside the Southwark Gem one night in mid-October, dropping snide, giggling remarks as Teddy and two or three cronies swaggered down the pavement into the cinema. Their brash, broad smiles antagonized the girls. ‘Who do they think they are?’ they muttered, watching the men’s backs as they paid at the box-office window. ‘Bleeding Prince Charming?’ Amy had already caught Teddy’s eye and brazened it out. He wasn’t so high and mighty that she couldn’t try and get her own back, after all. ‘Come here, Lettie,’ she whispered. All the girls huddled round. Before long, they’d despatched pretty Lettie to worm her way into the picture house along with Teddy and the boys. ‘Ten o’clock, round the back,’ they reminded her. ‘Make sure you bring him all on his own!’

  At ten, they waited quietly down the alley, tight in against the blank, high wall. Amy had managed to whip up feeling against the boss’s son almost to fever pitch. Every girl had recounted a story about his ugly behaviour. Most had come out of it better than Amy, but more by luck than judgement. All detested his groping, hot-breathed presence. Amy was good at stoking up their guilty disgust. ‘Might as well be pieces of meat on a slab for all he cares,’ she said.

  So they braved the cold autumn night, prepared to stick it out and help take him down a peg or two. They weren’t sure how things would work out, but they longed to turn Teddy Cooper into a figure of fun, if only for one night, down here in the dark alley.

  ‘What if he recognizes us?’ Olwyn Williams wanted to know. She worked in a department at Cooper’s which made men’s shirts. She was plump and homely, but this hadn’t disqualified her from attracting Teddy’s unwelcome attentions. ‘Will he get us the sack?’

  Amy laughed, then shivered. Vanity had kept her in her figure-hugging summer jacket long after the season was past. ‘He won’t dare say nothing, or he’d never live it down!’ She longed to get her own back for one brief moment.

  The others laughed too, making an echo down the hollow passage between two high walls. Then someone said, ‘Hush!’ as footsteps approached.

  They made out Teddy’s tall, slim figure in silhouette, backed by street-lights up on St Thomas Street. He had draped himself all over Lettie, whose head scarcely came up to his shoulder. Giggling and leaning her body towards him, she led him out of the yellow pool of light into deep shadow.

  Teddy was intent on the task. Lettie was so small and slight she wouldn’t put up much of a fight. He’d sent on the friends he’d arrived with, intending to catch up with them in a pub after an hour or so. She was a bit skinny and underdeveloped, but she seemed willing, so he’d come for swift satisfaction. He pressed himself against her, scarcely bothered with preliminaries such as talking and kissing.

  He had Lettie backed
up against the blank wall and she was beginning to struggle, just as a fierce finger poked him in the back. He grunted and swung round, expecting a drunken onlooker come to share the fun. Instead, he was confronted by five or six grinning, jeering girls.

  ‘Charming, I’m sure,’ one of them said, staring down at his state of undress.

  Teddy fumbled with the buttoms at the waistband of his trousers as Lettie slipped sideways to join the row. They all stood, hands on hips or arms linked, summing him up. He recognized Amy Ogden as the ringleader. ‘Oh, very funny, Amy. I expect this is your idea.’ He was so livid he didn’t see the danger, only the ridicule. He moved forward to shove through their rank and head off up the alley.

  But Amy stood her ground and thrust him back by the shoulder. With her other hand she snatched at his shirt and dragged it free of the loosened waistband. Then she shoved him again. He felt the cold wall with the flat of both hands. He lunged forward once more.

  This time, Lettie and Olwyn stood in his way. The Welsh girl stared him in the face, eyes glinting, a sarcastic smile twisting her mouth. She reached her fingers inside his collar, wrenched it and tore it free. He heard the studs snap the collar and hit the ground in the shocked silence that followed. Olwyn glanced round at Amy, who nodded approval.

  The group moved in closer. ‘Ain’t so cocky now, is he?’ a voice jeered, high and excited. ‘He won’t go round bragging after we finished with him.’

  ‘Not if we show him we mean business,’ Amy said. She stepped to the front of the semi-circle. ‘Let’s see how big and strong you are now, Mister Teddy Cooper!’ Standing there with her full lips parted, her eyes gleaming with hatred, she defied him to strike out at her.

  When he did, with a savage, slicing blow at waist height, she was ready. She plunged sideways, twisted and caught him round the middle to drag him off balance. His legs shot from under him, grabbed by other hands which began to tear at his clothes. He felt his shirt ripped open. The women’s hands clutched and pulled at him, then one dug in her nails. He kicked and punched back, face upwards on the ground under the flailing arms and flying hair.