by Maggie Ford
Alan’s eyes were trained on the middle distance. This last Friday evening in April had luckily turned warm and it was light still as he and Geraldine sat in Victoria Park.
He’d offered to take her to the pictures but she hadn’t wanted to go. She still insisted on paying for herself and at first he had suspected that she didn’t have the money this week. He’d told her he could afford it, but she wouldn’t have it. It often worried him, her refusal to let him pay out for her. It spoke of a wish to keep him at arm’s length and not to let their friendship grow into anything more. Now of course he knew the reason why.
It had taken her a while to get around to it but at least she had been honest in the end. He shouldn’t feel down about it, for she had made it plain from the start that they were only friends.
He too had preferred it to be that way. He’d been done down badly by one woman and it had left its mark on him. The one person he’d expected to be his lifelong partner when he’d married her had thrown her marriage vows in his face. Every day he relived that moment when he’d caught her with that other fellow.
He could see it now, joyfully dropping his kitbag onto the floor of the tiny two-roomed flat he’d rented just before they’d got married and he’d had to go back to France. Two days after the Armistice he’d been shipped back to England. No time to tell her he was coming home, he’d let himself into the flat still with six months of French soil grimed into his uniform. He knew Madge was home because a thin shaft of light beamed from under the bedroom door as he gently closed the front door. He had called out that he was home, expecting her to come throwing herself into his arms with joyous relief that he’d returned all in one piece where so many thousands hadn’t.
Instead, the four or five strides taking him across the living room to the bedroom door which he’d flung open in triumph had brought him upon a scene that haunted him still – Madge, stark naked, having come upright in bed, her blue eyes startled and as round as those of a china doll, her fair hair all unkempt, and beside her, his eyes almost as round as hers in stark terror, a naked man about his own age, face turned towards him but still with his body spreadeagled across hers, his buttocks the most prominent part of him. Alan knew at that moment that the man’s penis still lay taut inside his wife as she shrieked with the shock of seeing the husband she thought to be miles away standing not three feet from her staring at them both.
In the twinkling of an eye the man was off the bed, covering his nakedness with part of the bed sheet while Madge had rolled off to end up crouched between it and the corner, as though the act of hiding herself would make some difference to what was happening.
He could still hear her voice, half defensive, half accusing. ‘It ain’t what yer think, Al. ’E made me do it. ’E forced ’imself on me. Honest!’
Speechless with shock he’d simply stared at her, the pounding in his chest like he was inside his own heart rather than the other way around. He could hear the man making strange gurgling noises as he tried to gather up his pants, his trousers with the braces flapping like pale dead tentacles, his shirt and collar falling out of his grasp as fast as he gathered them up, and all the time, Madge crouched by the bed sobbing, ‘I didn’t expect yer ’ome, Al. Fergive me, I didn’t mean ter do noffink wrong, Al, it just ’appened.’
It was then he’d come to with a roar, throwing himself across the room, his forage cap flying from his head as he launched himself at the man who’d been trying to wrestle himself into one trouser leg.
The blighter hadn’t stood an earthly chance as he pounded into his face in blind, white-hot fury. What he actually did he couldn’t recall now except that there had been the taste of blood, not his, in his mouth, the man putting up no fight but merely squealing with each blow while from the corner the woman had let out shriek after shriek for him to stop before he killed him.
He remembered the room being suddenly full of people dragging him off a now felled body, of that body clambering to its feet still half-clad and staggering to the door, of seeing a face that resembled a piece of freshly chopped butcher’s meat. He couldn’t recall much after that. He couldn’t remember speaking to Madge, but that after a while he was alone. He hadn’t seen her since. He thought she’d gone off with the man whose name he now knew was Bert Copeland. Other than that he knew nothing about him nor wanted to. He’d seen someone about divorce and Madge apparently wouldn’t contest it. He thought she and this Copeland were living together somewhere in Hoxton, apparently like man and wife.
That he would be granted a divorce there was no question. He had witnesses enough to the adultery, those in the other flats who’d broken up the fight seeing with their own eyes his wife naked, the man partly so, the bed rumpled from what they’d been up to while he’d been fighting in France. It had been the talk of the neighbourhood, he given all their sympathy that served only to heighten his shame of being cuckolded. It was the legal costs of a divorce that was doing for him. The ten or fifteen pounds he’d been quoted, even for an undefended divorce suit, was beyond him and because he was earning he’d receive no aid at all from a Poor Person’s Committee.
He was still trying to get the necessary cash together, but by the way costs of living had escalated since the Armistice, he was making no headway and it looked like he’d be saving for years even though he’d given up the flat and gone back to his parents.
In all this time he hadn’t so much as looked at another woman, all interest knocked out of him, even fearful of being done down again and thinking that it would be a long time before he would ever trust another woman. Then along had come Geraldine Glover after having parted company those years ago when they’d been youngsters together. He had even dared to raise his hopes, but now it looked like they were being knocked down all over again.
It was true she hadn’t led him up the garden path, had all along given him to understand theirs was just friendship, but as the weeks went by he’d come to hope something more might develop, had even believed it would.
Damn all women, came the thought as he stared across the park, his gaze unfocused. She had sat here telling him about a young man she’d gone out with. She didn’t say when, just that it was one day in the week, but he was sure her tale about having tea with her sister last Saturday had been an excuse.
She was saying she hoped they would still be friends and still see each other from time to time and hoped he understood. And what was he saying in reply? Yes, he understood.
Damn understood! What he understood was that he was in love with Geraldine. He wasn’t ready for love yet and it was tearing his guts to pieces.
There was relief in her voice. ‘So we can carry on being friends, can’t we?’ she was confirming yet again and he was replying, ‘Yes, of course,’ as with his heart bleeding he looked up at the darkening sky and said it was time to go before the park gates closed, and that he’d see her home.
Chapter Six
The Great War as it was now being called had been over for a year. The previous Tuesday at exactly eleven o’clock the whole country had stopped whatever it was doing to stand in silence for two minutes to contemplate the millions of men that had perished in that bitter four and a half years of conflict.
Geraldine’s family had been so lucky, no one at all in her family lost to that war, not even to the devastating Spanish flu that had raged for months and months afterwards killing thousands in its wake. Mum was the one to point out how lucky this family had been to escape both onslaughts.
‘Just that one old aunt of mine, an’ she was in ’er seventies, and me cousin what I never see, and one of ’er daughters about your age, Gel. All in all we’ve come through without a scratch. I know we ain’t got much money wiv yer dad and Wally always in an’ out of work at the docks, but none of our family was killed in the war, thank Gawd. So we ’ave bin lucky I should say. And now you’ve got yerself a nice young man.’
Of all of them Geraldine thought herself the luckiest. She’d finally brought Tony to meet them in J
uly and except for Mavis who had sniffed perhaps in jealousy and said on the quiet that she saw him as a bit of a snob really, he had made a great impression on them all.
Evie had been all over him, her young body aflame with desire to find a bloke so handsome and well off.
He had got on well with young Fred discussing the merits of one newspaper publisher against the merits of another, a subject lately dear to Fred’s heart, proud of the modest part he played in the newspaper offices of the News Chronicle in Fleet Street.
He often had long and pleasant conversations with Dad and Wally, sympathising with the need for dockers to receive more money for the hard and dangerous job they did and that they had to resort to striking. The three would discuss politics until the cows came home, all the strikes the country had suffered since the war, that working men who were only fighting for their rights to a better life were looked upon by the Government as merely pulling the country further down than it already was. Dad thought him the finest man he’d ever met.
As for Mum, she was idolising him, glowing under his polite treatment of her and the little bouquet or the box of Cadbury’s chocolates he would bring her when he came to the house. In turn, Mum couldn’t do enough for him, seeing her daughter making a splendid marriage for herself, hopefully in the not too distant future.
‘Don’t you do anythink silly ter spoil it, will yer?’ she warned as though fearing it all to be too good to last. ‘Don’t go getting’ on yer ’igh ’orse an’ showing off in case he gives yer up.’
‘Of course not, Mum,’ she promised.
‘That’s a love,’ said her mother, reassured and visualising a bright future for her daughter.
She hadn’t yet boasted to the neighbours about it all – never count your chickens was her motto, having all her life been put down one way or another though she’d always come up smiling. But when the time came and that engagement ring sparkled on her daughter’s finger, then she would crow from the rooftops and see them all go green with envy.
‘Your Tony must ’ave pots of money stashed away somewhere,’ she remarked once. ‘Never seems short, do ’e? He can’t make it just from making cheap jewellery. I bet ’is father gives him a bit. Solicitor, ain’t ’e? From what I ’ear, them solicitors make thousands of pounds.’
It amazed Geraldine too how well off Tony always seemed to be. Last month he had even bought a car, a Bean, and she’d been so excited when he took her out in it for the first time, taking her down to Hastings by the sea. The only other time she had seen the sea she’d been eleven years old in 1912, taken by charabanc on a Sunday School outing to Southend.
She’d gasped in awe at the sight of the glowing, dark-green body and all that shining chrome, stunned by what it must have cost; had asked how he could have afforded it on what he made from his shop but he’d grinned and tapped the side of his nose, indicating for her not to ask. She assumed it to be perhaps a gift from his father, though why he wouldn’t say was beyond her. Maybe he’d been too proud to say that he had accepted a present from his father. He’d mentioned at odd times that he wished to be totally independent of his family and let them see that he could stand on his own two feet.
It was true, though, money did seem no object to him. In the six months they’d been going out together he had bought her a nice summer coat, a pretty summer dress, and a skirt and blouse, saying he wanted to be proud of her at his side. In September he bought her a winter coat, again saying that the one she had was too shabby to be seen in with him. She knew she should have been grateful but couldn’t help feeling that he didn’t consider her to be good enough for him as she was. But the feeling had soon been shrugged off when on her birthday in October he’d given her a lovely sapphire and diamond pendant, gallantly telling her that even its beauty was no match for hers.
She was becoming sure that whatever she might ask for he would give her except that she wasn’t of a grasping nature. But it did mystify her at times where all this money was coming from. It seemed, shabby though his little shop appeared to be on the outside, the making of cheap jewellery was more lucrative then she’d imagined.
‘It has its hidden profits,’ he had said a little sharply and she had thought it better not to make him angry with her questioning his income. That was his business. Even her mother never queried what Dad earned.
At the light tap on the back door Tony turned from his workbench to answer it. It was dark. The shop had been shut for a couple of hours now but he’d hung on down there, finishing off a cheap ring while waiting for his caller.
‘Okay to come in?’ queried the small, thin man standing there and without a word Tony moved back to allow him entry, glancing out to briefly check the tiny, cluttered backyard before closing the door.
The man was roughly dressed, a dirty old cloth cap, a threadbare jacket, a collarless striped shirt and trousers that sagged despite a thick, greasy black leather belt holding them up. This was a man Tony had met in the trenches, Herbert Dempster by name, who had been a sergeant while he’d been a second lieutenant. Until he had taken a lump of shrapnel in the thigh and got sent to Paris to convalesce, they’d whiled away the pauses between gunfire and fruitless advances talking of Blighty and what they’d do when they finally got back home if spared. Tony had told of his need to escape his father’s future for him and mentioned how he’d like to set up in a jewellery shop, having been interested in a hobby of making trinkets before the war. Herbert had said that he had no ambitions except to get rich quick but had no job to go back to, being a bit lazy, he’d explained without embarrassment.
Herbert’s way of getting rich quick had been to become a burglar, and being thin and wiry he had made a success of it judging by the bulging sack he now swung from his shoulder onto the floor of the workroom.
He had become a regular visitor. The last Tony had seen of him had been as they parted company after a riotous celebration as Armistice was declared, and they had gone their separate ways maybe never to meet again. But last January Herbert had appeared at his door, as unkempt-looking as he was this evening, but then with a starved look in his eye.
‘Sorry to bother you, chum,’ he’d begun. ‘But I found out you was operatin’ here and I thought you might be just the bloke to help me out with something.’
Tony had thought he’d come to beg, but he went on to explain that through lack of work, he’d taken to roaming around the back streets of the somewhat better parts of London – ‘Wouldn’t dream of tea-leafing off me own sort,’ he’d explained – and tried his hand at breaking in through windows carelessly left off the latch. ‘Got some good stuff here,’ he’d said. ‘Thought you might like to take a butcher’s at it, do yourself some good.’
Intrigued, he had taken a butcher’s and had felt his eyes light up at a range of small silver objets d’art, a quantity of necklaces and pendants and had seen how he could make money to keep his shop ticking over, a shop that in that short while was proving to be a white elephant with all the signs of his having to crawl back to his father admitting defeat.
It wasn’t the money but the humiliation. His father, a hale and hearty but overbearing man giving out that deep-throated guffaw that had always brought him down as a child trying to do his best and failing in his father’s eyes, would bellow, ‘I knew you’d fall by the wayside. Always have.’
Here had been an opportunity to make good, at least to keep going and show his father he was made of stronger stuff after all.
Herbert had asked if he could take the stuff off his hands, pay him what he thought it was worth. ‘You’re the first one I thought of,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just started this lark and am a bit chary of trusting anyone I don’t know. You don’t have to, of course, but we could work together, you and me – I find the stuff and you get rid of it. Do us both a bit of good,’ he’d added meaningfully.
He knew of the problems his old pal had with his father from those quiet confidences in the trenches when each man thought the day might be his last.
‘Why should there be?’ had come the reply. ‘You ain’t got ter pass it on or anything and leave yourself wide open. You make jewellery, don’t you? Get yourself a small smelter, melt down the precious metal, use the stones to make other things, and the gold and silver to mount ’em with. Easy.’
And so it had become a regular thing. This summer he had branched out, begun selling to the trade, or at least that part of the trade that asked no questions.
Slowly he’d found one outlet, then another, and on the way had found others coming to his door after dark, furtive figures trying to make a living out of thieving, accepting what he said was the going rate. He had put his ear to the ground and found out what was usually offered to these people and they’d very often leave with disappointed faces at the small reward for all their efforts, but in this business it was a buyer’s market every time. They did probably deal with others, but anywhere they went it would be much the same, take it or leave it! He never told Herbert about them. As far as Herbert was aware, he was his only client. Nor did he tell Geraldine. As far as she was aware, he was making a success of his business and that was all she needed to know.
It had been a lovely Christmas and New Year, the ghost of the Great War being slowly laid to rest and the new decade promising a more happy future to look forward to. A totally modern era stretched ahead of them – the horse-drawn vehicle fast disappearing, people who could afford them taking to cars, all travel done by motorised vehicles. Aeroplanes no longer made people gaze up at them in awe. Airships carried the wealthy across the Atlantic to America and back. The first plane ever to fly across the Atlantic had done so in three stages and Alcock and Brown had flown one non-stop across it. Young women had dispensed with corsets altogether and were wearing the new brassiers, dresses were looser with hems creeping up to calf length and sometimes a fraction shorter. People were beginning to enjoy the Jazz Age and indeed Tony had already taken her to a dance where jazz musicians had been playing.
