‘I leave a pinch of tea, bubeleh,’ she said to David as she gave him her last-minute instructions, ‘and there’s a lemon in the jar, then you can make a nice glass of tea vhile you clean the cage. Some time Sunday will do. You know to use the new gas ring, nu?’
So David agreed to keep an eye on things for her, because she’d been so kind. And Ellen agreed to go with him because she couldn’t have borne to be without him, even for the brief half-hour he reckoned it would take.
‘I’ll go an’ see me Ma Sat’day night,’ she decided. ‘Take her a few things. See how she is. Then we can feed the bird an’ ’ave the rest a’ Sunday to ourselves, all nice.’
‘Good idea,’ he said.
But the governor of Wormwood Scrubs had other plans.
Chapter Nineteen
It was a perfect day for an outing. Even at seven o’clock in the morning the sun was quite warm and the sky a most satisfying blue. The cycling club were gathering in Shoreditch High Street as David arrived, and a brightly coloured, busy crowd they were, giggling and gossiping, adjusting haversacks, pulling up socks and pumping up tyres. At first he couldn’t see Ellen, but that was hardly surprising with such a turn-out. He wheeled his bicycle carefully through the tangle of machines and riders looking for her, greeting friends, and agreeing with the universal opinion that they’d ‘got a good day for it’. But when he caught sight of that pretty blue suit, he was surprised and upset to see that the face above it was smudged with tears.
Mr Galsworthy, the club secretary, was comfortingly at his elbow. ‘Nothink serious, Cheify. Little family matter, that’s all.’
But he wasn’t reassured at all, and propped his bike against the kerb to rush off and see for himself. Maudie was standing beside her, talking earnestly, and when she sensed his approach, she looked up at once and gave him the first garbled news before the concern on his face could provoke further tears. ‘It’s ’er ol’ man. They let ’im out last night. ’Er Ma took ’im back.’
‘What’s up, bubeleh?’ he said, taking her hands.
‘They give ’im remission fer good behaviour,’ she said bitterly. ‘Good behaviour! I ask you. ’E ain’t been ’ome more’n five minutes an’ he’s wreckin’ the place. All my good work ruined. ’E’s been sick all down the curtains, an’ swore at Mrs Nym, an’ spent all ’er money down the boozer. An’ now ’e’s gone off ter Club Row ter buy hisself a dog. Makes me spit.’
‘Oh Ellen,’ he said, wiping the furious tears from her cheeks with his fingertips. ‘I dunno what ter say.’
‘Nothing you can say,’ she told him angrily. ‘They should never a’ let ’im out. ’E oughter be locked up fer good an’ all.’ The unexpected sight of him the night before had filled her with such loathing she still couldn’t contain it, sprawled across the bedspread she’d bought and cleaned, spitting on the floor she’d scrubbed, with his beer on her nice clean table and his boots beside her nice black-leaded stove, and her Ma grovelling and the kids snivelling. It was more than human flesh and blood could bear.
‘You ain’t never took ’im back, surely ter goodness,’ she’d said to her mother in furious disbelief.
‘An’ why not, girlie?’ he’d answered massively and easily, puffing his horrible bad breath in her direction. ‘Sure ’tis me own hearth an’ home, so it is, an’ haven’t I the right for to be in it?’
‘No you ain’t,’ she said. ‘You ain’t paid a penny piece a’ rent. An’ where d’yer think the key money come from?’
‘Shush! Shush, Ellie,’ her mother said, giving him a placating squint out of the corner of her eyes. ‘Don’t rile ’im, fer Gawd’s sake. ’Ave a bit a’ sense.’
‘Sense!’ Ellen stormed. ‘You stand there an’ talk ter me a’ sense!’ And then the tears had filled her chest and risen in her throat, and she’d had to run before they brimmed out of her eyes and gave him a reason to mock her.
‘I hate him,’ she said to David. ‘Great idle lump. What they want ter go an’ let ’im out for? She was doing all right without ’im. Now ’e’ll drag her right down in the muck again. What a waste!’
‘She is his wife,’ David pointed out.
‘More fool ’er to stay with ’im! She should ’a left ’im years ago.’
Such a very trenchant opinion upset him. ‘It ain’t fer us to tell our parents how ter live,’ he said. ‘Surely?’
‘It’s all right fer you,’ she said. ‘You got good ones.’ Her blue eyes were flashing with such anger that for a second he felt they were going to quarrel. But fortunately they were rescued by Mr Galsworthy calling his troops together from the other end of the line, ‘All set?’ The sudden movement all around them broke the mood, as club members wheeled their bicycles into the road and began to mount.
‘Dry yer eyes,’ David urged. ‘No good cryin’ over spilt milk, nu?’
And she did her best to smile for him and that encouraged them both.
‘Off we go!’ their leader chirruped, and the cavalcade rattled off southwards along the Sunday emptiness of the Shoreditch High Street. The sun was already quite warm on their shoulders. ‘We got a lovely day for it!’ they said. ‘What price blazin’ June!’
Above the long green sheds of Liverpool Street Station the sky shone pale yellow, and David noticed that the horses toiling up the ramp into the station with their holiday carts and carriages were already blackened with sweat. ‘It’s goin’ to be a real scorcher,’ he said to Ellen. She looked much more cheerful now they were cycling along together.
‘Be nice in the country,’ she said, and she was more cheerful. ‘Won’t take long ter feed the bird, will it?’
He’d almost forgotten Aunty Dumpling’s canary. ‘Ten minutes. No more.’
‘We’ll cut through the back,’ she said, because they were at Petticoat Lane already. ‘Shan’t be a tick, Maudie.’
It took them a great deal longer than a tick to ease their bikes through the crush of the market. There was so much going on there. The first customers were busily searching for the best buys, while the more tardy stall holders were still arriving and unpacking, so the street was crowded with frantic activity. Clothes hung in serried fringes from every wall, untidy canopies of bright colour against the blackened brick, and the stalls were hemmed in by cardboard boxes and obscured by rails trailing coats and jackets and skirts and trousers. They inched their unwieldy machines through any gap that presented itself, although at times it was quite impossible to move in any direction at all, and difficult to see where they were going. The stall holders didn’t approve of their presence, and were quick to tell them they were ‘committin’ a public nuisance wiv them things’ and that ‘it didn’t oughter be allowed’. By the time they’d pushed their way to the corner of Cobb Street they knew they’d made a mistake coming down the lane in the first place.
‘Let’s cut up Cobb Street and double back,’ David said. ‘We shall get lynched we keep on here.’
So they wheeled their bicycles into the comparative peace of the side street and followed it north into a cinder alley no bigger than a pathway that divided the back yards and privies of one row of narrow terraces from the front doors and living rooms of another. The smell there was so foul that they pedalled through as fast as they could. There was no one else in the alley, only three empty stalls propped against the fence, and a trestle table outside the pub on the corner of White’s Row, so they had a clear ride.
‘We could nip down White’s an’ cut through Fashion Street,’ Ellen was saying, when a gang of roughs kicked their way out of the pub and occupied the cobbled yard immediately between them. They looked ugly and they looked drunk, standing with their moleskinned legs balanced astride and their caps pushed back from the heat of their faces.
David stopped, and Ellen hesitated, one toe on the ground, estimating their mood.
‘Straight through,’ he decided. ‘I’ll go first. You stick close be’ind. With a bit a’ luck they won’t even see us.’
They rode quickly but as
steadily as they could, and for a second it looked as though they were going to get past without abuse or interference. But then one of the roughs lurched across the cobbles and made a grab at Ellen’s handlebars. And she found herself looking into the ugly leer of Jimmy Thatcher.
‘Well, well, well,’ he said. ‘Wash thish? Miss Icy White an’ ’er Ikey Mo. ’Ere’s a turn up fer the books.’
Fear stiffened her spine. ‘Let me pass,’ she said and was pleased that her voice was cold and calm. She could see David out of the corner of her eye and knew that he’d stopped and was propping his bike against the wall of the corn chandler’s next to the pub. ‘Don’t stop, David,’ she called. ‘’E’s lettin’ me through. Ain’t yer?’
For answer Thatcher grabbed her by one arm and pulled her off the bike so that she fell with one leg still over the saddle and quite unable to defend herself. As she struggled to sit up, Thatcher and his friends moved in, ugly faces grinning. ‘Thash what we do ter bints what muck about wiv Jewboys,’ he said. ‘Wan’ any more, do yer?’
Then things happened at such speed and with such passion that she couldn’t register half of them. David’s hands were round that thick neck pulling it backwards and the roughs were roaring. Fists punched from every direction as she scrambled from the bike. She could hear oaths and grunts and baying laughter and the harsh sound of hobnails scrunching the cobbles. And by the time she got to her feet, David and Thatcher were fighting, both bareheaded and red-faced, their arms flailing. As she caught her breath, two of the roughs joined in. David was grabbed by the arms and pinioned, and he was struggling and kicking, and Thatcher was punching him in the face.
She had a vague sense that there was a stick of some kind hanging outside the corn chandler’s, and she ran and pulled it from the wall, not caring what it was and growling with anger. She knew that the corn chandler was running after her, protesting that he’d call the cops, but she didn’t care. They were hurting her Davey and she was going to stop them. Her first blow thwacked across a bent and moving spine. It was a glancing stroke she hardly felt, but her second landed right across the bridge of Jimmy Thatcher’s nose.
For a split second he looked at her with total surprise, then his nose began to bleed, spurting red gouts in a regular pulse, like a fountain, and spattering everywhere, all down the front of his clothes, sideways onto his friends and David who were still fighting furiously, even onto her bloomer suit. He put up his blunt paws in a vain attempt to staunch it, while David knocked one of his mates to the ground and kicked a third, and all four turned tail and ran off down the alley, leaving Thatcher on his own. ‘Look what you done,’ he said to Ellen. Blood was dripping through his fingers onto the cobbles.
She was delighted. ‘Serve yer right, great bully!’ she shouted.
‘I’ll ’ave the law on you,’ the corn chandler said, puffing up behind her. ‘That’s my broom you got there, I’ll ’ave you know.’
‘’Ave it an’ welcome,’ she said, thrusting the broomstick into his hands. ‘I done all I want wiv it. Unless you want some more,’ glowering at Thatcher.
David was keen to go on fighting too. ‘Well?’ he threatened. ‘’Ad enough, ’ave yer?’
‘You can ’ave ’er, mate,’ Thatcher said, still dripping blood. ‘She’s a reg’lar hellcat, tha’s what. Wouldn’t catch me wiv a bint like that. You can ’ave ’er. Wish I’d never set eyes on ’er.’
It was a splendid victory, but it wasn’t until they’d cycled triumphantly through White’s Row and Fashion Street and arrived at Mr Jones the Dairy in Brick Lane that they realized what a price they’d paid for it.
They’d propped their bikes in the yard and were tiptoeing up the stairs to Aunty Dumpling’s room at the top of the house when Mrs Smith, who lived in the first floor back and was the self-appointed guardian of the staircase, put her head out of the door to see who they were.
‘My stars!’ she said. ‘You been in the wars, aintcher! Whatcher been doing?’
‘Gang a’ drunks,’ David explained, and he put up his hand to feel the side of his face where the direction of her eyes and the delighted shock on her face told him there must be some damage. Then he noticed that Ellen’s pretty blue suit was spattered with dark red spots of blood, and that one side of her face was smeared with it too.
‘Did ’e hurt you?’ he asked, suddenly anxious and concerned. ‘’E didn’t hurt you, did he, Ellen?’
But she was looking at his torn knuckles and didn’t answer.
‘Iodine. That’s what yer want,’ Mrs Smith informed them. ‘Best thing out fer cuts, iodine is. I’d give yer some a’ mine, onny I just this minute run out. My stars, you ’ave been in the wars! I’d get on upstairs an’ clean all them cuts if I was you. Might turn septic else. Iodine’s what yer want.’
She quite alarmed them. ‘We’ll get cleaned up straight away,’ David reassured them all. ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll see we don’t turn septic.’ And he and Ellen made haste up the stairs.
‘Salt’s good,’ Mrs Smith called after them. ‘I got some salt you could ’ave. I’d bring it up for yer, onny I can’t get up the stairs wiv me legs.’
‘My aunt’s got salt, ta,’ he called back to her as they reached the second-floor landing.
‘It’s the stairs, you see,’ she said. ‘Can’t get up the stairs no how.’ But she managed to get across the landing to tell her neighbour. They could hear her voice, rising up the well of the stairs, loud with importance. ‘… I’ve jest this minute seen ’em. … terrible state. Fightin’. Oh yes! Gangs, I shouldn’t wonder…. I’ve given ’em salt…’
The canary was rapturously pleased to see them and began to pipe and call the minute they opened the door but he was wasting his time, for by now they were so concerned about one another they didn’t even hear him.
‘I didn’t realize we was in such a mess,’ Ellen said, looking at the red splashes on her suit. ‘We oughter soak all them stains. They’ll never come out else. Look at the state a’ your shirt. It’s smothered. ’As yer aunty got a basin?’
She had three. And a jug full of cold water. And the remains of a bar of soft soap in the soap dish. ‘Take yer shirt off,’ she said. ‘I could ’ave that clean in a jiffy.’
‘Shirt can wait,’ he said. ‘I want ter see if’e’s hurt your face.’
So although she protested that she wasn’t hurt at all, she allowed him to sponge the bloodstains from her cheeks and rolled up her sleeves so that he could clean the graze on her elbow and dry it most tenderly on Aunty Dumpling’s towel, which gave them an excuse for cuddles and reassuring kissed, and a chance to relive the entire fight, blow by courageous blow. ‘I never seen such a fighter,’ he admired. ‘The way you hit him! No wonder ’e gave in!’
‘’E give in ’cause you was thumpin’ the life out of ’im,’ she said, blue eyes shining with admiration. ‘Four at once you was fighting one time, I ’ope you realize. Four. An’ you sent ’em packin’.’
It should have worried him that his behaviour had been violent and aggressive and not at all in his father’s submissive style. But it didn’t. He gloried in it. He was proud of himself for putting up a fight and proud of her for fighting beside him. ‘You’re like Queen Boadicea,’ he told her. ‘I can just see you in a chariot, d’you know that, drivin’ through the enemy, crackin’ heads. Splat! Splat! I’ll bet she had blue eyes!’
‘We showed ’em,’ she crowed. The strong sunlight was shining straight onto her face and her eyes were as bright as shields.
‘Kiss me,’ he said. It was right to demand kisses of such a warrior.
She kissed him hard. And again, harder still until they were both gasping. Then because his shirt was a mere two inches away from her eyes she noticed the stains on it again, and saw that there was a smear on his jacket too. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Take that lot off. Let’s get the worst out.’ And this time he obeyed her and stripped to his trousers and the woollen combinations he always wore under his cycling suit.
‘You look like a prize fighter,’ she said, stroking the dark hairs on his bare forearms.
The delicate caress gave him goose pimples, and when the jacket had been sponged and hung on the back of a chair, and the first stains on the shirt were soaking in salt water, they sat on the bed and returned to kissing. Soon he had unbuttoned the top of her bodice so as to kiss the lovely salty flesh of her neck, and, greatly daring, she was slipping her hands under the warm cloth of his vest to stroke his chest. And that led to the discovery that he had a crop of very colourful bruises blooming below his shoulder blades.
‘You really ’ave been bashed about,’ she said, touching the bruises tenderly with her fingertips. ‘I should’a cleaned you up ’fore I started on yer clothes. Look at the state a’ your knuckles.’
‘I’m all right,’ he said airily, trying not to make a fuss. But she was already out on the landing emptying the jug in the sink and getting fresh water. ‘Be a fine thing if I let you turn septic,’ she scolded affectionately, ‘after the way you cleaned me up so lovely.’ So he sat beside the washstand and allowed her to bathe his hands. ‘Miss Nightingale attends wounded soldier,’ he declaimed, striking a pose to hide his embarrassment.
‘Hero of White’s Row,’ she said, plunging both his hands into the bowl. His knuckles were actually quite badly torn, and bled profusely when she immersed them in the water, and this worried her. ‘Ain’t hurtin’, am I?’ she said, forehead wrinkled.
‘Hero faints with the pain!’ he said, laughing at her, and pretended to collapse, spreadeagled in the chair.
A Time to Love Page 28
