‘Happy birthday,’ they all chorused, chinking together their handle-free cups and chipped enamel mugs.
‘What a great idea this was,’ Speedy said. ‘Thanks go to young Billy here for organising it.’
Cheerful permitted himself a faint smile and stared at the, as yet, unopened parcel on his knee. ‘You…, you are all so kind. I don’t know…, I can’t understand, er, how you knew but… thanks all of you. It’s a privilege to share it with you.’
Speedy licked his fingers and began to applaud, whilst Handy started to sing For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow. The rest raised their drinks and joined in the singing but when Grandpa began an emotional rendering of My Old Dutch, and Cheerful’s eyes began to glisten, Hamster jumped up and danced round the floor singing All My Life I’ve Wanted to be a Barrer Boy. They all clapped and cheered and sang a heartily rousing version of Any Old Iron.
After a while, Billy carried two pint mugs of tea over to Cheerful, sitting down next to him. He was glad to see that the older man’s face, normally sallow and grim, finally had a faint glow on the skin, a glimmer of light in his eyes. ‘Sorry if that took you a bit by surprise, mate,’ he said. ‘Me and Hamster just thought that it would be nice to mark your birthday.’
‘That’s alright, son. It’s me that should be thanking you. It’s been a long time since anyone did anything like that for me.’
‘Well, you’ll not be forty again so why not. And the others seemed to enjoy having a bit of a party.’
There were a few moments of quiet as the tiring older man and the exuberant youth drank their tea and watched Grandpa and Speedy attempting to demonstrate the hornpipe to the laughing group. ‘Billy, do you mind if I ask you something?’ Cheerful said.
‘No, that’s alright. What’s bothering you, mate?’
‘Well, I really appreciate what you have done for me here, and I don’t want you to be offended, but, you know, the fish and chips, the bottles of beer, they must have cost a few bob.’
‘I suppose so, but it was worth it just to see all your faces. And we don’t have too much to celebrate in here, do we?’
‘Well, no, we don’t. I haven’t celebrated anything for years. But, what I mean is, the money. We none of us have much, which is why we live up here and not in some nice house somewhere. And I know that, a young fella like you, you haven’t been on the carts long, you’re not going to have much to spare. I…, I just didn’t want…, well, I have a little bit put by. If this has left you without…’
‘Cheerful, it’s nice of you to think about that but it’s ok, honestly. If you really must know, then it’s actually my dad who’s paid for it all.’
Cheerful’s eyebrows arched up in surprise. ‘Your dad? Why would he do that?’
‘Dad’s got his own business but he has had to struggle enough in the past. He knows what it is like to be on hard times, to wonder where your next meal will come from. When I told him about your birthday, he jumped at the chance. He said you lads deserved a bit of a treat.’
‘If your dad has got his own business, why do you not work for him? What are you doing working on the carts?’
‘Well, to be honest, I do work for him. But we have been having a bit of a problem with that Meredith and his stooges. I am on the carts just to see if I can find out what his rackets are, but please don’t say anything to anyone or else I might just finish up as a bad accident.’
‘I’ll not say anything, lad. I’ll swear to that. I have my own score to settle with that bastard. What tricks has he been getting up to with your dad?’
Billy recounted to Cheerful the alarming catalogue of intimidation from Meredith and his lieutenants – paint splashed over produce; threats to shopkeepers; allotments trampled and wrecked; truck tyres slashed; the fire at their distribution yard. The older man listened carefully, nodding his head thoughtfully and asking the odd question for clarification.
‘You need to be very careful, son. He’s an evil man and he will stop at nothing to protect his little rackets.’
‘Yeah. I know that he’s a bad lot. I’m trying to make sure that I keep my head down. The only other person I’ve mentioned this to is Hamster.’
‘Aye, Hamster’s ok. He hates him like the rest do. For me, it goes much deeper. I’d like to see him swinging from the end of a rope, just like…, just like my Alice did.’
Billy was shocked and confused by Cheerful’s venomous statement. ‘Oh, I’m sorry mate. I shouldn’t have said, I mean, I didn’t intend to upset you, you know, especially today, your birthday.’
‘It’s ok, Billy. I’m living with it day in and day out. Today is no different. I suppose that it does no harm to talk about it. If I had been a better provider, she might not have done it. I murdered her, son, because I couldn’t give her the world that she wanted.’
‘Hang on, Cheerful. That’s a bit steep. Don’t put yourself down like that. That’s a pretty serious thing to say.’
Cheerful smiled bleakly. ‘It’s alright, lad. Just a figure of speech. I didn’t put my hands round her throat or anything but I might just as well have done. Why would she even look at an evil bastard like him if I could have lived up to what she wanted? I found her when I came home on leave. She had been hanging there for at least a week.’
‘Oh, mate. I am sorry. I don’t know what to say. That must have been a terrible shock. But what could you have done? You were in the Army. You didn’t put her there.’
‘No, I didn’t. He put the rope round her neck. She knew too much. But she only turned to him because I had let her down when she desperately needed help.’
‘Cheerful, you’re not being fair to yourself. You were out there doing your bit. What more could you have done? You were all risking your lives out there. You can’t be blaming yourself for what happened here.’
‘Aye, I can, lad. I volunteered to go. Thought it was a big adventure. I had it in my head that I would make the difference. I thought that with me there, it would be all over and done with in no time. I could have become a conscientious objector and stayed at home. Alice would have still been alive if I had.’
‘She might have been a bit ashamed of you. You could have just finished up in prison. They had some of the conchies working on the Docks and you could easily pick them out. They weren’t the same as the normal dockers, they didn’t look the part and they always stayed together. We used to shout out and call them names. We were only kids; we didn’t really know what it was all about but we heard the women calling them. They used to give them white feathers.’
‘I think that it probably took a lot of guts for them to stand by their principles like that.’ They sat quietly sipping their tea and watching the others who, by now, had split into two groups; one set staring thoughtfully at their hands of cards in their game of cribbage, the other bickering about which way the line of dominoes should be turned next.
‘Cheerful, can I ask you something?’ Billy said hesitantly. ‘You said that Meredith killed your Alice because she knew too much. What was that all about?’
The older man frowned, pressed his white-nailed thumbs up and down the mug then spun his finger around the rim. ‘The Army gave me compassionate leave until after the inquest. I had to clear the house out before I went back. I couldn’t keep it on; couldn’t face the idea of living there. I found some notes that she had hidden.’
‘Notes?’
Cheerful dropped his head forward, scratching behind his ears, then the back of his head. Billy noticed, for the first time, the vivid red scar that slashed across the back of Cheerful’s hand as he grabbed and tugged at the back of his hair.
Billy put his hand onto the other’s shoulder and shook it vigorously. ‘Take it steady mate. Perhaps we should leave it alone if it’s that upsetting. It’s ruining your day for you.’
‘No, it’s alright, son. It has been bouncing around in my head for all these years. It might do some good to get it out. It is just so hard. Saying the words means finally accepting that it is true. Whils
t it’s not been said, it might prove not to be true.’
Billy was starting to feel uncomfortable with the anguish that the conversation was producing in his companion. He wondered what his father would say, how he would handle it, but he felt instinctively that Cheerful didn’t want to be stopped, that he wanted to share, and in the process clarify, the turbulent thoughts that had troubled him for so long.
‘These notes and things,’ Billy finally managed to say. ‘If you want to talk about them, then I am more than happy to listen and if me or my dad can help in any way, we will. But, you know, if the memories are a bit painful, well…’
‘No, I’m alright, Billy. It’s just where to start. You see, there were others like my Alice. During the war, while the men were away, a lot of women needed a bit of extra money. Usually, it was because the kids were starving or ill and they had no other family there to support them. Some turned to their families where they had any. Some just went off with other men, ones who had jobs. In Alice’s case, the only family that she had was her dad but he had taken bad and she had moved him in with her so that she could look after him. She’d write occasionally to tell me about him but she obviously hid a lot so that I wouldn’t be worrying. She bought him things that she couldn’t really afford. Thought that it might help him to get better. Trouble was, he was a demanding old sod, always wanted more. She pawned a few bits and pieces but then ran out of things to take.’
‘She must have been getting a bit desperate by then.’
‘Aye, she was, but she never said anything to me. What could I have done, anyway? Stuck out there, up to my neck in bleeding mud.’
‘I know. I remember Mam when she hadn’t heard from my dad for months. She was out of her mind with worry. I don’t know how she’d have gone on if it hadn’t been for her family and friends. Me and my brother didn’t really understand at the time. Dad’s best mate got his daughter to tell me to write. I don’t think, though, that it had much effect when I did.’
‘I’m sure you are wrong there. You can’t believe how anxious we got when we received any mail. Excited but at the same time worried in case there was any bad news. Alice wasn’t a great writer; I suppose that she had a lot on her mind. I never realised that she was hiding so much from me. When her father died, she had no money left to bury him with and nothing left to pawn. She did what a lot of them did, she went to Meredith to borrow some. Trouble is, he sets his own interest rates, low at first so that they keep borrowing, and then he starts pushing them up. When they can’t pay, which they never can, the bastard sends his stooges round to threaten them. Then he…, then he offers to write some of the debt off in exchange for personal favours. You know what I mean. The problem was that the debt was always going up faster than he was writing it off. After that, he forces them to work for him – as prostitutes.’ Cheerful sobbed quietly as he gave voice to the words that had haunted him for so long but had remained unspoken throughout those years.
Billy put his arm round the older man’s shoulder. ‘What a stinking sewer rat. How come the police have never caught up with him?’
‘He’s got a few of them in his pocket. Some of the women had threatened to expose him and they finished up like Alice. Either hanged or with their head in the gas oven. There were a lot of suicides then, women getting lonely and desperate. Alice was just another of them. People felt sorry for her; her father had died by then and the word was going round about how much she owed to various shopkeepers.’
‘They just assumed that she had done it herself as a way out?’
‘That’s right. But she left some notes; there might have been more but Meredith probably found them and assumed that he had the lot. We had a few little hiding places about the house that we used to put things in for safekeeping. She put down names and dates of things; other women who had died; locations of his brothels; people who he was bribing; names of men who were clients. There were some pretty eminent citizens amongst them. I was quite surprised; it was a side of her that I hadn’t seen before. She had found the strength from somewhere to make some careful and detailed notes.’
‘And you think that she used them to threaten the evil vermin, to try and get him off her back?’
‘I do. When she knew that I was coming home on leave, she probably realised that she wouldn’t be able to hide it from me so she made her move to try and get him off her back. She took her chance but it didn’t work out.’
‘Hope that you don’t mind me mentioning this, mate, but isn’t there the possibility that she might just have done it herself? Might it not have been that she just couldn’t face you, feeling that she had in some ways brought it on herself? You know, by borrowing the money in the first place.’
‘Aye, there is that possibility. But whether it was by his hand or her own, it was the same result and for the same reason. He forced them into that shame by his criminal activities and his bullying. But she predicted it in her notes because she had found out about others. And anyway, if she had planned to kill herself, she would have left a note for me. She was so thorough in making the others, I’m certain that she would have left one for me.’
‘Hmm. You are probably right. Could we not just go to the police and let them deal with it?’
‘Billy, I will give you a copy of the notes sometime. When you see who he was bribing and who was using his brothels, you will understand how a case could never stand up against him.’
‘We can’t just let him get away with all this. I’ll talk to my dad and see what he has to say.’
‘It’s a waste of time. When he has so many people that he is either bribing or that he can blackmail, then there is no way that he can ever be brought to justice.’
Moving his briefcase from one hand to the other, Liam checked his watch, withdrew his handkerchief and blew his nose like a trumpeting herald. He walked ten yards down the pavement, returned then checked his watch again.
‘Bloody keep still, will you?’ Chopper Hennessy growled. ‘That bobby over there is already watching us. Loitering with intent is what he’ll have us for.’
‘Why has our Billy not come out? You’d have thought that they would have finished in there by now,’ Liam asked, staring across the road at the door of the Lower Turk’s Head.
‘I have no idea, but you dancing around like that is not going to speed things up.’
‘We’ll give them five more minutes then I am going across to see what is going on.’ Liam walked down to an untidily dressed beggar with a white stick who was sitting on a canvas stool. He shook his can as Liam approached but dropped the card that bore the scrawled legend, ‘Have Pity on me. Escaping from Russian Prosecution.’
Liam bent and picked up the card, replacing it in the beggar’s hand as he hissed, ‘You daft sod, Sidney, it’s supposed to be persecution. Are the others in place?’
‘They are, mate. Mostly knocking about in the market stalls. That’s probably why the policeman is suspicious. He’s never seen so many fellas studying the book stalls.’
‘Aye. He could be a problem if they all start making for the pub at the same time. Beattie is coming in with us. If you see her coming to the door first, then you know that things have become a bit difficult. Take it steady if you come over. Our friend might be getting his truncheon out if he sees a blind beggar suddenly dashing across the road.’
‘It’s ok, Liam. Your Seamus said that he will walk across with me.’ Liam sighed. He knew that his nephew could sometimes be frustratingly charming yet erratic.
A tram trundled past them, the officious conductor holding his arm across the platform to prevent the early departure of anxious youths, keen to sift through the detritus of the market’s morning trade in their regular quest for usable remnants. Liam looked across at Seamus who was playing his fiddle for a small but drunkenly appreciative group near the book stalls. His slim frame moved constantly with the exciting cadence of the jig, the downward arcing of the shoulder adding emphasis to the thrilling rhythm, his bouncing mop of black h
air and tapping feet a fluent expression of the speeding reel. The young man’s mouth and eyes flickered constantly in a sensory immersion into the driving music of his violin. He finished the reel with an extravagant spin of his body and, seeing his Uncle Liam across the road, waved his bow cheerily. Sidney held up his white stick and waved back.
‘Bloody wars, Sidney, what are you doing? You’re supposed to be a blind beggar,’ Liam complained. ‘Why don’t you just walk across the road and explain to the law what we are up to? I’m getting a bad feeling about this whole thing already.’
‘Calm down, mate. Billy should be out soon. What’s Seamus spotted? He looks a bit agitated.’
Liam looked across at his tall, mop-headed nephew who was standing on his toes, peering down past the market stalls. He looked in the same direction, seeing nothing, but over the hubbub of the traffic and the crowds milling round the stalls he heard the faint, mournful sounds of a concertina. Then he heard the rich melodious voice. ‘A minstrel boy to the war is gone,’ it sang, a drawn-out emphasis elongating the initiating “A.” ‘In the ranks of death ye will find him.’
Liam’s body tensed and he searched, disbelievingly, the faces of the crowd at the hot beef and onion sandwich stall and the eager groups of children waiting by the roasted chestnuts oven. The only familiar faces that he could see were those of his allies from the allotments who had come to give moral support, and physical protection if needed, when he confronted Meredith and his bullying henchmen with the evidence that he had collected.
Rags, Bones and Donkey Stones (Sequel) Page 24
