After Hours

by Jenny Oldfield

  ‘Your heart don’t race when you see him?’ Jess remembered the quick, passionate longing she’d felt for Maurice in their first years together.

  ‘No,’ Hettie said quietly. ‘I feel warm towards George, but I ain’t head over heels and that’s a fact.’

  For a while silence overtook them again.

  ‘Do you want to break off?’ Jess stood up to hang the nearly finished garment around one of the dummies. She stepped back to assess the hang of the skirt from the hip.

  ‘No,’ came the quick answer. ‘Only I don’t know if it’s fair on George, the ways things are. Should I tell him I ain’t head over heels, Jess?’

  Jess considered this. ‘He knows you ain’t, I expect. And he still sticks with you.’ She nodded, satisfied with her work. ‘You can stop worrying about George. What about you, Ett? Do you need a bit of mad passion in your life?’

  They both laughed, then grew serious again. ‘What do you think?’ Hettie said at last.

  Jess smiled. ‘I say, passion ain’t everything.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning, I’d take care of what you got, Ett. George is a lovely man and he loves you to bits. Another woman could come up and offer him the whole world, and he’d say no thanks and stick with you. You’d go a long way to find that again in a man,’ Jess said sadly. She went across and hugged Hettie’s shoulders. ‘There, that’s what thinking does for you.’ She put her cheek against her sister’s. ‘I’d best be off to collect Mo from school. I’ll be back in a few ticks,’ she said.

  When Maurice got home late that evening, Jess had cause to refer back to her conversation with Hettie. ‘Passion ain’t everything,’ she’d said. It could get you into a marriage, but it didn’t make you stick.

  Maurice went upstairs for his ritual of looking in on Grace and moving Mo back to his own bed, breathing in the calm of their sleeping bodies. But it wasn’t enough to take the edge off a frustrating day. When he went downstairs to greet Jess, he began to relay his trials and tribulations without pausing to ask her how she was.

  ‘We had a projectionist off sick at the Gem, and a reel of film broke down at the Palace. Ten people asked for their money back at the end, and I don’t blame them. On top of that, Charlie nearly bit their heads off for asking. I had to step in and keep the peace.’ He sighed as he unlaced his shoes and kicked them off under the table. Then he loosened his tie and took out his collar studs. ‘I been thinking; Charlie ain’t up to it lately.’

  Jess picked him up. ‘Ain’t he allowed one mistake?’ She thought Maurice was sometimes hard on his employees, expecting 110 per cent from them all the time.

  ‘I ain’t talking about one mistake,’ he said irritably. ‘I’m talking about him going round like it’s the end of the bleeding world. People don’t go for a night out to look at his miserable face. I have to keep on telling him to cheer up.’

  Jess stood in her blue, satiny dressing-gown. ‘Is that all he’s done wrong?’

  ‘It’s enough.’ Maurice himself found Charlie’s glum face depressing.

  ‘But he ain’t never late. He ain’t never down on the takings, you said so often enough yourself. He’s got a good head for figures, and he ain’t never let you down.’ She tried to rescue Charlie Ogden’s image before Maurice consigned him to the reject pile. He made so few allowances tor the differences between people.

  ‘Look, Jess, I ain’t asking for your point of view.’ He was tired, he had too much on his mind. You had to run just to stand in one place in the cinema business, and Jess didn’t appreciate that he needed a bit of care and affection when he came home late at night. Instead, she was forever standing up to him, wanting an argument.

  ‘Shh!’ She put a finger to her lips and glanced upwards to the children. ‘If you ain’t asking for my opinion, why bother telling me all your problems?’ she demanded in a whisper.

  He flung his loosened collar on to the table and turned away. ‘Where’s the bleeding milk?’

  ‘Shh! It’s in the pantry, the same as always.’

  ‘Don’t I even get a decent cup of cocoa made for me when I get in?’

  ‘If you ask nicely, yes.’

  They stood face to face, she looking at him in cool disdain, he sulky and spoiling for a fight.

  ‘Anyhow, you helped me make up my mind. I thought about it, and I decided Charlie ain’t up to it no more. I used to think he was on the ball, full of ideas and so on. But now he’s standing still while things go racing ahead of him. The fact is, I’m gonna have to let him go, ain’t no two ways about it.’

  Jess stared at him. ‘You ain’t giving Charlie Ogden the sack? Not after all this time?’

  ‘And what if I am?’

  ‘But what’s he done, when all’s said and done? You can’t sack a bloke just because he don’t go round smiling all the bleeding time!’ Jess never swore, but she was beside herself ‘What’s got into you, Maurice Leigh? I can’t believe I’ve heard this.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t understand,’ he said. To make things worse, he changed tack and tried to belittle her reaction. ‘Hold your hat on, I can see you’ve had a hard day yourself.’ He adopted measured tones and waited for her to calm down as he stood over the pan of boiling milk. ‘You get yourself off to bed. I’ll finish off down here.’

  Jess was almost speechless. ‘I ain’t had a bad day,’ she countered, drawn into an irrelevant distraction. ‘In fact, I had a very good day. We took orders for over ninety pounds’ worth of stuff, and we took on a new assistant to help run the shop.’ She gathered her dignity as best she could.

  Her success was just the thing to grate on his nerves again. ‘Yes, and Mo never sees his own mother.’ He flung the worst thing at her; the one he always used when his back was against the wall. She never found a reply to that one.

  Jess retired hurt. But tonight she didn’t go and cry into her own pillow. She went upstairs and along the landing to the spare back bedroom, took blankets from the chest and curled under them on the bed, praying that Maurice wouldn’t soften and come to seek her out. She wanted to be left alone; every nerve ending cried out, every grain of her being detested what was happening between her and Maurice.

  On the morning of 1 October, the smart black doors of the Prince of Wales were opened for business. George Mann shot the bolts and swung them open, letting the sun shine into the bar with its dainty white window drapes and pale, plain walls. The pub stood ready for business.

  George stood on the step, looking up and down the street. A light drizzle dampened enthusiasm, and the crowds weren’t exactly flocking.

  Arthur Ogden strolled casually down Duke Street, first on the scene. He stood, hands in pockets, his cap pulled well down. ‘Lor’ lumme!’ He glanced inside and whistled in exaggerated surprise. But it wasn’t the new decor that had brought him nosing around. He was after the vital piece of information; the one everyone had been seeking. ‘You got the new man in there, I take it?’ he said, nodding and winking at George. The name of the new landlord had been held back by the brewery like a state secret. Not a soul down the court had been able to winkle it out.

  George nodded.

  ‘Come on then, who’ve we got?’ Arthur shoved past and stuck his nose inside the inner door. He caught sight of a stocky, fair-haired figure in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves standing behind the bar. ‘Blimey!’ Arthur couldn’t believe his eyes. He scrambled back on to the street. He blinked in broad daylight. Had his eyes deceived him? He darted back inside for a second look. Then he was out on to Duke Street, bad back forgotten, dancing through the market like a bantamweight, darting into Henshaws’, in and out of the market stalls to deliver the news. ‘Would you bleeding believe it?’ he crowed. ‘The blooming brewery, guess who they gone and got for landlord?’

  ‘Who?’ came the cry.

  Tommy ran out into the middle of the street, Nora Brady left her fish stall, Bea Henshaw poked her head out at Ernie and told him to go and find out what the fuss was about.

 
; Dolly Ogden came trundling up the court.

  ‘Who?’ Tommy demanded. ‘Spit it out, Arthur!’

  ‘They only gone and got in Bertie Bleeding Hill!’ he gasped.

  The news dropped into a stunned silence. The doors of the Prince of Wales stood ready to receive customers, and behind the bar stood the ex-copper, owner of Eden House, and now new licensee of the old Duke of Wellington public house: Bertrand Gladstone Hill.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The only person on Duke Street who was pleased with the new situation was Alf Henderson, the landlord at the Lamb and Hag. Trade was booming, with an influx of new regulars since the mass boycott of the Prince of Wales.

  Henderson, a whippet-like man in his mid-forties, with wayward grey-brown hair that had the texture of scrubbing-brush bristles, a narrow face and a long nose, couldn’t believe his luck. He doubled his orders of beer from the brewery almost overnight, barrels emptied almost as soon as they were tapped. Less meticulous in his methods than Duke Parsons, his cellars were often awash with slops, his spittoons full to overflowing with sawdust and cigarette butts, his glasses ringed with tidemarks from the day before. None of this mattered, however, as the Ogdens, O’Hagans, Walter Davidson, Nora Brady and her market pal, Liz Sargent, Rob Parsons and many others from the Duke crowded through his door, eager to slake their thirst.

  ‘I ain’t never gonna set foot inside that horrible new place,’ Liz Sargent declared, her hatchet-face stuck glumly over her pint of porter. ‘Makes me bleeding sea-sick just to look at it.’ She was referring to the new cone-shaped wall lights and streamlined look that gave the Prince of Wales the air of an ocean-going liner.

  Nora Brady nodded her agreement. ‘Like I says to Annie just the other day, you can see it all now.’ The gossip grapevine had turned it all around; Wiggin had been wrongly accused, Bertie Hill had planned every move.

  ‘Yes, you don’t have to look far to see who turned old Duke over to the coppers after all.’ Liz enjoyed the gloomy talk; it suited the nights that were drawing in and turning cold. Already there was a nip of frost in the air.

  ‘No, and it weren’t Willie Wiggin,’ Nora said darkly. ‘So I hope whoever done him in ain’t done it just because of that.’ A miscarriage of justice would be a terrible thing; supposing Wiggin had been murdered due to the impression that he was the one who’d lost Duke his licence.

  Liz reached up to readjust the hatpins in her brown straw hat. She jabbed them into her bun to hold the hat tight in place. ‘They ain’t still after Rob, are they?’

  ‘They are!’ Dolly muscled in, her instinct for gossip undimmed by the change of venue from the Duke to the Flag. ‘Ain’t you heard? That young copper was down Meredith Court again last week. It seems he ain’t happy.’

  ‘Why, what happened?’ Nora finished off her drink. She wiped her mouth with her kippery apron and stood up ready to return to her stall.

  ‘Let’s just say, Rob weren’t too happy neither.’

  ‘Did he clock him one?’

  ‘He would have if Walter hadn’t stepped in.’ Dolly shook her head. ‘They still can’t get enough on Rob to arrest him, but they’re having a bleeding good try.’

  ‘So, if Wiggin didn’t do the business with the licence, who did?’ Alf Henderson came round collecting empties, a stained red and white teatowel tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He dropped ash on the table from the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and left it there untouched. His motive in finding out the identity of the police informer was clear; he had to be sure he didn’t get caught out by the same bloke.

  Dolly regarded him with open pity. ‘Ain’t you put two and two together yet, Alf?’

  ‘And made five, like you, Dolly?’ came the quick reply. ‘And rob you of the thrill of telling me?’ He was a quick-talking, edgy man with a snappy temperament.

  ‘I’ve a good mind not to let you in on it,’ Dolly huffed. ‘See how you like losing your licence.’

  ‘Come off it, Dolly.’ Liz didn’t want to run the risk of sacrificing another Duke Street watering-hole. She beckoned Alf across. ‘It’s obvious, ain’t it? Since they opened the old Duke under a new name with Bertie Hill in charge, the whole street’s been buzzing with it. Don’t you see, it was Hill what dropped Duke in it!’

  Alf wasn’t slow to see the logic. ‘But you can’t be sure,’ he objected.

  Once more, Dolly swept aside doubt. ‘’Course we’re bleeding sure. Think about it, we been pottering along at the Duke nice and quiet, year in, year out, with no one to bother us. Duke opens and closes the doors when it suits his customers. We take no notice of all that after hours lark. Then along comes that snake, Hill. He buys up the old tenement and shoves up the rents, a real old Scrooge. He comes drinking at the Duke, but he ain’t welcome. It’s never his shout, and he never sticks his hand in his pocket to pay his round. He trots home to bed at half-ten like a good little boy.’

  Alf nodded at each emphatic point.

  Dolly sailed on. ‘And when we come to mention it, we seen him skulking round the place with strangers. They was narks, plain as the nose on your face. He gets Duke in a whole heap of bother with the coppers, then he goes straight down the brewery and sticks his name at the top of the list to be the next landlord, before anyone else gets a look in. The brewery keeps the lid on it; Hill’s promised them lots of fancy changes and more money in their tills. He had it all worked out, see.’ Dolly had been the very first to spot the conspiracy, forgetting all charges against Wiggin, the moment Arthur had darted on to the street shouting Bertie Hill’s name.

  ‘I ain’t never taken to him.’ Joe O’Hagan, wise after the event, had found his own cramped corner at the overcrowded bar. He rebuffed an approach from a Salvation Army collector, a girl of about eighteen with a mass of wavy, light brown hair tucked under her blue bonnet.

  ‘Just tell your Tommy to give him the cold shoulder, then,’ Dolly reminded Joe. ‘We don’t want no one round here breaking the boycott. We’re gonna starve him out, see. If no one buys nothing from the bleeding traitor and the pub stands empty, week in, week out, the brewery will soon get sick of that, and Bertrand Gladstone Hill will be out on his arse!’ She grinned in anticipation, ordered Arthur to buy her another drink, and then she settled down at Liz’s table for a game of cribbage.

  Among the rampant changes and the campaign to freeze Hill out of his new tenancy, George Mann found himself at a loss. He was no more pleased than the next man at discovering the identity of the new landlord, but he decided to hang on as cellarman for a few days, until he’d had a chance to talk things through with Hettie. He went about the business of rolling the empty barrels up the ramp and through the bar, out front on to the pavement, ready for collection. When the drays rolled up to deliver the new ones, he shouldered them from the cart and rolled them on the return journey down into the cellar. There he set them up on the long gantry, tapped the vent holes to allow the keg to breathe and inserted a new tap in one end. No need to worry about giving them a chance to settle before use, however; the barrels stayed full, just as the bar above stayed almost empty of customers.

  George quickly learned how to handle his new boss’s unsmiling demeanour and lack of experience in the job. He ignored them both, relieved of the necessity of maintaining a false cheerfulness by the former, and simply covering up the latter with his own expertise. George could have run the pub single-handed, with trade the way it now was.

  It had one advantage: Bertie Hill’s intention of keeping a clean nose with the brewery meant that he stuck to the letter of the licensing laws, so George got off early on the first Saturday night after an evening of desultory passing trade, despite the elegance of the new surroundings.

  ‘Word will soon get round,’ Hill assured his trickle of customers, including Jack Cooper. ‘Then things will really take off.’

  Cooper nodded and knocked back his whisky. He didn’t care where he drank, so long as people minded their own business and left him to his. H
is skin was mottled by years of over-indulgence, and sagged badly around the chin and eyes, which had all but disappeared behind folds of flesh. His appearance was going downhill fast: the good suits to the pawnshop to support his growing drinking habit, the bowler-hat fingermarked and scuffed. These days he neglected to shave and wash. Grime had collected beneath his fingernails, and his shoe leather was grey and cracked. He didn’t even care that Edith left him daily to his own devices, setting off at dawn on the bus to Ealing, getting into her stride as the new assistant at Hettie and Jess’s dress shop. She took care not to mention it to him, lest his temper flare, when he would snarl abuse about her descent to shop-girl status at the grand old age of fifty-five.

  That Saturday, George left the pub at half-ten on the dot. He took his cap from the hook in the hall and collected his old sit-up-and-beg bicycle from the alleyway at the back. Then he shot off in the direction of Bear Lane, to meet Hettie out of the Mission. On his way, he met Rob Parsons, the two men stopped to chat, and George promised Rob that he would see his sister safely home to Ealing.

  ‘Blimey, you ain’t gone and got yourself an old jalopy, have you, George?’ Rob knew it was too late for the trams and buses.

  George grinned. ‘No such luck. But a pal of mine’s just got hold of an old Matchless motor-bike and side-car. I was planning to ride over and borrow it, then take Hettie home in that.’

  ‘Ett in a side-car, eh?’ Rob gave a low whistle. ‘Best of luck, mate.’ He flicked his cigarette butt into the gutter. ‘How’s things?’ he asked obliquely.

  ‘You mean at the Duke?’ George stuck by the old name. ‘Slack, Rob. Ain’t nothing doing.’

  Rob grunted with satisfaction.

  ‘I been thinking of handing in my notice,’ George went on. ‘I don’t sleep easy in my bed no more.’

  Rob shook his head. ‘Think twice before you jump ship,’ he advised. ‘No one holds it against you for hanging on to the job.’