After Hours

by Jenny Oldfield

  At last, Sadie was roused to her lover’s defence.

  ‘Richie done his bit, Sarah. He been over the top more times than he could count.’

  ‘And he came back in one piece. He ain’t been a mother of one of them kids killed in the schools by the bleeding bombing planes, has he? He ain’t had to go down the Underground like a mole, waiting for the bugle all-clear.’ Sarah catalogued the miseries of war. ‘And you ain’t one of them poor young widows sitting at home waiting for the telegram to land on your mat. No, come to think of it, your luck ain’t all that bad. What’s one little disappointment set alongside all that? Look at you; you’re young, and you can make a decent show if you put your mind to it.’ She reclaimed the empty bowl and stood up from the table. ‘Comb your hair and dig out one of them fancy outfits I first saw you in. Make a bit of effort, for God’s sake!’

  As Sarah spoke, Sadie ran the gamut of emotions, from aching sadness, through shame, to anger. But as her decent, blunt neighbour stood with her empty dish, nodding encouragement, she laughed. ‘You think combing my hair will make all the difference?’

  ‘It’s a start.’ Sarah smiled back. ‘And don’t leave it all to that little stepmother of yours,’ she warned. ‘Ain’t nobody going to pull you out of this mess except yourself, Sadie Parsons.’

  Sadie nodded. ‘Thanks, Sarah.’

  ‘Well, get some fresh air, then. Take Meggie out for a bit.’

  ‘I will, thanks.’ Already she felt Sarah’s outspoken advice like a breath of new life.

  ‘Ain’t nothing to thank me for. What’s a drop of soup between us?’ she pretended.

  Sadie watched the raw-boned, middle-aged woman on her way along the balcony. She went to get Meggie ready for a trek across the river later that morning. She would go and look for work, as well as a better place for them both to live. But first, she wanted to write a letter.

  When she left Hope Street, she would leave it with Sarah, addressed to Richie. One day he might come back and be able to read it. She took up pencil and paper.

  It read:

  Dear Richie,

  Our little girl’s name is Margaret. Meggie for short. She’s got a round mouth and lots of dark hair. Her eyelashes are the longest I ever saw. She don’t smile much yet, but she cries plenty, to let me know she’s here. Her hands are tiny. Her face is all puckered up when she holds fast to my finger. When she’s asleep, you can hardly see her breathing.

  I want to tell you she’s beautiful I promise to take good care of her and to do my best not to let her come to harm.

  We followed our own hearts, Richie. I ain’t sorry. I’ll tell Meggie all about you, when she grows older. Your loving Sadie.

  Then she put on her cream jacket and skirt, and dressed Meggie up in one of the dainty outfits donated by Amy. As she looked in the mirror, she considered she hadn’t done too badly: with lip-rouge and a touch of powder, she managed to look decent again. She took the last of her coins from the dressing-table drawer and stepped outside with Meggie in her arms.

  ‘Blimey!’ Sarah said, sitting in the sun by her door.

  ‘Now, Sarah, don’t you say nothing!’ She turned the key in the lock.

  ‘A pair of bobby dazzlers, if you ask me!’

  ‘We ain’t.’

  ‘You are too.’ She smiled and waved them off. Sadie was bound to get back on her feet, looking like that. She was young and pretty. The baby gave her something to live for. Children did, until they grew up and went away. Then you sat alone at your doorstep and watched it happen all over again to the girl next door.

  Katie O’Hagan had saved all through the winter. She put away every penny she could from the takings on her haberdashery stall. Spring trade in beads and braids, fringes and feathers was good, as East End girls copied the racy, slim-hipped styles of the fashion magazines. Lace was quickly going out of fashion, except on underthings, but there was a craze for sewing beading on to everything, and buttons of all shapes and sizes. Katie worked hard and dreamed of America. Jack Allenby stayed in Eden House and found work wherever he could. They were both saving for Katie’s passage, planning on a summer departure. Once there, they would save all over again, this time to pay for a wedding, surrounded by Jack’s family. Meanwhile, Jack’s mother had written to Mary promising to keep a firm eye on the couple until the wedding knot was tied.

  These days, Mary hardly recognized her own daughter. She’d grown tall and slender, studied the ‘look’ and achieved it with considerable success. Her small, lively features were framed by a wavy, dark bob, her eyebrows arched and shaped, her lips painted in a red bow. She wore straight tunics in shiny rayon, over a knee-length, pleated skirt. Her legs looked longer than ever in her dainty, high-heeled shoes.

  When the day came to send her and Jack across the Atlantic, Mary had the sensation of saying goodbye to a beautiful stranger. She wondered from where little Katie had got all that determination and spirit of adventure. Not from her father, Joe, who had sunk into his old, moaning ways since Coopers’ had closed down. Life for him was sometimes too difficult even to get out of bed.

  ‘You’ll write to us?’ Mary made Katie promise. ‘Rosie will read your letters to me. You’ll tell us all about your new life.’

  Katie squeezed her mother’s hand. They’d decided to say goodbye at Waterloo, to avoid the long drawn-out business of waiting at the embarkation point at the dockside. Jack was working his passage, and Katie had bought a berth in the crowded, third-class section of the same ship. The time had really come. What had seemed Eke an impossible dream was coming true at last. ‘I’ll write, Ma, and I’ll send money. Don’t you worry.’

  Mary shook her head. ‘So long as you write and tell us you’re safe.’ She didn’t want to let go of Katie’s slim hand. But she relinquished it to Jack as the train doors began to slam shut and the porters heaved the last bags up the steps. Steam hissed and whistles sounded. Everything hurried them towards this last goodbye. ‘Good luck,’ she whispered.

  Katie stepped into the carriage. She turned and leaned out of the window, with Jack at her shoulder. ‘Take care of yourself, Ma!’ she cried. The train jolted and began to roll away. ‘I’ll write every week!’ She saw her mother’s long, pale face fade into the distance, get lost in the crowd. She knew she would stand there until the train drew out from under the giant glass arch, so she waved her handkerchief until the very end. She thought she saw Mary’s raised hand still waving them off. Then she hid her face against Jack’s shoulder. She was homesick and seasick for the first week, but launching out into a new future.

  After Katie left, Annie decided to take on her old stall once more. ‘It’s not too much for my old bones yet,’ she assured Duke. ‘Leastways, not now that it’s summer.’ She convinced him that she was looking forward to getting back to work on the market, ‘There’s Nora and Liz to keep me company, and Ernie will be there to keep an eye on me, won’t you?’ She grinned as Ernie replied with a vigorous, nod. ‘See, it’s for the best. I want to see if I can still turn my hand to earning an honest penny.’

  And, sure enough, her stall was a lifeline, now that Duke’s old trade had been taken away. Not to be outdone by his wife’s grit and determination, Duke came to the decision that it wasn’t all up with him yet either. On her first day back in business, he took a stroll up the court, ‘To see how she’s coping’, he told Dolly on the way up. He found Annie complaining about the rickety state of her canvas canopy, and went straight back home for hammer and nails. Soon he was deep into repair work on the wooden frame.

  ‘It’s all well and good that Katie saving every penny for her new life,’ Annie grumbled. ‘But these young ones, they let things slip. Another month or two, a good shower of rain, and I’d have the whole bleeding thing down on my head!’

  Up the stepladder, Duke hammered happily. ‘We could do with sewing a patch or two on this old canvas.’ He spotted a weakness and decided to take the whole thing down for repairs.

  Annie tutted and shrugged at Liz.
‘Bleeding hell; all I ask is for a couple of nails and five minutes of his time. Before you know it, he’s stripping the whole lot bare. What am I gonna do if it rains?’ she demanded, cocking her head sideways and squinting into the sun at him.

  ‘It ain’t gonna rain, Annie. You know very well.’

  ‘Duke, when you’ve got a minute, you can have a look at this wobbly leg of mine!’ Nora Brady called.

  Tommy O’Hagan leaned over and leered. ‘Now there’s an offer for you!’ He winked at Duke. ‘Nora ain’t never asked me to take a look at her wobbly leg.’

  ‘Cheeky monkey!’ Nora made as if to box his ears. She shrieked as he ran out from behind his stall and ducked down, promising to examine the offending part of her anatomy. ‘Here, get him off me! Stop that!’ She beat with the flat of her hands at the side of his head. ‘I mean the table leg, you bleeding young idiot!’

  ‘As if he don’t know!’ Liz said caustically.

  ‘Take no notice, Nora,’ Annie said. She served a customer with four yards of blue bias binding. ‘Duke will be over to take a proper look just as soon as he finishes here. He’s very handy with his hammer, is Duke.’ She made a grimace at Tommy, who had just escaped from Nora and was flitting by the fruit stall run by Queenie Taylor. Tommy picked a choice banana from the top of the pile.

  ‘Yes, we have no bananas,’ he sang jauntily as he peeled the fruit and bit into it. ‘We have no bananas today!’

  ‘Blow me down, if someone don’t clock him one soon!’ Annie shook her head, but laughed in spite of herself. It was a lovely day. And to make it perfect, she spotted Sadie all spruced up, with babe-in-arms, coming right down the pavement towards them.

  If Sadie was nervous treading back on home turf, she didn’t let it show. In fact, she looked more or less her old self, but without the stand-offish edge. Amy leaned out of the window above Powells’ to yell out a greeting. ‘Sadie, don’t you move, I’ll be right down!’ She came with Bobby straddled on her hip, running to compare offspring with Sadie. Meggie was small and delicate where Bobby was strapping; Meggie dark, Bobby fair-haired. Each admired features of the other’s baby.

  ‘He looks like you.’ Sadie smiled. A crowd gathered for their first view of Meggie. Annie cut through them like a scythe, claiming grandmother’s rights.

  ‘Poor thing!’ Amy blushed. ‘And little Meggie looks just like you.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘You Parsons is all the same. It’s them big brown eyes.’

  Meggie had woken after the tram ride and was gazing round at a sea of faces. Annie offered to take her. ‘Your arms must be killing you,’ she said to Sadie. ‘Here, hand her over. What brings you down here, anyway?’

  ‘You do, Annie. And somewhere to live.’

  Annie shook her head. So far, the search for a place for Sadie and Meggie to stay hadn’t come up with anything. Duke Street was currently full of families clinging on to their rooms by the skin of their teeth, as landlords cranked up the rents and packed them in like sardines. Few, if any, were interested in taking in a single woman without employment and a child to tie her down. Annie had tried locally, and Frances and Hettie had tried further afield in Union Street and Bear Lane. There was nothing on offer.

  ‘No, I thought it was high time I came looking for myself,’ Sadie said. She soaked up the warm atmosphere; the smell of fish and fruit, the sound of taxis and buses, the sight of her old friends. She saw Walter drive by with a fare, glad that he hadn’t spotted her. She felt ready to nod and speak with Charlie Ogden, who was filling in time on the market before going off to college in the autumn, but not to Walter. There were still too many recent might-have-beens between them.

  ‘And you reckon you’ll like this teaching lark?’ Sadie asked. She’d given over Meggie to Annie and strolled into the relative quiet of the court with Charlie. They passed the Prince of Wales, oddly new and shiny, catching up on each other’s news.

  Charlie put his hands in his pockets and shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that.’

  She smiled at his feigned indifference. ‘What are you going into it for, then?’

  ‘Because it’s steady. I ain’t cut out for the cinema no more. I had a dream once, but I let it slip by me. Maurice was right.’

  She listened. ‘You don’t hold it against him, then?’

  ‘Why should I? He gave me a job and he took it away. No use crying over spilt milk.’

  ‘I wish Richie could hear you say that. It’s good of you to see it that way, Charlie.’

  They walked on, down the shady side of the street. ‘Maurice won’t never settle for someone who just wants to be steady,’ Charlie pointed out. ‘It’s got to be bigger, better, newer, faster with him. That’s why he’s so good.’

  Sadie sighed. ‘Yes, he is good at his job.’

  ‘I hear he’s on to something big?’

  ‘I never heard that, Charlie.’ Sadie gave him a worried look. ‘Jess ain’t mentioned nothing to me.’

  ‘Maybe it won’t come off, then.’ Charlie stopped outside his own house. ‘I never said nothing, right? If it comes off, all well and good.’ He looked directly at her. ‘It’s good to see you again, Sadie. We missed you.’

  She smiled back. ‘Good to be back, Charlie. Oh, and one other thing.’ She had set off, but turned back quickly. She spoke softly. ‘I think you’ll make a good teacher.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘’Cos you always had your head stuck in a bleeding book when you and me was walking out together!’

  ‘More fool me.’ He smiled, nodded, and went inside. Water under the bridge. He thought: of himself as he was then: callow and selfish, too sensitive by half. He thought of Sadie then: careless and fancy-free, with her long plait down her back, her petticoats whirling in the wind as she rode her bike through the bluebell woods.

  Sadie’s stroll gathered purpose after she left Charlie. An idea entered her head that Eden House would not be the worst solution to her problem of accommodation. It had its drawbacks, it was true. It was old and run down, it held bad memories, and the landlord was Bertie Hill.

  But it was on the doorstep to Duke and Annie. It would be cheap. Planning ahead, she thought she could take in typewriting work to pay the rent and make ends meet. She could put up with poky conditions, provided she was standing on her own two feet, taking good care of Meggie and feeling that she belonged. It was a step up from Mile End at least.

  Gathering her courage, she entered the central doorway of the old tenement and began to ask around for the landlord.

  Duke rolled up the canvas hood from Annie’s stall, then went and fixed Nora’s gammy leg. He could hear Dolly Ogden holding forth about the relative merits of Bobby and Meggie. She led the healthy, strapping lobby. Annie took the opposite view: round, pink cheeks were fine on a boy, and big, chubby legs, but delicacy was what everyone admired in a girl. ‘Meggie will melt a few hearts before too long, you wait and see,’ she promised proudly. The grandmothers agreed to differ. Amy invited Annie to bring Meggie up for tea. ‘Sadie won’t mind, will she?’ She stopped for a moment, recalling the feud between Rob and Richie.

  ‘Not a bit,’ Annie said firmly. ‘Here, Duke, you watch the stall while Amy and me goes for a chat. Tell Sadie to come and fetch Meggie when she comes back.’

  Duke looked in bemusement at the hooks and eyes, the press-studs and rolls of elastic set out in neat rows along the stall. He stuck his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and shuffled into position.

  ‘A pint of the best, Duke!’ Tommy yelled.

  ‘And you!’ he growled back.

  ‘Tommy!’ Liz warned. ‘Don’t you go pushing your luck, you hear.’ Seeing Duke out and about was good news, but seeing him trying to cope behind the stall was like watching a fish out of water.

  ‘You gotta laugh,’ Tommy told her. ‘Otherwise you’d cry. He took it well, ain’t he?’

  ‘Now listen, Tommy.’ Liz took him to task. ‘You ain’t been into Hill’s place lately?’ Like the o
ther market-stall holders, she stuck rigidly to the boycott of the Prince of Wales. She worked hard to keep the young ones in line.

  ‘’Course not. What do you think I am?’ Tommy glanced at his watch, wondering whether to nip off and risk a quick one at the Hag. ‘Not that it’ll do the old man much good in the end.’

  ‘What you on about?’ Liz came In quick and sharp.

  ‘The brewery ain’t gonna take him back in any case.’ Tommy laid things out plain and simple. He kept his voice low. ‘Even if Bertie Hill comes a cropper, and I ain’t saying he don’t deserve to, they ain’t gonna give Duke his licence back, are they? He’s out on his ear and there ain’t nothing we can do.’

  Liz shook her head. ‘Don’t let Annie hear you going on like that,’ she warned. ‘And don’t go thinking of breaking the boycott because of it, you hear?’

  The street was determined to force Hill out of business, come what may.

  Inside the pub, word came up from the tenement that Mr Hill was wanted down the court. He left the bar to the booze-sodden care of Jack Cooper, to look after the thin trickle of lunch-time custom. It sounded like he could let another room if he went to sort it out on the spot.

  But he was in no hurry as he went down. Too thick-skinned to bother about the sour looks that greeted him wherever he went, he sauntered along in the sunshine. He was taken aback, however, as he entered the tenement and found Sadie Parsons waiting for him in the grey inner court. He’d never expected to see another member of the Parsons family come looking for a room.

  Sadie asked civilly if he had anything to let. Much as she resented Hill’s existence, she must swallow her pride and find somewhere to live. She confined herself to the business in hand. After all, there had been other, more difficult things to swallow recently, and if Rob or anyone got on his high horse about renting a room from the ‘enemy’, she was prepared to defend her actions. ‘I want something close to my pa,’ she told Hill with dignity. ‘It ain’t easy to manage without family close by.’ She met his inquisitive stare.