Just Around the Corner

by Gilda O'Neill

  Pat blinked; he felt like he’d been pole-axed.

  ‘I was a bit that way with my Sarah,’ Frank went on, ‘so I know all the signs, mate. I even asked your Katie about it once. When yer was away that time. I reckoned that was the cause of it.’ He winked matily at Pat. ‘And I was spot on about yer, wasn’t I? Still who can blame you, eh Pat? Yer a lucky man, having a good-looking woman like her by yer side.’

  Pat was silent for a long, uneasy moment, as images of Katie swam around in his mind. He could see her, smiling happily and chattering away to Frank Barber, while he was stuck in the poxy lodging house down by the docks.

  He took in a slow, deep breath, telling himself to stop being so stupid. He had been the animal who had actually raised his hand to his wife, and it had been he who walked out on her, not the other way round. And this man had just saved his life . . .

  ‘Yer right,’ Pat said stiffly. ‘She is a good-looking woman.’ He beckoned to the stall holder. ‘Two more teas over here, please, pal.’

  ‘Ta, Pat,’ grinned Frank, as the man topped up his cup from the urn. ‘We’ll drink a little toast to your Katie, eh?’

  Pat frowned. Was this bloke taking the piss or what?

  16

  PAT NEVER DID stand Frank the pint he’d promised him, the main reason being that during the weeks since Frank had saved him from the man with the docker’s hook, Pat had done his best to avoid Frank Barber at all costs, not trusting himself to be within punching distance of a man who had saved his life but who had also openly admitted he found Katie so attractive. Whenever he spotted him in the street or at work he would duck out of sight, and if ever Frank came to the house, Pat would make sudden, loudly announced dashes for the lavatory.

  But Pat was now faced with a situation where he wouldn’t be able to avoid meeting him; he had no choice. Katie and Mags were organising a street party to celebrate the Silver Jubilee, and no matter how ingenious his excuses, Pat was soon resigned to the fact that, unless he was hospitalised, he wouldn’t be able to get out of it.

  Not that he hadn’t tried. He’d agreed with Katie that the King was, in his words, a harmless old geezer, all right even, in his own way; but how could he, Red Pat, a man whose every belief was against all that the monarchy stood for, celebrate his reign? And anyway, didn’t he have more important things to do with his time, like trying to earn his living?

  Katie listened patiently but she still wasn’t having any of it. It had caused enough rows when he hadn’t gone to the Procession, she said – not spitefully, she didn’t even raise her voice – but what with everything they had been through, a knees-up was just what they all needed. And it would prove to everyone, show them all, that the East End spirit couldn’t be defeated by hard times and a run of bad luck.

  So, he was coming to the party and that was that.

  Katie had judged the mood exactly. Except for her husband, everyone else agreed that celebrating 6 May 1935, King George V’s Silver Jubilee, was the perfect opportunity for people to forget the cost for just one day and to have a good time regardless.

  Mags had actually come up with the idea, and had mentioned it one bright April morning when she and Katie had bumped into each other as they were going into the corner shop.

  They had started to ask Edie what she thought of it, but were interrupted by two little kids who dashed breathlessly into the shop and pushed their way forward to the counter. Katie and Mags were now waiting patiently while the two children, whom neither of them recognised, tried to persuade Edie to give them back the money on the roll of lavatory paper they were returning.

  The guests their mum had been expecting hadn’t turned up after all, they explained, so she wouldn’t need to waste her money on rolls of Izal, but could use squares of newspaper as they usually did. Edie, however, was questioning the pair closely; she wasn’t convinced that they hadn’t pinched the stuff off a stall and were trying to use Edie as an unwitting fence for stolen property.

  ‘So what d’yer reckon, Kate?’ Mags asked, as they waited for Edie to finish her inquisition of the two youngsters.

  ‘I reckon it sounds a blimmin’ good idea, Mags. As yer say, this street could do with something to liven it up, like the beanos we used to have every year when we could all afford ’em. They always did everyone a power of good, didn’t they?’

  Mags chuckled. ‘Apart from that poor old cow from round Ricardo Street, what Phoebe used to wind up upping every year.’

  Edie was listening to Mags and Katie with one ear, while she finished her negotiations with the two children. Her final offer was that she would pay them half now and the other half if they got a note from their mum. When they readily agreed to the deal, that was when she knew they were lying, and came from behind the counter and shooed them out of the door. No kid telling the truth would have dared to go home without all the money they’d been sent out for.

  Satisfied with her detective work, Edie resumed her position behind the counter. ‘Yer know Phoebe always reckoned that old girl from Ricardo Street had her eye on her Albert, don’t yer?’

  The three women sniggered at the thought of it.

  ‘Even Albert’s old mum would never have had him down as no oil painting.’ Edie paused, locked for the moment into some private memory. ‘We’ve had some good times in this street over the years, ain’t we?’

  ‘Yeah, yer right there, Ede,’ agreed Katie. ‘And yer know what they say, there’s good times just around the corner and all. There’ll be good times again.’

  Edie crossed herself and cast her eyes up to the ceiling. ‘Please God.’

  ‘I thought we’d ask some of the other turnings round here if they wanna join in,’ said Mags. ‘Just like we used to do with the beanos. But I reckon Plumley Street’d be the obvious place to have it, what with the wall and everything.’

  ‘More the merrier,’ said Katie, warming to the idea. ‘Tell yer what, Mags, yer wanna see if your Margaret’ll come. Get her to bring her old man with her.’

  ‘I dunno if she’d want to, to tell yer the truth, Kate.’ Mags pulled out her hankie from her sleeve and started fiddling with the lace edging. ‘Not now she’s got her place down there. Done up like a little palace it is.’ Her bottom lip started trembling. ‘I miss her, yer know. She said I’m always welcome, but I don’t like to go, not unless I’m asked special like.’

  Mags dropped down on to the bentwood chair that was usually occupied by customers a lot less well-preserved than the smartly turned out landlady of the Queen’s. ‘I worry, see, that my Margaret thinks she’s too good for the East End now she’s living down there.’ She looked up, her gaze passing from Katie to Edie and back again. Her eyes were brimming. ‘She’s got a privet hedge and everything, yer know?’

  Katie nearly burst out laughing at Mags’s peculiar notion that a privet hedge might make a person superior in some way, but Katie would never intentionally hurt anyone, especially not someone as kind and generous as Mags Donovan.

  ‘I reckon we should start collecting straight away,’ Katie said brightly, trying to cheer Mags up a bit. ‘We’ve got a couple of weeks, and I tell yer what, if you drop your Margaret a line I bet she’ll be up here like a shot. She always loved a do.’

  ‘Yeah, she did.’ Mags seemed slightly comforted by the thought. She blew her nose genteelly and stuffed her hankie back up the sleeve of her brightly coloured print dress. ‘I’ll ask all me customers what come in today. See who’s interested.’

  ‘Good idea, Mags,’ nodded Edie. ‘I’ll do the same.’

  ‘And I can start going round giving all the neighbours a knock.’

  ‘They’ll all wanna join in,’ said Mags, with a flap of her hand. ‘Well, maybe not the Lanes.’

  Edie looked thoughtful. ‘I reckon she would, that Irene. Give her a chance to show off her latest frocks. She’s got some lovely things, that girl.’

  ‘Have to watch she don’t go chasing Phoebe’s Albert, though,’ Katie said with great solemnity. Even though
part of her was furious about the night she had caught Sean in the Lanes’ house – especially as he still refused to say what he’d been up to in there – she was shaking with suppressed laughter at the thought of the glamorous Irene and smelly old Albert Tucker. ‘I mean, we don’t want no fights breaking out, do we?’

  ‘She was good to me, yer know, Irene, after my Bert . . .’ Edie said quietly. ‘Never made no fuss. Just brought me flowers to try and cheer me up. Told me to make sure I was eating properly, and having enough sleep and that.’

  Katie frowned. ‘Did she? I never realised.’ She turned to Mags. ‘Did you?’

  Mags started giggling. ‘No,’ she spluttered. ‘Sorry, I was just picturing her sitting on old Albert’s knee with her arms round his scraggy old neck!’

  The three of them were still laughing when the door opened and Phoebe Tucker came bowling into the shop. She had a battered, black straw hat perched over her miserable, broad, fat face, with an incongruous bunch of cheerful, bright red cherries dangling over one eye.

  ‘What’s all this about?’ she demanded, giving Mags the evil eye until she took the hint and gave up the chair to her.

  ‘We’re organising a street party. For the Jubilee,’ explained Edie, not daring to look at the others in case they set her off again. We was just sorting out collecting the money.’ She looked at Mags and Katie. ‘I know what’d be a good idea,’ she said. ‘If we get every one to give a bit extra, we could ask the Miltons without them knowing anyone’s gotta pay anything.’

  Mags nodded, liking the sound of the idea. ‘We could say the brewery was stumping up.’

  ‘Good idea,’ said Katie.

  ‘That’s all you lot know.’ Phoebe nodded her head wisely, sending the cherries into a jiggling little dance over her nose.

  ‘Eh?’ said Mags, unable to say any more without laughing.

  ‘You lot obviously ain’t seen him, have yer?’

  The women’s laughter was now forgotten.

  ‘Is something wrong in number three?’ Katie asked.

  ‘Wrong? Pwwhhhuh!’

  Mags folded her arms and looked Phoebe levelly in the eye. ‘I ain’t playing games with yer, Phoeb. If yer’ve got something to say, for Gawd’s sake just say it. Has something happened in there, or what?’

  Too keen to want to pass on her gossip to be worried about the tone Mags was taking with her, Phoebe leant forward, her chins spilling over the faded velvet collar of her serge coat. ‘He’s had it off, ain’t he? That Milton. These last few days he’s been walking about with a suit on and everything. And just yesterday, I saw her coming back from the market with enough shopping to feed a flaming army.’

  Mags frowned. ‘What? Ellen Milton?’

  ‘Funny enough,’ Edie said, ‘the kids was in here buying sweets and showing me their new football the other day. I thought nothing of it. Just reckoned someone had treated ’em.’

  Phoebe shook her head. ‘No, you mark my word, it’s him, he’s come into a few bob.’ She shifted her weight, making the chair creak alarmingly beneath her. ‘’Cos he certainly ain’t got himself no job. I mean, he’s indoors all day, ain’t he?’

  ‘Maybe’s he’s got nightwork somewhere,’ Edie suggested, never one to see bad in anybody if she could help it.

  ‘What, nightwork what pays the sort o’ dough he’s flashing about? Never. He’s had some rich old uncle die or something. Them sort have all the luck. Breed like rabbits and don’t have to lift a finger.’

  Katie looked from Mags to Edie and back again, raising her eyebrows and sighing. ‘I can see yer busy, and I’ve gotta get on and all,’ she said. ‘I’ll be over later and we can sort out doing the collecting then.’

  ‘I’ll pop back later and all,’ Mags said, following Katie from the shop.

  ‘See yer,’ Edie called after them. ‘Right, Phoebe, now what can I do for yer?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, hauling her bulky frame from the chair. ‘Yer don’t reckon I’m paying your prices when the market’s open, do yer?’

  The day of the Jubilee dawned grey and overcast, with a steady drizzle laying down a glossy slick of water on the cobbles – not what everyone had hoped for at all. But bad weather was no match for the residents of Plumley Street. They were holding a street party that was being attended by people from all of the surrounding turnings and they had no intention of letting anyone say that they couldn’t put on a decent show. So, raining it might have been but the work to transform Plumley Street went on unabated.

  Bunting and paper garlands were draped between lampposts, looped from one house to the next, hung in wreathed swags around windows, and stretched from one side of the street to the other. Big, colourful flags, representing some unknown and probably unheard-of country – borrowed by Bill Watts from someone over Hoxton way who had the hump with his neighbours and had gone to his daughter’s street to celebrate – were used to cover the row of kitchen tables that had been lined up along the middle of the road.

  It was not even nine o’clock, but Plumley Street was already transformed.

  Katie, having told Michael and Timmy to help her lug their kitchen table into the street almost before they had had the chance to finish their breakfast, was now busily decorating the outside of number twelve. She stood on a chair, while Timmy and Michael handed her the paper and crayon Empire flags and Union Jacks they had made at school. Carefully, she fixed each one around the door frame, leaning back to see if she’d got them straight.

  ‘This is better than doing the laundry, eh, Peg?’ she shouted across to her neighbour, who was concentrating on folding sheets of newspaper into Nelson-style paper hats.

  ‘You ain’t kidding there, girl. I could fancy having a party every Monday morning instead of lighting that flaming copper.’ Peg stood up and stuck one of the hats on her tightly permed hair, then, in a moment of recklessness that could have only come from the holiday atmosphere, she added, ‘Sod the washing, eh, Kate?’

  ‘Yeah, sod it!’ Kate called back, causing Michael and Timmy to collapse in fits of giggles at the amazing sound of Mrs Watts and their mum using such a word out in the street.

  ‘Sod it!’ gurgled Michael, clutching his sides. ‘They both said sod it!’

  Just then, Pat stepped out of the passage. Edging past Katie’s chair, he stared down at the boys. ‘What’s tickling this pair’s fancy?’ he asked.

  ‘Tickling our fancy!’ squealed Timmy, his face scarlet with laughter.

  ‘They’re excited,’ Katie said, with a little wrinkle of her nose. She smiled down affectionately at her two now almost helpless sons. ‘Bless ’em.’

  ‘I’ll give ’em bless ’em,’ said Pat, looking up at the first rays of sunshine breaking through the clouds, ‘if they don’t pull ’emselves together and start helping yer.’

  ‘They’re all right, love. They’ve been good as gold. Been helping me all morning, ain’t yer, boys?’

  The boys gawped at one another; their mother had obviously been replaced by a ringer. Instead of the woman whose only aim in life was to get them told off by their dad, she had been substituted by this nice, understanding lady whose only aim in life was to be kind to small boys.

  ‘So,’ she asked, still smiling happily, ‘where you off to then, Pat?’

  Pat winked at her behind his hand and held out a brown paper parcel. ‘I’m just taking this over the Queen’s. It’s that, yer know . . .’ He nodded towards the boys, signalling to Katie that he was now speaking in parents’ code, an indecipherable language that could only leave the boys guessing as to the actual significance of its words. ‘That whatsit, what I got from work last Friday.’

  ‘Aw yeah, yeah. Yer’d better get it over to her then, hadn’t yer?’

  ‘What’s that then, Dad?’ asked Michael, his recovery from hysterics now almost complete as he struggled with this new puzzle.

  Pat winked again at Katie and held up the package. ‘It’s a great big plate of air pie and windy pudden. Now, you two, I want yer t
o get up off yer arses and help yer mother. Now.’

  More language! Michael’s mouth dropped open. Had all the grown-ups gone raving mad?

  Pat said nothing more. He just strolled over towards the Queen’s and disappeared behind the glass and mahogany doors.

  ‘All right, Mags?’ Pat put his parcel down on the polished counter. ‘Katie said yer was organising all the food from over here, so I thought I’d bring yer this. A bit extra never hurts, does it?’

  Mags peeled back the wrapping and found herself looking at a great haunch of boiled ham. ‘Blimey, Pat. This must have cost yer a fortune.’

  ‘Not really,’ he said slowly. ‘See, I got a cotchell of it from work. This crate just burst open on the dockside. Right in front of me, it did. Seemed a pity to leave it there, so me and another bloke had a bit of a share-out. And Katie cooked it last night. Took hours it did.’

  ‘I bet it did. And it was a bit of luck, weren’t it? I mean, that it weren’t a crate of old rusty nuts and bolts or nothing.’

  Pat shrugged innocently. ‘Yeah, I reckon yer right, Mags. It was a bit o’ luck, ’cos I reckon we’re all gonna need plenty o’ grub to line our guts. Right jolly-up, this is gonna be.’ He stepped back to let Harold Donovan and Joe Palmer stagger past him with a barrel of ale. ‘All right, chaps?’

  They grunted a panting reply.

  Pat laughed as the two men pushed their way out of the bar and lurched out on to the street. ‘There’s enough booze stacked up out there already for a fleet of charras going on a beano.’

  Mags raised her eyebrows. ‘Harold’s kept saying all morning, “I’d better put out one more crate. Don’t want no one going short.”’ She lifted her chin with a little tutting sound. ‘Yer right, we’re gonna need plenty o’ sandwiches, all right. I’ll take this out the back and get on with it. Thanks again, Pat.’

  ‘It’s a pleasure, girl. I’ll see yer later on. I’m gonna go and see if I can give Harold and Joe a hand with anything.’

  ‘All right, Pat,’ Mags answered him, using her foot to push open the door that led out to the back kitchen. ‘And if yer see Aggie out there,’ she called over her shoulder, ‘tell her I’m ready to get started, will yer?’