‘I hope he’s all right,’ she said.
Ellen said nothing. Alma had the feeling that her daughter-in-law didn’t much care for Charlie. She didn’t say anything against him, but then she didn’t say anything for him either. Alma watched her as she moved around making the tea. It was lovely having Gerry and the little ones about the house, and Ellen was no problem, not really. She was quiet and a hard worker, she kept everything nice. She certainly didn’t moon around the place like Maisie used to and she looked after the children beautifully. But there was something that Alma could not quite put her finger on. It was as if Ellen was always holding something back, as if she had some secret she wasn’t going to let on about and Alma found it frustrating.
‘You joining me?’ she asked.
Ellen nodded and sat down opposite her. ‘Some blokes come to see Charlie this evening,’ she said.
‘What?’ Alma’s heart faltered. Charlie’s mates never came here: he always met them at some pub or other, well away from the street. ‘What did they want?’
‘Said they had something for him. I told them he wasn’t in and they said they’d leave it anyway.’
‘What? What did they leave?’
‘Little bag of stuff. I put it down the back of the put-you-up.’
Alma went straight to have a look. She slid her fingers down the gap between the back and the seat, and they closed round the grimy cloth bundle. It was not until then that it occurred to her that it was an odd thing to do, hiding it like this. And even as the thought struck her, she knew that Ellen had been right to put it out of the way. She stood for several moments with the canvas bag in her hand, not wanting to face the fact that anything Charlie’s mates might leave for him was likely to be stolen. Charlie’s mates, not Charlie. He was in with the wrong crowd, that was all. Unbidden, that dreadful moment at Southend surfaced, and she remembered his hand slipping into a man’s back trouser pocket and coming out with a wallet.
Her courage failed. She did not dare look inside the nasty little bag. She was frightened of what it might contain, terrified that it might confirm all the suspicions that she tried so hard to keep at bay. With a shudder, she thrust it back in its hiding place.
‘Nothing important,’ she said to Ellen.
‘Right. I’m going to bed now. Gerry went up ages ago. He’s tired.’
‘Poor lamb.’ With relief, Alma focused on her other son. ‘He works so hard. Always has. He’ll work himself into an early grave, he will. He does it for you, you know, Ellen – you and the kids.’
‘I know,’ Ellen said. ‘I’d help him on the stall still, if he’d let me. He needs someone with him, but he won’t hear of it. Says the children should have their mum looking after them.’
This was a stab at her, Alma realized. It was all very well for Ellen to stand there saying things like that. She had Gerry out there making a living; she didn’t have to bring up the children on her own.
‘He’s a good dad, is Gerry. Thinks the world of Jess and Teddy. And this new one. Real thrilled, he was, when he told me. Had tears in his eyes. Not many men’d be that pleased about their third.’
And there it was again, that secretive look. Alma supposed it was just because she was carrying. Women got a bit odd then. She’d been odd herself, so proud, as if she was making the whole world inside of her.
‘Oh yeah, he’s good with the little ’uns,’ Ellen agreed. ‘’Night, Mum.’
That was something, anyway – she did call her Mum. Alma liked that. She sat up some while longer, sipping the tea and trying not to worry about her boys. Gerry had married a good ’un there in Ellen, but he was running himself into the ground to provide for her. It was like he was always trying to prove something. As if that was needed. He was the best, her Gerry. It broke her heart to see him with that hunted look always on his face. In the old days, there was always a smile and a joke from Gerry, always some new plan, some wonderful deal. He never seemed to smile now.
She tried to keep her mind on Gerry, as the lesser worry, but inevitably Charlie crept in on her thoughts. She never knew where he went to or what he was up to. All she did know was that he was in with a very bad crowd. It was no good her saying anything. He’d given up listening to her when he was still at school. She had no power over him at all.
The door banged open and she jumped, then went limp with relief, her hand to her thudding heart.
‘That you, lovey?’ As if it would be anyone else.
There was a rumble of reply and Charlie appeared, swaying as he held on to the kitchen doorframe. Alma surveyed him anxiously. He was drunk, but he was fully clothed.
‘Had a good time?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’ He lunged past her, blundering into furniture, wrenched open the back door and made for the privy. That was normal enough, and Alma decided she had been worrying about nothing. Last week had been dreadful, but it wasn’t going to happen again. Reassured, she went to bed.
She was still half asleep the next morning when there came a banging on the front door. She sat bolt upright in bed, nerves jangling with the shock.
‘What the bleeding hell . . .?’
For a moment she was confused. This couldn’t be happening, not first thing of a Sunday morning. She listened. Teddy’s high-pitched babble floated up the stairs, then Ellen’s voice, wary and measured, and two men’s voices, heavily polite. She heard Charlie’s name mentioned – ‘Charles Albert Billingham’ – and then she knew.
‘God help us – coppers!’
She shot out of bed and began pulling on clothes, her fingers turning treacherously clumsy. A moaning noise of fear and frustration sounded in her throat. There was nothing she could do to warn him, to protect him. He was right there in the parlour, sleeping on the put-you-up. The put-you-up! She nearly cried out loud. She had not told him about the hidden bag. She put a hand to her side to steady the wild beating of her heart. It was all right; she must keep a hold of herself. He would have noticed it as he went to bed. He would have hidden it somewhere. But a voice inside her head reminded her that he had been pissed as a wheelbarrow last night . . . Shaking, her hair sticking out, her clothes all anyhow, Alma went downstairs. At the bottom, she took a deep breath. Then she sailed into the parlour.
‘Now then, what’s all this about? Can’t a body have a lie-in of a Sunday morning without you lot coming and marching in here bold as you please –’
She stopped short. The policemen seemed to fill the small room. Charlie was standing in his shirt and underpants, glowering. He seemed small and defenceless beside the large men. One of them had him by the arm and the other was holding the grubby canvas bag. He waved it in front of Alma.
‘You know anything about this, missus?’
Alma opened her mouth and shut it again. She would have said anything, perjured herself, to help Charlie, but she did not know what to say for the best.
‘Course she don’t. She was out last night and all, weren’t she?’ Charlie said.
‘That’s right,’ Alma agreed.
The policeman gave her an unbelieving look. ‘Got you trained all right, ain’t he, missus?’
‘I was out last night. You saying I’m a liar? I’ll have you for that. You ask anyone. I was up the Puncheon.’
He put on a show of patience. ‘All right, so who was in last night? This stuff didn’t just fly in the window, now did it?’
‘I told you, it must’ve been planted on me,’ Charlie said.
‘I was in last night.’
They all turned to look at Ellen. In the midst of the drama, she was totally calm. She looked at the policemen with a steady gaze.
‘It’s all right, Ellen. You don’t have to say nothing.’ Gerry was at her shoulder, pale and nervous.
‘Two men came yesterday evening with that bag. They asked for Charlie and I said he weren’t in, so they gave it to me to give to him.’
‘There you are!’ Charlie crowed. ‘It was planted.’
‘Friends of Mr Billingham�
�s were they, missus?’
‘I never saw them before in my life.’
‘So what did they look like?’
‘I didn’t see them very well. It was dark, and I didn’t ask them in.’ Ellen hesitated, her brow creased with remembering. ‘They was both quite short – no taller than me. They was wearing caps and jackets. One had a spotted necktie. And they was local – I could tell by the voices.’
The policeman holding the bag was unimpressed. ‘How old was they?’
‘I dunno – twenty, thirty.’
‘Short, wearing caps and jackets, twenty or thirty years old, local. That’d fit practically any villain in London, missus.’
Ellen turned her cold stare on him. ‘I’m sorry I can’t say no more, officer. I don’t invite strange men into my house so as I can tell the police about them.’
‘Pity.’ Wilting ever so slightly before her, he turned on Charlie.
‘Charles Albert Billingham, I am arresting you for receiving stolen goods . . .’
The rest of the caution was lost in Alma’s shriek of protest.
‘You can’t! You can’t do this! Not my boy. He’s a good boy, my Charlie. You can’t take him in – he’s done nothing.’
They ignored her and stood over Charlie as he got dressed. Worse was to follow. The house was searched from top to bottom, then they all had to go down to the station to make statements. Gerry was escorted to his lock-up and all his stock was gone through, together with all the receipts he could find. After an endless morning, the rest of them were allowed to go home, but Charlie was marched off to the cells.
Somehow, Alma managed to walk down Trinidad Street with her head high. She could see them all looking at her, some openly from their front doors, some from behind curtains. They must all have had a real morning of it, talking about the whole family being led off by a couple of coppers, but she wasn’t going to let them see her defeated. They all sat down round the kitchen table, and Ellen fetched Teddy and Jessica back from her mother, who had been minding them. Alma’s control cracked. Great sobs came heaving up from her very soul.
‘Oh, my poor boy,’ she howled, ‘my poor Charlie. What’s going to happen to him? I can’t bear it.’
She put her head in her arms and gave herself up to weeping, finding a release in the hot tears. She hardly heard Ellen or Gerry, or felt their arms around her. All she knew was the fierce pain and the crushing fear.
Florrie looked up as the bedroom door opened. Not more eager visitors. She had had enough of people peering at the baby and finding who he looked like. All Jimmy’s family thought he looked like some relation or other of theirs and all her own lot thought he looked like her. Some even went so far as to say he took after her mum, which brought tears to her eyes, or worse still, her dad. She stared long and searchingly at the tiny child after that suggestion, horror in her heart. It couldn’t be. Not that. Not her father come back to haunt her in the face of her firstborn son.
Ellen’s head appeared round the door, and Florrie relaxed. Ellen was the one person she wanted to see.
‘Not asleep?’
‘No – come on in, love. I could do with some company.’
‘I brought you up some tea.’ Ellen handed her a cup.
‘Oh, that’s nice, but I don’t really fancy it.’
‘Water, then? Shall I bring you some water? You got to drink a lot to make milk for the baby.’
Whenever anyone else said that, it made her want to throw the drink all over them. But from Ellen she could take it.
‘Oh, well, I suppose you’re right. Thanks.’
She looked thoughtfully at her friend’s face over the rim of the cup. For the first time since the birth of the baby, she considered someone besides herself and the child.
‘You look dog tired, Ellen. Things bad over the road?’
‘Well, you know Alma – always thought the sun shone out of Charlie’s backside. She still doesn’t believe he done nothing.’
‘But he was picked out, weren’t he, at an identity parade?’
‘Yeah, but he says as he was framed, and the old boy what picked him was half blind. Alma can’t let it rest. She nagged and nagged at him to get all his pals together so as I could have a look at them and find the ones what brought the stuff round, but he won’t have any of it. She went on at him so much that he did take Gerry and me to this pub up in Poplar yesterday evening. He wouldn’t let us meet his pals. We had to sit in the corner and pretend we didn’t know him. And then they all come in, and a right shifty-looking bunch they was an’ all. Just like him.’
‘And did you see them, the two that knocked?’ Florrie asked. It all seemed unreal to her. A pub in Poplar was as far away as the moon. But Ellen looked so worn that she was interested for her sake.
Ellen sighed and ran her hands over her face. ‘It was dreadful, Florrie. I stared and I stared, all the while trying to make out that I wasn’t. And they all looked the same. Honest. It was like that copper said, all the villains in London are small and about twenty or thirty and wear caps. And I never saw them proper. It was dark when they come, and you know how the streetlamp don’t give off much light, not where we are. And Gerry, he really had the wind up. He kept saying, ‘What d’you think? Can you see them? Are they there?’ And the more I looked, the more I couldn’t remember anything about them. Then of course when we got home, Alma was on at me until I just ended up screaming at her.’
‘What did she do?’ Alma might be all bright and jolly most of the time, but Florrie wouldn’t fancy being there when she wasn’t.
‘She yelled back. And then the children woke up with the noise and they started crying. But I tell you something, Florrie. Gerry surprised me. He really did. He got between us and he said, “You just leave off, Mum. Ellen’s done her best. Don’t carry on at her or she might lose the baby.” I don’t think I ever heard him talk to her like that before, not never. And she did calm down a bit. I think she was surprised an’ all. But of course it didn’t help none, because we still don’t know who it was what brought that stuff round for Charlie.’
‘At least he’s on bail,’ Florrie said.
That had been a right to-do, getting the money together. It was Harry who put most of it up. Jimmy’s family had been horrified. They never had any doings with the police, not the Crofts. If it hadn’t been for the baby being born right now, they might even have cut her off.
As if catching her thoughts, little George woke up and began to cry.
‘Can I?’ Ellen asked.
Florrie nodded and her friend bent down and picked the baby out of the drawer he was lying in. She held him on her knee, smiling down at his angry red features.
‘He’s got a real look of Harry about him, ain’t he?’ she remarked.
Relief swamped Florrie in a warm wave. She unbuttoned her nightdress and held out her arms for the baby. As he caught hold of her nipple and his face settled into an expression of avid hunger, she regarded him with new eyes.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, he has, you’re right. Just like Harry.’
They were both quiet for a while, watching the sucking baby.
‘He’s strong,’ Ellen said, as he started on the other side. ‘Reckon he’ll be all right.’
‘Hark at you, quite the old hand,’ Florrie joked, not looking up.
‘Yeah, funny, ain’t it, us both being mums now. Don’t seem two minutes since we was playing hopscotch.’
‘Or wheeling out other people’s babies. Remember that time we fought over Maisie’s Tommy?’
‘Yeah.’ They were both silent again, for it had not been Tommy they were fighting over, but Will’s behaviour to Maisie. Which brought both their thoughts to Siobhan.
‘Are you –’
‘I always thought –’
They both spoke at once, wanting to push the Irish troublemaker out of the way. The chat concentrated on babies and motherhood. Ellen fetched a clean square of old sheet for Florrie to change little George.
He definitely did look like Harry, Florrie decided. She still felt quite dizzy with the knowledge. She could not have born having her father in the house all over again, though of course it would be no more than she deserved.
Without thinking first, she said, ‘I wonder if Harry’ll ever have any of his own?’
The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She saw her friend’s face pale and her arm curl protectively round the baby she was carrying inside her. Florrie wanted to say she was sorry, but did not know whether that might make it worse.
Ellen was not looking at her. Her eyes were distant and she was stroking the bulge under her skirt.
‘I never –’ she began. She stopped, bit her lip, then carried on. ‘I never thanked you proper for what you done that day – the day we – I had to move out from next door: finishing the house off for me, and covering up. I – we – wouldn’t never have got away with it if it hadn’t been for you.’
It was the nearest Ellen had ever come to admitting just what had happened. All Florrie knew was that both her friend and her brother had disappeared for the day. She reached out and laid a hand on her knee.
‘We all got secrets,’ she said.
Ellen turned and for a long time the two women looked at each other, and felt safe.
2
‘YOU BEEN PLAYING around behind my back, ain’t you?’
The young man with the broken nose towered above Siobhan as she sat at the dressing table in their gilded bedroom. She cowered from him, shaking her head.
‘Me? No, I have not. Playing around? I never have, not in all the time you and me’ve been together.’
Her lover was unimpressed. He grabbed her arm and pulled her on to her feet.
‘Thought you’d get away with it, did you, what with me being away? Even if you can’t behave yourself for my sake, you ought to know I got eyes everywhere.’ His grip tightened round her arm, making her gasp. ‘You been seen.’
‘Lies!’ Siobhan squealed. ‘It’s all lies! I been good as gold while you been gone. All I been doing is working and coming back here.’
Trinidad Street Page 46
