by Irene Carr
Chrissie looked from one to the other: Martha gloating and triumphant, Sophie cockily determined. She saw something of her own ambition and drive in her daughter, and knew Sophie had spoken the truth, that she could not keep her at home against her will. Chrissie asked herself, what could she do? And then supplied the answer: do nothing.
She said, ‘Your home will be there when you come to your senses,’ and walked out, turning her back on her mother, who now gaped disbelievingly, and passing her daughter who blinked in uneasy surprise. She ran down the stairs, strode quickly along the passage and into the street. She was in the Ford again before she could change her mind. For a long moment then she hesitated, but finally shook her head and drove away.
Jack was incredulous then angry. ‘You didn’t bring her back? Are you out of your mind? You left that child with your mother after all you’ve said about her?’
Chrissie had had time on the drive home to let her own anger die and so recover from her distress, and she had stopped for a while to cry. Now she answered calmly, ‘She’s not the adult she thinks she is, but she’s not a child, either. I was thrown out in the world long before her age. It’s better for her to find out about my mother for herself. Sophie knows where we are when she needs us.’
But she cried again that night, and wondered if Sophie could be right.
Chrissie drove down into town to the hotel that Sunday to catch up on her desk work. Tom put his head around her door in the evening as she bent over her papers. Tall and dark, as time went on he looked more and more like Jack. Chrissie marvelled at the resemblance as he said softly, ‘So long, Mother.’
She thought, not for the first time, Thank God for Tom. She warned him, ‘Take care.’ Shipyards were dangerous places.
‘I will.’ Then he was gone, striding off up the passage, on his way to catch the train to Newcastle. He had to clock in at the yard early the next morning.
Sarah Tennant, working at a trolley of bedlinen and hidden behind the grand staircase, saw him go and smiled. Their paths had not crossed and she had not seen him for six months or more. He did not see her now.
When he opened the front door of his lodgings with the key his landlady had given him he found her son, Robbie, standing in the hall. Tom had met him a few times when Robbie had called to see his mother, bringing his wife and children with him. He was a thickset man who worked in one of the yards on the Tyne. Now he said, ‘Sorry, Tom, but me mother was taken bad on Saturday. She had a stroke and she’s in the hospital. They say she has to take it easy, so when she’s a bit better and they let her out she’s coming to live with us.’
Tom murmured his condolences and said, ‘Will you tell her I was asking after her and give her my thanks? She was good to me.’
‘Aye, I’ll do that.’ Robbie nodded his agreement then went on, ‘It was a bit short notice but we asked around and we’ve found some people that’ll take you in. It’s not far away, either, so you’ll still be handy for the yard. If you’ll pack up any things you’ve got upstairs I’ll give you a hand to shift them round there.’
He was as good as his word and carried one suitcase while Tom humped the other. Tom’s new lodgings were only a couple of streets away in a house similar to that which he had left. The woman who answered the door was tightly corseted and big bosomed, her hair permanently waved. She wore a fixed smile as Robbie introduced her: ‘This is Mrs Simmons.’ They exchanged greetings then Robbie shook Tom’s hand and strode away.
Tom went on into the hall and put down his cases. Mrs Simmons said, ‘Come into the parlour and I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ She ushered him into the front room off the hall and said, ‘This is Mr Simmons.’ He stood up from his armchair, a balding man with a drooping moustache. The jacket of his dark blue Sunday suit was unbuttoned to show his waistcoat with its watch and chain, but he wore carpet slippers on his feet. His wife went on, ‘And this is our Dolly. Her proper name is Dorothy but you call her Dolly like we do.’
Her daughter looked to be Tom’s age and he found out later she was just two months past eighteen, nearly as old as himself. She was taller than her mother but her hair was also permed and her bust well developed. She would grow more like her mother in time, but now was pretty. She smiled at Tom, shy but assessing.
Her mother said, ‘Now I’ll get you that cup o’ tea and a bite o’ supper – and Dolly can show you your room. She’s just next door to you.’
15
October 1937
After Peter was rebuffed by Sophie he told himself he didn’t care – for six long months. When he finally weakened it was still only so far as to return to haunting the High Street outside the Ballantyne Hotel, where he believed she worked and lived. He did not see her, nor Helen Diaz, though he looked out for her, too. But he caught glimpses of Sarah Tennant in the foyer on several occasions. He knew her as the girl who worked some evenings in the club where he trained for boxing. Before the break-up with Sophie he had often exchanged a cheerful greeting with Sarah if he met her on those evenings and had once said, ‘You work in the Ballantyne Hotel with Sophie, then.’
Sarah had not been prepared for that but guessed that Sophie had told Peter she worked there to keep her true identity secret. Sarah had tactfully replied, ‘Yes, I work at the Ballantyne.’
Joe Nolan was pleased with Peter’s progress and spent a lot of time with him. One night after a training session he told Peter, ‘You’ve got the makings of a champion, lad, if you want to go that way.’
Peter, sweating and breathing hard, stared at him in surprise. ‘Me? A champion?’
Joe nodded. ‘I reckon so. O’ course, you’ve got a long way to go. You’ve only put the gloves on with the lads in here so we don’t know how you’d get on in a competitive bout against a stranger, but those same lads have performed against some stiff competition. I think you’ve got the ability and the strength, all you need now is a bit more of the know-how. And the hunger.’
‘Hunger?’ Peter rubbed at his face with a towel and grinned wrily. ‘I’ve had some of that.’
‘I mean the hunger to win, to be the best. If you haven’t got that you’ll never be a champion, because it gets harder the further you go. So I’m not going to push you into anything. Make up your own mind, then let me know how you feel about it.’
‘Righto, Joe.’ But Peter’s attention was elsewhere now. The door of the gym had opened to admit two more of Joe’s ‘lads’ and Peter looked past them. Sarah Tennant happened to walk by in the passage outside at that point and Peter finally decided to act. ‘I’ll be seeing you, then, Joe,’ he said, and he changed into his street clothes and hurried out.
He found Sarah in the little room behind the bar, busily sawing bread into slices for sandwiches. He said, ‘Hello. Busy?’
‘Always busy in here,’ Sarah laughed.
‘Aye.’ He hesitated a moment, shy, then blurted out, ‘I wondered if Sophie was all right, wondered if mebbe she was poorly, because I haven’t seen her for a while.’
‘Oh.’ Sarah sawed at the bread, thinking quickly. Should she tell him the truth as far as she knew it, that Sophie was the daughter of the owner of the Ballantyne Hotel? But then she answered, ‘She’s gone away, must have been a month or two ago. I heard Mrs Ballantyne telling somebody.’ That last was true enough: Chrissie had publicly said that Sophie had gone away to work, though she had not gone into details. Sarah said, ‘I don’t know where she’s gone.’
Peter repeated numbly, ‘Gone away.’
Sarah saw his despondency and tried to cheer him. ‘I expect she was upset at leaving, and she didn’t want to hurt you so she couldn’t bear to tell you . . . Or maybe she didn’t have your address.’
Peter said miserably, ‘She hadn’t. She’d never been there.’ She had left him without a word. In his heart he had hoped that they would meet again and take up where they had left off, that the break-up had been no more than a quarrel along the way, but now it seemed there was a finality about it. She had gone away.
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br /> He left the club and wandered about the streets, alone and unhappy, crossing the bridge into the town. He paused outside the Ballantyne Hotel out of habit, then mentally shook himself and slouched on. There was no point in waiting there because she had gone.
That week there was a travelling fair on the Garrison Field at the end of the High Street. He walked in past the huge steam-traction engine that pounded away, driving the generator that supplied the power for the strings of coloured lights, the whirling, dipping and soaring merry-go-rounds. He meandered among the stalls and amusements until he came to the crowd surrounding the boxing booth. He stood on the fringe, watching and listening.
There were three boxers on the stage outside the booth, robes knotted over their boxing kit: a heavyweight, middleweight and lightweight. The proprietor of the booth stood at the front, shouting into a megaphone, touting for contenders. He had already found a heavyweight and a lightweight. They stood up there, too, blinking under the lights and grinning uneasily. The voice sounded metallic through the megaphone: ‘Five pounds for anybody who can go the distance with Dave Bolger here! Five pounds!’ The voice was becoming impatient, irritated. ‘You don’t have to lay him out or win on points, for Gawd’s sake! Just stay with him!’
A man in front of Peter muttered, ‘The feller that got in with him last night is still in hospital,’ and heads nodded around him.
The man with the megaphone must have guessed at the crowd’s thoughts. He taunted desperately, ‘I thought you were a game lot here! Surely one o’ you has the guts to have a go!’
Another voice spoke behind Peter, jeering, ‘Are you thinking of having a go, kid?’
Peter turned and saw McNally, scarred and head cropped, grinning at him; Gallagher, the red-faced, narrow-eyed foreman stood by his side. Both of them smelt of beer, and had obviously been going the round of the pubs. Peter had soon managed to swop from Gallagher’s to another gang, but they all still worked in Ballantyne’s shipyard, and saw each other several times a day. Gallagher’s and McNally’s hatred was also still obvious. Their grins now were not friendly but sneering.
Peter demanded curtly, ‘Why don’t you take him on?’
McNally shook his bullet head then nodded it at the stage. ‘He wouldn’t have me. I’m a light heavyweight, a bit too big for his boy. That’s not why he wouldn’t let me in with his boy, but it’s the reason he’d use.’
Gallagher grumbled, ‘The fact is that he knows McNally, so he won’t take him on. Wouldn’t have him last night. Took a mug instead, that wound up wi’ a broken jaw and concussion.’
McNally said, ‘It’s a pity. I could do with a fiver.’ Then, ‘Tell you what, kidder, I’ll bet you a quid you couldn’t last the first round wi’ him.’
Gallagher chuckled. ‘I’ll lay a quid he daren’t get in the ring with him.’
All Peter’s misery and frustration was now transmuted into anger and he snapped back, ‘You’re on, both o’ you!’ He swung back to face the stage and shouted against the blaring megaphone, ‘Here! I’ll fight him!’
He started to shove his way through the crowd and the megaphone voice ceased its tinny clamour for a moment as its holder peered at the young man prepared to chance his arm against Dave Bolger. Then it bellowed, ‘This looks a likely lad! Come on up here, my son!’
Peter clambered up on to the stage and stood by Dave Bolger. He eyed Peter and grinned confidently. The proprietor glanced from one to the other, weighing up both, and nodded. He lifted the megaphone again: ‘It looks like a right good match to me! Let’s get on wi’ it!’
Peter had time to cool off. The megaphone man was something of a psychologist, as he had to be, and suspected that if Bolger destroyed Peter as he had the man on the previous night, then his other two volunteers might change their minds. So he put them on first and Peter saw the lightweight retire after two rounds and the heavyweight knocked out in the first.
‘Two to them so far.’ The jeering voice again. ‘You’ll make it three – if you get in.’ Gallagher had worked his way through the audience in the packed booth with the help of McNally’s elbowing and now stood behind Peter.
Peter shut his ears to the taunts, swallowed his nervousness and climbed into the ring as the proprietor beckoned. He stripped to the waist and listened as an elderly ‘second’ shoved gloves on to his hands and tied their laces. The megaphone brayed, ‘This next bout is at middleweight, three rounds of three minutes each round . . .’ The megaphone was lowered for the question, ‘What’s your name, lad?’
‘Peter Robinson.’ Now he was watching Bolger and trying to remember all Joe Nolan had taught him, but failing to recall any of that instruction.
The voice was announcing, ‘. . . and the local champion, battling Peter Robinson!’
Peter knew that was rubbish. He wasn’t a champion. Bolger knew it and was laughing behind his gloves so the crowd could not see, but Peter could. Gallagher and McNally guffawed, mouths wide to show yellow teeth. They were all laughing at him.
He fought with a cold rage and a skill that first startled Bolger, then frustrated and finally subdued him. In the last minute of the last round Peter could have finished him but hesitated, reluctant to hit a man who could no longer defend himself. The booth proprietor did not hesitate and the round finished some twenty seconds early to save Bolger.
Peter collected his five pounds from the proprietor and two more from Gallagher and McNally. McNally did not speak and neither did Peter, but Gallagher asked, ‘Does anybody else know you can fight like that?’
Peter answered curtly, ‘Only Joe Nolan and the lads down at the club.’
He set off for home seven pounds richer but no happier.
As they watched his departing back with rage and hatred, Gallagher said to McNally, ‘We could use him.’
‘He won’t have owt to do wi’ us,’ McNally spat. ‘That’s if he has any sense. He knows we’ll do for him first chance we get.’
‘I didn’t mean he could work with us. I meant for us.’
‘How?’
Gallagher told him.
The next day Gallagher and McNally called on Joshua Fannon in the house where Meggie Fannon had died. It was changed now: there was new furniture and carpets on the floor, and velvet cloth covered the table where Fannon added up his rents as a landlord and the bets he took as a bookmaker, worked out what he had to pay the winners. When he opened the door to them that evening there was nothing on the table but the plate that had held his fish and chips, and a half-empty glass of stout.
He greeted them warily and with false bonhomie because he knew Gallagher as a hard man and McNally as a bruiser. ‘Now then, lads, what can I do for you?’
McNally’s eyes focused on the cupboard by the fire, its door half-open to show the bottles of various kinds inside. ‘You could give us a drink for a start. How about a drop o’ whisky?’
Fannon said heartily, ‘Aye, we’ll all have one, eh?’ and he got out the bottle.
When they sat around the table and the glasses had been filled and sampled, Gallagher said, ‘I’ve got an idea that could make us all some money.’
‘Oh, aye?’ Now Fannon was interested, but still wary.
‘Have you ever thought of setting up some fights?’
Fannon shook his head so that his jowls wobbled. ‘I don’t know owt about that business.’
Gallagher assured him, ‘You won’t have to. I’ll find the fighters and the places. All you’ll have to do will be to put up a purse and make a book.’
Fannon shifted uneasily. In fact, he was not entirely ignorant of the business of fighting. ‘Can you make any money that way?’
Gallagher conceded, ‘Not much, if you’re particular, but suppose you were managing a fighter yourself and you knew when he was going to lose . . .’ He paused and Fannon’s eyes drifted to McNally. Gallagher said, ‘No, not him.’
‘Who, then?’
‘A lad called Peter Robinson.’
‘I’ve never heard of him.’
‘Neither has anybody else, but he’s good.’
‘And he’ll agree to . . .’ He stopped because McNally was shaking his head and grinning.
Gallagher said, ‘No, he won’t agree to lie down, but he won’t have to.’
And then he explained.
Peter Robinson sat in the doctor’s surgery with its examination couch and screen and smell of disinfectant. He held his cap on his knee as Dr Dickinson, greying and with long years in that practice, told him gently, ‘Your mother’s heart is very weak. In fact it’s only operating at a third of what its strength should be. That’s why she is so grey, easily tired and short of breath. On top of that she’s run down.’
Peter twisted the cap in his hands. ‘What should I do? Does she have to go to hospital?’ He knew she would hate that.
Dickinson shook his head, ‘No.’ He could have added, ‘The hospital can’t do anything for her,’ but he had decided Peter was worried enough. ‘No. She can stay at home but she needs building up with good food – milk, eggs and fruit – and she must rest for a while. No stairs, no housework, just rest for a few weeks until she picks up a bit. Do you understand?’ He asked because some men did not, considering housework was not work at all – and anyway it was a woman’s job.
Peter nodded, afraid for his mother. ‘I’ll do all o’ that. Young Billy can give me a hand.’ Little Billy Hackett would soon be eight years old.
So they were busy that Friday evening. Despite Margaret Hackett’s protest, Peter insisted she sat in her chair by the fire while he and Billy cleaned the fire irons for the weekend. There were two sets, one steel and the other brass, each consisting of poker, tongs and shovel. The steel ones were used, regularly, and were cleaned with emery paper. The brass ones were for decoration, laid out in the hearth inside the brass-railed fender, and these were cleaned with metal polish.
Peter and Billy had almost finished when the knock came at the kitchen door, and Billy opened it to show Joshua Fannon smirking fatly. Fannon said, ‘I’m looking for Peter Robinson.’
