by June Francis
‘In a minute. I’d like time to smoke a ciggie and then we’ll be on our way.’
Once inside the Stadium, the noise was so tremendous she decided it would be a waste of time trying to make conversation, so she just sat there, watching what Marty was doing and waiting for the action to begin.
‘There she is,’ he said suddenly in her ear.
Oh hell! thought Jeanette, feeling her stomach turn over. She hoped that she wasn’t going to throw up. ‘Where?’ she croaked.
‘Don’t look, don’t look,’ he said. ‘Bloody hell, what’s she doing with him?’
‘Who’s she with?’ asked Jeanette, looking around wildly.
While she was trying to see whom Mary was referring to, unexpectedly she spotted Billy, whom she had believed was in Borstal, sitting between a couple of blokes. ‘What’s he doing here?’ she gasped.
‘Who?’ asked Marty.
‘That Billy who started the fight in the chip shop and hit David Jones in the face with a bicycle chain.’
‘Oh him! His dad was drunk and fell in a dock. They pulled him out dead. His mam immediately put on a grieving act and said she needed her son home. They let him out for the funeral and to help her with the arrangements, but if he dirties his nose, he’ll be for prison, I bet.’
She cast a surreptitious look at Billy and for a moment she thought he saw her and she immediately ducked her head. The last thing she wanted was for him to notice her. She wished fervently that she’d had more sense than to agree to come here with Peggy’s brother.
‘What are you doing?’ shouted Marty. ‘Keep your head up and look at me like I was that crust you’re hungering for. She’s spotted us!’
Jeanette felt her hair being pulled and her head was jerked upright. ‘That hurts!’ she cried.
There was a sudden roar that drowned out his words but she read his lips. ‘Smile, honey bunch,’ he commanded.
She smiled.
After that she almost relaxed. The crowd’s attention, including Marty’s, was centred on the boxing ring, which was not a ring at all but a square, which made Jeanette wonder why it was so misnamed. But she soon forgot such things and even Billy’s presence was pushed to the back of her mind as the wrestlers did what they did best, whilst the crowd roared, groaned and whistled, and the women nearest the ring catcalled, insulted and advised the competitors what to do to each other as they slammed bodies onto the canvas or got their opponent into dangerous-looking headlocks. Jeanette had never felt so exhilar-ated, whilst at the same time she was on pins and wanting to get out of there.
‘Enjoying yourself?’ asked Marty during a lull in the proceedings.
‘I’m exhausted,’ said Jeanette. ‘And thirsty – and what’s that smell?’
‘I presume you don’t just mean the stench of sweat and beer but the overpowering odour of liniment and embrocation, my girl,’ said Marty, grinning. ‘I wonder where Bernie’s gone? He’s still there but I can’t see her.’
Jeanette did not care where his girl had gone. She’d had enough and wanted to leave. Her watch said that it was getting on for ten. ‘Listen, Marty. I think it’s time I went.’
‘It’ll be finishing soon. Just hang on a bit longer, kid,’ he coaxed. ‘I’ll see you onto a bus.’
Jeanette heaved a sigh. ‘OK.’
‘And who is this?’ demanded a silky feminine voice, seemingly out of nowhere.
‘Bernie, what are you doing here?’ asked Marty, looking as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth as he gazed up at her.
Jeanette looked the girl over and thought there was no accounting for taste: dyed red hair, eyelashes thick with mascara and lipstick so red it could have been blood. As for what Bernie was wearing beneath a rabbit skin coat – her Aunt Ethel would have ripped it off her back. The woman’s breasts were hanging half out of a midnight-blue satin blouse.
‘You knew I’d be here. I told you so,’ snapped Bernie. ‘Who is this . . . this person?’ She leaned across him towards Jeanette and glared into her face.
On closer inspection, Jeanette realized Bernie was younger than she had first thought. ‘I don’t think I’m any of your business,’ she said, tilting her chin.
‘Oh no?’ cried Bernie, and lashed out at her.
A shocked Jeanette felt the air rush over her skin as the other girl’s fingernails narrowly missed their target.
Marty put an arm around Bernie’s waist and yanked her backwards. ‘Are you bloody daft?’
‘Let me go! Let me get at her!’ shrieked Bernie.
Jeanette pushed herself up out of her seat and said, ‘I’m going, Marty.’
She did not wait for him to argue with her but excused herself along the row in the opposite direction to Bernie until she reached the aisle. Then, clasping her handbag to her chest, she ran for the exit. She had just passed the end of the building outside when a figure suddenly loomed up in front of her and she almost died of fright.
‘So where do you think you’re going, doll?’ Billy grabbed hold of her shoulder and his grip was so painful she screamed. ‘Shut up,’ he bellowed, wrapping his arm about her throat.
She panicked and kicked backwards and caught him on the shins with the heel of her shoe. He swore and his grip tightened about her throat. She could feel herself losing consciousness. Then a voice that seemed to come from a far distance, said, ‘What’s going on here?’
She felt Billy’s grip slacken and although her head was swimming, she managed to jerk herself free and stagger away from him. Without bothering to see who had spoken, somehow she found the strength to keep on moving. As soon as she turned the corner into Dale Street, she took to her heels. Even so, she kept glancing over her shoulder every time she heard footsteps behind her. At last she arrived at the bus stop and stood, shivering, praying her bus would come soon. When a hand suddenly seized her by the shoulder, she cried out.
‘Did I give you a fright?’ asked Sam, gazing down at her.
She collapsed against him. ‘Am I glad to see you. Take me home, please!’ she cried, bursting into tears.
Seventeen
Jeanette sat at the kitchen table, warming her hands on a mug of cocoa and trying to avoid her father’s eyes. ‘Sam said you were frightened but wouldn’t tell him why you were in such a state, where you’d been or why you were on your own, stinking of cigarette smoke and beer,’ said George.
‘I haven’t been smoking or drinking,’ said Jeanette, rearing her head.
‘So you told him, but you’ve been somewhere that goes on. When Aunt Ethel told me you hadn’t come home from work, I presumed you’d gone to the pictures with your friend, Peggy, but that can’t be right because there aren’t any cinemas near Dale Street.’
‘I didn’t tell her that I was seeing Peggy,’ said Jeanette. ‘I’m going out with her tomorrow night to a dance.’
‘No you’re not, my girl,’ said George firmly. ‘You’re not going anywhere until I know where you were tonight. And while we’re having this little talk, I’d like to know where you go every Saturday during the day when you’re not in the office or at home.’
‘I work part time in a milk bar.’ Jeanette gulped a mouthful of cocoa. ‘Aunt Ethel takes almost all of my normal wages and I’d have scarcely anything to spend if I didn’t have this extra little job.’
George took a deep breath. ‘Right, I’ll check that out and if you’re lying to me—’
‘I’m not lying!’ she cried. ‘Ask Hester, she’s known right from the beginning because Aunt Ethel locked me in my bedroom the night before and I had to ask Hester to let me out, otherwise I wouldn’t have made it in time.’
George swore beneath his breath. ‘Right, now tell me what you were doing this evening.’
Jeanette hesitated. ‘I was returning a favour.’
George visibly relaxed. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. What kind of favour?’
‘I’d asked someone to pass a message on for me and in return I said that I’d help them out. They said it would b
e an experience for me,’ she said in a rush.
He paled. ‘What kind of experience?’
Jeanette bit down on her lower lip, knowing she had said too much.
‘Come on, explain, girl!’ he rasped. ‘What kind of experience? Do you know how many young people end up in trouble because they want to experience stuff that is bad for them?’
Her green eyes flashed. ‘Don’t give me that, Dad! I’m not stupid. I haven’t done anything bad. I just went somewhere that I knew you wouldn’t approve of and I wish I hadn’t gone, but there it is, I went.’ She took another mouthful of cocoa. ‘Now can I go to bed? I’m shattered.’
‘No you bloody well can’t go to bed! I’ll have you here all night until you tell me where you’ve been,’ shouted George, slapping a large hand on the table.
She jumped and the cocoa went down the wrong way and she burst into a spasm of coughing. He swore again and got up and went round the table and banged her on the back.
‘What’s going on?’ Hester placed a hand on her father’s shoulder.
Neither had heard the front door open and Hester come in.
George removed her hand and told her to sit down. ‘Why didn’t you tell me that Jeannie had a part-time Saturday job?’ he asked.
Hester said, ‘Now calm down, Dad. It’s nothing for you to get worked up about. You don’t want to knock her through to next week – which you would have if you’d kept banging her on the back. It’s not like you to be violent. You don’t realize your own strength.’
Jeanette gulped. ‘He hasn’t hurt me,’ she said hoarsely. ‘The cocoa went down the wrong way. I’ll come clean. I went to the Stadium to see the wrestling and this girl attacked me.
I also saw that youth, Billy, who started the fight in the chippy, and I had such a fright. He followed me outside and had a go at me. I thought I was going to die! If it hadn’t been for someone coming along, I think he might have killed me. Instead, I managed to get away and ran for my life.’
For several moments George stood silent and still, and then he reached for a chair and sat down heavily. It was Hester who asked, ‘What’s he doing out of Borstal?’
‘Apparently his father got drunk, fell in a dock and drowned. They let Billy out for the funeral.’
Hester and her father exchanged looks. ‘We’ll have to get someone onto this straightaway, Dad,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘But let’s get this cleared up first.’
‘OK,’ said Hester.
Both looked questioningly at Jeanette. ‘I went with Marty,’ she said.
‘Marty. Who’s Marty?’ demanded George, throwing his arms in the air.
‘Peggy’s brother. He’s OK – and she knows nothing about this. Bernie, the girl who attacked me, is his girlfriend and he was trying to make her jealous by taking me somewhere he knew she would be.’ Jeanette looked at her father hopefully. Surely that explained everything and he would allow her to carry on with her part-time job and go to the dance tomorrow evening.
‘He took you to the Stadium to make her jealous?’ George looked as if he could not credit it. ‘And she attacked you?’
‘She didn’t hurt me. I pulled away and got out of there fast. Up until then Marty was going to see me to the bus stop, but I didn’t wait,’ said Jeanette. ‘I wish I had,’ she added with a shiver.
Hester put an arm around her. ‘I wouldn’t ask any more questions, Dad. I can’t see our Jeanette ever going there again.’
‘It was smelly and really noisy and crowded – and just horrible,’ added Jeanette as an afterthought. ‘Now can I go to bed?’
‘Yes, but you’re not going out over the weekend. You’re staying put and you can scrub the floors for Aunt Ethel,’ said George in a voice that brooked no argument.
‘But . . . but what about my Saturday job?’ cried Jeanette, starting to her feet.
‘I presume they have a telephone? You can give them a ring and tell them you won’t be in,’ he said.
Tears started in Jeanette’s eyes and she shrugged off Hester’s arm and marched out of the kitchen and upstairs. She slammed the bedroom door and then threw herself on the bed and wept.
Downstairs in the kitchen, Hester managed to restrain her father from going upstairs after Jeanette when the bedroom door slammed. ‘Leave her be, Dad. She’s had a terrible fright. You heard what she said – she thought she was going to die. This Billy is the one who used the bicycle chain.’
‘I know that,’ growled George. ‘Now, is one of us going to see to his being brought in?’
She nodded. ‘I’ll make the call.’ As she made for the door, she stopped and turned. ‘Where’s our Sam?’
‘He had to go out again.’
She looked thoughtful but did not say anything and left her father alone. He sank down onto a chair and put his head into his hands, glad that Hester was there and a woman of such good sense.
‘Our Jeanette had a lucky escape,’ said Hester.
It was the following morning and she was at police headquarters talking to Sam. He gazed at her pale face and rubbed his unshaven jaw wearily. ‘Do we tell her about the stabbing or not?’
‘I think we’re going to have to. Her friend Peggy’s brother was at the Stadium and most likely he’ll be aware of what happened,’ she said, slumping in the chair on the other side of his desk.
‘Until the doorman comes around from the anaesthetic, we’ve no proof that it was Billy who did it,’ said Sam.
‘Surely the fact that he didn’t come home last night and is still missing says something,’ said Hester.
Sam nodded, knowing a watch was being kept not only on Billy’s mother’s house, but on that of his former mates. ‘I wish I knew where the hell he was because I feel our Jeanette won’t be safe until he’s found.’
‘He’d be a fool to go after her,’ said Hester.
‘I agree. But he’s already shown that he lacks any self-restraint and common sense.’ Sam leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. ‘Bloody hell, I’m tired.’
‘You need your bed,’ said Hester, getting up. ‘I’m off home. I need some shut-eye myself.’
Sam opened his eyes. ‘Hang on a mo! You never told me how you got on with Cedric on Tuesday.’
‘I finished with him. I told him there was someone else.’
‘I bet that didn’t please him.’
Hester smiled. ‘No, I don’t think it did. Anyway, it’s over.’
‘Good.’
She took a deep breath. ‘I feel so much better. I was thinking of dropping in on Wendy later. I’m off duty until early tomorrow morning. She just might have something to say about Ally.’
Sam grinned. ‘Give her my regards.’
She nodded. ‘D’you want me to tell our Jeanette about the stabbing?’
‘If you would. You’ll do it so much better than me. But I’ll phone through to Dad at the bridewell and let him know.’
‘See you later,’ said Hester.
Sam nodded and reached for the telephone as she left the room.
Jeanette wiped her sweaty forehead with a damp arm, seemingly unaware of the soapy water dripping from the scrubbing brush onto her apron as she looked up at Hester. ‘You don’t think the man is going to die, do you?’ she asked, a tremor in her voice. ‘I’ll feel it’ll be all my fault if he does.’
‘Don’t be daft!’ said Hester, resting her feet on the crossbars under the kitchen table as she returned Jeanette’s regard. ‘The person responsible is the one who stabbed him. Anyway, the man’s still alive.’
‘I hope he stays that way.’ The scrubbing brush slipped from Jeanette’s fingers and dropped into the bucket of water, splashing her front. ‘I wish—’
‘Wishing does no good,’ said Hester briskly. ‘What’s happened has happened and now I’m going out and leaving you to get on with washing this floor.’
Jeanette pulled a face and fished out the scrubbing brush. ‘At least Mrs Cross accepted that I couldn’t go in with an upset stomach.
Can’t be passing on germs to the customers.’
‘Too right you can’t,’ said Hester, getting up and carefully stepping over the wet patches of tiles onto a sheet of newspaper and another until she reached the door. ‘See you later and no skiving off!’ She heard her half-sister sigh as she closed the door and headed off to catch the bus to Charley and Wendy’s flat.
‘I’d been wondering when you’d come,’ said Wendy, grabbing Hester’s sleeve and pulling her inside. ‘How long can you stay?’ She beamed at her friend. ‘Oh, I do miss you and work!’
‘And we miss you,’ said Hester, following her upstairs to the flat over the shop below. ‘I can stay long enough to have a cup of tea and a chat. Is Charley in?’
‘No, he’s gone to watch Liverpool play away,’ replied Wendy. ‘Why, did you want to speak to him as well?’
‘No, I just don’t want to be interrupted,’ said Hester.
‘Is it police business? Because I tell you now he’d go mad if it was and he was here. He said I’ve got to forget all about criminals now I’m married and just concentrate on looking after him. I love the bones of him, but I’m not going to have him telling me what to do when he’s not here.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Hester. ‘Just let me get my coat off.’
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Wendy.
A quarter of an hour later the pair of them were sitting on the sofa in front of the fire with cups of tea and a plate of biscuits to hand.
‘I hear you went to the flicks with Ally,’ said Wendy, smiling.
‘Not from him, surely?’ said Hester, startled.
‘No, from one of Charley’s cousins. Ally’s gone back to Germany. I thought he might have been in touch with you.’
‘Not so far,’ said Hester, ‘although we did talk about meeting up again when he comes home.’ She sighed. ‘I really like him.’
Wendy reached for a biscuit. ‘I’m glad. What about Cedric?’
‘I’ve finished with him. I told him I’d met someone else.’
Wendy smiled. ‘I’m glad. Ally’s a good egg, so Charley says.’
‘Hmmm! But I’m not seeing him at all right now,’ said Hester forlornly. ‘Even when he comes back, I don’t know what will happen between us. He’s considering emigrating but I like my own country. To go so far away from my family would take some doing.’
