‘I don’t want to ’ear any talk about us passin’ dud notes over a counter,’ said Ma. ‘Mind, I won’t say they couldn’t be useful if we ever got poverty-stricken.’
‘Yes, if me and Amy and Alice ’ad to go about all ragged,’ said Fanny.
‘I was thinkin’, Ma,’ said Alice, ‘if Pa had told the police where the jewels were, he might not have got hard labour, nor as much as five years.’
‘Alice, not in front of the children, if you don’t mind,’ said Ma.
‘Ma, you don’t have any children,’ said Alice, ‘you’ve got three growin’ daughters and a grown-up son.’
‘Never mind that,’ said Ma, ‘just be careful what you say.’
‘Ma, none of us would ever say what we shouldn’t,’ said Amy.
‘Not about Pa we wouldn’t,’ said Fanny. She and Amy were as solid as the Rock of Gibraltar in their reliability.
‘The point is,’ said Nick, ‘if Pa had told the police where the jewels were, that would have landed his accomplices deep in the murky soup.’
‘What’s murky soup?’ asked Fanny.
‘It’s one you make with thick turnips,’ said Amy.
‘Crikey, I didn’t know that,’ said Fanny. ‘Here, did Nick say accomplices?’
‘Frankie says our brother gets them kind of words from ’is insurance company,’ said Amy.
‘It’s funny Frankie can say anything at all with that gobstopper stuck in his neck,’ said Fanny.
‘I don’t like anyone talkin’ about accomplices,’ said Ma, ‘it’s a word that don’t sound honest.’
‘But if Pa had spilled the beans,’ said Nick, ‘his life wouldn’t have been worth living.’
‘Old Horsy would’ve got him,’ said Alice.
‘We won’t ’ave any more of this kind of talk,’ said Ma, ‘or ’ave you got something to say, Amy?’
‘Yes, Ma,’ said Amy, ‘how’s yer canary?’
Christmas Day arrived. The kitchen, the parlour and the passage were all decorated with colourful paper chains made by Amy and Fanny. A homemade Chinese lantern hung from the centre of the kitchen ceiling, and the range fire burned and glowed, warding off the chill that was hanging about in the backyard. The coal bunker was well-stocked, Nick having paid for a delivery of three hundredweight. Christmas was a time when the kitchen and parlour fires were generously refuelled, and the kids of hard-up families sneaked about beforehand nicking any kind of fuel for the occasion. A housewife might say to her old man, ‘’Ere, where’s that broken chair gone that you was goin’ to mend?’ ‘Search me, me old Dutch, it was out on the doorstep five minutes ago, where I was goin’ to do the mendin’.’
For dinner, Ma did roast beef with Yorkshire pudding and veg, followed by Christmas pudding and hot custard. Mr Lukavitch accepted an invitation to sit down with the family, and by the time the meal had come to an end, his slightly hollow chest seemed to have filled out, and his eyes seemed to reflect the moist brightness of the hot custard.
‘Strike a light,’ he said, ‘never have I known such a bleedin’ lovely Christmas dinner, ain’t I? Don’t you think? Yes, I do think. What a fine bloke I am to be among you. Bloody good, eh?’
‘Now now, Mr Loovakish,’ said Ma, ‘it’s Christmas Day, remember.’
‘Yes, we’re all corblimey tophole cockneys,’ said Mr Lukavitch.
‘No, you’re Polish,’ said young Fanny.
‘Polish cockney, you bet,’ beamed Mr Lukavitch. He spent the rest of the day with the family, and in the evening they introduced him to Christmas card games played for matchsticks, and to chestnuts roasted on the fire. In return, he produced a large box of chocolates for the whole family. Ma said he shouldn’t have done it, not when he wasn’t making a rich living. Mr Lukavitch said it was a ruddy pleasure and that receiving kindness was worth a lot more than being rich.
Annabelle had a lovely Christmas with her family and with the Adams families, everyone meeting up on Christmas evening at the house in which Annabelle’s maternal grandmother known as Chinese Lady lived with her husband, and with Boots, Emily, Rosie and Tim.
For her part, Chinese Lady would not have considered Christmas properly ordered if any of the individual families had not been present. Everyone knew that, of course, and so everyone attended. So did Vi’s parents, Aunt Victoria and Uncle Tom. It gave Chinese Lady pleasure to note how her family had multiplied. There were Lizzy and Ned’s four children, Annabelle, Bobby, Emma and Edward, and there were Rosie and Tim, belonging to Boots and Emily. Tommy and Vi had produced Alice, David and Paul, while Sammy and Susie were the parents of Daniel, Bess and Jimmy. Of all her granddaughters, Chinese Lady thought Annabelle at seventeen quite lovely, and Rosie at eighteen such a striking young lady. Rosie was not an Adams by birth, only by adoption, yet of all the younger generations, Rosie was the one who was dearest to Chinese Lady, although she would never have said so.
The young people made themselves heard above the adults, although it couldn’t be said that any of the adults had become quiet and retiring. Everyone contributed something to the revelry, and Boots, as usual, put himself in charge of most of the party games, which made Chinese Lady say, as usual, that he had a disreputable habit of turning every game into one for hooligans. And Rosie, as she always did, said a little hooliganism at Christmas parties was very allowable.
That didn’t apply so much to Postman’s Knock, always a must. During the course of this, Annabelle received a lovely smacker from Sammy who, in turn, received one from his wife Susie who, in her turn, received one from Boots. Rosie, called out next, regarded her dad critically.
‘She’s left lipstick.’
‘Your Aunt Susie has? Well, it’s a nice flavour,’ said Boots, and wiped it off.
‘You shouldn’t kiss her on the mouth,’ said Rosie.
‘All in the rules, Rosie.’
‘Never mind that, don’t do it again, she’s your sister-in-law,’ said Rosie.
‘It’s Christmas,’ said Boots.
‘No excuses,’ said Rosie, teasing him.
‘Postman’s Knock isn’t an excuse, it’s an opportunity,’ smiled Boots.
‘So’s Christmas,’ said Rosie.
‘Bless you, my child,’ said Boots, and Rosie laughed and gave him a Postman’s Knock kiss on his cheek.
* * *
Miss Polly Simms, the long-standing friend of the Adams family, was one of several guests at a country house in Sussex. She would have preferred to be with the Adams families, who enjoyed Christmas in uninhibited Dickensian fashion. She had enjoyed it with them on two occasions, but no invitation had arrived this year. Polly suspected Emily had put her foot down. Well, Emily had a case for doing just that, as Polly frankly admitted to herself. So she accepted an invitation from the Mannering family in Sussex. The Mannerings owned a brood of sons, daughters, nieces and nephews who had been among the Bright Young Things of the Twenties, as Polly had herself. Alas, while Polly had eventually found more useful things to do, the Mannerings’ brood hadn’t. The women had remained flappers, and the men still thought they weren’t living unless they charged around the countryside in noisy sports cars at midnight. By the time she retired to bed at two in the morning, Polly had had more than enough of what she considered their boring inanities. As far as interesting people were concerned, the men and women of Chinese Lady’s extensive family were high on her list, Boots in particular, of course. She always felt Emily failed to appreciate what an exceptional man her husband was. The idiocies of the human race irritated and even enraged many people. They only amused Boots. Polly asked him once why idiot politicians didn’t make him swear. I’m an idiot myself, he said. Join the club, said Polly, so am I.
In some extraordinary way, Polly, born of the upper classes, identified completely with the Adams’ and all that their cockney antecedents had given them, a great love of life and a great capacity to enjoy it.
Slipping into bed in a guest room, she lay thinking about Boots and why Emily was his wife a
nd not herself. That was always a bitter thing in her mind.
The door opened, and with her bedside light still on, she saw Gregory Mannering, the divorced son of her hosts. He had a smile on his face, and a bottle and two glasses in his hands. A dressing-gown covered him. Quietly, he closed the door, using his slippered foot.
‘Don’t mind, do you, Polly? Thought we could share a nightcap.’
He’d been at the vintage port most of the evening, and was about the only person present whom Polly hadn’t found tedious. Forty years old, he was a chunky, amiable man with a fine war record, having served with the British forces in Mesopotamia and Salonika. He’d collected a scar on his forehead. It didn’t mar his looks as far as Polly was concerned. She was war-hardened, and battle scars on men did not upset her in the least.
Gregory Mannering advanced to the bed and sat down on the edge of it. Polly eyed him without offence, her attractively piquant looks making her look much younger than her thirty-seven years. She knew, of course, that he was here in the hope of being invited into her bed.
‘Is that more port, old bean?’ she asked.
‘Only the best, old girl.’
‘And then what?’
‘Up to you, old darling.’ Gregory poured a measure of port into each glass and offered her one. Polly sat up and took it. Her breasts, much to be admired for their still pouting firmness, glimmered behind the semi-transparent silk of her black nightie. ‘I hear you’re considered the only virgin in London these days, Polly.’
Polly, sipping port, said, ‘And what else do you hear?’
‘Well, dear old chum, I hear on quite good authority that you’re carrying a torch.’
‘I’m always fascinated by good authority,’ said Polly, her brittle smile showing. ‘It has the astonishing ability to listen at a thousand keyholes at one and the same time. I’m sometimes sensitive about whether or not it can also look through bathroom windows without ever falling off the ladder. Oh, well, if it can I must learn to live with it. Thanks for the nightcap, Greg old cheese, sorry you can’t stay.’
‘Fond of you, Polly, damned if I’m not, but up to you.’
Polly knew what would happen. Once he was in bed with her, she’d close her eyes and make every attempt to imagine he was someone else. Boots. It was bound to be traumatic, imaginatively striving to turn him into the one man she had ever genuinely wanted for her very own. On the other hand, Gregory belonged to that never-to-be-forgotten breed of men who had known the great sound of the guns, and was her body so inviolate that she could not give it except to Boots?
‘Well, don’t just sit there, old sport, come and join me,’ she said.
Horrors, once he was about to slip in with her she changed her mind, which was damned hard luck on Greg, who was naturally as keen as mustard.
‘Come on, play fair, old girl,’ he said.
‘Can’t,’ said Polly, ‘I don’t go in for that kind of cricket. Sorry, old sport.’
‘That’s it, knock my wicket down,’ said Greg, but he took her refusal like a game old soldier and a gent. One didn’t force a woman like Polly Simms, decorated for her outstanding record as a wartime ambulance driver. He left her bed and her room, taking his port with him, giving her a fond good night.
Polly thought why the hell do I let that frustrating swine Boots spoil me for all other men? God, love is the very devil.
The Rovers always played a special Christmas match on Boxing Days against their deadliest rivals, Manor Place Rangers. It counted as a lighthearted fixture, with no honour at stake, and both teams usually fielded scratch sides because of absentees spending Christmas with relatives. The Rovers had to bring in Dumpling, her willing dad, and young Fanny. Dumpling was overjoyed, Fanny keen as mustard, brushing aside Ma’s feelings of horror and Nick’s warning that she might get trodden on. He found shorts, shirt and socks for her, and Starving Crow lent her his young brother’s football boots.
Good old Bonzo Willis, the Rangers’ beefy captain and centre half, decided he needed to have a word with Nick before the kick-off.
‘Oi, Nick, come ’ere,’ he called.
‘What’s up?’ asked Nick, arriving for the confrontation.
‘What’s up, what’s up? You mean what’s that, don’t yer?’ said Bonzo, pointing to Dumpling. Dumpling was taking part in the kickabout around the Rovers’ goal area. ‘What is it, might I ask?’
‘That’s Evans, our scratch inside right for today,’ said Nick.
‘Don’t gimme that,’ said Bonzo, ‘she’s a ruddy female. Get ’er orf. She ain’t natural.’ That was a bit unfair. Dumpling was perfectly natural. All she had was her own, and she’d fitted it tidily inside her shorts and jersey. Certainly, she looked a dumpling, but no-one could have justifiably called her not natural. ‘Get ’er orf, Nick, and we’ll lend yer one of our supporters, seein’ it’s a friendly.’
‘Sorry, Bonzo, can’t be done,’ said Nick.
‘Now listen, mate, we ’ad to play against a fat goalie when we last met yer, and it upset us. We ain’t playin’ against no fat female. ’Ere, and ’oo’s that titch?’ He’d spotted Fanny darting about.
‘That’s my youngest sister,’ said Nick, ‘we’re very scratch today, but as it’s Christmas, does anyone mind? We don’t.’
‘Listen, yer cockeyed lemon,’ said Bonzo, ‘I don’t care if it’s Christmas, Easter or bleedin’ pancake time, you expectin’ us to play against a fat female and yer titch of a sister?’
‘Well, if you don’t, we’ll claim the match, then, as a walkover,’ said Nick. ‘Pity, really, when it’s the festive Boxing Day friendly. I’ll tell my team you’re packing up and going home to your mums.’
‘Nick, I ain’t got nothing against you personal,’ said Bonzo, ‘but can’t yer stop talkin’ like a bleedin’ sugar plum fairy? All right, we’ll play the match, but tell Fatty and Titch it ain’t goin’ to be as friendly as all that.’
‘Right, got you, Bonzo.’
So the game began, the Rangers cackling a bit at the sight of Dumpling as inside right, and young Fanny out on the right wing, where Nick thought the enemy could do her the least harm. The first thing that happened was when Dumpling was given the ball by Ronnie Smith as he kicked off. She dribbled round formidable Bonzo and left him so much off balance that he fell over like a drunken elephant. Supporters Alice, Cassie, Julie and Meg nearly died laughing.
Dumpling enjoyed herself from then on. No-one, not even her loving dad, who was at left back in place of Frankie, could have said she was the brains of the forward line. But she was certainly the engine. She’d said she’d feed Starving Crow on the left wing, he being a headache to any opposition, but she didn’t seem to know where he was most of the time. Fanny received the ball more often than she was supposed to, and on each occasion she seemed to disappear inside the opposition. She made up for that by kicking every enemy ankle within reach of her right boot.
It hardly mattered that Dumpling was more of an engine than a skilled tactician. She was such a bother to the Rangers that Bonzo copped her once with a shoulder charge that bundled her off her feet and sent her rolling. Dumpling, never one to be discouraged, had her own back a few minutes later by tripping him up and treading on him. Bonzo, the marks of her studs on the seat of his shorts, bawled for her to be sent off.
The ref, having blown for a foul, admonished Dumpling.
‘Me, what’ve I done?’ she said. ‘And what’s ’e cryin’ about, ain’t he ’ad ’is Christmas puddin’?’
All the same, it was still a lighthearted game, with plenty of goals. Fanny, shutting her eyes and giving a squeal as she kicked the ball in a goalmouth scramble, found she’d scored. Bonzo grinned.
‘Well done, Titch,’ he said.
‘Crikey, was that me?’ gasped Fanny in delight.
At half-time the score was three each. Nick took his team off, patting the backs of Fanny and Dumpling.
‘Ain’t we ’eroic, me and Fanny?’ beamed Dumpling.
�
�Well, you’re both still alive,’ said Nick, and noticed then that four girl supporters had become five. A strawberry-red coat caught his eye, the wearer chatting animatedly to Freddy and Cassie. Alice put herself beside Nick and whispered to him.
‘Freddy’s brunette cousin’s just turned up again,’ she said. ‘Who’s she after? It had better not be you.’
‘Would a gorgeous girl like that be after me, a pipsqueak clerk?’
‘What d’you mean, a pipsqueak clerk? Where’d you get that from, you dope?’
‘Fair question, Alice me girl. Just a thought.’
‘Some thought, I don’t think,’ said Alice. ‘Anyway, how would she know if you were a pipsqueak clerk or not?’
‘Who’s she?’
‘Her.’
‘Freddy’s ravishing cousin?’
‘Don’t come it,’ said Alice. ‘But oh, ’elp, wouldn’t you just like to be able to try your luck with her? She really is luvverly.’
Dumpling ballooned in.
‘Crikey, Alice, ain’t it an excitin’ match? Fancy Fanny scorin’ a goal. I’m ’oping to knock in one or two meself in the second ’alf. Mind, I dunno ’ow Nick come to let the Rangers score three. I know it’s only a friendly, but I don’t like to see ’im gettin’ careless. I got a special place for Nick in me album of football memories, yer know. ’Ere, Freddy’s cousin Annabelle ’as joined us again. Ain’t that compliment’ry? Of course, I told ’er last time that our team’s the best in Walworth.’
Nick glanced. Annabelle was taking absolutely no notice of him, she was immersed in her dialogue with Freddy and Cassie. Freddy was wearing a good-looking grin. Nick helped himself to a slice of lemon, moving away from Alice and Dumpling. Danny joined him.
‘What d’yer think of Dumpling’s performance, eh, Nick? Gettin’ to be a reg’lar in the side, ain’t she?’
‘It looks that way, Danny.’
‘Of course, I ain’t too sure girls ought to play a lot of football.’
‘I’m sure myself that they shouldn’t,’ said Nick. ‘Can’t you marry Dumpling and make her bake cakes and cook the Sunday dinner?’
Pride of Walworth Page 22
