A Step Too Far (5 page)

     ‘It was a shame what happened to Freda.’ Katrin’s reply broke the short silence Becky’s words had induced.

     ‘It’s a shame all right,’ Alice said, vehemence emphasising every syllable, ‘a shame the real culprit weren’t sent down.’

     ‘Real culprit?’ Katrin looked perplexed.

     ‘Ar, real culprit. But that one got away with it, he kept quiet letting Freda carry the can for what was his doin’.’

     ‘I don’t understand. Are you saying someone other than Freda should have answered to the charge of black marketeering?’

     ‘That be exactly what I’m saying.’

     ‘Careful Alice!’ Becky cautioned. ‘You know what the posters say, “Walls Have Ears”. You never can tell who might be listening.’

     ‘Let ’em listen.’ Alice’s head lifted defiantly. ‘I’m only saying what is true, that idle fossack Jim Slater was behind it all and it were him said nothing while Freda went to gaol; what a boyfriend for any wench! I’d rather be courting a snake!’

     ‘Jim Slater was dealing on the black market?’

     ‘Was?’ Alice ignored Becky’s ‘Shhh.’ ‘He still is, the sticky fingered swine. God only knows how he gets what he gets, same as only God knows the reason he don’t get caught. I tell you, Kate, be wary of that one, keep clear of him if you want to stay this side of a prison wall.’

     ‘But Freda must have known what she was doing, she must have realised . . . I mean when things are not to be had in the shops  . . .’

     ‘Of course her realised them stockings had been pinched, what her didn’t reckon to was what Slater had slipped inside the packet sent along for Maudie Hopkins. Had it been only stockings the cops caught Freda with, then she wouldn’t have been no more than fined, but Maudie was after buyin’ ration books as well, and being in possession of them was what got Freda five years.’

     ‘Ration books?’ Katrin’s glance swung quickly to the girl keeping step beside her. ‘But how . . . where  . . . ?’

     ‘Where be easy.’ Alice broke off as the three of them negotiated several lorries flanked by the ever present flurry of bicycles, continuing only when they reached the other side of the busy road. ‘You must have read the newspaper of that break-in along of the Town Hall some months back, it reported several dozen food ration books and a number of clothing and petrol coupons had been stolen. I reckon Jim Slater were a party to that; as for how, even as a kid he could break in where castor oil couldn’t get and I don’t see him being any the less able now.’

     ‘But how can you be so sure it was Jim Slater put a ration book in with the stockings?’ Katrin queried. ‘It could have been there when he bought them.’

     Alice sniffed derogatively. ‘Pigs will fly before Slater
buys
anything he can get by swiping it from the back of a lorry, and it were not one ration book but two Freda were caught with. And I know it was him pinched them cos he offered a couple to my mother.’

     ‘Eeh Alice, he never did!’

     ‘Cross me heart and hope to die. Mother might have took ’em except her didn’t have the five quid asking price.’

     ‘I never had a deal of liking for Jim Slater and now I dislike him even more.’

     ‘You and me both Kate.’ Alice’s tone was scathing. ‘But one I detest even more than him is the one who tipped off the coppers about Freda.’

     They had reached the junction of Holyhead Road and Dudley Street, the point where Katrin must go her own way to Hollies Drive while the other two continued on, Becky to Queen Street and Alice to Cross Street. Who was it Alice referred to? Who had informed the police of Freda Evans’ black market dealings? The urge to have these questions answered had Katrin ask, ‘Do you know who that man is?’

     Alice Butler turned to look at the young woman and a trace of envy pricked warm in her throat. Kate Hawley could not be called a beauty, certainly she was not as pretty as Becky, but there was something about her that caught the eye. Not the hair, though that was thick and shone like polished copper. The figure then? No. She was no more shapely than Becky or Alice herself yet . . . the eyes. Alice halted in mid thought, it was Kate Hawley’s eyes. Looking into them now she saw something deep and almost hidden. Yet not quite: a hint of it showed low in those green depths, gleaming like a candle flame amid darkness. Uncertain as to what her brain was telling her Alice was silent, only Kate Hawley’s repeat of her question breaking what felt like a trance.

     ‘No.’ She blinked, clearing her mind of what she could not fathom. ‘No, I don’t know who that swine is or where he might be found but this I swear. So sure I do find out, so sure I hear a whisper of him, then he and Jim Slater will go down, but not before our Rob and a few of his mates have finished with him, he won’t go shoppin’ nobody else not for a long time!’

‘
No, I don’t know who that swine is . . . so sure I hear  . . .
’

     Claiming tiredness she did not feel had provided a plausible excuse for Katrin to retire early. Now in the privacy of her bedroom, she laughed softly at the words in her mind.

     ‘
. . . He won’t go shoppin’ nobody else  . . .
’

     Alice Butler had vowed vengeance on the one who had informed against Freda, had as good as said her brother would give the man a beating should it ever be discovered who was the person responsible.

     ‘Don’t forget to put your gas mask handy, and lay your dressing gown across the foot of the bed.’

     A breath of irritation filling her lungs, Katrin frowned resentment at the call that came from the top of the stairs. Her mother had called that same thing every night since the war had begun, had repeated those words so often it seemed they emanated from the very walls of the house; Lord, was she still a child who needed constant reminding of every least thing? ‘
Don’t come home by yourself . . . if there is a raid while you are at work don’t go sitting next to those girls from the factory workshop . . . if you are caught in a raid while on the way home then for heaven’s sake choose a respectable looking house to ask shelter of . . .
’ the list went on and on.

     Forcing down the surge of annoyance and adopting a mumbling half-asleep tone designed to persuade her mother not to enter the room, Katrin replied that all was as instructed then clamped her teeth hard on the tut of exasperation as the nightly practice continued. ‘I’ve made each of us a sandwich and the flask is ready for filling, it is all on the tray in the kitchen; them there German bombers don’t leave time for doing much once they be here so it’s best to be ready to run. And, Katrin, remember; shoes for the air raid shelter not bedroom slippers.’

     ‘Yes mother . . . shoes.’ Letting it drift dreamily Katrin listened with bated breath. Her mother might yet come in, to ensure all of her instructions had been carried out; more than that, seeing her daughter still awake would evoke more enquiry as to her day at the office. Every question was aimed at learning one thing, had her daughter perhaps caught the attention of senior management, senior meaning Arthur Whitman, the owner of Whitman Engineering? But what could catching the attention of the boss achieve? Promotion . . . senior position in the typing pool? No, that was not what Violet Hawley was angling for, she was fishing for the main catch and the fish she hoped to land was Arthur Whitman.

     Beyond the closed door a slight clink released the tension holding Katrin’s mouth. That was the torch her mother placed each night on the small table on the landing, ready to light their way to the air raid shelter – her final act before going to bed. Assured at last she would not be disturbed Katrin slipped from the bed and listened several moments.

     There was no sound from the landing. Releasing a breath she had not been conscious of holding, Katrin eased back the dark cloth with which each window of the house was covered in order to comply with blackout regulations. War! Touching a finger to the pretty flowered curtain the drab material had hidden, she stared into the moonlit softness. War was cruel, it scarred so many lives, yet war could not be blamed for the scar on Katrin Hawley’s life. That blow had been struck years ago, hurled at her by angry children in a school playground. It was a scar only revenge could remove and Katrin Hawley would have that revenge.

4

‘
You tricked Jacob Hawley  . . .
’

     ‘
. . . others might not fool so easy  . . .
’

     ‘
. . . the loss of a husband  . . .
’

     Like insistent bluebottles of thought, her sister’s words buzzed in Violet Hawley’s brain, words which had plagued like a thorn in her flesh since her return to Hollies Drive, words which even now, sitting in her gleaming sitting room, refused to be silenced.

     ‘
Jacob knew of your lying with a man who refused to wed you, knew your backstreet abortion had deprived him of a family.
’

     Staring at patterns of sunlight trickling through windows criss-crossed with brown sticky tape, a precautionary measure against glass shattered by bomb blast, Violet heard other words, words spoken some twenty-one years before.

     ‘. . .
He told me of the child you carried, the child he were father of
.’

     Jacob had stared at his pain.

     ‘
. . . he laughed on saying I’d been hooked like a fish, taken in by a wench no better than her should be
.’

     ‘. . .
Jacob that is a horrible lie. . . !
’

     In the space of a moment the look of pain so vivid in his eyes had become cold anger then disgust.

     ‘
No Violet, the lie is the one we have lived this twelve month, the lie of believing we can have a life together, now that lie is ended, tomorrow  . . .
’

     Violet’s eyes followed the dancing gold of afternoon sunlight. What might Jacob have gone on to say of that tomorrow? What was his intention?

     He had not said, not that night nor at any time since; but instinct told then what passing years had confirmed, whatever love Jacob Hawley may once have held for her was dead.

     Caught in the web of memory, Violet saw again a young fair-haired man, grey eyes regarding her across a dimly lit room. They held no trace of righteous anger, no look of disgust nor the dullness of pain, the eyes that looked at her were devoid of emotion: empty, soulless, robbed of life.

     ‘
Tomorrow  . . .
’

     He had begun to speak again. To say what she had kept hidden in her own heart these twenty-one years? To tell her their marriage was ended? That the next day would see him gone from the tiny terraced house? It had not been said yet nor had it been foregone or renounced. Ella had been right. Jacob was biding his time, simply waiting to see his daughter wed and then he would leave, turn his back on a life he had no pleasure in, on the wife he held no love for. And Katrin? Violet drew a long breath. Surely the child she had taken and reared as her own would not leave, she would not turn her back on the mother who had given her everything. Katrin had not been born of her body, but that would prove of no consequence! Violet shrugged away the sudden coldness touching her insides. Katrin loved her, that was evident in every aspect of the girl’s behaviour and marriage would not alter that.

     So what if Jacob left her?. . . Life would not be so very changed. From the day he found out about that pregnancy, discovering she had married him not for love but for security of name, they had not lived as man and wife. They shared a room but not a bed, he had provided food and home  . . .

     Jacob had provided a home! He had taken her from the smoke-blackened two up two down, tiny back to back in Cross Street, one of a long line of terraced houses each sharing a garden privy with four other families. Jacob had taken her from that drab dark house and brought her here to Hollies Drive, to Elm House, a tall detached villa with its own garden, a private toilet and running water piped directly into the house.

     Hollies Drive! A flush of pride warmed away the last lingering vestige of cold in her stomach. A house here was a status symbol in the town, it carried the mark of a man’s success, it commanded respect of the kind due Jacob Hawley as manager of Prothero Steel and Tube manufacturers. And it commanded the respect due his wife. Yes, she was respected by the shopkeepers of Wednesbury, she was held in esteem.

     Elm House was her pride and joy, no other member of her family could claim such. That was the true reason for the snide remarks thrown at her by Ella; her sister was jealous of what Violet had, of Jacob’s rise in the world; they were all of them filled with envy. They had expected her to remain as they still were, living in those tiny grime-covered terraces, but they had all been proved wrong. Violet’s lips spread in a satisfied smile. They had thought Jacob would leave her when he found out about her past; they had not expected him to keep up the pretence of all being normal between them and certainly not to provide her with a home in so prestigious an area as Hollies Drive; Jacob had provided.

     Until now! How much longer would that provision continue? He had stayed on for Katrin’s sake, but now Katrin was capable of taking care of herself; there was no longer anything to hold Jacob here.