After Hours (10 page)

‘You still feeling all right?' Hettie sensed her hesitation at the door.

Annie sniffed. The strong, sharp smell of disinfectant was overwhelming. The soft shoes of the nurses squeaked over the polished tiled floor. ‘Just tell me where he is,' she managed to gasp. ‘There's a good girl.'

‘Third bed on the right.' Hettie pointed. ‘I'll come with you if you like.' She had to overcome her own growing fear to make the offer. This could be a turning point for the whole family. She thought of Duke busy behind the bar.

But Annie patted her elbow. ‘You wait here. Third on the right, you say?' She saw that the man in the bed was awake as she advanced slowly down the aisle towards him.

It was the wreck of a human being; a shrunken, demented old man who writhed to escape from his sheets, who fought the air with his fists and cried out at invisible enemies. He was foul-mouthed and frightening.

Annie took a final step forward. She drew a chair from under the bedside table and sat close to the bed. ‘Willie?' she said quietly.

The man continued to beat the air, sitting upright at the sound of her voice. She saw his face. There was no flesh, just skin and bone. The mouth opened in an awful curse; it was toothless, a gaping, slavering black hole. The skin was covered in sores, the head shaved. The red-rimmed, swollen eyes could scarcely open. He tore at his sheets with twisted hands.

Annie looked at him in terror. ‘Willie?'

The mouth issued another thick, incoherent curse. The face turned again in her direction, but the eyes stared straight through her. It was Wiggin.

She put out a hand to touch the cold claw that tried to beat her off. ‘Willie, it's me, Annie.'

He pulled away. The name seemed to mean something to him at least. ‘Annie! Annie!' he roared, like a man just home from the pub and demanding his supper. ‘I'm back, Annie! Annie! Annie!'

She shuddered. ‘It's me, Willie. I'm here.' She tried to restrain the fighting hands.

More terrible curses, a violent coughing fit, a struggle to be tree. ‘Wiggin, sir! 02753!' He lay back at last and gasped the number, hands held to attention at his sides. His head jerked upwards and back.

‘Willie, it's Annie.' She withdrew her hand, spoke as if to a feverish child.

He stared back without recognition. ‘You ain't Annie!' he accused vehemently. He wrenched his head from the pillow and tried to sit up. ‘I ain't never seen you before! Annie! Annie!' The screams rose in pitch, then his body convulsed and he fell back. A nurse came and put her arm around Annie's shoulder.

Annie looked up broken-hearted as Hettie rushed to help. ‘He don't know me, but it's him all right.'

Annie and Duke decided on a family gathering. Sunday would be a good day to bring over Jess, Maurice and the kids from Ealing. Frances would come along to the Duke with Billy; they would meet up in the afternoon, once everyone had had time to come to terms with the shocking news of Wiggin's reappearance.

On his wife's return from the Mission, Duke had gone straight upstairs to hear the worst. He was prepared for it and took it without flinching. ‘No, don't tell me.' He sat down heavily in the wicker chair. ‘I can see it in your face, Annie. It
is
Wiggin, ain't it?'

Annie sat on the bed, white and drawn, her hat lying across her lap. ‘He's in a bad way, Duke. They reckon he might not pull through.'

‘And if he does,' Duke said slowly, ‘we're in a fix, ain't we?'

‘Two husbands is one too many for me, you mean to say?' Annie looked up, grasping at the shreds of her old fierce and lively self, shaking a fist at fate.

‘For any woman living, I should think. Well, Annie?'

She stood up to embrace him. ‘Two like you, Duke, would do me any day.'

‘Try telling that to the vicar.' Gently Duke let her go. ‘It looks like we ain't married no more, don't it?'

Annie's dark eyes blazed. ‘We're married, Duke. They can say what they like, ain't nothing can alter how I feel about that!'

The last nine years had been the best of her life. Marriage to Duke Parsons had brought double helpings of happiness that she'd never dreamed of before. He was a stubborn, proud, old-fashioned type of husband; breadwinner, decision-maker, grumbler, worrier. A generous-hearted, stalwart friend. It wasn't as if they never had a cross word, and Annie gave as good as she got. But they believed in each other, that was the thing. Neither had had a moment's doubt since they'd reached that altar and promised, ‘For better, for worse.'

‘The law says different,' Duke pointed out. ‘You know how I feel, Annie, and I know what you're going through, believe me. But we got to try and keep a clear head here. For a start, what's going to happen to Wiggin now?'

‘He's staying put. He ain't going nowhere, not for a week or two.'

‘But he can't stay at Ett's Mission for ever.'

‘No. I already thought of that. That side of it ain't so much of a problem. I still got a bit put by from the old market-stall days, and I can dip into that and find a place for the poor old sod to stay. I'll pay his rent for a bit.'

Duke's frown deepened. ‘You're sure you can manage that?'

She nodded. ‘Call it my rainy day money. And if this ain't a rainy day, I don't know what is.'

He saw her mind was made up and began to follow her line of reasoning. ‘It'd be somewhere nice and handy, I take it?'

‘I thought of the tenement down the court. Joe O'Hagan was just saying this new landlord has kicked a lot out for being late with the rent. There's plenty of rooms free. Willie could take one on the ground floor with no steps.'

‘That's the ticket,' Duke agreed, though his heart was sinking. ‘You think he can get by?'

Annie recalled the wrecked piece of humanity she'd just encountered. ‘No, Duke. I'll have to look after him.” She looked him straight in the eye.

He lifted his hand to stroke her hair. ‘I know, Annie,' he said sorrowfully. He cleared his throat, rising to the challenge of her selflessness. ‘I been thinking about it. We gotta do the right thing, and I'm saying to you now, love you like I do, and will do to my dying day, I gotta tell you you're free. You ain't under no obligation to stay on at the Duke, see.'

‘Free?' Annie repeated the word like a death sentence. ‘You ain't sending me on my way, Duke?'

His voice broke down: ‘Never in this world, Annie darling. Only, we gotta do what's right.'

Annie went and clung to him. ‘I'm trying. But this is hard. I'd cut off my right hand for this never to have happened!'

‘But it has.'

They talked long into the night, growing calmer, trying to look ahead into the future. The first thing they wanted to do next morning was to include everyone else in what had taken place. They asked Hettie to break the news to Jess, while Sadie explained to Ernie that Duke and Annie had hit a problem they wanted to share with the family. Everyone was coming to Sunday tea.

Ernie nodded and went and got his best collar from the top drawer. He polished his boots and paid special attention to his teeth and hair. It was Ernie's wide, simple smile that greeted Mo and Grace that afternoon as they leaped upstairs.

‘Now you all know this ain't the sort of Christmas get-together we had in mind,' Duke began. They'd arrived in Sunday best, as smart a bunch as he could wish to greet; the two men in their tight-fitting suits with wide lapels, the girls beautifully kitted out, thanks to Jess and Hettie's skill with the needle. His grandchildren were shiny clean in white collars and socks. ‘No need to say why not, worse luck,' he went on. He looked down at Annie, who sat in her own fireside chair, turning her head this way and that with birdlike precision, her face glad as little Mo scrambled on to her knee.

Duke stood next to her, back to the fire, with the others gathered round, sitting or standing, and Rob leaning against the mantelpiece
in his usual self-assured pose. ‘Annie's asked me to start doing the talking,' he said. ‘She wants you to know she ain't thrilled by Wiggin turning up out of the blue. But he's a sick man, and Annie wants to look after him.'

Frances leaned across and murmured to Billy. Jess warned Maurice to hear Duke out.

‘Now, we all know her too well to try and change her mind. So she's been down the court this morning to have a word with Bertie Hill about renting a room.

‘How sick?' Maurice asked, in spite of his wife's warning. It was where everyone's thoughts were tending.

‘Pretty bad,' Duke confirmed. ‘But if he does pull through, Annie wants to have me room ready and waiting.'

‘Even after what he's done to you?' Again Maurice was the one to give vent to a common feeling. ‘This is the one what left you in the cart, remember? Not so much as a by-your-leave, according to Jess here.' He recalled the details of Annie's story; how Wiggin had taken off during one of his regular trips to sea. He'd told Annie he'd be away for two or three weeks. Weeks turned into months and months into years, and not a penny, not a word did he send. She wore out his old boots, tramping up and down the court, scrimping and saving to get by, building up a life for herself by running her haberdashery stall on Duke Street market. She'd been abandoned, but she refused to let it beat her. Only after years of silent struggle did she give Wiggin up for dead and set her sights on the widowed landlord at the Duke. When Duke had eventually proposed marriage, Annie had her runaway husband officially declared missing at sea, presumed dead; only to having him turn up again now, doing his Ancient Mariner act.

Now Annie felt it was her turn to speak. She touched Duke's hand. ‘It ain't that simple, Maurice. Yes, he left me in the lurch, I don't say he didn't. But it depends how you look at things. According to the law, and Duke and I have talked this one through, Willie and me is still married.'

Sadie looked at Frances in alarm. Rob stood up and moved
restlessly round to the back of the group, out of his father's gaze. The others stared wide-eyed or frowned at their own feet.

‘But according to Ett, he don't even know who you are!' Frances intervened. ‘How can you still consider yourself married to him?'

Annie ploughed on. ‘It's not me. It's the law, Frances. Ask Billy, he'll tell you the same thing as me. Anyhow, I ain't that hard-hearted. I gotta find the poor bloke a roof over his head, whatever he done. You all see that, don't you?' She pleaded for their understanding. ‘Duke seen it straight off!'

Jess came up and took Mo gently from her, stooping to kiss her cheek. ‘Poor Annie,' she said. She carried the boy back to her own chair.

‘Thanks, Jess.' Annie sniffed into her handkerchief. ‘And your pa has told me he won't hold me to vows that ain't legal no more. He says I can go.' Her voice trembled, her hands shook, a solitary figure in her big fireside chair.

‘Not to Wiggin!' Sadie's outrage broke through.

Ernie heard Annie's last words with dawning dread. Slowly the picture of how things might change formed inside his head. He wandered out on to the landing and sat at the head of the stairs, frowning at the wall.

Annie shook her head. ‘No, I ain't never going back with him. There's no law says I have to be his wife again, as far as I know; only the one saying I can't be your pa's no more.'

‘More's the pity.' Frances looked up at Billy. She knew what Annie and Duke must have gone through to reach this decision.

‘Pity is right,' Annie said. ‘Anyhow, the plan is, I'll move my bits and pieces out of here this evening, back down the court to my old house.' She moved swiftly on. ‘I'll need a hand from you, Rob, to carry my trunk in your cab. And I'll need plenty of elbow grease to get the old place shipshape again. Where's Ernie? Grace, sweetheart, you run and find him and ask if he'll sort out the rats in the cellar like he used to.'

Her enforced cheerfulness drove Hettie to tears. She'd prayed all morning in church for this not to happen; Annie having to move
out, down to her dusty, deserted house in the corner of Paradise Court.

‘Don't take on, Ett. Ain't nobody died yet, is there?' Annie couldn't bear it if good, strong Hettie broke down. She spotted Ernie drift back into the room, gazing uncertainly from her to his pa. ‘Listen here, Em!' Annie went and seized him by the hand. ‘I ain't going far. Ask your pa; he says it's for the best. And I can carry on working behind the bar. So cheer up, things ain't as bad as they look!'

She repeated her own advice to herself later that evening when she sat down at her own lonely fireside, amid the smells of carbolic soap and lavender polish, with only the silver-framed portrait photograph of Duke smiling down at her from the mantelpiece.

The women of Paradise Court approached the Christmas of 1923 with a mixture of dread and determination. This was the time when finding presents for the children and a bit of extra meat for the table became a pressing burden to people already working through the night to exist, taking in washing or going out to clean in hotels and restaurants. Those who could bring home leftover bread and a knuckle of boiled bacon considered themselves lucky. The others took in still more outwork. Katie O'Hagan, for instance, sat the little ones around the kitchen table with cardboard and paste, where she supervised the making of matchboxes. She was set on buying their mother, Mary, something special for Christmas out of the one penny per hour which made up each child's average earnings.

Some of the men tried hard too to make this a time of seasonable enjoyment. But many were demoralized by chronic unemployment in the docks, and they took refuge in the pubs, often staying till well after midnight. Joe O'Hagan, his health failing, struggled to keep on his porter's job at Jack Cooper's drapery store, but nevertheless was one of the Duke's regulars, along with the unemployed Arthur Ogden. On the Monday of Christmas week, he came in with twelve shillings worth of hard-earned tips, laid it on the counter and demanded a supply of drink to keep him going through the festive season.