After Hours (15 page)

‘I know you ain't. The problem is, he seen us!' Time was running out. Any moment, either Rob or Richie would be coming into work. ‘And now he says he'll show Richie the door, but it ain't his fault, and we ain't even doing nothing wrong. I came clean with you, Walter. You gotta tell Rob that.'

Walter sighed. ‘It won't make no difference.' He'd spotted Richie sloping in across the yard. Rob himself wouldn't be far behind. ‘You know Rob.'

Sadie choked and slumped down at the desk. ‘It ain't fair,' she sobbed, head in hands.

‘Listen, the best thing is for me to break it to Richie and give him his wages before Rob gets here,' Walter decided. ‘Then it's up to him if he wants to have it out with Rob. If he's got any sense, though, he'll take the money and hop it.'

Sadie knew he wouldn't. She couldn't imagine Richie running away from a fight.

Richie had come into work as usual, collar up, shoulders hunched down Meredith Court. But when he spotted Sadie in the office talking to Walter, looking upset, it only took him a second to work things out. He stared warily at them both, then glanced over his shoulder to see if Rob was following him in.

The moment Sadie looked up and saw him, she reached a further level of panic. Common sense fled as she dashed out to meet him, desperate to warn him so he would be ready to face Rob. Rob mustn't get it all his own way.

But there was no time to explain. Rob's uneven footsteps crunched across the cinder track, he turned the corner into the yard. Richie pushed Sadie to one side, telling Walter to take care of her. He stood, feet wide apart, facing Rob.

‘Right, Palmer, you know what this is about! Take your nasty face out of here, and don't never show it no more!' Rob was fired up by the scene that confronted him, Sadie crying, begging Walter, of all people for help. He acted without hesitation, his dark eyes narrowed in an angry frown.

Richie gestured again to Sadie to stay out of it as she tried to break free of Walter. He faced Rob with a cool stare. ‘Don't worry, I'm on my way,' he drawled. ‘You can stick your job, Parsons. I'm sick of it anyhow.'

Rob, who had been building up for a straight fight, was caught off guard. ‘Go on, get out!' He punched out the words, still expecting resistance from Richie, who, after all, was big and strong enough to give him trouble.

The mechanic turned down the corners of his mouth, shot Rob a pitying look from head to crippled toe, and turned his back. Rob
lunged clumsily. Sadie wrenched free of Walter and caught hold of her brother, pulling him back by the sleeve. She saw Richie hesitate as Rob swung round to push her off, but he walked on, head high, away from the depot.

‘Right, Rob Parsons, that's it!' Sadie was screaming at the top of her voice. ‘You just wait!' Her helpless threats echoed under the dark roof arch. ‘You just wait and see!' She ran out across the yard, up Meredith Court, top late to spot where Richie had headed off to. Weeping tears of angry frustration, she made her way home.

‘What are you up to at this time, girl?' Duke came along the corridor to investigate the noises in Sadie's room. It was still early, not half past seven. He was only just up and dressed.

‘I'm packing my bag, Pa, what's it look like?' Sadie could hardly see through her tears. She flung underthings from a drawer into a canvas bag, hands shaking, her stomach in knots.

‘It's Rob, ain't it?' Duke knew there'd been a row the night before. Annie said so, and warned him it looked serious. Rob and Sadie were at each other's throats again, she said, and with their tempers, things could turn nasty. So Duke was expecting more trouble.

Now Sadie blurted out Rob's crime of sacking Richie. She was still beside herself, crying and trembling.

‘And what's it to you?' Duke asked slowly. These days Sadie never confided in him. He prepared for a shock.

‘Richie and me's walking out, Pa! That's why Rob done it.'

‘Because of Walter?' It began to make sense. Rob's loyalty to his friend would override everything else.

‘But Walter knew,' she insisted. ‘I ain't done nothing behind his back, not since the first time.'

He looked at her shaking and crying. She was a slender, pale, dark-haired young woman, still a girl to him. Hettie wouldn't go and make a fuss like this, he thought; nor Jess, nor Frances, not over a lover's tiff. ‘Pull yourself together, girl,' he said sternly. ‘No need to go on.'

But she turned on him. ‘Go on, Pa, take his side! You and Rob
won't never understand.' She flung more clothes into the bag, tears dripping off the end of her nose. ‘Ain't no use talking to you!'

‘I never said I was on Rob's side.'

‘You don't have to say it. Well, you won't have to watch me “going on” no more, as you call it, 'cos I'm leaving! And good riddance, says you!'

‘I never said that neither.' Duke tried to steady his voice. It looked like Sadie was serious. ‘Just hold on, Sadie. Where you off to, for God's sake?'

Her eyes flashed as she weighed the impact of her reply. ‘To Richie's!' she said, swinging the bag off the bed, reaching for her coat and hat.

‘Never.' Duke sat down heavily on the edge of the bed. He blew out through his cheeks.

But Sadie swept on down the stairs. Hettie came out of her room, still in her night things, just in time to catch a glimpse of the bag Sadie carried, before the door slammed in the hallway below. ‘Pa?' Hettie peered into her sister's room, saw Duke sitting bewildered.

‘Sadie's gone,' he reported.

‘Where to?' Hettie came and put an arm around him.

‘To Richie Palmer, she says.' He shook his head. ‘Now why, Ett? Why would she do that?'

Hettie scrambled the facts together;
this
was the secret Sadie had been keeping to herself all through the spring!

‘Why's she leaving us for Richie Palmer?' Duke repeated.

Hettie comforted him. ‘I expect she loves him,' she murmured. ‘That must be it, mustn't it?'

Sadie's morning was spent tramping the streets of Mile End looking for Richie's lodging-house. She had only a rough idea of where he lived, and had to stop to ask many times. At last, just before midday, she arrived at an old tenement block in Hope Street. This was it. She went in under the arched brick entrance and up some dirty stone stairs until she came to number twenty-five, knocked on the door and waited amid sounds of children name-calling down in
the alley, heavy drays carting sacks of flour to the biscuit factory down the street, and the smells of stale cooking and fumes from cars below. When she realized she would get no reply, she sat down heavily on her canvas bag to wait.

A woman passing by on the balcony stopped to peer in at her. ‘Have you tried his work?' she asked, not unfriendly. ‘You'll find him down Southwark way, I think.'

Wearily Sadie nodded. ‘I know where he works, thanks. He ain't there, though.'

The woman, who wore a square of coarse brown cloth tied around her head and a shapeless dress, whose muddy – coloured skirt had come apart from the bodice in places, stood and summed up Sadie's plight. ‘You his girl?' She seemed taken aback by the younger woman's smart cream outfit and stylish appearance.

Again Sadie nodded. ‘You ain't seen him this morning, then?'

‘I ain't seen him all week,' the woman replied. ‘You never know with him. I sometimes think what's the use of having him as a neighbour, as a matter of fact. I never hardly see him.'

The words sank heavily on to Sadie's shoulders as the woman went on her way. She'd never asked Richie about his life in the tenement, and he'd never volunteered any information. According to the woman, it seemed a rootless, detached sort of life. With time to kill, exhausted after the morning's crisis, Sadie sat wondering what she'd let herself in for. After all, she'd left home and landed on Richie's doorstep without even letting him know. At last, round about four in the afternoon, she heard footsteps come up the stairs.

Richie turned on to the landing and saw Sadie waiting there. He held his key in one hand, stone-cold sober despite a day-long binge at the pub to help him block out the morning's events. He stared at the bag lying at her feet, then without saying a word he unlocked the door to his rooms and stepped inside.

Sadie lingered on the doorstep. Should she follow him in after all? This was a big move an her part and she waited to see how he would react. But Richie lifted her bag in silence, as if everything was understood and settled in that moment when he'd turned the corner and seen her there, smoothing down her Jacket, putting one
hand up to her dark hair. He led her in and closed the door behind her.

There was one room for living in, with a window facing out on to the landing, overlooking the busy street. It had a sink, a table and one wooden chair. The other, darker room to the side of the block was for sleeping. Richie had a piece of faded red cloth pinned permanently across the narrow window, a mattress on the floor, and one coat hook on the back of the door. He watched Sadie's face as she took a quick look around.

‘Not much, is it?' he said.

‘It ain't.' She marvelled how he could live like this, wandering back into the living-room and peering out of the window into the street.

‘You can change your mind.' His hunched shoulders and lowered head suggested he didn't care if she did. Inside, he wanted to lock the door, throw away the key, keep her here for ever.

‘I can.' Her own head went up. She flicked her hair out of her face and stood squarely facing him.

‘So will you stay?' He gestured to her bag on the bare floorboards. That's what you got planned, ain't it?'

‘Are you asking me?' she challenged. ‘Do you want me to?'

He leaned back against the crumbling wall and turned his head away. ‘Don't play games with me, Sadie. I ain't in the mood.'

Suddenly serious, she went up to him and put her arms around his neck. ‘I'm here, ain't I? It took me all morning to find the place, for God's sake!' She kissed him on the lips.

He responded, held her close. ‘Stay, then.'

There was only the present as they embraced once more; no thought of the future or the consequences of what they were doing. They had a place to themselves, however poor. Sadie had made the break from home.

She and Richie made love for the first time, shy and tender. There were tears, which he kissed away. Then he kissed her neck and shoulders. If they thought they could beat him, they were mistaken. He had her now, in spite of them. He would love and care for her for ever.

May days lengthened into early June. Sadie left the tenement rooms in Mile End each morning, and travelled by tube to her job at Swan and Edgar. Richie took casual work wherever he could get it. Since neither wanted to accept help from Sadie's family, they cleaned and painted the two rooms themselves. Sadie's first purchases were another chair, some bedlinen and a tablecloth. Eventually she wrote to Hettie, telling her where she was, but saying she would prefer not to come over to the Duke to visit until Rob saw fit to apologize to Richie.

‘Never in a month of Sundays,' Duke said sadly.

Hettie put the letter on the table with a shake of her head. ‘Let's wait and see, Pa. Leastways, we know she's safe and well.' Sadie sounded happy. There was no disguising her enthusiasm as she wrote about her new set-up with Richie.

Duke didn't like it, but Sadie was twenty-five years old and he had to get on with his own life as best he could. Summer nights brought more people out on to the streets to gossip and watch the children play. Some of them drifted into the pub for a drink before they went to bed. Trade improved slightly, though much of it went on late at night, well after hours, to Annie's disgust. ‘What can I do?' Duke shrugged. ‘We gotta earn a crust.' When the doors of the pub finally closed, he fretted after Sadie. And the truth was, he'd rather have the place alive and full of people, than close early and sit at his hearth without Annie.

One rule he did intend to stick to was his ban on Willie Wiggin. ‘Ain't no one here will give him a single drop to drink!' he told Annie, and she would nod in satisfaction when she saw him keeping his promise. She was trying to dry the old drunk out, and largely succeeding. Though his liver was ruined, the doctor said he might not get rapidly worse as long as they kept him away from the drink. She kept her eagle eye on him, and gave orders to the tenement children to run no more errands for the lodger in number five.

But Wiggin sober was as much of a problem as Wiggin drunk. He turned to argument, accusing the O'Hagans of deliberately
driving rats into his room, claiming that Annie came in to steal his money when he lay asleep, trudging up to the post office and claiming dole that he wasn't owed. He was impossible to handle, mean and vicious, and still cunning in pursuit of drink.

On the first Saturday afternoon in June, Wiggin was seen making his way along Duke Street towards the public park. Katie O'Hagan, who ran Annie's old haberdashery stall with all her predecessor's verve for business, spotted him wandering back an hour or so later, obviously the worse for wear. She passed the word along, ‘Tell Annie, Wiggin is off the wagon!' She saw it'd be a miracle if he didn't get run over by a bus, the silly old sod. Katie wound five yards of white ric-rac braid on to a scrap of card, took threepence in payment and craned across the stall to watch Wiggih's progress. When she saw his shambling figure stagger to a halt at the corner of the court, then drift crabwise towards the door of the Duke, she thought direct action was called for. ‘Watch my pitch!' she yelled at Nora Brady on her nearby fish stall. Then she skipped down the busy street, eager to warn Annie personally.

She found her wending through the crowd from the other direction, her basket full of fruit and veg, taking her time and chatting in the evening sun. Annie turned to Katie's call, but her smile vanished, when she saw the girl's pointed little face looking serious and she heard the latest news. Quickly she went towards the pub, just too late to stop a confrontation between Duke and Wiggin.