After Hours (19 page)

‘Of course. It's not that. Only, our proposal that Mr Parsons should step down of his own accord is based on a different outcome.'

‘What's he on about, Maurice?' Rob got to his feet and walked the length of the room. ‘Come clean, Mr Wakeley. What is it you're saying?'

Wakeley looked him straight in the eye. ‘The fact is, Mr Parsons, we have someone else in mind.'

Maurice tapped the edge of the table with his fingertips. ‘A different landlord?'

‘Who? Who the bleeding hell can you put in Pa's place?' Rob's control snapped. So much for dressing up and playing the part. ‘They got another plan in mind all along,' he said to Maurice in disgust.

‘Now, I can't tell you that, Mr Parsons. You wouldn't expect me to. But we want a fresh start; move with the times, that sort of thing.' Wakeley stood up. He clipped the end of his cigar then turned to Maurice. ‘No, the best thing you can do, Mr Leigh, is to go back to your father-in-law, explain the brewery's point of view, and advise him to go without a fuss.
Before
Friday, if possible.' He stood firm behind clouds of blue cigar smoke.

Rob took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Let's get out of here,' he said to Maurice. He felt stifled. ‘Ain't no point hanging round.'

Maurice conceded defeat. They went out of the office, pointedly refusing to shake Wakeley's hand or make any promises on their part.

‘We was set up!' Rob said angrily as they found their way out of the nearest exit, through the stables lined with heavy tack. ‘If they want us to do their dirty work, they can think again.'

Two great shire horses stirred restlessly inside their bays. Maurice shook his head. They crossed a wide yard towards the iron gates overlooking a railway siding. ‘I gotta go back and tell Jess,' he said, not relishing the task. ‘What you gonna do?'

Rob sagged forwards, hands in pockets, shoulders stooped. ‘I'll go and tell Pa to expect the worst. There ain't no way he can win now.'

‘We done our best.' Maurice turned his starter-handle. The car fired. ‘We can say that.'

‘And it ain't good enough.' Rob climbed into his taxi.

The two cars slid into the crowd of bicycles and pedestrians filing out of the brewery gates to the sound of the hooter that signalled the end of the working day.

The bad news filtered down Paradise Court that the brewery didn't intend to stick up for Duke when he went to court.

Charlie Ogden met Katie O'Hagan on the market and told her that it was all up; Duke had seen the writing on the wall. He'd admitted defeat. Charlie had got the news from Walter Davidson, who'd got it straight from Rob Parsons.

‘He ain't gonna fight?' Katie was devastated. She was a fiery slip of a girl, with a green tinge to her eyes and her father's wide, Irish mouth. Undersized, but making up for her lack of height with non-stop activity and determination, she regarded the Parsons set-up as the ideal home she'd never had. Duke was a rock in the neighbourhood. He ran the pub like clockwork, never took sides in petty quarrels and looked on his family with affectionate pride. And in Katie's eyes, Hettie was an angel of mercy, a saint. ‘Does that mean he'll have to pack up and go?'

‘Duke's finished,' Charlie told her. ‘Ain't nothing he can do.'

She passed on the news to her ma and pa. Joe cursed Wiggin. ‘Who they gonna get to fill Duke's shoes? That's what I'd like to know.'

‘. . . a new broom?' Dolly Ogden listened to Mary's account with rising scorn. ‘Who they trying to kid? Listen, they got the best landlord there is in Duke Parsons.' It was almost unheard of for her not to be first on the scene when a new development occurred. ‘And you say Duke ain't gonna fight no more?' she shouted at Mary, as if it were her fault.

‘That's according to Katie.' Mary was on her way to deliver a calico sack of clean table linen to Henshaws' when she bumped
into Dolly. ‘She says they tried talking to the brewery, but they didn't want to know. They got someone else in mind.'

Dolly mouthed Mary's last words to herself, then exploded aloud once more. ‘Who the bleeding hell can they get in Duke's place?' she demanded. Then she stormed up to the market to have her say among her women friends. ‘The brewery's dropped Duke in it,' she reported. ‘They're kicking him out after all these years. It's a bleeding disgrace!' Dolly overlooked the little matter of serving after hours. Who could blame Duke for giving people what they wanted?

Next day, the Thursday, Frances came across to Duke Street to talk things over with Hettie. She still hadn't felt able to broach the important subject with Annie, finding the problem over the licence enough to deal with at any given time. The sisters sat in the living-room together while the business of the pub went on below.

‘Is he thinking straight?' Frances asked. They talked in hushed tones, their eyes dark with worry. ‘Has he thought what he's gonna do after tomorrow?'

Hettie was dressed in uniform, ready to go out. Her bonnet lay on the table, her Quaker-plain jacket was buttoned to the chin. ‘I don't know, Fran, it's like he can't bring himself to think about it. I asked him yesterday after Rob came back from the brewery, should I look round for another place for us? And he just looked up at me with dying eyes. Yes, like he wants to pack-up and die.' Hettie's eyes filled with tears. ‘I been praying and asking God's help, but I ain't getting no answers.' She sobbed on Frances's shoulder.

‘Hush, we'll sort something out, Ett. Just hush, my dear. Don't you cry.' Frances's self-restraint cracked under the strain of comforting Hettie. They sobbed quietly for a few minutes, to the sound of doors swinging, glasses clinking, people drinking in the bar below.

Then Frances blew her nose and went down the court in search of Annie. She needed to tell her that Duke had agreed that she and Hettie should compose a letter to send to the magistrates, admitting his offence of serving after hours and agreeing to give up his licence. Everyone understood, after listening to Rob, that all was lost. Now
Frances wanted to spare her father the unnecessary distress of appearing in court.

She didn't find Annie in her own little terraced house, but she was still anxious to explain the latest development to her face to face, before it had time to reach her in a buzz of rumour. So she went on from Annie's house to the tenement, expecting to find her busy tidying up at Wiggin's place.

Frances had never before ventured into number five Eden House, the misnamed tenement where Wiggin had holed up with Annie's support. She disliked the feel of the whole building in fact, objecting to the lack of privacy whenever she came to visit the O'Hagans on the upstairs floor; the dark, bare corridors, the peeling plaster. For the inhabitants it was a poor sort of life, overlooked by the tall walls of a furniture factory at the back, with one toilet shared between all the tenants on each floor. As Frances went under the crumbling stone entrance and down some steps to the semi-basement rooms at the back, she instinctively pulled her cardigan around her and knocked briskly at the shabby door marked number five.

She stood and waited. There was someone in there, she was sure. ‘Hello. Annie, is that you?' Frances shivered in the damp, cold corridor. She knocked again.

Inside she heard a shuffling sound of something heavy being dragged across a bare floor.

‘Mr Wiggin?' Frances's suspicions were aroused. It seemed he didn't intend to answer the door. ‘Is Annie there, please? It's Frances Wray. I need to speak to Annie.'

‘I don't know you!' Wiggin's muffled voice came back at last.

Frances heard more grunts and gasps as he shifted the heavy object towards, the door. ‘I tried Annie's place. She ain't there. I was hoping to catch her. It's very important.'

There was a stream of abuse as Wiggin clattered around inside the room. The message came through loud and clear; he didn't want to be disturbed.

Frances backed off in distaste, then she set her head at a determined angle. ‘Ain't no use calling me them names, Mr Wiggin,' she retorted. ‘I heard them all before. They don't bother me.'

Wiggin responded by throwing open the door. He clutched on to it to peer out at Frances, a respectable figure in the fawn cardigan and skirt looking him straight in the eye. He swayed unsteadily, growled and spat out phlegm at her neatly shod feet.

Frances stepped quickly back, out of reach. ‘I want to know, have you seen Annie?' she persisted. ‘Ain't she dropped by with your breakfast today?'

Wiggin's eyes were red, his breath stank of strong drink. He tottered in the doorway, cursing Frances for coming there. ‘Annie this! Annie that!' he minced, with his top lip curled. ‘I ain't seen Annie. Annie don't live here. See for yourself!' He flung open the door, overbalanced and fell against Frances.

She caught him by the shoulders, filled with disgust, but shocked at how little he weighed. He was skin and bone, easy to drag inside the room and pull on to a poor bed in one corner. There were signs of Annie's efforts; clean curtains at the window, a tidy grate. But Wiggin seemed to have been on the rampage, scattering bread and milk across the floor, dragging an old chest out of the alcove by the hearth. As Frances eased the old man on to his bed, the smell coming off him made her feel sick. He collapsed on his back, wheezing and cursing.

‘Does Annie know the state you're in?' she said coldly. ‘Has she gone for the doctor?'

Wiggin's chest heaved and erupted. Frances realized with horror that he was laughing. His thin lips stretched back, showing ulcerated gums that were red-raw. He clutched his chest, convulsed with unseemly laughter.

‘It ain't funny.' Frances made a snap decision to leave him where he was, noticing an empty bottle by the bed and another half-empty one on the mantelpiece. Satisfied that he had left off laughing and subsided into a lethargic stupor, she quickly closed his door and fled.

Now alarm bells rang, not just for Wiggin. Frances had to find out where Annie had got to. Coming up the court, she bumped into Patrick O'Hagan, a boy of about thirteen who played truant
and loitered his life away in the alleys and courts. He nodded when Frances rushed by and asked him if he'd seen Annie lately.

‘When?' Frances grabbed his arm. ‘Which way did she go?'

‘Ten minutes since,' Patrick guessed. ‘She went home.'

‘But I tried her door. Are you sure?'

The boy nodded. ‘Sure I'm sure.'

Frances turned on the spot and headed down the street towards Annie's house again. Why hadn't Annie answered her door? Why had Wiggin laughed? She mentioned Annie going to fetch the doctor and he croaked his delight. She knocked hard at Annie's door for a second time. She tried the knob. It turned in her grasp.

‘Annie?' Frances hesitated on the doorstep. She called gently, ‘It's me, Frances. Are you in?'

‘I can't come and see you now, Frances.' Annie's voice drifted down the narrow stairs. ‘I'm upstairs having a lie-down.'

This was unheard of. ‘I'm coming up.' She mounted the bottom step.

‘Leave me alone, there's a good girl. I'm just resting.'

‘Ain't you heard me knock before, Annie? I need to talk.' Frances carried on until she came to the landing.

Annie's bedroom door opened. She came out fully dressed, her face averted. She trembled and reached out to the banister for support. ‘I didn't want no one to see me,' she whispered.

There was a gash across her left eyebrow, an inch long, just missing the eye. A trickle of blood still ran down her cheek. The eye itself had swollen and begun to bruise. Frances stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh, Annie!' she whispered.

‘You found me out, Fran.' Annie tried to smile.

‘Did Wiggin do this?'

‘I slipped. I slipped and fell awkward against the mantelpiece.'

Frances felt herself turn cold with anger against Wiggin. She went up to her stepmother and led her gently back to bed. ‘Don't stick up for him,' she pleaded. ‘Not right now.'

Annie sighed. ‘He had a bottle by the bed. I wanted to take it away from him. I asked him how he came by it.' Her account began, slow and flat. She was in a state of shock. ‘He got his hand
on it first, he held it by the neck and brought it down on my head, just here.' She pointed with a trembling finger. ‘I must have blacked-out tor a bit. When I came to, he was panicking, trying to pull the old chest across to the door. I got up and out in the nick of time.'

‘Just rest, Annie. Don't say no more.' Frances stroked her forehead. ‘I'm so sorry!' She crooned until the trembling stopped and Annie was able to rest her head on the pillow. ‘Shall I go for the doctor, dear?'

‘No need for that,' Annie protested. ‘But Wiggin might need him. He's set on drinking himself to death, I think.'

‘Leave that for now.' Frances helped Annie to loosen the neck of her blouse and slip between the sheets. ‘Put yourself first for a change.' She took off her shoes and put them under the bed. ‘I gotta talk to you about Wiggin, Annie.'

‘Later,' came the faint plea.

‘No, now. You gotta rest and listen to me. I heard a story about him the other day.'

‘Who from?' Annie turned to look at Frances, pain evident in her tight lips.

‘From Dolly.'

‘Oh, her.' Annie sighed. ‘You don't want to take ho notice of what she says.'

‘Maybe not. But I gotta tell you. She went on about how you two met in the first place.' Frances felt she must go carefully, but go on she must. She blamed herself for not trying to get Annie away from Wiggin soon enough. ‘It was over in Hoxton, I think?'

Annie closed her eyes. ‘I'm tired out, Frances.'

‘I know you are. You had a bad shock.'

‘He ain't never turned on me before today. Not since he came back. And I don't think he knew me. I could've been anyone getting between him and his next drink.'