After Hours (32 page)

In his turn, Rob had been brought up to take his responsibilities seriously, with a good, strong sense of his roots. And he seemed genuinely fond of the girl. Duke watched them joining hands over the tiered wedding-cake, ready to cut through the white icing. That was the funny thing about weddings, he thought; each one came along coloured by memories. He thought of earlier ones: his daughters', his friends', especially his own. His two marriages, first to Pattie, then to Annie.

Annie leaned over and broke into his reverie. ‘There's just one thing I ain't happy with,' she whispered, her dark eyes dancing.

‘What's that?' Duke clasped the hand she'd laid on his arm.

‘I think that me and Dolly must be related by marriage now.' She pinched her mouth as if tasting a lemon. Dolly was winding up the gramophone, vigorously sending people out on to the dance-floor. Annie shook her head in dismay. ‘Who'd have thought it, eh? Me, in-laws with Dolly Bleeding Ogden!'

‘I heard about Sadie. Ain't it a shame?' Dolly felt it was time to let her hair down. She'd done the honours and got everyone dancing to gramophone records she'd heard earlier in the year at the Empire Exhibition over in Wembley. The Charleston had really got the young ones going: Katie O'Hagan was teaching the little girls all in a row, hands on knees, pigeon-toed. Now Dolly came and settled on to a chair next to Billy and Frances. ‘Word gets round; it can't be helped.'

‘She made her own choice.' Frances turned frosty. Dolly was employing her usual crafty tactic of making generalized, sympathetic noises, purely in order to extract more information. The music, breakneck and breathless, clattered on.

Dolly tapped her fingers in her broad lap. ‘All the same, she ain't done nothing to deserve this.'

Frances weighed up what Dolly must be getting at. It wasn't Sadie's outright refusal of her invitation to the wedding; this was common knowledge and already discussed to death. Sadie had received the silver-edged card through the post and telephoned Hettie to say she wouldn't be able to come. No reason, no apology. At the same time, she let slip to her sister that she and Richie were expecting a baby. It was due in May, and she asked for it to be kept quiet. Hettie could pass it on to their pa, and he could choose who else to tell within the family. She'd rung off with a brittle cheerfulness. To Frances, the fact of Sadie's illegitimate pregnancy wasn't the stumbling block; it was the way she'd cut herself off from the family that hurt. After all, she could have come to see Annie and Duke to give them the news face to face.

But it was the sort of thing that seeped through the walls of Paradise Court. Not only had Sadie run off with the moody mechanic from the taxi depot, but now she was living in sin with him and having his kid. She would have nothing to do with her family since Rob had sacked her man. She was always spirited and maybe a bit spoiled. A handful at least. The myth grew of Sadie having had too much of her own way, and now she was paying the price.

Frances knew that the gossip about her sister had leaked far and wide. Only the other day, a woman had come into the chemist's shop for Andrews' Liver Salts and asked when the baby was due. She was tired of fobbing people off and telling them to mind their own business.

‘I expect she'll have to pack in her job.' Dolly sighed. Her soft, purple, brimless hat had settled into a pork-pie shape on top of her head, in vivid competition with her rosy, round cheeks. The wide sleeves and high collars which still found favour with the older women made her seem trussed up like a leg of lamb, and trapped her body heat. Noisily she fanned her face with a napkin. ‘I only hope she knows what she's doing, poor girl!'

‘Yes, and I'll pass on your regards, Dolly.' Frances stood up to move away.

Dolly looked startled. ‘You ain't never gonna dance the Charleston?' She'd taken offence. Frances was being snootily secretive as usual. Now Dolly got her own back. She glanced at the young girls bending their legs in and out like pieces of elastic, criss-crossing their skinny arms. ‘This ain't your type of thing, surely?'

‘There's the cake to wrap,' Frances replied. ‘Your talking about Sadie just reminded me; I told her I'd take some cake over to her next time I visit. You don't mind, do you?'

Dolly was wrong-footed. ‘Go ahead.' She scowled. ‘Take her as much as you like. And be sure you tell her I was asking after her.'

It was Dolly's only setback of the afternoon. Straightaway she buttonholed Hettie to hear how Edith Cooper was making out in the shop. ‘You've been an angel to that woman, Ett,' she told her. ‘With her old man going downhill fast, and everything going to
the bailiffs, your little job's just what she needs. I seen her at church, and I says to her she's looking very nice. I can tell she's happy to be there. It's hard on the poor thing, coming down in the world with a bang like that.'

Hettie smiled and nodded until Dolly ran out of steam and moved across to discuss Katie O'Hagan's plans to elope across the Atlantic with Jack Allenby.

‘We ain't eloping, Dolly,' Katie laughed. ‘Ma and Pa know all about it; it's all above board. We're saving up the passage money. Jack's writing to his ma and pa telling them about me.'

Dolly turned to the open-faced, well-built young sailor. Within five minutes she had his entire life story under her belt; his mother's age, his father's occupation, the jobs on offer in San Francisco for the likes of Katie. ‘And what's your ma say?' she asked the girl.

Katie sighed. ‘She says “good luck”. She wishes she'd had the chance at my age.'

‘She'll miss having you round.'

‘She will, Dolly. Don't think I don't know.' Katie looked wistfully across the room at her mother, a little one on her knee, Tommy bending over her shoulder to tease the child.

‘But good luck to you, I say and all!' Dolly rose, and, letting her purple sail billow in the wind, she drifted across the little square of dance floor to her next port of call.

By late evening, the music had slowed to the veleta and the waltz. The children rested tired heads against adults' shoulders. The feast of cold meats, sandwiches, pickles and pies lay in ruins. The beer barrel was empty, and the wedding cake neatly boxed. Balloons wafted between the feet of close-dancing couples, streamers came unpinned from the walls. Rob had Amy in his arms and they were dancing the last waltz, their hair sprinkled with white confetti, cheek-to-cheek in a world of their own.

‘Is went off well. It was a nice wedding,' Frances told Sadie. She'd called, desperate to build bridges with her youngest sister. Two small silver cardboard boxes of cake sat on the table between them in the Mile End living-room. ‘We all had a good time, considering.'

‘Considering what?' Sadie made the effort to be sociable. She'd tidied her hair and put on a touch of make-up for Frances's benefit. Richie had gone out, leaving the place to the two sisters.

‘Considering Pa ain't been too well this winter, and we had all that worry over Rob.' She told Sadie about the clumsy police investigation into Wiggin's death. ‘Trust them.' She laughed. ‘They never get nothing right.'

They shuddered over how history had nearly repeated itself for the family; first Ernie, then Rob.

‘But Pa's all right, ain't he?' Sadie knew the strain he'd been under. ‘He ain't pining for the pub?'

‘Oh, he's pining.' Frances sighed. ‘We was worried he'd go under. Then we got the good news about Rob, and the wedding. That picked him up no end.'

Sadie nodded.

‘Only, I wish you'd been there.' Frances leaned forward confidentially. ‘I don't know, somehow it felt like there was a hole, and we was going round busy mending it all the time, talking ten to the dozen about everything except you, Sadie.'

Sadie tried to laugh it off. ‘That's the first time I've ever been called a hole. That's me; a ladder in a stocking!'

‘What's wrong, Sadie? Why can't you make it up with Rob? For Pa's sake, at least.' Frances had come as peacemaker. It was early December; Christmas was almost upon them. She wanted the family back together by then.

But Sadie turned serious. ‘Rob's gotta make it up with me, Frances. Not the other way round. If Rob admits he was wrong and says sorry to Richie, then maybe I'll consider it.' She half turned away, her shoulders slumped, dark shadows under her eyes. ‘But then again, Rob ain't never said sorry to no one.'

‘You ain't sleeping well?' Frances changed the intractable subject. ‘Are you sick much?'

Sadie nodded. ‘Every morning. It ain't too bad though.'

‘I'll bring you some herb teas next time. And some Pink Pills. You look a bit anaemic. Are you getting to the doctor?'

Sadie smiled again, and told Frances not to fuss.

‘I have to fuss. What else am I for? I'm your big sister, ain't I?' She got up and hugged her tight. ‘We miss you down Duke Street. And we wish we could help.'

‘Talk to Rob,' Sadie said between her tears.

Frances nodded. ‘But from what I heard, Richie won't think of going back in any case. Not after what Rob done. He's proud, ain't he?'

Sadie dried her eyes, settled one hand across her stomach and put on a brave face. ‘Everyone's pride has a price,' she pointed out. ‘Come spring, when the baby's born and there's no jobs for love nor money, I think even Richie will have to swallow his pride.'

‘Don't bank on it.' Frances saw Rob and Richie as two stubborn enemies: one on his high horse about what the mechanic did to his pal, Walter; the other's resentment blinding him to compromise. She asked how Sadie and Richie would manage until spring. Sadie said they had a bit put by from her wages before she had been forced to own up to her condition at the office. Occasionally Richie managed to pick up casual dock work.

‘It ain't right,' Frances insisted, getting ready to end her visit. ‘You stuck here on your own like this, when you got us ready and willing to help just across the water. You should speak to Richie. One way or another, them two have got to make it up.' She slid her hands into her gloves and took her hat from the table.

‘Frances!' Sadie's arms looked as if they would reach out, but she wrapped them around herself instead. ‘Nothing.' She hung her head.

‘Things is all right between you and Richie?'

‘Fine.'

‘Well, chin up, then. Give it time. Things usually work out in the end.' Frances tried to end on a cheerful note.

When she said goodbye and went down the stone steps, she looked back at Sadie, still hugging herself, pale and strained, all alone, and her heart turned over with pity.

Sadie herself watched Frances out of sight, then went inside, quickly tidying away the two boxes containing the pieces of Rob and Amy's wedding-cake. They would only anger Richie, and send
him into a black mood. The evening crawled by. Down the landing, a child cried. Sadie, put a pan of broth on the stove, turned off the light to economize, tried to read by lamplight. Still no Richie. At eleven o'clock she went to bed, tired and cold, praying that Frances someone, anyone – would be able to talk Rob round.

Christmas came and went without healing the rift between Sadie and the rest of her family. Neither Rob nor Richie could bear to hear mention of the other's name. Rob swore and struggled with the two unserviced taxicabs, up to his elbows in oil and grease over an undetected knock in the engine, worn-out brakes, a sizzling radiator. Over in Mile End, Richie tried for work as a road digger, or a porter at Liverpool Street Station. He brought home money from this casual work on maybe one or two days each week.

Sadie learned to make a decent meal out of pork rind and bones, a few potatoes. When she heard that a child in the next tenement had died of diphtheria, she sat with her head in her hands. Measles was rife throughout February, so she stopped going down to the public baths for her twice-weekly scrub and soak, for fear of coming into contact with anything infectious.

Her sisters visited her, bringing little nightgowns and socks, in preparation for the baby. She refused all offers of help for herself, would accept neither food nor money. But she took the tiny clothes, white and sweet smelling, wrapped them in tissue paper and put them in the bottom drawer of her dressing-table. Health wise, the pregnancy was still difficult; her appetite was poor and she didn't gain the expected weight. The baby, due in May, would be undersized, the doctor predicted. As time passed, Jess, Hettie and Frances would choose the time of their visits to avoid Richie, since he made it plain they weren't welcome. They had the idea that he would get at Sadie for letting them come near, so they tried to miss him, letting Sadie keep her own counsel over their regular visits.

Occasionally they would drop Sadie's name in Rob's hearing,
telling Amy how her pregnancy was progressing, how Sadie did her best under trying circumstances. ‘She keeps the place neat and clean, but it ain't what you'd choose,' Jess reported. In fact, her latest visit to Mile End had shocked her. Sadie tried to keep house in the two rooms, but the floors were bare and there was no easy-chair, let alone a sideboard for her few bits of crockery. As for Sadie herself, she'd lost her quick movement and lively eye. She seemed to have faded, she looked awkward and apathetic.

Amy was quite the opposite, Jess thought. Pregnancy suited her. There was a natural, peachy bloom on her cheeks, even in the dead of winter, a glow of energy and enthusiasm. Her over-neat, regimentally waved blonde hair had been allowed to soften into a longer style that framed her face.

‘Poor girl,' Amy commiserated. She sat gratefully in the midst of her own nice things: a tatted rug from Annie, spare pots and pans from Jess, a sturdy table that Frances had passed on from the Institute. She'd hung lace curtains at the big picture window, and she'd got her way over the problem of the dirty green ceiling; it was now a warm cream colour, and Rob had papered the walls to match. Both families had rejoiced when they heard the news that Rob and Amy were expecting a baby, and a tactful veil was drawn over the date of its anticipated arrival.