After Hours (33 page)

‘Poor girl, nothing,' Rob remonstrated. ‘She cooked her own goose, ain't she?' He hid his face behind his newspaper, checking the list of results for Palace's score.

‘Still.' Amy sighed. She shook her head at Jess. ‘You can't help being sorry.'

Jess said they thought the baby might not be strong. ‘It's underweight, see. They say it's to do with how she lives. She don't get much fresh air, and she don't get out much for company, stuck way over there.' She prodded her brother's conscience as tar as she safely could.

‘Ain't we lucky, though?' Amy said softly. She gazed at the white woollen shawl which Jess had brought as a gift for their baby, so fine it was almost weightless, soft and warm when she held it to her cheek.

‘Luck ain't nothing to do with where Sadie's landed herself,' Rob insisted. But he rattled his paper and sounded uncomfortable. ‘Palace drew nil-nil,' he said by way of diversion.

Amy gave Jess a lighter glance. He was cracking. On her way out, she predicted that Rob would soon see reason.

Jess went from Amy's back to Annie's house to collect the children. There were signs of spring, even down Paradise Court: a lighter, longer feel to the afternoon, a general lifting of people's spirits. She said hello to Dolly, stopped for a proper word with Charlie, asking after his prospects. She was glad they didn't seem to hold things against her, but was still ashamed of what Maurice had done.

‘I ain't sure yet what I'm gonna do,' Charlie told her. ‘I've been thinking things through. There's America, the land of opportunity. I've been thinking of that.'

Down the corridor, Dolly dusted door-handles and banged vigorously about.

‘Your ma don't sound too happy about that,' Jess said.

‘Pie in the sky,' Dolly shouted. ‘Pie in the bleeding sky!'

Jess smiled. ‘What else, Charlie? If you don't get to America?' She wondered if that was what he was cut out for, the pioneer life, making his way in a foreign country.

‘I been thinking of college,' he confided.

‘Yes?'

‘I only been thinking of it. They say they need teachers. I might go and train as one.' When he put it into words, he thought it sounded foolish; even more far-fetched than the American idea.

‘Very good,' Jess nodded. ‘I'd say that's more your cup of tea.'

Charlie looked surprised but pleased. ‘You on the level?' He stood upright in the doorway, seeking her honest opinion.

‘I am. Training as a teacher would be a good thing, I'd say. Shall I ask Frances for you? She'll know how to go about it.'

Gladly Charlie agreed. Here was someone with a bit of faith in him for a change. Both his ma and pa had scoffed at the idea of him going back to school. ‘Where's the money in that?' Arthur had
been quick to point out. ‘Who puts the food in your mouth while you sit with your head stuck in a bleeding book?'

‘Maybe there's a scholarship. Frances would know.' Jess promised to find out. She went on down the court, pleased after all to have crossed paths with the Ogdens.

Grace was on the doorstep of Annie's house, playing at marbles with Rosie O'Hagan, the second youngest girl. They rolled the coloured glass balls along the ground and chased after them with squeals and yells, encouraging them into the hole in the pavement which they'd chosen as their target. Jess watched as a ragged boy appeared from the tenement doorway, ran pell-mell down the street, snatched a handful of the girls' marbles and leaped for the nearby street-lamp. He shinned up it in a flash, and perched on the crossbar out of reach.

Grace, hands on hips, looked at Rosie, then glared up at the boy. Then she hitched her skirt around her waist and promptly shinned up after him.

The boy waited until she grabbed hold of the iron crossbar, then cheekily swung himself down, leaving Grace stranded. But he'd reckoned without Rosie, who came at him like a whirlwind, diving for his pockets and the precious marbles. Grace swung and jumped to the ground. Between them, the two girls recovered their property and boxed the boy's ears. They saw him off, tongues out, calling derisively after him.

When it was over, Jess came quietly by, casting a look of mild disapproval at her daughter. ‘That ain't very ladylike.' She frowned.

Grace pulled down her skirt. ‘And he weren't no gentleman.'

Rosie giggled. ‘'Course not. That's my brother, Patrick!'

Jess smiled. ‘Grace, don't you go far,' she warned. ‘We have to get back home soon.' She knew Grace would pull a face and do her best to squeeze an extra few minutes out of the occasion. Smiling, she went inside to collect Mo and say goodbye to her pa and Annie.

Mo, too, was in seventh heaven. He lay flat on the carpet, face covered in chocolate, chugging his toy train between tracks Annie had sketched out for him on a long length of spare wallpaper.
She'd drawn a station, a level-crossing, a signal-box, trees and houses. As Mo chugged the little metal train along, Duke played at station-master, signalman and passenger. He'd found a whistle in the sideboard drawer to add the right flavour to events. Mo blew it loudly while Annie stood by covering her ears.

‘Thank God you're here,' she said to Jess. ‘I ain't never gonna be able to stop this train otherwise. They been round and round that track till I feel dizzy.'

Mo grinned and leaped up. ‘Grandpa's the fireman, I'm the driver!' He jumped clean over the railway track and landed at her feet. She picked him up to wipe his face.

‘I hope he ain't been too much for you.' Jess set Mo down and began to gather her things. ‘I know what he's like.'

Duke tousled the boy's hair. ‘He ain't too much,' he promised.

Jess smiled at him. ‘You're looking better, Pa.'

‘His chest's clear now the weather's picked up.' Annie gave her bulletin. ‘He's eating better, and he can sleep through the night, propped on three pillows.'

‘Good, and you're getting out and about?'

Duke shrugged.

‘Not enough.' Annie frowned. ‘He won't go near the Duke. It's enough to upset anyone, when you see what they've gone and done to it. And, of course, you can't get for without going past the old place, so he stays cooped up here a good deal.'

Jess nodded sadly.

‘Memories,' Duke explained. ‘Happy memories.' Inside his head, he could play the old pianola tunes, he could hear the warm hum of conversation, the clink of glasses. In his mind, he could still reach for the wooden pump-handle and pull the best pint around.

‘No one goes near, now Hill's got the place,' Annie insisted. ‘They all swear it was him dropped Duke in it. Arthur and Charlie, Joe, Tommy; they all go up to the Flag.'

‘Quite right.' Jess pulled on her gloves and fixed her hair under her hat. Mo made for the front door to go and find his big sister. ‘Well, he can't last long, if that's the case.'

‘He gets a few in from Union Street and further off. The young
ones. They hear the place has been done up and they pop in to take a look. But Hill don't encourage regulars. He ain't got the knack.' Annie picked up the gossip from the market. The boycott of the pub was holding up. George had ditched his job and gone and found cellar work with the stretched landlord at the Hag. None of this did Duke much direct good, but it must hearten him to hear that Hill couldn't make a go of the place.

At last Jess was ready to leave. ‘Chin up,' she told her pa. She went and prised the children away from their playmates in the court, told them to wave goodbye, then walked them briskly up Duke Street to catch the tram to the Underground station. On the journey home, Mo sat and chugged his train across his knees, Grace counted and re-counted her pocketful of shiny coloured marbles. Jess stared out of the tram window, swaying to its pitch and jolt, aware of a mounting regret as she left behind the warren of East End streets, burrowed underground, and emerged into her genteel, leafy suburb, and turned the key to her; own beautiful, empty house.

Money was tight for Rob and Amy as they struggled through the winter, facing the harsh realities of married life after the artificial excitement of being engaged and married. Amy had plenty of time to reflect on the loss of her busy daily routine in the company of her department store pals; her naturally sociable nature found it hard to adapt to long days cooking and cleaning inside her own four walls, waiting for Rob to show up at the end of his day's work, waiting for their baby to be born.

She didn't spend much time alone, however. Dolly was forever sailing through the door with news and advice, telling her how Frances Wray had fixed up for Charlie to go and see people at the Workers' Educational Institute. He wanted to apply for something called a Ruskin scholarship to go to college in the autumn. Katie O'Hagan and Jack Allenby had scraped together the money to pay for their tickets on a boat bound for America at the end of May. Bertie Hill was now trying to palm off Eden House on to some poor ignorant buyer, who didn't suspect it was riddled with dry
rot from top to bottom. ‘The sooner they pull it down the better.' Dolly was sick of living near the place; it harboured rats and dragged down the tone of the whole court.

‘Don't let Mary O'Hagan hear you going on like that,' Amy advised. ‘Where would they go if they pulled the old place down?'

‘They'd get re-housed by the council,' Dolly said, with superior knowledge of the new welfare state. ‘Into a brand-new place with their own bath and toilet, instead of the slum they're in now.

‘And who'd pay?' Amy couldn't see it; she'd heard of great new government building plans, but they were far away in Wehvyn Garden, and impossible to imagine.

‘The penny rate and the council, of course,' Dolly assured her. ‘It's the latest thing. A bath of your own. A garden.'

‘Hmm.' Amy wasn't immediately taken with the idea. ‘And bleeding miles from anywhere and all.' She'd read in the newspaper that tenants were being shifted out there against their will, and that they kept coal in their baths, and pigeons too. ‘It ain't for me.' She liked being able to walk downstairs on to the street, to the market, the shops, the pub.

Gossip with her ma kept Amy going through the early months of 1925, and the time she spent with Rob more than made up for the loss of her old, more worldly lifestyle. Pregnancy gave her a matronly air and she lost her flirtatious edge, dedicating herself instead to domestic life with a pleasant, humorous optimism that made her laugh at her husband's occasional grumpiness, and bully him into doing something to reinstate his old mechanic, so the whole family could get back into something like their old harmony.

Rob resisted. He swore it was none of her business. Sadie had chosen to slight them over the wedding invitation, and if she was having a hard time now, she had only herself to blame. He got angry. He pointed out how Walter would feel if they brought Richie back to work at the depot. He knew he couldn't find steady work, but he deserved everything he got.

‘But Sadie don't,' Amy insisted. She never beat about the bush. ‘She only made a mistake, Rob. It makes me miserable to think of
her sticking it out without no one to help. I never thought she had it in her.'

Rob looked at his heavily pregnant wife in bed beside him. Their baby, conceived in August, amidst the chaos of Wiggin's murder, was due any day now. ‘You know how to get under my skin,' he said, moved to be unusually gentle as he stroked her face and kissed her. He sighed. ‘Wait till their kid arrives. Then I might go over and see her.'

Amy settled into a satisfied sleep. At two in the morning, she woke Rob to tell him to go down and fetch Dolly. Her mother came. At eight she sent for the midwife, and at eleven a healthy baby boy was born.

Four or five weeks went by, but the weather reverted to winter on the day that Sadie's baby, Margaret, was born. A cold, north-eastern wind got up, and brought a flurry of light snow in the middle of May, so that people looked out of their windows and shivered and complained at the dark, unseasonable skies.

It was the middle of the afternoon, a Thursday, when Sadie seized the poker and hammered at the hollow chimney-back to let her neighbour, Sarah Morris, know that she needed help. The baby was early. Richie was out on what had degenerated into a regular, day-long wander through the streets without any real prospect of work. He spent hours hanging about in shop doorways, rolling thin cigarettes and longing for a drink, along with two or three pals in a similar situation. When her labour started, and Sadie hammered for help, Richie couldn't be reached. She would have to manage by herself.

Sarah came running in. She got Sadie to bed and sent for the doctor, at the younger woman's insistence. Sadie was glad of Sarah: a woman who took childbirth like a bad case of measles, a nuisance that disrupted the rhythm of everyday life and meant you got behind with your daily chores, by dint of the fact that you were flat on your back and in agony. ‘Time the pains,' she advised. ‘When they come bad and often, count your blessings, 'cos it'll soon be over.'

Sadie responded well. She waited for Dr McLeod and measured the pain. It was bearable. The next time, still bearable. She tried to judge how much worse it could get before she was forced to cry out. Quite a bit, she thought. She would grit her teeth and try not to make a fuss.

Sarah boiled water, great pans of it, on her own kitchen range. She asked Sadie for towels and sheets. ‘That doctor had best get a move on,' she said, as if doctors were a modern invention, designed to complicate women's ability to give birth. She wiped Sadie's face. ‘Else he'll be too late.'

Sadie gripped Sarah's wrist and kept her mouth clamped shut as the contractions tore through her and the groans rose to her throat.

‘Her,' she managed to gasp. ‘Dr McLeod, it's a woman.'

Sarah's eyes widened. ‘That's a step in the right direction, any rate.'