After Hours (4 page)

‘Come to bed, Duke,' Annie said. She stretched across the hearth and tapped his hand. ‘You look done in.' The fire flickered low in the grate, Hettie and Sadie were both safely back home.

‘You go,' he told her. ‘I'll hang on here. I want a word with Rob. I don't expect he'll be long.'

‘Hm.' She was unconvinced but, nag as she might, she knew the old man would never get himself off to bed before all the others were in. Old habits died hard. ‘Rob can look after himself, you know.' She rose stiffly from her seat, ready to go through.

‘Better than most, I reckon.' In spite of the loss of one leg during wartime action, Rob managed to keep himself fit and active. It hadn't stopped him from learning to drive either; a goal he'd set his heart on as soon as the war was finished. If people said, ‘No, you can't do it,' to Robert, you could bet your life he'd prove them wrong. So he'd worked, saved and borrowed the money to set up this taxicab business with Walter Davidson, down at the old carter's yard. They were making a go of it too, though both their cars were past their best and cost them plenty in repairs. Duke was proud of Rob. He'd settled down and got over the bitterness of what had
happened to him in the trenches. ‘That's him now,' he told Annie. He heard the bolt being shot across the back door.

She stooped to kiss his cheek. ‘Chin up.' She thought he looked a bit down tonight. ‘It'll all seem different in the morning.' His old face seemed sunken. After all, he was going on seventy and still putting in a long day's work.

Duke sighed.

‘Look here, business ain't that bad. We get by.'

He nodded. ‘Don't mind me, Annie. You go off, get some sleep, and I'll ask Rob to take us out in that contraption of his to see Jess and the littl'uns.'

Annie's face lit up. ‘When?'

‘Tomorrow.'

‘Oh, Duke, that sounds nice!' She loved visiting the posh house that Maurice had set Jess up in, with its lawned front garden and fancy leaded windows. Grace and little Mo would tumble over themselves to answer the doorbell. Jess would give the warmest of welcomes.

‘Consider it done,' he said, as she disappeared happily off to bed. He rose to greet his son and offer him a nightcap before he dimmed the last lamp.

But Rob, flinging his cap on to a chair, looked round, disappointed to find Duke alone, sitting up in the small hours. ‘Where's Sadie?' he demanded.

‘Gone to bed. Why?' The old man went to fetch the whisky bottle from the cupboard. He recognized the tone of voice, registered trouble brewing. ‘Sit down, have a drink, son. You look as if you could do with one.'

Rob swilled the whisky round his glass, then knocked it back. The stump of his leg hurt where it was strapped tightly to the artificial limb, and the daylong effort of changing gear with it had taken it out of him. ‘You'll never guess what Sadie's been up to now!'

‘Hush. Ain't no need to yell, Rob. Whatever it is, can't it wait till morning?'

‘No, it bleeding well can't.' Robert's anger boiled over. ‘She's
only two-timing Walter, that's all. She's a rotten little flirt, Pa, and she don't deserve a decent bloke like him.'

Duke sighed over the inevitable row between his hotheaded son and his youngest daughter. ‘Two-timing, you say? Mind you, they ain't exactly engaged,' he reminded Rob. His own whisky hit the back of his throat and trickled down.

‘As good as. Look, Pa, you don't mess about when you got someone steady. You gotta tell her.'

‘In the morning,' Duke agreed. ‘We'll get the full picture off her, then we'll see.' He blamed himself if Sadie was turning flighty. He'd spoiled her in the past, let her have too much of her own way. He didn't hear the bedroom door click, or see the white figure advance down the landing. ‘If she is pulling the wool over Walter's eyes, we'll have to sit down and talk to her then.'

Rob, with his own back to the door, wasn't satisfied. ‘Walter's my best pal, Pa. I've known him all these years and he ain't never said or done a rotten thing to no one. She can't just come along and make a fool of him!'

‘Keep your voice down,' Duke warned. But then he turned to see Sadie herself standing there, almost as pale as her long cotton nightdress. He retreated to the fireplace, seeing that it had gone past remedy. Sadie and Rob would go at it hammer and tongs; they'd wake the whole street before they'd finished.

‘Who's making a fool of who?' Sadie trembled as Rob whipped round to face her. She held herself steady by holding on to the door-handle. ‘And who's been telling you fibs, Robert Parsons?'

Rob snorted. ‘Oh, so Maurice is a liar now, is he?'

‘Maurice?' Her heart sank and her voice went faint. Events slotted together: her brother-in-law had opened his big mouth as soon as ever Rob had picked him up to take him home to Ealing. Soon everyone would know about her and Richie Palmer.

‘Yes, Maurice! That shut you up, didn't it? He saw you in the back row with that hooligan. As if you didn't know!'

‘We wasn't in the back row,' she protested, a red flush creeping up her neck.

‘No, but you was
with
him, you admit that much?' He went and faced her, daring her to deny it.

‘So what?' Up went her chin. ‘What's it to you?'

‘Oh, nothing,' Rob sneered. ‘You're only my sister. Walter's only my best pal and business partner.'

‘And what do you think?' she asked hotly. ‘You don't think I'm cheating him, do you?'

‘What am I supposed to think?'

‘Now, hold your horses, you two.' Duke stepped in between the flashing looks and raised, accusatory voices. ‘I don't know what's going on here, but this ain't the time or the place for it, I do know that.' He could, see Annie advancing down the landing, a shawl covering her night-dress, her hair in a long braid over one shoulder.

Robert laughed and backed off to pour himself another drink. His own face was patchy and flushed. ‘Oh, I get it,' he said sarcastically. ‘You arranged everything with Walter beforehand. He gave permission for you to go spooning with Richie Palmer?'

Duke's brow wrinkled. He switched his gaze to Sadie.

‘We wasn't spooning! And I was going to tell him just as soon as I got the chance!' she insisted.

‘Oh, you was going to tell him,' he mimicked. ‘Well, that makes everything swell, 'cos if
you
don't, I will!'

Sadie felt Annie appear at her shoulder and turned to grab her in heartfelt appeal. ‘Oh, Annie, ask Rob not to! If he tells Walter, it'll hurt him. I gotta talk to him myself in my own way. I
will
tell him, I promise!'

‘Steady on.' Annie led a snaking Sadie by the wrist and sat her down by the fire in Duke's own chair. ‘And you steady on too, Rob. Give the girt a chance to tell her side. We gotta hear the whole thing and give ourselves time to calm down.' She put an arm around Sadie's shoulder. ‘Don't take on, girl. You only went to the pictures with Richie Palmer, I take it? So far as I know, it ain't a hanging offence.'

In the face of Annie's kindness, Sadie dissolved into tears. ‘But I never meant it to get out, Annie. I knew it'd hurt Walter if he
found out. Only I wanted to see the picture, and Walter's so busy, and it's a Saturday night, and—'

‘Strike a light!' Rob said roughly. He paced across the patterned carpet.

‘I didn't mean no harm!' Sadie crumpled into Annie's arms once more.

Annie glanced up at Duke. ‘You ain't fifteen no more, girl. You're a growed woman. You can walk out with more than one young man if you like, you're welcome. And there ain't no law against it.' She held up a hand to stem Rob's noisy protests. ‘Only, I do think you oughta clear it with Walter first.'

Sadie sniffed and pulled herself together. Her dark hair fell as a curtain to shade her face. ‘I ain't never going to see Richie no more,' she vowed. ‘It ain't even as if he's nice to talk to.'

In the background, Rob snorted.

‘But you'll still tell Walter what you done?' Annie checked.

Overwhelmed by family pressure, and her own swelling sense of guilt, Sadie gave her promise. Rob heaped more insults on to Richie's head, calling him a no-good drifter who'd end up on the scrap-cart before too long. She watched as Annie calmed Rob down, and saw her efforts to cheer Duke up, before she dried her own eyes on a handkerchief and slid off to bed.

In her own room, Sadie found Hettie sitting in the wicker chair, her long hair flowing over her shoulders.

‘It was only a little fling,' Sadie insisted quietly, defiance stiffening her stance once more. ‘I weren't never going to see him no more!'

‘I know. I heard.' Hettie looked her full in the face. ‘Walter's the best there is, surely you know that?'

‘I do, I do! No need to rub it in, Ett!' Sadie rolled back her sheets and stumbled into bed. She pulled the covers tight under her chin. ‘I could kill that Maurice,' she muttered. ‘Landing me in this fine mess!'

Hettie shook her head. ‘I don't know about him landing you in it, but did you notice Pa?' she asked anxiously across the darkened room. ‘I been worried about him lately, Sadie. I don't suppose you saw how he took it all?'

But Sadie, exhausted, was already falling asleep.

Jess worked quickly and expertly, running up seams on the machine, watching with satisfaction as the dress took shape. The trimming would be a wide band of glass beads handsewn around the hem and plunging neckline. A sash would tie tight around the hips to show off the straight shape that all the customers preferred these days.

She thought back to the lime when she and Hettie had rustled up an outfit ready for her to go with Maurice to the Town Hall Christmas dance. That had been the beginning of it all for her; the escape from drudgery and the stigma of Grace's illegitimate birth. That tight bodice and clinched waist seemed to belong to a different world. How long was it, for instance, since she and Maurice had been out dancing? Before they came to the new Ealing house that faced on to the Common? Before Mo was born? Well, staid, well-to-do women didn't dance along to the new whispering baritones, or cavort to the Charleston. What would people think?

She used one of Maurice's phrases to laugh at her own silliness, then snipped a thread and held the dress up for inspection. Not going straight up to bed with him had been her small act of defiance after their scratchy conversation about Sadie. Now that was lost in a sea of reminiscence, as she delved deep into their marriage.

There was no doubt about his success as the forward-looking manager of the biggest cinema chain in the city, and it had given them a lot of what other people could never dream of having. They'd moved away from their East End roots, and up in the world. With careful planning, they were able to instal a telephone, and gradually buy the new, streamlined furniture that was replacing the carved mahogany style of her childhood. Soon Maurice would start looking for a Morris Cowley motor car; not brand-new, but still dearer and more stylish than the Model T, as far as small cars went. Jess tilted her head from side to side as she re-ran word for word the endless conversations about whether they could afford to buy and run a car, and if so, what type? And how much? And petrol at one and six a gallon.

The biggest problem for Jess in all this, setting aside the wrench of having to move away from family and friends, was a growing feeling that Maurice's ambitions were all well and good, but that he gave no room for Jess's own dreams to take root and grow. They basked in the sunshine of his success, his good business sense and eye for fads in the fast-moving picture trade, which kept his cinema chain well ahead of all East End rivals. But her own poor little business, dressmaking with Hettie, was overshadowed and neglected. She even felt that Maurice would uproot it if he could, and throw it away like a useless weed. He never said so in so many words. But then he never praised her efforts either, and sometimes suggested that Grace and Mo might prefer it if she gave up the work. ‘It's not as if we need the money,' he told her, in a spirit of husbandly generosity. ‘I earn enough, and I don't like the idea of you working your fingers to the bone. It's like the old sweated labour.'

‘That's all you know,' she challenged. ‘Our little shop is in a good spot on the High Street. We're getting to be very fashionable with a certain class of lady round here.' They'd graduated long ago from the repairs and alterations of their humble beginnings above the Duke.

‘The trouble is, wives round here don't go out to work much.' Maurice's dark brows had furrowed. ‘It ain't Paradise Court!'

‘I know it ain't!' She'd looked at him long and hard. ‘What about Hettie?' she said finally. ‘Don't I owe it to her to keep on?'

So he'd let the matter drop, and she often stayed up late at night, after the children had gone to bed, making up orders for chiffon party dresses and crêpe-de-Chine visiting outfits. During the day, she would enjoy her time with Hettie in their chic little shop. She took pleasure in the cut and quality of their tailormade clothes.

‘You know it's two o'clock in the morning?' Maurice's voice interrupted her train of thought. He peered round the door, sounding subdued, seeing her still sitting there in the pool of light.

Immediately she felt contrite. ‘Can't you sleep?' she asked as she stood up and came halfway to meet him.

‘No.' He'd come down dressed in pyjamas. ‘Was it my fault?'

‘What?' She glanced at his raffled hair, his tired face. ‘No, it's mine. I should've realized.' She could never sleep when Maurice stayed up late either. She went and put her arms around his neck. ‘You should've let me know before now.'

He kissed her. ‘I knew you were busy.'

Stroking his cheeks she whispered, ‘Not too busy,' and felt his arms tighten around her.