After Hours (5 page)

‘You'll come now?' he murmured. Their passion, undimmed by the years, rekindled easily. His arms pressed her to him. She leaned back to unpin her hair and let it fell loose to her waist. Tilting sideways, he kissed her neck, then led her from the room.

The light burned all night long. In the morning, Maurice came downstairs and turned it off before he opened the curtains and went through into the kitchen to make tea for Jess and take glasses of fresh milk up to Grace and Mo.

November faded into a raw, dripping December, accompanied by rain and fog. They were short, cold days, harbouring a continuing fear of hunger in the docklands. Still, the East Enders found things to be cheerful about, whistling the old wartime songs in the streets, standing in long, damp queues to watch Crystal Palace rout the northern opposition, then emulating their heroes during Sunday matches in their local park.

On the second Saturday of the month, Palace were to meet up with arch-rivals Derby County. Walter Davidson and Rob gave themselves a rare afternoon off from taxi work, leaving Richie in charge of the depot. Tension between the three of them had slackened off during the weeks since Sadie's heart-to-heart with Walter, when she confessed the mistake she'd made in going to the picture-house with Richie. She told him she hadn't realized how it might look; she hadn't meant any harm and she was truly sorry. She didn't mention the kiss.

Walter had kept both her small hands in his during the confession. He said he understood how much she liked to go to the pictures, and he didn't blame her for taking a night out. He was sorry he couldn't leave work to take her more often himself, only they were still building up the business, getting known beyond Duke Street, down Union Street and Bear Lane. It was wrong of him to neglect her, he knew. There was really nothing for him to forgive.

After this, Sadie felt worse. For a start, she might have welcomed a small show of jealousy on Walter's part; there was her female pride at stake. Second, her confession had only been partial, to save Walter's feelings, she told herself. But she'd deliberately missed
out the tumult in her heart when she kissed the silent, infuriating Richie Palmer. From now on she must keep out of his way, as a safeguard to her own peace of mind. Her stolen night out with him would be the one and only.

Duke and Annie approved when they saw her and Walter back together. Walter was part of the scenery; steady as they came, loyal and true, a big support to Rob when he first came home wounded.

Walter's own war had been spent as a motor-bike dispatch rider around Ypres. It had kept him out of the thick of things on the front line, but he stored many terrible memories which he would forever keep to himself. His belief in the justice of the Allied cause had kept him going through thick and thin. Later, he'd trained as one of the first drivers of the new military tanks, and was in the last push of the autumn of 1918. He came home a hero to a country exhausted by war, unable to offer him a means of keeping body and soul together. So he and Rob resorted to their boyhood dream of setting up by themselves. They took casual employment on the docks and markets, working like navvies to scrape money together. Over the years, their meagre savings of one pound a week rose to thirty shillings, or on a good week, thirty-five. Still, their target seemed miles off.

Help came along for the pair of them at last in the unlikely shape of Mrs Edith Cooper. She heard of their struggle to start up from one of the girl assistants in her husband's drapery store. Mrs Cooper held a soft spot for Robert; he'd come to talk kindly to her on the death in action of her only son, Teddy. She'd seen in Robert all the maimed and wounded victims of the war, the wasted youth, the terrible price of victory. This dainty, fastidious woman, an East Ender herself in the days before her husband's success, had once more requested Rob to visit her at home. She offered him a loan of £200 to be paid back according to a set plan at a low rate of interest. She wished him well, shook his hand and stood at her window, shielded by a long net curtain, watching him to the gate. Rob went with his head high, eagerly in spite of the impediment of his leg. Tears stood in her eyes. Her husband, Jack, sneered and told her she'd be lucky if she ever got back a penny of her investment.
‘Throwing good money down the drain,' he complained. ‘And times are this bad.'

Cock-a-hoop, Rob and Walter sat up late debating whether to spend their cash total of £350, £150 of which they'd saved for themselves over a three-year period, on one brand-new Morris Cowley with its revolutionary American engine, or on two older, used Bull nose Morrises. They'd gone for the latter; two cars meant twice as much business when there were two of them able to do the driving. They found premises to rent at the old carter's yard under the railway bridge, installed a telephone and put up their nameplate. For two years now they'd struggled to repay their loan and to make ends meet. Each month, with a gleam in her eye, Edith Cooper unsealed the brown envelope and held up the five-pound note to show her disbelieving husband.

It was a rare Saturday when they decided to take time off, but the Derby County game was a needle match and the whole of Southwark would be making a mass exodus to the Palace ground in Sydenham. When they spotted Tommy O'Hagan trudging along Duke Street through the pouring rain, water rolling from the brim of his trilby hat, they pulled up to offer a lift. The car, notorious for its poor road-holding, skidded to a halt.

Tommy quickly gestured to his companion to hop in too, and the pair of them slid gratefully into the back seat. Glancing in his mirror, Rob saw that the uninvited guest was Bertie Hill, the unpopular new landlord of the O'Hagan tenement block. Tommy, keeping an eye open for the main chance as usual, had obviously thought it wise to keep well in with the man. He sniffed and shook his hat on to the floor. ‘Blimey, Rob, ain't we glad to see you.'

But Hill was the sort to put a dampener on the conversation with his snide remarks. He would assume familiarity where there was none, and managed to put Rob's back up the moment he stepped on the running-board. ‘Whoa, Dobbin!' he cried as the cab slewed sideways into the pavement. ‘Ain't you got no control over the old girl?'

‘About as much as you've got over your mouth, I'd say,' Rob replied. He slapped on a grin from the outside without meaning
it, before he pushed the car into gear and set off at breakneck speed. ‘Mind you, I have to admit the brakes ain't so hot,' he remarked, deliberately swerving wide of the giant tramcar which bore down upon them.

Bertie Hill took a damp Woodbine out of his breast pocket, lit it and inhaled deeply. ‘Now, a Daimler,' he said slow and easy, ‘there's a beauty of a car, if you ask me.'

‘I was in a Daimler once,' Tommy told them. ‘She went like a bird, all the way down to Southend and back. Next thing I knew, the geezer what drove it was cooling his heels up the station at Union Street. Turns out this Lefty Harris had nicked the Daimler from Earl Somebody-or-other. Tries to lay it on me. I says I can't even drive the bleeding thing, so how the hell can I nick it? In the end, they had to let me go.'

Walter and Rob enjoyed the story. Tommy had a way of dissolving tension. He was always in a scrape from wheeling and dealing on the market, always one step ahead, but at the same time a strong family man who took home much of what he earned to his ma and pa. He kept just enough to socialize and get by. He had been the mainstay of the O'Hagans after Daisy's tragic death, reckoning he'd no time for the birds or for settling down.

‘Hey, Tommy, there's just one thing wrong with that,' Rob protested. ‘You can drive almost as good as me!'

‘But the coppers don't know that, do they? They take me out and put me behind the wheel of one of their Model Ts. I looks it all about like this, and takes hold of the handbrake. “Is this to turn the engine, or what?” I ask. And I let it go and we freewheel down the hill until the copper grabs hold of the wheel and slams the handbrake back on. “Just wait till I get my hands on that Lefty Harris!” he squeaks. He's gone as white as a sheet. They give Lefty six months in the Scrubs, no messing.'

‘And
did
you nick the Daimler?' Walter leaned back to listen to Tommy's reply. Rob had begun to edge the car into a side street not far from the ground.

Tommy looked at him, all wide-eyed innocence. ‘You know me, Walt!'

‘That's why I'm asking, Tommy, believe me!' Walter winked, and the subject was closed.

Rob parked the car. The four of them pulled their hats down and joined the trudge up the street towards the turnstiles.

Sadie stared down at the rain-sodden street. ‘Look at them poor blighters,' she said to Hettie. Two women, shawls over their heads, pulled a sack half-full of coal along the pavement, ‘I bet they've been picking by the railway.'

From the comfort of their living-room above the pub, Hettie and Sadie watched the women drag the sack. ‘A land fit for heroes,' Hettie remarked, sinking into the shadow of Giant Despair. With an effort she shook herself free. ‘I dunno, Sadie, there's a lot of work to do before we can afford to rest.' Picking up her bonnet and fixing it on her head, Hettie got ready for her long, busy shift at the Mission.

‘Anyone'd think you can do it all single-handed, the way you work yourself to the bone, Ett.' Sadie thought her sister looked worn out. ‘Them women struggling down there ain't your fault, you know. You shouldn't take on.'

Hettie tied the bow smartly under her chin. ‘They ain't my fault, but they are my sisters, Sadie, as sure as you are, and I can't let my sisters suffer in silence. We all gotta work and pray, and ask God to forgive our sins, until we reach the Heavenly gate.'

‘And I suppose I gotta watch
you
suffer in silence?' Sadie refused to let the point drop. She knew that Hettie worked herself to the point of collapse on behalf of the poor down-and-outs.

‘I ain't suffering,' Hettie protested. ‘I'm doing God's work.'

She looked so pained and surprised that Sadie regretted her sharp tone and went up to her. ‘I know you are,' she said gently. ‘And I'm just a horrible sinner, getting at you when I know you're a hundred times better than me!'

Hettie smiled. ‘Who's counting?'

‘I am. I'm a wicked woman, and don't I know it!'

‘How? How are you wicked?' Hettie linked arms and fondly stroked Sadie's wavy hair.

‘Pa thinks I am. The other day he asked Frances not to bring me no more lip-rouge from her chemist's shop because it ain't ladylike.' Poor Sadie had been kept under strict control since her escapade with Richie.

‘And what did Frances say?'

‘She told Pa not to be so old-hat. All the girls wear lip rouge these days.'

‘See.' Hettie smiled. ‘Frances has her head screwed on.' Of the four sisters, Frances was the one they looked up to. Even Duke stood in awe of her since she'd married Billy Wray, the widowed ex-newspaper vendor, and gone to live with him above the Workers' Education place in Commercial Street. ‘You ain't wicked just because you wear a touch of make-up. Same as the women who come into our shop; they ain't terrible vain things just because they want a dress to look nice in.'

‘But you don't know the half of it,' Sadie told her. Her one serious transgression, the luxurious, forbidden kiss was beginning to worm its way out of her conscience.

‘I know one thing.' Hettie glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘I'm gonna miss my tram if I don't get a move on.' She gave Sadie a quick smile. ‘Why not come to church with me and Ernie tomorrow?' Her hand was already on the doorknob.

Sadie half-nodded and smiled. ‘I'll think about it.'

But as soon as Hettie vanished downstairs, Sadie's brooding mood returned. Feeling the urge to shake herself free of it and make herself useful, in a pale shadow of Hettie's own missionary zeal, she decided to heat some soup and nip down to the depot with it. Rob and Walter would be glad of a warm lining to their stomachs on an afternoon like this. Quickly she set the pan to boil on the range. She put on her broad-brimmed grey hat to keep off the rain, and slipped into a matching wrap-around coat. Then she set the pan inside a linen teatowel at the base of her shopping-basket, tied the towel in a knot to secure the top of the pan, and set off on her errand.

Puddles barred her way when she reached the cinder-strewn yard
where Rob and Walter garaged their two cars. One of the Bullnoses stood safe inside, under the brick arch of the massive railway bridge. The other was missing; presumably out on a job. Carefully she picked her way across the yard, trying to shield her basket from the worst of the rain. ‘Rob?' she called as she peered inside towards the corner office. There was no sign of life. ‘Walter?' Cautiously she stepped inside.

Richie Palmer eased himself from under the stationary car and stood up. He'd recognized the voice and the ankles, and thought for a moment that if he stayed put, Sadie might well conclude there was no one there and turn right around. But he'd look a fool if she spotted him hiding, spanner in hand. So he got up to face her, watched her spin round at the dink of metal as he rapped the spanner on to the ground. This was a meeting he could well do without.

‘Where's Rob?' Sadie felt her throat go dry.

‘At the match. They both are.'

‘Oh.' This possibility had never occurred to her. She was irritated; even her good deeds turned against her. Richie was the last person she'd planned to bump into. ‘Are you sure? They never take a Saturday off.'

‘It's Derby County.'

She tilted her head back. ‘I brought them some soup.'

Her remark hung in the air. Richie looked steadily at Sadie, aware of how she'd avoided him since their night out together. It was clear that she wished the ground would swallow her. ‘I'll tell them you dropped by,' he said.