After Hours (7 page)

Her heart and soul were with the Army, however, and at first she gave him little encouragement. Then, almost passively, she began to accept his persistent attention. Duke had acknowledged Annie's point of view. But, ‘He'll do for me,' he said, ‘now that Joxer's slung his hook.' For more than three years George had grafted and quietly impressed.

‘And she won't say nothing to Sadie?' Frances enquired, still wondering about Hettie's troubles. She prepared to brave the wet street.

Rob tossed his head.

‘I take it that's a “no”?'

He followed her into the rain. They shifted as quick as they could into the front porch. ‘Sadie ain't listening to no one at present,' he said in disgust.

Frances braced herself and pushed open the door. Annie, busy at the bar, waved noisily. Duke looked up, pleased by the rare visit from his eldest daughter. She was thirty-nine, with a sensible marriage under her belt and a good job at Boots, and he felt proud of her if a little distant. He still didn't hold with her opinions, which were too modern for his taste, though since women had got the vote, he'd noticed she'd quietened down a good deal. Still, there was something aloof about her; she meant well, put her husband and family at the top of her list of priorities, but she lacked the common touch. ‘One look from her would freeze a man's beer in its pint pot,' was Arthur Ogden's way of putting it.

Frances went upstairs ahead of Rob, only pausing to shake the rain from her jacket and hang it up. From the landing she heard the telephone ring, and Sadie's voice as she answered it. Something made her hesitate.

‘Ett, is that you?' she heard Sadie ask. ‘Calm down, Ett. Don't get worked up. It ain't like you . . . Yes, I can hear. But are you sure? . . . Yes, I think I heard Frances come upstairs just now. Hang on a tick, Ett. Don't go away. I'll go get Frances for you.'

Slowly Frances turned the handle and went in. She looked at Sadie's pale, shocked face, saw her standing holding the telephone mouthpiece out towards her. She went and took it from her.

‘Oh, Frances!' Sadie cried. ‘Ett's here, and she's in a fix. She's at the Mission and she says Willie Wiggin has just turned up!'

‘Annie's old husband?' Frances held the phone to her ear in disbelief. Everyone in the court knew the story of how Annie had been deserted by Wiggjn who'd gone off to sea and eventually been declared missing, presumed dead. Ett's voice sobbed along the wire, while Sadie made a grab for her arm, pleading over Ett's incoherent tears. ‘Tell her there's some mistake, Frances! Tell her it's just some mad old drunk. It can't be Wiggin. It can't be!'

By the time Frances and Sadie arrived at the Bear Lane Mission, Hettie had managed to calm down. She was standing at a long trestle-table doling out soup and bread, quakerish in her navy-blue uniform. She looked tense, but under control. Her two sisters signalled they would wait by the refectory door until the soup queue was served. Hettie nodded and wielded the big metal ladle, though the smell of potato and mutton from the steaming pot was as much as she could stomach. Doggedly she worked on, dealing kindly with the row of shuffling, dejected tramps.

‘Oh my God!' Sadie breathed. It was her first view inside the Mission, and it struck her as a picture of hell. The refectory was a long, bare room with arching roof beams and high, narrow windows. Tables were set out in rows along the length of the room, and hunched shapes huddled over their meagre rations.

These men, segregated from the women and children, were clothed in rags. They sat to eat, wrapped in old trenchcoats tied around with sacking, padded out with newspapers. Bundles of rags perched on the benches beside them; they were reluctant to be parted from one scrap of their belongings. Their feet, under the bare wooden table, were shod in old, misshapen boots, stuffed with paper that was worn to a waterlogged pulp. Many were caked in mud. They scoured their empty enamelled bowls with crusts or dirty fingers, chewing with toothless gums. Their faces were caved in by poverty; unshaven, shadowy, suspicious.

‘They're the lucky ones,' Frances reminded her sister. ‘At least they got a bed for the night.'

Sadie looked on in horror, her gaze flicking from one face to the next, praying that this wasn't the man claiming to be Wiggin; or the next, or the next.

At last Hettie finished her work, wiped her hands on a linen towel and came across the hall. She was composed, pausing when an inmate stuck out his hand to accost her and accuse her loudly of some uncommitted crime. ‘It's a crying shame!' the old man shouted. ‘So it is. It's a shame, and I want something done about it!'

Hettie bent to soothe him, promised that everything would be all right if he took his empty bowl to the hatch and picked up his bed ticket for a good night's sleep. She patted his hand until he released her and she could go on her way. She woke another man, fast asleep at the table, and helped him to his feet, not flinching at the sight of a livid, distorting burn that scarred one side of his face.

Sadie came forward almost in tears. To her, Hettie was an angel. She could solve everything, find a way through for these hopeless cases. She would be able to dissolve away this small problem over Wiggin. ‘Hello, Ett.' Sadie gave her a brave smile, aware that Frances had come up quietly beside her.

‘We came as quick as we could,' Frances said. ‘Where is he? Do you want us to try and get some sense out of him?'

Hettie nodded. She led the way out of the refectory, down a long cream and brown corridor towards the men's sleeping quarters. The dormitories, well aired, with rows of bunks to either side, were a step up from the old workhouses, but offered few luxuries. A warm blanket, a promise of breakfast in return for a chore successfully carried out, was what persuaded the homeless to stay on after their spartan suppers. Included in the bargain was a close of hymn-singing and allelujahs, which most considered a price worth paying in return for refuge from the elements.

Hettie turned right, up a narrow flight of stone stairs. The thing is, he keeps coming back regular as clockwork, every Saturday night,' She spoke quietly over her shoulder to her two sisters. ‘First off, I hoped it'd be just the once. They drift off and we never slap
eyes on them again, some of them. But he came back the next week, I think it was the last Saturday in November, and I hoped to goodness he'd change the tune and stop going on about this woman called Annie. It was a load of rubbish mostly, but it put the wind up me.'

Frances listened carefully. The upper storey of the Mission contained more men's dormitories. Glancing to either side, she could see barrack-like rooms, each of which gave beds to thirty or forty men. ‘Just “Annie”? Is that all?' She grasped at a straw. After all, there were hundreds of Annies round here, lots of room for Hettie to have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

‘At first, yes. I had to help him to bed, he was so drunk. He moaned the name “Annie” over and over, then it was “Paradise Court”. He held on to my arm. He told me he'd left his Annie down the court and gone away to sea. But now he'd come back to find her.' Hettie stopped and turned helplessly. ‘I prayed hard, Fran. And God forgive me, I prayed for him to go away and never come back! I was glad when he went the next morning, poor old sinner. And I can't tell you how much I dreaded seeing him come through them doors again!'

‘But he's here now?' A deadening feeling had seeped into Frances that the old tramp's story might indeed be true, and that here was someone who could turn up out of the blue after twenty-odd years and set their lives in turmoil. Her voice flattened out into a monotone, jerking between her narrowed lips.

Hettie breathed in sharply. ‘I was in Reception earlier on, helping the major with admissions. The major calls out names and issues blankets, I write down the name and give each man a number for his bed ticket. “Wiggin,” the major says. It comes over loud and clear, the first time I've heard it. My hand can hardly write it down for shaking. I look up and see he's back right enough. And now I've got his last name and a face to put it to.'

‘So you telephoned us? It's all right, Ett, you did the right thing. We'll help you sort this out if we can.' Frances managed to control her fears and take charge. ‘Show us where he is and let's see what we can do.'

‘It's Annie and Pa I'm worried about,' Hettie whispered, leading the way into a dormitory. ‘Whatever'll we do, Fran?'

Frances gave her a brief shake of the head. The three women went in at last, and two of them being in civvies attracted a certain amount of attention. Eyes swivelled in their direction from the bunks and from groups of men huddled by radiators. ‘Oo-er!' came the old-fashioned call from shrivelled, cracked lips. A cackle went, up, fuelled by Sadie's obvious blushes. Then a lone baritone voice struck up into the sudden silence.

You are the honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee,
I'd like to sip the honey from those red lips, you see
...'

Sadie shuddered and forced herself to walk on.

‘This ain't the place for the ladies to kip,' another, rougher voice called out. ‘You missed your way, I think!' His laugh turned into a hoarse cough.

‘Ain't we the lucky ones?' someone else cried. ‘Good tommy in our bellies and fine lady visitors!' His wild eyes stayed riveted on Sadie's fashionable short skirt.

‘Nah!' His companion from the bunk above cut in. ‘They ain't no fine ladies. They're soul-snatchers, just like the rest!' He sneered and spat on to the floor, before rolling over and pulling the blanket over his head.

Hettie, used to the name-calling, went right down the central aisle, reading off the number on the end of each bed. But when she came to the one supposedly occupied by the man who called himself Wiggin – number 407 – she came to a sudden halt.

‘Is this it?' Frances had followed close on her heels. She stared at the empty bed, the blanket thrown to one side.

‘Where is he?' Sadie panicked more at the idea that the man was lost than at the previously dreaded idea of having to confront him. He might drift back on to the streets, find his way down to Paradise Court before they could check his story.

‘You looking for the old Jack Tar?' The man with the decent baritone voice jumped up from his bottom bunk and approached
them. He was among the most sober and alert of the men, ready for a good mystery. ‘He jumped ship.' He smiled, eyeing the three women in a lively way. ‘You should've seen him. He was punching the air and shadow-boxing like the devil. Then he stands up on the edge of the bedstead. Blimey, I thought he was a goner. He topples forward and crashes down, then he rolls over and makes for that door on his hands and knees. Gone. Man overboard.' He winked at Sadie. ‘I don't like these soul-snatchers and their jingle-jangle music no more than the next man. But I reckon I have to put up with it unless I want another wet night under the arches. That's the way it is. But not that old bag of bones. I reckon he came to just enough to see where he'd landed up, and the idea of all that song and prayer at five in the morning was too much for him. So he hopped the wag. And who can blame him?' He glanced from Sadie to Frances, then to Hettie, trying to make her rise to his bait.

Sadie had to back off from the reek of the man's breath, while Frances went to look through the far door leading into another dimly lit corridor. ‘You mean he went this way?' she asked.

The sober man, standing upright, with his hands casually in his trouser pockets, nodded.

‘How long since?' Hettie spoke sternly.

‘Five minutes.' The man's cocky smile faded.

‘Where does this lead?' Frances asked Hettie. The three of them had made their way from the bleak dormitory on to the darkened landing.

‘Down some back stairs to the refectory,' Hettie reported. The cackle of catcalls and insults had begun again as the men's insolent cheerleader recovered his nerve and set up his tune of ‘Honeysuckle' once more.

Sadie shut the door behind her. ‘Let's be quick,' she said. ‘Maybe we can catch him up.' She darted down the stairs; it was vital to get hold of this old tramp before he could spread his wild story.

But down in the refectory, an adjutant stood on a raised platform, praying for the batch of souls who'd just partaken of the skilly and hard rolls. Fifty or sixty men bowed their heads, more likely
in sleep than prayer, as the Army preacher began his speech of salvation: ‘Poor as you are, hungry and ragged as you are, be sure that you will feast in Paradise. No matter how you starve and suffer here, you will rest one day at God's heavenly feet. Pray with us, dear brothers, that the path may not be long and weary, that we may feast on His Host and pray for His forgiveness . . .'

Anxiously, Sadie, Frances and Hettie scanned the rows of bowed heads. At last Hettie had to admit that she recognized none of the captive audience. ‘No,' she signalled, retreating from the hall.

‘Where's he got to?' Sadie frowned. She looked all about.

‘What'll we do now?' Frances was the one to think ahead. They must talk face to face with the man before they could frame a real plan of action.

‘My bet is he won't get far,' Hettie told them. ‘He ain't strong. I don't see how his legs could carry him all the way up to the court, even if he could find his way at this time of night.' They stood in the churchlike entrance, looking out at the pale faces pressed against the window; the men who'd arrived too late for shelter. ‘Leastways, he ain't managed it up till now.'

Sadie nodded in relief, but Frances shook her head impatiently. ‘We're jumping way ahead of ourselves,' she told them. ‘We're supposing things before we know they're true. How do we know for sure this
is
Annie's old husband? He's given Hettie a load of gibberish, he's got a couple of names right. But who's to say he is who he claims he is? No, we gotta take this one step at a time.'