Lovers Meeting (3 page)

Reuben Garbutt might easily have seen the Langleys when they entered the Albert Dock or left it because he plied his trade hanging around the dock gates, but he had missed them. Reuben was the only son of Elisha Garbutt, who had been sacked by William Langley for theft. When David and Peggy carried Josie off the
Blackhill
, Reuben and his gang were following a sailor.

The young Garbutt was sixteen years old while most of his gang were a year or two older, but he led by strength of personality, example – and fear. They wore ragged jackets and trousers, greasy caps or battered bowler hats. Some smoked stubby clay pipes. The sailor was dressed in an old blue reefer jacket and canvas trousers. He had been paid and he was drunk.

Reuben was tall for his age, broad and muscular with dark, piercing eyes. In the past year the precocious boy had grown into a young adult. He had learned that he was attractive to some women and was learning how to use that charm. But not today. He strolled close behind the sailor as he staggered through the streets, the six members of the gang spaced out over a score of yards following their leader. He waited with the confidence of experience for his opportunity and seized it when it came. The sailor turned into a street narrower than the rest – and empty. Reuben took two long strides to bring him up on the heels of his prey and with a flick of one booted foot he tapped the sailor’s ankles so that he tripped and fell. Reuben was on the man’s back before he sprawled his length, shoving his face down into the dirt of the street. The rest of the gang came running up as the sailor tried to fight and yell. Reuben cut off the cry with a hand around the man’s throat and the others helped to pin him down. They went through his pockets, found his money and a watch, and one of them tied his ankles with a length of rope. Then they were up and running as a woman appeared at her door and shouted, ‘’Ere! What are you lot doin’?’

‘A’right! This’ll do!’ Reuben snarled the command and halted his band after running for a minute and rounding half a dozen corners. They stood in a dark alley and Reuben took off his cap, held it out and demanded, ‘Cough up!’ They all tossed into the cap what they had stolen from the hapless sailor. Reuben counted the coins in the cap and remained with his head bent, staring down into it for some seconds. Then he looked up and said softly, ‘I saw him change a sovereign in the pub. I could tell you to a penny what he had in his pocket. Somebody’s holding back.’ His gaze, dark eyes staring, travelled around the circle of faces, looking into the eyes of each of them in turn. He stopped at one, a skinny youth with a spotted face. Reuben said, ‘You’re a cheating rat, Sepp.’ He did not raise his voice but its tone and his glare were sufficient. Sepp hurriedly dug into his pocket, pulled out more coins and threw them into the cap.

Reuben dismissed him with a jerk of the head towards the mouth of the alley. Sepp whined, ‘What about my cut?’

‘You’ll get your cut if you try that again – right across your throat!’ Reuben held him with the terrible glare and Sepp backed off, turned and ran. Reuben showed his teeth in a grin. That was another skill he had learned in the past year: how to terrify.

He shared out the money in the cap, though his share was bigger than the others and he pocketed the watch. No one objected. His partners in crime then headed for a favourite pub, but Reuben set out for what passed for his home.

This was a single crowded room in a tenement. He climbed several flights of stairs in darkness to reach it, his boots clumping hollowly on the wooden treads. He found his mother and his four sisters, all younger than he, sitting on stools around the small fire that burned in the grate. There was a table, bare save for a crust of bread and a knife. On the floor lay two mattresses. Reuben slept on one of them, the four girls on the other. His father lay in a corner on the only bed. He alternately mumbled, coughed, raved and gasped for breath.

Reuben shoved through the half-circle formed by his mother and the girls to stand in front of the fire. He asked, ‘How is he?’

His mother, sallow and dark-haired, shrugged. ‘Still hanging on.’ Her dress, like those of the girls, was old and greasy. She and her daughters stared listlessly into the fire. But then she looked up and asked, ‘D’ye get any money?’

Reuben reached into his pocket, pulled out some coins and dropped them in his mother’s lap. She fingered them eagerly, counting. Reuben knew how much there was and how much remained in his pocket. He warned, ‘Don’t spend it all on gin.’ Then he shoved out of the ring around the fire and went to stand by his father’s bedside.

The old man was skeletal, the skin drawn tight over his skull, his wispy beard tangled. His eyes were glazed and shifted wildly. When Elisha Garbutt was dismissed by William Langley he had already spent the money he had stolen and had saved nothing. The sale of the furniture in the house he rented in Sunderland had paid for him and his family to travel to Liverpool where he hoped to find work. Those hopes were soon dashed; without a reference he could get only badly paid menial work and little of that. Now he was at the end of a long year of starvation, illness and despair.

Reuben listened to the old man’s mumblings but for most of the time they were incomprehensible. Only now and again did a few words come through clearly enough to be understood: ‘… Langley … damned Langleys … beggared me … Langley … damn them to hell!’ Finally Reuben could stand no more, turned and almost ran from the room. He strode the streets, not mourning but raging. He was sure who was to blame for the downfall of his father and hence his family.

When Elisha Garbutt had managed the Langley shipyard he and his family had lived comfortably, members of a middle-class élite, and looked down on the people who served them. None more so than Reuben, who had strutted at his father’s side, disdainful of the common workmen. He had furtively mauled the young girls who worked in the Garbutt house and counted them lucky to have the experience. He had looked forward confidently to a lifetime of full pockets come easily. At the same time he envied the Langleys as owners of the yard and believed his father really did all the work. Then William Langley had sacked Elisha and Reuben found himself a penniless outcast, humiliated, jeered at by the girls he had lorded it over. During the past year his hatred of William Langley had built upon itself and now it had crystallised into a determination to be avenged.

He returned to the tenement as the dawn was breaking and he heard the wailing as he climbed the stairs. He knew what it meant and did not need his mother to tell him as he pushed in through the door, ‘He’s dead!’ The dirty blanket was pulled up over Elisha Garbutt’s face. Reuben stood over the body, silent, his head bowed, but not in prayer. Inside he was cursing the Langleys, man, woman and child, and swearing to make an end of all of them – one day. He flung himself out of the room again, shoving his mother and sisters out of the way.

Garbutt’s gang was not the only one following his villainous trade. Another pack of four, dirty and shifty eyed, saw David Langley on his way to the shipping agents. His route took him through a maze of streets where all the houses seemed to be tenements. They teemed with grubby children and harassed women. He wound his way through them and the four skulked after him. But then, thinking he saw a short cut, he turned into an alley that led to a court that was dark even in the light of day. Here there was not a soul to be seen and here the gang struck. They spread out and one overtook David and swung round in front of him. He demanded hoarsely, black and stained teeth showing through his straggly beard, ‘Cough up!’ He held out one hand open, palm up, while the other pulled a short iron bar from his pocket.

David checked for a second, startled, but then his reaction was automatic and he lashed out. His fist struck the other full in the face and he staggered back, but then his partners closed in from each side and behind. One locked his hands round David’s neck and the other two seized his arms. He struggled desperately and the panting, cursing group staggered about in the gloom of the court. The bearded one wielding the iron bar stepped in again but took David’s boot on his shin and yelped with pain and rage. ‘You bastard!’ And he struck out with his weapon.

David’s jaw dropped as the club came down on his head. He slumped among his captors. For a second they held him up, then they let him go and he crumpled and fell in the dirt.

One of them cursed, ‘You mad bugger! You’ve killed him!’

No one argued; the result of that fearful blow was obvious. Another muttered, ‘You could swing for this.’

But the bearded killer whined, ‘We’re all in it together!’ Then he shoved the iron bar in his pocket and ran, the others racing after him.

When Reuben passed that way an hour later there was a policeman beside the blanket-covered corpse. An ambulance with its team of two sweating horses stood nearby. A crowd surrounded them, all talking about the young man who had been killed. Reuben stood back and listened.

‘Bloody murder! … Smashed his head open! … He was dead when they found him so they could ha’ walked them poor horses ’stead o’ whipping ’em along here at a gallop … could ha’ been you or me …’

He shrugged – the man meant nothing to him – and went up to the room. He joined his mother and sisters, all of them drunk now, and took a bottle from one of them. He drank and coughed as the raw spirit caught at his throat, but slowly his temper improved. He consoled himself that he would not have to put up with them for much longer. He was making far more money than he could have done by working. He took the lion’s share of everything the gang stole and he saw to it that they worked hard at it. He knew he had the power to charm or terrify and that those gifts would make him rich.

He told himself that must come first. He would wreak his revenge on William and all the Langleys but in his own good time. He knew where to find them.

‘You are Mrs Langley, wife of Mr David Langley?’ A policeman brought the news. He stood blue and burly in the dim hallway of the boarding house with its aspidistra on a table and its smell of boiled cabbage. Peggy Langley was nervous, standing in his shadow with little Josie holding to her skirt, then distraught with grief and shock when he told her awkwardly that David was dead. She knew she had to control herself for the sake of the child at her side and at first there was disbelief. Hadn’t she kissed David, and seen him saunter off, only an hour or so ago? But then the policeman produced David’s wallet and notebook, in which he had written the address of the boarding house. So she knew it was true.

Josie asked in a whisper, afraid of the big policeman, ‘What’s the matter, Mam?’ The tears rolled down Peggy’s cheeks, and now Mrs Entwistle came waddling to comfort her, with Herbert Entwistle tutting and shaking his head mournfully in the background. Peggy lifted Josie and held the child to her breast, let the older woman lead her to the parlour while Herbert fetched a nip of brandy. She was glad of any sympathy and comfort at that time. She could give little to Josie who could not understand why her father would never come back to her, and cried.

Herbert Entwistle handed Peggy the brandy and assured her, smirking, ‘We’ll help all we can, m’dear. You can depend on us.’ He arranged for an undertaker, who slipped Herbert a commission. And the evening before the funeral Peggy, deathly pale in her black ‘widow’s weeds’ and with hands shaking still, asked Herbert, ‘May I speak to you in private, Mr Entwistle?’

He bobbed his head, expansively granting a favour now. He knew there was little money to be had out of Peggy Langley. ‘O’ course. Come into the office.’

The office, where Mrs Entwistle kept her records, was little bigger than a cupboard. There was a small table and two straight-backed chairs. They sat and Herbert waited while Peggy twisted her wisp of a handkerchief into knots, until he prompted impatiently, ‘What is it, then?’

Peggy admitted, ‘Will you write a letter for me, please?’ Like many more, she was illiterate. Unlike many, she felt it keenly.

Herbert’s sense of superiority made him confident. ‘O’ course I will.’ He coughed, then went on apologetically, ‘Trouble is, I have to charge.’ He ended vaguely, ‘Professional rules, y’know.’

Peggy, still embarrassed, said quickly, ‘Oh, aye.’

Herbert looked in the drawer under the table and found some sheets of writing paper, a pen and a bottle of ink. The nib was rusted but he scraped it clean with a thumbnail and wiped it on the leg of his trousers. Then he dipped the pen in the ink and poised it over the paper with a flourish. ‘Who is the letter to?’

‘Mr William Langley …’

The letter Peggy dictated hesitantly was simple and short. It informed William of the death of his son, David, expressed Peggy’s sympathy and her own grief and concluded, ‘Yours sincerely, Peggy Langley.’

Herbert addressed the envelope and said, ‘There y’are, ma’am.’ He ventured, ‘That’ll be sixpence.’ And added quickly as Peggy hesitated, ‘That’s for postage as well.’ So Peggy paid him and he ushered her out, assuring her, ‘You can leave it to me, ma’am, don’t you worry.’ Then he burnt the letter in the kitchen fire and pocketed the money.

The funeral was in the morning. There was a cold wind numbing their faces and a spit of rain as the few mourners gathered around the coffin with the clergyman officiating. The widow was in black with a veil, and the child stood by her. Josie was very straight in the back and her white face was turned up to look at her mother. That showed because everyone else looked down at the grass and clay of the churchyard. The only other mourners were the Entwistles, Herbert carefully long-faced and his wife dabbing at tears caused by grief – or the wind.

They all rode back to the boarding house in the solitary cab. Josie still could not comprehend the disappearance of her father, was bewildered and unhappy. She hated the Entwistles, the boarding house, the cemetery and the cab. She whispered to her mother, who sat clutching a handkerchief, ‘Are we going to America now, Mam?’

Peggy shook her head. ‘No. We’re getting on a train to London.’

‘Is that like America?’

‘Better. You’ll see.’ But Peggy had no such confidence.