Paradise Court (18 page)

Without bothering with hat or coat, Jess flew out of the door and up the street to the drapery store.

Teddy Cooper sat back in his father's office chair, his feet up on the desk. The old man had gone off on the train to the woollen mill in Bradford where they bought most of the worsted cloth for the men's suits. He'd be away for at least three days. Meanwhile, Teddy enjoyed the luxury of driving the motor car and draining his father's drinks cupboard. With experienced foremen, the place more or less ran itself, leaving him free to flirt with the shop-girls and put in a token appearance every now and then in the workshops. Thick-skinned as he was, his unpopularity didn't dent his confidence; he strutted about the place in Mr Cooper's absence, from electrical goods into menswear, and up into household linens.

But when Jess burst into the office to confront him, even his self-satisfied smile faded. He was presented with a breathless, half-demented woman demanding to know what he'd done to Daisy O'Hagan; how she'd go to the police station and tell them all about his affair with poor Daisy if he didn't go himself. ‘How can you sit there and let someone else get the blame?' she shouted, beside herself. The whole street knows about you! Ain't it about time you owned up, you bleeding bastard!'

Teddy stood up and motioned one of the shopwomen who'd pursued Jess through the store out of the room. He advanced and
kicked the door shut. ‘Don't let my father hear you chucking insults like that around,' he said coolly. ‘Good job he ain't here.'

‘I don't care if he
is
here! If you ain't got the decency to own up when they nab the wrong person, I can call you any names I like!' She stood, gasping and dishevelled. ‘Go on then, tell me where you was when it happened!'

‘Ah!' Teddy rested on the edge of the big mahogany desk and fiddled with a glass paperweight. ‘So you think I'm Jack the Ripper, do you?'

His flippant crudeness shocked her into silence. She was suddenly aware of onlookers crowding round for a better view outside the glass partition.

‘Well, I'm sorry to disappoint you.' He put the cut-glass sphere on the palm of his hand and balanced it.

‘You would say that,' she faltered. As the heat of her anger began to cool, she grew aware of the futility of the confrontation.

‘I would, wouldn't I? Even if it was true, I wouldn't be on my knees confessing to you, would I? I'd be denying it even if you had
six
brothers locked up in Union Street.' He grinned at her surprise. ‘How do I know who you are? That's what you're thinking. You're the Parsons sister who went wrong, the black sheep. I know all about you, see. You push your pram along here on the way to the park. The girls here gossip about it, naturally.' He paused, circling behind her as he talked.

Jess drew herself together. She stared straight ahead. ‘I can still go to the coppers and tell them about you and Daisy. You'll have to tell them where you was that night, and you ain't exactly no angel as far as they're concerned neither.'

‘A nice speech, I'm sure.' Teddy drew up alongside her. His top lip curled into a sneer. One lock of fair hair had fallen over his forehead. ‘Again, I'm sorry to disappoint you.'

‘What d'you mean?'

‘The police have already paid me a visit. I had to give them an alibi, and that meant having to drop someone you know into a nasty hole.'

Jess took a deep breath. ‘Why? What alibi? You mean to say you was with someone when it happened?'

‘Certainly.' Teddy went back and settled on the desk. He tossed the paperweight and caught it with a small, slapping noise. ‘I met someone after I left the picture house. I've done my best to protect her of course, but the police insisted on knowing my whereabouts. I was obliged to give them her name.'

‘Who then?' Jess felt herself begin to shake, afraid of his answer.

Teddy enjoyed the cat-and-mouse game. He paused. Jess was one girl in the street he'd never had much to do with. She'd been away in service, but as he stood and looked at her now he saw her as an experienced, strong-minded woman, a cut above the ones he often went with. She had wonderful wavy hair and deep, dark eyes. Her skin was dark too, almost Italian-looking. ‘Are you sure you want me to tell you?'

‘Just say it!' Jess fended off his nasty look.

‘Well, as a matter of fact, it was Amy Ogden who I met up with.' He stared right into her eyes to study the effect of his words.

‘Liar!'

He laughed. ‘More insults. Why not go and ask her? Poor Amy will have to admit it, but she'll be in deep trouble with her ma. Her ma don't like me, you see.'

‘I will!' Jess turned and wrenched open the door. ‘I'll go and get the truth out of her, just you wait!'

Teddy watched her go. The little interlude had brightened up a dull day. Now he'd best get the women packed off home and begin to shut up shop. He went about it with a smile. Amy Ogden was his precious alibi. He enjoyed all the little ironies of that situation. It was a pity about Jess Parsons though. There was a good woman going to waste.

With a sinking heart, Jess went down the court to Amy Ogden's house and knocked on the door. Possibly Teddy Cooper was lying. She could cling on to that hope and have a word with Amy. Come to think of it, surely Amy would have had to mention this before now, especially with Dolly Ogden going on and on about Teddy
Cooper being the killer. She knocked again. Amy had better not try any silly games over this; Jess was determined to get at the truth.

Maurice Leigh took his time to answer the door. He had no friends in the area who would come visiting him here; the caller was bound to be for the Ogdens, but he didn't mind coming down to take a message. He opened the door to Jess Parsons.

‘Is Amy here, please?' Jess was thrown off her stride and backed off.

‘No, they're all out. Come in a minute.' Maurice had just finished shaving. He rolled his shirt-sleeves down his forearms. ‘Would you like to leave a message with me?'

Jess stepped over the threshold, looking suddenly dejected. ‘I don't know. If Amy ain't here, perhaps I'd best be off.'

‘Why, what's the trouble? Can I help?' The narrow corridor made it difficult to carry on a relaxed conversation. Maurice led the way to the kitchen, turning and holding out one arm in welcome.

Jess laughed self-consciously. ‘Ain't nobody can help if what I just heard is true.'

‘That right?' He stopped and waited for her to catch up, feeling her skirt brush against one leg. On impulse, he took her gently by the elbow. ‘Tell me about it.'

As if the effort of standing upright had suddenly overwhelmed her, Jess sank against him. She shook her head. ‘Ain't nothing I can do.'

Maurice folded both arms around her shoulders and stood there holding on to her. He realized she was in deep trouble, and he wanted to shield her from it if he could. Being near to her, feeling the soft hair at the nape of her neck, smelling the soap on her skin gave him pleasure. He kissed her cheek, then her mouth.

Jess returned his kiss, then drew back. His arms were locked around her so she turned her head sideways in confusion. As a girl she'd received boys' inexperienced kisses, and as a woman she'd borne a child. But she'd never clung to a kiss and desired it as she had this one.

‘What's wrong?' he murmured. ‘Don't you like me?'

She nodded, unable to trust her voice.

‘Well, then.' He stroked her hair, her smooth, slim back. ‘You don't know nothing about me,' she said plaintively. ‘It ain't right.'

‘What's to know?' He let her pull away; he knew not to rush her. His smile broke the mood. ‘Shall I tell Amy you called?'

‘Yes please.'

‘I will then.'

They stood facing each other in the run-down kitchen, until Jess finally turned away. ‘Thanks,' she said quietly.

‘My pleasure.' Maurice meant it. From the moment he set eyes on her, he knew Jess was special. Now he knew she liked him too. That was progress, he thought, as he went upstairs to get ready for work. Tomorrow, or the day after, he'd take things further; one step at a time.

Maurice's kiss had unsettled Jess more than she could say. In a flurry of confusion, she locked the episode away and tried to fix her mind back on her vow to help Ernie.

Later that evening, she decided to send Hettie down to the Ogdens' place to discover the truth of what Teddy Cooper had to say.

‘Get down there yourself, why don't you?' Florrie urged. ‘You started this thing, girl. You'd better finish it.'

Hettie hesitated by the door.

‘I'm tired, Auntie.' Jess bent her head over her sewing. ‘Hettie don't mind.'

‘I dare say she don't.' Florrie eyed her knowingly. ‘But it looks fishy to me. Who's down there that you don't want to bump into?'

‘No one!' Jess coloured up. She knew Maurice would be out at work by this time, but she was still keen to steer clear of the Ogden house for a bit. Memories of Maurice's embrace came crowding in on her again. She needed time to think. Not much chance of that with Florrie around, she thought.

‘Let's both go,' Hettie suggested. ‘Get a breath of fresh air. I can back you if Amy plays up. Come on.'

So they stepped downstairs together and went along the court arm in arm. Little Katie O'Hagan waved at them from the far end. Three men came out of her tenement doorway and staggered up to the pub; one of them Chalky White.

The women gave the men a curt hello. ‘Blimey, if he didn't have his mates to prop him up, he'd fell flat on his face, he would,' Hettie commented about Chalky.

‘Why, what's up?' Jess glanced back at the trio.

‘Drunk as a lord.'

‘He ain't.'

‘He is too. I don't like the look of him, Jess. I ain't seen him sober for weeks,' Hettie declared. ‘He ain't never out of our place these days.'

Jess too turned up her nose. ‘He's another one I ain't keen on. I don't know which one I hate the most; him or Teddy Cooper!' White's slouching walk got on her nerves, and she knew Robert and he had never seen eye to eye.

Hettie grinned and told her to hush before she knocked on Amy's door. ‘Mind you, what we've come here to say won't go down too well as it is!'

‘Are they in?'

‘They are. I can hear Dolly coming now. Hold on to your hat, girl.'

Jess stood, working out exactly what she wanted to say.

Dolly opened the door with a warm welcome. ‘Don't stand out there. It's drawing in cold of a night. Now, girls, sit and have a cup of tea with us.' Her sympathy for the family's plight was genuine. ‘Amy, put the kettle on. Let me get rid of these things.' She began to clear a space on the table, where piles of fawn stockings lay waiting to be finished off. She'd taken in more outwork since her dismissal from Coopers' and had to work every waking hour to make ends meet.

‘It's Amy we come to see,' Jess said quietly. She blushed and looked across at Hettie.

‘Best make short work of this,' Hettie went on. ‘Can you cope with a bit of a shock, Dolly?'

The stout woman stood uneasily in the middle of the bare room. ‘You know me,' she said, trying to smile. ‘I take it this ain't a social call, then?'

Amy, sensing that she would have some awkward explaining to do, bent over the hob, her face averted.

‘Look here, Amy,' Jess began again. ‘I been talking to Teddy Cooper this afternoon, and he told me where he was when Daisy
went and got herself bumped off.' She looked up anxiously at Dolly, who'd bridled.

‘So?' Amy made a feeble attempt to brazen it out. ‘What's it to do with me?'

‘Everything, according to him. He says we can count him out of it, Dolly. He can't have killed Daisy.' Jess hoped Amy would come clean. Things were getting very strained. But there was silence from her corner.

‘Why's that, then?' Dolly had trumpeted the theory about the detested boss's son for and wide. But her skin began to crawl with a dreadful realization. ‘Amy, come over here, will you. Leave that bleeding kettle alone and come and do like I tell you!'

‘Hang on, just hear what Jess wants to say,' Hettie interrupted.

‘Teddy Cooper told me he was with you that night, Amy. He says you're his alibi.' Jess wished herself anywhere else in the world, rather than have to look Dolly in the face right now. She saw Amy go sullen.

‘Is he right?' Dolly asked.

Amy would have lied if she thought she could pull it off. But she was trapped. If she denied it, she could keep her mother off her back, but the Parsons sisters would go and land Teddy right in it, and she was back to the old bind. Who would the police believe; her or Teddy Cooper? If she confessed, on the other hand, Doily would kill her. So she stood in silence, waiting for the storm to break.

Dolly made a lunge for her. ‘I'll get this out of you if I have to shake it out!' she cried. Humiliation came with a sharp sting. She'd be a laughing stock when this got out. She seized Amy by both elbows and shook her hard. ‘Was you with him, or not? Yes or no? Yes or no?'

‘Yes!'

‘Hold on, Dolly!' Hettie rushed forward to restrain her. The older woman took some pulling off. Amy crashed back against a chair and sat on it, sobbing.

But her mother darted forward again and slapped her cheek.
‘Bloody little fool!' she cried. ‘Dirty, disgusting, bloody little fool! How could you?'

Amy whimpered. ‘Look what you done!' she hissed at Jess.

‘Jess ain't done nothing.' Dolly pulled herself up, her fingers still tingling. But she was back in control. ‘It's you, girl! I lost my bleeding job over you! We walked out of Coopers' with our heads up after what he done to you. Stuff their bleeding jobs! And what do you do? You let him get back in with you. First you yell and scream at me and your pa for not going up to the coppers with it, then you sneak off behind our backs and get back in with him again! Tell me why, girl, ‘cos I don't understand you. The man's a monster, ain't he?' She breathed heavily, appealing to Jess and Hettie in her last remark.

Hettie bent over Amy's chair. The girl had slumped forward, head on her knees, arms over her head. ‘Tell your ma why you went off with him, and why you never said nothing,' she whispered.

‘I just went up to the shop ‘cos I wanted to try and put a bit of pressure on him.' Through her tears, Amy thought she could make them understand. The fight had brought her hair down and pulled her blouse loose at the back. ‘I went to tell him I could still go to the coppers if I liked!'

‘What for?' Hettie was horrified. You couldn't go messing Teddy Cooper around like that.

Amy sat up straight. ‘I thought I could get some cash out of him.'

‘Bleeding blackmail!' Dolly's mouth hung open in disbelief.

‘And did he give you any?' Hettie handed Amy a handkerchief.

‘He gave me ten shillings. He weren't nasty to me neither. He said not to worry, he'd get me another job before too long, if I was nice to him and never went up to the police.'

‘Oh, Amy!' Jess stood, holding on to Dolly, who still quivered from head to foot. ‘You never believed him?'

Amy gave a miserable shrug. ‘He was nice to me, like he was at first, I said I'd meet up with him again that night, that's all. It didn't mean nothing, and I thought he'd be different with me this time.'

‘And was he?' Jess kept a firm hold of Dolly.

Amy's full tragedy came tumbling out. ‘No, he weren't! I didn't even get to go to the picture house with him this time. He met up with me outside Coopers', and we went up to the office like before.' She sobbed into the handkerchief.

‘Everything
just like before?' Dolly asked.

Amy nodded. She looked up through bleary eyes. ‘But I couldn't tell no one about it, could I? Especially when Daisy went and got herself killed, and, Ma, you went on and on about it being Teddy! What was I meant to say?'

‘And have you seen him since?' Hettie asked. She put her arm around Amy's shoulder, thinking how young she looked for her seventeen or eighteen years.

Amy sniffed. ‘He don't want to know me. He sent me packing and he was laughing at me, saying I might cry rape once but not twice, and anyway they'd soon see what sort of a slut I was. He warned me to stay away or he'd have me thrown in gaol as a common prostitute. That's what he said.' The memory sent her off into fresh wails of misery.

Dolly stood there stunned. ‘I ain't dragged you up to go off and do this kind of thing,' she whispered. ‘I lost my bleeding job over you!'

Amy sobbed harder. ‘Oh, Ma, why didn't we go up to the police first off?'

Dolly steadied herself against Jess. ‘Your Pa said why not. They'd never have believed us.'

Jess and Hettie worked hard to pull them round after the first shock had worn off. They talked about Florrie arriving out of the blue to lend a hand, and Frances getting hold of the very best advice for Ernie through a friend of hers. If they all pulled together they were sure they could get him out. ‘But we gotta admit Teddy Cooper's out of the picture now,' Jess said to Dolly out on her front doorstep again. ‘Try not to be too hard on the girl, if you can help it.'

The sisters walked back up the court. They felt down, in spite of their efforts to look on the bright side. The next day, the second
of Ernie's imprisonment, Frances had arranged a visiting order to go and see their brother. They'd keep themselves busy by making up a food parcel and helping Duke in the bar. The old man was determined to carry on business as usual, but he moved like an automaton, drifting from dawn to dusk.

Wormwood Scrubs was a loathsome place. The warders made visitors queue up and answer to the number belonging to the inmate they had come to see. ‘Janeki 743, Madigan 621, Parsons 684.'

Terrified, Frances walked in single file along the inside of the perimeter wall, which rose twenty feet high to their left. Built like a fortress, black with age and soot, the prison must deaden the spirit of whoever set foot inside its iron doors and metal landings. She was angry and astonished that men lived here like caged beasts. Looking out of a window, she saw prisoners shuffling the narrow triangular path in the exercise yard, heads bowed and shaven. She saw their faces at the door hatches, gaunt and brutal. Doors clanged, footsteps echoed, the stench of boiled food sickened.

All eyes followed the female visitors along the landings, drilling holes into their backs, resentful of their freedom. Frances felt faint, but she clutched Ernie's food parcel and marched on behind the warder. At last he stopped and turned the key of cell number 684.

‘This your first visit?' he asked, holding the door ajar.

She nodded

‘It ain't that bad,' he reassured her. ‘Not when you get used to it.'

Then he locked her in with Ernie, telling her they had half an hour. Ernie rose from his iron bed and came blindly towards her, reaching out his arms. She cried as she hugged him, then broke into questions: did he have enough to eat? Was he warm enough? Had they treated him well? She opened up the food parcel, happy to see him tuck into some left-over veal pie. She told him to expect to see a Mr Sewell, a good man who would help explain things to the judge in court. Ernie must tell Mr Sewell everything he could recall about that night. ‘Think long and hard before you answer him, Ern. A lot will depend on exactly what you remember.'

He nodded faithfully.

‘Try to think who you saw, and where and when. Or think, did you hear any noises from inside? How long did you stand waiting outside the stage door? Mr Sewell will ask you them sort of questions, Ern, so you gotta be clear in your own mind.'

But Ernie was so pleased to see her, he just sat and smiled and nodded, and he cried silently when it was time for her to go. She got up and leaned over the table to kiss him.

‘We'll look after you, Ern,' she promised. ‘But it's gonna take a bit of time, so you just got to hang on here.'

‘Don't have much choice, do he?' the warder said as he beckoned her out of the cell. He eased the giant key in the lock.

Shocked to the core, Frances followed him down the metal staircases, under brick arches, out through the fortress-like gate. By the time she'd travelled the streets back to Southwark, she'd come to, but when Billy Wray intercepted her on Duke Street with the offer of a cup of coffee in Henshaw's, she was glad to accept. ‘You look done in,' he told her. They settled in a dark corner of the eating-house, away from the window, while Bea Henshaw went for their order.

‘I got to write to Robert tonight and tell him about Ernie,' she said faintly. ‘I put it off yesterday, and I still ain't looking forward to doing it.'

‘No, and there ain't nothing he can do about it in his position. Has he been shipped out to France yet?'

Frances shook her head. ‘No. He ought to be told what's going on back here though, don't you think?'

Billy nodded. ‘Even if it is a bit hard on him. But I should think the police will be in touch with him pretty soon. I'd get a move on and write that letter if I was you. It's better if he hears the news from family in my opinion.'

‘Only, I think if Robert was here Ernie would have a better chance, and I'm afraid Rob might think so too. I just hope he don't go and do nothing stupid.'

‘Go AWOL? No, you gotta write and explain we're doing everything we can.' He settled back in his seat, watching with
concern as Frances sipped her coffee. ‘How do you feel now? You didn't half give me a fright when I saw you step off that tram. You nearly went straight under the wheels of a car, not looking where you was going.'

‘That prison's a terrible place, Billy.' Frances stared down at the linen tablecloth. ‘I never expected it to be that bad.'

‘I fixed up for Mr Sewell to visit him tomorrow morning. That'll help keep his chin up.' If Billy Wray could have moved a mountain for Frances Parsons, he would have done. He admired her determined way. His own wife, Ada, had always been a passive sort, content to stay at home. Now, with her illness, she leaned on him a lot. Billy was a devoted husband, but he felt as he sat watching Frances that marriage was his own sort of prison. Then he regretted thinking it. If Frances had been less good-looking, he'd have things more under control. The truth was, he liked her precise, near movements, and the graceful turn of her dark head.