Paradise Court (20 page)

‘Oh!' Florrie had gone purple with helpless rage. Small, strangled noises were emitted from her throat, the scarlet silk flowers in her hair trembled uncontrollably. ‘Oh, I ain't feeling well,' she whispered to Arthur, clutching at her bodice. And she retired upstairs hurt.

Annie looked down her nose after her. ‘Serve her right.'

‘But it ain't true, is it?' Arthur wanted to know. He'd never fancied Florrie Searles as deserted wife material.

‘Every word is God's honest truth,' Annie insisted with utter sincerity.

Arthur took his half-empty glass and went off to chat with Duke. ‘All over a pair of boots,' he ruminated, eyeing the shapeless offending articles on Annie's feet. ‘I dunno, women fall out over some bleeding stupid things once their dander's up.'

Arthur spoke from bitter experience. His house echoed with the small artillery fire between mother and daughter ever since Dolly had found out how badly Amy had let her down. She picked fault with the way the girl sat, ate and breathed. She criticized her dress, her manner, her laziness in not finding work. The more she went on, the more Amy dug in her stubborn heels. She didn't get out of bed until eleven, then spent an hour or more at her bedroom mirror. Perhaps she'd meet up with her old mates from Coopers' at dinner time, then she'd walk on alone up to other department stores to study the goods which she had no means of affording. Evenings were spent joining up with her pals again, to hang around street-corners or outside the picture houses where they hoped for someone in the money to come along and stand them a treat.

Amy's reputation had nosedived indeed when the truth emerged about her involvement with Teddy Cooper. He bragged about his clever way of compromising her for good on that second night, feeling that it showed his clear-headedness as well as his way with women. His own friends smirked and congratulated him, while the girls Amy hung around with turned up their noses. ‘Oh, Amy, how could you?' Emmy protested. ‘Ain't once on the big office desk enough for you, girl?'

But Amy found she could ride out this level of disapproval, and even began to turn the episode to her advantage amongst girls younger than Emmy and Dora. She gave out the story that Teddy had found her irresistible, and that she'd used her charms to screw some money out of the poor sod. This hard veneer gave her a certain status with little Lettie Harris who'd taken over Amy's job in hats, and with other girls still at school or just on the very bottom rung of the work ladder. ‘He ain't such a catch, I can tell you,' she intimated. ‘He thinks he's big with all the girls, but he don't know they only put up with him ‘cos he's the boss's son and they have to.'

Outside work, the girls were bolder, especially in their street-corner gangs. Led by Amy, they stood outside the Southwark Gem one night in mid-October, dropping snide, giggling remarks as Teddy and two or three cronies swaggered down the pavement into the cinema. Their brash, broad smiles antagonized the girls. ‘Who do they think they are?' they muttered, watching the men's backs as they paid at the box-office window. ‘Bleeding Prince Charming?' Amy had already caught Teddy's eye and brazened it out. He wasn't so high and mighty that she couldn't try and get her own back, after all. ‘Come here, Lettie,' she whispered. All the girls huddled round. Before long, they'd despatched pretty Lettie to worm her way into the picture house along with Teddy and the boys. ‘Ten o'clock, round the back,' they reminded her. ‘Make sure you bring him all on his own!'

At ten, they waited quietly down the alley, tight in against the blank, high wall. Amy had managed to whip up feeling against the boss's son almost to fever pitch. Every girl had recounted a story about his ugly behaviour. Most had come out of it better than Amy, but more by luck than judgement. All detested his groping, hot-breathed presence. Amy was good at stoking up their guilty disgust. ‘Might as well be pieces of meat on a slab for all he cares,' she said.

So they braved the cold autumn night, prepared to stick it out and help take him down a peg or two. They weren't sure how
things would work out, but they longed to turn Teddy Cooper into a figure of fun, if only for one night, down here in the dark alley.

‘What if he recognizes us?' Olwyn Williams wanted to know. She worked in a department at Cooper's which made men's shirts. She was plump and homely, but this hadn't disqualified her from attracting Teddy's unwelcome attentions. ‘Will he get us the sack?'

Amy laughed, then shivered. Vanity had kept her in her figure-hugging summer jacket long after the season was past. ‘He won't dare say nothing, or he'd never live it down!' She longed to get her own back for one brief moment.

The others laughed too, making an echo down the hollow passage between two high walls. Then someone said, ‘Hush!' as footsteps approached.

They made out Teddy's tall, slim figure in silhouette, backed by street-lights up on St Thomas Street. He had draped himself all over Lettie, whose head scarcely came up to his shoulder. Giggling and leaning her body towards him, she led him out of the yellow pool of light into deep shadow.

Teddy was intent on the task. Lettie was so small and slight she wouldn't put up much of a fight. He'd sent on the friends he'd arrived with, intending to catch up with them in a pub after an hour or so. She was a bit skinny and underdeveloped, but she seemed willing, so he'd come for swift satisfaction. He pressed himself against her, scarcely bothered with preliminaries such as talking and kissing.

He had Lettie backed up against the blank wall and she was beginning to struggle, just as a fierce finger poked him in the back. He grunted and swung round, expecting a drunken onlooker come to share the fun. Instead, he was confronted by five or six grinning, jeering girls.

‘Charming, I'm sure,' one of them said, staring down at his state of undress.

Teddy fumbled with the buttoms at the waistband of his trousers as Lettie slipped sideways to join the row. They all stood, hands on hips or arms linked, summing him up. He recognized Amy Ogden as the ringleader. ‘Oh, very funny, Amy. I expect this is your
idea.' He was so livid he didn't see the danger, only the ridicule. He moved forward to shove through their rank and head off up the alley.

But Amy stood her ground and thrust him back by the shoulder. With her other hand she snatched at his shirt and dragged it free of the loosened waistband. Then she shoved him again. He felt the cold wall with the flat of both hands. He lunged forward once more.

This time, Lettie and Olwyn stood in his way. The Welsh girl stared him in the face, eyes glinting, a sarcastic smile twisting her mouth. She reached her fingers inside his collar, wrenched it and tore it free. He heard the studs snap the collar and hit the ground in the shocked silence that followed. Olwyn glanced round at Amy, who nodded approval.

The group moved in closer. ‘Ain't so cocky now, is he?' a voice jeered, high and excited. ‘He won't go round bragging after we finished with him.'

‘Not if we show him we mean business,' Amy said. She stepped to the front of the semi-circle. ‘Let's see how big and strong you are now, Mister Teddy Cooper!' Standing there with her full lips parted, her eyes gleaming with hatred, she defied him to strike out at her.

When he did, with a savage, slicing blow at waist height, she was ready. She plunged sideways, twisted and caught him round the middle to drag him off balance. His legs shot from under him, grabbed by other hands which began to tear at his clothes. He felt his shirt ripped open. The women's hands clutched and pulled at him, then one dug in her nails. He kicked and punched back, face upwards on the ground under the flailing arms and flying hair.

Soon they had the clothes from his back. He rolled on to his side, trying to curl and cling on to his trousers which were halfway down his buttocks. Fists pounded his ribs, nails snatched at him as each girl fought to aim her blow. They shrieked with savage energy, fuelled by the unique satisfaction of having him at their mercy. ‘Get them off me!' he cried at Amy. ‘Do you want them to kill me?'

She stood back to look at the writhing heap of bodies; arms pummelling at Teddy's naked white flesh. His face and chest were scored red. He'd had enough, she decided. Coolly she went and hammered on the fire-exit door, and as help came she cleared her friends off. They ran wildly up the alley, screaming with victory. Olwyn clutched Teddy's collar like a trophy. They ran laughing and gasping on to the tram that rattled its way towards them down the street.

In response to the violent hammering on the door at the back of the cinema, Maurice Leigh wrenched open the iron bolts which he'd just locked. He darted into the alley in time to see silhouetted figures of laughing girls, and on the ground the groaning, nearly naked figure of a man.

He picked him up, recognized him at once, offered his own coat and took him inside. Teddy Cooper was a mess; severely bruised and scratched. Maurice suggested calling the police, but Cooper refused. ‘It's nothing. Just telephone this number and get my father to send the car for me.' He wrote down a number for Maurice on a piece of office paper. The pain of the scratches was nothing compared with the blow to his pride, and he wouldn't forget the hyena faces of those women as they laid into him. He shivered inside another man's coat, clutching his torn clothes, covered in claw marks.

Maurice quietly made the necessary arrangements. He was alarmed by what had happened. Skirmishes like this could give the Gem a bad reputation, so he didn't push to involve the police. He knew enough about Cooper to guess that he probably deserved what had happened. Still, Maurice didn't like it when women turned nasty. His sympathy for Cooper's ex-girlfriends didn't extend to condoning what they'd done; as a man he had to back male vanity by giving it a stiff drink and hustling it half-naked into the car sent over from Richmond.

He stood on the pavement watching Teddy being driven off with his jacket round his shoulders. I expect that's the last I'll see of that, he reflected. Back to the pawn shop for a decent replacement. The man had had his come-uppance and no doubt his family would
patch him up. It was time they sorted him out and put a stop to his antics with women, though. Maurice went and locked up the cinema, arriving back at his lodgings at the same time as Amy Ogden returned home after an innocent evening out with the girls.

Next day, Edith Cooper was closeted with her husband, Jack, in the office of their department store. She sat opposite him at the great desk, determined to stay put until he gave her an answer. It wasn't her habit to make confrontations, but she'd considered things long and hard, and knew something must be done about Teddy. ‘Why can't you leave him to me?' Jack asked. He drummed the desk with his fingers. ‘You'll only get out of your depth, Edith, I'm warning you. This business is better dealt with by me.'

She sighed. ‘I've left it to you for twenty-three years, Jack, ever since Teddy was born. But now I feel I have to put my foot down.'

Jack Cooper glared at his wife. Their relationship, stormy in the beginning, had levelled out over the years to one of mutual non-interference. As prosperity increased, so did the veneer of politeness, in direct inverse proportion to the passion they'd once felt. Jack might bully his work-force, fleece his suppliers and browbeat his rivals, but he would go home each night and listen attentively to Edith's tribulations over the upstairs maid. He dressed for dinner, complimented her housekeeping and learned not to swear in front of her ladies' sewing circle.

For her part, Edith willingly paid the price for going up in the world. She didn't expect to play a part in the core of her husband's life, his drapery store, as long as she was left to her own devices of spending money on clothes and house. She had quiet, refined tastes and a placid temperament which had let certain things slide, she now realized. But when Teddy had come home last night with most of his clothes gone and his face scratched red raw by a gang
of vengeful shop-girls, her tolerance reached its limit. ‘It's a terrible thing to be ashamed of your own son,' she told Jack. ‘I asked myself what Teddy could possibly have done to deserve what they did to him, but I can't bear to think about it.' Her eyes began to water and she reached in her bag for a handkerchief.

‘See, you should leave it to me and not bother your head over it. Don't worry, I'll have a heart to heart with him when I get the chance.' Jack chewed the end of an unlit cigar. His own view was that Teddy just wasn't careful enough, even after the warning he'd received over the Ogden girl. What he got up to was his own business, but he was a fool for being indiscreet.

‘What good will it do this time or any other time?' Edith had taken the plunge by coming into the store especially to discuss this. At home, surrounded by fire-screens and occasional tables and all the gadgetry which was the fruit of Jack's labours, she could never pluck up the courage. The more impersonal atmosphere of the office gave her the necessary determination. ‘No, Jack, I want you to do something about his behaviour. I want to be able to hold my head up when I come through the store, knowing that he's behaving himself like a gentleman.'

‘How's that?' Jack snorted. He might aspire to the status himself, at least in outward show, but he also scorned many of the gentlemanly attributes, such as fair play and openness.

‘You know very well what I'm talking about.' Edith wouldn't let herself be thrown off course. ‘I want you to
do
something, Jack!'

The stout shop-owner's patience, fragile at best, began to give way. He stood and leaned forward, resting his knuckles on the desk. ‘For God's sake, woman, what do you mean, “do something”? He's a grown man, in case you'd forgotten. He goes his own way. Do you think I want him bringing down the family name and trampling it in the mud down all these filthy back courts and yards? Course not. I brought him up better, and God knows it cost me plenty. But I don't see what I'm supposed to “do” about it, as you put it. It's his choice, ain't it?'

‘But listen to me, Jack.' She got up and walked agitatedly back and forth between the desk and the door. ‘I'm not just speaking
out of turn here. I've an idea that there is something we can do to rescue Teddy from himself.'

Her husband snorted again. ‘You've been reading too many novels,' he declared. ‘“Rescue Teddy from himself”!'

Edith was stung. ‘If they're not the right words, it's only because what your son gets up to is too filthy to describe! If you want me to be plain, I'll ask you a question. Do you want him to go on dragging girls down the back of cinemas or using his key to bring them up here for his pleasure? One night he'll go too far and the police will arrest him and put him in prison. Is that what you want?'

‘Using his key?' Cooper had begun to parrot his wife's words, this time in disbelief.

‘Yes. Don't you bother to keep your ears open at all? It's what the girls say when they whisper in corners; that he uses your whisky from that cupboard there to get them drunk, and then he uses this very desk to . . .!' She broke down. ‘I can't say it. I didn't believe it when I first heard the rumour, so I asked directly; three or four of the women who work here for you. Then I had to believe it.' She hid her face in her hands and gave a shudder.

Jack Cooper slammed his cigar into the ashtray, making the glass paperweight bounce and rock. ‘I'll horsewhip him! I will, I'll flog him!' He went and looked wildly along the shelves of the cupboard where he kept his drink, then turned with a look of violent disgust. ‘Where is he? Still licking his wounds at home, I expect.' He wrenched the telephone off the hook, ready to yell his home number through to the telephonist.

‘No, Jack, I want to explain my idea.' Edith's self-control was restored. She thought she could use his outrage to force a decision, so she made him replace the telephone and listen. ‘I want Teddy to join the war effort. It's a good, decent thing for him to do. The army will give him some discipline for a start, and that will be something he'll never lose. Besides, Lord Kitchener tells us all young men should serve. That's true, isn't it? It's their duty. Teddy's fit and able-bodied.' She spoke quietly and firmly, ignoring Jack's sarcastic grunt. ‘I've thought it all through. You could get him a
commission, then he won't have to go into the ranks. I wouldn't want that. Conditions would be better for him, he'd earn the men's respect, it would change his whole life. Listen, Jack, I don't think we'd ever need worry about him again!'

Rattled more by the fact that Teddy continued to risk the firm's reputation than by the red-blooded activities themselves, Jack Cooper listened and brooded. ‘How are we going to get him into uniform if he don't want to?' He was beginning to see the good side of the plan, and if he was honest with himself, he knew he could easily do without his son's so-called help around here. But he didn't see how you could force someone to join a war, commission or not.

Edith had thought of that too. ‘You hold the purse strings, don't you? If you cut off his allowance, he'll go to France soon enough.' She spoke steadily, coolly.

Jack thrust his head back and stared at the wood panelling on the ceiling. His eyes darted from side to side. Edith had sewn this up nicely; he wouldn't have believed she had it in her. At last he nodded. ‘Right then, I'll put it to him.'

‘When?'

‘When I get the chance.' He began to shuffle papers into order on the desk.

‘If I know you, the war will be over and done with before you get the chance, Jack Cooper. I want you to talk to Teddy tonight.' She stuck fast until he agreed. Then she gathered her bag and gloves.

‘It's a hard mother who sends her only son off to war, you know that?' Jack got in a sour dig in retaliation for the way he'd been so successfully manoeuvred.

Edith looked him in the eye. ‘And it's a soft father who turns a blind eye to all his shenanigans.'

They stared at each other, then called a truce. Edith went down through the store dignified as usual, pausing for a word with the supervisors in various departments, stopping again on the pavement outside the main entrance to drop coppers from her purse into Hettie's Salvation Army collection box.

Hettie recognized the store-owner's wife and immediately drew
her into conversation. There was a family down Paradise Court, she said, who'd suffered a lot of bad luck. ‘You heard the business about Daisy's murder, I expect?' She approached the subject frankly, not meaning to disconcert Mrs Cooper.

The fair woman's complexion flushed bright red. ‘The music-hall girl?' Uneasily she put her purse back in her bag, fearful that Teddy could be dragged into yet another scandal over a girl.

‘Yes, Daisy O'Hagan. Well, her family ain't taking it too well. They live down my street and they're pretty much cut up about it.'

Edith Cooper overcame her discomfiture and nodded. ‘How do you want me to help?'

‘There's a lot of mouths to feed, and Mary ain't up to it all by herself. Joe, her husband, would take work if he could get it, but they already turned him down at Tooley Street. I wondered if there was anything he could turn his hand to here?' Hettie glanced back at the shiny, fatly stocked windows. ‘Just a little job would do for a start.'

Edith promised to try, though she didn't normally interfere with her husband's workforce. Hettie's sincerity had affected her. Hepton drove off through me dingy, cold street while she sat on the leather upholstery, looking to right and left at the stall-holders, flower and newspaper sellers, crossing sweepers and children picking at gutters. Helping one family wasn't much, she reflected. Still, she would try, if only to resist Jack's accusation that her heart had frazzled up and died during these years of plenty.

She went home to prepare the way with Teddy. He was in a weak position, and even his confidence was knocked by the livid scars and humiliation at the hands of Amy Ogden. Edith thought she could manage to carry the day. Teddy would look good in uniform and she would be able to speak of him with pride.

All through October, Hettie was the one in the Parsons family who most often braved the bleak walls and metal gangways of the prison. She went two or three times a week to the remand wing, sometimes taking Duke to see Ernie, sometimes going with Jess.
But Jess had taken on the task of visiting people round about to see what she could dig up about the murder. Though she'd drawn a blank with Teddy Cooper, she still had names on her list, and planned to see Fred Mills, the manager at the Palace. ‘The coppers don't care,' she told Hettie in a bitter voice. ‘They interviewed a few witnesses and they think it's cut and dried. As far as they're concerned, Ernie did it and that's that.'

As Hettie sat across the table from Ernie in her navy-blue Army uniform, she held his hand tight. ‘We're gonna pray to Jesus, Ern,' she said fervently. ‘He's the one what watches over us, even in the bad times. You gotta believe that. We're gonna march under the banner of Jesus, you and me, and He ain't gonna let us down!'

Ernie nodded. He'd remembered to pray, like Hettie taught him on her last visit. It was someone to talk to in his lonely cell late at night, and Hettie promised that He heard and would answer his prayers. The warders would look in on him through the grille and shake their hard heads. The lad mouthed his prayers audibly. ‘Lord, keep me safe and send me home to my pa.'

In the earnestness of her new-found religion, Hettie taught him the psalm which brought her most comfort in her hour of need. ‘The Lord is my shepherd,' she began. Ernie repeated after her, phrase by phrase. ‘I shall not want.'

‘I shall not want.'

‘He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.'

‘He maketh me . . .'

‘To lie down.'

‘To lie down.'

‘In green pastures.'

Ernie nodded again and completed the line. He liked to think of green fields and still waters. He wanted to dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Their dream was interrupted on one occasion in early November by the arrival of the solicitor, Mr Sewell. He was a short, balding man, decisive in his movements, with a confident, cheerful voice. He introduced himself to Hettie, then told Ernie some news. ‘We have a date set for the trial at last.' He drew up another chair and
sat at the table. ‘It's going to be the tenth of December, so that gives us more than another month to prepare.'

Hettie heard the date and felt it etch itself painfully in her mind She smiled to reassure Ernie. ‘See, it'll soon be over. Don't you worry.'

Mr Sewell was brisk. ‘I've received a letter this morning from your brother Robert in France. He tells me that the prosecution counsel doesn't plan to drag him away from the front line to stand as a witness for them. So I'm going to ask for his written testimony to use in your defence, Ernie. I'm sure it will corroborate – back up – your own account of your movements that night. I'll also ask him to provide a character reference, which should help us a great deal.' He gave the sister a quick glance. ‘Does he understand what I say?'

Hettie shook her head. ‘I doubt it. Still, you go ahead, I'll explain it to Ern later. What about Rob's letter.
Will
it help?'

‘The jury will have to take it into account It looks very good, coming from a member of our armed forces, patriotism being what it is now there's a war on. Our job is to build up a picture of a respectable family background, you see, to impress members of the jury.'

Hettie nodded. Sewell's talk made the trial all too real. Though she was cheerful for Ernie's sake, she went home full of fear. Ernie's life lay in the hands of twelve strangers. What would they see when they came into court? Who would they believe?

The setting of a date for the trial for the 10th sent Jess straight away up to Hettie's old haunt, the Southwark Palace. She left Duke to keep an eye on Grace, since Florrie was out at the market. Joxer could easily manage the trickle of early afternoon custom. It was Saturday; a match day. Jess could be over there and home again before the football crowd filtered back through the streets into the pubs. Grace sat, plump and content, on her grandfather's knee. ‘If she cries, you can give her a spoonful of that mashed veg.' Jess buttoned her emerald-blue coat and put on her velvet hat. ‘Auntie
Florrie won't be long down the market. Do you think you can manage here?'