Paradise Court (4 page)

‘Well, until you do,' Dolly said with raised eyebrows, ‘just count these stockings for me and count your blessings while you're at it.' And she went across to bang about at the sink in the corner, rinsing cups, straining out tea-leaves from the cracked brown pot to see if they could be reused once more.

Among the blessings Amy felt she could count were the recent attentions at work of the boss's son, Teddy Cooper. She thought of him now as she stacked up the stockings.

Teddy was always coming and poking his nose into the hatters' workshop. He pretended to check the work, but really he came to stop and chat with some of the better looking girls. ‘Hats' was way up in the rear attics above Coopers' shop, up the back stairs and loosely supervised by Bert Buggies, who was as silly as his name suggested.

Bert always had his long, thin nose stuck into the racing papers. He didn't care tuppence what the lads and girls under him got up to, unless Mr Cooper himself stepped up with an especially important order. Then he became suddenly strict in a mincing sort of way. Hat trade was generally poor, and Amy certainly hadn't found the pressure of work too great since she'd come to Coopers' last autumn, unlike her poor mother in ‘Hosiery'.

When Teddy Cooper put in his daily appearance in – ‘Hats', he didn't usually affect Bert's interest in the winner of the Epsom 2.30. The girls were free to spoon with the young man to their hearts' content. And it seemed to her that she, Amy, was his chosen one. He singled her out for special comment, praising her hair and pretty blue eyes. Once he even put an arm around her waist and popped a chocolate from his coat pocket into her surprised mouth. Yesterday he had whispered a promise to take her to the Balham Empire if she was good. She'd never been to the cinematograph.

Amy cast a sideways glance at her sleeping father. She'd already
decided to keep quiet about Teddy Cooper, since there was never any risk of having to bring a young gentleman like him home to meet her ma and pa. Still, she'd go out to see
The Perils of Pauline
with him since he'd asked, and she'd have a good time on the quiet. A girl deserved to be given a chance.

It was all right for her brother, Charlie. He was a boy. They'd always thought Charlie would amount to something, right from the start. Now, with his scholarship and his big ideas, they'd been proved right. As for Amy, they thought the hatters was good enough. The local women blessed the ground Mr Jack Cooper trod on for keeping them all in work. Teddy, though, called his old man a pompous prig. Amy stifled a laugh at the memory.

‘What's up now?' Dolly asked. She woke Arthur and practically ladled the weak tea down his throat.

‘Nothing.' Amy wasn't telling.

‘You don't laugh at nothing, leastways not if you're right in the head. Must be something,' Dolly grumbled on. ‘Just tell Charlie to come down here a minute, will you. I want him to run up to the Duke to ask how much the old man's put down on the slate tonight. He'll only lie to me if I ask him straight.' She took it all for granted. Arthur would drink. She'd sew stockings. She'd pay for his beer and hope there was money left over to pay for a shoulder of bacon or some sheep's liver a couple of times a week. If not, well, there was no point losing sleep. Dolly's broad face rarely registered emotion, but she laughed uproariously when she got the chance, usually at puny Arthur's expense.

Charlie came down and took on the errand, ungracious as only a fifteen-year-old boy can be. His head hung down, his eyes stared at the dark stone flags. ‘You know I hate going up to that place,' he moaned.

‘Oh, la-di-da!' Dolly mocked. ‘That place, as you call it, is home from home for your pa. And Duke Parsons is a decent sort. Now you get yourself up there and find out how much we owe him, or else!' Her voice rose to a bellow. Charlie scuttled off.

‘Ma!' Amy protested as the door slammed shut.

‘Well!' Dolly pulled off Arthur's worn-out jacket and slung his
inert arm around her broad shoulder. ‘What is he when all's said and done? A little stool-arsed jack, that's what! Here, Amy, be a good girl, help me get your pa to bed.' Dolly brooked no argument in her own house. Amy and Charlie did as they were told.

The gang of boys hanging around the front steps of the Duke was one reason why Charlie loathed this errand. Though he was older than most of them, it was hard to hold his own against the insults they chucked at him. And he usually had to dodge the odd hob-nailed kick.
‘Go boil your head!' he muttered. He wrenched himself free from the grasp of a little O'Hagan, no more than nine or ten years old and desperate to rise in the gang's estimation.

The kid tried to link arms with him again.

‘Ooh!' the others cried. ‘Shall we? Shall we stroll ‘cross the Common?'

They swung their hips as girls did, mimicking a woman's walk. ‘Get lost!' Charlie yelled. He freed himself and practically fell forward into the passage leading into the bar. Quickly he made his way through the groups of men standing and sitting in the smoke-filled room. ‘How much does my pa owe?' he asked. He had to raise his voice and yell over the sound of the pianola playing away in a far corner. The tune broke off before Duke had time to reply.

Duke consulted the slate. ‘Well, young man, he downed five pints of Bass and two pints of half and half. Tell your ma she owes nine pence three farthing.' His answer sailed loud and clear across the room. Charlie nodded his thanks. He felt the hairs at the nape of his neck prickle with embarrassment. He would never get used to this. All he could hope now was that the gang outside would be off down the street on a game of knock-down ginger, hammering on the door of some helpless old woman. As long as they found someone else to annoy he didn't care. Stopping in the passage by
the door to button his jacket and steel his nerves, he looked up and saw Sadie coming downstairs.

‘Hello, Charlie.' She hugged a big cast-iron pan in front of her, but still stepped swift and sure through the door which he held open for her. She wore her tartan beret, a dark coat and a big blue woollen scarf wound high around her neck. Her long plait and short skirts swung as she turned down the street. ‘Are you on your way home?' she called back.

Charlie fell in beside her. ‘Yes. Where are you taking that?' The gang had melted away, no fear of being kicked and put down in front of Sadie. It was because he stopped – at school and studied instead of hopping the wag with the rest. That's why they called him names; he wouldn't join in with the crowd.

Sadie sighed and raised her eyebrows. ‘Frances says I have to take it down the court to the O'Hagans. One of the little ones ain't right. I dunno.' Her lace-up boots tapped along the stone pavement. ‘It's a pan of broth,' she explained. ‘Frances boiled the ham bones with some pearl barley. She says it's good for you when you're feeling under the weather.'

Charlie strode along. He glared at the little O'Hagan kid, who scuttled on ahead of them now, barefoot, heading for home. He was skinny as a whippet in his threadbare rags. ‘Must've smelt the broth,' Charlie noted. He stopped by the door of his own terraced house. At least the steps were clean and scrubbed. His ma did her best, not like some.

‘You going straight in?' Sadie asked. ‘Why not come down with me instead?' She felt she had to be bold with Charlie Ogden. He was too slow to take things up on his own account, with his nose always glued to a book.

Just lately she'd noticed that behind the buttoned-up jacket and serious manner lurked something interesting and attractive. He was a good head taller than she was, with what she called a nice face. His features were fine and regular, unlike most of the lumpy-skinned, misshapen faces of many of the boys at school. She'd decided to set her cap at him.

‘No,' Charlie said after a moment's hesitation. He stared at his
ma's whitened steps. She made a border down each side with carefully applied donkey-stone. ‘Thanks.' He took the three steps at once and disappeared through the door.

‘Thanks for nothing!' Sadie huffed. She tip-tapped on down to the end of the court.

‘What's that?' Tommy enquired, sniffing the air. He'd appeared from the cellars of the tenement block like a jack-in-the-box. Now he poked his nose at Sadie's pan and lifted the lid with a grimy hand.

She smacked it smartly. ‘Leave off, Tommy. It's broth for your sick brother, that's what. Anyhow, what you got there?' She pointed to a big square object sticking out from behind his back.

He side-stepped, angling to get past without showing what he had hidden. But a tiny, pitiful cheeping sound gave his game away. ‘Cage birds,' he said, giving himself over to a couple of minutes' delay. Girls went soft over cage birds.

‘Oh, Tommy!' Sadie said. Her face lit up. She put the soup down on the black, greasy pavement, ‘Let's have a look. Oh, they're pretty. Where did you get ‘em?' Inside Tommy's wire cage, with its bent and battered ribs, perched two ruffled larks. Their breasts sagged mournfully, their round, black eyes blinked with shock.

Tommy held up his property for inspection. ‘Railway embankment,' he told her proudly. ‘I limed ‘em myself.'

‘Oh.' Sadie's voice was less enthusiastic. ‘Poor little mires. But will someone buy them?' She hoped the pathetic things would last the night. Knowing Tommy, he'd have no food to give them.

He nodded. ‘I'm off back up the Palace to catch the crowd coming out. There's always a lady there can get her beau to buy her a songbird.'

Sadie sighed and picked up her pan of broth. ‘Best of luck then.' She turned and went on her way. He was never short of ideas, but then you had to look out for yourself in a family like that. Funny, she thought, Tommy's the same age as me and Charlie, but you'd never guess it. He had the face of a fifty-year-old stuck on the body of a runty little kid. She was still shaking her head as she climbed
the narrow stairs with the broth, up to the top floor of the block. This was what Tommy called home.

Mary and Joe O'Hagan and their family lived in two rooms at number 48 Paradise Court. It was a bleak, bare-fronted tenement of blackened bricks and grimy windows, butted up against a blank stretch of factory wall and facing out on to another identical block across the narrow cobbled street. Their two rooms, a kitchen and a bedroom, lay at the back of the building, shut off from fresh air and sunlight. Down on the ground floor they shared an earth closet with a dozen other families in the block. Up here in the garret, Mary O'Hagan brought in washing and stood at the wooden tub all day and most of the night with her board, her scrubbing brush and soap.

Sadie tapped at the door and went straight in. Joe O'Hagan sat at the bare table, an empty look in his eyes. He was small and thin, with a hangdog bearing, as if kicks were all he ever expected from life, and all he ever got. Beaten down in body and soul, terrible things took place around him. It was as much as he could do each morning to stumble into his worn trousers and button up his frayed shirt. Then he would sit, bent over the table, vacant and listless, while Mary thumped at the washing-board. Meanwhile, Daisy would smarten herself up at the piece of broken mirror propped on the bedroom sill. Tommy would be out early to beg and scrounge, while the little ones swarmed from kitchen to bedroom, and up and down the dark stairs.

Sadie put the broth on the table. ‘Frances sent it,' she said quietly. Peering through the door into the bedroom, she saw a small child lying on a bed under an old blanket. ‘How is he?' she asked.

Mary came forward. She wiped her red hands on a coarse apron and shook her head. The pan lid rattled as she lifted it to peer inside. Again she said nothing, but took it to the mean fire in the grate and set it to heat there. Sadie bent and lifted a little one from the floor. She set the child against one hip. Another came and tugged at her skirt.

‘You heard the tale, did you?' Joe O'Hagan opened his mouth and the flat, Irish voice drifted across the room. The silent,
round-eyed children turned curiously towards him. ‘I expect that's why you was sent.'

‘Joe, Sadie doesn't want to listen to all our moans and groans,' Mary reminded him. ‘We're just waiting on the few shillings Daisy gives us each week, then we can fetch the doctor,' she explained.

Sadie nodded uncomfortably. The child in the bed coughed and turned.

‘Aye, but I went before the Board today.' Joe insisted on telling the whole story, his peaky face pale and set. ‘I've lost three kids to Paradise Court, and I'll be damned before it's a fourth. We need a doctor. So I went before the Board. “My child has to see a doctor,” I tell them. “He has the fever bad. He sleeps five to a bed with the other children. Without a doctor I doubt he'll last the weekend.”' Joe paused to study the wood grain on the table. ‘“And have you no money at all coming into the house?” they ask me. “Nothing to pay for the care of your own child?” I explain we're waiting for Daisy's few shillings. They look me up and down. “And have you no better off family to help you?” Where would I have better off family? My three brothers are all in Dublin, and I wish I was too. I've been here fifteen years, in work and out. Why did I come to the Board if it wasn't necessary, I say?' Joe raised his fist and thumped it weakly on to the table. Mary raised her apron to hick her face. Sadie hugged the child.

‘So they turn me away at last. “Wait for your daughter to come home tonight with the money you need to pay your own way.” One of them marches me out of the office. “And next time you come before us, I advise you to wear a suit,” he says. I say to him, if I had a suit, I'd
pawn
it and pay for a doctor myself. I wouldn't go to the likes of him.'

A hush fell on the room as Joe stopped for breath. It was broken by the child coughing and Mary sniffing. ‘Daisy will bring us the doctor,' she promised.

‘Aye, not those nice bastards over there.' Joe sat, wrapped in misery.

‘Joe!' Mary remonstrated. She turned and took the child from Sadie, then went and bent over the pot on the fire. Strands of
greying hair fell forward on to her face. With a weary gesture she pushed them back. She was worn out. ‘Daisy's a good girl, and she's good to us,' she told Sadie as she stirred the broth.

‘Oh aye,' Joe said, hollow-voiced. ‘Working in a place like that!'

Sadie left them while Joe issued dire warnings about the consequences of working at the Palace and Mary took a shallow bowl of broth through to her sick child. When she got back to the Duke, she ran straight upstairs to Frances, fell against her shoulder and cried her eyes out. Life was hard down Paradise Court.

Hettie and Daisy came off-stage for the last time that night, just as Archie Small went on for his final session of wisecracks and songs.
‘Hello, girls!' He winked as their paths crossed backstage.
‘I'm melting!' Daisy gasped. ‘Gawd, them lights don't half give off some heat!' She still held the smell of hot dust and metal in her nostrils.
‘
I'
ll soon cool you down,' Archie leered. ‘Just you wait!'

Daisy glanced at Hettie and mirrored her friend's expression of disgust. ‘Ugh!' She gave a little shiver and they ran for the dressing room, jostled by the other girls, crying out their exhaustion.

‘Let's have a bit of hush down there,' the stage-manager warned. ‘Get yourselves off home before Mr Mills comes and catches you making all that racket.'

‘No need to tell us,' Hettie called back. ‘You won't see me for dust.' She staggered ahead of Daisy into the room, jockeyed for a chair and fell backwards into it. ‘My poor feet!' She moaned. The place was swirling with discarded silk dresses and petticoats, reeking of hot bodies and face powder. The amount of female flesh on view would fill fifty seaside postcards. Hettie bent double to pull off her heeled boots, snagged a nail on her stocking and sent a ladder shooting from ankle to thigh. ‘Oh gawd, bang goes my wages!' she cried.

‘Come on, Hettie, help me out of this.' Daisy stood over her, demanding help with the tight bodice. ‘I gotta get home.'

‘That's a turn-up.' Hettie hoisted herself out of the chair to loosen
the lace that kept Daisy's waist nipped in so tight. She heard Daisy groan. ‘Why, what's the rush?'

‘Nothing.'

Both women vanished for a few seconds beneath yards of crimson silk. They emerged, hairstyles miraculously intact. Then they hung the dresses on the rack and scrambled for their street clothes.

‘Anyone seen Freddie?' Daisy asked.

‘Freddie' was what they called Mr Mills when his back was turned. ‘Hasn't he got them wages down here yet?'

‘Not bleeding likely,' someone muttered. Greasepaint came off left, right and centre, leaving pale, tired faces in the mirror. ‘When did he ever rush down with the wages, you tell me!'

Daisy shrugged herself into her dowdy jacket and set her hat at a sideways angle. She rubbed at her cheeks to encourage a faint pink glow. ‘Ready?' she asked Hettie.

‘Blimey.' Hettie eyed Daisy. ‘I said, where's the fire?'

‘Nowhere. Only, I have to get back.'

Hettie vaguely remembered Frances mentioning a little brother ill at home. She knew, too, that Daisy's wage was practically all that kept body and soul together at number 48. Suddenly the rush to get off home made sense. ‘Half a tick,' she said, ‘And I'll be with you.'

But they were still standing inside the stage door twenty minutes later, waiting for Freddie to show up. Archie Small was already off-stage, pursued by raucous laughter. He bounded down the corridor towards the bunch of girls who were kicking their heels by the door.

‘Still here, darling?' He slid up to Daisy and snatched her by the waist. ‘Just waiting for Archie.'

Daisy wriggled free. ‘Leave off, you horrible little man!'

Archie wore a loud checked suit, with spats and patent leather pumps. His bow-tie nestled against several spare chins, and his waistcoat buttons strained against a large belly. His hair was slicked to one side to conceal a mottled bald patch. ‘She only says that because she likes me!' He winked at the other girls.