After Hours (27 page)

‘Yes, ‘course. I think it's a marvellous idea.'

Hettie's eyes lit up. ‘Then I'll go across next weekend and fix it up,' she promised.

For a while the two women worked on in silence, sitting heads bowed, amid yards of clean-smelling new fabrics, surrounded by scissors, pins, measuring-tapes and dressmakers' dummies.

‘I been thinking,' Hettie said at last.

‘Don't do that. It can lead where you don't want to follow,' Jess joked. ‘And then you're in a fine mess.'

‘No, honest, Jess. I been thinking about George and me.' For weeks they'd been dancing around one another, unsure of their next move.

‘See!' Jess snapped a thread and shook out the skirt of the dress. ‘What did I say?' She made it a rule these days to push all worries about herself and Maurice to the back of her mind.

‘I mean to say, George and me, we've known each other for years now, but we ain't getting nowhere fast. Not to my mind, we ain't.' Hettie allowed a sigh to escape.

‘Don't he make you happy?' Jess took up the subject in earnest; it was rare enough for Hettie to give time to her own concerns.

Hettie thought hard, letting the whir of her machine carry the talk forward. ‘Not happy exactly. Contented is more like.'

‘And ain't that enough?'

‘For me it is.' Hettie's own horizons weren't grand. She'd seen a terrible thing happen to Daisy O'Hagan, and she experienced the effects of raw poverty each time she walked into the Bear Lane Mission. So expectations in this life had to be limited, she knew. It was a subdued life at best, rising to glory at last in Christ's
presence. Only, she wasn't so blinded by the light that she didn't notice the hopes and dreams of other, more secular beings. ‘I think George wants more,' she admitted.

‘Does he want to marry you?'

‘He ain't asked me.'

‘But does he want to?'

Hettie nodded. ‘I think he does.'

‘And do you want him?'

‘I ain't sure, Jess. That's what I been trying to explain. I like George. There ain't no harm in him, and he's good and honest.' She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘I'm not saying it's him; it's me!'

‘Your heart don't race when you see him?' Jess remembered the quick, passionate longing she'd felt for Maurice in their first years together.

‘No,' Hettie said quietly. ‘I feel warm towards George, but I ain't head over heels and that's a fact.'

For a while silence overtook them again.

‘Do you want to break off?' Jess stood up to hang the nearly finished garment around one of the dummies. She stepped back to assess the hang of the skirt from the hip.

‘No,' came the quick answer. ‘Only I don't know if it's fair on George, the ways things are. Should I tell him I ain't head over heels, Jess?'

Jess considered this. ‘He knows you ain't, I expect. And he still sticks with you.' She nodded, satisfied with her work. ‘You can stop worrying about George. What about you, Ett? Do you need a bit of mad passion in your life?'

They both laughed, then grew serious again. ‘What do
you
think?' Hettie said at last.

Jess smiled. ‘I say, passion ain't everything.'

‘Meaning?'

‘Meaning, I'd take care of what you got, Ett. George is a lovely man and he loves you to bits. Another woman could come up and offer him the whole world, and he'd say no thanks and stick with you. You'd go a long way to find that again in a man,' Jess said
sadly. She went across and hugged Hettie's shoulders. ‘There, that's what thinking does for you.' She put her cheek against her sister's. ‘I'd best be off to collect Mo from school. I'll be back in a few ticks,' she said.

When Maurice got home late that evening, Jess had cause to refer back to her conversation with Hettie. ‘Passion ain't everything,' she'd said. It could get you into a marriage, but it didn't make you stick.

Maurice went upstairs for his ritual of looking in on Grace and moving Mo back to his own bed, breathing in the calm of their sleeping bodies. But it wasn't enough to take the edge off a frustrating day. When he went downstairs to greet Jess, he began to relay his trials and tribulations without pausing to ask her how she was.

‘We had a projectionist off sick at the Gem, and a reel of film broke down at the Palace. Ten people asked for their money back at the end, and I don't blame them. On top of that, Charlie nearly bit their heads off for asking. I had to step in and keep the peace.' He sighed as he unlaced his shoes and kicked them off under the table. Then he loosened his tie and took out his collar studs. ‘I been thinking; Charlie ain't up to it lately.'

Jess picked him up. ‘Ain't he allowed one mistake?' She thought Maurice was sometimes hard on his employees, expecting 110 per cent from them all the time.

‘I ain't talking about
one
mistake,' he said irritably. ‘I'm talking about him going round like it's the end of the bleeding world. People don't go for a night out to look at his miserable face. I have to keep on telling him to cheer up.'

Jess stood in her blue, satiny dressing-gown. ‘Is that all he's done wrong?'

‘It's enough.' Maurice himself found Charlie's glum face depressing.

‘But he ain't never late. He ain't never down on the takings, you said so often enough yourself. He's got a good head for figures, and he ain't never let you down.' She tried to rescue Charlie Ogden's
image before Maurice consigned him to the reject pile. He made so few allowances tor the differences between people.

‘Look, Jess, I ain't asking for your point of view.' He was tired, he had too much on his mind. You had to run just to stand in one place in the cinema business, and Jess didn't appreciate that he needed a bit of care and affection when he came home late at night. Instead, she was forever standing up to him, wanting an argument.

‘Shh!' She put a finger to her lips and glanced upwards to the children. ‘If you ain't asking for my opinion, why bother telling me all your problems?' she demanded in a whisper.

He flung his loosened collar on to the table and turned away. ‘Where's the bleeding milk?'

‘Shh! It's in the pantry, the same as always.'

‘Don't I even get a decent cup of cocoa made for me when I get in?'

‘If you ask nicely, yes.'

They stood face to face, she looking at him in cool disdain, he sulky and spoiling for a fight.

‘Anyhow, you helped me make up my mind. I thought about it, and I decided Charlie ain't up to it no more. I used to think he was on the ball, full of ideas and so on. But now he's standing still while things go racing ahead of him. The fact is, I'm gonna have to let him go, ain't no two ways about it.'

Jess stared at him. ‘You ain't giving Charlie Ogden the sack? Not after all this time?'

‘And what if I am?'

‘But what's he done, when all's said and done? You can't sack a bloke just because he don't go round smiling all the bleeding time!' Jess never swore, but she was beside herself ‘What's got into you, Maurice Leigh? I can't believe I've heard this.'

‘Well, you wouldn't understand,' he said. To make things worse, he changed tack and tried to belittle her reaction. ‘Hold your hat on, I can see you've had a hard day yourself.' He adopted measured tones and waited for her to calm down as he stood over the pan
of boiling milk. ‘You get yourself off to bed. I'll finish off down here.'

Jess was almost speechless. ‘I ain't had a bad day,' she countered, drawn into an irrelevant distraction. ‘In fact, I had a very good day. We took orders for over ninety pounds' worth of stuff, and we took on a new assistant to help run the shop.' She gathered her dignity as best she could.

Her success was just the thing to grate on his nerves again. ‘Yes, and Mo never sees his own mother.' He flung the worst thing at her; the one he always used when his back was against the wall. She never found a reply to that one.

Jess retired hurt. But tonight she didn't go and cry into her own pillow. She went upstairs and along the landing to the spare back bedroom, took blankets from the chest and curled under them on the bed, praying that Maurice wouldn't soften and come to seek her out. She wanted to be left alone; every nerve ending cried out, every grain of her being detested what was happening between her and Maurice.

On the morning of 1 October, the smart black doors of the Prince of Wales were opened for business. George Mann shot the bolts and swung them open, letting the sun shine into the bar with its dainty white window drapes and pale, plain walls. The pub stood ready for business.

George stood on the step, looking up and down the street. A light drizzle dampened enthusiasm, and the crowds weren't exactly flocking.

Arthur Ogden strolled casually down Duke Street, first on the scene. He stood, hands in pockets, his cap pulled well down. ‘Lor' lumme!' He glanced inside and whistled in exaggerated surprise. But it wasn't the new decor that had brought him nosing around. He was after the vital piece of information; the one everyone had been seeking. ‘You got the new man in there, I take it?' he said, nodding and winking at George. The name of the new landlord had been held back by the brewery like a state secret. Not a soul down the court had been able to winkle it out.

George nodded.

‘Come on then, who've we got?' Arthur shoved past and stuck his nose inside the inner door. He caught sight of a stocky, fair-haired figure in waistcoat and shirt-sleeves standing behind the bar. ‘Blimey!' Arthur couldn't believe his eyes. He scrambled back on to the street. He blinked in broad daylight. Had his eyes deceived him? He darted back inside for a second look. Then he was out on to Duke Street, bad back forgotten, dancing through the market like a bantamweight, darting into Henshaws', in and out of the market stalls to deliver the news. ‘Would you bleeding believe it?' he crowed. ‘The blooming brewery, guess who they gone and got for landlord?'

‘Who?' came the cry.

Tommy ran out into the middle of the street, Nora Brady left her fish stall, Bea Henshaw poked her head out at Ernie and told him to go and find out what the fuss was about.

Dolly Ogden came trundling up the court.

‘Who?' Tommy demanded. ‘Spit it out, Arthur!'

‘They only gone and got in Bertie Bleeding Hill!' he gasped.

The news dropped into a stunned silence. The doors of the Prince of Wales stood ready to receive customers, and behind the bar stood the ex-copper, owner of Eden House, and now new licensee of the old Duke of Wellington public house: Bertrand Gladstone Hill.

The only person on Duke Street who was pleased with the new situation was Alf Henderson, the landlord at the Lamb and Hag. Trade was booming, with an influx of new regulars since the mass boycott of the Prince of Wales.

Henderson, a whippet-like man in his mid-forties, with wayward grey-brown hair that had the texture of scrubbing-brush bristles, a narrow face and a long nose, couldn't believe his luck. He doubled his orders of beer from the brewery almost overnight, barrels emptied almost as soon as they were tapped. Less meticulous in his methods than Duke Parsons, his cellars were often awash with slops, his spittoons full to overflowing with sawdust and cigarette butts, his glasses ringed with tidemarks from the day before. None of this mattered, however, as the Ogdens, O'Hagans, Walter Davidson, Nora Brady and her market pal, Liz Sargent, Rob Parsons and many others from the Duke crowded through his door, eager to slake their thirst.

‘I ain't never gonna set foot inside that horrible new place,' Liz Sargent declared, her hatchet-face stuck glumly over her pint of porter. ‘Makes me bleeding sea-sick just to look at it.' She was referring to the new cone-shaped wall lights and streamlined look that gave the Prince of Wales the air of an ocean-going liner.

Nora Brady nodded her agreement. ‘Like I says to Annie just the other day, you can see it all now.' The gossip grapevine had turned it all around; Wiggin had been wrongly accused, Bertie Hill had planned every move.

‘Yes, you don't have to look far to see who turned old Duke over to the coppers after all.' Liz enjoyed the gloomy talk; it suited
the nights that were drawing in and turning cold. Already there was a nip of frost in the air.

‘No, and it weren't Willie Wiggin,' Nora said darkly. ‘So I hope whoever done him in ain't done it just because of that.' A miscarriage of justice would be a terrible thing; supposing Wiggin had been murdered due to the impression that
he
was the one who'd lost Duke his licence.

Liz reached up to readjust the hatpins in her brown straw hat. She jabbed them into her bun to hold the hat tight in place. ‘They ain't still after Rob, are they?'

‘They are!' Dolly muscled in, her instinct for gossip undimmed by the change of venue from the Duke to the Flag. ‘Ain't you heard? That young copper was down Meredith Court again last week. It seems he ain't happy.'

‘Why, what happened?' Nora finished off her drink. She wiped her mouth with her kippery apron and stood up ready to return to her stall.

‘Let's just say, Rob weren't too happy neither.'

‘Did he clock him one?'

‘He would have if Walter hadn't stepped in.' Dolly shook her head. ‘They still can't get enough on Rob to arrest him, but they're having a bleeding good try.'

‘So, if Wiggin didn't do the business with the licence, who did?' Alf Henderson came round collecting empties, a stained red and white teatowel tucked into the waistband of his trousers. He dropped ash on the table from the cigarette hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and left it there untouched. His motive in finding out the identity of the police informer was clear; he had to be sure he didn't get caught out by the same bloke.