East End Jubilee (24 page)

He blinked his fair lashes. ‘No wonder you didn’t want to know about televisions!’

She smiled. ‘That’s not to say I can’t see the logic in all your labour-saving devices. Believe me, I was only thinking the other day that if I had the money I’d buy a
washing machine. We could do with it with three kids.’

‘Three? Didn’t you say you had two?’

‘My sister has a son of ten.’ Rose added quickly, ‘She’s recently widowed. That’s why she’s staying with us for a bit.’

‘Oh dear,’ he commiserated, ‘you have been in the wars.’

Rose smiled. ‘Yes, just a bit.’

His blue eyes met hers in a rather familiar way and Rose lowered hers. She had no desire to be flattered or flirted with today. There was a very special excitement inside her that surpassed all
others.

‘Well,’ he said, stepping back, ‘please apologize to your sister for me. I really didn’t intend to frighten her, or you, come to that.’ He paused, then added in a
rush, ‘In fact, I was hoping to meet you again. I’ve passed your door a couple of times and never had the courage to knock.’

‘Oh,’ Rose said heavily, as the penny dropped. ‘I see.’

He let out a long sigh and groaned. ‘Oh dear, I can see by your face I’ve overstepped the mark.’

Rose blushed. ‘Well, you see, Bobby,’ she added kindly, ‘I’ve had some wonderful news this morning. Really wonderful. Me and Eddie are . . . expecting.’

‘A
baby
, you mean?’

‘Yes.’ She giggled a little hysterically. ‘I’m just so happy, Bobby. So very happy.’

He nodded slowly, unable to hide the disappointment as it dragged down his face. ‘Well, all I can say is, he’s a lucky man, this Eddie of yours. He really is. So, apart from
congratulations, I’m happy for you both. Truly happy.’ He looked hard at her, then sighed. A second later he had lifted his box and was grinning over it. ‘Well now, off you go and
tell your sister the good news.’

Rose smiled. ‘Good luck with that new van.’

He walked off, struggling, and Rose hurried in to the kitchen. Em, as usual, was at the sink. She turned and said quickly, ‘Who was that?’

‘I introduced you, didn’t I? He’s Bobby Morton and a genuinely nice young man.’

‘If you say so.’ Em gave her a huffy shrug. ‘Well, what happened? What did the doctor say? I’ve been waiting all day to find out.’

Rose ignored the cross tone and smiled. ‘Come and plonk down and I’ll tell you.’

They sat at the table. ‘Oh, Rosy, what is it?’

‘You’ll never guess. It’s the best piece of news I’ve had in ages.’

‘Is Eddie coming home?’ Em gasped.

‘No, I wish he was though, especially now. Em, I’m going to have a baby.’

‘A baby?’ Her sister’s gasp was audible.

‘All this sickness . . . it isn’t an ulcer or worry or anything like that. I’m perfectly healthy. Em, I’m pregnant!’

Rose felt a bubble of laughter rise in her chest. Em gave a little scream then flung her arms around her neck. She had almost forgotten what it was like to be so perfectly, wholly happy, when
even the air tasted like a mountain stream and the light that flowed through the kitchen window seemed like a shaft of pure silver. The whole world was alight with breathtaking beauty.

‘A baby,’ Em repeated in a daze. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘Nor can I.’ Rose blinked her damp lashes. ‘But Dr Cox is certain. According to me dates, the baby’s due around the middle of next February.’

‘Oh Rosy, didn’t you guess?’ Em asked incredulously.

‘I missed me period but I thought it was the upset of Eddie going.’

‘What about your job?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And what will Eddie say?’

Rose giggled. ‘I hope that he’s pleased. We always wanted another one, a boy if possible.’

‘Well, yes . . . but—’

‘You’re going to say,’ Rose cut in, ‘that it couldn’t have happened at a worse time.’

Em nodded slowly. ‘Something like that.’

‘I don’t care,’ Rose said defiantly. ‘I want this baby more than anything else in the world – except us all being back together of course.’

A little smile flickered across her sister’s face. ‘Oh Rosy, ’course not.’

‘I’ll be able to work for a few months yet.’

‘You mean you’re still going to work on Monday?’

‘Why not? Nothing’s changed.’ Rose pulled back her shoulders.

‘You’re not going to tell them you’re expecting?’

‘Not until I have to. What they don’t know won’t hurt them.’

The two women sat in silence, until Em stood up with a little switch of her head and a sigh. ‘Well, this won’t do. I’m behind as it is. This floor needs cleaning.’

Rose suddenly saw the funny side of things. She could have just announced an earthquake was imminent and her sister’s only concern would have been that she was behind with the housework.
She watched Em go to the cupboard and take out the mop and pail, her brow slightly furrowed under the turban. Rose thought of Bobby Morton and his labour saving devices. She smiled. Although Em and
Bobby didn’t know it, they had a lot in common.

‘What would you like for tea tonight?’ Em called over her shoulder and Rose saw and heard not Em, but their mother standing at the sink. Both were similar in stature and height at an
inch or two over five foot. Both had narrow yet very straight shoulders and efficient little arms always appearing to be busy. Rose had always felt comforted by the sight of her parents in the
kitchen. They worked as a team and her father had rarely declined the offer of a cloth if it had been thrust his way. Now there was no short and stocky masculine figure to stand like a helmsman at
the wheel and no Eddie to dance around doing exactly the reverse, attempting to escape from it.

Rose sighed softly. Neither her father nor her husband were here to share in the joy of today’s discovery. The two men she loved most in her life were absent. But how much worse must it be
for Em?

Arthur had lived in this house for a short while after their marriage and had occupied the chair in the front room for most of that time. Eddie always observed cryptically that Arthur had glued
his braces to the cushions. But Em had seemed so blissfully happy in those days. The days of innocence, Rose thought a little sadly, when Arthur’s peculiar predilections had not yet surfaced
to shatter their lives. Rose wanted to reach out and hug the busy little turbaned figure. She wanted to tell her sister that everything was going to be all right. She knew this because her baby was
telling her so. The unbelievable miracle that had happened to Rose would spill over into Em’s life, too, and light it up.

‘I went up the shop and bought six sausages,’ Em said as she lowered the pail to the floor and plunged in the mop. ‘I know the girls like Toad in the Hole. Will does too. For
afters we could have sponge and custard.’

‘Lovely,’ Rose said, retracing her steps backwards into the hall as the mop came swishing across the floor followed by a slim little body wielding such energy that Rose retreated
quickly to the front room.

Here she sat on the couch and stared at the radiogram. No longer was she preoccupied with the past. There was too much to live for in the present. With a soft smile on her lips she drew a
cushion in front of her and hugged it tightly. ‘My baby,’ she whispered breathlessly, ‘my darling baby.’

‘Mr Weaver, the facts relating to the robbery are not in dispute. The issue is whether you were one of those who participated in it.’ Charles Herring irritably
shuffled the papers in front of him and looked up with an impatient sigh.

‘But I never saw the inside of that warehouse, Mr Herring,’ Eddie protested once more, wondering what he had to do to convince his counsel he was innocent. Eddie was beginning to
think that the brain of Mr Charles Herring, acting for Mr Lance Puckley-Smythe his defence QC, was as impenetrable as the grey November mist outside.

‘But you were in the area at the time, you admit to that?’ demanded the clerk again.

‘Yes, I told you, I’d been up West for the day.’

The severe-faced young man with neatly oiled dark hair and pince-nez spectacles who sat on the other side of the small table, raised his shoulders in a dismissive shrug. ‘The newspaper
vendor identified you. As a witness for the police – a surprise witness may I add, his testimony is critical to the charge of handling stolen goods.’

Eddie wondered if he’d needed his brains tested on that early spring night in May. Fancy buying a paper when he hadn’t even intended to read it? But he’d felt conspicuous
walking up and down waiting for his punter. Maybe he should be relieved that his man hadn’t turned up and he’d returned home empty-handed. If the newspaper seller had noted a
transaction taking place, then he really would have landed in the proverbial soup. ‘I just bought a newspaper,’ Eddie said brightly. ‘It was a coincidence I was in the
area.’

‘A coincidence indeed,’ the young man sniffed.

‘Coincidences happen all the time,’ Eddie answered dismissively. ‘Anyway, do you think I’d really have been daft enough to flog me neighbour a telly that I’d nicked
from this Whitechapel job?’

‘It’s not up to me to surmise,’ was the curt reply from a deadpan face. ‘But the prosecution are attempting to link your presence in the area to the warehouse burglary
and subsequently the sale of the television to Mr Parker. We have to account for your movements on the day of the Whitechapel burglary. This is our foremost concern.’

Eddie listened vaguely to the imperious voice ringing in his ears. He was weary of the constant use of ‘our’ and ‘we’ when it was he alone who was being accused of crimes
he didn’t commit. It was even more ridiculous that he couldn’t tell the truth about what he was really doing on that day. Eddie was forced to smile at the irony.

But the young lawyer scowled, glancing at Eddie as though the cat had dragged him in. Eddie felt hot and uncomfortable in his shabby suit, which was suffering the creased effects of five
months’prison storage. It was his old demob suit, the one that had been donated to him at the end of the war, along with an overcoat, a shirt with two detachable collars, a tie, two pairs of
socks, a pair of shoes and a hat. Eddie hated hats and had given it away immediately. The shirt, collars and tie had long gone, but he still wore the suit, shoes and overcoat, thanks to
Rose’s careful efforts to preserve every stitch of clothing she’d gathered over the last eight years. The suit was as good as new when pressed to perfection by the heavy old iron heated
on the grille over the fire. To think he had felt so confident when he last wore the suit on Coronation Day as he strode into Olga Parker’s front room. He’d thought himself the
cat’s whiskers and even the news that Olga had dropped him in it hadn’t dampened his spirits. Now he knew the foolishness of his actions. Rose hadn’t been far wrong when
she’d begged him to avoid close contact with their neighbours.

Eddie began to wish, as he had done innumerable times whilst incarcerated, that he had listened to his wife all those years ago. If only he had bought the licence from Ted Jenkins when
he’d retired from his market stall. Cheap enough then, too. Ted had no family and looked on him as a son. But shouting his lungs out behind a stall all day hadn’t appealed to his
inflated ego and instead he’d continued to trade on the streets and in pubs and at the racetracks. Eddie shivered at the thought of the debt he had incurred since Marlene was born. The next
bet was always the big one, until he lost.

But that was water under the bridge now. When he got out of this tangle he’d settle down and do as Rose wanted. The lesson he had learnt on remand was a bitter one. Three days ago he had
climbed the steps to the dock with his heart in his mouth. Here he was, Eddie Weaver, King of the Road, on trial at the most famous criminal court in the world, the Old Bailey. He’d felt numb
with shock to find himself a prisoner under the hallowed roof where the majestic figure of Justice lifted her sword and scales above the City. He’d felt physically ill at the sight of all
that gleaming, polished wood, black gowns and powdery white wigs. And when Lord Justice Markbury had taken his seat, accompanied by twelve members of the jury on the bench, it was then that Eddie
had known the meaning of true fear.

He’d wanted to scream out loud that he hadn’t nicked a telly much less been part of a gang wielding hammers and a shotgun. Eddie shivered again. He hated firearms. He was a peaceful
man and went out of his way to avoid confrontation. He deeply sympathized with the warehouseman who had been assaulted and bundled into a cupboard whilst the villains had driven off with thousands
of pounds’ worth of valuable gear.

Eddie believed in British justice, but today he had begun to wonder if anyone would ever believe him. Yesterday he had pleaded Not Guilty to the charges against him. But today had been a
nightmare from which he seemed unable to wake. Rose had attended against his wishes. He knew his appearance in the dock would be distressing enough for her in her condition. But he hadn’t
reckoned on his own feelings of humiliation, which had been the most painful he’d ever experienced. Every now and then she had met his eyes with a look of confused desperation. He’d
felt powerless, ashamed. All he’d been able to do was try to convey an apology in his eyes.

‘The gang members wore balaclavas,’ continued Charles Herring in a flat, detached voice as Eddie returned to the moment. ‘Therefore identification of the thieves remains
impossible. However, it has been suggested you could have been a lookout.’

Eddie rolled his eyes despairingly. ‘All I was doing was walking home minding me own business. Honest.’

‘Walking from where?’

‘I’ve told you a thousand times. I’d been up West for the day – trading – and I was on me way home.’ By now Eddie had convinced himself this was the truth,
for there was no way he could reveal that his trade was made up entirely of punters eager to place their next illegal bet on the street. Added to which, Rose hadn’t the least idea of what he
had been doing for a living since their second daughter was born. Not that she had ever asked, Eddie thought a little self-righteously, even though at times he had wanted her to. His agreement to
keep his business dealings as far away from their doorstep as possible had answered the problem of Rose’s concerns. But it had also provided him with carte blanche to do as he liked. If ever
he had a twinge of conscience about using their pact for his own ends, he’d smothered it as quickly as it appeared.