Rough Justice (17 page)

Did Bernie really think she didn’t notice what they were up to? Like most men, he didn’t have a very high opinion of women’s ability to work things out, but surely he could give her some credit – at least for having two eyes in her bloody head.

The next time Sylvia saw her husband – with Stephen still firmly in tow – it was a quarter to nine. They were down a bit earlier than usual. They came through the door by the side of the bar followed by four men who were as red-faced from drink as Bernie had been from the heat. The four men were speaking and laughing loudly. Stephen was neither red-faced nor speaking loudly, and he certainly wasn’t laughing, in fact he looked fit to put somebody’s lamps out.

Sylvia sidled casually along behind the bar, moving closer to where the men were saying their goodnights. The four strangers shook Bernie’s hand, variously winked at Stephen, lifted their chins in his direction or saluted him, and then left, still talking and laughing loudly.

Sylvia caught Bernie’s eye and mouthed –
tell him he’s barred
– before getting back to serving.

With a raise of his hand, Bernie called another goodnight, and then turned back to Stephen, looking into his eyes as if he were trying to
decode some sort of secret that Stephen was hiding behind them.

‘Everything all right is it, Steve-o?’

‘I’ve just lost ten quid, what do you think? Them bastards couldn’t get away quick enough. Scared I’d win it back from them. Do you call that fair play?’

‘Leave off. You’ll get it back soon enough. You always do, mate. But I wasn’t talking about that.’

Bernie had to be careful how he put this, but he wasn’t about to let Sylvia think she was going to get away with this bloody hare-brained scheme of hers. Bringing Nell back to the pub – had she lost her marbles or something? Whatever would she come up with next? Giving away half-price beer every Saturday night? If she had her way, not only would it ruin what had become a very nice arrangement between him and Stephen Flanagan, but there’d be two little cherry hogs running around the place. No thank you very much. He’d never had kids of his own, so why would he want someone else’s? But, most of all, why would he want to lose a money-spinner like Flanagan? He was the most profitable runner he’d ever had, and the muscles on him meant that he never had to take any nonsense from the punters. No, it was a good set-up, one he wasn’t about to ruin. He had to warn him that something was up, but without setting him off. Flanagan could go off like a rocket on Bonfire Night, and he didn’t fancy being on the tail end.

‘No, what I meant was is everything all right
indoors? It was just something Sylv was saying earlier, after she’d been round to see your Nell. I thought you’d want to know about it, that’s all. You know how women talk.’

Bernie stopped there. Had he said enough? Too much?

Shit, he had.

Stephen’s face was now just as red as Bernie’s. ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, Bernie, or what
your wife
’ – he emphasised the words with a sneer – ‘is talking about. In my home, Nell does as she’s told. She keeps things like I want, and she doesn’t spend all her time nagging and gossiping like other women. You got that?’

Bernie held up his hands, stretching his braces almost to bursting point over his big round belly. ‘You know best, Steve-o.’

‘As far as my own home goes, yes I do. Yes I fucking well do thank you very much.’

Bernie groaned inwardly. That went well. ‘Right.’

‘So long as we’ve got that straight.’

‘Yeah, course. See you tomorrow then?’

At the sound of Stephen’s boots in the hall coming towards the bedroom, Nell closed her eyes tight, trying to breathe calmly as if she were sleeping. Maybe it would be one of those nights when he just got into bed and went to sleep almost as soon as his head touched the pillow, leaving her alone while he snored like a pig.

But it wasn’t.

Before she had a chance to protect herself, Stephen had torn the covers off her and was dragging her out of bed. He slammed her against the wall and smacked her across the face with the flat of his hand.

‘I don’t want to hear that that whore from the Hope has been anywhere near this place ever again, do you understand me?’

Nell’s head felt as if it was spinning off her shoulders, but she knew she had to nod – she certainly couldn’t speak.

‘And if you make a noise and wake up them two little bastards through there and they come in and then they start screaming, and then I have people poking in their noses where they’re not wanted, well then you’ll be sorry. Very sorry. Got it?’

Another headjarring nod. She knew he meant Martin Lovell. She really didn’t want him being involved and Stephen starting on him. She liked Martin so much. He was so kind. Or did Stephen mean Sylvia. Or . . . ? Or who did he mean?

But she couldn’t remember any more names, because it was then that Stephen Flanagan started punching and kicking her.

Martin Lovell stood at the window of the brewery office, looking down at the street below. The crowd was still out there, right by the gate, and, what made it worse, so was his father, right in their midst.

What was he going to do? He couldn’t just go down there and ignore him, but the gate was the only way out of the building.

Martin dragged his fingers down his cheeks. This was turning out to be a royal pain in the arse. For the past couple of hours he’d been finding bits of work to occupy him, making up reasons why he had to stay in the office – papers to sort through, orders to update, accounts to be chased – all the while hoping that the crowd below would just listen to the organisers’ rabble-rousing speeches, shout and holler their support back at them for a while, and then make their way home or clear off to the pub.

Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened; they were still there, and if anything they were getting livelier.

But he had to leave soon; his mum would be going mad as it was. Knowing her she’d already be convinced that he’d been crushed to death
under a dray in the brewery yard, knocked down by a bus on the way home, or attacked down by the dock gates by a drunken mob off the ships. What with the way his dad had started acting lately, she had enough to worry about, so he didn’t want to do this to her as well.

He took his hat off the rack. Right. What he’d do was this – he’d walk across the brewery yard, all casual like, then he’d get to the gates and nod his goodnight to the watchman as though everything was normal, and then he’d just step out onto the pavement, keep his head well down, and walk right past them. Easy. Just another bloke wandering along the Mile End Road.

He looked at the clock again and then stared down at his boots.

Maybe his father wouldn’t notice him.

Yeah, there’d be some chance of that. He might as well have had an arrow pointing to his head with
look this way
written on it in big red letters.

With his hat brim tipped down over his eyes, and his jacket collar turned up regardless of the heat, Martin reached the high metal gates with his blood drumming in his ears.

‘Night then, Mr Lovell,’ called the watchman. He spoke so loudly he might as well have been using a megaphone. ‘Make sure you mind yourself with that lot out there. Right song and dance they’ve been making. Bloody trouble-makers. Could turn ugly if you ask me. They should be moved on. That’s what I think. But where’s a
copper when you want one, eh? That’s what I wanna know. You tell me that. Not like it used to be. Aw no.’

Martin sighed wearily. It was as if the man’s words had attached some sort of a magnet to him, because without needing to look at them, he knew that the whole crowd had turned and that, as one, their gaze was now burning into him – and in that crowd was his father.

The black-shirted orator, who had been addressing the crowd from a makeshift wooden platform created from beer crates appropriated from round the back of the brewery, pointed at Martin. ‘Look at him. Go on, look at him.’

As if they needed telling. Was there anyone left who wasn’t looking at him?

‘The likes of him think they don’t have to worry. And why is that? I’ll tell you why. Because he thinks he’s doing just fine. Fine and dandy, because he’s got work, hasn’t he. And it’s well-paid work from the look of his smart suit and his trilby hat. But let him wait, let him wait until the Jews and all the other foreigners step forward and offer to do his job for half his wages. You wait and see where he is then. I’ll tell you where that’ll be, shall I? He’ll be out on the streets like the rest of you, with no job, no money and not even any pride left because he didn’t act before it was too late – because he couldn’t see it coming. So let’s explain the facts to him, shall we?’

The crowd roared its approval.

The Blackshirt pointed at Martin again. ‘Come
over and join us and listen to a few home truths. Come and learn how you can protect what you’ve got while you’ve still got the chance. Stand up for your rights like a man; stand up and be heard like every decent Englishman should.’

Martin turned down his collar and ran his finger between his neck and his shirt, letting the air circulate around his blood-flushed throat. ‘No, thanks all the same,’ he said as he edged his way past the now jeering crowd. ‘I’m off home.’

‘Think you’re too good for us, do you, because you’ve got a job and this lot haven’t? These men –’ He looked about him like a field marshal surveying his troops. ‘These men have worked hard all their lives. They’ve worked in the docks, and in the factories, working to build up this once great country. Abandon them to poverty, would you? Find them too embarrassing for your posh taste, do you?’

Martin’s father was now only a few feet away from him, but Martin didn’t meet his gaze as he replied as calmly as he could, ‘No, they don’t embarrass me, they don’t embarrass me at all. But do you know what? You do, because me, I’ve never thought I’m too good for anyone. Not foreigners, not Jews, no one. So, if it’s all the same to you, like I said, I’m off home.’

‘Off home, eh?’ shouted someone from the thick of the crowd. ‘Well good for you, moosh. You with your office-wallah job, you can afford to pay the rent on a wage like yours.’

Martin guessed that it was probably the same
person who shouted at him who then threw the stone that hit him on the side of his face. But Martin didn’t react to the taunts or the violence, he wouldn’t let them get to him, not with his dad standing there amongst them. Any other time he’d have been right in there, but he wouldn’t let them set him against his own father. All he wanted was to get away from there, with, preferably, his father by his side. Joe had only been to a couple of the meetings, so maybe it wasn’t too late to make him realise that these people were wrong, and that the men who were putting these ideas into the heads of otherwise decent citizens were nothing more than muck-stirring yobs.

Martin raised his hand and waved at Joe. ‘Dad. How about you coming home with me, eh?’

‘Dad?’ a voice repeated. ‘Dad? Bloody hell. He’s some sort of a geezer, this one. He won’t even hang around to support his own old man? That’s the type he is – a right two-bob merchant.’

‘Ignore him, Dad. Please. We can stop off at the pub on the way home if you like. Yeah, that’d be good; let me buy you a pint.’

His mum would just have to suffer for another half-hour or so; anything would be better than this.

‘Maybe get in a couple, eh? Anywhere you fancy? How about the Hope, that’s only just up the road?’

‘No thank you.’ Joe’s voice was brittle. ‘A man of my age should have enough money in his pocket to buy his own pint. My place is here, with
this lot, with blokes who are in the same boat as me. Blokes who’ve got the guts to do something about this fucking disgusting situation – a situation where a man can’t even afford to put food on his own dinner table, where he can’t afford to treat his own bloody wife.’

‘But, Dad, can’t you see what’s happening here? You’re a good man. Not like them.’ Martin jerked his head in the direction of the speaker on the platform. ‘They’re just a bunch of – I don’t know – bullies.’

‘Bullies?’ roared the Blackshirt, his eyes blazing and his finger stabbing the air. ‘You just wait until the day the Jews finally take over. You mark these words, and mark them well. They are going to swamp us. They are going to flood over us like a wave. They are going to take our jobs and our homes from us; steal our sisters and our daughters. That’s when you’ll find out what bullies really are. As for us and what we are, we are just ordinary men, men standing up for ourselves and our families. And if you were half a man you’d be doing the same by joining us. Joining us and your own father.’

Martin was about to say something more to Joe, but his father had turned his back on him.

It was time to give up – for now at least. Martin took a moment to gather himself and then threw out his chest and barged his way through the openly hostile crowd.

A voice, even louder than the baying mob, shouted over them, ‘Why don’t you hooligans go
and do something useful, like getting yourselves some work?’

The sneering question came from a slightly tipsy, very smartly dressed passer-by, who had an equally well-dressed companion walking along unsteadily beside him.

Martin turned to see what was going on, and closed his eyes with a moan of despair. It was only one of the senior managers from the brewery. He didn’t recognise the other man, but from the look of both of them they’d been making a good fist of sampling the company’s products. Martin was sure as hell not going to let either of them recognise him. He started moving away again, faster this time.

‘There are plenty of jobs out there for all of you,’ the senior manager went on, ‘if only you’d be bothered to shift yourselves to go and look for them, instead of hanging around together on corners like a crowd of street arabs.’

‘What jobs would they be then? Working in offices like you two toffee-nosed bastards? Some chance we’d have of getting cushy little numbers like that.’

‘Why not go and build more cars for toffee-nosed bastards like us?’ The man smirked as he opened the door of what appeared to be a brand new Austin tourer. ‘I could do with a little run-around for the wife. Or how about becoming a tailor? Make me a new suit. I don’t think a gentleman can ever have too many suits, do you?’