Rough Justice (6 page)

As a feeling of sickness rose in her empty belly a man absorbed in reading his morning newspaper walked straight into her, sending her stumbling backwards.

‘Watch where you’re going, will you?’ he barked, striding off without even offering to help her.

Nell tried to save herself, but the thin soles of her shoes slipped on the damp paving stones and she lost her footing, finishing up almost sitting on top of a petite, red-haired young woman who was kneeling on a coconut mat, scrubbing the front step of a pub.

‘Oi! Look out you dozy ha’p’orth,’ she yelled. ‘You’ve knocked my bloody hat right off my flipping head, and soaked my sleeve all the way up to my blooming elbow.’

‘I’m very sorry, miss.’ Nell was now round-eyed with fear. Would the woman attack her? ‘I didn’t mean to. Honestly I didn’t.’

She bent down to right the woman’s bucket, but her frozen fingers had no grip and the pail went crashing to the pavement, sending what water there was left all over Nell’s already chilled bare legs. She burst into tears of miserable self-pity.

Getting to her feet, the red-haired young woman sighed loudly. ‘All right, don’t make such a bloody fuss. It’s only a drop of water. And it was your own fault. I didn’t chuck it at you. Not like you chucked it over me.’

She put her arm around Nell’s shoulders. ‘I’m probably going to regret ever doing this, cos you might be a mad axe-murderer for all I know, but look at you, I can’t leave you out here, you’re trembling. Come on, come inside and we’ll get you all dried off.’

Nell resisted for a brief moment – she had never seen anyone with so much powder and lipstick plastered on her face – but not knowing what else to do, she gave in and let the woman usher her inside the pub.

As she pushed her way past the folds of a heavy red velvet curtain that hung the full length of the doorway, Nell gasped. She had never seen anything like it.

The place was glittering with ornate bevelled mirrors and burnished brass rails and gasoliers. There were rows of variously sized and coloured bottles on glass shelves, polished wood and ceramic pumps on a curving mahogany bar that was divided up by etched-glass snob screens.

Nell thought it must be one of the most beautiful places in the world.

And it was so warm. The heat was coming from what looked like a freshly set fire that was blazing away in a tiled and blackleaded grate, and the air was thick with heavy scents that she couldn’t recognise or name, but which reminded her of Mr Thanet.

‘So, what do they call you then, sweetheart?’ said the young woman, peeling Nell’s coat from her drooping shoulders. ‘They call me Sylvia.’

‘Nell, miss,’ she said, making sure her brooch was safely tucked into her fist, a memory flashing into her mind of being told to keep it safe in her mouth before the man came.

‘That’s a nice name; I had a friend called Nell once.’ Sylvia pulled a chair close to the fire and draped the coat over it to dry. ‘But she got married and moved over to south London. Gawd knows why she did that.’ She turned back to face Nell. ‘And I’m not
Miss
, I’m . . . Here, hang on a minute. Your dress. Isn’t that one of them they wear in that home that’s off the back of the high street?’

Nell nodded. ‘Yes, miss.’

‘You’ve not gone and pinched it off their line or nothing, have you?’

‘No, it’s mine.’ Nell’s head had started aching and her fingers and heels were tingling as the heat warmed her skin.

‘So what were you doing out in the street then?’

‘I left this morning,’ she said, then added hurriedly, ‘because I’m sixteen.’

Sylvia frowned; there was something funny going on here. ‘I thought they were meant to get you girls work once you turned fourteen. Yeah, that’s right they do, they get all the girls from that place jobs in the schmutter trade. I’ve got customers who’ve taken them on as finishers and pressers.’

She paused, looking Nell up and down, taking in the girl’s bare legs and her damp dress. She knew the home had a bit of a reputation for being
strict and for not exactly overflowing with the milk of human kindness, but surely even they wouldn’t send a kid out dressed like that, not in this weather. Sylvia was wearing a good thick coat and warm stockings, and she felt bloody cold enough.

‘Here, you haven’t run away have you? Cos if you have, then I don’t want you here, because I’m not having you bringing any trouble to my door; this is a respectable house.’

‘No. It was Matron, she told me I had to leave.’

‘Well where are your things then?’

‘I haven’t got any.’

‘So you’re saying they kept you on longer than they should have, but then they just chucked you out with nothing? Are you telling me the truth?’

Nell shrugged, embarrassed, but not daring to mention the row over the brooch. ‘Matron let me stay until now because I was doing all her office work.’

She pressed her lips together, determined not to cry again. ‘I can do typewriting, you see. And I did loads of laundry and cleaning, and looked after the little ones, taught them their letters if they were finding it hard. But for some reason she got all upset with me, and said I had to go.’

‘Did you steal something? Is that why she got upset with you?’

‘No.’ Nell closed her hand tighter round the brooch. ‘I never took anything, not all the time I was there. I never even stole the vegetable peelings from outside the back of the kitchen, not
even when I was really hungry, even though some of the others did. I don’t know why she was always so cross with me. I always worked as hard as I could. And Mr Thanet, he said I was the hardest worker in the home. Best he’d ever had.’

Sylvia’s face softened. ‘You say you did laundry and cleaning, eh? So where are you working now then, Nell?’

‘Nowhere.’ Nell’s bottom lip started to wobble. ‘I don’t really know how to get a job.’

‘Right.’ Sylvia fussed about with Nell’s coat, turning it over and moving the chair nearer the fire. ‘Tell you what, you wait there for me a minute, sweetheart, and I’ll be right back.’

As Sylvia disappeared through a door at the side of the bar, Nell could hear her calling, ‘Bernie, come down here will you, darling, there’s someone I want you to meet.’

‘Aw, Sylv, do I have to?’

‘Come on, Bern, do us a favour. It won’t take long. It’s important.’

There was a sound of floorboards creaking and of a chair dragging heavily across a floor from somewhere above Nell’s head, followed by footsteps coming down a flight of stairs. Then Sylvia reappeared with a man behind her, his huge frame making the diminutive woman look even tinier. He was completely bald with a big, round, friendly face.

‘Bernie, this is Nell. Nell, this is my husband who runs the pub with me.’

Bernie Woods nodded and smiled.

Nell did her best to smile back, but hearing that this man who looked to be about Mr Thanet’s age – at least fifty – was married to Sylvia, who couldn’t have been more than in her late twenties, was something of a shock. He was old enough to be her dad. But perhaps that was how things worked in the world outside the home and outside the books at Sunday school. She felt bewildered. She was beginning to think she didn’t know much about anything at all.

‘And, do you know what?’ Sylvia continued. ‘We’ve been looking for a good, hard-working girl for a while now, not a lazy, dozy mare like the ones we’ve had working here lately.’ She looked at Bernie and rolled her eyes. ‘Right Bern?’

‘Right Sylv.’

‘So, how d’you fancy doing a bit of cleaning work for us?’

Before Nell could answer, Bernie had cut in. ‘You can give her more than a bit of cleaning, Sylv. With her looks we’ll have the blokes flocking in if we stick her behind the bar.’

‘I think you could be right.’ Sylvia eyed Nell closely, not as she had done before, but this time taking in her trim figure, her wide grey eyes, and her badly cut yet still pretty blonde curls.

She thought for only a few moments. ‘Here, I’ll tell you what, Nell, you can do the cleaning down here, help me upstairs with a few jobs, maybe a bit of laundry and that, and then you can have a couple of hours behind the bar. How does that sound?’

‘Thank you, miss.’ Nell could hardly say the words, not because she was still shocked at her being married to Bernie – that was all forgotten in this fast-moving, strange world – but because she was so excited; her mouth had gone dry and she felt as if her tongue was going to stick to the roof of her mouth.

Then cold reality struck her like a slap in the face from Matron Sully. ‘But first I have to find somewhere to stay.’

Sylvia shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about that, you can live in if you like. How’d that suit you?’

Nell stared down at the ground, feeling stupid, just like she did whenever Matron had scolded her for getting something wrong. ‘Live in? I don’t know what that means.’

‘It means I’ll sort out a room for you here, Nell.’ She nodded towards the door by the bar. ‘Upstairs. We’ve got loads of space. Rooms we don’t even go in, let alone use. And you can have your meals chucked in and all, and we’ll get you a couple of frocks, a sight better than that one, and, let’s say what, five bob? No, don’t let’s get into an argument over it, seven and six a week?’

Nell nodded, her face glowing with the gratitude that she felt towards this wonderful woman.

It was now Sylvia who couldn’t believe her luck: a general dogsbody for seven and six a week, a couple of frocks off the market, and a bit of grub. She could already imagine having a lovely long lie-in of a morning before sitting down with a nice cup of tea. Living exactly the life
she’d expected she was going to have the day she’d agreed to marry Bernie, when she’d been working for him as a barmaid.

Bernie patted Nell on the head. ‘Good girl,’ he said, and made his way back towards the door by the bar.

‘I’ll leave you two girls to sort out the details,’ he said, puffing as he started to climb the stairs. ‘I’m back up to the kitchen to finish off my breakfast. And from the sound of that girl’s rumbling belly, I reckon she could do with a bit of something and all, Sylv.’

‘I’ll make her a couple of rounds of toast,’ said Sylvia, following him through the doorway. ‘You warm yourself by the fire, Nell, while I go and get the bread. And give that coat a turn or it’ll scorch.’

Nell watched in amazement as Sylvia sat next to her by the fire and first toasted the thickly sliced, really white, fluffy-looking bread on a long metal fork, and then spread it with bright yellow butter – something she’d only ever seen when taking Matron in her afternoon crumpets, certainly something she’d never eaten. Sylvia then put big dollops of glistening deep red jam on top.

Nell ate three of the thick slices and drank two cups of tea with sugar and milk, out of the prettiest cup and saucer – even better than Matron’s – she’d ever seen. It was as if the angels in those books at Sunday school had lifted her up.

‘Better?’ asked Sylvia.

‘Yes, thank you very much, miss.’ Nell shifted
slightly on her chair so that she wasn’t looking Sylvia in the face. ‘There is one thing, though.’

Here we go, thought Sylvia. She should have known it was too good to be true. ‘And that one thing, what would that be then?’

‘What your husband said, about blokes flocking in. I didn’t really know what he meant. What do I have to do?’

Sylvia covered her spluttering laughter with a hurried coughing fit.

‘You don’t have to do anything, darling,’ she finally managed to spit out. ‘When you’re a young girl with looks like yours, men will take a proper shine to you. They’re only interested in one thing about a girl, see, the whole bloody lot of them. You know what men are like.’

‘No, not really, I don’t think I do.’ Nell was slowly shaking her head. ‘I’ve only ever really known one man, and that’s Mr Thanet. He’s the governor at the home, and Matron said I was too old for him to be interested in me.’

This time, Sylvia’s coughing fit didn’t have to be put on.

‘Well, I must say, Nell, you’ve picked this up in no time, darling.’

Nell smiled across at Sylvia, as she gave the brass rings around the beer pumps a final polish. ‘It’s all so beautiful, I feel lucky that you let me do it.’

‘I have to admit I hadn’t been seeing the Hope and Anchor in that sort of a light lately. It’s been more like a bloody millstone round me flaming neck than a thing of beauty – what with all the cleaning and scrubbing involved. It was all too much for one person to cope with. You’ve brought a proper breath of fresh air to the place. It’s been like having a special friend living here with me, or even the daughter I might have had.’

‘Why haven’t you had children, Sylvia, you’d be a smashing mum?’

Sylvia suddenly found herself preoccupied with a smudge on the front of her dress. ‘Didn’t happen, that’s all. After I had a bit of trouble. Anyway, I’m happy enough. And I’ve got you now, haven’t I?’

She looked at Nell, studying her shining hair, and her soft, unblemished skin. How old
was
she?

Nell was apparently concentrating on folding
the rag she’d been using as a duster into a neat square, flattening it firmly on the bar with slow sweeps of her hand. ‘I don’t remember my own mum, Sylv. Like I said, all I do know is there’s someone I think I remember, a kind, beautiful lady, but then there was a fire and then I was in the home, and . . .’ She ran a finger round the outline of the brooch she now never failed to pin onto whatever she was wearing. ‘For some reason I always knew this was mine, mine by rights; something to do with remembering someone, and the fire.’

Nell lifted her chin and looked at Sylvia. ‘But I hope she was like you, Sylv, however old I am. Though I reckon we’re more like sisters, you and me.’

Sylvia bit down on her scarlet-stained bottom lip and held out her arms. ‘Come over here and give me a cuddle, you silly great ha’p’orth.’

Nell hugged her tightly. ‘I can’t remember ever being this happy. Not ever.’

She had had more loving attention in the time she’d been at the Hope and Anchor than she had experienced in her whole life before she had bumped into Sylvia, on that day when the man had knocked her over. Now Christmas was coming, and Sylvia was promising to put on what she called ‘a really good do’. And then there was Stephen Flanagan.