That'll Be the Day (2007) (28 page)

‘Aye, he’s been up to no good, that’s what. Your precious boy has been up before the beak and spent a night in t’clink.’

Betty put a hand to her mouth in silent distress. All she could think of was that the last thirteen years of her life had been a complete waste of time. She hadn’t escaped from Ewan Hemley at all. He was not only back in her life and beating her up like he used to, had taken over
her
bedroom and was ruling
her
house as if he owned the place, but was also leading her son along the same dangerous path of criminal activity as himself.

‘I’d have come and told you sooner, only I didn’t know till this morning when they let him out,’ Constable Nuttall was saying. ‘I took the opportunity to see him home personally.’

And indeed there was Jake, looking thinner and bonier than ever but with an anxious, uncertain grin on his face. ‘You’re out of Germsville I see, Mam?’

‘Jake!’ She wanted to leap to her feet and clutch him to her breast, but how could she when she couldn’t even get out of this flipping chair? Instead, Betty slapped him just as he bent to kiss her. ‘What the hell have you been up to?’

‘Only hanging out wi’ me mates.’ He held a hand to his burning cheek, his expression sullen, just like when he was a young boy kicking against her shins because she insisted he go to bed early.

Constable Nuttall said, ‘Sorry to interrupt this touching reunion but the lad has got himself mixed up with an even worse gang of hooligans and he’s now managed to acquire a criminal record. They were only done for shop lifting mind, for which we should be thankful for small mercies. It could have been much worse. But he’s on probation so he’ll have to keep his nose clean. It won’t be just his local bobby keeping an eye on him in future. Anyway, I thought you should know, Betty, and I certainly didn’t trust young Jake to tell you.’

Betty’s heart sank. All her life she’d fought against this very possibility. Now she considered her son with deep disappointment. He even looked different, something to do with a change of hairstyle. He’d adopted a Teddy Boy jelly roll, curling it up even higher at the sides so that it came together in a coil right over his forehead. And the shoulders on his Edwardian style jacket were so grotesquely wide they sloped steeply downwards, hanging over Jake’s own narrow shoulders as if he still carried the coat hanger inside. Worst of all it was a bright, luminous green with black velvet lapels. She’d have laughed out loud if the situation weren’t so dreadfully serious. Her whole life seemed to be falling apart.

‘Oh, Jake, how could you?’ was all Betty managed, and when he shrugged his shoulders in the ridiculous jacket she could easily have slapped him again.

Clenching her fists and holding on to her temper, Betty thanked the constable, again assuring him that she’d keep a better eye on her son in future. Though how she was going to manage that strapped into this flaming wheel-chair, Betty really didn’t have the first idea.

‘Was it you who burgled Mam’s house?’ Lynda demanded of her brother. She was relieved to see Jake safely home again but condemning of his behaviour that had led him to being locked up in a police cell. ‘Pity it wasn’t longer. It might have knocked some sense into that daft noddle of yours.’

‘Why don’t you drop dead twice,’ Jake shouted back at her.

‘And end up looking like you? So, did you do our place over, or not?’

‘No, I didn’t. That’s not the sort of gig I would get involved with so don’t come over all frosted with me. Why would I steal from Mam?’

‘As revenge against this supposed damage she did to you when she chucked your precious father out the door all those years ago. You’ve spent all your flipping life blaming her for that, just ‘cause she wanted a bit of peace in her life.’

Jake flushed. He’d been having second thoughts about that too recently, particularly since Ewan had attacked his mam; having second thoughts about a lot of things, in fact, but he wasn’t yet ready to admit as much to his sister. He steadfastly maintained his innocence, saying he’d done nothing wrong and claiming he’d been too occupied trying to find what had happened to his car.

‘It’s still where you parked it.’

‘Not now it isn’t. I reckon someone nicked it a week or two back,’ he mourned.
 

‘There is justice in the world then,’ Lynda said. ‘I just hope you’ve learned your lesson, that’s all. Mam has enough on her plate without you making things worse for her.’

‘Oh, cut the gas,’ Jake muttered, and stormed off in a huff.

Ewan had no intention of ever leaving Champion Street. Why would he when he had nowhere else to go? He was desperately hard up and had spent the time Betty was in hospital setting himself up as a fence. He’d put out a few feelers from contacts he’d made, letting it be known that he was in the business of disposing of unwanted goods, with all due discretion of course.

The money he’d found carefully secreted under the floorboard had helped to get the enterprise launched.

It amused him that Betty still hid her money in exactly the same place as she had in the other house. Did it never occur to her that under the floorboards would be the first place he’d look? Sadly there hadn’t been quite as much cash in her tin box as he’d hoped for, no more than twenty quid or so, and he needed considerably more than that if he was ever to make something of his life. Still, it had helped to get him going, a bit of capital always being useful at the start of a new business.

Ewan was tired of having no money in his pocket and he also owed a packet on gambling losses. Nor was Billy Quinn, the local bookie, one to put up with such heavy losses for long before he called in the debt. Stories of what he did to people who welshed on their debts were apocryphal n this neck of the woods. Big Molly, for one, could certainly tell a tale or two about the time her own daughters were kidnapped by Quinn because she’d got behind with her payments. Not wishing to find himself in the same sort of bother, Ewan had decided to take action.

He’d also found it necessary to sell one or two other items he’d found in his ex-wife’s house, like the gold clock she kept on her dresser, and one or two pieces of good china. So far Betty didn’t seem to have noticed, being too sunk in her own pain and misery, but if she ever missed them she’d assume they were stolen during the burglary. Which they were, in a way, Ewan chuckled.

Lynda had noticed, he could tell by the look in her eye whenever she dusted the dresser or went to a cupboard to fetch something and found it had vanished. She was doing it now, picking up an ornament, dusting under it, then slamming it down again with a heavy hand.

‘You’re making a hell of a din back there. If you’ve summat to say, get it off yer chest but don’t take it out on that pot dog.’

Lynda stared at her father with his feet up on the mantelshelf in his customary position, reading his
Sporting Life
as if he hadn’t a care in the world. ‘It was you, wasn’t it? I thought it might be our Jake, but it was you who robbed Mam. Don’t try to deny it because I know you’re guilty.’ Lynda put her duster away and got the ironing board out, banging it about in her growing temper. She still had a few shirts to iron and then the tea make. Life was all work these days.

‘Ooh, hoity-toity. Got proof, have you?’

She spit on the iron to check the temperature then reached for the first shirt. ‘Our Jake denies selling Mam’s precious bits and pieces, and I believe him. He’d never do such a thing.’ She was feeling braver suddenly, now that Jake was back home and her mother on the road to recovery. It wouldn’t be long before they’d persuaded this dreadful man to leave. ‘But you wouldn’t think twice, would you?’

Ewan carefully put down his paper and stared at her, his face expressionless. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

‘I’m going to see Constable Nuttall, first chance I get.’

‘I don’t think so, Lynda. I don’t reckon that would be at all wise.’

But thinking of her brave friend, Lynda stuck her nose in the air and said, ‘Watch me!’ She slammed the iron back and forth along the crumpled sleeve.

Ewan got up out of his chair and came over to inspect what she was doing. ‘Don’t you know you should iron the collar first? Didn’t your mother teach you anything? Let me show you.’ Snatching the iron out of her hand he grabbed her wrist and pressed the hot iron on her hand. Lynda screamed as the pain seared her skin.

‘There you are. A little lesson for you in how to iron, and how to keep your bleeding mouth shut.’

Ewan was delighted to have his son back home. Jake, he decided, could make a very useful go-between by helping to spread the word for this new business of his. But when Ewan outlined to the lad what it was he wanted him to do, Jake simply looked blank.

‘What sort of stuff are you talking about?’

‘Stuff!’

‘You mean like all them bits of engine parts and boxes of records you’ve got stacked in Mam’s bedroom?’

‘It’s not your Mam’s room any longer son, it’s mine, and what the bleedin’ hell were you doing in it?’

‘I forgot, and went looking for her to mend this hole in t’pocket of me trousers.’

‘Aye, well, you might ask her to stitch up the hole in your head at the same time.’

‘What hole in me head?’

‘Never mind. Not the brightest star in the night sky, are you lad? Listen carefully and I’ll explain again. What I want you to do is let them mates of yours know that should they come across anything interesting in their travels, to give me first refusal. I could well be interested in making a little purchase from them which could be beneficial to us both.’

Nothing registered in Jake’s expression beyond blank puzzlement. ‘They don’t go in much for travel don’t my mates. They tend to hang around their own pad.’

Ewan sighed, feeling a great urge to tear out his hair, or more likely Jake’s. Instead, he adopted the kind of tone one might use with a very small child. ‘But they do sometimes visit other people’s pads, don’t they, when they haven’t even been invited?’

Light slowly dawned. ‘Oh, yeah, I see what you’re driving at, daddy-O.’

‘Don’t call me that, son, I don’t like it. Just plain Dad will do fine.’

‘But it’s only a saying, like cool, ya know?’

 
Ewan gritted his teeth, clenching and unclenching his bony fists which he had a great urge to plant on the boy’s stupid face. ‘Just try to concentrate on what I’m telling you. Should they ever come across owt interesting in these places they visit, let me know, right?’

Jake grinned, then tapped the side of his nose with one finger. ‘Gotcha.’ Right now he’d do anything to keep this father of his happy. Maybe then he’d stop bullying his mam and Lynda.

‘Thank God for that,’ Ewan said, on a sigh of relief. ‘We’ve got a deal then?’

‘Made in the shade.’

‘What? Never mind, don’t bother explaining, I don’t want to know what that might mean.’

Almost at once a frown again appeared. ‘Won’t Mam object? I mean, she threatened to shop me to Constable Nuttall if I ever did anything wrong again.’

‘Ah, but your mam won’t know, will she? You’re certainly not going to tell her, are you? And I’d be daft to, so there we are, you’ll be quite safe.’

‘Aw, right, I suppose I would.’ Jake still didn’t look convinced and Ewan gave it one last push.

‘So you’ll pass the word around then? It’s quite simple, lad, first we find stuff that nobody wants, or folk have found lying about like, then we sell it and share the profits. What could be simpler? Sound good to you?’

‘Yeah,’ Jake quickly agreed, thinking of his lost motor. ‘I need to buy meself a new set of wheels then I can go burn some rubber.’

‘Course you do, lad, and I’ll help you get one.’

‘Rightio daddy-O. You’re on. I’ll go and ask them now, shall I?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ Ewan agreed with barely restrained patience. ‘No time like the present.’

‘OK, see you later alligator.’ And Jake gladly escaped, though he still wasn’t entirely sure what he was supposed to do, or what tricks his father was up to.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Judy rushed round to see Sam and collect Ruth first thing the next morning.

‘She’s not here,’ he told her. ‘She’s gone to school.’
 

‘Oh!’ Of course she had. So had Tom. How foolish of her to imagine otherwise. But then Judy wasn’t thinking too clearly.

She’d hardly slept since Sam had delivered Tom after their day out, a fear growing inside her that he was poisoning the children’s mind against her. Tom had been strangely quiet over breakfast and although Judy had been reluctant to interrogate him about his afternoon out with his father, yet she’d found herself asking a few leading questions beneath the usual ‘Did you have a good time?’

She wanted to know if anyone else had been there, without actually saying that she meant another woman. If their father taking them back to their old home had made them long to return to their own bedrooms and the life they’d used to know? Judy was quite sure that it must be hard for the children to leave again to return to this grotty bedsit.

She recalled how Lynda often talked of her sense of abandonment and loss, something Judy didn’t want to happen to her own kids. She felt it was important that Tom still saw his father; a boy needed a male figure around to look up to and pit himself against. She wanted him to have the chance to love Sam, as she knew Sam loved Tom. She wondered if the little boy was feeling jealous of Ruth because she’d chosen to stay, yet felt disloyal to his mother for wanting to stay too.