The Cobbler's Kids (18 page)

For the same reason she’d not taken him seriously when he talked about her marrying Bill Martin. Not only was he twice her age, but it was well known that he was a dubious character. She’d thought it was all talk, some jape they’d dreamed up when they’d been drunk, and that her father was using it as a threat. She’d thought his talk of money-making schemes involving Bill had also been figments of their imagination.

Now she knew better. Her father had made it quite clear that he had not only believed in these schemes, but had built his hopes on the two of them making a fortune.

She was to have been the bait! She was the reward, or prize, that he had promised to Bill in return for his cooperation.

For weeks afterwards, Vera and her father avoided each other. When he came into a room she left it. When Eddy realised what was going on he demanded to know what was wrong. When she eventually told him, and showed him some of her bruises, Eddy wanted to sort things out with him once and for all.

‘I’ll beat the living daylights out of him,’ he threatened. ‘I should have done it years ago, only I’ve always been too scared of him.’

‘Don’t do anything that either of us will regret, Eddy,’ she begged. ‘You can leave any time and clear off, but what about me and Benny? I don’t earn enough to support him on my own.’

‘I could look after you both!’

She shook her head ruefully. ‘You are still planning to marry Rita …’

‘Well? You could come and live with us.’

‘Rita wouldn’t like that, now would she,’ Vera pointed out in a toneless voice.

Eddy shrugged. ‘She’d understand. She knows what a pig the old man can be.’

Vera smiled uneasily. ‘I don’t think it would work. It wouldn’t be fair on the two of you and I don’t suppose for one minute that Dad would let Benny come with us. He’d rather see him in a home,’ she added bitterly.

‘You can’t go on living here, Vee … it’s not safe. Next time it mightn’t simply be bruises. You could end up with a broken arm, or worse … just like Mam!’

‘I don’t think he’ll hit me again … he seemed sorry after it happened.’

‘Did he say so?’ Eddy asked cynically.

‘Of course not.’ Vera gave a harsh little laugh. ‘You’ve never heard him say sorry in his life, now have you?’

‘No, you’re right, about that! Take care, though, Vee. If you are worried about the way he’s acting then tell me and let me deal with it.’

Gradually life returned to normal. Vera and her father stopped avoiding each other, but they were still uneasy in each other’s company, and they spoke to each other only when they had to do so.

Michael spent more and more time out drinking with his cronies. Vera left a covered plate of sandwiches on the table for him each night and made sure that she was in bed when he came home.

It was quite by chance that Vera discovered that when Benny came home from school her father was sending him on messages to the manager of James Coombes’s, a company-owned boot and shoe repairer’s in Great Homer Street.

She didn’t approve of Benny going there on his own, but at eight years old he was big enough to carry out such a simple task. When he assured her that there was no money involved she reasoned that it was unlikely he would be waylaid, even though he nipped through the jigger behind their shop.

However, she discovered the true nature of the messages Benny had been delivering when one evening, shortly before closing time, a drunken, brassy blonde, with a cigarette dangling from one corner of her vividly painted mouth, came into the shop.

When she started threatening to report what she declared she knew about Michael’s apparently illegal dealings in front of his other customers, he hurriedly propelled the woman out of the shop and into their living room.

‘Trying to shut my mouth are you, Michael Quinn?’ she laughed garrulously, when he ordered Vera to make her a cup of tea. ‘Well, you’ll have to offer me more than a cuppa to make me do that.’

‘The minute I close the shop I’ll take you for a bevvy,’ Michael promised. ‘For the moment though, sit down by the fire and talk to my daughter, Vera.’

As the woman lurched across the room and flopped down in Michael’s armchair by the fire, the smell of cheap California Poppy perfume mixed with fumes of alcohol almost choked Vera.

‘I suppose you’re wondering who the hell I am and what I want,’ the woman stated. She took a long draw on her cigarette, letting the grey ash spill down the front of her low-necked bright red satin blouse and onto her short black skirt.

Vera watched, fascinated as the woman crossed one shapely leg over the other, her cheap silk stockings rasping against each other as she did so.

‘Did you say you’d like a cup of tea?’ Vera asked non-committally.

The woman shrugged. ‘If that’s all you have to offer me. What I really need is a drink … a real drink.’

‘I’m afraid we haven’t any beer in the house,’ Vera told her stiffly.

‘Beer! Who mentioned beer? I need a proper drink. Whisky, brandy, gin, or even a port if you’ve nothing else.’

Vera shook her head. ‘You’re out of luck. There’s nothing like that in this house.’

‘Bugger me! No wonder Mike is down at the pub every night. What sort of home is this?’ She looked round the room disdainfully. ‘Not much of a place by the look of it.’

Vera felt her anger rising. Their home might be sparsely furnished, but she kept it spotlessly clean. As far as she was concerned her first priority was to use the limited money she had to put food on the table and clothes on their backs. And since most of the clothes she bought for herself and Benny were seconds from Paddy’s Market she couldn’t economise any more than she did.

It was with difficulty that she managed to hold her tongue as she made a pot of tea and poured out a cup for both of them. She watched in silence as the stranger spooned three helpings of sugar into hers.

She was relieved when her father came through from the shop. Quickly, she poured a cup of tea for him and then offered to refill their guest’s cup.

The woman shook her head. ‘No more cat’s piss for me! I wonder you can drink it, Mike, when you’re used to something a damn sight stronger,’ she jibed.

‘Not during the day! I never drink while I am working. I save my thirst for when I go for a bevvy in the evening.’

‘You certainly put it away then!’

Vera waited for him to explode in anger at her comment, but he merely smiled. ‘So now, Di, to what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’

Her heavily rouged lips pressed together in a grimace and her sharp green eyes gleamed. She leaned forward, displaying her ample cleavage, and tapped the side of her nose with a nicotine-stained finger.

‘I’ve just come from Coombes’s shop in Great Homer Street,’ she stated with a knowing grin.

‘Patronising the opposition are you? So why come to tell me about it?’

‘Not patronising them, Mike Quinn, but picking up nuggets of information!’ She sat back with a gloating expression on her face. ‘I know all about the little racket you and the manager there, Tom Gray, are running between you.’

Michael Quinn straightened up in his chair. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I hardly know the man.’

‘Come off it! I’m not blind and I’m not green. I’ve seen the two of you in a huddle down the boozer, and then passing a wad between you!’ She paused and took another long drag on her cigarette, letting the smoke out so that there was a blue haze in the air around her. ‘I couldn’t help wondering what might be going on, so I made it my business to find out.’

Vera tried to quell the thundering of her heart. James Coombes’s was where her dad regularly sent Benny on messages, so what was going on? She didn’t want to believe what she was thinking, but she was pretty sure from what the woman was saying that her dad was engaged in some sort of a fiddle again.

‘Knowing that your cosy little arrangement with the bookie was at an end it didn’t take much for me to work out that you had a new enterprise under way.’ Di grinned. ‘One that amounts to thieving, no less!’

‘You’re talking a load of rubbish, Di Deverill,’ Michael blustered. ‘Any transactions you’ve seen between me and Tom Gray are strictly business dealings. As fellow cobblers we help each other out. Sometimes I run short of soles and he loans me some until my next delivery comes through. I then repay him by sending the same number back.’

Di laughed coarsely. ‘Of course that’s what’s going on! He pinches the bloody things, passes them on to you and you pay him half what they’re worth.’

‘Nothing of the sort! We simply loan them to each other.’

‘Bloody rubbish! The soles you send back to him are only half the number he has loaned you. And, more to the point, they are cheap and inferior. You must be making a tidy sum out of this little racket, Mike!’

He opened his mouth to refute her claim, then held back. Giving her a cool smile, he asked calmly, ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

Di Deverill again took a long pull on her cigarette. ‘Depends!’ she said cryptically.

‘Depends on what?’

‘Well, I did think of going to the police, but I don’t like getting involved with scuffers, even when I am in the clear. Then I thought I would let the top boss man at Coombes’s know what was going on. That would get Tom Gray the sack. It would also get you into trouble. That kid of yours, who shuttles the stuff between the two of you, would probably end up being sent to Borstal. Now what good would all that do me?’

‘None at all!’ Michael agreed heartily.

‘So then I had another idea.’ Di paused and stubbed out her cigarette in her saucer.

Vera and her father waited anxiously for her to go on, but it was obvious she was enjoying herself and in no hurry to do so.

Di looked across the room at Vera and then turned back to Michael with a knowing wink. ‘I think it might be better if we went somewhere else, somewhere we can be on our own, before we discuss my idea any further,’ she said with deliberate coyness.

He frowned. Inwardly he was shaking with fear knowing that if she did go to the police they would be more than happy to pursue the matter. He might have escaped from their suspicions over handling the betting slips, but he knew they didn’t believe he was innocent. PC Walters would take a perverse delight in seeing him up in court on some other charge.

To be accused of conspiring to steal from a company the size of Coombes’s would bring him real grief. He couldn’t rely on Tom Gray to keep his name out of it. Even if Tom did there were far too many people who, like Di Deverill, had seen them huddled together.

Although he had closed the shop he didn’t want to go to the boozer in his working clothes, but he didn’t want to leave Di alone with Vera any longer either.

‘Shouldn’t you and Benny be out doing deliveries instead of hanging around here listening to other people’s business?’ he asked her brusquely.

Vera looked from him to Di and back again. There was something serious going on and it scared her. He obviously wanted her out of the way and she knew better than to defy him.

‘I’ll get our coats and we’ll be off then,’ she said quietly. She smiled at Di. ‘It was very nice to meet you, perhaps I’ll see you again someday.’

‘You’ll be seeing me again, you can count on it, luv,’ Di told her with a grin.

Vera was surprised to find Di Deverill was still sitting in the armchair in their living room when she and Benny came back from doing the deliveries. She was looking smug, but her father was scowling.

‘How about making another cuppa, luv?’ Di said before Vera had even had a chance to take off her coat.

‘Hurry up! You heard what Di said,’ her father snapped, when she hesitated.

‘You’d better get used to taking orders from me,’ Di told her happily, ‘because I’m moving in.’

Startled, Vera looked questioningly at her father. ‘Is that right, Dad?’

‘Get that tea made and pack young Benny off to bed, then we’ll tell you all about it,’ he muttered gruffly.

Vera was on the point of arguing, reminding him that Benny hadn’t had his supper, but there was such a strange atmosphere in the room that she decided to do as he asked. She couldn’t believe for one minute that this woman was telling the truth and she wanted to know exactly what she was doing.

‘Go on, there’s a good lad, I’ll bring you up a jam butty and a glass of ginger beer and you can have them upstairs in bed,’ she promised.

‘Can I take my comic up to read?’

‘Yes, of course you can,’ she told him, giving him a little push towards the stairs.

‘And will you come up and read to me?’

‘Perhaps. Later on, when I’ve heard what Dad has to tell me,’ she whispered.

By the time she’d taken the ginger beer and jam butty up to Benny her mind was in turmoil. In that short space of time she’d considered so many interpretations of what was going on and what her dad was going to say.

She felt very uneasy as she carried the tea through for her father and Di. She perched awkwardly on the edge of one of the straight-backed wooden chairs wondering what exactly her father had to tell her. Di’s remark about moving in, and that she’d have to get used to taking orders from her, made her feel pretty sure that she wasn’t going to like what she was about to hear.

Michael Quinn waited until she’d poured out the tea and Di had helped herself to her three heaped spoonfuls of sugar.

‘Now, girl, listen carefully.’ He paused and cleared his throat. ‘We’ve got some news for you. Di’s decided she wants to live here with us and I’ve agreed.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Vera challenged. ‘You can’t mean she is going to be here all the time?’

‘That’s what I’ve just told you, isn’t it?’ he barked, his face set with anger.

Vera frowned. ‘But there’s no room. Where will she sleep?’

Di laughed raucously. ‘Grow up girl, where do you think I will sleep?’

‘I don’t know. We haven’t got a spare bedroom …’

‘I’ll be sleeping with your old man, you silly bint,’ Di told her mockingly.

Vera looked taken aback. The colour drained from her face. ‘You mean in his bed … where my mam used to sleep?’ she gasped.

The shock and horror in Vera’s voice brought a hoot of laughter from Di.