The Girl from Cotton Lane (53 page)

Lastly, a few words of advice. Learn forbearance, Billy. It is a virtue to be prized.

Goodnight, and may God bless you.

Seamus P. Murphy

Billy sat on his bed, fond thoughts and memories of the old priest filling his mind. He could hear his excited children playing noisily in the parlour and the sound of Connie crying. Annie came into the room and stood beside him, putting her hands on his shoulders.

‘He was a good priest, Billy, and a good man,’ she said quietly.

He nodded and picked up the letter from the bed. ‘What does forbearance mean, Annie?’ he asked.

She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. ‘Patience, Billy. Patience.’

Chapter Thirty

During the whole of January 1933 it was bitterly cold and snow fell on the cobbled streets. It lay deep, with little sign of a thaw, and it claimed a victim in Page Street. Maggie Jones fell and broke her hip as she struggled to the market one day, and a week later she died in hospital. Her old friends in the little riverside turning stood silently at their front doors as the hearse departed, the horses straining to keep their feet as they were led away from Maggie’s house. The old lady’s son Ernest and his wife were accompanied by Florrie Axford and Sadie Sullivan in the following coach, and as the cortege disappeared into Jamaica Road Maisie Dougall turned to Maudie Mycroft and dabbed at her eyes. ‘Maggie was ever so proud of young Ernie,’ she said, trying to raise a smile. ‘When ’e won that medal she couldn’t stop talkin’ about ’im. She was pissed fer a solid week.’

‘’Ave a bit o’ respect, Mais,’ Maudie reproached her.

Maisie gave Maudie a dark look. ‘Well, it’s true,’ she told her. ‘Ole Maggie ’ad ter be carried ’ome from the Kings Arms one night. Me an’ Florrie was sittin’ in the snug bar an’ Maggie come in wiv ’er bonnet all lopsided an’ she could ’ardly stand up. Florrie reckoned she’d bin doin’ all the pubs in Dock’ead that night. She give ’er a pinch of snuff ter try an’ steady ’er but it only made the poor cow sick. Gawd, what a night that was.’

Maudie made her excuses and went back inside the house, fearful of being party to what she thought were wicked words, while Maisie moved along to another door to continue her observations.

Although the cold wind was blowing through the backwater folk stayed at their front doors to discuss the funeral and the abundance of flowers which draped the hearse. Eventually their conversations returned to the plight they found themselves in. Work was hard to find and many of the women had their husbands and sons sitting around the house doing nothing. Factories were on short time and the docks and wharves provided very little work. Men trudged through the snow to join the ever-lengthening dole queues and returned home with their shoulders bowed and their shabby coat collars turned up against the cold wind. Women struggled to feed their families and searched through cupboards and drawers to find items to pawn. Stew pots simmered over fires which were kept going with bits of wood and tarry logs, and watery soup was thickened by adding bacon bones, potato peelings and flour. Folk in desperate need knocked on their neighbour’s door and cups of sugar and flour were passed out along with a few slices of bread and a smile. Pats of margarine and a smear of jam made up the meal for many families, and in many cases the woman of the house went hungry as she lied about already having eaten, watching with a heavy heart as her man and her children ate a frugal meal.

The houses in Page Street did not let in the weather, however, and the gas coppers were now all working. Maudie’s bedroom ceiling had been fixed and Florrie wondered how she was going to find the extra rent George Galloway had threatened her with if she did not comply with his new scheme. Each Monday morning the rent man called and Florrie along with the rest of her neighbours awaited the bad news, unaware that their landlord had shelved his plans to install more tenants in the old houses. Galloway had other, more pressing matters to take care of, and as he sat in the yard office talking with his son Frank he was a very worried man.

‘Five years we’ve ’ad that contract an’ now the whoresons are not renewin’ it,’ he moaned. ‘We’re bein’ underbid, an’ what’s more we’re losin’ out on the day work. I told yer we should ’ave kept a few ’orses. Those bloody lorries are useless this weavver. If it goes on like this fer much longer we’ll be in the poor-’ouse.’

Frank Galloway stared moodily at his ageing father. He had seen trouble ahead when the old man refused to move with the times. He had wanted his father to go for the more profitable transport work with the larger food factories in the area and instead had seen the business lose out because the old man insisted on sticking with the smaller firms which were now hit hardest of all by the depression that seemed to be sweeping the country. Other transport firms in the area had changed from horse transport to lorries and had picked up work that until then had been transported by rail to cities and towns up and down the land. They were riding the storm while the Galloway business was suffering badly. The old fool will end up going bankrupt if he’s not careful, Frank groaned to himself. It’s a pity he doesn’t retire and be done with it.

George Galloway reached down into a drawer of his desk and took out a bottle of Scotch whisky and a glass. ‘I see they’ve started work on the gymnasium again,’ he said, pouring himself a large measure. ‘They’re puttin’ the roof on now.’

Frank nodded and watched as his father downed the whisky. It’s a wonder the silly old fool hasn’t pickled his liver before now, he thought to himself. ‘It amazes me where all the money’s coming from,’ he remarked.

‘I ’eard that Farvver Murphy left a large sum in ’is will,’ George replied. ‘If it wasn’t fer ’im we might ’ave got that site. It would ’ave bin ideal. We could ’ave moved all the lorries there an’ brought a few ’orses back in this yard.’

Frank sighed irritably. ‘That’s just going backwards,’ he argued. ‘What we should have been doing is going for the journey work.’

‘Goin’ backwards?’ George repeated, raising his voice. ‘Look at Will Tanner’s kid. She’s got more work wiv ’er ’orses than she can ’andle.’

Frank gave his father a hard look. ‘I expect Will Tanner’s holding the reins,’ he replied. ‘It was a mistake to get rid of Tanner. I thought so at the time.’

‘Well, I didn’t ’ear you arguin’ very much ter keep ’im on,’ George told him. ‘Anyway, it’s water under the bridge now. Yer’d better get on ter some o’ the ovver transport firms an’ see if they’ve got any work they want us ter cover.’

Frank set about the task with distaste. Any work gained in that way was sure to be the dregs, he thought as he picked up the phone. Maybe he should listen to Bella. She was always suggesting ways of persuading his father to hand over the business. He would have to be very careful if ever that day came, he told himself. Bella was a scheming bitch whose fascination with expensive clothes had already proved very costly. She had also started to rig out their daughter Caroline with elaborate dresses and at fifteen she looked more like a twenty year old, which worried Frank. Caroline was spoilt and getting to be more like her mother every day. Soon she would be introduced to Bella’s theatrical friends and quite possibly seduced by someone like that idiot Hubert who had made a thorough nuisance of himself before he was finally and firmly ejected from the family home.

The phone calls proved to be a waste of time and Frank leaned back in his chair and studied the grimy ceiling. George had left the office and the only other person there was the young clerk who had his head bent over a large ledger. Frank found it all very depressing. At work he was constantly being blamed for the state of the business and at home he was constantly being reminded that he should be more assertive in the office. Bella had become a vixen since she had been replaced in the show by a younger and more vivacious woman, he thought disdainfully. She had not worked for some time now and was forever on the phone to her agent pleading for him to find her a role. The trouble was, he told himself, Bella would not come to terms with the fact that time had taken its toll on her as it had on everyone else. She lived with high hopes of landing a leading role in a musical and to that end engaged in endless partygoing, sometimes coming home in the early hours with her expectations raised. At least she had been coming home alone and always at a respectable hour since the days of Hubert the nancy boy, he reassured himself.

Frank’s understanding of Bella’s behaviour was only partly accurate. Bella did come home alone and at a respectable hour, but what Frank did not know was that his wife was once again prostituting herself at the parties she went to in the hope of turning the head of some important impresario. On these occasions, however, Bella was careful not to give her husband any reason to suspect that she was not behaving in a dutiful manner. Her trysts were now taking place during the day, often in the cluttered office of a fat, balding man whom Bella felt could help in furthering her career.

Myer Wilchevski belonged to a circus family which had come to England from the Ukraine at the time of the pogroms. He had been a middling to good juggler and clown, and after years of travelling throughout the country had changed his name to Bernard Payne and set up an agency for circus performers. He prospered, and before many years had passed he branched out into the wider field of theatrical promotions. Bella saw the potential in Bernard Payne and she turned a blind eye to his shortness, lack of hair and abundant girth in her desire to get back to the top in her field of entertainment.

Myer, or Bernard as he was now called, had a wife called Delia, who also came from a circus family. Delia had a correspondingly wide girth, and a wide pair of shoulders too. She had bent iron bars and lifted anvils above her head during her circus career and had earned the name of the strongest woman alive. She was putty in the hands of Bernard, however, until she found a pair of silk stockings in his coat pocket one morning and then she almost tied the poker into a knot in her anguish. She caught the next train from Barking where they had a comfortable house and made her way through the cold streets of London to Bernard’s offices in Shaftesbury Avenue. It was her first visit to her husband’s place of work and as she climbed the long flight of stairs Delia vowed that if she found the owner of the stockings she would rip her legs off with her bare hands.

‘I’m sorry but Mr Payne has a full diary today. I’ll try and fit you in tomorrow,’ the pretty receptionist told her.

‘I’ll wait. Maybe he’ll have a cancellation this morning,’ Delia replied, giving the young woman a look which told her she should not attempt to argue.

There were quite a lot of comings and goings but Delia had not been able to fit any of the visitors to the silk stockings and she sighed sadly as she leaned back in the uncomfortable armchair and scanned through a variety paper yet again. At first she had thought it might be the young receptionist who had left her stockings in Bernard’s possession but she soon ruled her out. The girl wore lisle stockings and her legs were the wrong size. The next major suspect came into the office near midday, rolling her hips and swinging her handbag, and Delia noticed that her legs were long and slender. There was something uncannily familiar about those legs, she thought, racking her brains to work out what it was, and when the woman came out of Bernard’s office looking decidedly unhappy Delia smiled to herself and hid her face behind the paper. Barney Preston was up to his tricks again, she chuckled. Barney had been a female impersonator for years.

At ten minutes after midday a youngish woman walked into the waiting room and Delia’s stomach muscles contracted. She was wearing a strong perfume and it was the same smell that was on the stockings in Delia’s handbag. The woman was told to go straight into the inner office and then Bernard appeared, his face flushed, and told the receptionist to cancel the rest of his appointments for the day.

‘So this is what you do behind my back!’ Delia shouted, throwing down the paper and moving towards him.

‘What in heaven’s name are you doing here?’ Bernard spluttered, moving around the desk.

‘Where is that trollop?’ Delia roared. ‘Let me get at her!’

As Bernard tried to calm his raging wife, all the while staying out of reach of her flailing arms, Bella Galloway slipped out from the inner office and attempted to reach the outer door. With a mighty shove Delia despatched Bernard across the room. He came to rest against a filing cabinet. Then the huge woman turned towards Bella who was at the door. As she made a grab for her she tripped over the magazine table and was left holding a handbag by its broken strap as Bella tore down the stairs making her getaway. Inside the handbag Delia found a name and address. She grinned evilly at her terrified husband. ‘There’ll be no more engagements today for Mr Payne,’ she growled to the receptionist, who had been peering from below desk-level at the goings-on. ‘Get your coat and hat. You’re taking me to lunch,’ she told Bernard.

Two days later a parcel arrived at the Galloway house in Ilford. It was addressed to Mr Galloway and it contained one damaged handbag and an accompanying note which, amongst other things, said that Mrs Galloway was nothing more than a common tart who had been very fortunate to escape from the premises of Bernard Payne, Theatrical Agent, in one piece.

Frank Galloway had already left for work when the parcel was delivered and Bella breathed a huge sigh of relief when she opened it as she had been expecting a visit from the mad woman herself at any time. Nevertheless she still felt the need to keep a lookout from her upstairs window that day, lest Bernard’s enraged wife should decide to make a personal call as well.