The Girl with the Creel (48 page)

‘What in the name of Jesus are
you
doing here?' Lenny countered.

‘Please, Lenny,' Elsie begged, her hands jumping from her breasts to her pubis in a vain effort to cover herself. ‘It's not what you think.'

‘What am I supposed to think when he'd his prick inside you?'

Struggling to get on his trousers, Paddy snarled, ‘What business is it of yours?'

‘She's mine! That's what business it is! She's been mine for years!'

Paddy burst out laughing. ‘For years? You're just a kid. You don't know what you're speaking about.'

‘Ask her!' Lenny screeched. ‘She'll tell you!'

His hands fumbling with his trouser buttons, Paddy turned angrily to Elsie. ‘Is that true?'

Wishing Lenny in hell, she shouted, ‘Get out, get out!'

‘Tell him it's true!' Lenny yelled.

Slipping on his shirt, Paddy roared, ‘I don't give a monkey's damn if it's true or not. I'm finished with you, you tramp!' Lifting his jacket, he made for the door.

‘Don't go, Paddy!' Elsie pleaded. ‘I didn't mean you!'

He looked at her contemptuously as he went out, and she jumped to her feet and punched Lenny in the chest. ‘See what you've done, you stupid young bugger?'

At that moment a shrill voice outside called, ‘Put out that light!'

Lenny collapsed on to the couch in a fit of uncontrollable laughter, but Elsie went to the door and gave the warden a mouthful of curses as well as a full view of her bare body. As he reeled back in amazement, she banged the door and went in to yank the curtains together. Turning to face Lenny, she spat out, ‘D'you really think I wanted a half-grown idiot when I had my pick of anybody I wanted? I only fooled about with you because Peter had stopped touching me, but Paddy's a real he-man and … now I'll never see him again.'

Her tears made Lenny get up to put his arms round her, but she shoved him away. ‘Get out of my sight, for God's sake!'

He stood for a moment, then walked slowly towards the door, but as he opened it he looked at her again. ‘You're an evil bitch! I'll not let you get away with what you've done to me.'

‘Get lost, little boy,' she sneered. ‘Run home to your mammy and see what she thinks of you for interfering with a married woman.'

Lenny pulled the door shut quietly. Her last remark had made him feel like strangling her, yet remembering how beautiful she looked standing naked in front of him, he knew he would go running back if she crooked her little finger at him. But she wouldn't have anything more to do with him now, and he would damned well carry out his threat. She deserved to suffer as much as she'd made him suffer tonight. He didn't know exactly what he would do, but he'd think of something!

Jenny couldn't believe her ears. The two women in the butcher's had been saying some awful things about Elsie. ‘And it must be true,' one of them had crowed gleefully. ‘Eck Stewart couldna mak' up a story like that.'

Lifting the change from the ten shilling note she had tendered, Jenny walked out of the shop seething and strode home so fast that Georgie had to run to keep up with her, while her little daughter laughed with glee at the new game. When she spotted the ARP warden at the other side of the road, she crossed over to tackle him about the rumour he had spread.

‘It's not a rumour, it's gospel,' he said, puffing out his chest. ‘I shouted to Elsie to put out her light, though it wasna really a light, just the flames from her fire, and help my bob, she comes to the door in her birthday suit, as bold as brass. I didna ken where to look. I've never seen a body like hers before, not without being well covered, and there she stood, swearing like a trooper. Not only that, I saw a man running out with his jacket in his hand a minute or so afore, and there was still a man in wi' her. So what had she been up to?'

Feeling sick, Jenny said, faintly, ‘You must have imagined it, Eck.'

‘It wasna imagination that made my cock stand up … oh, I beg pardon, Jenny. I shouldna be saying things like that to you. But I thought I was well past it, and that proved I wasna.'

‘You shouldn't go telling folk, though. Whatever she was doing, it was her own business.'

The warden was taken aback at this, but muttered, ‘I dinna think her man would look on it like that.'

Feeling a deep compassion for Peter, Jenny made up her mind to go and find out what Elsie was playing at. One lover would be bad enough, but two at the same time? Maybe when she knew it was being bandied about she would listen to her old friend … though it seemed she'd paid no attention to the advice she got before. Leaving her children with Babsie Berry, Jenny made for Main Street.

Elsie looked a mess when she came to the door, her face still bearing traces of make-up, black streaks where tears had made her mascara run, her bleached hair uncombed. ‘I can't speak to you just now,' she said.

Ignoring this, Jenny pushed past her. ‘What was going on in here last night?' she demanded. ‘And don't pretend you don't know what I'm getting at, for Eck Stewart's telling everybody.'

‘Eck's got a dirty mind. I'd a bath at the fire, and I'd just finished drying myself when he knocked at the door and shouted something, and I opened it without thinking.'

Gullible Jenny was prepared to believe this, yet something was still bothering her. ‘Eck said he saw one man running out of your house and another man was still inside.'

Elsie threw back her head and let out a loud laugh. ‘That Eck! He got a right eyeful of me, and he's made up a story to spice it up a bit.'

‘Are you sure, Elsie?' Jenny wasn't really convinced, but was prepared to give her friend the benefit of the doubt.

‘There was nobody here except me and the bairns. Even if I'd wanted a man, d'you think I'm as stupid as take two in together? What do you think I am? Depraved?'

‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't have believed him.'

‘A fine friend you've turned out,' Elsie muttered, looking offended.

‘Don't say that. I was only wanting to save Peter being hurt.'

‘Peter? Are you after him now? I never dreamt …'

‘You know fine I'm not after him, but it was awful to think you'd been unfaithful to him.'

‘Well I haven't been, so go home and think twice before you accuse me of anything again.'

‘Are you still friends with me, Elsie?'

‘I shouldn't be, after what you said … but all right. Still friends.'

When Jenny wrote to Mick that night she did not mention the incident. Eck had been making as much as he could out of it, and that's what she would tell anybody who asked her about it.

She might have known Eck would clype on her, Elsie fumed, and all the old bitches in Buckpool would be watching her house every minute of the day now to see what they could see. It had been a piece of cake palming Jenny off, but some of her neighbours wouldn't be so easily hoodwinked, so she'd better give them time to forget before she took another man in.

Lenny's threat didn't worry her. It was a natural reaction. If only he hadn't walked past her house when he did, everything would have been hunky-dory, though it was her own fault for forgetting to shut the curtains – Paddy had driven that right out of her head. Of course, she shouldn't have gone to the door starkers, that was her biggest mistake. She hadn't been thinking clearly at the time. She'd only meant to shock the warden, but she'd ended up landing herself right up to the eyeballs in shit.

Always able to rise above her troubles, Elsie stood up and shrugged her shoulders. To hell with Eck Stewart! To hell with Lenny Fyfe! To hell with Paddy Flynn! And to hell with the whole lot of narrow-minded harpies that couldn't stand to see a girl having a good time.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Lenny had asked a few girls out over the past six nights, but they had all been too young and innocent to satisfy him properly. It was like a man having skimmed milk on his porridge when he was used to cream. Lying in bed, frustrated because the girl he'd been with had slapped his face for putting his hand up her skirt, a way to punish Elsie suddenly came to him. He would go back to her – she'd have cooled down by now – and make her think he was still under her spell. He would lay it on real thick, swear he loved her, and then … as soon as there was any sign that she loved him – really loved him, not just pretending this time – he'd give her the dirty heave.

He should have known what she was up to before, just letting him see her in a forenoon. It had left her free to take another lover later on. So … he'd be the one to go in the evenings from now on.

The following day he got a loan of a sex book one of the older bakers had bought because his wife had told him she was fed up with how he made love, and spent the afternoon reading it in his bedroom. It was a revelation to him – all those different positions when he'd thought you could only do it with the man on top. His eyes widened at the diagrams, he'd never seen anything like them, and they almost fell out altogether when he came to the photographs – actual photographs of …

The fire in his loins reaching fever pitch, he slammed the book shut. It was a true saying that half the people didn't know what the other half was doing, but he'd have to keep his heat for Elsie.

Having told his mother that he was going out for a drink, he knocked on Elsie's door that night. She didn't look very pleased to see him, and stood with her hands on her hips. ‘What d'you want?'

‘I've come to say I'm sorry for … you know … last week.'

‘So now you've said it. Cheerio!'

He managed to stick his foot out to stop her closing the door. ‘Please, Elsie, will you not let me in?'

The pathetic, pleading way he was looking at her made her realize how much she had missed him … actually missed him. It hadn't been his fault. ‘All right, come in and let Elsie show you she's forgiven you.'

He needed no second bidding, and having seen how she liked the Irish navvy roughing her up, he let himself go as he worked mentally through as much of the sex-book as he'd read. After a couple of hours, when he was having a quick smoke to give his flagging desire time to kindle again, she leaned over him. ‘Oh, God, Lenny, if I'd known you could do things like that, I'd never have looked at Paddy.'

Congratulating himself on being so clever, Lenny blew a smoke ring past her ear. ‘You ain't seen nothing yet,' he bragged, not bothered that he had to start work at 2 AM.

It only took another two nights for him to be sure Elsie meant it when she said she loved him, for she was looking at him like she'd never done before. When he sprang his surprise on her – but not till he'd sampled a lot more of this abandoned sex – it would shake her to the dark roots of her hair.

Lenny's idyll, however, was to be rudely shattered. When he went home from the bakehouse one forenoon just three weeks later, a long buff envelope was lying on the table. Opening it, he gave a loud gasp.

‘What is it,' Mrs Fyfe asked in concern, for he'd been in a strange mood this while past and she was sure something was bothering him.

‘My calling-up papers!' He'd had to register two years ago, but because he was a baker and his boss had put in an appeal, he hadn't thought he'd have to go at all.

Unable to eat his breakfast, he went up to his room to think, and after about ten minutes sat up with a delighted grin. The army had played right into his hands. He had already planned every detail of the ditching and this would make the grand finale even grander.

‘You're awful quiet,' Elsie murmured that evening, lifting her blond head from the pillow to kiss him. ‘Is anything wrong?'

He hadn't meant to tell her yet, but it came spilling out. ‘I've been called up.'

Her face fell. ‘Oh God! Already?'

He affected great despondency. ‘We've just a week left.'

‘Is that all?'

Neither of them said anything for a few seconds, then Elsie raked her fingers through the dark hairs on his chest. ‘We'd better make the most of it, eh, Len?'

He nodded eagerly. He would give her a week she would never forget, and the crunch would come on the last night.

‘Mrs Fyfe was telling me Lenny's been called up,' Jenny observed as she poured a cup of tea for her visitor.

Elsie wondered if there was any hidden meaning intended, but decided there wasn't. ‘Aye, so I believe.'

‘He's grown up into a right handsome man, hasn't he?' Jenny continued. She was trying to find out if there was any truth in the rumours she'd heard about him lately. ‘He used to be a scraggy streak, but he's fairly filled out.'

Elsie couldn't help smiling at this. ‘One bit of him, any road.'

Jenny's eyebrows shot up. ‘Elsie! You haven't been … not with
him
?'

‘I was only joking,' Elsie said hastily. ‘He's never been near me.'

But Jenny wasn't to be fooled. ‘I don't believe you.'

Angry at herself, Elsie went on her high horse. ‘Please yourself. What business is it of yours what I do and who I do it with?'

‘What about Peter?'

‘Why are you aye so bloody worried about Peter? If he'd been as good as Lenny and Paddy, I wouldn't have needed them.'

Something clicked into place in Jenny's mind. ‘It was true what Eck Stewart said, wasn't it? It must have been this other man that ran out of your house that night, and Lenny had still been inside. Did he catch the two of you at it?'

Stung because she'd hit on the truth, Elsie said, ‘You're just jealous I'm having a good time, that's what's wrong wi' you, and I'll tell you something else. I was wi' a man every time …' Realizing how indiscreet she was being, she tailed off, her eyes seeking assurance that Jenny was not a jump ahead of her. She was out of luck, however.