The Nightingale Girls (16 page)

‘Right. Best not say any more then, eh, ducks?’ Dora whispered back, as Bea leant in closer to listen.

The game was almost over when they heard the Rileys’ front door bang, followed by Nick’s heavy footsteps thundering down the passage next door.

‘These walls are like paper,’ Nanna Winnie grumbled. ‘You can hear everyone’s business.’

‘As if that that ever worried you!’ Rose laughed.

‘Sounds like your brother’s home.’ Dora got to her feet. ‘Better go and let him know where you are.’

She went out into the yard just as Nick came flying out of his back door, his face white. ‘Have you see Danny?’

‘He’s with us. He was sitting out in the rain, so we brought him in—’

But Nick had already vaulted the broken-down fence between them and shouldered past her into their kitchen.

Danny saw his brother and his face split into a big grin. ‘I’m playing a game. I’m winning, look!’

‘Never mind that. What have I told you about wandering off on your own?’ Nick snapped.

‘He was safe with us,’ Dora said.

Nick ignored her, his gaze focused on his brother.

‘Come on, we’ve got to go,’ he ordered.

Danny’s grin turned into a stubborn pout. ‘I’m playing,’ he insisted.

‘And I’m saying come home now!’

‘It’s all right, love,’ Dora said quickly, seeing Nick’s frown. ‘We’ve got to pack it away, anyway. Let’s say you won, shall we?’

There was a flurry of activity as they packed up the game and helped Danny back into his almost dry jersey. Nick watched, unsmiling, from the doorway. Dora couldn’t
imagine two brothers more different. While Danny was so happy, childlike and trusting, Nick seemed permanently guarded and watchful. Physically they were very different too: Danny pale and slight, Nick dark-haired and muscled like a fighting dog.

They were already in the yard before Dora remembered the pies her mother had wrapped up for them.

‘Wait!’ She caught up with them. ‘These are for you.’

She tried to hand Nick the package, but he eyed it suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

‘Don’t worry, it’s not a gun, it won’t go off in your hand!’ She laughed at his wary expression. ‘It’s just a couple of mince pies Mum promised Danny.’

‘We don’t need hand-outs,’ Nick said gruffly.

‘It’s not a hand-out. Call it a Christmas present. Anyway, they’re not for you, they’re for your brother.’ Dora turned, smiling, to Danny. ‘You’ll take them, won’t you love?’

Nick scowled as his brother grabbed the parcel eagerly.

‘Th-thank you,’ he stammered.

‘You’re welcome. Happy Christmas, ducks.’

Dora watched Nick lift Danny over the broken fence and propel him back into their house, his hand fixed on the back of his brother’s neck.

‘And Happy Christmas to you too, Nick,’ she called.

He didn’t reply.

CHRISTMAS DAY WAS
as bleak as any other for the Riley boys.

Danny had wet the bed again. Nick woke up to find him whimpering in the corner, tears running down his face.

‘S-sorry, Nick,’ he sniffed, wiping his nose on the frayed cuff of his pyjamas. ‘It was a accident.’

‘I know, mate. Don’t take on about it, there’s no harm done. We’ll get this lot washed in no time.’ He forced a smile for his brother’s sake.

As he dragged the sodden sheets off his brother’s mattress, Danny whispered, ‘Y-you won’t t-tell Mum, will you?’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t disturb her beauty sleep.’

Nick hauled the washing into the sink and ran the cold tap, barely able to contain his anger. It was Christmas Day, but you’d never know it. There were no decorations, no tree, no presents. The old Ovaltine tin where his mother kept the housekeeping money was empty, but there wasn’t a scrap of food in the house apart from half a stale loaf and a sweating lump of cheese in the cupboard.

He thought about the Doyles’ warm, cheery kitchen, so full of laughter and happiness. They would be next door unwrapping their presents now, all excited about the day ahead. Rose Doyle would probably already have a chicken in the oven, its delicious aroma drifting through the house.

And where was his mum? Still in bed, sleeping off last night’s bender.

He rolled up his sleeves and plunged the sheets into the freezing water. This was all his mother’s doing. She hadn’t come home until the early hours, even though she knew it upset Danny.

‘Sh-she will come home, won’t she, Nick?’ he’d asked, over and over again, as they lay side by side on their mattresses in front of the dying fire.

‘’Course she will, mate,’ he’d replied cheerfully, while inside he seethed with anger. His mother had gone out yesterday and left Danny on his own again. She’d promised faithfully she wouldn’t, not after the last time he’d gone wandering and that policeman had picked him up near the canal.

Nick shuddered to think about what might have happened if his brother hadn’t been found then. Now he worried every time he went to work, spending all his shift with his stomach churning. Every time he turned the corner into Griffin Street he expected to find a policeman waiting for him.

It won’t always be like this, he told himself as he wrung out the sheets and draped them on a clothes horse in front of the dying embers of the fire. As soon as I’ve saved up the money, we’re getting out of this dump.

As if he could read his thoughts, Danny said, ‘D-do they have Christmas in America, Nick?’

‘’Course they do, mate. Better than we have over here, I reckon.’

Danny emerged timidly from his corner to watch as Nick stoked up the fire with the last of the coal. ‘Can we have a Christmas tree when we live there?’

‘The biggest one you’ve ever seen. With presents piled high under it.’

Danny’s eyes shone. ‘What kind of presents?’

‘What do you fancy?’

His brother thought about it for a moment. ‘A motor car,’ he said.

Nick poked at the fire, stirring it back into life. ‘Not sure we’d be able to fit one of those under the tree. But maybe Father Christmas could leave it outside with a ribbon round it, eh?’

Danny sighed with pleasure. ‘I reckon Mum would like a motor car.’

Nick straightened up, massaging the aching muscles in his back. ‘What did I tell you, Danny? This is meant to be a secret, all right? We’re not going to tell Mum about it, are we?’

Danny nodded. ‘It’s going to be a surprise for her.’

‘It will that, mate.’ You don’t know the half of it, he thought. With any luck, by the time she found out about it they’d be long gone.

He’d heard a lot about what life was like in America, and he’d also heard they had doctors over there who might be able to help Danny. If there was even the slightest chance his brother might be right again one day, he had to take it.

Every week Nick saved some money out of his wages to get them to America. And the cash prizes he won from his fights went into his savings, too. His trainer Jimmy reckoned he was good enough to make the big time as a boxer, and Nick was determined to be as rich and famous as Max Baer one day.

It was the only thought that kept him going when life in Griffin Street was really grim.

Their mother finally surfaced just before midday. She drifted into the living room, her woollen dressing gown
pulled tight around her thin body. Nick could smell the stale booze on her from the other side of the room.

‘H-happy Christmas, Mum.’ Nick watched Danny rush to greet her, winding his skinny arms around her neck and planting a sloppy kiss on her cheek. He wished he could be so forgiving.

‘Happy Christmas, son.’ She and Nick shot each other resentful looks across the room. ‘Any chance of a cup of tea?’ she asked.

‘That’s about all there is.’ Nick filled the kettle under the tap. ‘There’s no food, that’s for sure.’

His mother pulled a packet of Woodbines out of the pocket of her dressing gown. ‘Here we go,’ she sighed, lighting one with an unsteady hand. ‘Your brother never misses a chance to have a go at his poor old mum, does he?’ she said to Danny. ‘Even on Christmas Day, he can’t let it lie.’

‘So you’ve noticed it’s Christmas Day, then?’ Nick lit the gas. ‘I wasn’t sure, since we’ve got nothing to show for it in the house. Unless you’ve got a chicken and a load of sprouts hidden away somewhere?’

June Riley narrowed her eyes at him through the curling plume of cigarette smoke. She had been pretty once, but drink and resentment had etched deep lines in her face. ‘Maybe there would be, if you gave me a bit more money?’

‘What, so you can go and spend it all down the Rose and Crown? You’d have enough money if you didn’t drink it all away.’ He turned to face her. ‘I s’pose there’s no point in asking where you were last night?’

‘I’m entitled to a life, aren’t I? They’d banned slavery last time I looked.’

‘It wouldn’t hurt you to do a bit of slaving once in a while. Have you seen the state of this place?’

June rolled her eyes at Danny. ‘Your brother’s giving
me earache again, Danny boy. When’s he going to change the record, eh?’

‘I’ll change it when you start listening to me.’ Nick sat across the kitchen table from her, forcing her to look at him. ‘Look, I don’t care where you go, or what you do. You can go to hell for all I care. It’s Danny I worry about. You know I don’t like him being left on his own. Anything could have happened to him.’

‘It didn’t though, did it?’

‘No thanks to you. You know what he’s like.’ Nick lowered his voice. ‘Doesn’t it bother you that he could have wandered off and ended up in the river, or under a tram?’

June turned her head slowly to look at him, her red-rimmed eyes mournful. A thin stream of cigarette smoke escaped from one corner of her mouth. ‘Might be a blessed relief if he did,’ she muttered.

Her words hit Nick like a punch in the stomach. ‘You wicked cow!’

‘Wicked, am I? Look at the poor little sod.’ She glanced at Danny, who sat at her feet, looking up at her with adoring eyes like a spaniel. ‘He doesn’t understand half of what we’re saying. What kind of life is that for him? Who’s going to look after him for the rest of his days?’

Not you, that’s for sure, Nick thought.

‘You don’t know how hard it is for me.’ There was a catch in his mother’s voice as she turned her face away. ‘Four years I’ve had to struggle on my own.’

‘You, struggle? Don’t make me laugh! You haven’t been on your own, have you? You’ve had us. Except you’ve never given Danny and me a thought in all that time.’

Nick watched her fish in the pocket of her dressing
gown for a handkerchief, unmoved by her self-pity. It was the same every time she’d had a drink.

Danny rushed to comfort his mother, clumsily trying to dry her tears with his sleeve. ‘L-leave her alone, Nick,’ he begged.

‘You wouldn’t say these things to me if your father was here,’ she wept.

‘Well, he’s not here, is he?’ Nick said.

‘Because you drove him away. You sent away the only man I ever loved!’

‘And do you know what? I’d do it again tomorrow.’

‘That’s your father you’re talking about. You should show some respect.’

‘Did he show us any respect when he blacked your eyes and cracked my ribs or—’ Nick broke off. He couldn’t bring himself to talk about Danny. His brother didn’t understand what had happened to him, and Nick would never say it.

But he remembered only too clearly that day four years ago when he’d come home from work and found Danny lying like a broken doll on the floor, his face a mashed-up pulp, blood seeping from his ears and nose. And Reg Riley, the evil swine Nick couldn’t even bring himself to call his father, standing over him, his fists balled, acting the big man because he’d smashed into a skinny, helpless little boy.

Nick never knew what his brother had done wrong. Danny was only eleven, such a quiet lad who never got into trouble or said a cheeky word to his father. Not like Nick. But Nick was sixteen, and so big and strong that even Reg Riley wasn’t stupid enough to pick a fight with him. Nick had tortured himself ever since, wondering if his father had decided to punish Danny instead.

Nick had carried his brother’s broken little body across
the park to the Nightingale himself. It was the worst moment of his life. He had no use for religion, but he had prayed that night, traded his soul, his future and everything he had, if the Almighty would just let his little brother live.

And He had. But no one had promised what kind of life he would have.

Once he knew Danny was going to pull through, Nick had left his mother crying crocodile tears over her son, and gone out looking for Reg Riley. He’d found him hiding in the pub, dragged him outside and given him a taste of what he’d given his youngest boy. Such was Nick’s white-hot anger he would have killed him stone dead if some other men hadn’t dragged him off.

But Reg Riley had got the message. That night, while Nick and his mother were at the hospital, he had come home, packed his bags and left.

Nick had thought his mother might be grateful that her bullying husband was out of her life. But once the shock of what had happened to Danny had passed, June Riley quickly forgot who had been to blame for it.

‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she wept now. ‘I need someone to look after me.’

‘Don’t cry, Mum. We’ll look after you.’ Danny hugged her tighter, burying his face in her neck. June pushed him away impatiently.

‘Get off me, for Gawd’s sake. You’re smothering me.’

Nick saw his brother’s trembling lip and his heart hardened. ‘I don’t know why you even bothered to come back,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you stay out drinking with your pals at the pub?’

‘Oh, believe me, I would if I could. Anything not to stay here in this dump and look at your depressing bloody face all day.’ June took a vicious drag on her cigarette. ‘I know it’s Christmas but they don’t give drinks away.’

‘You mean you couldn’t find some desperate bloke to buy them for you? You must be slipping.’ Nick’s lip curled. He reached into his back pocket and took out his wallet. He could feel his mother’s eyes watching him keenly as he took out a ten shilling note and dropped it on the table in front of her.

‘I don’t want your money!’ she hissed.