The Runaway (19 page)

‘I’m not surprised; fog’s getting thicker,’ Polly said, plunging her hand into the pocket of her trusty navy overcoat. ‘Me and me boyfriend have been to the Commy to see this here new feller … Oh my Gawd!’

‘Whazza matter?’ the conductor said, though not as though he cared very much. He gave another enormous yawn. ‘Tuppence please, miss.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Polly said breathlessly. ‘I can’t find – I seem to have lost – oh I say, I’m awful sorry; me boyfriend got on the tram before this ‘un not realising I didn’t bring me purse out and I’ve not gorra penny to me name. But if you’ve got a pencil and a bit of paper I’ll leave you me name and address and I’ll pay you double fare tomorrow. Or you could give me your name and I’ll drop it off at the depot, just as soon as I’ve got my purse.’

The conductor grinned, then shook his head sadly,
‘Good try, miss, but you know full well I can’t go doin’ no deals with me passengers. You’ll have to gerroff,’ he told her. And then, as she got reluctantly to her feet and hesitated, clutching the pole and turning to try to persuade the man to let her remain aboard, he detached her clinging fingers and gave her a shove as the tram came to a halt. ‘Goodnight, Miss Tuppence Short,’ he said sarcastically and then rang the bell once more. ‘Off we go, Reg!’ he bawled at the driver. Polly, unable to think of a stinging retort, began to trudge in the vehicle’s wake, shivering as the chilly fog swirled around her. But she told herself firmly that a walk would do her good and plodded determinedly on.

It had been late when they left the cinema, later still when she and Ernie had parted company, and now she guessed it could be getting on for midnight, not at all the sort of time a nice girl should be walking beside the docks. But she tucked her hands into her pockets, turned up her coat collar and trudged on, knowing that she had a long walk ahead of her. What a fool she had been! There had been bad feeling between her and Ernie, but she knew very well that he would not have dreamed of leaving her alone and penniless had he suspected even for an instant that she might not have her tram fare tucked away somewhere. As she walked Polly mused on the fickleness of fate. She always kept a few pennies, usually more, in the pocket of her working coat but tonight for some reason they had not been there. She plunged her hand into her pocket once more, then stopped short, her other hand flying to her mouth. There was a small hole in the lining of the pocket, and now that she had remembered the
hole – which she had been meaning to mend for weeks – she also realised what must have happened. Usually she carried large copper pennies and halfpennies in that pocket, but she had decided that it was partly the weight of the coins which had worn the hole so only the previous day she had exchanged the coppers for a sixpenny piece, a coin just the right size to slip unnoticed through the hole and go tinkling off on its own affairs. Infuriatingly, her searching fingers might actually have pushed the tanner through the hole while she was still aboard the vehicle she had just left. But knowing this was no comfort whatsoever; even her anger with the unfriendly conductor was not enough to keep her warm, so she pulled her beret down over her ears and increased her pace. She wished she had been wearing her warm boots, had thought to bring her woolly gloves and a scarf, but she had not done so. Such clothing was a nuisance in the well-heated cinema and neither she nor Ernie had even considered having to walk further than the nearest tram stop. Sighing heavily and telling herself it would be a lesson to her, Polly slogged on.

By the time she reached the dock where the big liners were berthed she had begun to warm up a little, and she slowed down to peer through the swirling yellow fog at the dim shape of an enormous ship. There were a few people milling around below though it seemed a strange hour for passengers to be coming ashore. On the other hand, she knew that arrivals and departures were dependent upon the state of the tide, and anyway the figures that she could see, stumbling up to the roadside, might be crew and not passengers at all. Polly speeded
up again, then paused as someone called her name. ‘Polly … Over here, girl.’

Polly, who had begun to feel very vulnerable, felt a great wave of relief flood over her. Ernie must have guessed that she had no money, must have disembarked from his own tram as soon as he realised, and was coming to her rescue. Polly turned a big smile upon the young man running towards her … then realised with a sinking of the heart that it was not one man but three and that none of them was Ernie. In fact they were all total strangers … but how had they known her name? She voiced the question as soon as they reached her.

‘Who the hell are you and why did you shout me name?’ she asked belligerently. ‘I thought you were me pal.’

The three men took no notice. They had surrounded her and were pulling her away from the bright street lights towards the shadows of the piled-up boxes, barrels and other impedimenta awaiting delivery. ‘I’m your pal, ’cos I reached you first,’ the tallest of them said. He was also the fattest, and he had a great beefy hand with fingers like sausages gripped tightly around Polly’s skinny wrist. ‘Got any friends, queen? Else you’ll have to do between the three of us.’ He grabbed her chin in his hands and turned her face up and Polly smelt the beer on his breath. ‘You’re nowt but a scrawny chick. I likes a woman wit’ some flesh on her bones,’ he added discontentedly.

‘She’ll do me,’ another voice chimed in. This one belonged to a younger skinnier man with a weasel face and a drooping mouth.

Polly stared defiantly from face to face. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I just gorrof the tram too early and am on me
way home to bed,’ she said, but was unable to stop her voice shaking a little. ‘Me name’s Polly. I thought that was what you were calling.’

‘Nah, we was calling
Oy, you!
’ the third man explained. He was older than the others, grey-haired and deeply tanned. He turned to his mates. ‘I reckon we’ve made a mistake,’ he began, but was immediately overruled.

‘No matter; she’ll do,’ the weaselly one said. He reached out and grabbed Polly by the front of her coat. Buttons popped and Polly began to fight, horribly aware that if she did not do so at once she would speedily find herself in real trouble.

The weasel-faced one laughed hoarsely and grabbed for Polly’s blouse. More buttons popped, but the man gave a grunt of pain as Polly’s well-aimed knee caught him somewhere soft and yielding. The fat one was laughing, cheering his mate on, whilst the older man said uneasily that if this was no dockyard trollop they could easily be in for it. Polly had fallen to her knees and was trying to drag her clothes around her. On her way down she had bitten the fat man’s hand to the bone and hacked weasel-face in the shins, but she was all too conscious of their superior strength as well as numbers and began to scream for help at the top of her voice. Weasel-face promptly threw himself on top of her, endeavouring to gag her with one long and filthy hand. Biting that hand was a pretty disgusting experience but Polly bit anyway and to some effect. Weasel-face screamed with pain, his voice mingling with Polly’s cries for help as she kicked and fought, and to her unutterable relief she heard a man’s voice say sharply: ‘What’s all this? You must be seamen from the SS
Georgia
. I’ll see you reported to your officers.’

The weaselly one, struggling to his feet, began to whine that it were nothing to do with him; all he’d done was try to help the young lady to her feet after she’d fallen over a spar of wood, but the wild cat had misunderstood and bit him to the bone till he was likely to die from the poison … here the fat man gave a contemptuous snort. ‘Don’t you take no notice, sir. These dockside whores scream when us pleasures them,’ he began, only to be told that dockside whore or not the girl had received pretty rough handling from three great brutes who no doubt intended to cheat the lass of her fee.

This was enough to jerk Polly to her feet. ‘I got off my tram a stop too soon and these – these creatures got quite the wrong idea. I’m as – as respectable as you are yourself,’ she said tearfully, speaking as Dana was trying to teach her to do, though she reverted to her Liverpool accent as a rule when not in Dana’s company. ‘I told them and told them that I wasn’t the sort of girl they were looking for, but they wouldn’t believe me.’ She looked down at herself, at the buttonless blouse and coat, and burst into tears.

The three men who had attacked her saw that the newcomer’s attention was all on their erstwhile victim and made off, though the grey-haired one shouted over his shoulder that he was sorry and had had no part in what had gone on. Then her rescuer ushered Polly gently out from behind the pile of crates and she saw that he was accompanied by another man, who had not yet spoken. The two of them stood gazing anxiously down at Polly. ‘Do you want to call the police?’ the man who had confronted her attackers asked. ‘Are you much hurt?
Those brutes should be taken in charge and prosecuted for assault, but by now they’ll be half a mile away, running like rabbits.’ He chuckled. ‘You were giving a pretty good account of yourself, from what we could hear as we ran across the quay looking for you.’

‘Oh, thanks ever so much, but I’m all right now,’ Polly said, her voice almost steady. ‘They thought I was – I was a bad girl, though I really don’t know why.’ She took a couple of experimental steps, then groaned. ‘Ooh, me legs are a mass of bruises and I don’t have a penny piece on me. How’ll I get home, sir?’ She looked hopefully at her rescuers. She judged them to be thirty or forty and they were of medium height and both clad in raincoats, scarves and checked caps. Polly peered into their faces, forgetting her own problems for a moment. ‘Are you twins?’ she asked. ‘I can’t see much, what wi’ the fog and them caps, but you’re that alike …’

Both men laughed, showing excellent sets of white teeth, which reminded Polly of the film she had just seen. Errol Flynn had just such gleaming white fangs, she remembered. The man who had been first on the scene was answering her question. ‘No, but we are brothers. I’m Jake Freeway; I’m older than Ralph here by several years and if we weren’t all muffled up you’d not even suspect we were twins. I’m the handsome one, you see; Ralph’s plain as a boot! But to answer your other question, if you can recommend a decent hotel we’ll get a cab and drop you off at your home. I take it you live hereabouts?’

‘That’s right,’ Polly said nervously. Nice though these men seemed she realised she did not much want to share a taxi with two strangers after her nasty
experience with the men from the SS
Georgia
. On the other hand her legs were trembling, her arms ached and she was uneasily aware of the cold creeping in past her buttonless clothing.

The man who had introduced himself as Jake Freeway, however, seemed to divine her problem. ‘You’d best sit in front with the cabby,’ he told her. ‘Then you can direct him to your house before he takes us to the hotel.’ He smiled at her kindly and bent to pick up a large suitcase which he must have dropped before frightening off her attackers. ‘How far do we have to walk to find a cab?’

‘I don’t know; the trams and buses don’t run late at night when it’s foggy and I’ve never caught a taxi – cab, I mean,’ Polly said doubtfully. ‘We’d best walk towards the Pier Head; that’s where all the trams and buses turn round. As for hotels …’ But the younger man had put two fingers in his mouth and produced one of the shrillest whistles Polly had ever heard, and before she could do more than give him a startled glance he was holding up an arm and a taxi was screeching to a halt beside them.

‘Well done, feller,’ his brother said approvingly. ‘I guess cabs and their drivers are the same the whole world over.’ He opened the front passenger door and bundled Polly inside, then both men hefted their suitcases into the vehicle and climbed in after them. ‘Home, James, and don’t spare the horses,’ the one called Jake said cheerfully. He leaned forward to address the cabby, who had twisted in his seat and was staring enquiringly from one face to the other. ‘We’re taking this young lady home first and then we’d like you to take us …’ He hesitated, and Polly cut in.

‘It’s awful late, and most of the little hotels, the cheap
ones, don’t have a night porter,’ she said. ‘But the Adelphi stays open all night just about. It’ll be pricey, but if you just sign in for the one night …’

Both men laughed. ‘I guess we won’t go broke for one night in a good hotel,’ the younger of the two said, speaking for the first time; Ralph, wasn’t it? ‘Now give the cabby your address. Will your ma and pa still be up?’

Polly frowned; ma and pa? Clearly this young man thought her still a child. ‘I haven’t got neither; me and my friend Dana have a room-share. It’s in Temperance Court, so if the cabby will drop me beside the arch I’ll be home and dry in half a minute.’

Ralph said that they ought to drive her right to her door, but the cabby knew that this was impossible. ‘S’all right,’ he said resignedly. ‘You ain’t English, are you, lerralone you ain’t Scousers else you’d know you can’t drive into the courts. But we’ll watch the young lady until she gets indoors if that’ll satisfy you.’

‘Oh, but I want you to meet Dana; I know she’ll want to thank you,’ Polly said. She had been puzzled, she now realised, by the men’s accents but had assumed them to be Irish. Now she thought again. ‘Me and my pal had just left the cinema. The film was the new Errol Flynn … are you Americans, sir?’

Both men laughed but it was Ralph who answered. ‘Yeah, we’re Yanks, as you Limeys call us. At least, we’ve lived in the States for the past ten years. Over there they say we’ve got English accents but I guess over here everyone will think we’re genuine citizens of the good old US of A.’

‘Gosh, Americans,’ Polly breathed. ‘Are you here on holiday? Or visiting long-lost relatives? Or are you
touring Britain the way I’ve heard Americans do?’ She sighed. ‘It must be grand to travel. I say, are you anything to do with the cinema?’ Her voice grew awed. ‘I suppose you aren’t film stars, are you?’

The men were laughing and denying it, though the elder of the two admitted that they did have cinematograph connections, as the taxi drew up beside the entrance to Temperance Court. Polly prepared to alight, profuse thanks on her lips, but Jake Freeway shook his head chidingly and got out of the cab. ‘I’ll see you to your door and explain what’s happened to this friend of yours,’ he said firmly. ‘Here, take my arm – your legs are still shaky.’ He chuckled suddenly. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll see you safe indoors, have a quick word with this friend of yours and then book in at the Adelphi.’