A Lesser Evil (18 page)

‘Christ Almighty!’ one of them exclaimed once they reached the lights on the main road and they could see him properly. ‘You’ve been given a right going over. We’d better call an ambulance.’

‘My wife!’ Dan managed to get out. ‘Got to get home.’

‘She’ll have fifty fits if you go home like that,’ the man said. ‘You’ve got blood all over you. You need a doctor.’

Fifi’s eyes kept moving from the clock to the window. She was growing ever more anxious about Dan. He couldn’t work once it was dark, and she didn’t think he would go off to the pub with the other men, not when she was expecting him home.

It was after eleven now and thankfully all quiet again over at the Muckles’. The fight had begun soon after it got dark, and because they had only the thinnest of covering over their window she had seen it all.

She had watched the silhouettes of Alfie and Molly laying into each other like maniacs, with blaring music accompanying them. At the height of it all she’d been so frightened she’d gone down to see Miss Diamond, to ask if she thought they should call the police.

Fifi was always wary of bothering Miss Diamond as she seemed to be the kind of person who wanted to maintain her distance from other people. She always spoke if she ran into Fifi or Dan on the landings, but it was invariably a brief interchange. Fifi was as curious about this big, striking woman with dark brown hair as she was about Yvette. She was about forty, exceptionally well groomed with an elaborate beehive which looked as if it had been glued in place, she never had visitors, and aside from going to work at the telephone exchange, she rarely went out. Dan joked that she was related to Attila the Hun.

Fifi had caught glimpses of her flat when the doors were open. The front room was her sitting room, her furnishing style plain but rather classy with a cream fitted carpet. The bedroom, which was beneath Fifi and Dan’s, was lovely, with a pale blue flounced bedspread and white-painted furniture. Even the kitchen, which was right at the back of the house, was attractive, with sunshine-yellow cupboards and the work surface tiled in white. It seemed odd that a woman with so much style, and obviously coming from a good background, should choose to live here. Since Fifi met her for the first time, she’d been determined to find out all about her, but as yet she’d had no success.

Fifi’s mind wasn’t on prying, however, when she knocked on the woman’s door around ten o’clock, only on the disturbance over the road. Miss Diamond came to the door wearing a long, loose emerald-green garment that wasn’t quite a dressing-gown or a dress. She looked tense and angry at all the noise, but her hair was still as immaculate as always.

‘Mrs Helass usually rings the police,’ she said. ‘She’s the only one in the street with a phone. Much good it does though. Really, that family are just the end! They need locking up and the key thrown away.’

She ranted about what she’d seen and heard so far, and Fifi said she was afraid Alfie was going to kill Molly.

‘I wish he would,’ the older woman said with a weary sigh. ‘Then once he was locked up perhaps we’d all get some peace. I really can’t stand much more of this.’

Miss Diamond offered Fifi a cup of tea, but even as they chatted about the Muckles in her kitchen, they could still hear the row continuing across the street. By the time Fifi went back upstairs, however, it had grown quieter. While looking out the window to see if Dan was coming down the street, she saw the light come on in the Muckles’ bedroom, and momentarily saw Alfie silhouetted before it was switched off.

Molly was still downstairs. Fifi could see her on the settee and hear her crying. She wondered about the children, particularly Angela, for it had to be terrifying hearing such battles. But she supposed they happened so often they’d just got used to them and might even think them quite normal.

Later, as she continued to look out for Dan, she saw Dora come down the street with Mike, Alfie’s nephew. They were arm-in-arm, chatting quite happily. Fifi assumed they’d been out for the evening and felt a little sorry for them that it would be spoilt the moment they got indoors.

Everyone in the street talked about the relationship between Mike the nephew and Dora. Strangely, the ten-year age gap was rarely mentioned, only that Dora was simple. Yvette had said that she was damaged at birth through a forceps delivery. Apparently she looked upon Molly as a mother, for her own had died when she was around five or six and Molly had taken care of her ever since.

Fifi watched as they went indoors. For a short while they were standing in the front room, and she assumed they were talking to Molly, although she could no longer see her. The light went out in the room, and a few seconds later another came on right at the top of the house. Presumably they were all going to bed.

Fifi wanted to go to bed too, but she felt she had to stay up and wait for Dan. The street was quiet now, and one by one all the lights that had been on in the houses on the other side of the road went out. She thought that Dan must have gone home with one of his workmates, for he wouldn’t be able to go on to a club after the pub, not in his working clothes. Perhaps he’d gone to look at some job the man wanted help with. A few beers and he’d lost track of time. Maybe he’d even got too drunk to make his way home.

At midnight she was too tired to wait any longer, so turning off the lights she went to bed.

She woke at the sound of a bell. Fumbling for the alarm clock, she saw it was seven o’clock, but it wasn’t the alarm clock ringing, it was the front-door bell. Then she remembered Dan hadn’t come home.

Frank Ubley’s voice wafted up the stairs, and she could hear another male voice. All at once she was wide awake, sensing that the caller had come to see her.

She jumped out of bed and grabbed her dressing-gown, putting it on over her nightdress as she flew down the stairs.

When she saw a policeman in the hall with Frank she clasped a hand over her mouth in horror. ‘Is it Dan?’ she asked.

‘It’s okay, Mrs Reynolds,’ the policeman said, coming up a few stairs to meet her. ‘I just called to tell you that your husband was taken to St James’s Hospital last night. Someone attacked him.’

‘Who attacked him? Is he badly hurt?’ Fifi asked, all at once feeling sick with fright.

There wasn’t much more the policeman could tell her as he hadn’t seen Dan himself, he was only passing on the message the local police had been given.

‘But his injuries can’t be very serious or the hospital would’ve asked us to call on you last night to take you to your husband,’ he said soothingly. ‘So don’t get all worked up, Mrs Reynolds, I expect they only kept him in overnight for observation.’

He went on to tell her where the hospital was in Tooting, and suggested she phoned before going there to check if they wanted her to bring anything with her, like clean clothes or pyjamas. Then, after apologizing for giving her such a shock, he said he had to go back on his beat.

Fifi burst into tears after he’d gone and Frank took her into his kitchen to give her a cup of tea.

Both Fifi and Dan had come to like Frank a great deal. He always greeted them warmly when they came home, he’d give Fifi little bunches of flowers from his garden, and he took her milk in every day and put it in her fridge so it wouldn’t turn sour. He was obviously lonely with his only daughter and her family in Australia, but he never made a nuisance of himself. He just took a friendly and kindly interest in them, and if they asked him up for a cup of tea, or bought him a drink at the pub, he was always delighted to accept, but never outstayed his welcome.

‘Why would anyone attack Dan?’ Fifi sobbed out. ‘Every-one likes him. He isn’t a troublemaker.’

Frank put his arms around her and comforted her. ‘It must have been robbery, I suppose. But a bloke like Dan wouldn’t have been my choice to rob, he’s young, fit and strong.I’d have gone for an easier target.’

‘They wouldn’t have found anything on him worth stealing,’ Fifi said tearfully. ‘He never has any money left by Thursday, he doesn’t even wear a watch.’

Frank was still in his dressing-gown too, so Fifi drank her tea, then said she was going to get dressed so she could go and phone the hospital.

‘Want me to come with you?’ Frank asked. ‘You look a bit shaky to me.’

‘I’ll be fine once I know he’s all right,’ she said. ‘But thank you for being so kind.’

Frank patted her on the shoulder. ‘Come and tell me how he is when you get back. I could make you a bit of breakfast.’

‘The ward sister said he’s quite comfortable,’ Fifi told Frank when she got back from the phone. ‘He got a blow to the back of his head and another in the ribs. The police are going to talk to him this morning to find out what happened.’

‘You’ll take the day off then?’ Frank asked. ‘Would you like me to ring your office at nine and explain for you?’

His fatherly manner was touching. He’d dressed and shaved while she was making the phone call, and he smelled of soap and toothpaste. He’d already laid the table for breakfast for them both in his tiny kitchen, and with the back door open and a huge pot of colourful petunias right outside it, it felt very homely and comforting.

‘I can do that on the way to the hospital,’ Fifi said. ‘They only allow visiting between two and three and five and six, but maybe if I go there with his pyjamas they’ll let me see him straight away.’

‘So they’re keeping him in then?’

Fifi nodded. ‘Yes, the sister said they have to monitor him for brain damage as he was knocked unconscious. But he can’t be that badly hurt. She said Dan made a joke about how they’ll have to check he’s got a brain first.’

Frank smiled. ‘I can just hear him saying that. He’s the kind that finds summat funny in everything. You know he’s even charmed Miss Diamond, don’t you? She knocked before she went to work because she’d heard the policeman earlier. Upset she was! Said if there was anything she could do, you’d only got to ask.’

‘That was very kind of her,’ Fifi said. She was feeling a bit better now that she’d spoken to the hospital, and it was so nice to know her neighbours cared. ‘I spoke to her last night when all that noise was going on over the road. Did you hear it?’

Frank nodded grimly. ‘If the whole street hadn’t heard them at it hammer and tongs I might have thought Alfie was behind this attack on your Dan. But as he was over there giving Molly a pasting it can’t have been him.’

Fifi remembered Yvette’s warning and frowned in consternation. ‘Why would you think he might be responsible?’

‘Alfie ain’t one to let anyone get the better of him,’ Frank said with a shrug. ‘Your Dan marked his card when he hurt Angela. That’s enough reason for Alfie to get some revenge, and walloping someone over the head in the dark is just his style.’

At the hospital the ward sister did soften and let Fifi in for ten minutes, just so she’d be reassured Dan was all right. But Fifi wasn’t reassured, not when she saw Dan with his head bandaged and his face unnaturally pale. He grinned as she came up the ward, but it was forced, so she knew he was in pain.

‘I’m as sound as a pound,’ he insisted. ‘They’re only keeping me here as a precaution, not cos I need to stay in bed. I’ve a good mind to get up and come home with you.’

‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Fifi said sharply, sniffing back her tears. ‘They don’t put bandages that big on some-one for no reason.’

She asked him how it happened, and he explained that he couldn’t remember anything after Owen called out to him. ‘Whoever did it must have been in the alley already,’ he said. ‘There’s gates into backyards where he could hide.’

‘But why?’ Fifi asked. ‘Are you sure you haven’t got on the wrong side of someone?’

Dan sighed. ‘That’s what the police asked me when they came a while back. They wanted to know if I owed anyone money, or if someone had a grudge against me. They even asked if I’d been playing around with another woman! I told them to have a look at you, then they’d know I wouldn’t be messing with anyone else.’

Fifi liked that. Sometimes Dan could be so charming. ‘Frank thought it sounded like Alfie Muckle’s work,’ she said. ‘But it couldn’t have been him, he and Molly were in their house fighting, everyone heard them.’

‘The Dale Street Obsession,’ Dan exclaimed, rolling his eyes. ‘Everything that happens to anyone is always down to Alfie Muckle. If Martians landed in London that would be his fault too.’

‘They’ve had years of bitter experience with him,’ Fifi said indignantly. ‘You should have heard the row last night! He’s a monster.’

‘I agree he’s a wife and child beater, a slob and a lazy thieving bastard, but that still doesn’t make him responsible for every single crime committed in the neighbourhood.’

‘Maybe not, but Frank, Stan, Yvette and even Miss Diamond all say –’

‘He’s the son of Satan, I suppose.’ Dan cut in before she could finish. ‘You shouldn’t listen to them, Fifi. They’re all losers too.’

‘They aren’t,’ Fifi said incredulously. ‘What a horrible thing to say! I thought you saw them all as friends?’

Dan shrugged. ‘I do, but it doesn’t blind me to their faults. If they had anything about them at all they would’ve moved away years ago. But they stay, and moan about the Muckles. And you know why? Because that family make them feel better about themselves.’

‘Dan! That’s a wicked thing to say. Maybe they can’t afford to move, perhaps they’ve tried and can’t find anywhere. I don’t believe for one moment that they feel better about themselves just because they have ghastly neighbours.’

Dan gave her one of his looks that said he thought she was naive. ‘I know how it is for them, sweetheart, because I’m guilty of it myself. Your parents look down on the way I speak, the way I look, and my job, and let’s face it, I’ve justified their belief I’d bring you down to my level by taking you to live in Dale Street. But I feel at home there. I can look across to the Muckles and see the blankets across their windows and feel dead smug because we’ve got nice curtains. No one looks down on me there for working on a building site. I’m even the envy of every other man in the street because I’ve got a gorgeous wife.’

‘I don’t see what you’re getting at,’ Fifi said peevishly. She hated it when he put himself down. ‘That bang on the head must have done you more damage than I thought.’