The Bells of Bow (37 page)

Alice had quickly established that the mother’s name was Tilly. Her marital status was left for others to guess at and Alice to invent, but what was known for a fact, and for once not just by Alice, was that she was a hard-faced, brassy-looking type in her late thirties, not much older than Blanche but looking years older with her heavy layers of make-up and her rotten teeth and too tight clothes. Her boy, Sonny, was thirteen. He seemed to have the unnerving knack of appearing out of nowhere in people’s back yards and even, once or twice, in their back kitchens, looking a picture of innocence but, more likely than not, with his pockets stuffed to bulging with someone’s prized possessions. Then there was Janette, Tilly’s daughter. She was a good-looking girl of fourteen but, with the way she got herself up, she looked more like a twenty-one-year-old on the game than someone who had just left school. Blanche’s daughter Mary, because of her fondness for, and proprietorial attitude towards Micky, Alice’s grandson, shared the old gossip’s immediate dislike of the flashy young girl. Much to Blanche’s annoyance, for she didn’t like that sort of talk, Mary let it be known that she suspected that Janette earned more from selling what she let the fellers get hold of than from what she had to sell on her counter in the Woolworth’s at Aldgate.

Despite the local bad feeling that their presence was causing, Maudie did her best to make the Dintons welcome. She tried not to admit, even to herself, that she found them a truly awful bunch, because she had promised the WVS that she would help them. And Maudie wasn’t one to break a promise if she could help it. So she really tried to put up with them and to ignore Tilly Dinton’s moaning and her crafty ways and to forgive all the little things that went missing from the house and the complaints from Alice that she had seen young Janette sneaking soldiers into the house after the blackout.

By the February, Maudie had got into an odd sort of routine where, if she was going out for any length of time, she would lock anything of value in her wardrobe and, probably pointlessly, expressly forbid any of the Dintons to enter her bedroom. She didn’t like doing it, but it was either that or throwing them out on the street. And she couldn’t bring herself to do that, even though the streets were far safer than they’d been for months now that the big air raids, in London at least, seemed to be over. They would probably have found an abandoned place somewhere, but it was too cold to wish that even on the Dintons.

The alternative was to return the whole dreadful lot of them to the WVS with a strongly worded reprimand to the organiser about her thoughtlessness in landing her with such a family, but that would mean them living in the church hall until another mug – because that’s what she now realised she was – could be found to take them in. And, as the war dragged on, those mugs were few and far between. For a whole month now it had been practically nonstop low cloud, rainy nights, freezing mist and fog, the sort of weather that both depressed you and made your very bones ache with the damp. Much as she felt like it at times, Maudie knew she couldn’t inflict the privations of living in the barely heated church hall with its cold hard floors and its endless round of other bombed-out families on anybody. No, not even on the Dintons. So the Dintons had, in their insidious way, settled themselves very comfortably into number seven and into Maudie Peters’s life.

Evie had also made herself comfortable in Darnfield Street. It was clear to Babs, and Georgie too if he’d ever admitted to thinking about such a thing, that Evie had made no attempt whatsoever to go back to her flat in the Mile End Road. But then Albie had made no attempt to come and fetch her. He hadn’t even been to see her to talk things over.

Evie spent her time much as she had done in the flat, except that now she had someone other than Flash to complain to and to shelter with when the sirens started screeching their shrill warnings in the night.

Evie seemed happy to sit back while Babs went to work and looked after the house and Georgie, and her and the dog as well. She was beginning to get on Babs’s nerves by playing on her ‘condition’, as she had taken to calling her pregnancy. She seemed to be happy to divide her time into either moaning about her loss of freedom to go out and have a good time, or acting like a holy martyr rubbing various bits of her body, complaining about the aches and pains that she was having to endure for the sake of the unborn child.

It was nearly seven o’ clock in the evening and Babs had only just stepped in the front door. She had been out since before half past six that morning; she was tired out and she was angry.

‘If that’s you, Babs, come in here and see to this fire,’ Evie groaned pitifully from the front room.

‘Can’t it wait a minute?’ Babs called back to her from the passage. She shivered as she took off her coat and slung it over the banister. ‘I’ve just got in from work. I had to walk nearly all the way from Aldgate.’

‘I thought yer was late. I was worried the fire’d go out.’

Evie’s wheedling voice set Babs’s teeth on edge. She took a deep breath and threw open the front room door. ‘What’s the matter with you doing it? Got yer fat arse stuck in the chair?’

Evie’s lip quivered. ‘Even you think I’m ugly now I’m pregnant,’ she wailed, making a full dramatic production of shifting herself to a more comfortable position in the armchair by the hearth.

Babs controlled herself. ‘No, Eve, I don’t think yer ugly.’ She knelt by the grate and raked through the cinders until they glowed, then she shook in some coal from the scuttle and hauled herself back to her feet.

‘You don’t seem in a very good mood,’ Evie pouted. ‘I was looking forward to having a bit of company when you got in, but yer’ve come home all humpy. Who’s upset yer? That Ginny from work?’

Babs looked at her coal-blackened hands. ‘What’s for tea?’ she asked over her shoulder as she walked out of the room.

‘Charming. Don’t bother to answer me, will yer?’ Evie got up and followed Babs into the kitchen. ‘Thought we could have some sandwiches.’ She smiled sweetly and looked down at her hands resting on her stomach. ‘And that you wouldn’t mind making ’em. ’Cos of me condition, like.’

Babs looked at her as if she had gone mad. ‘Sandwiches? But Dad’ll be in soon and he’ll need some proper grub.’ She jerked her thumb behind her. ‘D’yer really think I’m gonna be able to make a meal for the three of us out of that miserable specimen of cheese?’

Evie’s eyes grew wide. ‘No hope of that,’ she giggled, pointing to the table.

Babs turned round just in time to see Flash stealing the small piece of Cheddar cheese off the table. ‘Aw wonderful, that was the whole bloody ration and all.’

Eve flopped down into the carver chair by the stove. ‘It’s all right, there’s plenty more where that came from.’

Babs frowned. ‘How d’yer mean, plenty more?’

Eve waved towards a cardboard box on the draining board. ‘Chas was round here just now. He come to fetch all that stuff. Albie sent him with it.’

‘So that’s why he was here.’

‘Eh?’

‘I saw him when I was coming along. Up the top of the street, he was, trying to get a cab. Too stupid to walk along to Mile End to get one.’ Babs went over to the sink and started sorting through the box for something to make a meal with. ‘This arrangement seems to be suiting Albie,’ she said, putting a tin of corned beef to one side. ‘He don’t seem to be missing you. Or the dog.’

‘That’s where yer wrong, clever dick,’ Evie snorted. ‘Why d’yer think he sent all this stuff round? ’Cos he cares for me. I’m here because he likes me having company while he’s so tied up with his business, that’s all. He’s been really busy lately.’

Babs unhooked the string bag of potatoes from the nail under the sink. ‘Corned beef hash?’ she asked.

Evie nodded sulkily.

Babs filled a saucepan with water and began peeling the potatoes into the sink. ‘Why’d yer keep on kidding yerself, Eve? He’s a no-good bastard and he couldn’t care less about yer.’

‘Yer just jealous, I’ve said it all along.’

‘Look, Eve, we both know all about him being busy and what he gets up to.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? Other women?’

‘That and all, but you know exactly what I mean.’ Babs looked over her shoulder at Evie and shook her head contemptuously. ‘Business? Don’t make me laugh. Ducking and diving, that’s the only business Albie Denham’s ever known. And don’t look so hurt, Evie, you know full well what he’s up to. He’s making all this dough out of the war while people are suffering and going without.’

‘I thought better of you, Babs. They’re all stories and rumour-mongering. Yer no different to bloody Alice Clarke and her street-corner gossip if yer believe all that shit about my Albie.’

Babs dropped the knife into the sink and twisted round to face her sister. She stuck her fists into her waist. ‘Aw yeah? Gossip? Well, let me tell yer some home truths about
your Albie
. When I saw Chas just now, the stupid sod thought he was impressing me showing off what he knows about your precious husband. He’s hijacking lorries in the blackout, did yer know that? Fags, clothes, booze – you name it. Aw yeah, and the warehouse raids. That’s another little line of his.’

Babs leant forward. Evie could feel her hot breath on her face as she spoke.

‘Albie Denham is bribing dockers so that him and his cronies can nick food that should be on the tables of decent people like your own dad, Evie. And while blokes like Dad’re risking their lives for the likes of him, that ponce is swanning around up West in and out of clubs with a different tart on his arm every night.’

She went over to the draining board and tossed the corned beef back into the box.

‘I dunno what I was even thinking of, I’d rather starve than eat his filthy food. And so would Dad.’

Evie sat silently staring at the floor.

‘Sending Chas round here with all this. Couldn’t even face coming round here himself, could he? And that money, that’s just to keep yer quiet. Bloody conscience money, that’s what that is.’

‘Money?’ Evie asked. Her voice was tiny.

‘Yeah, money.’ Babs reached into the box, pulled out a handful of notes and waved them under Evie’s nose. ‘Yer’d better get used to it, Eve, he don’t want nothing to do with yer. He’s bought you off. And the sooner you realise it the better.’

A single tear rolled down Evie’s cheek.

Babs bowed her head. ‘Don’t start crying, Eve,’ she said, her anger spent. ‘He ain’t worth it.’ She picked up the tea towel and wiped Evie’s face with it. ‘Me and my big mouth, I didn’t mean to upset yer. I was just angry, that’s all.’

‘But it ain’t you in this state,’ Evie said, her voice flat and lifeless. ‘So what you gotta be angry about?’

‘Aw Evie, can’t yer see? I’m angry ’cos of the way the rotten bastard’s treating you. Yer me sister and I love yer, Evie.’ Babs folded her arms round her twin and rocked her, letting her sob. ‘And I’m fed up with this sodding cold weather,’ she whispered, fighting back her own tears. ‘And with this whole bloody, stinking, rotten war.’

‘But yer can’t have started, it ain’t due for at least a couple of weeks.’

‘I can’t help that, Babs,’ panted Evie, grasping at the sheets as though they were life-saving ropes keeping her secured to a mountainside.

‘We’ve gotta get down the Drum.’ Babs looked up at the ceiling as though it were transparent. ‘The planes are already on their way over. Listen.’ She threw Evie’s coat onto the bed. ‘It must be the warning that’s brought you on early.’

Evie gritted her teeth. ‘I don’t care about no poxy air raids, Babs. They’re hardly a surprise, are they? Now, for Christ’s sake,
do something
.’

‘I’ll fetch Ethel, she usually helps out with babies, don’t she?’

Evie wiped her damp hair back off her forehead. ‘No, Babs, not Ethel, don’t bring her.’

‘Shall I go and fetch Blanche?’

‘Yeah. Do that.’

Relieved to be doing something, Babs walked hurriedly out of the bedroom and was down the stairs in a moment. But before she had a chance to open the front door, Evie was calling down to her.

‘Don’t go, Babs. Don’t leave me. I’m scared.’

Babs ran back upstairs. She leant over the big double bed and frowned down at her twin. She looked like a little girl, all wide-eyed with fear.

‘What d’yer want me to do?’

Evie’s face contorted as another wave of pain shuddered though her body.

Babs backed away. ‘Look, I don’t wanna leave yer, but it’s only next door. I’ll be one minute.’

Evie groaned.

Babs swallowed hard. ‘I think it’s best if I fetch Blanche.’

Babs bashed on Blanche’s door. No reply. The sirens had stopped so perhaps they were already sheltering in the pub. She pulled her coat tighter round her and glanced up at the sky as she dashed across the street to the Drum. The searchlights picking up the suggestion of the outline of a plane in the cloudy night sky still gave her the creeps, even after all those months of bombing.

The bar was empty but she could hear the sounds of laughter and talking coming from the cellar. She almost smiled to herself as she pulled up the cellar door and picked her way down the wide, shallow steps; sheltering had become quite a popular event for some people.

‘We wondered where yer were,’ said Clara, the first to see her. ‘Whatever’s up, darling? Yer white as a sheet.’

‘It’s Evie, she’s started. Please, Blanche, yer’ve gotta come. She’s asking for yer.’

Blanche handed Janey to Mary and grabbed her coat. ‘She indoors?’

Babs nodded frantically and practically dragged Blanche towards the cellar steps. ‘She’s in a bad way.’

‘Don’t worry, Babs,’ Minnie called after them in her brash, warm-hearted way. ‘She might as well be at home as in the laying-in ward. If it’s like the hospital where me and Clara work, there ain’t hardly nothing left, all the gear’s been nicked for the forces. Everyone’s saying so.’

Babs knew from the tone of Minnie’s voice that she was trying to be kind but she didn’t take in a word of what she was saying. Nor did she respond to all the shouts of good wishes that followed. All she could think about was getting back to Evie.