Trinidad Street (58 page)

‘God help us – coppers!’

She shot out of bed and began pulling on clothes, her fingers turning treacherously clumsy. A moaning noise of fear and frustration sounded in her throat. There was nothing she could do to warn him, to protect him. He was right there in the parlour, sleeping on the put-you-up. The put-you-up! She nearly cried out loud. She had not told him about the hidden bag. She put a hand to her side to steady the wild beating of her heart. It was all right; she must keep a hold of herself. He would have noticed it as he went to bed. He would have hidden it somewhere. But a voice inside her head reminded her that he had been pissed as a wheelbarrow last night . . . Shaking, her hair sticking out, her clothes all anyhow, Alma went downstairs. At the bottom, she took a deep breath. Then she sailed into the parlour.

‘Now then, what’s all this about? Can’t a body have a lie-in of a Sunday morning without you lot coming and marching in here bold as you please –’

She stopped short. The policemen seemed to fill the small room. Charlie was standing in his shirt and underpants, glowering. He
seemed small and defenceless beside the large men. One of them had him by the arm and the other was holding the grubby canvas bag. He waved it in front of Alma.

‘You know anything about this, missus?’

Alma opened her mouth and shut it again. She would have said anything, perjured herself, to help Charlie, but she did not know what to say for the best.

‘Course she don’t. She was out last night and all, weren’t she?’ Charlie said.

‘That’s right,’ Alma agreed.

The policeman gave her an unbelieving look. ‘Got you trained all right, ain’t he, missus?’

‘I
was
out last night. You saying I’m a liar? I’ll have you for that. You ask anyone. I was up the Puncheon.’

He put on a show of patience. ‘All right, so who was in last night? This stuff didn’t just fly in the window, now did it?’

‘I told you, it must’ve been planted on me,’ Charlie said.

‘I was in last night.’

They all turned to look at Ellen. In the midst of the drama, she was totally calm. She looked at the policemen with a steady gaze.

‘It’s all right, Ellen. You don’t have to say nothing.’ Gerry was at her shoulder, pale and nervous.

‘Two men came yesterday evening with that bag. They asked for Charlie and I said he weren’t in, so they gave it to me to give to him.’

‘There you are!’ Charlie crowed. ‘It was planted.’

‘Friends of Mr Billingham’s were they, missus?’

‘I never saw them before in my life.’

‘So what did they look like?’

‘I didn’t see them very well. It was dark, and I didn’t ask them in.’ Ellen hesitated, her brow creased with remembering. ‘They was both quite short – no taller than me. They was wearing caps and jackets. One had a spotted necktie. And they was local – I could tell by the voices.’

The policeman holding the bag was unimpressed. ‘How old was they?’

‘I dunno – twenty, thirty.’

‘Short, wearing caps and jackets, twenty or thirty years old, local. That’d fit practically any villain in London, missus.’

Ellen turned her cold stare on him. ‘I’m sorry I can’t say no more, officer. I don’t invite strange men into my house so as I can tell the police about them.’

‘Pity.’ Wilting ever so slightly before her, he turned on Charlie.

‘Charles Albert Billingham, I am arresting you for receiving stolen goods . . .’

The rest of the caution was lost in Alma’s shriek of protest.

‘You can’t! You can’t do this! Not my boy. He’s a good boy, my Charlie. You can’t take him in – he’s done nothing.’

They ignored her and stood over Charlie as he got dressed. Worse was to follow. The house was searched from top to bottom, then they all had to go down to the station to make statements. Gerry was escorted to his lock-up and all his stock was gone through, together with all the receipts he could find. After an endless morning, the rest of them were allowed to go home, but Charlie was marched off to the cells.

Somehow, Alma managed to walk down Trinidad Street with her head high. She could see them all looking at her, some openly from their front doors, some from behind curtains. They must all have had a real morning of it, talking about the whole family being led off by a couple of coppers, but she wasn’t going to let them see her defeated. They all sat down round the kitchen table, and Ellen fetched Teddy and Jessica back from her mother, who had been minding them. Alma’s control cracked. Great sobs came heaving up from her very soul.

‘Oh, my poor boy,’ she howled, ‘my poor Charlie. What’s going to happen to him? I can’t bear it.’

She put her head in her arms and gave herself up to weeping, finding a release in the hot tears. She hardly heard Ellen or Gerry, or felt their arms around her. All she knew was the fierce pain and the crushing fear.

Florrie looked up as the bedroom door opened. Not
more
eager visitors. She had had enough of people peering at the baby and finding who he looked like. All Jimmy’s family thought he looked like some relation or other of theirs and all her own lot thought he looked like her. Some even went so far as to say he took after her mum, which brought tears to her eyes, or worse still, her dad. She stared long and searchingly at the tiny child after that suggestion, horror in her heart. It couldn’t be. Not that. Not her father come back to haunt her in the face of her firstborn son.

Ellen’s head appeared round the door, and Florrie relaxed. Ellen was the one person she wanted to see.

‘Not asleep?’

‘No – come on in, love. I could do with some company.’

‘I brought you up some tea.’ Ellen handed her a cup.

‘Oh, that’s nice, but I don’t really fancy it.’

‘Water, then? Shall I bring you some water? You got to drink a lot to make milk for the baby.’

Whenever anyone else said that, it made her want to throw the drink all over them. But from Ellen she could take it.

‘Oh, well, I suppose you’re right. Thanks.’

She looked thoughtfully at her friend’s face over the rim of the cup. For the first time since the birth of the baby, she considered someone besides herself and the child.

‘You look dog tired, Ellen. Things bad over the road?’

‘Well, you know Alma – always thought the sun shone out of Charlie’s backside. She still doesn’t believe he done nothing.’

‘But he was picked out, weren’t he, at an identity parade?’

‘Yeah, but he says as he was framed, and the old boy what picked him was half blind. Alma can’t let it rest. She nagged and nagged at him to get all his pals together so as I could have a look at them and find the ones what brought the stuff round, but he won’t have any of it. She went on at him so much that he did take Gerry and me to this pub up in Poplar yesterday evening. He wouldn’t let us meet his pals. We had to sit in the corner and pretend we didn’t know him. And then they all come in, and a right shifty-looking bunch they was an’ all. Just like him.’

‘And did you see them, the two that knocked?’ Florrie asked. It all seemed unreal to her. A pub in Poplar was as far away as the moon. But Ellen looked so worn that she was interested for her sake.

Ellen sighed and ran her hands over her face. ‘It was dreadful, Florrie. I stared and I stared, all the while trying to make out that I wasn’t. And they all looked the same. Honest. It was like that copper said, all the villains in London are small and about twenty or thirty and wear caps. And I never saw them proper. It was dark when they come, and you know how the streetlamp don’t give off much light, not where we are. And Gerry, he really had the wind up. He kept saying, ‘What d’you think? Can you see them? Are they there?’ And the more I looked, the more I couldn’t remember anything about them. Then of course when we got home, Alma was on at me until I just ended up screaming at her.’

‘What did she do?’ Alma might be all bright and jolly most of the time, but Florrie wouldn’t fancy being there when she wasn’t.

‘She yelled back. And then the children woke up with the noise and
they started crying. But I tell you something, Florrie. Gerry surprised me. He really did. He got between us and he said, “You just leave off, Mum. Ellen’s done her best. Don’t carry on at her or she might lose the baby.” I don’t think I ever heard him talk to her like that before, not never. And she did calm down a bit. I think she was surprised an’ all. But of course it didn’t help none, because we still don’t know who it was what brought that stuff round for Charlie.’

‘At least he’s on bail,’ Florrie said.

That had been a right to-do, getting the money together. It was Harry who put most of it up. Jimmy’s family had been horrified. They never had any doings with the police, not the Crofts. If it hadn’t been for the baby being born right now, they might even have cut her off.

As if catching her thoughts, little George woke up and began to cry.

‘Can I?’ Ellen asked.

Florrie nodded and her friend bent down and picked the baby out of the drawer he was lying in. She held him on her knee, smiling down at his angry red features.

‘He’s got a real look of Harry about him, ain’t he?’ she remarked.

Relief swamped Florrie in a warm wave. She unbuttoned her nightdress and held out her arms for the baby. As he caught hold of her nipple and his face settled into an expression of avid hunger, she regarded him with new eyes.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yeah, he has, you’re right. Just like Harry.’

They were both quiet for a while, watching the sucking baby.

‘He’s strong,’ Ellen said, as he started on the other side. ‘Reckon he’ll be all right.’

‘Hark at you, quite the old hand,’ Florrie joked, not looking up.

‘Yeah, funny, ain’t it, us both being mums now. Don’t seem two minutes since we was playing hopscotch.’

‘Or wheeling out other people’s babies. Remember that time we fought over Maisie’s Tommy?’

‘Yeah.’ They were both silent again, for it had not been Tommy they were fighting over, but Will’s behaviour to Maisie. Which brought both their thoughts to Siobhan.

‘Are you –’

‘I always thought –’

They both spoke at once, wanting to push the Irish troublemaker out of the way. The chat concentrated on babies and motherhood. Ellen fetched a clean square of old sheet for Florrie to change little George.

He definitely did look like Harry, Florrie decided. She still felt quite
dizzy with the knowledge. She could not have born having her father in the house all over again, though of course it would be no more than she deserved.

Without thinking first, she said, ‘I wonder if Harry’ll ever have any of his own?’

The moment the words were out of her mouth, she regretted them. She saw her friend’s face pale and her arm curl protectively round the baby she was carrying inside her. Florrie wanted to say she was sorry, but did not know whether that might make it worse.

Ellen was not looking at her. Her eyes were distant and she was stroking the bulge under her skirt.

‘I never –’ she began. She stopped, bit her lip, then carried on. ‘I never thanked you proper for what you done that day – the day we – I had to move out from next door: finishing the house off for me, and covering up. I – we – wouldn’t never have got away with it if it hadn’t been for you.’

It was the nearest Ellen had ever come to admitting just what had happened. All Florrie knew was that both her friend and her brother had disappeared for the day. She reached out and laid a hand on her knee.

‘We all got secrets,’ she said.

Ellen turned and for a long time the two women looked at each other, and felt safe.

‘
YOU BEEN PLAYING
around behind my back, ain’t you?’

The young man with the broken nose towered above Siobhan as she sat at the dressing table in their gilded bedroom. She cowered from him, shaking her head.

‘Me? No, I have not. Playing around? I never have, not in all the time you and me’ve been together.’

Her lover was unimpressed. He grabbed her arm and pulled her on to her feet.

‘Thought you’d get away with it, did you, what with me being away? Even if you can’t behave yourself for my sake, you ought to know I got eyes everywhere.’ His grip tightened round her arm, making her gasp. ‘You been seen.’

‘Lies!’ Siobhan squealed. ‘It’s all lies! I been good as gold while you been gone. All I been doing is working and coming back here.’

‘And shopping.’

Siobhan went pale. She swallowed, then tried to keep up the defiant tone.

‘So I went shopping. What’s wrong in that? I got to buy things. I got to keep looking nice. You want me to look nice for you, don’t you?’

‘For me, yeah. Not for that poncy bastard with the handle to his name.’

‘I don’t know what you mean!’

She cried out as the back of his hand hit the side of her face.

‘Don’t know what I mean, my arse. It’s not enough for you, is it, having the biggest man in Southwark? You got to go after them bleeding upper-class streaks of nothing. Just ’cos they got fancy names and places in the country. Can’t leave it alone, can you?’

‘All right, all right,’ Siobhan screamed at him. ‘So I went down Bond Street with him. That’s all there was to it, I swear! I was lonely without you here. None of my friends come here to see me. They’re all too scared. All I wanted was a bit of company, someone to talk to.’

‘Lying bitch!’ He hit her hard this time, cutting her lip.

‘It’s the truth, I swear it!’ she cried, trying to back away from him. ‘I was just out walking with him.’

‘And after, eh? What happened after, when you went back to his rooms with him? Just having a cup of tea for three hours, were you?’

‘No – I never – it was just . . . I never meant no harm.’

She twisted and struggled, trying to escape from his iron grasp, and when that failed, screamed at him to stop, then tried begging for forgiveness. But this time she had gone too far. There was no mercy in the hard eyes.

When at last he stopped beating her, the ornate room was a shambles. Siobhan crouched in a corner, her arms curled round her head in an attempt at protection. With a last curse, he flung a vase at her and stormed out of the room.