After Hours Read online

  ‘We beat ’em on the Aisne.

  We gave them hell at Neuve Chapelle ...’

  He blew his horn furiously at a cyclist who had wobbled out from behind a crowded omnibus.

  ‘And here we are again!’

  ‘Steady on, Rob!’ Waiter warned. He made a grab for a hand-hold as the car swerved to one side. ‘Ain’t a thing we can do about it.’ He resigned himself to getting Richie to strip down the engine of the old car one more time.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not.’ Rob’s brain was a riot of ideas, some feasible, some not. They could sell both Morrises and buy one new Cowley. They could team up with another outfit, cut down on overheads, start saving all over again. They could borrow more money. ‘Maybe not!’ he repeated, careering through puddles with a hot hiss of steam. He pulled to a halt outside the depot, leaped out and slammed the door as he went inside.

  Walter jumped into the serviced car still parked inside the garage. Richie handed him an address, saying the woman had already rung up twice to ask where he was. Rob started up the engine, Walter put his foot down and was on his way. Rob went into the office to check the next job on the list.

  ‘What the bleeding hell’s this?’ he asked, shoving a basket to one side. He glowered at the scrawled messages.

  Richie frowned. He stood in his shirt-sleeves, a wide leather belt buckled carelessly round his waist, his collarless shirt open at the neck. ‘Sadie brought it in,’ he answered. His choice had been to get rid of the basket and avoid awkward questions, or to leave it on view. Some stubbornness in him had chosen the second option. Now he stood looking steadily at Rob as the information sank in.

  Rob, never one to ask questions, pounced on the one unacceptable fact. ‘She never came down here?’

  ‘She did.’ Richie took his jacket from a peg behind the door.

  ‘By herself?’

  He nodded.

  Rob kicked a chair to one side and slammed the office door shut. Its glass panels rattled. His eyes widened, his fists clenched as he pinned Richie into one comer. ‘Now listen, Palmer, you leave that girl alone, you hear me? You lay one finger on her and I’ll break your neck!’ He faced his strong, able-bodied opponent head on, without a scrap of fear. Even when Richie unfastened his belt and swung its brass buckle out in front, wrapping the leather strap around his wrist for a firmer grasp, Rob refused to back off. ‘Come on, then! Come on! What you waiting for?’ He crouched low and made a beckoning motion.

  ‘You don’t want a fight,’ Richie warned him, low and menacing. ‘Ain’t nothing worth fighting over.’

  Further enraged, Rob swung at him. Richie dodged sideways, escaping from the corner. He was three or four inches taller than Rob, younger, fitter.

  ‘I’m telling you, lay off my sister. She ain’t interested, get it? She don’t want nothing to do with a hooligan like you!’ Rob spat with ineffectual rage. He swung again, once more missing his target.

  ‘You’d better ask her that.’ Richie put the desk between himself and his boss. He never even raised his voice.

  To Richie, things had suddenly changed. Five minutes ago he’d been prepared to vanish, without wages, without explanation! He’d take his cap and jacket off the hook and never show up again. This thing with Sadie was too complicated. Since he never knew which way she’d jump, he felt the whole affair was out of his control, and he was uneasy. Besides, whenever he saw her, his urge to hold her and the memory of kissing her that once resurfaced and threw him further off balance. He didn’t like that feeling one bit.

  Now it was different; Robert had come charging in with orders, with the idea that he could lord it over Richie and rule his life. Richie had never been able to bear being told what to do. Brought up by Barnardo’s, he’d learnt to follow his own instincts to survive. He took the children’s home for what it gave him – food and shelter – but he hated the rules and Christian browbeating that went with them. He left there when he was ten years old. His teenaged years on the streets had toughened him up and taught him never to trust. Then two years of army service had fuelled his obsession with car engines. He gleaned information and experience from working on supply lorries that travelled between the Belgian coast and the front line. Like many uneducated men, the war had at least given him a trade. Otherwise, it only served to reinforce his rebellious spirit.

  He had one sergeant-major who treated him like dirt; Richie got the worst billets, the most dangerous tasks in a battle of wills to see if he would crack. But it came to a bad end. The sergeant-major had sent Richie over the top on reconnaissance once too often. He and the other men had stayed put in the trench until they heard a hail of enemy fire. But the sergeant left his own strategic retreat a second too late. A shell had landed in the trench over Richie’s head, leaving the sergeant-major hanging on the old barbed wire. Later, Richie would sing that wartime favourite with vicious enjoyment.

  Rob wore a dark moustache, just like that sergeant-major. His upright bearing gave him a military air. He was the type who never showed a soft side. His temper was always ready to flare and he didn’t like to be crossed.

  ‘Look, I ain’t gonna take none of your cheek, you bleeding idiot.’ Rob jumped down Richie’s throat. ‘Sadie’s spoken for. Why can’t you get that into your thick head?’ He got ready for his third lunge, this time raising the heavy brass phone, holding it like a dub. The wire wrenched from its socket and dangled uselessly.

  Over his head, beyond the glass partition, Richie spotted the rapid approach of Rob’s eldest sister, Frances. He lowered the belt and unwound it from his fist. Instinctively Rob dropped his own guard. ‘You heard me,’ he warned. ‘You leave her alone.’

  Richie turned away and took his jacket without a reply. But the set of his shoulders spoke defiance. ‘Try and make me,’ he suggested. It was in the angle of his cap, in his curt nod at Frances as she came in. He loped off across the cinder yard.

  Frances Wray, as she now was, had spoken earlier on the phone to Hettie. She’d set off for the Duke as soon as she could, hoping to catch her sister before she left for the Mission. Hettie’s tone had been uncharacteristically downbeat. Though she’d been quick to deny that anything was amiss, Frances had decided to leave work and pay her a visit.

  Since Rob’s depot was on her way and it was raining hard, Frances thought she might ask Rob for a rare favour and catch a lift to the Duke. Now she shook out her black umbrella and closed it, glad to find someone in. ‘Cheer up, it might never happen,’ she told Rob. His face was like thunder.

  ‘It already did.’

  Frances glanced after the retreating figure of Richie Palmer. ‘Well, anyhow, run me up home to the Duke, there’s a good chap. I need to see Hettie and I’m afraid I’ve left it late,’ Frances sighed. ‘Why do customers always have to come in at the last minute? You’d think they’d show more consideration. Don’t they know we have our own lives to lead?’ She’d been mixing pastes and making up pills until well after five o’clock.

  ‘No, didn’t you know?’ Rob tilted his chin up and fixed his tie straight. He was beginning to recover from his argument with Richie. ‘You ain’t a human being. You’re a machine for peddling pills and potions, that’s all.’

  ‘Ta very much, Rob.’ By now they’d climbed into his cab and backed out of the yard on to the dark street. Frances sat quietly in the passenger seat, listening to the swish of the tyres through the puddles. In her feather-trimmed hat and fawn, tailored outfit, she looked quietly respectable as always. ‘Ett didn’t sound her usual self,’ she commented, separated from the familiar sights of Duke Street by the steamy windscreen. ‘She ain’t mentioned nothing to you, has she, Rob?’

  He came to a halt outside the pub. ‘There was something, but she didn’t say what. I think she’s got a lot on her mind. She won’t even say nothing to George, though, so there’s no use asking me.’

  George Mann, also a pal of Rob’s, stayed quiedy in the background of Hettie’s life, and he had become part of the Parsons family. He’d taken
Joxer’s place as cellarman at the Duke, after Joxer had uprooted and drifted off on his silent, lonely way. George had been glad of a job during the lean period after the war. Duke said he owed him a steady place after he’d snatched Rob from certain death on the battlefield; it was George who’d lifted the wounded soldier on to his back and staggered with him to safety. ‘He’ll stick like glue,’ Annie warned. She knew the type; strong and silent, pretty much alone in the world, fond of his home comforts, and quickly felling for Hettie.

  Her heart and soul were with the Army, however, and at first she gave him little encouragement. Then, almost passively, she began to accept his persistent attention. Duke had acknowledged Annie’s point of view. But, ‘He’ll do for me,’ he said, ‘now that Joxer’s slung his hook.’ For more than three years George had grafted and quietly impressed.

  ‘And she won’t say nothing to Sadie?’ Frances enquired, still wondering about Hettie’s troubles. She prepared to brave the wet street.

  Rob tossed his head.

  ‘I take it that’s a “no”?’

  He followed her into the rain. They shifted as quick as they could into the front porch. ‘Sadie ain’t listening to no one at present,’ he said in disgust.

  Frances braced herself and pushed open the door. Annie, busy at the bar, waved noisily. Duke looked up, pleased by the rare visit from his eldest daughter. She was thirty-nine, with a sensible marriage under her belt and a good job at Boots, and he felt proud of her if a little distant. He still didn’t hold with her opinions, which were too modern for his taste, though since women had got the vote, he’d noticed she’d quietened down a good deal. Still, there was something aloof about her; she meant well, put her husband and family at the top of her list of priorities, but she lacked the common touch. ‘One look from her would freeze a man’s beer in its pint pot,’ was Arthur Ogden’s way of putting it.

  Frances went upstairs ahead of Rob, only pausing to shake the rain from her jacket and hang it up. From the landing she heard the telephone ring, and Sadie’s voice as she answered it. Something made her hesitate.

  ‘Ett, is that you?’ she heard Sadie ask. ‘Calm down, Ett. Don’t get worked up. It ain’t like you . . . Yes, I can hear. But are you sure? . . . Yes, I think I heard Frances come upstairs just now. Hang on a tick, Ett. Don’t go away. I’ll go get Frances for you.’

  Slowly Frances turned the handle and went in. She looked at Sadie’s pale, shocked face, saw her standing holding the telephone mouthpiece out towards her. She went and took it from her.

  ‘Oh, Frances!’ Sadie cried. ‘Ett’s here, and she’s in a fix. She’s at the Mission and she says Willie Wiggin has just turned up!’

  ‘Annie’s old husband?’ Frances held the phone to her ear in disbelief. Everyone in the court knew the story of how Annie had been deserted by Wiggjn who’d gone off to sea and eventually been declared missing, presumed dead. Ett’s voice sobbed along the wire, while Sadie made a grab for her arm, pleading over Ett’s incoherent tears. ‘Tell her there’s some mistake, Frances! Tell her it’s just some mad old drunk. It can’t be Wiggin. It can’t be!’

  Chapter Five

  By the time Frances and Sadie arrived at the Bear Lane Mission, Hettie had managed to calm down. She was standing at a long trestle-table doling out soup and bread, quakerish in her navy-blue uniform. She looked tense, but under control. Her two sisters signalled they would wait by the refectory door until the soup queue was served. Hettie nodded and wielded the big metal ladle, though the smell of potato and mutton from the steaming pot was as much as she could stomach. Doggedly she worked on, dealing kindly with the row of shuffling, dejected tramps.

  ‘Oh my God!’ Sadie breathed. It was her first view inside the Mission, and it struck her as a picture of hell. The refectory was a long, bare room with arching roof beams and high, narrow windows. Tables were set out in rows along the length of the room, and hunched shapes huddled over their meagre rations.

  These men, segregated from the women and children, were clothed in rags. They sat to eat, wrapped in old trenchcoats tied around with sacking, padded out with newspapers. Bundles of rags perched on the benches beside them; they were reluctant to be parted from one scrap of their belongings. Their feet, under the bare wooden table, were shod in old, misshapen boots, stuffed with paper that was worn to a waterlogged pulp. Many were caked in mud. They scoured their empty enamelled bowls with crusts or dirty fingers, chewing with toothless gums. Their faces were caved in by poverty; unshaven, shadowy, suspicious.

  ‘They’re the lucky ones,’ Frances reminded her sister. ‘At least they got a bed for the night.’

  Sadie looked on in horror, her gaze flicking from one face to the next, praying that this wasn’t the man claiming to be Wiggin; or the next, or the next.

  At last Hettie finished her work, wiped her hands on a linen towel and came across the hall. She was composed, pausing when an inmate stuck out his hand to accost her and accuse her loudly of some uncommitted crime. ‘It’s a crying shame!’ the old man shouted. ‘So it is. It’s a shame, and I want something done about it!’

  Hettie bent to soothe him, promised that everything would be all right if he took his empty bowl to the hatch and picked up his bed ticket for a good night’s sleep. She patted his hand until he released her and she could go on her way. She woke another man, fast asleep at the table, and helped him to his feet, not flinching at the sight of a livid, distorting burn that scarred one side of his face.

  Sadie came forward almost in tears. To her, Hettie was an angel. She could solve everything, find a way through for these hopeless cases. She would be able to dissolve away this small problem over Wiggin. ‘Hello, Ett.’ Sadie gave her a brave smile, aware that Frances had come up quietly beside her.

  ‘We came as quick as we could,’ Frances said. ‘Where is he? Do you want us to try and get some sense out of him?’

  Hettie nodded. She led the way out of the refectory, down a long cream and brown corridor towards the men’s sleeping quarters. The dormitories, well aired, with rows of bunks to either side, were a step up from the old workhouses, but offered few luxuries. A warm blanket, a promise of breakfast in return for a chore successfully carried out, was what persuaded the homeless to stay on after their spartan suppers. Included in the bargain was a close of hymn-singing and allelujahs, which most considered a price worth paying in return for refuge from the elements.

  Hettie turned right, up a narrow flight of stone stairs. The thing is, he keeps coming back regular as clockwork, every Saturday night,’ She spoke quietly over her shoulder to her two sisters. ‘First off, I hoped it’d be just the once. They drift off and we never slap eyes on them again, some of them. But he came back the next week, I think it was the last Saturday in November, and I hoped to goodness he’d change the tune and stop going on about this woman called Annie. It was a load of rubbish mostly, but it put the wind up me.’

  Frances listened carefully. The upper storey of the Mission contained more men’s dormitories. Glancing to either side, she could see barrack-like rooms, each of which gave beds to thirty or forty men. ‘Just “Annie”? Is that all?’ She grasped at a straw. After all, there were hundreds of Annies round here, lots of room for Hettie to have jumped to the wrong conclusion.

  ‘At first, yes. I had to help him to bed, he was so drunk. He moaned the name “Annie” over and over, then it was “Paradise Court”. He held on to my arm. He told me he’d left his Annie down the court and gone away to sea. But now he’d come back to find her.’ Hettie stopped and turned helplessly. ‘I prayed hard, Fran. And God forgive me, I prayed for him to go away and never come back! I was glad when he went the next morning, poor old sinner. And I can’t tell you how much I dreaded seeing him come through them doors again!’

  ‘But he’s here now?’ A deadening feeling had seeped into Frances that the old tramp’s story might indeed be true, and that here was someone who could turn up out of the blue after twenty-odd years and set their lives in turmoil
. Her voice flattened out into a monotone, jerking between her narrowed lips.

  Hettie breathed in sharply. ‘I was in Reception earlier on, helping the major with admissions. The major calls out names and issues blankets, I write down the name and give each man a number for his bed ticket. “Wiggin,” the major says. It comes over loud and clear, the first time I’ve heard it. My hand can hardly write it down for shaking. I look up and see he’s back right enough. And now I’ve got his last name and a face to put it to.’

  ‘So you telephoned us? It’s all right, Ett, you did the right thing. We’ll help you sort this out if we can.’ Frances managed to control her fears and take charge. ‘Show us where he is and let’s see what we can do.’

  ‘It’s Annie and Pa I’m worried about,’ Hettie whispered, leading the way into a dormitory. ‘Whatever’ll we do, Fran?’

  Frances gave her a brief shake of the head. The three women went in at last, and two of them being in civvies attracted a certain amount of attention. Eyes swivelled in their direction from the bunks and from groups of men huddled by radiators. ‘Oo-er!’ came the old-fashioned call from shrivelled, cracked lips. A cackle went, up, fuelled by Sadie’s obvious blushes. Then a lone baritone voice struck up into the sudden silence.

  You are the honey, honeysuckle, I am the bee,

  I’d like to sip the honey from those red lips, you see ...’

  Sadie shuddered and forced herself to walk on.

  ‘This ain’t the place for the ladies to kip,’ another, rougher voice called out. ‘You missed your way, I think!’ His laugh turned into a hoarse cough.

  ‘Ain’t we the lucky ones?’ someone else cried. ‘Good tommy in our bellies and fine lady visitors!’ His wild eyes stayed riveted on Sadie’s fashionable short skirt.

  ‘Nah!’ His companion from the bunk above cut in. ‘They ain’t no fine ladies. They’re soul-snatchers, just like the rest!’ He sneered and spat on to the floor, before rolling over and pulling the blanket over his head.