While Cissie and Gladys walked along slowly behind them – each deep in thought as to what marriage to Sammy Clarke would mean – the children got on with their much speedier and far more erratic journey home. Authorised bursts of running ahead of their mothers were interspersed with sudden halts, predetermined by Terry, at street corners where they were not only in danger from any passing traffic, but where they might also disappear from sight and get up to no good, meaning that Terry would be in trouble with his mum for letting them.
But once they’d turned into Linman Street the younger ones, apart from Joyce, all raced on ahead of him, heedless of his shouted instructions, warnings and threats, and threw themselves into the boisterous game of British Bulldog which the Godwins, and assorted other children from the surrounding neighbourhood, already had well underway. And which, despite her living at the other end of the street, Myrtle Payne had found reason to complain about, and was voicing her displeasure at a volume that was causing far more disturbance than all of the kids could manage between them.
It was this scene – Myrtle bellowing at the heap of sprawling children, including Terry, whose efforts at containment and order had been abandoned to the seductive thrills of knocking his mates flying across the rough surface of the tarry blocks and into the middle of the road – which confronted Cissie and Gladys as they turned into Linman Street.
Matty was the first to spot them coming round the corner, and was up on his feet and running towards them before they had even passed the shop.
‘All right if Terry comes indoors and sees me soldiers, Mum?’ he yelled, intent on cementing his alliance with such a grown-up kid as Terry Mills, a move that would definitely bring him honour in the playground. ‘I said he could but I had to ask you first.’
Relieved to see her son, who had been so serious lately, in such carefree high spirits, and determined to demonstrate to Myrtle that some adults actually approved of children having a harmless bit of fun, Cissie ruffled Matty’s hair and smiled down at him. ‘Course it is, babe, and tell yer what, why don’t yer take the rest of ’em indoors and all, and I’ll see if Sammy’s got a farthing’s worth of odds to share out between yers and all, shall I?’
Whoops of pleasure from the gang of kids disappearing into number seven were Cissie’s only answer, as she watched, with a sinking heart, as the Godwins, and a couple of other youngsters she knew by sight but not by name, all presumed that the invitation had been extended to them as well. She made a mental note to get out the nit comb before she put her two to bed that night – the Godwins being notoriously cooty – but refused to call them all back out as Myrtle was still standing there as though she was on guard duty.
‘I like to see kids having a good time,’ Cissie said loudly and pointedly, for Myrtle’s benefit, then added under her breath to Gladys as she pushed open the door to the shop, ‘Might as well try and keep the poor little so-and-sos happy while I can, eh, Glad? Cos I ain’t gonna be able to afford no luxuries like sweets when the stall’s finished.’
‘Blimey, Cis,’ Gladys whispered, as she followed her friend into the shop doorway, ‘you’re a bit bold coming in here so soon, ain’t yer? You ain’t made yer mind up already surely, have yer?’
Cissie’s eyes opened wide with realisation. ‘Aw Christ! I wasn’t thinking,’ she hissed back. ‘Mind.’ Cissie went to turn round to escape, but Gladys blocked her way.
‘Too late now,’ Gladys grinned, pushing her right inside. She followed her friend in and looked around the shop, shaking her head in wonder at such riches. ‘All this. Just look at it, Cis. All of it. You can have every single thing. A farthing’s worth of odds’ll be nothing. Yer’ll be able to have a quarter o’ pear drops or half a pound o’ barley sugars whenever yer feel like ’em. How can yer even think about turning him down?’
‘Gladys!’ Cissie spluttered, all too aware of Sammy’s chubby pink face beaming at her from across the counter, and of Ethel, arms akimbo, glaring at this interruption to her shopping. ‘Will you be quiet?’
‘Hello, Cissie. Glad,’ Sammy greeted them, keeping his eyes fixed on Cissie.
‘Oi!’ the elderly woman exclaimed, slapping her hand on the counter. ‘D’you want me custom or not, Samuel Clarke? Cos if yer don’t, there’s plenty of other shopkeepers round here what do.’
Very calmly, Sammy folded his arms across his aproned chest and addressed Ethel in a slow, unflustered way. ‘Well, Ethel,’ he began, ‘of course I do. In fact, I value your custom very highly indeed. I mean, I can’t think what I’d do to get by if I was to lose the price of a quarter o’ tea, a stale loaf, and a slab o’ marge every couple o’ days. But,’ and here, he gave a low, gentlemanly bow, ‘the choice of where you shop is, madam, entirely yours.’
Gladys didn’t quite register Sammy’s meaning for a moment, but then it clicked, and she threw back her head and burst out into loud, uninhibited laughter. ‘That told her, Sam!’
Ethel was fuming. ‘I’ve never in all my life—’
‘Aw, ain’t yer?’ squealed Gladys, now almost uncontrollable with laughter. ‘So where did your Lena come from then? Out o’ the cabbage patch?’
‘That’s it, I don’t have to come in here to get insulted.’
‘So where d’yer usually go for your insults then, Ett?’ Gladys snorted.
Catching Cissie’s stony expression out of the comer of her eye, Gladys thought that maybe she’d pushed things too far, so she bit her lip and did her best to stop herself from saying anything more, although her shoulders still shook with suppressed laughter.
Sammy, on the other hand, still had the devil in him and, knowing how Cissie had always enjoyed a lark, he carried on the joke. Eyes twinkling, he made a great show of wrapping Ethel’s purchases and then presenting them to her with a flourish as though they were the finest provisions from an exclusive West End emporium. ‘Madam,’ he pronounced solemnly, ‘your groceries.’
Gladys squeezed her lips tightly together as Ethel snatched up her things and strode across the shop to the door, with her chin in the air, and an angry, ‘I’ll pay you later, Samuel Clarke.’ Then she stood there in the doorway, waiting for any further cracks from any of them, muttering darkly about what Sammy’s mother and father would have had to say about such carryings on.
‘He did all that just to make you laugh, Cis, you do know that, don’t yer?’ Gladys whispered to Cissie behind her hand. ‘Yer know, I reckon he’d do anything to impress you. Give you anything yer wanted, he would.’
‘I dunno what’s got into you, Gladys, but I wish yer’d keep yer trap shut,’ Cissie spat back at her.
From her position in the doorway, Ethel narrowed her eyes at the two women whispering animatedly behind their hands. Going by her own standards they would be saying bad things about her, and she didn’t like it, but, as she had no allies there in the shop to support her, she stepped backwards to leave them to it. She would repay them later – with interest.
However, to add to her indignation, Ethel’s supposedly dignified withdrawal from the shop was ruined. Her exit was blocked by the sudden explosion of a bundle of youngsters all cannoning through the doorway at once, sending Ethel stumbling back into the shop.
‘Matty! What d’yer think you’re doing?’ Cissie demanded. She might not have had any time for the likes of Ethel Bennett but Cissie wouldn’t put up with that sort of behaviour from her children. ‘Now, you let Mrs Bennett out o’ that door at once!’
The sound of such determined authority in an adult’s voice was enough to chasten all of the children to a silent, respectful halt. They stepped to one side and let the now puce-faced Ethel leave with what little dignity she had left.
When the shop door was closed behind her and the little bell had stopped its jangling, Cissie spoke to Matty again. ‘Whatever’s got into you, child? Pushing past an adult like that. And I don’t know if I’m going to get them sweets I promised yer now. Not after that show-up,’ she added, wagging her finger at him. ‘And how about yer soldiers? I thought yer was all gonna play nicely together.’
Shamefaced at being the cause of his mother’s displeasure, Matty swung his shoulders from side to side and stared down at the sawdust-strewn floor. ‘Nanna Lil’s talking funny, and she told us all to get out.’
Cissie swallowed hard and flashed a sharp look at Gladys. Talking funny. They both knew what that meant. Lil was pissed again. Cissie felt like going straight over to number seven and wrapping her hands around Lil’s bloody throat and shaking her till she sobered up.
‘Glad, would you mind keeping an eye—’
Gladys didn’t let her finish. ‘We never finished that story that Uncle Ernie started earlier, did we?’ she said, taking Joyce by the hand.
‘He’s not Uncle Ernie,’ chipped in Gladys’s youngest. ‘He’s our dad.’
‘That’s enough of that, thank you very much.’ Gladys opened her eyes wide in warning, silencing him immediately.
‘Here, Sam,’ Cissie said, putting down a thru’penny piece on the counter, ‘weigh ’em out some sweets, will yer?’
‘Course I will,’ Sammy replied, reaching down and chucking Matty under the chin. ‘But I don’t need no money. This is my treat.’
With that, he flipped the coin back to her in a glittering arc, right across the shop.
As Cissie caught it, she also caught Gladys’s ‘I-told-you-so’ expression. The sight of her friend winking so knowingly had her fleeing from the shop faster than if she’d had Old Nick himself on her tail.
‘D’yer mind telling me how yer got the money to pay for this?’ Cissie asked.
She walked over to the kitchen table, snatched up the half-empty bottle of gin and weighed it in her hand.
Lil peered up at her through bloodshot, unfocused eyes. ‘It was another little surprise, weren’t it?’ she mumbled happily.
‘A surprise?’ Cissie asked, backing away from the blast of Lil’s alcohol-tainted breath. ‘How d’yer mean, a surprise?’
Lil smiled wonkily. ‘Money. Found it on the mat, didn’t I? Shoved through the letterbox it was, just like that other lot.’
Cissie dropped down on to the chair opposite Lil’s. ‘Give it here,’ she said slowly and deliberately.
‘What?’ asked Lil, her mind befuddled with the drink.
‘The rest o’ the money.’
Lil shrugged non-committally. ‘Don’t know if there is any more.’
‘Stop sodding around, Lil, or I’m gonna get the hump. Now, just hand it over.’
Cissie pocketed the two five-pound notes that Lil eventually surrendered to her, and then went over to put on the kettle, to start the process of sobering up her mother-in-law before the children came back from Gladys’s.
She sighed wearily to herself as she took down the tea caddy from the dresser. Lil was such a bloody nuisance. If only she hadn’t been Davy’s mum she would have booted her out of the house so fast her feet wouldn’t have touched the ground. But she was Davy’s mum and so she had to put up with her.
Anyway, she was lucky in other ways. She hadn’t even given Sammy his answer, but he’d still come straight back from walking along with her and had put the money through her door, just because he knew she was worried about losing the stall. He probably wouldn’t admit it though, just like last time, but Cissie knew it was him. There was no one else it could be.
He was a good feller. Really kind. But if only she could think of him as a man rather than as good old Sammy Clarke. If only he was a bit more like Jim Phillips…
By the time Cissie had managed to get her mother-in-law to swallow almost the whole contents of the teapot and to coax several slices of buttered toast down her throat, Lil was considerably less incoherent, and was even looking reasonably presentable. Not wonderful, but she would do for when the children returned from Gladys’s.
Cissie topped up the empty pot with a couple of spoons of tea leaves and some freshly boiled water and poured them both another cup.
‘There’s something I wanna talk to yer about before the kids get back,’ Cissie said carefully.
‘Aw yeah,’ Lil replied, stirring a heap of sugar into her tea. ‘Gonna tell me off for trying to forget me pain, are yer? That’s why I do it, yer know, to forget.’
‘Yeah, yeah, all right.’ Cissie rubbed her hands over her face. ‘But that ain’t what I wanna talk about – not this time anyway,’ she added bluntly. ‘I wanna talk to yer about something that’s gonna affect us all. Me, you, and the kids.’ Lil tore her gaze away from the gin bottle that Cissie had stood on the draining board, so tantalisingly close to her grasp, and looked across at her. ‘What yer talking about? Affect us all?’
‘Sammy Clarke’s asked me to marry him.’
‘He’s what?’ Lil screeched.
‘Calm down, Lil, I ain’t said I will or nothing.’
‘I should bloody well think you ain’t,’ she fumed.
‘I know it must hurt, Lil,’ Cissie said, staring down at the tabletop. ‘Davy being yer only son. But I’m a young woman. I don’t like even to think about it, but I’m probably gonna get married again one day, and so—’
‘This ain’t nothing to do with Davy,’ Lil snapped.
Cissie raised her eyes and looked at Lil who was almost vibrating with temper. ‘How d’yer mean?’ Cissie asked carefully.
‘I couldn’t give a bugger who yer marry, or when yer marry for that matter,’ she sputtered. ‘In fact, the sooner the better for my part. I’m fed up skivvying round here while you swan about all day. But what the hell does a good looker like you wanna waste yer time with a no-hope, sodding grocer like Sammy Clarke for?’
Lil’s face twisted in a contemptuous sneer. ‘You could do better for us both than the likes of him.’
Cissie felt sick. ‘What’s wrong with you, Lil? You’re no mother. Yer son’s been dead for six months and how many times have you even been to the cemetery? Yer’ve never had any time for me, I know that, but you ain’t gonna treat me the way yer treated Davy. If you don’t watch that mouth o’ your’n, yer gonna come in for quite a shock, cos I ain’t got no reason to be your meal ticket if I don’t wanna. Got it? You ain’t gonna take liberties with me the way yer did with Davy.’
Cissie raked her hands roughly through her hair, pulling it back off her face.
Lil, the drink still sloshing around in her veins, was trembling with fury. She leant across the table and jabbed her finger at Cissie’s chest. ‘You ain’t got a clue. D’you really wanna know the truth about Davy?’
Cissie blinked warily. ‘Don’t say nothing yer gonna regret, Lil. Yer pissed. You dunno what yer talking about.’
‘Aw, don’t I?’ Lil taunted Cissie. ‘Well, let me tell you, if you hadn’t have been so bastard greedy, Davy would never have done what he did, and you wouldn’t be a widow with two little kids to bring up on yer own.’
Cissie shook her head. ‘No. I ain’t gonna listen. I’ve heard all sorts of shit about him before. All that stuff about him running a book and I don’t believe none of it. And nor should you.’
‘Running a book!’ Lil snorted. ‘That’s all you know. Betting ain’t the half of it.’
Cissie went to stand up, to get away, but Lil reached out and grabbed her arm, pulling her back down.
‘Not the half of it by a long chalk, yer silly cow.’
Cissie dragged her arm from Lil’s grasp and rose unsteadily to her feet. She shook her head and backed away towards the door. ‘You’re just saying all this to hurt me. You’re just a spiteful, wicked old woman who don’t know how else to get at me.’
‘Am I?’ Lil stood up too and began walking slowly towards her. ‘And what are you? A moaning, lazy—’
Cissie lunged at Lil. Lil stumbled sideways, and fell against the dresser, sending a shower of cups and plates crashing to the floor.
‘That’s it,’ she screamed, ‘attack a defenceless old woman.’
‘Attack yer?’ Cissie yelled back. ‘Yer lucky I ain’t throttled yer!’
The two women stared at one another across the room, neither of them moving, until Cissie suddenly turned her back on Lil, went over to the sink and turned on the tap.
She let the water run until it was icy-cold and then splashed it over her face.
She turned round and faced her mother-in-law. ‘You and me had better get a few things straight,’ Cissie breathed. ‘So I reckon you’d better sit down at that table and get ready to answer one or two questions. Like whether Davy really was involved in street betting, and whether there really is something else to tell me.’
Lil sat back down at the table and fiddled with her empty cup, turning it round and round in the saucer. Almost stone-cold sober now, she was regretting the price she was having to pay for her moment of drunken glory over her daughter-in-law.
Just watching her sit there made Cissie feel like running out of the house, but she had the terrible feeling that she was about to discover some very unpleasant truths, or rather, some very uncomfortable lies that she had been living.
‘So, come on then. What are yer gonna tell me?’
‘Not much,’ Lil said flatly, shifting her weight on her chair.
‘You’d better tell me what yer mean, Lil, when yer say “not much”.’ Cissie’s voice was not raised, but it was obvious that she would brook no more evasions.
‘I told him yer was gonna leave him,’ Lil said bluntly.
‘You did what?’
‘When he first started seeing yer, I told him that if he had any ideas about marrying a pretty girl like you, he’d better buck his ideas up and find a way of bringing in a bit more dough. I said that yer’d told me, in confidence like, that there was all these other blokes with loads o’ money sloshing about, and cos yer wouldn’t be able to manage to keep yerself looking nice on the sort of money he was fetching in from his dad’s old stall, you’d probably wind up going off with one of ’em. But it was all a terrible shame cos you was desperate to stay with him, cos he was the one yer really liked.’
Cissie rolled her eyes at the ceiling. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this.’
Lil shrugged. ‘It worked out all right, didn’t it? He was already taking the bets like for himself, just like his dad used to, but he earnt a whole lot more once he started up for Turner—’
‘You mean he really was running a book for him?’
‘Course he was.’
‘And you knew all along?’
‘Blimey, Cissie. Course I did. I was his bleed’n mother, wasn’t I?’
Cissie was too dumbfounded to answer.
‘Well, it was nice, wasn’t it, having the extra money?’ Lil smiled, a sly, slow smile. ‘’Specially when everyone else round here was doing so bad. It made me feel proud, being able to flash a few quid about.’
She drained the last of the tea into her cup and lit herself another cigarette without offering one to Cissie.
‘But you know what it’s like.’ She was speaking as though Cissie was someone she was chatting to in the bus queue, rather than her son’s widow. ‘I had this feeling, deep down like, that having a little bit more would be even nicer. That’s when I put the idea in his head.’
‘What idea?’ Cissie asked flatly.
Lil smiled again, obviously pleased with the memory. ‘I told him he better watch himself, cos it was obvious, wasn’t it? Even though yer was married, a nice-looking girl like you, a girl what’d had plenty o’ blokes hanging around her in the past. Well, the first rich feller what showed a bit of interest, you’d be off with him, wouldn’t yer?’
‘You told him what?’ gasped Cissie, sending her chair flying as she sprang to her feet. ‘I ain’t never been with no one except Davy. No one!’
‘I didn’t think you had,’ she shrugged casually. ‘But what did that matter? He started doing other little jobs for Turner, and then a bit more besides – for himself like, and it all worked out all right, didn’t it?’
Calmly, Lil took a drag on her cigarette. ‘Well, at first it did. But it sort of got a bit out of hand. I must’ve pushed it too far. Saying how you was gonna leave him and that.’ Cissie was gripping the edge of the table. ‘Go on.’
‘Well, he sort o’ got carried away with the idea, didn’t he? And one night, when he got in right late, he come into me room, before he went upstairs to you, and he was crying his bloody eyes out. Like a right big baby he was.’
‘When? When was this?’
Lil thought for a moment. ‘Dunno. Ages ago. Matty could only have been a couple o’ months old, cos I’d just moved into that bloody front parlour, hadn’t I? I hate it in—’
‘Don’t even think o’ starting on that, Lil.’
‘Anyway,’ Lil wisely decided to continue, ‘it must have been about then. Well, he was moaning and groaning and carrying on.’ She shook her head fondly. ‘Silly sod. Anyone would have thought he’d committed a bloody murder, the way he was leading off.’
‘So what had he done?’ Cissie asked quietly. She was shaking all over.
‘He’d knocked off some little tart he’d picked up in a boozer near the market,’ Lil answered lightly. ‘He’d been feeling a bit sorry for himself, see? Wanted to prove he still had it in him. Yer know what fellers are like? Anyway, after that, it didn’t seem to worry him so much. He just got on with it. But he always told his old mum about his latest girls, and there was enough of ’em.’
Before Lil realised what was happening, Cissie had smacked the cigarette from her grasp with one hand and had caught her a stinging wallop across the cheek with the other.
‘You vicious, spiteful…’ Cissie couldn’t go on, words failed her.
Lil rose to her feet. ‘Yer’ll be sorry you ever raised yer hand to me,’ she seethed.
‘Aw no, Lil, you’ve got that wrong,’ Cissie breathed. ‘I ain’t the one who’s gonna be sorry.’