THE FINE SPRING weather continued with hardly a break and, by the middle of May, there was the makings of what looked like being a hot, dry summer. But while the sky was clear blue, the weather pleasantly warm and full of promise of even better things to come, the atmosphere in number twelve Plumley Street was very far from unclouded.
It was Monday afternoon and Katie was in the kitchen doing the ironing; there was a mountain of it and no one to give her a hand. Before Stephen had shown up out of the blue in the pub at Christmas, almost six months ago now, Nora would have been there in the kitchen with her, helping her daughter with all the work that it took to keep the family clean, clothed and fed. But she was too busy for all that now, what with all the time Stephen expected her to spend with him.
Katie didn’t mean to be selfish, that wasn’t her way, she just wished that the rest of the family would do something to make her load a little easier. She didn’t even want them to do very much – just find a few minutes to sit down and talk to her, to reassure her that her fears about what was happening to them all were just silly, groundless worries, made worse by her being so tired lately; at least that would have made her feel she wasn’t losing touch with them.
But, of course, like Nora, they were all too busy with their own lives to bother about Katie; she had always coped and they all just seemed to expect that she would carry on doing so.
It had been so much easier when the kids were little. The worst thing that happened to any of them then was a scraped knee or a lost football. But even Timmy, at nine years old, was no longer her baby. And that was another worry to add to the pile: the boys hadn’t stopped growing just because there was less money in the house; new boots and trousers still had to be found from somewhere. The idea of getting a job seemed more and more sensible to Katie, but she knew that that was the last thing even to try to bring up with Pat. At least she was bumping along reasonably enough without too many rows with him, so why add extra needle to what was already a tough enough situation for a woman to handle?
While Katie fretted to herself in the kitchen of number twelve, as she ironed and pressed and thought about how she’d have to get a move on if she was ever going to get the tea ready, things next door were very different. In number ten, life seemed to be going along very nicely for all concerned, particularly Stephen. He had not only ingratiated himself with his wife but, with all his tales and jokes – not to mention his Blarney – his grandchildren had completely fallen for him. Every one of them loved having him there.
It was, as Katie had fruitlessly tried to point out to her mother on more than one occasion, as though Stephen Brady, the totally self-centred young villain who had abandoned his pregnant wife, had been totally forgotten, and had been replaced by Farvee, a lovable old scoundrel who could apparently do no wrong in anyone’s but Katie’s eyes. She had pleaded with her mother to take care and watch him like a hawk if she didn’t want to be taken for a ride again, but Nora had dismissed her daughter’s concerns and told her she should be more forgiving. And, every time, out came the same excuses: Stephen had been just a boy and had known no better, but he was a man now, and Nora was glad of it.
Nothing could convince Katie. She still thought he was a waste of space and wouldn’t, even for her mum’s sake, make the effort to call him Dad. But then Stephen did something that made even Katie grudgingly admit that she supposed there was a bit of good in everyone.
It started one evening in the Queen’s when Stephen was sitting up at the bar, listening to Pat and Harold discussing how the so-called Great War was still affecting people, and relatively young ones at that – men like Bert Johnson, for instance, who was only in his early forties.
‘When I went over to Edie’s for me fag papers the other morning,’ Pat said, setting down his half-empty glass on the counter, ‘looked right upset she did. Reckons Bert’s in such a bad way with that leg of his, he can’t even stand on it no more.’
Harold, who was propping up the other side of the counter, gave a distressed shake of his head. ‘She was telling my Mags how it’s all swollen and infected again. Terrible it sounds. Poor sod.’
‘It must get to him,’ Pat went on, ‘knowing his old woman’s gotta do everything in that shop. And all he can do is sit there.’
Harold leant forward on the bar and said quietly, ‘Edie told Mags she tried to get him to sit in the shop with her – at least he’d see a bit of life that way – but he wouldn’t have it. Said he’d only be in the way.’ Harold straightened up and moved along the counter to serve a stall holder who’d just come in for a quiet drink after packing up for the day. ‘Know what he’s doing?’ he asked Pat and Stephen as he pulled the man a pint.
‘What’s that?’ asked Stephen, speaking for the first time since the topic of Bert Johnson had come up.
‘He’s got himself stuck away in a corner of that little storeroom out the back of the shop, that’s what. Sitting there by himself all day, he is.’ Harold handed the stall holder his drink and took his money before rejoining Pat and Stephen.
‘Sure, that’d drive a feller mad.’
‘Yer right there, Stephen,’ Harold agreed. ‘It would. But he says at least he’s out of her way. And if he hadn’t had to drag himself out to the lavatory in the back yard, he reckons he would stay upstairs in the bedroom.’
The terrible thought of spending all that time alone, with no one to have a laugh and a joke with, made Stephen decide that he would do something to cheer up Bert Johnson.
So over the weeks, Bert and Stephen became like old pals. They’d sit in the shop’s back room, day in, day out, playing hand after hand of cards, drinking bottles of the warm pale ale supplied by Edie, and smoking smelly roll-ups that clouded the room with a sickly fog. But as far as Edie was concerned, and despite her being a stickler for cleanliness, the two of them could have been smoking old tarry barge ropes; no matter what sort of stink they caused, she would never have complained. She was just grateful that her Bert had a bit of company to help him through his pain.
The sounds coming from the storeroom, of roaring laughter or of the two men discussing what they’d read in their morning papers, were as much a tonic for Edie as they were for Bert, and she found that she could get on with her job, serving her customers, stocking the shelves, slicing and wrapping slabs of this and that, with almost the same enthusiasm and energy as she had before Bert had finally succumbed to his injury.
A lot of the other neighbours were only too willing to help out the Johnsons, of course. Aggie Palmer, for one, had proved to be a real friend to Edie. Not only was she doing more hours in the shop than usual, but she had also persuaded her husband, Joe, that he should let her and young Danny Mehan take his truck to Pledger’s the wholesaler to collect Edie’s stock of a morning, before Joe and Danny started their regular day’s haulage work.
Danny was a bit put out when Joe had told him about going with Aggie, and had made sure he let her and Joe know that he was only doing it for Edie and Bert. But even Danny had not been able to resist cracking a smile when, as he was carrying a carton of tinned peas into the shop one morning, he watched Edie Johnson telling his stern-faced mum that she must be really proud that her son had turned out so much like Stephen, his saint of a grandfather.
But as much as Bert appreciated Stephen’s company, really enjoyed it even, after nearly a month of being stuck out the back and feeling more like a spare part than ever, it was with real excitement that he announced he wouldn’t be needing Stephen to call on him for a couple of weeks, as he was hoping to go into hospital for treatment at last. Edie had heard from a customer about a doctor who had treated the woman’s brother with some new surgical technique that might be of help to Bert. As soon as the woman had left, Edie had shut the shop, gone to the hospital, and had fought like a lioness protecting her cubs to get her husband an appointment to see the consultant.
When she had come home and told Bert what she had done, all he could say was, could they afford it? Even with the money he had got for his gold hunter watch from Arthur Lane, he was still worried about the cost of it all. But Edie wouldn’t even let him talk about money. Whatever they had was his, whether it meant selling the shop and every stitch that Edie stood up in. All she wanted and prayed for was for him to be well again and free from his terrible pain.
It was nearly half past eight, on the first Friday morning in June, the morning that Edie was going with Bert to the hospital, and Aggie Palmer was banging on the door of the corner shop. She couldn’t understand why it was still locked. She looked over her shoulder, across the street to where Danny was sitting in the truck that he had just backed out of the yard ready to go and fetch Edie’s order from the wholesaler’s.
‘Dan, come over here a minute will yer, love?’ Aggie called to him.
Danny reluctantly turned off the motor. He had been out a bit late the night before, seeing Bob Jarvis, and had a head on him that felt like he’d been bashing it against the yard wall. Having to turn off the engine and crank it back into life again in five minutes’ time was just about the last thing he felt like doing.
He sighed loudly and dropped down on to the pavement from the cab. For about the fiftieth time that morning, Danny wished with all his heart that he could get another job and leave Joe Palmer and his bloody haulage business to rot. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the work, it was the thought of working for someone who was half gypsy, a stinking pikey as he thought of him, that Danny had learnt to detest.
As he sauntered over to Aggie, hands stuck deep in his pockets, Danny had a look of total disdain on his face. He didn’t mind helping out Edie and Bert, he liked them, they were decent people, but this was what he resented – being called over by Joe’s wife to do her errands for her. Why should he do what the likes of her told him? What did she think he was, some sort of lackey?
‘What’s up?’ he asked, insolently.
‘See if yer can get over the side gate and have a look round the back for us, would yer please, love?’ Aggie held her hand up to the glass window and peered through it, trying to make out if there was anyone in the dark interior of the shop. ‘I can’t be sure, but I reckon there’s something wrong in there. I thought Edie would’ve been up for hours, knowing they was going to the hospital this morning.’
His resentment of Aggie Palmer temporarily forgotten, Danny grasped hold of the top of the gate and heaved himself up and over the fence. He landed lightly in the paved alley that ran between the shop and the Miltons’ next door, straightened up and made his way round the back.
The back door, which led to the storeroom where Stephen and Bert had set up their impromptu card school, stood wide open but he knocked on the glass out of politeness.
‘Edie?’ he called. ‘You there? It’s me, Danny. Me and Aggie have come over to fetch yer order.’
No reply.
Danny stepped gingerly inside.
After the bright morning sunshine it was difficult to make out where he was treading, so he waited a moment for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. There was nobody in the room except the fat old tabby who feasted on any mice who were stupid enough to think they could come into the Johnsons’ yard. When he heard Danny come in, the cat awoke, stretched out in luxurious ease on its bed of sacks and licked contentedly at its fur.
Danny frowned. Everyone in the street knew that Edie, with her obsession with ‘hygienics’, never let that cat put a paw inside the storeroom. If he wanted to go indoors he had to clamber up over the lavvy roof and miaow outside the upstairs window until either Bert or Edie heard him and let him in that way.
Without another thought, Danny rushed along the passage and took the stairs two at a time up to where the Johnsons lived above the shop.
As he reached the top, he skidded on the slip mat, and slid right across the polished landing. He came to a stumbling halt outside the front bedroom door.
Like the back door, it too stood wide open.
Inside, Edie was sitting on the floor with Bert’s head cradled in her lap; tears ran down her cheeks as she rocked back and forth.
Danny was back down the stairs in a flash, shouting for Aggie to come and help. His hands trembled so badly it took him what felt like hours to undo the bolts and the lock on the shop door to let her in.
‘It’s Bert,’ he said, standing back to let Aggie dash past him. ‘They’re up in the front.’
‘You’d better come with me, Dan,’ Aggie called over her shoulder. ‘I might need some help.’
Danny followed her back up the stairs, but he didn’t go into the bedroom; he stood there, in the doorway, his heart racing and his mouth dry, watching Aggie kneeling on the floor by Edie, gently wiping the tears from her face.
‘He was so sure this doctor was gonna do something for him, Agg,’ Edie whimpered. ‘Now there’s nothing no one can do. No one.’
Aggie put her arm round her shoulders, trying to comfort her, but Edie’s suffering couldn’t be stilled so easily.
‘He fought in the war, in them sodding trenches. He was a hero. He never talked about it to no one, but he was. And is this all there is for him? Him dying like this? A cripple?’ A sob shuddered through Edie’s body. ‘What was it all for, eh? He’d get himself that worked up of an evening when we listened to the news on the wireless. “What did I fight for?” he’d say. “All this business in Germany – did all them poor sods die in the filth and mud for nothing? ’Cos it’s happening all over again.”’
‘Don’t take on, Ede,’ Aggie said softly. ‘Look, why don’t we—’
‘It ain’t right.’ It was as though Edie hadn’t heard her. ‘Men like my Bert – no, not men, they was boys when they was fighting – they got hurt, they lost their lives, just for it all to happen again. You wait and see. I used to kid him that I thought he was wrong. I tried to keep him from getting so worked up, but he was right.’ Edie bent forward and kissed Bert’s uncombed hair. ‘Weren’t yer, love? My Bert couldn’t stand the thought of it, could yer, darling? People listening to that Mosley and them Blackshirt bastards.’ Aggie stroked the cold, slightly damp flesh of her husband’s cheek. ‘When he got better he was gonna go and sort out the no-good cowsons before any of the kids round here got hiked up with ’em. He was talking about it only yesterday, God love him.’ Another sob shook through her body. ‘Soon as he was better he was gonna do something. Now he can’t do nothing. And if no one else takes his place, they’ll just be left to get on with it. That’s what Bert was scared of. If no one stops ’em, there’ll be another war. It’ll all happen all over again.’
‘You know the people round here, Ede,’ Aggie soothed her. ‘None of ’em’s stupid enough to get took in by the likes of that lot. It’ll all come to nothing, you’ll see. It’ll be a five-minute wonder, then they’ll get some other daft idea in their heads.’
‘No, Agg,’ Edie insisted. ‘This is different. Bert knew. He knew that these are wicked, terrible ideas, and they’re gonna cause real trouble.’ She began rocking backwards and forwards again, touching her lips to her husband’s lifeless forehead. ‘Aw, Agg, my poor Bert. My poor, poor Bert.’
Aggie looked up at Danny. Now she was crying as well. ‘Go and fetch yer mum for us, eh Dan? There’s a good lad.’
Danny was only too pleased to do as she asked. He hated to hear women crying, and as for having to look at a dead body, the thought sickened him. He had never seen anyone dead before, well, apart from the time when he was only a little kid, and the old parish priest had been laid out in the church in his open coffin. But, as they had all filed past, paying their last respects, Danny had had his eyes half closed and hadn’t really looked at him. It had still given him the willies though. Yes, he was more than glad to be out of it, there was nothing he wanted to see in there. And as for what Edie was saying, there was nothing he wanted to hear either.
It was Friday, 8 June 1934, just a day after Bert Johnson had been laid to rest, and Plumley Street was still in a state of shocked mourning for their neighbour.
Danny was standing alone in the kitchen of number twelve, shaving over the sink before he went out. Katie, Nora and Molly had gone over with Peggy and Liz to sit with Edie; Stephen and Pat were sitting out in the back yard of number ten keeping an eye on the youngsters, making sure that they didn’t go making too much noise and show disrespect for the dead; and Sean had taken himself off out somewhere straight after he had swallowed down his tea.
Satisfied that he looked smart and respectable – just the way Bob Jarvis had told him to – Danny wiped his chin dry with the towel and then carefully oiled and combed his thick black hair away from his forehead. He peered out of the kitchen window to see if he needed to take a coat. The mourners at the funeral yesterday had witnessed the first sprinkling of rain since the drought had started all those weeks ago, but it looked like it had cleared up again.
Danny looked at the clock on the overmantel for what must have been the twentieth time since he had come in from work. He felt nervous, excited, wound up like the spring of a clockwork toy; he was going to a British Union of Fascists rally with Bob Jarvis. Bob had promised him that he would never have seen anything like it in the whole of his life, and that it would change the way he thought for ever.
Well before Danny Mehan was even within sight of the Olympia stadium, where the Blackshirts were holding their meeting, he was astonished to see just how many people were surging along the pavement heading towards the rally. The showery rain had started again, but it did nothing to discourage the people who were converging on the arena. There were thousands upon thousands of them. And, what was beginning to make Danny feel even more nervous was not only did a lot of the people not seem to be members or even supporters of the British Union of Fascists, but a lot of them, far too many for Danny’s liking, seemed to be involved in organising some kind of demonstration against the BUF. There were all sorts of people, mostly men, carrying banners and handing out leaflets denouncing Mosley and his supporters and jostling and heckling anyone they identified as a supporter of the fascist cause.
Danny was wondering whether it was such a good idea to have come along after all, and whether it might be better to turn round and go home, when someone tapped him on the back. He swung around, fists up, ready to defend himself, but instead of punching out, Danny smiled with relief and slapped the man matily on the shoulder. ‘Bob!’
‘Wotcher, mate!’ Bob Jarvis greeted him in return. ‘What d’yer think of all this scum?’ he sneered as he brushed away a hand holding out a leaflet to him. ‘Pathetic, ain’t they?’
With his confidence increased now he was no longer alone, Danny agreed easily with Bob. ‘Yeah, right, pathetic.’
‘See,’ said Bob, steering Danny towards the queues of smartly dressed young men pushing their way to the entrance, ‘if only them mugs’d listen they’d realise what the Union could do for ’em. It’d sort out this country’s work and money problems in no time. But this mob,’ Bob sneered again, this time at a banner-waving girl who looked barely old enough to have left school, ‘they couldn’t stand the discipline what’s needed.’ Bob continued to push him forward. ‘If this country’s ever gonna be anything again we’ve gotta fight these communist idiots. What do they know, eh? Nothing, that’s what.’
It was barely seven o’clock, still almost an hour before the meeting was due to start, but when Bob and Danny turned into Addison Road, they saw that there were already thousands of BUF supporters congregated there, waiting for the main gate into Olympia to open. As they moved slowly forward through the crush, Danny felt Bob grab his sleeve. They had stopped by a group of a dozen young men of about their own age, all wearing black shirts, armbands with the BUF insignia, and knee-high black boots.
We’ll wait here until the doors open,’ Bob told him, slipping off his long raincoat to reveal that he was dressed the same as they were. Seeing Danny’s look of surprise, Bob tapped his chest proudly and said, ‘I’m a steward, me.’
Danny nodded, trying to look impressed, but he couldn’t stop himself glancing warily over Bob’s shoulders at the increasing numbers of banner-waving, anti-fascist demonstrators.
‘See, Dan,’ Bob went on, acknowledging his colleagues with a stiff little dip of his head, ‘it’s a classless brotherhood we want. And we’re gonna explain all about it to everyone. Well, to anyone what’s got the brains to listen.’ He jerked his thumb behind him. ‘Not like these red scum. All they understand is violence. We persuade people with our views. Then, once they’ve heard what we have to say, they realise we’re right. That’s why I’m so proud to be one of the stewards.’ He puffed out his chest. ‘You can set an example, see. Let ’em have a look at how decent people conduct ’emselves.’ He flicked at a speck on his sleeve. ‘It’s just a shame your Molly never saw it that way.’
Danny, embarrassed, looked away. ‘Yer know what girls are like, Bob,’ he said quietly. ‘There’s no telling ’em. I did try and explain like yer told me.’
Bob punched Danny playfully on the arm and winked. ‘Don’t worry yerself, Dan. I’ve decided to give her another chance, ain’t I? I’m gonna wear her down and she’ll be going out with me again before she knows what day it is.’
It was almost eight o’clock and the meeting was due to begin. Bob and Danny, like all the young men surrounding them, were now more than ready to file into the hall, but the door still hadn’t been opened. People were growing restless.
Suddenly, without any warning, a group of demonstrators surged forward waving their banners and jeering at the Blackshirts, singing ‘The Red Flag’ and the ‘Internationale’ at the tops of their voices. At that moment the doors were flung open from the inside and Bob shoved Danny forward into the mass of dark-uniformed men who, ignoring the taunts, began marching smartly inside.
Danny strained to turn round to see what was going on behind him, but he was being sucked along, dragged forward by the strutting crowd. From all the shouting and screaming he could hear, it sounded as though a real battle had broken out.
Inside the arena, Bob guided Danny towards a seat in the middle of one of the rows, where they sat down and waited.
It was a quarter to nine when the Blackshirt parade finally entered the hall.
They marched in with a strange, stiff-legged gait, waving replicas of the huge black and yellow flags of the British Union of Fascists with which the whole place seemed to be draped. The mood was already electric, but by the time the massed bands, all dressed in the same sombre uniform as the stewards, led in Oswald Mosley himself, in a blaze of sweeping lights, the whole hall was primed and set to give their leader a wild, adulatory welcome. As one, the audience rose to their feet and roared their salutations.
Mosley mounted the stage and all the arc lights were focused on him alone. He opened his mouth to speak but his words were immediately drowned out by barracking and yelling from one of the galleries. ‘Fascism means war!’ bellowed the groups of demonstrators who had infiltrated the meeting. ‘The Blackshirts want another world war! Stop the fascists!’
Bob tapped Danny on the arm and signalled with a nod for him to watch as members of the Blackshirt Defence Corps, who had only moments before heralded in their leader, ran to the sides of the hall and began to scramble up the sloping, tiered walls to reach the demonstrators who were perched halfway up, waving their own banners across the BUF’s flags and showering the people below with leaflets. The huge room erupted into a wild cacophony of shouts and yells with each side voicing their support for either the fascists or their opponents.
Danny watched, wincing at the force the Blackshirts used as they grabbed at the hecklers and dragged them to the ground before frogmarching them outside.
‘I told yer,’ said Bob triumphantly, ‘we respect discipline. Efficiency, see? Not like them idiots. Just look at ’em. How could they even think they’d be any match for us?’
Mosley began speaking again; this time his clipped, upper-class tones rang clearly around the arena.
Danny was dumbfounded by what he was hearing – not that an obvious ‘toff’ should speak about the same things that Bob and his friends had been drumming into him during the last few months, he had expected that; what he hadn’t expected was that Mosley was using almost exactly the self-same words.
It made Danny uncomfortable as he realised what it reminded him of: it was just like last Christmas when young Timmy and Michael had rehearsed their lines for the nativity pageant together. In the end, they had done it so often that each of them could recite the other’s part perfectly without having any sense of what they were actually saying. Much as everyone had admired the kids’ efforts, they really were more like little parrots than actors.
Danny glanced sideways at Bob – he looked transfixed as he sat there staring straight ahead at his leader. But suddenly Bob, Danny and everyone else in the hall swung their gaze towards the ceiling as a loud voice came from high above them in the rafters: ‘Down with fascism!’
The arc lights swung around until they picked out, at what must have been a hundred feet above the agitated crowds, a man shuffling his way precariously across the narrow girders in the roof. Almost immediately, Blackshirt stewards had appeared on either side of him, making their own uncertain way across the rafters towards him.
All but one of the beams of lights were returned to the stage and most eyes in the hall refocused on Mosley, who had begun speaking again. ‘It is customary at fascist meetings,’ he explained, looking directly at the assembled members of the press without a trace of irony, ‘for a very few people to prevent the audience from hearing the fascist case.’
Then there was a terrible crash, the sound of smashing glass and something fell from the rafters to the ground at the side of the hall. There was an instant huddle of Blackshirts around whatever it was that had landed. Nobody could actually see what it was, but the whisper quickly went round that it was the heckler who had unfortunately ‘slipped’.
From the back of the arena, somebody threw something which landed close by Danny’s feet; it was quickly followed by a hail of similar missiles. Danny soon realised what they were, as the air rapidly became tainted with the sickening stench of stink bombs cracking open around him.
It was enough to make the already tense atmosphere explode. Fights broke out all around the place, both in the packed galleries and on the main floor of the hall. Danny ducked out of the way as a young woman plunged past him yelling anti-fascist slogans. She was grabbed by two equally young women, both dressed entirely in black, who chopped her to the ground with the sides of their hands.
Bob threw back his head and gave a savage laugh. ‘Let me introduce you to our jujitsu girls,’ he crowed. ‘But, good as they are, we can’t leave it all to them.’
Danny looked on in horror as Bob Jarvis took a weighted sock from his trouser pocket and swung it hard against the side of a man’s head as he cowered on the ground in front of him. Danny was rapidly coming to the conclusion that he had heard enough of the non-violent fascist case. It was time to go; he had seen enough, more than enough. And he had been made a fool of. All he wanted was to get out.
While Bob was busily ‘explaining’ his views to his unfortunate victim, Danny clambered over the back of his chair and, keeping his head well down, began to weave his way towards the back of the hall.
He took one last disbelieving look back towards the stage as he heard Mosley claiming that the brutal tactics of his henchmen and women only showed how ‘very necessary the Blackshirt Defence Corps is to defend free speech in Great Britain.’
Before he turned his head away in disgust, Danny saw Bob swing the weighted sock down on to the now unconscious man who lay at his feet.
Danny felt the taste of bile rise into his mouth; he had to get out in the fresh air. Using his elbows and his shoulders, he eventually reached the double doors where, less than an hour ago, he had entered the hall so cocky and full of it all. But his way out was barred by a bizarre-looking group of men and women in evening dress. The women’s clothes alone looked as though they would have cost Danny a year’s wages. They were all braying and laughing as the men in their group shoved their way past the anti-fascist demonstrators, heedless as to whom they knocked down in their eagerness to get inside and to listen to their hero. It took all Danny’s remaining strength to struggle past them, but he had to get out.
When he at last managed to fight his way on to the street, he found that fresher air apart, things were just as bad out there. There were lines of banner-waving demonstrators, locked in brutal clashes with club-wielding stewards dressed in the full Blackshirt regalia. Behind them were what Danny guessed must have been a couple of thousand police, mounted as well as on foot. They had their batons drawn, and made charge after charge at the fighting hordes.
Danny pressed himself against the wall and edged his way along, moving as fast as he could away from the scene of escalating madness, trying to lose himself amongst the bloodthirsty crowds, gathering to watch the spectacle.
When he finally reached Plumley Street, it was so late that even though it was a Friday night, both number ten and number twelve were in darkness. But before he went into his nanna’s house to go to bed, Danny stuck his hand through the letter box of number twelve and pulled out the key. He crept inside and, as quietly as he could, he made his way upstairs.
He paused on the landing, listening for any sounds from his parents’ room. All he heard was his father softly snoring. He just hoped that his mum was asleep as well, as he tapped on his sister’s bedroom door.
‘Moll?’ he hissed under his breath as he turned the handle. ‘You asleep?’
‘What? Who is it?’ Molly’s voice was thick with sleep.
‘It’s me. Danny.’ He sat down on the bed beside her. ‘Keep it quiet, Moll, they’re all asleep.’
‘So was I,’ she whispered tetchily, pushing herself up on her elbows. ‘This had better be good, Dan.’
Danny hesitated for a brief moment then said, ‘It’s Bob Jarvis.’
‘Not him again. I told yer, I—’
‘Listen. I don’t want yer seeing him.’
‘I don’t believe this.’ Molly was now wide awake and very angry. ‘You have the cheek to come in here and wake me up to tell me not to see someone who I ain’t even seeing?’ She poked her brother hard in the chest. ‘What’s up with you, Danny Mehan? You pissed or something? Or have yer just taken leave o’ yer senses?’
‘I mean it,’ Danny said. ‘I don’t want yer seeing him.’
‘You flaming hypocrite. Yer went barmy when I told yer I wasn’t seeing him no more. Yer kept going on about what a good bloke he was. And now yer saying I shouldn’t see him, even if I wanted to.’
‘Look, Moll, keep yer voice down and listen. He’s no good. All right? But I know he still fancies yer, and he’s talking about getting yer to go back with him. I just don’t want yer to let him kid yer, that’s all.’
‘You must think I’m a right flaming idiot. But, tell me, why should I have you telling me what I can and can’t do?’
‘I don’t care what yer think about me, but please, Moll, yer’ve gotta listen.’ Danny grabbed her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m serious. If he even comes anywhere near yer, yer to tell me. Right?’
Molly pulled her hand away from him. She had never heard her brother talk like this before. Perhaps he too had seen the other side of Bob Jarvis. ‘All right,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll tell yer.’
‘And while we’re at it,’ he said, standing up and moving backwards towards the door, ‘any other blokes who wanna see yer. I wanna know who they are and what they’re up to. All right?’
‘No it ain’t bleed’n all right. You reckon I’ve gotta report to you about who I wanna see? Yer kidding, ain’t yer?’
‘No,’ said Danny simply. ‘I ain’t. I wanna know everything about any feller who so much as talks to yer.’ With that, he was gone.
The next morning all of the family except Danny were sitting around the breakfast table in the kitchen of number twelve. Even Nora had come in from next door when Stephen had produced a couple of pounds of bacon from one of his mysterious sources. But the reappearance of the much-missed fried breakfast on the Mehans’ table still hadn’t improved the atmosphere.
‘Michael,’ snapped Molly, slamming her fork on to her plate, ‘will you please shut yer noise for five minutes? Or d’yer want me to shut yer gob for yer?’
Michael grinned at his granddad. ‘Oooo, hark at her! Wonder what’s up with old Misery Guts, eh, Farvee?’ He jerked his head at his pale, exhausted-looking sister. ‘She’s been out on too many late nights by the look of it.’
‘That’s enough, Michael,’ Katie warned him, waving the breadknife she was using to slice up the loaf to emphasise that she meant it.
‘It’s a good story though, innit, Farvee?’ Michael went on, completely ignoring all the threats.
‘It is, it is,’ Stephen agreed, putting his glasses back on to read the item from the morning paper once again.
‘So did the lion eat the man all up then?’ Timmy asked, his eyes wide and his mouth stuffed full of toast. ‘Or did it leave bits of him?’
‘I reckon there was probably bits of his uniform that the big old pussy cat would have spat out,’ said Stephen after a moment’s consideration. ‘I mean, even a big old lion wouldn’t want to eat a zoo keeper’s brass buttons and his peaked cap, now would he?’
‘Do we need to go into details while we’re eating?’ Katie asked, looking to Nora for support.
‘Sure, leave them alone,’ said Nora, smiling indulgently at her husband and young grandsons. ‘It’s not every day of the week that you hear about a keeper being attacked by lions while he’s trying to get a visitor’s hat back for him, now is it?’
‘I dunno why they need to read about the flaming zoo,’ said Katie, slapping down another heap of toast on the table and setting about slicing some more bread. ‘It gets more like the flipping monkey house in here every day, with all the chattering and squawking what’s going on.’
‘It’s parrots what squawk, not monkeys,’ said Michael, ducking to avoid the inevitable clip round the ear for his cheek.
‘Pat,’ said Katie, tossing down the breadknife, ‘will you tell him?’
‘Do as yer mother says,’ said Pat without looking up from his plate.
Just then, Danny came into the kitchen, looking even rougher than Molly.
‘And what sort of time d’yer call this?’ Katie enquired of her eldest son. ‘Yer lucky that this lot ain’t finished everything off.’
‘I ain’t hungry,’ said Danny, dropping down on to the chair next to Sean. ‘I’ll just have a cuppa tea.’
‘What sort of a breakfast’s that when yer’ve gotta work this morning?’ Katie wanted to know. ‘And anyway,’ she added grudgingly, ‘there’s bacon.’
‘I still don’t want none, and I ain’t going in to work this morning.’
‘What?’ Now it was Pat who was questioning him. ‘But you always do a half-day on a Saturday.’
Danny held up his hand. ‘It’s all right, I just nipped along and told Joe there’s something I’ve gotta do.’
‘Aw yeah?’ Pat said suspiciously. ‘And what’s so important that yer gonna miss work? You sure you ain’t chucked that job in, Danny?’
‘No. I promised I wouldn’t unless I found something else, and I ain’t. Satisfied?’
‘Don’t you dare speak to yer father like that.’ Katie smacked the flat of her hand round the back of Danny’s head. ‘You ain’t too big for a good hiding yer know, boy.’
‘No, but I’m big enough to ask Lizzie to marry me,’ Danny blurted out.
‘Eh?’ Katie looked at Pat, then at Nora, then at Pat again.
‘I’ve decided it’s time I settled down. I know it won’t be able to happen for a year or two yet. I’ve gotta lot of saving to do. But it’s what I want and no one’s gonna stop me. I’m going over there this morning to ask her.’
‘Yer right about needing a few quid if yer gonna get hitched.’ Pat was unable to resist the chance of rubbing it in that he’d been right all along. ‘It’s lucky yer never chucked yer job in after all then, ain’t it?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Danny grimly. ‘And I realise Joe Palmer’s been good to me. Put up with a load of old lip from me and all. I should be more grateful.’ He paused, staring down at the table. ‘I mean to. make it up to him.’
Pat rubbed his hands together in satisfaction. ‘He’s come to his senses at last. Thank Gawd for that.’
‘Not now, Pat,’ breathed Katie, her eyes shining with tears. ‘This is too happy a time to row.’
‘So yer don’t mind then?’ Danny asked quietly.
‘Mind?’ Katie rushed to her son’s side and wrapped her arms tightly around him. ‘How could I mind? I’m bloody ecstatic!’
Timmy and Michael burst into giggles at their mum using ‘language’.
‘A wedding,’ Katie went on, apparently not caring that her two youngest were now repeating ‘bloody ecstatic, bloody ecstatic’ over and over again. ‘And not only to a nice Catholic girl from a lovely family, but from the same turning and all. What more could a mother ask for?’
‘And what a great time we’re going to have,’ beamed Nora, ‘with all the planning for the wedding with Lizzie and Peg. Sure, won’t it be just great?’
Katie nodded in enthusiastic agreement. ‘Just think of Lizzie’s lovely fair hair under a veil, Mum. She’ll look a right picture walking up that aisle.’
Nora sighed rapturously at the thought of it. ‘And won’t the procession next month be good practice for the boys being pageboys at the wedding? Now we’ll have two opportunities to get them all done up in little white satin suits.’
Michael and Timmy’s giggles turned to wide-eyed expressions of alarm as the double horror presented itself. Not only were they going to be humiliated at the annual Catholic Parade, but now they were expected to make idiots of themselves at their big brother’s wedding.
‘Pageboys?’ Michael breathed, as though he were repeating the name of the very devil himself. ‘Little white satin suits?’
Nora grabbed Timmy’s chubby face between her hands. ‘Aw glory, won’t I be proud of yers!’
Stephen grimaced and rolled his eyes supportively at the boys.
‘And I know it’s not for a while yet,’ said Danny, beginning to enjoy himself, ‘but I was hoping you’d think about being me best man, Sean.’
Sean, for all his sulky, adolescent bravado, couldn’t hide his delight at being treated in such an adult way. He stood up and grabbed his brother by the hand. ‘Good luck to yer, Dan,’ he said, pumping his arm up and down, and slapping him across the shoulder. ‘I’d be proud to stand next to yer.’ Then he began laughing. ‘But don’t yer reckon yer’d better go over and ask Lizzie before them pair of little ’uns wind up telling her before yer’ve had the chance?’
Danny nodded, hesitated for a moment, then said quietly, ‘I’m glad yer all happy for me. Ta.’ He scratched his head shyly and added with a soppy grin, ‘I’d better go and do as you say, Sean. I mean, it wouldn’t do to keep no secrets from Liz, now would it?’
Molly waited until Danny had disappeared into the passage, then she stood up from the table and said stiffly, ‘You lot finished with all this? I’ll start clearing up, shall I?’
After the shock and sadness of Bert’s sudden death, the engagement of Danny Mehan and Liz Watts was such a welcome event that it was all anyone could talk about all the rest of that day, all the next day, and even in whispers during Mass. It even eclipsed the appearance of Irene Lane paying her last respects at the funeral as the most popular topic for the gossips to chew over. Everyone seemed delighted – or at least nosy regarding the arrangements – at the prospect of the wedding. Everyone, that is, except Molly. She had been unusually quiet since Danny had made his announcement.
‘I’m going up,’ she suddenly announced when she had helped her mum and nanna clear away after the Sunday tea, which Liz and her mum and dad had shared with them in celebration of the engagement.
‘Not going out on a fine evening like this, Moll?’ Katie asked her, as she folded the table cloth that had been brought out especially. She looked over her shoulder and smiled. ‘I thought you had a regular appointment of a Sunday. Didn’t you, Mum?’
Nora chuckled. ‘I did.’ She paused and looked slyly at her granddaughter. ‘D’yer know what’d be a wonderful thing?’ she began slowly. ‘A real dream come true for yer old nanna? I’ll tell yers. If the family was blessed with a double wedding.’
Wide-eyed, Molly stared in alarm at her nanna: she couldn’t give her away, she couldn’t.
‘But yer’ll have to get yerself a nice young man first if I’m to have me wish, won’t you, darling?’ added Nora with a wink.
‘Just leave me alone, can’t yer?’ Molly shouted, and ran from the room.
The next morning, as the girls made their way to work, Liz was so excited that she didn’t seem to notice that while she chattered away nineteen to the dozen about herself and Danny, Molly was walking along beside her in stony-faced silence. It was only when they came to the doors of the factory that Molly actually spoke.
‘I ain’t going in,’ Molly said abruptly.
‘I know it’s Monday and the sun’s shining, Moll, but we ain’t ladies of leisure.’
Molly began walking away. ‘There’s something I’ve gotta do,’ she said, her steps becoming faster. ‘Be a mate and tell ’em I’m ill.’
Liz stood there, stunned, watching her friend sprint off along the road.
By the time Molly reached Simon’s uncle’s printing works, in a narrow side turning off Cable Street, she could barely breathe. She had always been a good runner but it wasn’t so much the exertion as the panic she was feeling that was making her gasp for breath.
With one hand pressed to her chest to steady herself, she patted her hair tidy with the other, and then climbed the steep flight of stone steps to the front door.
She paused, closed her eyes, crossed herself and then pulled the door firmly open. With a smile set on her lips she went up to the little glass window behind which sat a stern-faced, grey-haired elderly man, writing in a big leather-covered ledger.
‘Good morning,’ she said, hoping that her quaking voice wouldn’t give her away. ‘I’ve come over from Terson’s Teas. It’s about the order. I’m to speak to Simon Blomstein.’
Without looking up from his ledger, the elderly man shouted, ‘Simon. Out here.’
As she waited for Simon to appear, Molly felt so nervous that she was convinced she was going to faint. Then, quite suddenly, there he was, peering over the elderly man’s shoulder, a look of bewilderment shadowing his dark, handsome face as he realised who it was he had been called out to see.
‘I know what this is about, Uncle David,’ Simon said, frantically signalling with his eyes for Molly to go outside – to go anywhere that was out of sight of his uncle.
‘It had better not be any trouble, Simon,’ David grunted in reply, still concentrating on his ledger.
‘No, it’s nothing,’ said Simon, slipping past his uncle’s chair and reaching for the door handle. ‘I won’t disturb you; I’ll go out there and see her.’
As Simon closed the door silently behind him, David carried on with his writing.
On the other side of the door, Simon hurriedly ushered Molly outside, back down the steep stone steps, and round the corner into a narrow alleyway that ran alongside the printing works.
‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, his eyes frantically searching her face for clues. ‘Why didn’t you meet me yesterday?’
Now she was actually facing him, Molly wasn’t sure how she was going to explain. She dropped her chin and stood there, staring down at her feet, feeling chilled to the bone even though it was a bright sunny morning.
‘You’re shivering. Are you ill? Is that what you’re going to tell me?’
She looked up at him and shook her head. Tears fell on to her cheeks. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t turn up yesterday, but it’s Danny and Liz. Danny’s going on about wanting to know who I’m seeing and now he’s gone and got engaged to Liz and she knows all about yer. They ain’t gonna have any secrets, and I’m scared she’s gonna give us away. And me nanna’s going on about me having to get a young man, so’s I can get married. Yer uncle’d go barmy . . .’ She sniffed loudly. ‘I’m sorry, Simon. I can’t see yer no more.’
‘No, don’t say that. It doesn’t matter if Liz tells your brother, does it?’
‘You don’t know what he’s been like lately. He’s been mixed up with these blokes.’ She wiped her tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I don’t think he is now, but I still don’t think he’d want me seeing yer, not if he knew you was . . .’ She ran her hand distractedly through her hair. ‘Look, I just know he wouldn’t, all right.’
Simon took out his handkerchief and handed it to Molly. She took it without a word. ‘Molly, I want to see you, and I know you feel the same. It’ll be all right, I know it will. We’ll find a way.’
Molly gave a shuddering, self-pitying sob and Simon reached out to touch her but, at the sound of voices coming from a window high above their heads, he pulled away again.
‘See,’ she sniffed. ‘This is what it’d always be like. We’d be hiding all the time like criminals.’
‘Molly, I’ve got to go oh seeing you.’
‘But yer not Catholic, Simon.’
‘And you’re not Jewish.’ He tried to smile. ‘Anyway what’s happened to the girl who said that the worst thing she could think of was being bored?’
‘I’ve grown up since then,’ she said, her voice barely audible. ‘I ain’t a little kid playing games no more.’
‘Nor am I. This is the most grown-up thing I’ve ever said to anyone.’ He reached out and took her in his arms. ‘Molly Katherine Mehan,’ he breathed into her ear, ‘I love you. And no one, not your brother, not your grandmother, not my uncle, not anyone, is going to take you away from me.’