By the time Cissie eventually turned into Linman Street, footsore and tired out after her long walk in the exceptionally hot June weather, it was almost six o’clock. Even though it was much later than she’d told Lil to expect her back, she still didn’t go straight home, instead she stopped first at the corner shop.
Sammy was just turning over the ‘open’ sign on the door to read ‘closed’.
‘Hello, Sam,’ she said looking over her shoulder for signs of nosy neighbours. ‘You’re locking up early.’
‘Yeah,’ he replied, stepping to one side to let Cissie inside the shop. ‘Nice day like this, everyone goes down Chris Street to the market. I’ve hardly seen a soul all day.’
‘It looks different in here with the blinds down. And with all the gear from outside piled up everywhere.’
Sammy folded his arms and smiled. ‘You ain’t come over to see what I do with me potatoes and greens when I lock up of a night, now have you, Cis? Cos I know it don’t even interest me very much, so I’m sure you couldn’t give a bugger about it.’
‘No, yer right.’ Cissie tugged nervously at her fringe. ‘See, Sam, it’s, well, look…’ She flapped her hands in exasperation, trying to find the right words and failing.
She began again. ‘Look, yer know how you said yer’d help me? Putting stuff on the slate for me and everything. Until I, you know, get meself sorted out.’
Sammy’s smile disappeared. ‘Didn’t Lil give you that box of groceries I fetched over this morning?’
‘Yeah, course she did.’ Cissie dropped her chin. ‘Sorry, Sam, I should’ve remembered to thank yer. It’s just that I’ve had so much on me mind.’
She patted her dress pocket, all too aware that the Craven A packet inside it contained her one and only remaining cigarette, the one she was saving to have with a cup of tea before she went to bed. ‘And it was right good of you to think of putting in the fags and all. Ta, Sam. Really.’
‘I don’t need no thanks, Cis. I just wanna see you and the kids doing all right. I know I can’t really understand what yer going through, but I know it can’t be easy with them little ’uns to worry about.’
Cissie touched him gently on the arm. ‘You’re a really good bloke, Sam, d’you know that?’
Sammy shrugged, embarrassed but pleased.
‘And that’s why,’ Cissie went on, ‘I thought yer might not mind if I asked you something else.’ She screwed up her nose. ‘Sorry, but it’s not another favour. Well, not exactly, it ain’t. I mean, there’d be something in it for both of us.’
‘Why don’t yer just spit it out, whatever it is?’
She nodded, digging deep into her pocket. ‘All right. Someone said this might be worth something.’
She held out her hand to him. On the flat of her palm was her cigarette lighter.
Sammy took the lighter from her, respectfully avoiding brushing her hand with his.
‘So, what d’you think?’ she asked eagerly.
He went over to the door and, propping it open with his shoulder, he looked closely at the lighter, turning it over and over in the still bright, early evening sunshine.
The examination over, Sammy let the door swing shut again. ‘I ain’t no expert, Cis, but I think it looks like it could be gold. Probably worth a couple o’ quid.’
‘Only a couple o’ quid?’ Cissie shrank with disappointment.
‘Well,’ Sammy added quickly, ‘yer know what Uncle’s like. Never gives no one a fair price, does he?’
‘I wasn’t thinking about pawning it.’ Cissie lifted her chin and looked Sammy directly in the eye, willing him to understand what she was hoping for. ‘See, the thing is, I couldn’t. Just the thought of Ethel or Myrtle, or worse still, that big-mouthed Lena Dunn, seeing me going in there, and having them knowing all me business. I’d really hate that, Sam. Yer know what they’re like.’
‘I wouldn’t mind buying it off yer,’ Sammy said, with a nonchalant twitch of his shoulders.
‘How much?’ she asked, immediately ashamed by her enthusiasm.
‘Let’s see…’ Sammy began slowly, not having the first idea what he should offer her. Buying second-hand goods wasn’t something Sammy was in the habit of doing, in fact, it was something he had always carefully avoided. With so many people going through hard times it would have been a dangerous precedent to set. He’d have been inundated with shiny-arsed Sunday suits and grannies’ patchwork eiderdowns stinking of mildew and no cash left to run the shop. But this was Cissie asking, and that was an entirely different matter.
‘Enough to buy stock for the stall, d’you reckon?’
‘Course, yeah,’ Sammy agreed readily, relieved that Cissie knew how much she needed and so he wouldn’t have to risk upsetting her – and making a fool of himself – by suggesting the wrong amount.
Before she had a chance to think better of it, Cissie threw her arms around Sammy and kissed him smack on the lips.
‘Aw, Sam, I’m sorry,’ she gasped, springing away from him. She stood there a moment, wide-eyed with shock, then turned on her heel and fled.
Sammy chased her to the door. ‘Ain’t yer gonna wait for yer money, Cis?’ he called after her as she ran across the street.
Cissie skidded to a halt on the cobbles and turned round to face him – just in time to see Lena walking slowly towards her, grinning all over her face.
‘Putting it about already are yer, Cissie Flowers?’ Lena smirked. ‘Nice behaviour for a widow, I don’t think. Still, I hope yer give him his money’s worth.’
It had just gone half past four in the morning; Cissie shook herself like a wet dog and stepped on the brake, bringing the truck to a shuddering halt. She was finding it hard to concentrate on what she was meant to be doing. Her head was so stuffed full of angry thoughts that ideas about what stock she should have on the stall, or even how she should go about buying it, were just about the last things on her mind.
Not only had she had to stand there the night before and watch Lena bowl along the street, knowing she was about to spread her spiteful insinuations to anyone and everyone who would listen – and there were always plenty of those around – but then she’d had to put up with Lil’s latest barmy accusations.
According to her mother-in-law, the only reason Cissie was planning to leave the house at the crack of dawn to go to Covent Garden market was not because she was trying to earn them a living, but because she wanted to get out of looking after Matty and Joyce.
Lil wasn’t only spiteful, she was stupid. Cissie honestly felt she could murder her at times. As if she wouldn’t give the world to be able to stay at home with her children the way she used to, only having the shopping and cleaning and washing to worry about. She could visualise Matty and Joyce as she had left them, tucked up in their beds, not knowing that they were going to wake up to their nanna’s miserable face.
Cissie sighed out loud and slapped her hand angrily on the steering wheel. If she was going to do this stall lark properly, she was going to have to sort out something better for them. Not only did they deserve it but Cissie knew she wouldn’t be able to settle unless they were happy.
If only she hadn’t said all those things to Gladys…
The loud honking of a motor horn brought her back to the present with a jolt.
‘Oi! What you up to, yer silly bleeder? You gonna shift that truck or what?’
Cissie stuck her head out of the window to answer him, but he didn’t give her the chance.
‘It’s a bloody tart!’ he shouted at no one in particular. ‘Your old man should be ashamed of himself letting you out in that thing. This is a bloody wholesale market, darling, not a street full of little dress shops. Now, get that motor out o’ the way. Go on, people’re trying to do business.’
‘So am I,’ Cissie said as calmly as she could manage. ‘And, if it ain’t too much trouble, d’yer think yer could tell me where I can park me truck, please?’
Cissie clambered down from the cab and walked towards the bustling complex of elegant buildings, makeshift sheds and surging hordes of people, barrows, baskets and carts. Her first impression of Covent Garden was that she was entering a cross between the biggest street market she had ever seen in her life, and a madhouse.
First of all there was the noise: clanking metal wheels, squeaking trolleys, jarring gears and the crashing of tailboards being lowered, and the constant banter of men being incongruously jolly at such an early hour, all backed up with a just discernible hum – the unmistakable buzz of people making money.
Then there were the smells. She had first noticed the air getting sweeter, heavier somehow, more cloying, as far away as the Strand, but here, in the thick of it, the smell was almost overwhelming: a heady mix of mellow ripeness and sickly overmaturity.
She felt nervous but excited. So many people, so much going on, and here was she, Cissie Flowers, about to plunge into the middle of it. She could hardly take it in.
‘Oi! Mind yer back, love!’ a man’s voice yelled from behind her.
Cissie, still entranced at all this activity that she had, of course, known about but had never expected to witness for herself, stepped silently aside, pressing herself flat against the wall to allow the man, a market porter, to pass.
She watched, fascinated, as he swept past with his barrow, guiding it skilfully over the flagstoned pavement without losing a single strawberry from his piles of brimming baskets. But that trick was nothing compared to the man who dodged round Cissie and then past the man with the barrow: he too was a porter but he was carrying the round wicker baskets of fruit on his head, piled high in a stack like children’s bricks about to tumble to the kitchen floor. But somehow they didn’t tumble, they stayed there, even when he did a half-turn to get a better look at her.
He flashed her a wink of appreciation. ‘Yer like a sailor’s dream of home, girl!’ He grinned and was gone, sucked into the crowds of men all ferrying their own burdens of boxes, baskets and crates.
‘Excuse me,’ Cissie called, running to catch up with the man with the barrow. ‘Is this the market?’
The man stopped dead. He turned round and looked her up and down. ‘No, sweetheart,’ he sneered sarcastically, ‘it’s the Henley sodding regatta, and I’m delivering these here to that bloke over there in his rowing boat. So, if yer don’t mind.’
With that, he shook his head, rolled his eyes in exasperation at such stupidity, and shoved his barrow forward with a loud, ‘Mind yer backs, there!’
‘I meant, is this the flower market?’
With a theatrical sigh, the man stopped again, dropped the handles of the barrow and spun round to face her. ‘Do these look like sodding daisies?’ he demanded, pointing angrily at the baskets full of soft fruit. ‘No,’ he answered himself, ‘they don’t, cos they’re flaming strawberries, ain’t they, yer dozy mare.’
Cissie wouldn’t let him see how humiliated she felt. She drew herself up to her full height, lifted her chin and looked down her nose at him. ‘Well, I’m sure an intelligent man such as yerself would be able to direct a lady to the flower market.’
‘Over there,’ he said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Now, if yer don’t mind, I’d like to get this fruit moved before it mushes down into jam.’
Nodding in gratitude, Cissie stepped backwards away from the man. She was just about to voice her thanks, when, with no explanation, he lunged forward and grabbed her by the arms.
‘What the bloody hell!’ Cissie demanded, shaking him off.
‘Suit yourself,’ the man shrugged, letting go of her. ‘But I’d rather be grabbed by the arms,’ he went on, gesturing with his chin to something behind her, ‘than have to face them old hens if I trod on ’em.’
Cissie turned round to see what he was talking about. Looking up at her was a semicircle of old women sitting by the kerbside on upturned crates. All of them were dressed in black shapeless dresses, coarse aprons and battered hats, and all of them were doing exactly the same thing: with swift, barely discernible hand movements they were shelling massive piles of peas into enamel basins wedged firmly into their broad laps.
‘Thanks,’ she said sheepishly, stepping carefully around the heaps of discarded husks.
The man tutted and treated her to another roll of his eyes. ‘Bloody sightseers. Not fit to be out, some people,’ he muttered to himself and went about his business.
As Cissie made her way over to the flower market, she heard the old women laughing raucously.
‘Love yer hat, dearie,’ one of them jeered after her.
‘Yeah,’ another one agreed, ‘where’d yer get it? From the bootmender’s?’
Cissie felt so useless, she could have cried. But the moment she stepped inside the huge glass-and-metal grandeur of the flower market, any thoughts of humiliation, tiredness, her children being at home in bed, even the fact that it was barely five o’clock in the morning, were all forgotten. The sight and scents simply took her breath away. She had had no idea that it would be so beautiful, such a brilliantly coloured, wondrously sweet-smelling kaleidoscope of flowers, plants, shrubs and seeds.
She wandered slowly forward between the wide aisles where the wholesalers exhibited the glories they had on offer that morning, each vying with their displays to catch the eye of the retailers.
She paused by one of the stands.
‘I ain’t seen you before, dearie,’ said a weather-beaten woman sitting at a little wooden clerk’s desk. As she spoke she kept her eyes fixed on the roll of notes she was counting.
‘I’ve just started up,’ Cissie said proudly.
The woman was immediately on her feet, the cash tucked safely in her money apron. A newcomer. She could smell the scent of easy pickings. ‘Just look at these, my lovely,’ she said, thrusting a bunch of freesias under Cissie’s nose. ‘Lovely, ain’t they? Fresh in from Guernsey they are. You won’t get better than them anywhere in this market. And look at these.’ She snatched up a dull, bare-rooted clump of leaves. ‘Lovely ’mums, full of bud they’ll be.’
Cissie smiled weakly at the woman. ‘I’m just looking at the minute, ta.’
‘Well don’t look too long,’ she snapped, ‘or you’ll get left with all the shit. Good gear like mine always goes first.’
‘I’ll remember that. Thanks.’
For almost an hour, Cissie walked about the place trying to work out what to do. She watched as men exchanged brass tally tokens, sensing that they were some kind of deposit. But for what? Then she saw a man deliberately knocking over a pile of empty wooden boxes and surreptitiously kicking some behind him to another man who hurriedly bundled them away on a two-wheeled sack trolley. What was that about? And the prices. Were they for a box? A bunch? One of the narrow waxy cartons?
She began to feel the panic rising in her throat. How would she ever know what to do? How would she ever understand all this?
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had to pull herself together. She would just have to know what to do – she couldn’t afford the luxury of feeling sorry for herself, she had the children to think of.
Slowly, she opened her eyes and, with fists clenched by her sides, she strode purposefully along the aisle towards the woman with the freesias.
As she leant against the cast-iron column and toasted her achievements with a thick china cup of dark stewed tea, bought from one of the stalls dotted around the edges of the still-lively business areas, Cissie yawned loudly and lifted her chin to look up at the flower-market clock.
Not quite half past seven. It didn’t seem possible; from how tired she felt, she’d been sure it must have been at least midday. But, exhausted or not, she couldn’t stop herself from grinning. She’d done it! She, Cissie Flowers, had bought enough flowers to cover her stall in luscious summer colour. She’d spent nearly all her money and she’d probably paid over the odds – especially to the porter who had seemed a bit too delighted to transport her stuff to the truck – but that was all right, she’d soon be as sharp as all the others and would be able to wheel and deal, duck and dive, with the best of them.
Davy would have been so proud of her. And it was knowing this that gave Cissie the energy she needed to get herself moving again and to set about getting the flowers sold.
She climbed back into the truck and drove slowly between the big wire cages being stacked full of empty wooden crates, safe from dishonest hands who, given the chance, would pilfer them and trade them in for the deposits which, she now knew, were represented by the tally tokens.
She grinned yet again. She was learning, learning all the time. And she felt happier than she had for months. She felt in such high spirits that, as the market officer waved her forward, she pitched a handful of coppers out of the truck window to a bent-over old woman scavenging around the cobbles for discarded vegetables.
‘Here y’are, Gran,’ Cissie called. ‘Treat yerself.’
‘Good luck to yer, girl,’ the old woman called back, pressing the coins to her dry old lips. ‘Good luck.’
‘Thanks all the same, love,’ Cissie replied with a wave, ‘but you keep yer luck for yerself, cos I don’t reckon I’m gonna be needing any!’
Half an hour later, Cissie was dragging the stall from the lock-up. This time she had a smile on her face. And this time she was not going to make any mistakes. She had remembered exactly where the lock-up was, she knew how to set up the stall, and she had flowers to sell. She’d even had the sense to bring a pair of old gloves to save her hands.
She was a bit late for the early trade, she thought to herself as she paused for breath before manipulating the stall round the final corner, but she’d get better at it, quicker. The way she was feeling now, exhilarated by her achievement and knowing it would take just a few more shoves and pushes to get to the pitch, Cissie felt she could do anything.
Just the few more steps past St Botolph’s and she’d done it.
But what was going on? There was another stall, another flower stall, on Davy’s pitch.
Dropping the handles and leaving the stall where it was, blocking the corner of the street, Cissie ripped off her gloves and sped over to the two tough-looking men who were standing by a sparsely stocked stall.
‘Here! What d’you think you’re doing?’ she demanded, her anger at these men who had dared to dash her dreams yet again making her brave. ‘That’s my bloody pitch.’
The shorter and broader of the two men looked at his companion and sniggered. ‘I’m scared, Ron. Don’t let her shout at me.’
‘Don’t worry, Dennis,’ Ron answered him with a reassuring pat on the shoulder. ‘Uncle Ron’ll look after you.’ With that, Ron slowly lowered his massive head until his face was just inches from Cissie’s, and said quietly, ‘I dunno if you’ve got any sense in that beautiful little loaf of your’n, darling, but if you have, yer’d better use it and bugger off. Now, if yer don’t mind, we’ve got a business to run.’ Ron straightened up and adjusted his well-cut jacket around his huge frame.
Cissie didn’t move, but she was all too aware of how small she must seem to this great clod of a man. ‘I ain’t got no idea what yer on about. This is my pitch, and I ain’t gonna bugger off for you or no one. Yer can ask that bloke on the newspaper stall,’ she added by way of proof, jabbing her thumb over her shoulder.
‘What bloke would that be then, darling?’
She looked round. ‘Bugger it,’ she fumed. ‘He must have gone to the lav or to get himself some tea or something.’ Dennis started laughing, but Ron’s face was like stone. He opened his mouth to speak, but when he noticed another man heading towards them, he took Cissie roughly by the arm and marched her to the corner where she’d abandoned her stall.
Cissie was now too scared to complain, she wasn’t used to men pushing her around.
‘You obviously ain’t all the ticket, darling,’ he hissed menacingly, ‘cos if yer was, yer wouldn’t be messing with nothing to do with Mr Plains, now would yer.’
‘Who?’
Ron narrowed his eyes. ‘Yer really don’t know?’
‘Know what?’ Cissie now felt more confused than scared, and the thought of going home yet again, further in debt and without a single penny earned, was more than she could bear. ‘What’re yer talking about?’
Ron made an elaborate show of checking that no one else could hear him. ‘Listen to me, sweetheart. I’m gonna do yer a favour, I ain’t gonna tell Mr Plains I’ve seen yer. So you be a good girl and run along home before I change me mind.’ He shook his finger at her as though she were a foolish child. ‘When the pitch was left empty we reckoned Turner had seen sense.’
‘But this was me husband’s stall,’ Cissie interrupted. ‘What’s this got to do with Turner?’ She turned her head and looked away from him. ‘And now my husband’s dead, the stall’s mine.’
‘Your husband run this pitch? What, Turner got widows working for him now, has he? He must be losing his touch.’
‘I don’t know why yer keep going on about Turner,’ Cissie snapped angrily, ‘but if yer reckon I’m gonna stand here and let someone take over my Davy’s stall then yer must be an idiot.’ Without a thought for how he might react, Cissie poked Ron in the chest. ‘And yes, I’m a widow, and I’ve got two kids and a miserable old cow of a mother-in-law to keep. So if yer think I’m gonna let anyone take this away from me then yer’ve got another thought coming. This pitch is mine, right? Mine.’
Ron scratched his head distractedly. ‘Turner really must be losing his touch if he’s got young girls like you doing his dirty work for him.’
Cissie jabbed her finger at him. ‘Turner! This is driving me barmy. Why bloody Turner all the time? I told yer, this pitch was Davy’s.’ She pointed at the stall. ‘He even owned his own barrow and everything. Look, go on, look. There’s his name carved and painted on the side. Not like yours,’ she said defiantly. ‘I’ll bet that’s rented.’
The other man, Dennis, appeared by Ron’s side. ‘Blimey, Ron, ain’t yer got rid of her yet? What, yer swapping knitting patterns with her or something?’
‘No, I ain’t, Den. And, to tell yer the truth, I’m getting the right hump with her.’
Dennis folded his arms and stared menacingly at Cissie. ‘Don’t let Ron get the hump with yer, girl, cos yer won’t like it. Now, if yer know what’s good for yer, just clear off and we’ll say no more about it.’
‘No, I won’t clear off, but I think you should. Cos if yer threaten me again, I’m gonna call the police.’
‘The rozzers!’ sneered Dennis. ‘Now that definitely would be a mistake.’
He leant over her, backing her towards the church railings.
‘Let me tell yer a little secret, more a warning really. Mr Plains is moving into the area. Got it?’
Cissie swallowed hard. ‘What’s so special about this pitch? Surely yer can sell flowers anywhere?’
Dennis laughed, a sneering snorting sound like an animal. ‘Davy Flowers was no florist, darling. It was all just a front.’ He grinned. ‘A great big whopping fib. Now wasn’t that naughty of him?’
‘But if he wasn’t a florist—’
Dennis folded his arms again and leant on the struts of Cissie’s stall. ‘Your old man, Mrs Flowers, was a bookie. He was running this pitch for Turner.’
‘That’s enough,’ Ron warned him.
‘No,’ Dennis said with a shake of his head. ‘Let the mouthy cow know. Let her know what a little, tiny, nomark cog her old man really was. And if she wants to call the coppers then good luck to her, but she’d better be prepared for the consequences.’
Cissie was stunned. Davy was a bookie?
Mechanically she picked up the handles of the stall and started hauling it around the comer and back towards the lock-up.
Could it be true? Had her whole life with Davy been a lie?
No, it couldn’t be true. There had to be some other reason why those men said those things. She would have to find Turner somehow. She would go and see him, make him stop people spreading these lies about him and Davy. Tell him about the men and this Plains whoever he was.
Cissie stopped in her tracks, not noticing the cars and bicycles swerving and skidding to avoid her and the stall.
Could this have something to do with what Eileen had been hinting at? Maybe there was some truth in her drunken ramblings.
Eileen. She would know where to find Turner.
Cissie started walking again, oblivious of everything around her. All she could think of was that Turner’s name was always there, always lurking somewhere in the background, and she was being drawn closer and closer to his world.
And it scared the life out of her.