Tom nodded. ‘Would you consider your sister to be a woman who makes all the right decisions in life?’
Gert and Bert glowered at the speaker.
‘Well?’ asked Tom.
‘No,’ replied Gert begrudgingly. ‘She’s one for the men, I’ll give you that. But she’s Sally mother and—’
‘The woman were never a mother,’ snapped Rosie. ‘She were more of a bloody liability.’
‘We cared for Sally all through the war,’ added Maureen. ‘Especially once the Americans were here. Weren’t we the ones who took her in after the sirens went? Weren’t we the ones who fed her? So don’t be coming here to tell us about motherhood. And I never noticed you around here when Sally wanted a bit of bread and jam.’
Bert pulled at his wife’s arm. ‘That one’s old.’ He nodded his head in Ivy’s direction. ‘She’ll not reign long, Gertie. We’ll get what’s rightfully ours in time.’
Ivy all but exploded. ‘Rightfully yours?’ she shouted. ‘You make our Sal sound like something that’s been left in a will, an ornament or summat. This is a little girl, not a bloody set of pots and pans.’
Tom held up a hand, spoke quietly. ‘Sally is no-one’s property,’ he said. ‘She is a seven-year-old girl who needs her grandmother.’
Bert dragged Gert to the door. ‘Come on,’ he begged. ‘Our time’ll come.’
But Gert wanted the last word. ‘When you die, Mrs Crumpsall, that kiddy will go to her nearest. And that’s us.’
‘In that case, our Sal is poor in more ways than one. Shut the front door behind you.’ Ivy felt sick, but she maintained her dignity.
When the Simpsons had left, a dense silence hung over the meeting. Each member present felt uneasy, worried about Sally’s future. It was Ivy, of course, who summed up everyone’s mood. ‘He’s a queer feller,’ she announced. ‘And his wife’s a bloody fool.’
All were in agreement, though no-one said a word.
Two things kept Prudence Spencer-Worthington alive. One was her love for Victor, the thirty-year-old product of her marriage; the second was the hatred she felt for Andrew Worthington. Her daily encounter with each end of the emotional spectrum often left her drained, yet she continued doggedly as mistress of Worthington House, a detached piece of Victorian ugliness that squatted at the top of Wigan Road.
Deep inside Prudence’s heart there lingered two hopes. She wanted Victor to be happy and successful, longed for the day when Andrew would be brought down. For these ends, Prudence remained alive, healthy in body if not in mind, and extremely lonely. Worthington House entertained few visitors as its atmosphere was often repellent.
She lingered over the piano, could still feel reverberations from the series of dissonant chords she had just played. She was a good pianist, had been an adequate singer, but sometimes, she took her anger out on the keyboard. Another girl at the door today. Another child with a child in its belly. The girl’s father had twisted his cap in fretful hands, had shed a tear or two. ‘We’ve spoke to Mr Worthington,’ he had said, his voice trembling with a mixture of emotions. ‘And he told us to go away. My little girl – she’s nobbut sixteen – what am I to do? He swears blind it weren’t him, missus, says it were likely one of the carders. It’d be our word against his, you see.’
Andrew Worthington’s wife crossed the room and studied herself in the overmantel mirror. At fifty-four, she remained a remarkably attractive woman. The ash-blond hair was greying, yet the threads produced by age were not thick and wiry, but fine, silvery. She was a rounded woman, had always tended towards plumpness, but she had maintained a definite waist and firmly rounded breasts and hips. Love was supposed to keep a woman young, she thought. In her case, all affection was aimed not towards her spouse, but in the direction of another man. That other man was twenty-four years her junior, and she was his mother.
She hadn’t needed to ask the whys and wherefores today, hadn’t needed to ask for years. The girl on the doorstep had been bullied or bribed, was yet another of Andrew Worthington’s victims. The story was so old that it had engraved itself on Prudence’s heart. Girls who appealed to the beast were often young, sometimes as young as fourteen or fifteen, usually thin. He would take one at a time ‘under his wing’, would get the chosen one to do a bit of shopping for him after her shift. At the end of a working day, he would pounce. No-one had ever charged him. No policeman had been brought in, as all the girls, thus far, had refused to talk. ‘Soon,’ she prayed aloud. The answer would arrive in the form of unionism, she knew that full well. The unions were spreading, would reach Paradise eventually.
Prudence sat down, folded her hands, dreaded another evening in this house. Once Victor had moved out, she had tried to leave, had yet to manage the move. The younger Worthington had not followed his father into the factory, yet he was employed by Paradise, among other companies, as accountant. Victor had his own small accountancy firm in town. He handled the financial affairs of several businesses, including his father’s, and was therefore detached from the filth and noise that was cotton, from the filth and noise that was his father.
She had given money to the waif on the doorstep. The poor little thing’s father had been pathetically grateful. Andrew Worthington was a shrewd man, chose his targets carefully. The girls he used were from poor families with limited education. Some were orphans, others lived in houses owned by Worthington, a few parents accepted what happened to their female children as part and parcel of keeping a job in the Paradise Mill.
Prudence smiled grimly. Times were changing. The blustering buffoon she had married was still a piece of Victoriana, was still clinging to a life that had died a natural death before the end of the Great War. He had even denied his own contempt for womankind by insisting on naming his son after the queen who had occupied the throne until the century’s turn. Now, Andrew’s come-uppance must be due, Prudence mused. The workers of the 1940s were more vigorous, more outspoken. Soon, the spinners and weavers would unite in spite of the ogre’s objections. Soon, soon, he would fall from his own self-made throne.
Today’s child had been a sad, shy thing. Tomorrow’s might just fetch the law. As for the shame of it all – Prudence had given up on worries of that sort thirty years ago. No young wife wanted the world to learn of her husband’s bestiality, yet she had been forced to accept long ago that she was married to a creature that defied description. Everyone knew about him; everyone feared and hated him. All she needed was for one voice to be heard in court and he would be gone for ever.
She picked up a book, flicked pages, could not immerse herself in Charles Dickens just now. Dickens was a bit wordy for an unhappy and preoccupied woman, so she turned to
Good Housekeeping
and read an article about fashions in the nursery. Victor would probably get married soon. He had been courting the very correct Miss Margaret West for some four years, had brought her home several times. The piece about infants’ clothing made Prudence realize how near she was to becoming a grandmother. Perhaps Margaret might improve in time, become approachable, less starchy. Perhaps Margaret might invite her mother-in-law to live with . . . No. That would never happen.
She tossed aside the magazine, closed her eyes and remembered Victor as a child. He had been so round and plump, pretty, funny, warm. He wasn’t like his father, she told herself firmly. All those little escapades were in the past, surely? She would not consider the difficult times. Instead, she conjured up in her mind’s eye memories of Bournemouth, Southport, Morecambe. His little fat legs running in the sand, tears when he had been urged to leave behind a favourite beach donkey, a tantrum when the tide swamped his castle . . .
The particular girl who had tried to destroy Victor had been a loose type, had been asking for trouble, she told herself determinedly. That female had not been comparable with Andrew’s collection of victims. Oh no, the little madam who had accused Victor had been trying to get her hands on the Spencer-Worthington fortune. Victor was not a bit like his father, not at all. Andrew Worthington’s face had blazed with a mad triumph when the girl’s father had appeared. ‘Your son tried to force himself on my girl,’ the tobacconist had roared.
Prudence opened her eyes and stared into the grate. Two thousand pounds had changed hands when the tobacconist had threatened to bring charges. Not one of Andrew Worthington’s casualties had spoken up. But poor Victor, who had made just one or two mistakes, had almost been brought to book. That fire at school – surely the other boys had goaded him into playing with chemicals? And didn’t all young people get involved in stealing apples? No, no, he wasn’t like his father, could not possibly be another monster. She had brought him up so carefully. Best to concentrate on happier times, she thought. Victor was a good boy, a lovely man. So she dreamed of grandchildren and of happy times. Because Victor was a good boy, really . . .
The line seemed endless. Tom Goodfellow stood in the middle of the road and watched Londoners queuing for potatoes. It was 1947, and there wasn’t a spare halfpenny in sight. This was victory, thought Tom. This was a sure sign that the Allied Forces had won the war. After all, wasn’t there food aplenty, weren’t people showing signs of health and vigour? The only symptom of life in the placid line of humanity was a squabble between two women. ‘I was here first,’ shouted a tall, fat female with a child clinging to her tattered coat.
‘No,’ yelled her opponent, a spare creature with very little hair. ‘I been standing here since the crack of dawn.’
The untidy crocodile of people waited not for tobacco or some exotic fruit from overseas. No. They hung around and argued over the humble potato. He considered separating the two warriors, changed his mind. Only once had he come between Rosie Blunt’s temper and her intended victim. After that unhappy occasion, he had avoided intervention between people of the female persuasion – unless blood actually flowed. Women were angry and in pain. They had lost their men, or were nursing husbands and sons through wounds physical and mental. Most of the former scars would have healed, though psychological damage lingered, no doubt.
Tom took a bus across the city, then walked down Regent Street. Things looked a bit better here until he looked closely. Navy pinstripes and bowlers were dotted about but, in doorways and alleys, a few shabby figures lurked. These were not young men, were not the immediate casualties of the second war. A one-legged chap on expertly balanced crutches bared his gums at Tom, held out a hand. ‘Penny for a cuppa rosie, mister? Lost all three of me sons, I did. Died in France.’ So the second war had brought to the surface the poor who had survived the earlier abomination.
Tom jangled some coins in his pocket. The beggar was chattering on about battles he had fought almost thirty years earlier. ‘Who’s looking after you?’ Tom asked.
The toothless grin spread across skin that was prematurely aged – surely this man could not be much older than fifty? ‘The gel next door looks in most days. Got a flat, I have. Me house was flattened, see. They put me in a new place, but times is hard. Just a couple of pennies, guv.’
Tom handed over a shilling, hurried along. The beggar had probably been forced out of his new, custom-built home by boredom, he thought. Here, in the city, the middle-aged man saw and heard all the bustle he had lost when his house was razed. And, if his sons had lived, he would not have suffered such dreadful loneliness.
Another group of men chatted on a corner, their ageing cleaned-and-pressed-for-the-occasion coats festooned with medals from the First World War. From snatches of conversation, Tom gathered that the company was preparing a celebration of some kind, a few drinks to mark earlier empty triumphs in fields of blood and clay. How many of them had been deprived of sons and homes this time round? Proudly, they displayed the shining proof that they, too, had fought for freedom. Tom smiled at the veterans, crossed the road and walked towards the lawyers’ offices, his head full of memories that were not all savoury.
An unfamiliar anger bubbled in Tom’s breast. He had lost so many friends, had visited men without legs, men whose faces had been destroyed, whose bodies had been seared in burning cockpits. His own crash during one of many training flights had been a mere hiccup compared to some disasters. This morning, Tom had read the news. The Chancellor of the Exchequer was telling parliament that rations must be reduced even further. Twopence-worth of tinned meat a week was the new allocation, though a little more sugar was being sifted through to the populace, and each holder of a ration book was now allowed five ounces of sweets each week.
‘Is that Group Captain Goodfellow?’
Tom ground to a halt, swivelled and saw a man whose features rang a slightly muffled bell. ‘Hello?’ he said uncertainly.
‘Bombardier Clarke, sir. Known as Nutty in common parlance, because I—’
‘Because you would have bombed the whole globe for a bag of peanuts. Good to see you, old chap.’ The ‘old chap’ was about twenty-five. He had no hair, as it had been removed by fire. Gloves hid heat-scarred hands, while Nutty’s baldness was covered by a bruised trilby-type hat of indeterminate colour.
‘Battle of Britain hero, eh?’ remarked Tom. ‘I seem to remember visiting you in hospital. What are you doing these days?’ He needed no answer, had noticed the barrow parked at the edge of the pavement.
‘This and that,’ answered Nutty. ‘Me hands isn’t up to much, but I’m being retrained. Used to be a carpenter, sir. They’re teaching me how to use the tools again, only it’s a slow job, so I sell a few bits and pieces between classes.’ He nodded towards his cart, then faced Tom once more. ‘The wife’s just had twins and my mum’s fading fast. Had a rough war, my mother. Got bombed out and lost Dad in the blitz. How’s the old leg, sir?’
Tom straightened his spine. ‘It aches in the rain, that’s all. They should have let me stay on, but they pensioned me off as disabled.’ He felt something akin to shame when he considered his own accident, because many others were scarred beyond measure. ‘Will you accept a gift for the babies?’ he asked. Nutty Clarke. Of course. The full memory flooded back in glorious colour. Nutty had been the madman, the one who would have flown solo to Germany with a single bullet in his gun. ‘Just let me at ’im,’ Nutty used to curse. ‘Bleeding ’Itler? I’ll bleeding do for him.’