‘Not good enough for my girl,’ he told the vendor. ‘Only the best for her.’
He would save the money and take her somewhere for a slap-up meal, and watch her face as she read the menu, her lip caught in her
teeth as she tried to decide between all the delicious treats. He would see the weariness of the day slip from her and a glow come to her cheeks as she ate and relaxed and enjoyed herself. He grinned to himself, almost laughing aloud in anticipation.
As Gerry’s stall came into view he stopped, waiting to catch the first sight of her. The handcart was parked in front of it, half loaded. They were packing up. Then he saw her. Her arms were full of newspaper-wrapped bundles and she was smiling, evidently sharing a joke with someone. And as he watched, Gerry appeared, also smiling, and flung an arm round her shoulders, a brief intimate gesture that brought all Harry’s suppressed suspicions boiling to the surface. He strode the last few yards, ready to do murder.
‘Ellen!’
She jumped, colour rising in her face. Gerry hastily withdrew his arm.
‘Harry! I never thought –’
‘Yeah, I can see that,’ he said. ‘Sorry if I’m breaking something up.’
Gerry gave a placatory smile. ‘We was only having a bit of a laugh. Between pals, like.’
‘If you will come creeping up like that, checking up . . .’ Ellen said.
‘I wasn’t meaning to come checking up. I was meaning to take you out. But perhaps I ought to come and see what’s happening up here more often.’
‘Come off it, mate. I wouldn’t move in on you. You know that,’ Gerry said.
‘Blooming well ought to know it,’ Ellen added.
Harry looked from one to the other. He wanted to believe them. But Gerry was no fool, he knew a good thing when he saw it, cousin or not.
Under his accusing stare, Gerry shifted and looked away, fiddling with some of his goods.
‘Look, er – why don’t you two make off now, eh? I can finish the packing up. Go and have a bit of fun.’
Ellen looked awkward. ‘Oh, Gerry, I couldn’t do that. There’s loads to do yet.’
‘Don’t let me drag you away,’ Harry said.
‘Don’t be so bloody pig-headed,’ Gerry told them both. ‘Shove off, for God’s sake.’
‘Oh, well – if you’re sure.’ Ellen deliberately threw Harry a defiant look and kissed Gerry on the cheek. ‘Thanks, gov’nor. You’re a real pal.’
Then she tucked her arm into Harry’s and smiled up at him. ‘So where are we going, then?’
He was so angry he could have shaken her. Playing games with him like this! It was the sort of thing Siobhan did, not Ellen. He strode off down the street, not caring that she had to trot to keep up with him.
‘Harry . . .’ She was clinging on to his arm, her face red with exertion. ‘Harry, I’d love a drink.’
They were right by a pub. He needed one himself, he realized, and marched in. They sat opposite each other at a small table, not speaking. But by the time he had downed half a pint, he felt a bit better. Across the table, Ellen was looking at him with amusement in her eyes.
‘You are stupid, you know.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Yeah, you are. We been all through me working for Gerry, over and over again. You got to trust me, Harry.’
‘It ain’t that I don’t trust you. It’s Gerry.’ He stopped. It was too difficult to put into words, to explain how he felt when he saw another man touch her. He said, ‘It’s just that I love you. I want to keep you all to myself.’
She reached across and put a hand over his. ‘I love you too. Don’t you see that? And you have got me all to yourself, in that way. Gerry’s just work. You wouldn’t be jealous of Maconachie’s if I was still there, now would you?’
He sighed. She just didn’t see it. But when she looked at him like that, with her small hand on his large one, he could not stay angry with her.
‘I suppose not’, he said.
Ellen stretched across the table and kissed him on the lips. ‘That’s better.’
The evening fell into a familiar pattern. They went to a chophouse and gorged themselves on meat pudding and peas, then to a music hall, then walked home along the embankment in the moonlight. Idling along with his arm round Ellen’s waist and her head leaning on his shoulder, Harry was practically the happiest man in London.
‘If only things could always be like this,’ he said. ‘You and me and the river and the moon . . .’
‘Mm. It’s just lovely, ain’t it?’
In the darkness between the pools of lamplight they kissed.
‘I love you,’ Ellen said, sighing with pleasure.
‘I love you too.’
If he could just solve the problem of his family, he could ask her to marry him and be done with the nagging question of Gerry for ever.
It was only a few days later that his mother remarked one teatime that the Masons were moving out of number twenty-four.
‘Bloody good riddance,’ Archie growled. He was in a foul mood as he had no money left and the Rum Puncheon had refused to put any more on the slate.
Ida said nothing to contradict him, but stared down at her plate, biting her lips. The Masons’ daughter was exactly her age and a good friend.
Florrie was more open. ‘They’re good people, the Masons. It’s not at all a good riddance. We shall all miss them.’
Archie stood up and thumped a fist down on the table. ‘You shut your trap. You don’t know nothing.’
There was an intake of breath round the table as everyone else looked at Harry. Milly’s hands closed on her apron.
‘No, Harry, please, no,’ she whispered under her breath.
Harry sat quite still, holding on to his temper. He waited until he knew he could speak calmly.
‘She’s got a right to her opinion,’ he said, looking straight at his father.
For several long moments, he and Archie glared at each other. Then slowly, Archie sat down and began eating again.
‘Where they going to?’ Johnny asked.
‘Rotherhithe,’ Milly said.
‘Rotherhithe!’
The children’s eyes widened. That was over the water, practically another country.
As the talk resumed along an almost normal path, Harry let his attention drift. If the Masons were going, that meant their house would be empty. Possibly the landlords had not yet relet it. From number twenty-four he could still keep an eye on his family while getting away from his father. He would not be constantly aggravating the situation simply by being there. Best of all, he could ask Ellen to marry him.
‘– Harry?’
‘Yeah?’ He had not even noticed he was being spoken to.
‘You said you was going to be up early tomorrow?’
‘Yeah, I got a long one upriver.’
It was as if the sun had come out on the future, lighting up the course he was to steer. He would get hold of the rent collector the very next time he came and find out about the house.
Harry was at work when the Masons left, but all those who were at home that day turned out to gawp at the pathetic little collection of household goods as they were loaded on to the cart, and to wish the family well in their new neighbourhood. As the procession of cart, pram and children turned out of the street, those left behind gathered to discuss the departure. General opinion was that the Masons were mad. To move south of the river, and to a rough area like Rotherhithe, when they were nicely established on the Island seemed reckless in the extreme. It served as a point of conversation on the doorsteps and in the Rum Puncheon for days.
They had not been gone twenty-four hours before Harry got hold of the key. He was not really sure why he wanted to look at the place. It was hardly going to be different from any of the others on the street and he knew Mrs Mason to be a proud woman who would leave it spotlessly clean, but it seemed important that he should make absolutely certain before inviting Ellen to come and see it.
It was just as he had imagined it. He stepped into a small front parlour that was already starting to smell damp and musty. Over the fireplace an oval patch of wallpaper where the mirror had been showed a pattern of stripes and flowers in contrast to the faded yellowy-grey blur covering the rest of the room. The tiny fireplace was swept our and the square of oilcloth, too old to move without cracking, was shining. In the kitchen, the range had been black leaded. Three shelves had been put up in the alcoves with a row of hooks underneath them. He tried to picture Ellen there but it was so still and lifeless that he found it difficult. He had to bring her here. She would breathe the life back into the place, make him see their own things in it, suggest little improvements.
He went up the creaking stairs to the front bedroom. The last of the evening sun was streaming in through the window, adding a friendly touch to the empty space. Once again there were small signs of the previous occupants: patches on the wallpaper – pink flowers on pale blue this time – and marks on the wall and floor where the Masons’ bed had been. It was odd standing where all the little Masons had been conceived, but here upstairs it was easier to think of how it might be. He squatted down on the space where he would sleep, his back to the wall, his elbows resting on his knees, imagining he was waiting for Ellen to come upstairs. She would climb up softly, her tread light, and smile at him as she came in at the door. Then she would undress, asking him to undo all the little fiddly buttons down the back, and he would slide his hands inside as the dress opened out . . .
At first he thought the footsteps on the stairs were part of his own fantasy. Even when the door of the bedroom opened he thought it was Ellen, come to find him. The last person he expected to see was Siobhan.
‘You left the door open, so I let myself in,’ she said, by way of a greeting.
He did not get up, but stayed staring up at her, resenting her intrusion.
‘You can let yourself out the same way, then,’ he told her.
But she did not go. She wandered round the little room, running her fingers along the walls, over the windowsill, casting considering glances at him. There was an animal restlessness about her that held the eye, as if the very clothes on her back were a restraint.
‘If you’re waiting for Ellen, you’ll be here a long time,’ she said.
Her skirt brushed his arm as she passed. Despite himself, it sent a shiver of pleasure through his nerves.
‘That so?’
‘She’s got other things to do this evening.’
He said nothing.
‘Just like she has most evenings.’
She came to a halt in front of him. She was standing very close, so that the hem of her dress was touching his feet. He found her presence profoundly disturbing, producing a compound of irritation, suspicion and sexual attraction.
‘Just what are you trying to say?’
In answer, she sat down on the floor facing him, her hand resting on his knee, her eyes gazing into his with an expression of compassion and concern.
‘’Tis time someone told you, Harry,’ she said earnestly. ‘She’s been stringing you along something wicked all this time, so she has, and I can’t bear to see it any longer. ’Tis time you opened your eyes.’
He instantly decided that whatever she was going to say, he would not believe a word of it. He knew his Ellen. She was as true as they came. But as he thought it, a worm of doubt wound in under his guard.
‘They’re wide enough open already,’ he said.
‘Harry, Harry, the whole street knows. They all know what’s going on, but nobody wanted to tell you. Nobody wanted to hurt you, Harry. They all know what she means to you. But it can’t go on, Harry, not now you’re looking at a place. I am right, ain’t I? It is for herself and you?’
‘Yeah,’ Harry admitted.
She looked so anxious, so innocent, and her voice was so sincere. But she was lying. He was sure she was lying.
She sighed and shook her head, biting her lip in seeming indecision.
‘Maybe I’m talking out of turn . . .’
‘Too right you are,’ he said, shifting abruptly so that her hand was jerked off his knee.
‘Maybe she’ll tell you herself once she knows how serious you are.’
‘Tell me what?’ Harry demanded. ‘What is all this about, eh? Just what are you trying to say?’
She shook her head again. ‘No, no. I better not. Best left unsaid. Forget it, forget I ever came here.’
She made to get up, but he caught her by the wrist.
‘Tell me.’
Despite all he thought he believed, black suspicion was growing. He had to know what she was hinting at, what everyone else in the street was supposed to know.
‘Come on, tell me. You can’t leave it at that. Say!’
‘Oh, Harry, you must have had some idea, surely? You must have wondered, just a little bit? All that late working? All them odd hours?’
The trouble was, he
had
wondered. Only the other day he had been brought face to face with it. He had never been happy about her working for Gerry. He knew in his head that his cousin was a good bloke, and that Ellen was faithful, but in his heart he had always harboured a dark corner of distrust. What with his own erratic working hours and the demands of the market, Gerry saw a good deal more of Ellen than he did. And there were plenty of opportunities for them to get close.
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘No, never. She’d never do the dirty on me, not Ellen.’
Siobhan reached out and put a hand over his clenched fist. ‘Harry – I know ’tis hard, but ’tis best to face it now. If ’tis bad now, it’d be far worse after you were married.
If
she marries you. I may be doing her wrong. I hope so. She may be just stringing the both of you along till she decides which of you is the best bet. Once you ask her, perhaps she’ll choose. Have you asked her?’
‘It’s none of your business!’
‘But it is, Harry, it is.’
She moved a little closer, took his other hand and tried to gaze deep into his eyes. Harry refused to look at her, but it did not stop her.
‘I’m making it my business because I’m your friend. I’m a better friend to you than all the others. They just let you go on being deceived
because they don’t want to be the one to tell you. But you got to be told, Harry. Let her go now, before it gets any worse. You know where she is, right now?’
‘Packing up the stall,’ Harry said. His voice came out harsh and grating.