‘How you doing, then?’ Harry asked. He knew as soon as the words left his lips it was a stupid question.
‘Not so bad.’ She shrugged.
‘So what did you want to see me for?’
‘Get us another, Harry. Please – for old times’ sake?’
He sighed and stood up.
‘Make it two.’
With two more doubles inside her, the harsh lines of her face relaxed a little. She tried to talk to him about himself, but he did not want to say anything. Finding she was getting nowhere, she soon gave up and asked about the street. Harry filled her in with the news of births, marriages and deaths. She nodded, muttering and commenting on each piece of information.
‘And Charlie? Charlie Billingham? What’s happened to him?’
‘I thought you had it in for him?’
She put her hand on his arm, her bony fingers gripping him until it hurt. She leant across the table so that her face was within inches of his. He recoiled from her bad breath.
‘I got to see him again, Harry. Can you arrange that, eh? Can you? I got to see him alone, like.’
‘Well, I dunno . . .’
‘Come on, Harry. You said as you wanted to help me, didn’t you? Said I only had to ask. Well, now I’m asking. You’re not going to go back on what you said, are you?’
‘No, of course not.’
He wanted to help, but it was not as easy as all that. He thought it through, anticipating the problems. It was not like getting Will to meet up with Siobhan again. He and Will did sometimes go out together, so Will had not been the least suspicious, and when they got to the hall it had seemed to be just a coincidence that Siobhan happened to be performing there. But with Charlie it was different. He had very little to do with his cousin, beyond the casual meetings in the street or up at the Puncheon. If he suddenly tried to organize something, Charlie would smell a rat. He tried to explain this to Theresa.
‘You’ll think of something,’ she said.
Harry wished he had as much confidence in himself.
‘He don’t go out with the same people as the rest of us. He might go up the Puncheon during the week sometimes, but Saturday and Sunday he’s off with his own mates. I think he goes up Poplar way.’
Theresa latched on to this. ‘You find out where, and tell me.’
‘I thought you didn’t want to come anywhere near home?’
‘Poplar’s not home, is it? I would never come near the Island, but I don’t mind Poplar – not if I can get that Charlie Billingham.’
‘What’ve you got planned?’ Harry asked. He had no respect or liking for his cousin, but family was family.
‘Planned? Nothing! I just got things I got to say to him, that’s all.’ An expression of pained innocence sat incongruously on her ravaged face.
In the end, with many misgivings, he promised to meet her again next Saturday and tell her what he had found out. Satisfied, Theresa stood up.
‘Can’t sit around here all night gassing to you. I got a living to earn.’
They had not discussed her life at all, so that this barefaced statement caught him unawares.
‘Wait, Theresa.’
‘What’s up? Fancy a bit, do you?’
It turned his stomach. ‘Pack it in, Theresa. That ain’t funny.’
‘Suit y’self.’ She shrugged. ‘I could get you a nice young girl, if you like. You could have it on the house.’
‘Shut it, will you?’
‘All right, all right. See you back here next week. Promise?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You’re a real pal, you are, Harry. A brick.’
He watched her as she threaded her way through the noisy bar. Theresa O’Donaghue, nice Irish girl from a strict home. Theresa O’Donaghue, draggled-tailed whore, not even young or attractive any more. He doubted whether she would find many clients round this part of town, except if they were very drunk. It would not be long before she was fit for nothing but the Ratcliff Highway. He was filled with a sick anger. If it really was Charlie Billingham who had been the cause of her downfall, then he deserved anything that Theresa had in mind. Somehow, he would do what she asked.
She knew him the moment he stepped out of the pub. She saw him against the lighted doorway, recognized the figure she had carried in her mind for all these years, first with pain, then with hatred. All this time, she had waited for a chance for revenge, waited without any clear plan beyond the knowledge that somehow, sometime, she would ruin him as he had ruined her. It was only within the last few months that she had realized she had the perfect method at her disposal. And now, at last, the moment was at hand.
She shifted out of the cold alleyway she had been lurking in these past two hours or more and began to walk towards him, keeping to the shadows. He was with friends, which made it difficult, but he was drunk – they were all drunk. She heard them laughing and hooting, saw them staggering about. She was in luck. He tripped and almost fell, then reeled against a wall and leant there while he got his balance. The others, not noticing, went on. Theresa went into action.
‘Hullo, darling.’
His first reaction was to push her away, but Theresa was used to that. She knew how to make a customer out of a man with a skinful. She ducked under his arm and wrapped himself round him, her hand reaching unerringly for his crotch.
‘Get out of it!’ He grabbed at her arm but she resisted, working expertly at him.
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you like it? ‘Fraid you can’t get it up?’
They could still get nasty at this stage. It had happened often enough in Theresa’s career. She had been punched and kicked and beaten countless times. She had given them what they wanted then been laid out and not paid. But it was not payment she was after this time. Just him. She pushed all her weight against him as he leant on the wall, her
breasts rubbing invitingly. She kept her head down so that all he could see was the top of her hat with its gaudy feathers, while her fingers undid his buttons and slid inside, at last getting a sluggish reaction from him.
‘That nice? You like that, don’t you? You want it, don’t you? Come on, it’ll cost you a tanner.’
He was far too weak to resist. She managed to get him along to the graveyard she had chosen earlier, holding him up and steering him as he wove unsteadily along. They collapsed on to the rank grass, which was cold and wet from a week’s rain. Nearly there. No longer afraid of being recognized now that they were in the dark, her only fear was that he was going to be incapable. She used every trick she knew, a cold excitement growing in her as he responded. Crowing with triumph, she rode him.
It was all over in no time at all. He was too drunk to keep going. For a moment she panicked, rigid with fury, not knowing if it had been long enough to achieve her purpose. She kept him there for as long as she could, just to make sure, even when he was just lying there making great drunken snores like some wallowing pig. A wild, malicious laugh broke from her. She had done it, she had fixed him. Now he would know what it was to despair.
When she finally could not hang on any more, she got off him, and as an afterthought, went through his pockets. Nothing, absolutely nothing. Suddenly the revenge she had wrought did not seem enough. She had paid him off for what he had done to her, but there were all the others, all the men who had used and humiliated and injured her over the years, all the others who had had what she sold and not paid for it. They had to be seen to as well. She started with his shoes, then, as he was dead to the world, pulled off his trousers and underpants. Even the chill air on his exposed skin failed to wake him. Her mouth stretched in a vindictive grin as she removed his jacket, dragging it carefully from under him. It was only when she tried to take off his shirt that he stirred and grunted in protest. Swiftly feeling around in the darkness, she gathered up his clothes.
‘What – whazzermatter? Who . . .?’
Before he could realize what had happened, Theresa made off, with the bundle clutched to her body.
Charlie Billingham was left nearly naked in a Poplar graveyard at half-past twelve of a March night.
‘Charlie in yet?’ Alma asked.
‘No,’ Ellen said. ‘Tea?’
‘Please, lovey.’
Alma sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. She had not been able to enjoy this evening, not with the worry about Charlie at the back of her mind. It had been the shock of her life last week, when she’d had to go and fetch him back from Poplar police station, taking some clothes with her. They’d brought him up from the cells wearing nothing but his shirt. Thank God it had been his best one, not the old patched thing he wore for every day. He’d not thanked her for it. He’d been right grumpy all week, snapping at her whenever she spoke. But then that was only natural, really. Enough to give anyone the pip, being left like that when you’ve had one too many.
‘I hope he’s all right,’ she said.
Ellen said nothing. Alma had the feeling that her daughter-in-law didn’t much care for Charlie. She didn’t say anything against him, but then she didn’t say anything for him either. Alma watched her as she moved around making the tea. It was lovely having Gerry and the little ones about the house, and Ellen was no problem, not really. She was quiet and a hard worker, she kept everything nice. She certainly didn’t moon around the place like Maisie used to and she looked after the children beautifully. But there was something that Alma could not quite put her finger on. It was as if Ellen was always holding something back, as if she had some secret she wasn’t going to let on about and Alma found it frustrating.
‘You joining me?’ she asked.
Ellen nodded and sat down opposite her. ‘Some blokes come to see Charlie this evening,’ she said.
‘What?’ Alma’s heart faltered. Charlie’s mates never came here: he always met them at some pub or other, well away from the street. ‘What did they want?’
‘Said they had something for him. I told them he wasn’t in and they said they’d leave it anyway.’
‘What? What did they leave?’
‘Little bag of stuff. I put it down the back of the put-you-up.’
Alma went straight to have a look. She slid her fingers down the gap between the back and the seat, and they closed round the grimy cloth bundle. It was not until then that it occurred to her that it was an odd thing to do, hiding it like this. And even as the thought struck her, she knew that Ellen had been right to put it out of the way. She stood for several moments with the canvas bag in her hand, not wanting to face the fact that anything Charlie’s mates might leave for him was likely to
be stolen. Charlie’s mates, not Charlie. He was in with the wrong crowd, that was all. Unbidden, that dreadful moment at Southend surfaced, and she remembered his hand slipping into a man’s back trouser pocket and coming out with a wallet.
Her courage failed. She did not dare look inside the nasty little bag. She was frightened of what it might contain, terrified that it might confirm all the suspicions that she tried so hard to keep at bay. With a shudder, she thrust it back in its hiding place.
‘Nothing important,’ she said to Ellen.
‘Right. I’m going to bed now. Gerry went up ages ago. He’s tired.’
‘Poor lamb.’ With relief, Alma focused on her other son. ‘He works so hard. Always has. He’ll work himself into an early grave, he will. He does it for you, you know, Ellen – you and the kids.’
‘I know,’ Ellen said. ‘I’d help him on the stall still, if he’d let me. He needs someone with him, but he won’t hear of it. Says the children should have their mum looking after them.’
This was a stab at her, Alma realized. It was all very well for Ellen to stand there saying things like that. She had Gerry out there making a living; she didn’t have to bring up the children on her own.
‘He’s a good dad, is Gerry. Thinks the world of Jess and Teddy. And this new one. Real thrilled, he was, when he told me. Had tears in his eyes. Not many men’d be that pleased about their third.’
And there it was again, that secretive look. Alma supposed it was just because she was carrying. Women got a bit odd then. She’d been odd herself, so proud, as if she was making the whole world inside of her.
‘Oh yeah, he’s good with the little ’uns,’ Ellen agreed. ‘’Night, Mum.’
That was something, anyway – she did call her Mum. Alma liked that. She sat up some while longer, sipping the tea and trying not to worry about her boys. Gerry had married a good ’un there in Ellen, but he was running himself into the ground to provide for her. It was like he was always trying to prove something. As if that was needed. He was the best, her Gerry. It broke her heart to see him with that hunted look always on his face. In the old days, there was always a smile and a joke from Gerry, always some new plan, some wonderful deal. He never seemed to smile now.
She tried to keep her mind on Gerry, as the lesser worry, but inevitably Charlie crept in on her thoughts. She never knew where he went to or what he was up to. All she did know was that he was in with a very bad crowd. It was no good her saying anything. He’d given up
listening to her when he was still at school. She had no power over him at all.
The door banged open and she jumped, then went limp with relief, her hand to her thudding heart.
‘That you, lovey?’ As if it would be anyone else.
There was a rumble of reply and Charlie appeared, swaying as he held on to the kitchen doorframe. Alma surveyed him anxiously. He was drunk, but he was fully clothed.
‘Had a good time?’ she asked.
‘Yeah.’ He lunged past her, blundering into furniture, wrenched open the back door and made for the privy. That was normal enough, and Alma decided she had been worrying about nothing. Last week had been dreadful, but it wasn’t going to happen again. Reassured, she went to bed.
She was still half asleep the next morning when there came a banging on the front door. She sat bolt upright in bed, nerves jangling with the shock.
‘What the bleeding hell . . .?’
For a moment she was confused. This couldn’t be happening, not first thing of a Sunday morning. She listened. Teddy’s high-pitched babble floated up the stairs, then Ellen’s voice, wary and measured, and two men’s voices, heavily polite. She heard Charlie’s name mentioned – ‘Charles Albert Billingham’ – and then she knew.