All Fall Down (11 page)

‘Christ!' Rob's wheels locked and squealed. For a second he thought he must have hit him. The women were deadly quiet. As they skidded to a halt and the engine cut out, he swung open his door and stepped out. A second tramp was hauling the inert body of the first clear of the road. ‘Did I catch him?'

‘Just clipped him, I think.' His job done, the rescuer wanted to shuffle out of the limelight.

‘Is he dead?' Lorna recovered first and came to stand by Rob.

‘Dead drunk more like.' Getting over the shock, Rob was more annoyed than anything. ‘Leave him be.' Lorna was trying to turn the unconscious tramp face-up and loosen his filthy woollen scarf. Rob turned to get some sense out of his companion. ‘Where does he live?'

A shrug, a noncommittal shrug.

‘Nowhere.' Rob's hands were deep in his jacket pocket. ‘Marvellous, ain't it?' He was all for leaving him where he was, there on the pavement.

But the two young girls in his cab had turned into would-be Florence Nightingales, along with Loma. They piled out onto the pavement. ‘Poor old thing, look at the state of him. Ain't there nowhere we can take him?' they appealed to the hero of the moment. Meanwhile Rob looked on, while Loma tried to right the victim and Dorothy sat scornfully by, her lip curled, a fresh cigarette between her fingers.

‘Dunno. You can leave him there if you want.'

‘But you know him, don't you? There must be somewhere we can drop him off.'

‘Me? No, I was just passing.' Perhaps it struck the second tramp there was something in this new role of hero, however, for he stopped making as if to wander off into the night and thought again. ‘I don't really, what you might call, know him. Not by name or nothing.'

By now the inert victim was stirring. Lorna succeeded in tipping him onto his back. His cap fell forward over his face.

‘Mind you, I do know there's someone in Bernhardt Court what keeps an eye on him if he's in a real bad way.'

‘Who?' The girl in the red dress seized on this.

Rob turned impatiently and walked back to the cab.

‘Someone in a pub up there.' Their informant struggled to remember. ‘No, it's gone. But it's definitely Bernhardt Court, a pub somewhere there.'

‘Let's take him up there. We can't leave him in this, state.'

‘Who's paying?' Rob wanted to know.

Dorothy met his gaze. ‘Don't look at me. I'm like you, I want my bed.'

The girls wailed in protest, then turned to the coherent vagrant. ‘You could take him!'

‘Not me. I ain't got two brass farthings.'

But there was no stopping them in their mission of mercy. The flame-haired girl hailed another cab, then Red Dress opened her purse. ‘Here's two bob.' She handed a florin to the tramp. ‘We'll put him in this taxi and you make sure he gets up to Bernhardt Court, OK?'

He took it with a stupefied look. Dorothy raised an eyebrow at Rob.

‘Here, give us a hand.' Lorna gave up the unequal struggle to get the semi-conscious man to his feet. The new cabbie leaned out, obviously wondering what he'd got himself into.

In the end Rob saw it as the quickest way out of the difficulty. ‘Get in,' he barked at the bemused hero, indicating the back of the new taxi. Then he turned to help the girls. They got the tramp upright, leaning against Rob's chest. Loma pulled the cap back from the grime-lined, sagging, ruined face. A blast of stinking breath hit Rob full force. He staggered. By the time they'd got him safely stowed, Rob was white and breathing hard.

A door slammed and the second cab set off with the tramps inside, back over the river onto the Embankment. Once out of sight, the hero rapped hard on the cabby's partition. ‘This'll do!'

The cab stopped and disgorged its cargo. The drunken victim
fell flat on the pavement. The other tossed the cabbie a couple of coppers and went on his way, his florin intact.

Sick to his stomach, Rob dropped his own passengers one by one along Duke Street, then made his way to Walter's house. He had to tell someone what had just taken place or he would choke on it. The downstairs light was still on at number 32.

‘Walt?' He knocked quietly on the door and spoke through the letter-box. ‘It's me, Rob.'

Walter was late going to bed; he hated the house without Sadie in it, especially the empty bedroom. Meggie had recently come home and was upstairs in her own bed. ‘Rob, you look done in.' He held the door and let him in. ‘Here.' He went straight to the front room and pulled out the whisky bottle for him. ‘Have a swig. Tell me what's going on for God's sake.'

Rob gulped the drink. ‘Christ Almighty, Walt, you ain't gonna believe what I just did.'

‘Has there been an accident?' Walter feared the worst. Rob was white as a sheet, breathing fast, the sweat standing out on his forehead. ‘You ain't gone and knocked some poor blighter over?'

‘I wish I bleeding well had!' He was in agony. He clenched his teeth as the whisky hit the back of his throat. Then he took another gulp. ‘I wish I'd bleeding killed him!'

‘Who? What is this? Come on, Rob, spit it out.' They had both raised their voices, Walter had to restrain Rob from crashing furniture about the place.

‘I didn't run him over, did I? I wish I had.' He imagined the satisfaction he would have had. ‘Bleeding fool stepped right in front of me, drunk as a lord. I slammed on the brakes, bleeding well missed him!'

‘Who?
Who
?' Walter shook him by the shoulder.

‘Richie Palmer, that's who. I just gone and saved his life.'

Chapter Seven

‘You cast-iron, copper-bottom certain?'

‘I'd know him a mile off.' Rob gave Walter the whole story, blow by blow. ‘The girls get this idea to send him up Shaftesbury Avenue in another cab, to Bernhardt Court, so I'm lending a hand to get him back on his feet and that's when I get a look at him, close as this.' Rob held the flat of his hand against his nose. ‘The man's a wreck, but I still know him and, what's more, he knows me.'

Walter took this in. ‘Give me that,' he said, grabbing the whisky bottle from Rob and taking a drink. ‘You all right?'

‘Tip-top.'

‘It's a good job Sadie ain't here to hear this.'

Rob felt the tension begin to fade. ‘Would you believe it. He was there, right there under the wheels, as near as dammit.'

Walter recognized how he must feel. Even he felt a pang of regret. ‘I suppose he was bound to turn up sooner or later.' He didn't relish the idea of what Sadie and Meggie would want to do next, if they did get to hear.

‘But I had him, Walt, honest to God.'

‘Shh, keep your voice down. I reckon it's for the best.'

‘Not likely. If I'd finished him off there and then, that would've been it. A score settled, an end to your problems.' Knowing Walter as he did, Rob guessed that he would in the end want to go and blab to Sadie. Now he regretted following this urge to tell him all about it. This way, the whole thing would be sure to end in tears. He sat down to try and talk sense into his over-scrupulous partner. ‘Now look, Walt . . .'

‘I know what you're gonna say next, Rob.' Walter rocked back on his chair, rolling the newspaper he'd been reading into a thin column and tapping it against his knee.

‘Will you have to bring this up with Sadie?'

‘Who said I would?'

‘No, but you will, though.' Once more Rob swiped the bottle from the table and took a long drink. ‘Let's get this straight. I nearly run over the geezer what tried to do me in in the first place by cutting them brake rods, only he gets you by mistake. Then he ditches my sister, your missus, and the kid.'

‘I know, I know. Keep your voice down for God's sake.'

‘No, listen here. You're too soft by half, that's your trouble. All these years on, I miss my chance to pay him back. Who'd have been any the wiser? A tramp, dead drunk, walks under the wheels of my cab. Good riddance.'

‘Well, it ain't happened like that, Rob.'

‘Worse luck!' He worked himself up. ‘But I'm stupid, I am. I have to come and tell you all about it. And now you'll go blabbing to Sadie and Meggie, and that'll send them off up Shaftesbury Avenue to Bernhardt Court and they'll be able to track him down. And what'll you do then?'

Walter hung his head. ‘I don't know.'

‘And what'll
they
do? You know Sadie. She ain't gonna be able to take this in her stride, is she?'

She had a lot to cope with these days. She could still be strong and determined, but the worry was definitely undermining her health. Walter would often find her in bed with a terrible headache, or so silent in her routine chores that it was like being in the house with a ghost, a hollow shell, when she turned in on herself and refused to let him come near. ‘But what about Meggie? Don't she have a right to find out about her own pa?'

Rob didn't answer at once. He'd had this argument before, at home with Amy. He saw it as a practical issue: if Meggie succeeded in her hunt for Palmer it would only cause more problems. Amy argued for allowing Meggie to go on looking for him. If she found him, they would clear the air and she would know the truth about
her lousy father. Then she wouldn't have to spend her whole life caught on the hook of ‘if only'.

Outside the door, sitting barefoot on the bottom stair, Meggie pulled her dressing gown around her. She'd been awake from the first knock, when her stepfather opened the door to her uncle. Their raised voices had brought her downstairs.

‘For God's sake, Walt, keep this under your hat. Ain't we got enough to worry about?'

Meggie held her breath. She was on the point of standing up, opening the door and saying, ‘It don't make no difference, I already heard every word.' But something made her stay put. Perhaps she wanted to test Walter's loyalties. Maybe her own mind was so shocked and confused that she lacked the presence of mind to act. So she sat and shivered in the dark.

Walter rapped the newspaper on the edge of the table. ‘Have another drink, Rob. And stop going on about it, will you?' Never, not once in their married life, had he kept anything from Sadie. He sighed and shook his head.

‘I will if you promise you'll keep stumm.'

Meggie heard Walter stand and walk across the stone-flagged floor. She shot upstairs like a scared rabbit, too quick and sudden to hear his final answer:

‘Have it your way, Rob. I won't say nothing to Sadie. Let's keep this between you and me, eh?'

All week Tommy had laid off the drink and given Edie his sober, undivided attention. Instead of repairing to the Duke in the evening, he stayed late in the office, letting her know that he was there, a shoulder to cry on if she should need it. It was the most private and most neutral place he could think of.

To look at her from the outside, coming into work each day in a smart dress, her hair pinned up at the back but falling over to one side of her face in a gentle, shiny wave of honey-gold, always with a cheery word and an instant answer to queries about stock, hours worked, wages, no one would have guessed that she had troubles of her own. Edie had pulled herself together and out of
his arms on Monday evening. He was left with the memory of her burying her beautiful face against his shoulder, as if the imprint of her slight figure had left an indelible impression. At night in bed, he would turn half-expecting it to be Edie there beside him, finding only an unresponsive Dorothy, lately in from her gallivanting.

‘Everything all right?' he asked again on Friday, after Edie had dealt as usual with the wages. He'd told Loma and the others to go on home. He would lock up and finish things off.

Loma made no bones about wanting to be off.

‘You coming Edie?' She shouted down the stairs.

‘No. I've to finish cashing up.'

‘Ta-ta, see you later, then.'

They'd arranged to meet to go to the cinema. ‘Half seven at the bus stop.' Edie heard the shop bell ring and the door slam. She looked up as Tommy came down.

‘Everything all right?'

‘Fine, ta.' She piled the sixpences into silver columns next to the chunky threepenny bits.

He stood looking at her, hands in pockets. ‘Sure? You don't want to go to pieces all over again?'

She laughed. ‘Don't you wish?'

‘As a matter of fact I do.' He walked a fine line between joking and meaning what he said. ‘I like it when you go to pieces.'

Since Monday's confession, Edie had been deliberately brisk with Tommy. Not another soul knew about her row with Bill. Edie's mother was dead, her father lived up in Shoreditch with his spinster sister. They weren't close and, as an only child, she'd grown up used to living an independent emotional life. What others might have called lonely, she thought of as normal. It still wasn't her habit to go sharing her troubles; it altered people's opinion of you too much and, generally, there was little they could do.

‘I hope you don't think I was leading you on?' She left off from her counting, frowning up at him.

He bit his lip. ‘Silly joke. Sorry.' He'd risked the rebuff, but still it knocked him back.

Edie stood up. ‘No, I'm the one that's sorry. You were good to me, Tommy. I was very grateful.'

He felt them drifting, all at sea, her flying the flag of politeness, him making all the wrong semaphore signals in his confusion. There was a knot of tension gathering under his rib cage. ‘I meant what I said; you ought to think why you stay with that old man of yours. But then, I ain't the one to be doling out advice, am I?'

She knew that he meant he had a vested interest. She wanted to be straight with him. She liked her boss. The way he handled himself by joking his way through difficulties, but never at another's expense, and how the tough shell disguised kindness. He looked after Jimmie, didn't he? And his generosity over the little gifts and bonuses was done to please, not out of ulterior motives. This week she'd even begun comparing him with Bill; the solid muscularity of her husband, set against Tommy's wiry, lithe stance.