Dancing in the Moonlight (26 page)

They were crossing the Wear Bridge now, and as they reached North Bridge Street, Tom said quietly, ‘Might be best not to mention seeing Lucy to Jacob, Mam. You don’t want to rake it
up again, considering how cut up he was.’

‘You think so?’ Enid looked at him doubtfully. ‘I thought if he knew she was married with a bairn, it’d finish any hopes he might have about her coming back one
day.’

‘I don’t think he thinks that way. He’s got on with his life, hasn’t he? Even walked out with the odd lass or two. But likely it did leave a nasty taste in his mouth and
what’s the point in reminding him, now he’s settled and happy? He thinks she’s down south with Donald – leave it at that.’

‘If you think that’s best, lad.’

‘I do.’ He didn’t want Jacob muddying the waters.

‘Aye, all right. We don’t see much of him these days anyway, as you know.’ Enid glanced again at the son who was her sun, moon and stars. ‘You’re a good lad,
bothering about him, when he’s the way he is with you.’

Tom shrugged. ‘He’s still my brother, Mam. That’s the way I look at it.’

Enid continued to ramble on about her afternoon until he dropped her off outside her front door, promising he’d be round for Christmas Day lunch the following day. He declined her offer of
a drink, saying Mrs Hedley would have his dinner ready and it would take him longer to get home than usual, with the snow coming down so thickly. Once clear of Zetland Street, he pulled the car
into the kerb and sat for a few minutes, staring blankly through the windscreen. His hands were shaking, he realized, holding them up in front of his face and giving a ‘huh’ of a growl.
Stupid!

Angrily he started the engine and drove home too fast for the weather conditions, his head buzzing. Over eighteen months and not a day, not an hour, but Lucy hadn’t come into his mind. But
he’d never once imagined she was married.

He let loose a string of obscenities, beside himself with rage. She must have had this bloke that she had married on the go all along, that was the answer. There was no doubt she’d still
been a virgin the night he’d taken her, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been seeing someone on the quiet. But when would she had found the time and opportunities? She’d had
her hands full with the bairns and keeping house, hadn’t she? He’d thought Jacob was the fly in the ointment, but perhaps she’d been stringing them both along and had had her eye
on this other bloke, this widower. She’d thought she could keep them all dangling most likely – that was the way women were. And then she’d caught her toe with him, when
he’d given her what she’d asked for.

He ground his teeth, wanting to hurt something or someone.

He’d find out what was what in the coming days, he promised himself. She thought she could treat him like a fool and then play Happy Families, did she? Well, she had another think coming.
He wasn’t done with Lucy Fallow. No, not by a long chalk.

Enid entered the house by the front door and as she walked along the hall she could hear Aaron holding forth about something or other. She paused outside the kitchen door,
which was very slightly ajar. She couldn’t have explained why she was about to eavesdrop, because she suspected she wouldn’t like what she heard.

Aaron’s voice was loud and slightly irritable. ‘I tell you, I heard it straight from the horse’s mouth. It’s the same bloke who told me about Walter and Ernie, and he was
there that day an’ all. Maurice Banks, him that lives in Bright Street. He only talks so freely cos he knows I’m Tom’s da and he thinks I know everything that goes on, being
family.
Family!
Huh.’

Enid screwed up her eyes against the bitterness, but still she didn’t make her presence known.

‘But how does he know it was Tom who ordered the bloke to be done in?’

‘Like I said, Frank, Maurice was
there.
All right? Part of it. This wasn’t second- or third-hand. Tom reckoned he had it on good authority that the bloke was working for the
customs, undercover like. And this isn’t the first time some poor so-an’-so’s disappeared or been done over so bad their own mother wouldn’t recognize them. You know that as
well as I do.’

‘Aye, an’ I also know it’s not wise to talk about it.’

‘Oh, come on, this is just us three. What’s said in these four walls stays in ’em, but let’s face facts. Tom’s goin’ to hell in a handcart, and I for one
don’t know him any more. He’s no lad of mine, not these days. I’ve had a bellyful, I tell you straight.’

‘Da, we’ve been over this before. There’s no way out. We keep our heads down and do as we’re told. There’s the Kane lot, don’t forget. No one in their right
mind goes up against them, and Tom’s as thick as thieves with Jed.’

‘Thieves is about right, but I wouldn’t mind if it was just the thieving. It’s the rest of it that sticks in my craw.’

‘Aye, well, that don’t concern us. Like I said, we do our bit an’ keep quiet. The rest is just hearsay, when all’s said and done. He’s never asked us to do anything
like that.’

‘And if he did?’

‘He won’t. He knows you’ve got your breaking point.’

‘Oh aye, very respectful of me, he is,’ Aaron said with deep sarcasm.

Enid couldn’t bear another moment. Creeping back up the hallway, she opened the front door, but banged it shut this time, calling out as she did so, ‘I hope there’s a brew on,
cos I’m frozen through.’

‘Hello, Mam.’ Ralph opened the kitchen door as she reached the end of the hall, taking one of her bags. ‘Got everything you wanted?’

‘Well, what I haven’t got now we’ll do without. It was cold enough to cut you in two out there, but still the town was full and, when you think, it’s only two days,
isn’t it? Day after Boxing Day it’s back to normal except everyone’s drank and eaten too much.’ She was gabbling, she told herself. She had to act natural. Taking a deep
breath, she walked across and opened the oven door to check the pot roast she’d put in before she had left with Tom. ‘It’s ready,’ she said. ‘I’ll just take me
things off and put away the shopping and then I’ll dish up.’

‘I’ve poured you a cup of tea, lass,’ Aaron said behind her. ‘Come an’ have it an’ get warm, the dinner can wait. The lads’ll see to the
shopping.’

His voice had been kind – kinder than it had been for some time – and as she turned she saw that he was pulling out a chair for her at the table. She looked at his weatherbeaten
face, at the lines that years of honest, back-breaking toil to provide for his family had carved out. He had used to come back from the shipyard exhausted and spent, and often frozen to the marrow
in the winter. It was no wonder he was riddled with arthritis and a hundred and one other complaints.

When the moan sounded loud in her ears she didn’t realize for a moment it had burst forth from her own throat. It was shocking, like the cry of a woman in labour. And when Aaron pressed
her down into a chair and then put his arm round her as she wept and wailed, murmuring, ‘There, there, lass, don’t take on. Nothing’s worth this. Come on, me love’, it made
her cry even harder. He was heaping coals of fire on her head. Because she knew, through the remorse and guilt, that she wasn’t going to tell him she had been listening.

Once again, she was choosing Tom.

Christmas came and went on a high of jollity and no one but Ruby knew that behind Lucy’s smiles and gaiety was a nagging, ever-present fear. Once Perce was asleep on
Christmas Eve, Lucy had crept out of bed and gone into her sister’s room, where Ruby was wide awake and waiting for her. They’d sat in the sitting room and, over a mug of hot milky
cocoa, Lucy had told her sister the whole story, omitting nothing. They had cried together and spent half the night talking, and Ruby had agreed to keep her eyes and ears open in the coming days
for any sign of Tom Crawford sniffing about.

On New Year’s Eve they celebrated the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new one quietly as a family. Ruby and John stayed up until midnight and were allowed a small glass of
Perce’s beer each, and Perce acted the goat and stepped outside the flat to knock on the front door as first-foot, on the initial stroke of the New Year.

Later, in the warmth of their big bed, Perce drew her gently into his arms, but not for the reason Lucy had supposed. Instead he lay quietly for some minutes holding her close before saying,
‘I can’t believe you’re mine, lass. I looked at you tonight and it swept over me again how lucky I am. This last year since the bairn’s been born, well, it’s been the
happiest in me life.’

‘Oh, Perce.’ It was at times like this that she told herself she must do everything she could to make him never regret taking them in. He was so good, so kind. ‘I think
I’m lucky, too, to have you.’

‘Oh aye, a man twice your age, with two bairns and a face like a battered pluck.’

She could hear the smile in his voice and she giggled. ‘I like your face.’

‘That’s all that matters then.’ He kissed the top of her head before settling her more comfortably against him. ‘I love you,’ he whispered so softly she could
barely hear him.

She could not say, ‘I love you too.’ Instead she turned and reached for his face, bringing his mouth to hers.

Gradually over the next days and weeks the threat of Tom Crawford was relegated to the back of Lucy’s mind. It was still there, manifesting itself in the odd nightmare
now and again or a jittery feeling when she left the safety of the flat to take Daisy and Charley to the park or to do some shopping, but she forced herself not to dwell on it. Her soup kitchen, as
Perce called it, was a huge success and took more of her time than she’d expected, but this was welcome in the circumstances. It left her no time to brood.

On Daisy’s first birthday at the end of February Perce closed the shop for the afternoon and they took the children to the Winter Garden at the rear of the Museum and Library building. The
large conservatory was full of tropical plants and flowers and had a pond full of goldfish, but it was the aviary that delighted little Daisy. Even after two hours of looking at the birds she
wasn’t ready to leave.

It was a wonderful afternoon, and when they got home and had finished the birthday tea, Daisy put the final seal on the day by taking her first steps unaided. A proud Perce whisked her up into
his arms shouting, ‘That’s me darling, that’s me bonny babby’ and everyone clapped. After that Daisy had insisted on staggering about until bedtime, delighted by the
attention.

It was in the second week of a bitterly cold March, when unemployment’s upward spiral had reached a new peak of one and a half million, resulting in angry demonstrators fighting with the
police in some major cities, that Lucy noticed Perce deep in conversation with a customer one evening. John was keeping an eye on the little ones in the flat above the shop, and she and Ruby were
busy dealing with the queue for hot soup at the far end of the marble counter, which stretched the width of the premises. They were some distance from Perce, and Lucy couldn’t hear what was
being said.

It wasn’t unusual for Perce to chat with his customers – his hearty banter sold more fish than the reasonable prices – but something about this exchange bothered Lucy. For one
thing, the customer was a man, and in a community where women did the shopping this was out of the ordinary. And the individual concerned had a look about him – Lucy couldn’t explain it
to herself except to say that he appeared shifty.

This was explained to some extent when she asked Perce about the man later that night when they were alone. He looked at her a little sheepishly, lowering his voice, although there were only the
two of them sitting in front of the fire now that the rest of the household were in bed, and said, ‘He was after setting up a bit of business, lass. That’s all.’

‘What sort of business?’ She was busy hand-sewing some cream lace on a little dress she’d made for Daisy for the summer, and she stopped to give him her full attention.

‘He’s matey with one of the skippers on the boats, and this bloke sees him all right when they’ve had a good haul. He’s got a stall in the Old Market –
nothin’ fancy – and oft times there’s too much for him to get rid of, but he don’t like to say no in case this bloke takes offence. He’s offerin’ to let me have
any extra, for what he pays this pal of his, on the quiet like. It’s half of what I can get stuff for, lass. Course, I’m not daft. I’ve an idea the price he’s told me, tasty
as it is, is not what he forks out, but if it does me a good turn and he makes a bit on the deal, that’s all right.’

Lucy stared at him doubtfully. ‘Do you think he’s telling the truth? It could be knocked off, you know.’

Perce grinned at her. ‘See no evil, hear no evil, say no evil, that’s my motto, lass, and I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. If he says it’s all above
board, that’s good enough for me.’

‘What about the harbour police?’ she said drily. ‘Would it be good enough for them?’

‘You worry too much.’ His smile widened. ‘Let me do any worrying – that’s what husbands are for.’

‘So when is he bringing it?’

‘Next time he gets a load. He’ll tip me the wink.’

‘I don’t like it, Perce.’

‘It might not happen, pet. Don’t fret. It could well be something or nothing.’ He popped his pipe in his mouth and disappeared behind his paper again, signifying the end of the
discussion.

Lucy bit on her lip. They didn’t need to take any risks, they were doing nicely as it was. Since Daisy had been born and she’d started feeling more herself, she had taken over the
paperwork concerning the business. Perce was no scholar and he hated putting pen to paper, so everything had been in an awful mess, but gradually she’d brought order to the chaos and
established a neat set of accounts, as Ada had done before her demise. The business had never made much of a profit, but enabled them to live comfortably within their means as long as they watched
the pennies. Over the last two months, however, with the soup kitchen, operating profits had begun to soar. Lucy had decided to make batches of bread rolls to be sold alongside the soup, and these
had gone down extremely well. She bought umpteen sacks of flour at a time, seconds, for a very good price, which were delivered free of charge to the shop for a bulk order. In spite of the chaff
and inferior quality of the flour, the rolls were filling and cheap, which was what her particular clientele asked for. Soft white bread at four times the price was no good to families who
hadn’t got two farthings to rub together.