Paradise Lane (40 page)

‘Go,’ he whispered harshly.

Prudence showed no sign of preparing to leave. ‘You know, I think I have finally become an adult,’ she told him. ‘For too long, I was a bewildered child, afraid of my own shadow. That must have made your life of debauchery so much easier.’ She dropped her head for a second, stared vacantly at the floor. ‘I suppose some of it was my fault, then, so it is right that I should pay your debts.’

‘I am telling you now, if you don’t get out of here—’

‘What?’ Her chin raised itself. ‘You’ll what? Hit me, burn down my shop, take away my dignity? There is nothing you can do to me, Andrew Worthington. As I have already been in close contact with your disease, my system has raised an army of immunity against you.’ She thought for a moment, put her head on one side. ‘Disease,’ she repeated slowly. ‘Like the lepers in the Bible, you should carry a bell to warn others of your progress towards them.’

In thirty-odd years of marriage, he had never known her to make a speech. In thirty-odd years of marriage, she had never defied him. In fact he could not remember when she had last expressed an opinion. ‘It won’t succeed,’ he said quietly.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘This workers’ co-operative, this furniture game. I shall await developments.’

She pursed her lips for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose we might allow you to do that. As long as you await developments from a safe distance, that is.’

He looked hard at her face, found that her eyes were cold, that the jaw had set itself. ‘Clever all of a sudden, aren’t you?’

Prudence rose from the chair, removed the gloves from her handbag. ‘No single man can win against the masses,’ she informed him, the tone matter-of-fact. ‘We are simply too many and too much for you, Andrew. Goodbye.’

His heart pounded loudly as he followed her progress through the ward. Through narrowed eyes, he saw the woman who had been his wife going through the double doors without a single backward glance. Another face appeared briefly, its homely contours framed in an upper panel of glass. Mrs Miles. They were all in it together, then.

Women. Andrew Worthington picked at the fringe of a bottle-green bed cover, hoped that his heart would calm down before bursting all the surgeon’s needlework. Ivy Crumpsall, Prudence Spencer, Rosie Blunt, the Miles woman – they were all joined in the plot to destroy him, had even made allies of the loose females who had given themselves to him over the years.

Sister arrived at the bedside. ‘A visitor, then?’

He glared at the nurse, was convinced that she, too, was a part of the plot. ‘Go to hell,’ he spat.

The craggy features smiled down upon him. ‘We are out of sorts today, aren’t we?’

Andrew Worthington mustered his resources. ‘Speak for yourself. But with a face like yours, I’m not surprised if you feel a bit depressed.’ He closed his eyes, willed her to go away.

Sister Gladys Merton bit back the reply, told herself that it would be unprofessional behaviour if she were to tell him how ugly he was.

He lay as still as stone, listened to her heavy footfalls as she walked into her office. Women. He would need to stay out of the picture for a few years, would need to regain his strength.

But he wasn’t finished. Oh no, he wasn’t going to take this lying down. In time, he told himself. In time . . .

‘So that’s where we’re going to live.’ Ivy plonked the snapshot on the table right in front of Sally. ‘Next door to Mrs Worthington and Mrs Miles. We’ll pay rent to Mrs Worthington, ’cos she owns the house.’

‘She doesn’t,’ replied Sally, an impish smile decorating her face. ‘Mrs Spencer owns it.’

‘Less of your cheek, Clever Clogs.’ Ivy transferred her attention to Arthur ‘Red’ Trubshaw. Red, whose appetites for life and for food were becoming legendary in Hampshire, was pushing porridge round his bowl. ‘What’s up with you? That porridge’ll curdle if you don’t straighten your mush.’

Red shrugged. He didn’t want to go home, didn’t want to end up in a bed containing eight or ten limbs and at least two adenoidal snorers. ‘I’m all right,’ he answered quietly.

‘All right? You look like a week of wet Mondays,’ pronounced the matriarch. ‘I think I’d better give you some working medicine.’

The threat of working medicine was something that hung like a black cloud over any day when one of Ivy’s charges felt unwell. Liquid laxative was prescribed by the good woman for any ailment from headaches to sore feet, and the children usually enjoyed a total and apparently miraculous recovery when offered a spoonful of California Syrup of Figs. But Red shrugged, made no move towards escape.

‘What’s up with you?’ asked Ivy. ‘Have I to get that bottle out and dose you up?’

‘I’m not bothered.’

Sally studied her stalwart friend with interest. Normally, he would have been halfway to Oakmead or Goodfellow Hall when threatened with an inner cleansing. ‘Are you poorly?’ she asked him.

He raised a shoulder. ‘No.’

‘Are you fed up?’

He fixed his gaze on Sally. ‘Course I’m fed up. I’ll be back to our house and Basher Bates inside a week. You’re having a new house and a new school.’ He did not resent Sally’s good fortune, he told himself inwardly. It was just that Hampshire had been so nice, no bugs in the bedroom walls, no cockroaches, no brothers pinching his catapults and glass marbles. The conker season would start soon, too. A lad living round here could be a millionaire when it came to conkers.

Ivy winked at Sally. ‘Shall I tell him?’

‘If you want.’

‘Tell me what?’ He looked at their smiling faces, knew that they had a secret. ‘Go on, then,’ he shouted.

Rosie peered in from the kitchen. ‘Shut up, Red,’ she advised him. ‘Else I’ll come out there and give you a clout. Yon husband of mine’s just spilled his tea when you yelled out.’

‘Sorry.’ He was sorry, too, very sorry for poor Mr Blunt whose mind was wandering, very sorry for Mrs Blunt who did all the cleaning up of the old man’s various accidents.

Ivy took Red’s hands, noticed the dirt under fingernails. ‘You’ll have to be clean,’ she told him. ‘Mrs Spencer won’t put up with no dirt. As for Cora, she’ll likely shove your head under the cold tap and do your ears with carbolic and steel wool.’

‘Eh?’ He looked from one to the other, snatched back his hand.

‘Your mam says you can come along of us to Crompton Way,’ said Ivy. ‘Mr Heilberg called round at your house and asked, then he wrote to us. You’ll be sleeping next door, mind, in Mrs Spencer’s house, but you’ll still be our Red. And your mam and dad’s Red, too. They’re only letting you go on account of overcrowding. You’ve got to visit them every weekend.’

Red let out a sigh of relief that was short-lived. His mam was letting him go. It didn’t feel right. Surely Mam wasn’t going to get rid of him as if he were ready for the rag cart? He glanced at little Sally, realized how awful she must have felt when her mother upped and offed without a by-your-leave or a ta-ra. ‘Did . . . did me mam not say owt about me going, like?’

Ivy nodded. ‘Aye, lad. Joseph Heilberg said as how your mother come over all faint, had to be brought round with Mrs Heilberg’s sally-volley-tiles. Them’s smelling salts, you know. Any road, Mrs Trubshaw said she wanted you to have a chance for a better life. Oh, and if you don’t visit home every Saturday, she’ll sell your hide to Walker’s Tannery.’

Red could not believe his luck. He was ugly, big and clumsy. His mother loved him enough to hang on to him, enough to let him go. He was ugly and stupid, but Ivy and Sally liked him anyway. He was going to live in a house with a garden and . . . A thought struck. ‘Can I change schools and all?’ he asked.

‘Aye, if you must.’ Ivy’s face wore a thin mask of severity. ‘Any trouble and you’ll go straight back to Basher Bates.’

Sally was going to miss her own teacher. She remembered all the little kindnesses, the many occasions when Irene Lever had passed food to the malnourished child whose mother was Lottie Crumpsall. ‘I wish Miss Lever were going to be at our new school,’ she said sadly.

Ivy coughed. ‘She won’t be at no school at all, won’t Miss Lever.’

‘Why?’ chorused the two children.

The old woman patted the steel-grey bun at the nape of her neck. ‘Her’s been in a lot of bother,’ she told them.

Sally glanced at Red. ‘But she were all right, Miss Lever,’ she protested. ‘She never hit nobody, never sent us to Basher for a caning, never hit us with a ruler, never—’

‘She sorted yon feller out,’ Ivy informed her small audience.

Red’s jaw dropped. ‘Eh?’

Ivy was plainly savouring the moment. ‘Walked in his office when he were giving a lad six of the best. Seems she lost her rag, like.’

‘No,’ gasped Red.

‘Yes,’ insisted Ivy. ‘Grabbed the cane off him and broke it in two, she did. Then she put both pieces in the bin and said as how it were a pity she couldn’t stick him in the rubbish and all. Then, just to top it all, she told him what he could do with his job.’

Sally’s loud gulp broke the small silence that followed.

‘Everybody knows about it,’ continued the old woman. ‘The lad as were being punished put it around, told the whole school. Miss Lever walked out and never came back.’

‘Her mam’s ill,’ whispered Sally. ‘She looks after her mam. They live over a shop in town. They need money.’

Ivy nodded. ‘Aye. That’s where Joseph Heilberg found her. Above a shop in town.’ To spin out the drama, she spent a second or two clattering dishes on the parlour table. She straightened, winked at Red. ‘And that’s where he offered her the job. Irene Lever’s coming to work at the mill. She’ll be helping the apprentices to learn about their trades. And she’s good at adding up, so she can keep the books.’ Ivy sniffed. ‘We’ve dispensed with Victor Worthington’s services. Mrs Worthington – I mean Spencer – wanted to keep his firm on as accountants, but we’ve persuaded her to have a complete break for all our sakes.’

Sally didn’t care about Victor Worthington. All she could feel was relief because Miss Lever and her old mother would be safe from financial worry. ‘Can I play out, Granny Ivy?’ she asked sweetly.

Ivy considered. ‘What if you start coming over all lacksy-daisy behind a tree again? What if you start traipsing through holes as aren’t big enough for Red?’ And what about when Worthington gets out of hospital? wondered Ivy, though she kept the thought to herself.

‘I won’t,’ promised Sally.

‘She won’t,’ vowed Red.

Prudence-Spencer-as-was should have sorted Worthington out by this time. Once the man realized there were thousands of folk after him, he would surely learn to behave. ‘Go on, then. No climbing and no leaving gates open. If that bloody Primrose gets in our garden again, I’ll turn you and her into best steak.’

Sally ran to her grandmother, held her close. ‘Gran, you’re all talk,’ she said.

‘And you’ll be fifty next birthday,’ forecast Ivy. ‘Go on, hop it, the pair of you. Get from under me feet.’

Sally and Red hopped it. ‘I’ll be next door to you,’ grinned the flame-haired urchin.

‘With Mrs Spencer. She’s posh, you know.’

They both stopped in their tracks and considered the awesomeness of poshdom.

After a couple of minutes, Red came up with an answer. ‘I think I’ll manage,’ he declared.

‘How? It’ll be all clean boots and matching cups and saucers.’

Red nodded. ‘Aye, I know. But it won’t take me long.’

‘Long to do what?’

‘Train them,’ he pronounced. ‘I’ll soon have them to rights, Sal. Come on, let’s go and find Primrose.’

Joseph Heilberg, in black coat and hat, a rolled umbrella in his hand, strode down Spencer Street and paused at Paradise Lane. Gert Simpson was standing in the middle of the cobbles with a wooden tray in her hands. ‘Keeping the workers fed, Mrs Simpson?’ shouted Joseph. ‘Very commendable. But we should go now and join Ruth, because the ceremony must begin.’

Gert placed her burden on the ground, removed a scarf from a quieter head of hair. ‘Shame they’re not here,’ she told Mr Heilberg. ‘Maureen and Tom should have seen this. And Ivy and our Sally. Still. We can’t be expecting folk to rush back from Africa just to watch the first sod being turned, eh? Then Sally needs her rest after that pneumonia do.’

Joseph, who had discovered in his heart a great fondness for Lottie Crumpsall’s sister, took her arm. ‘We shall represent them, my dear.’

Gert fluffed up her hair, folded her lips so that the applied colour might be evenly spread. All around her, great areas of pavement were missing, so she was forced to depend on her companion as she struggled along in the most sensible shoes she had found among her collection. ‘Even low heels gets stuck,’ she complained. ‘And I wouldn’t be caught dead in owt flatter than these.’ She gave the workmen a brilliant smile. ‘They’ll be nice, these houses, when they’ve been decorated. Electric, too. Eeh, we are going up in the world, Mr Heilberg.’

Joseph nodded. The four Paradise Lane houses were for mill management and for Nutty Clarke, the young Londoner who was to be caretaker of the factory buildings. ‘Where will you live?’ Joseph asked his companion.

Gert shrugged. ‘I don’t know yet. Nay, don’t be worrying about me, ’cos I always fall on me feet. Mind, with these shoes, I might be better falling on me head.’

‘I will find you a home,’ he promised.

Gert shook the brownish curls. ‘I’ve told you – stop mithering. It’s Ivy and Sally as counts, then that young London man with the burns. I mean, you’ve got to see to the Blunts and all. He’s a few slates short, is old Ollie and—’

‘They will live with Ivy and Sally. Mrs Miles and Mrs Spencer will be next door, so the Blunts will be cared for. You, dear lady, must come into the business. There will be many suitable jobs.’

Gert smiled, her teeth dazzling against a frame of scarlet lipstick. ‘Too busy looking after everybody, you are.’

Joseph laughed. ‘This has been my mission in life. My wife, also, tells me off for being too busy. But I am happy.’

They stopped at the recreation ground, watched while the mayor wielded a shining spade to begin the excavations. Many in the crowd had worked for Worthington, had come to see the day when a new beginning promised to wipe out the poison.