The Bad Penny (5 page)

It was a beautiful June afternoon, with the sun shining from a clear sky. Patty was heading for home with baby Merrell fast asleep in her bicycle basket and her black bag strapped on to the carrier. As she turned the corner into Latimer Street, the baby’s weight caused the bicycle to keel dangerously and Patty reminded herself that she really must find someone to look after Merrell whilst she was at work.

Despite the best of intentions, she had not got round to finding – or even searching for – adoptive parents for the little girl and knew now that she would not willingly part with her. At first it had been simple to take Merrell with her whenever she was called out in the night. If it was raining, she covered the bicycle basket with an old oilskin bought from a stallholder in Paddy’s market. If it was fine, a good thick blanket sufficed. Fortunately, Merrell was a contented baby who rarely cried and Patty found it easy enough to unhook the bicycle basket and take it with her into whichever house she was visiting. If the mother-to-be had older children, then Patty left them in charge of Merrell; if not, she took the baby with her into the bedroom whilst she delivered the mother. If a doctor was present, she would leave the basket somewhere near at hand, and so far no doctor had ever queried Merrell’s presence, taking it for granted that the patient was looking after the child for a relative. Patty always made sure that she cycled away, with the baby in the basket, after the doctor had left.

During daylight hours, when she did her revisits, Patty explained that the child was in her charge until she was old enough to go to a children’s home, and though this occasioned some sharp looks and smothered smiles Patty simply concluded that folk thought she was being taken advantage of. However, it did not worry her. She had registered the child’s birth, putting her down as Merrell Peel with unknown parents, and this had never been queried. So long as no one enquired too closely into Merrell’s origins, or tried to take her away, Patty was satisfied.

But now, Patty realised as she cycled up Latimer Street, she would have to do something about the child. She had never looked for anyone to share No. 24, since she found she could manage the rent quite comfortably and really loved having her own little home. She had begun to furnish it and had been delighted, and astonished, by the way her new neighbours and several of her patients had reacted when she had admitted she was fitting it up as and when she could afford to do so.

‘You’ve gorra job on your hands,’ Mrs Clarke had said, seeing Patty hanging up a line of washing across her part of the balcony. ‘I dare say your littl’un makes a deal of washin’ and I know you nurses have to have clean uniforms ever so often.’ She had looked critically at the overall which Patty was pegging to the line. ‘You have to starch ’em an’ all, don’t you? I starches Bill’s collars – he’s a clerk at Exchange station – and that’s a messy enough job, Gawd knows.’

Patty assured her neighbour that the hospital laundered her uniform but not the overall she wore around the house but Mrs Clarke, undeterred, had continued. ‘Mrs Knight telled me you wasn’t much of a hand wi’ your needle. She said you’d bought some real nice curtain stuff for your front room but you didn’t have no sewing machine so you was goin’ to make ’em by hand. I’ve gorra sewing machine and now I’ve left work …’ she patted her protruding stomach proudly, ‘I’ve got time on me hands, like.’

‘Really?’ Patty had said, a little coolly. ‘But I’m afraid I wouldn’t know how to use a sewing machine, Mrs Clarke.’ She remembered chatting to her next door neighbour, Mrs Knight, earlier in the week, showing her the material, explaining that she would be making the curtains by hand, that she was a poor and reluctant needlewoman, and now she regretted it. She had meant to hold aloof from the neighbours, keep herself to herself, but Mrs Knight had been so friendly, so interested, that she had unbent a little. And now look what was happening! Mrs Clarke was as good as saying that she, Patty, needed to borrow – probably to hire – a sewing machine in order to get her curtains made before next Christmas!

But Mrs Clarke had clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Give me a couple of bob to cover cottons and me time, and I’ll do ’em for you,’ she explained. ‘I don’t suppose you know, but I worked in a clothing factory afore I wed and I’m doin’ out-work for them now. It brings in a bit o’ splosh, helps wi’ household expenses.’

Patty had stood staring at her, unable to believe this marvellous offer. She looked searchingly at Mrs Clarke’s freckly face to see whether she was taking a rise out of her. But even if she were … ‘How much would you charge me to make all my curtains, tapes and everything?’ she enquired baldly. ‘I’ve got material for the front room, but I’d want it for the rest as well.’

‘Better let me get it for you,’ Mrs Clarke advised. ‘I’m a dab hand at findin’ just the right stuff up the market. As for making ’em, say I charge a bob a pair? Us have got to stick together, you know, and I dare say when me littl’un’s born there’s things you’ll be able to do for me.’

Normally, Patty would have responded crossly that she needed to be paid for her services, but Mrs Clarke’s offer had been so welcome – and so unexpected – that she found she had no wish to snub the other woman. Instead, she said: ‘It’s very good of you, Mrs Clarke. Do you want me to – to measure up my windows?’

‘Nah, course not,’ Mrs Clarke said scornfully. ‘They’ll be the same as mine … and the same as Nellie’s and Lizzie’s. I made their curtains an’ all, so if you want to see what sort of a job I do …’

‘I’m sure that won’t be necessary,’ Patty said hastily. ‘Are you sure four bob is enough, though? It seems very little for so much work.’

‘It’ll be more than four bob with the tapes and the material,’ Mrs Clarke reminded her. ‘Give me half a bar and we’ll settle on a proper amount when I know what it’s goin’ to cost.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Mrs Knight’s right next door to you, so I dare say you’ve met her son, Derek? He’s ever so nice, everyone likes him. They call him Darky … d’you know him?’

‘I’ve seen him about,’ Patty said guardedly. Considering he was her next-door neighbour it would have been strange indeed had she not noticed him. Derek Knight had thickly curling black hair, very dark eyes and the sort of olive complexion that Patty usually associated with someone of foreign birth. He was also well over six foot tall and well built, so Patty supposed that most girls would think him good-looking, handsome even. ‘I’ve not spoken to him, mind, only seen him once or twice when we’re both coming in around the same time. I don’t believe we’ve ever exchanged so much as a “good morning”, to tell you the truth.’ She did not add, as she was tempted to do, that she had no interest in Darky Knight, no matter how handsome he might be, and what was more was equally uninterested in all young men. It might be the truth – well, it was – but it was not necessary to tell Mrs Clarke how she felt. In fact, if she thought about Darky Knight at all it was because he seemed somewhat sulky, and was definitely not at all friendly, never even smiling when they passed one another on the stairs.

Mrs Clarke chuckled. ‘I dare say you think he’s stand-offish, but you’ll get to know him better in time,’ she said tolerantly. ‘The fact is, he’s still not gorrover the death of his wife. She – and their newborn baby – both died and he’s norrover it yet though it were … let me think … yes, all of three years ago. He stayed in their place for the first year, but then …’ she lowered her voice to a whisper, ‘then they say he tried to top hisself, so Mrs Knight insisted that he come back here to live.’ She sighed gustily, clearly enjoying the drama of her revelations. ‘I thought you’d best know, otherwise you might put your foot in it, like. Now, about them curtains; tell you what, decide what sort o’ colours and patterns you’d like for the material, write it down on a scrap o’ paper and shove it, wi’ the money, under me door. Does that suit?’

Patty began to say it would suit very well when a voice hailed Mrs Clarke in stentorian tones from the balcony below and she set off hastily towards the stairs. ‘I’ll bring the material round as soon as I’ve gorrit,’ she called back over her shoulder. ‘I’m comin’, Maisie.’

Patty had returned to her kitchen, knelt on the floor and prised up one of the short floorboards. Beneath it, in an old Glaxo tin, were her savings. Now that she had a home of her own, Patty often blessed the fact that she had always been a saver and not a spender. There had been nothing worth spending money on whilst she lived in the nurses’ home and worked at the hospital, and though the nurses complained of poor wages and insufficient food Patty had always managed to put some money away each month and was glad of it now. She extracted a ten shilling note from her hoard, noticing ruefully that the amount in her tin was steadily shrinking, and pushed it into an envelope. Then she replaced the Glaxo tin and the floorboard and stood up, going over to the table where she seized a stub of pencil and wrote ‘Curtain money from Nurse Peel’ upon the envelope. Then she took it along the balcony and pushed it under her neighbour’s door.

That night was a busy one. With Merrell snugged down in her bicycle basket, Patty set off at ten o’clock to check on a first-time mother who thought her pains had started; then, later, the doctor sent a message that she was to go at once to another case to assist him with a breech birth. By the time she eventually tumbled into her own bed, dawn was greying the sky and she knew she would not get much sleep before her day’s work began. Even so, before she slept she considered what Mrs Clarke had told her about her neighbour’s son. Young Mr Knight had lost his wife and baby three years ago, according to Mrs Clarke’s memory of the affair. Patty could not remember any such happening and she had been on the district for three years, perhaps a little over. But then she remembered that the young Knights might have been living on the opposite side of the city at the time and put the whole matter out of her head. It was, after all, none of her business. But it was very sad, and explained, she supposed, why Darky Knight always looked so grim.

Patty turned over and pushed her face into the cool pillow. Sleep, she commanded herself, or you’ll be no use to anyone in the morning. And presently, worn out, she obeyed.

Darky Knight had been about to step out of the front door and on to the balcony when the voices gave him pause. He stopped short, clicking his fingers impatiently. It was the bleedin’ women, gossiping out there; he’d hang on a moment until they finished talking and went their ways, then he would set off for the docks. The pubs down there were always open for when the dockers came off shift. Fortunately, his mother had gone to do her messages some time earlier, or she would have chided him for lurking indoors on a fine and sunny day. What was more, she would have guessed just why he was unwilling to go out whilst the women were jangling on the balcony.

‘There’s no sense in avoiding our neighbours, even if they do happen to be young women,’ she would have said. ‘For God’s sweet sake, boy, it’s nigh on three year since you lost your dear Alison; isn’t it time you started to live again? That young Mrs Clarke’s a grand girl so she is, and the new one, the nurse … well, she’s pretty as a picture and anyone can see she’s been let down by a feller or she wouldn’t be bringin’ up that babby by herself, so she ain’t on the lookout for a man of her own, if that’s what you’re afraid of.’

He would say he was not afraid, merely indifferent, and his mam would snort and say that it was time he pulled himself together, began to meet people again, to go to dances, to the cinema … time he began to take a girl about. Despite himself, Darky grinned. In his heart, he knew that Mam was probably right. Alison and the baby had died a long time ago. It was time he at least tried to put it behind him. And you couldn’t deny that the girl next door – Nurse Peel, wasn’t it? – was a real little cracker. That abundant, white-blonde hair, the brilliant blue of her eyes, the rose-petal complexion … he had been amazed when his mam had told him, in a hushed voice, that she was single, seemed indifferent to the feller who had fathered her child, and apparently had no man in her life.

No relatives, either, he thought musingly now. Nor friends, for that matter. She had been in the flat for three weeks and no one had called to see her save those who wanted her professional services. Odd, that. A pretty girl in a good job … but even thinking that way made him feel a traitor to Alison’s memory. His dear little love with her soft, reddish-gold hair, skin like milk dusted with golden freckles, her round, hazel eyes, the lilt of her soft Scots accent, the bubble of laughter never far away … he felt the familiar contraction of his stomach. Gone. Gone. Because they had married and he’d taken no precautions, and she’d got in the family way … nine months of marriage and then …

Darky felt the stupid rage begin to build, the rage which sent him out on drinking binges which had twice almost lost him his job. He closed his eyes and pressed his fists against them until he could see brilliant sunbursts on the blackness behind his lids. Then he leaned his forehead against the cool glass of the window and made himself listen to the talk still going on outside. Anything,
anything
, to stop him remembering, blaming himself …

‘… he’s still not gorrover the death of his wife. She – and their newborn baby – both died …’ There was a short pause whilst Darky gritted his teeth and clenched his fists … how
dare
they discuss him, the common little trollops, how dare they so much as mention Alison! … and then one of them whispered: ‘They say he tried to top hisself …’

Darky felt his stomach begin to turn over and hastily abandoned the window to hang over the sink. He remembered the night his mother had come calling, had found him lying on the kitchen floor … the smell of the vomit was in his nostrils now … but no one knew! Not a soul had ever said a word to him; even in hospital there had been no talk such as he had just overheard, no scandal …