The Bells of Bow (2 page)

‘Now don’t make no noise,’ whispered Eve, creeping out from the bedroom onto the landing. ‘We don’t wanna wake him. He’ll only try and tap us for a few bob.’

‘But he’s been asleep since this afternoon,’ Babs replied, muttering the words under her breath as they stepped gingerly onto the uncarpeted wooden stairway. ‘He’s bound to be awake by now.’

‘Don’t bet on it, Babs. From the stench of beer on him when he got back from the pub at dinner time he’s sunk enough pints to keep him asleep in that armchair till tomorrow morning.’

‘But he’ll be sure to wanna know where we’re going,’ protested Babs.

‘D’yer reckon?’ asked Evie cynically. ‘Won’t you ever learn?’

Babs shrugged. ‘Well, he might do.’

‘If he was interested, which I doubt,’ Evie answered her wearily and far more loudly than she’d intended, ‘surely even
he
can work out that it’s Saturday night. So where’d he think we’d be going?’

‘Who’s that?’ a thick, slurred voice asked from the back kitchen.

‘Only us, Dad,’ Evie soothed him, all the time moving carefully along the narrow passage which led towards the street door. ‘You go back to sleep.’

Just as she reached out to put her hand on the latch, Georgie mumbled something else, this time unintelligible. Evie stopped in her tracks and waited a moment. When there was no more noise from the kitchen, she hissed at Babs, ‘Go and see if he’s gone back to sleep.’

Babs opened her mouth to object but Evie urged her on with a quick sideways nod of her head. ‘Go on, hurry up.’

Babs tutted and crept back down the dim passage, past the closed door to the front room, and stopped by the open doorway of the kitchen. She looked into the little room and saw her father slumped, as usual, in the high-backed carver chair that stood by the gas stove which had been fitted into the old fireplace. His chest rose and fell in time with his coarse, drunken breathing.

Babs went over to him and touched him gently on the hand. ‘You all right, Dad?’ she asked softly.

Ringer groaned and shifted his large, although no longer muscular frame in the hard wooden seat, but he didn’t wake.

‘See yer later,’ she whispered gently. ‘Me and Evie’s going to the Troxy. We won’t be late.’ She bent forward and kissed the sleeping man’s forehead.

‘Babs.’

On hearing Evie whisper her name, Babs turned round; she gasped and drew back in alarm, taken aback by the sight of her still unfamiliarly blonde sister standing tight-lipped in the kitchen doorway. ‘Yer made me jump.’

‘Come on,’ Evie commanded as she walked back down the passage. ‘Leave him. Or we’ll never get to the bloody picture palace.’

She stood impatiently by the street door, waiting for Babs to join her. ‘And yes, I’ve got it,’ she said, before Babs could ask, holding up the latch key and then dropping it into her handbag which she closed with a snap of the clasp before pulling the door open wide. ‘Least it’s not raining again tonight.’

‘No,’ said Babs, looking up at the clear, deepening blue of the late evening sky. ‘Thank gawd for that and all. All that rotten rain was really beginning to get me down.’

The twins stepped out from the gloomy passageway of number six into the bright warmth of the August evening and the lively, tight-knit community of Darnfield Street. Next door, at number eight, down towards the blocked canal end of the street, Maudie Peters was using a wet rag to wipe down the stone ledge of her front window.

‘Evening, Miss Peters,’ they called out, as though they were speaking with a single voice.

‘Evening, girls,’ she answered, wringing out her cloth into the pail that stood by her side. ‘This sun makes everything look so dusty. Still, mustn’t complain, it’s lovely to have some nice weather for a change.’ She looked up at the twins and a smile spread across her face. ‘You’re looking very glamorous,’ she said, wiping her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘A new look?’

‘Yeah, good, innit?’ grinned Evie in reply.

‘And you’re …’

‘Evie,’ said Babs, then added hurriedly, ‘No, I mean
she’s
Evie.’

Maudie chuckled. ‘It’ll make it easier to tell you apart.’

‘Like it, do yer, Miss Peters?’ Evie asked, turning her head from side to side to give her a better look.

‘Very much, Evie. In fact, as always, you both look a picture.’

‘Ta,’ the twins said in happy unison.

‘Have a nice time, girls, must get on.’ Maudie Peters returned her attention to her window ledge and her wiping down.

‘She ain’t bad when she smiles,’ said Babs under her breath as she and her twin walked towards the open end of Darnfield Street where it joined Grove Road, the main thoroughfare that stretched from Victoria Park to Mile End.

‘Yeah, she’s a funny one though,’ Evie said, glancing back over her shoulder at Maudie. ‘Never seemed like she fitted in round here somehow.’ She shook her head in puzzlement. ‘Bit of a frump really but still knows when someone looks good. I reckon she could be a bit of a looker herself if she made an effort. Nice though, in her way.’

‘Yeah, I like her. How old d’yer reckon she is?’

‘Dunno,’ said Evie, screwing up her face as she tried to work it out. ‘Late thirties? Forty maybe?’

‘Don’t,’ protested the seventeen-year-old Babs, a look of dread in her eyes. ‘I hate the thought of getting as old as that.’

‘I’m never gonna get old,’ Evie said firmly.

‘Dozy mare.’

‘No, I mean it. I’ll always be young at heart, me, no matter how old I am in years. You just wait and see.’

‘Prove it then,’ Babs dared her, and dragged her sister over to a group of chanting girls who were playing skipping games in the middle of the street with a length of old washing line.

‘Give us a go, kids,’ said Babs, rubbing her hands eagerly together.

‘Here y’are then,’ chirped one of the youngsters, pushing a smaller girl out of the way to make room for the twins.

Without another word, Evie and Babs dropped their handbags onto the kerbside and ran and jumped straight into the path of the turning rope. Holding their skirts down with one hand and their hats on with the other, they both skipped while the kids sang out at the tops of their voices:

Underneath the spreading Chestnut Tree
Neville Chamberlain said to me
If yer want to get your gas mask free
Then join the bleeding ARP!

Across the road from the Bells’ house, Minnie Watts and Clara Thomas, two fine, large late-middle-aged women who lived in the upstairs rooms of number five, stood on their street doorstep enjoying the warmth of the late evening sun, laughing with pleasure at the sight of the twins skipping so enthusiastically.

‘Wish we was still young enough,’ one of the women called to the twins, tucking her meat-plate sized hands under the front of her enormous cross-over apron.

‘And who said yer wasn’t, Min?’ Evie called back to her as she bounced up and down on the spot in time to the twirling rope. ‘Come on. Come over and have a go.’

Minnie and Clara looked at each other. Clara shrugged then nodded. With a chuckle, the two big women waddled over to the laughing youngsters.

Babs and Evie ducked neatly out from the path of the turning rope, making room for Minnie and Clara.

‘Yer’ll have to slow down while we get in,’ instructed Minnie, positioning herself at the ready, her fat, pink tongue stuck between her lips. ‘We ain’t as young as we used to be.’

Then, laughing and puffing, she and Clara threw themselves into the game.

Babs and Evie clapped and cheered as the two women, huge bosoms bouncing, heaved themselves over the slowly turning rope while the kids recited ‘Salt, mustard, vinegar, pepper’.

‘We’ve gotta go now, see yer,’ Babs yelled over the shrill children’s voices. ‘Enjoy yerselves.’

‘Yeah, see yer, gels,’ gasped Minnie, staggering away from the rope. ‘Have a good time.’

Clara, whose tightly waved steel-grey hair hadn’t shifted an inch, raised her hand to wave goodbye to the twins. ‘Come on, kids,’ she wheezed as she joined her friend. ‘Me and Min’ll turn the rope for you young’uns while you have a go. We’ve done all the jumping about we can manage for one day.’

Evie and Babs waved back and bent down to pick up their bags from the kerb. As they stood up they were nearly knocked over by two scruffy little boys who darted out from behind the baker’s shop and raced past them before disappearing over the wall of the Drum and Monkey, the pub which stood on the opposite corner.

‘Jenners?’ asked Evie, looking towards the pub wall behind which the boys had vanished.

‘Yeah,’ Babs nodded. ‘Another two. Seem to breed overnight, that family.’

‘How many they got now?’ Evie pondered as she repositioned her hat and fastened it securely with the long, pearl-topped pin.

‘Dunno,’ Babs said, shaking her head in wonder. ‘I’ve lost count and yer hardly ever see her to get the chance to ask. Probably too busy with all them kids.’

‘I think it’d be funny having more than the two of us, don’t you?’ Evie mused, linking arms with Babs. ‘I never wanted any more brothers or sisters.’

Before the girls had moved more than a couple of steps, the heads of the two tousled-haired boys reappeared over the wall. ‘Guess what, gels?’ one of them whined pathetically. ‘There ain’t no empties to nick over here, not a single one.’

‘Nellie’s probably got ’em all hidden away from thieving little toerags like you two, that’s why,’ laughed Babs, turning round to face them.

‘We was gonna get ourselves fish and taters with the money and all,’ snivelled the other boy. ‘We’re really starving.’

‘Yeah, yer look hungry,’ said Evie, staring at the rosy-cheeked, chubby-faced child.

‘Chuck out yer mouldies for us, twins,’ he pleaded. ‘Go on. Please.’

‘Take this for yer cheek, yer pair of villains,’ laughed Evie. Taking a couple of coppers from her bag she flipped them towards the boys.

The boys scrambled back over the wall to retrieve the shiny treasure. ‘Cor, ta, twin!’

Now Babs was laughing too. ‘Twin! I dunno. We’ll have to wear labels round our necks till everyone knows which of us is the blonde one.’

‘I’d have thought that was quite obvious,’ snapped a short and bony elderly woman. Her narrow lips pursed, she moved towards them like a pint-sized sergeant major leading the troops on a parade ground. Trailing several yards behind the woman was an even shorter thin-faced ferret of a man who, apart from his wrinkled old man’s face, looked for all the world like a reluctant child being dragged back to school after the summer holidays by his bullying mother. The two were husband and wife, Nobby and Alice Clarke, the couple who lived downstairs from Minnie and Clara at number five.

‘Obvious, is it?’ asked Babs, hands on hips. ‘All right then, which one am I?’

‘Don’t yer start yer old nonsense with me, my girl,’ snapped Alice.

‘Bloody hell, twin,’ beamed Nobby, as he caught up with his wife. ‘What yer gone and done to yerself now?’

Evie flashed him a dazzling, dimpled-pierced smile. ‘Like it, do yer, Nobby?’

‘Yeah, not half.’

‘She’s had them crackers in her hair again, Nobby. And bleach this time. Just look at her,’ fumed Alice.

‘I am, Alice, I am.’ Nobby was too busy gawking at Evie to notice Alice’s hand come round with a sharp wallop on his ear.

‘Oi!’ he complained, his face screwed up with pain.

Alice’s response was to tut loudly and to grab the unfortunate Nobby roughly by the arm. ‘I dunno,’ she spluttered as she propelled him towards number five. ‘Throwing money away on them Jenner kids like it comes off trees and then blonding and waving their hair. Whatever next, eh? Tell me that. That Georgie Bell had better keep an eye on them girls of his or they’ll turn out just like their no-good mother. You mark my words if they don’t. What a family.’ Then she turned back towards the end of the street and, letting go of her husband, she tucked her fists into her waist and bellowed, ‘And now where’s that Micky got to?’

As if on cue, Micky Clarke, Alice and Nobby’s fifteen-year-old grandson, turned into the street at a fast trot. But at the sight of Evie, he pulled up dead and let out a long low whistle.

‘Cor!’ he said with an enthusiasm as unwisely undisguised as his grandad’s had been. ‘What a sight for sore eyes.’

Evie winked at him and blew him a kiss. ‘Like it?’ she asked, flicking her thick bobbed hair back over her shoulder.

With his mouth wide open and his eyes fixed on Evie, Micky stumbled forward, tripped down the pavement and went careering into his nan’s arms. ‘Blimey, twin,’ he breathed, ‘you ain’t kidding I like it. I thought it was Veronica Lake standing there.’

Evie glowed while Babs sighed, ‘We ain’t never gonna get to see no film at this rate.’

‘Right bloody smashing,’ said Micky, still transfixed by the glorious sight of Evie posing before him. ‘Bloody smashing.’

‘And that’s enough of that talk, thank you very much,’ Alice snarled and cuffed her grandson round the back of his head even more soundly than she’d walloped her husband.

‘Oi, Nan,’ Micky complained, rubbing the sting away, ‘that bloody hurt, that did.’

‘Good, it was meant to. And I mean it, any more of that talk and I’ll wash yer mouth out with soap and water, you just see if I don’t. And I’ll tell yer mother of yer, just for luck.’

‘Nan,’ whinged Micky, his cheeks flaming from the embarrassment of knowing that the twins were standing there watching the whole shameful pantomime. ‘Leave off, Nan. Let go of us.’

With a little lift of his chin, Nobby smiled grimly at the twins. ‘Kids, eh?’ he sighed for want of something better to say.

‘D’yer want a bit of tea?’ Alice growled at her grandson.

‘No thanks, Nan, not till I’ve seen Terry,’ Micky answered quietly, still squirming as he tried to release himself from his grandmother’s humiliating clutches. But his efforts were in vain; little and old she might have been, but Alice Clarke’s grip wouldn’t have disgraced an eighteen-stone stevedore.

‘And yer can keep away from that sister of his and all,’ she snapped.

‘Blimey, Nan, what’s wrong with Mary Simpkins all of a sudden?’

‘Never you mind, me lad. And what did I just tell yer about that mouth o’ your’n?’