The Bells of Bow (6 page)

‘Well done, Chas,’ said Albie, slapping him hard on the shoulder. ‘Now. See this?’ He held up an envelope.

Chas replied with a silent nod.

‘Good. You put it through the letter box of number six. Got it?’

Chas nodded again, took the envelope and got out of the car, soundlessly repeating to himself, ‘Number six, number six.’ He had taken only two steps away from the car when he turned round, ducked his head and looked at Albie through the window. ‘Number six
Darnfield Street
, would that be, Al? Where the girls live?’

Albie wearily exhaled a stream of blue-grey cigarette smoke. ‘Yes, Chas,’ he sighed. ‘Number six Darnfield Street. Where the girls live.’

‘Right.’

Chas might have been slow in some ways but he was quick enough on his feet. He was soon back in the car, his errand run, waiting to see where Albie was taking him next.

‘Breakfast?’ Chas wondered hopefully.

‘Breakfast,’ confirmed Albie.

Within two minutes they were walking into a cafe on the Mile End Road; even at ten to nine on a Sunday morning, it was crowded with customers.

‘Hello, Paulo, mate,’ said Albie. ‘Why ain’t yer in the kitchen?’

‘I am, and I’m out here and all. I’m doing everything this morning. Bloody madhouse, it is.’

‘So where’s your Gino then? Not at church surely? I know he’s a bit of a holy Joe even for one o’ you mob, but even Gino puts his business first.’

Paulo wiped his hands down the front of his white, starched apron. ‘He’s gone back home for a few weeks,’ he whispered nervously.

Albie frowned. ‘He never mentioned nothing to me.’ Suddenly he didn’t sound so friendly. ‘Here, yer don’t mean home as in Italy, do yer?’

‘Yeah.’

‘But he ain’t been there for years.’

‘It’s Mama.’

‘Old lady sick, is she?’ asked Chas with a concerned frown.

‘No. She’s fretting about war breaking out ’cos she’s heard how there’s been trouble over here for some of the Italian families with cafes and that.’

‘But yer know nothing like that’ll happen around here, Paulo, me old son,’ said Albie, brightening up again. ‘Not while yours truly’s here to look after yer.’

Paulo nodded gloomily. ‘Right. That’s what Gino said.’

Albie winked and pinched Paulo’s cheek. ‘So long as you remember that, then everything’ll be all right, won’t it?’

Paulo nodded again, this time with resignation, then he swallowed hard. He looked over his shoulder to make sure that no one was listening. ‘Gino told me about the payments.’

‘Good, so there won’t be no misunderstandings then. Right. That’s settled. Now give us two breakfasts. Matter o’ fact, I think I could manage the full works this morning, so make sure yer give us all the trimmings.’

‘Right, Albie, sure. Straight away,’ Paulo said and headed quickly towards the kitchen, ignoring a customer in the corner who was asking for another cup of tea.

Albie and Chas settled down at a table near the window. Albie lit a cigarette and made himself comfortable, enjoying the sun warming him through the glass. It looked like being another nice day, maybe even the start of an Indian summer after the wet and windy weather of the last few miserable weeks. But the moment was spoilt for Albie. ‘Aw, no,’ he said turning away from the window. ‘He ain’t seen me, ’as he, Chas?’

‘Who?’

‘Him. Out there. Doctor sodding Reider.’

‘He’s seen yer all right,’ sniggered Chas. ‘And just look at the state of him trying to cross that road. Pissed as a fart and it ain’t even nine o’clock yet.’

Albie shook his head as the man came stumbling into the cafe. ‘You watch.’ Albie winked at Chas. ‘He’s on the tap again. Guaranteed.’

‘Albert,’ slurred Dr Reider, his eyes swivelling in and out of focus as he tried to find his way towards Albie’s table. ‘Just the chap.’ He slumped down on the chair next to Chas and leaned across the oilcloth-covered table towards Albie. ‘Was out to a bit of a party last night and I seem to have found myself a bit short of the readies. Wonder if you might …’

‘I’ve told yer, Dr Reider,’ said Albie standing up and reaching into his trouser pocket. ‘Yer wanna keep away from them spielers or yer’ll never have no dough.’

‘What makes you think I’ve been gambling?’ the doctor asked in an offended voice.

‘Just a guess,’ said Albie and slowly folded up a large white five pound note before handing it to the doctor. ‘It’ll have to go in the book, yer know.’

‘Of course, of course,’ Reider agreed willingly. Then he rose shakily to his feet, pocketed his loot and wove his way unsteadily out of the cafe.

Albie watched him pass the window, heading straight back in the direction of Whitechapel and its illegal gambling clubs, exactly as Albie knew he would. ‘Mug,’ he sneered.

‘Watch yer backs.’ Behind them Paulo appeared with two plates piled high with fried bacon, sausages, eggs, tomatoes and black pudding. ‘On the house, Albie,’ he said uneasily.

‘Nice. Very nice. I like a bit of respect.’ Albie nodded for Paulo to leave as he pulled his plate towards him and stuck a fork into the crisp, dark brown skin of a sausage, making it spurt a jet of hot fat across the table. He raised the sausage to his lips and blew on the hot meat. ‘He must owe me mum nearly a hundred quid, that Reider. Drinking and gambling can be very dear hobbies.’

‘What, even on a doctor’s wages?’ Chas asked, his mouth full of black pudding.

‘Specially on a good wage – more to lose, yer see. And if he knows what’s good for him he wants to start thinking about getting some of that money back that he owes me mum. Yer know how she gets.’ Albie chewed reflectively on the piece of sausage. ‘Not bad,’ he said, cutting through one of his eggs, releasing a thick pool of dark yellow yolk. ‘It’s different me and the old man having our little dip,’ he continued. ‘But she don’t appreciate no strangers taking liberties.’

Chas laughed, a cold, dry sound that rumbled in his throat.

Albie didn’t join in, he had a hurt look on his face as he put down his knife and fork. He raised his hand and snapped his fingers to attract Paulo who was hovering anxiously by the counter. ‘No fried bread.’ Albie’s expression might have been one of disappointment but his simple statement sounded menacing enough to send Paulo rushing back to the kitchen.

‘Mum, I’ve got the takings,’ Albie shouted along the passage as he stepped inside the street door of the Denhams’ house in Bow Common Lane.

Even though everyone in the area knew that Queenie kept all her money indoors – like most moneylenders she had no time for banks and had no intention of bothering herself with things like tax – nobody would dare go through the ever open front door without being invited in, not when she had an old man like Bernie and definitely not with a son like Albie around the place.

‘Yer’ll have to wait a minute if yer want yer breakfast,’ she yelled back at him from the front parlour. ‘I’m in here just seeing to this. Trying to make sense of all these bleed’n bits of paper.’

‘It’s all right, Mum. I’ve had some already.’ Albie went into the dingy parlour. The small room was made to seem even tinier by its clutter. There was not a space that didn’t have a dust-covered ornament, a vase of drooping, dead flowers or a pile of unidentifiable clothes which could have been dirty or were maybe waiting in their crumpled heaps to be ironed into more recognisable shapes. Albie lifted a toppling pile of papers from the greasy seat of an overstuffed armchair that stood by the table at which his mother was working, and sat down. He puffed out his handsome cheeks and patted his middle contentedly. ‘Right full up, I am.’

‘Aw yeah. And where’d you have that then? Round some silly tart’s house while her old man’s away at sea, I suppose.’ Queenie looked up and smiled proudly at her son, her face folding into deep, thickly powdered creases. She had bright crimson circles of rouge on her cheeks that matched her painted lips, and black, pencilled eyebrows which rose into extravagant arches high above her actual brow line. With her startlingly unnatural orange curly hair and the material of her vivid floral frock stretched tight across her bosom, Queenie bore more than a passing resemblance to a pantomime dame. ‘Yer a lad with the girls,’ she beamed at her son. ‘New one every week. Just like yer old man,’ she added fondly and then went back to trying to make sense of the accounts over which, she knew, her husband and son bamboozled her.

‘If yer must know, I had me breakfast in a cafe. But I have got meself a new girl.’

‘Oh yeah? So who’s this one?’ Queenie frowned at yet another indecipherable pencilled note from the pile in front of her, then shrugged and stabbed it down hard onto an already overspilling spike.

‘Right looker she is. Blonde. Very tasty.’

‘After me dough, I suppose, like all the rest of ’em.’

‘Leave off, Mum. Even if I was boracic lint, yer know I could get any girl I wanted. Can’t resist me, can they?’

‘Hark at you,’ Queenie said rolling her eyes. ‘Yer sound just like that bloody father of your’n. I dunno. Men!’

The cackling of sudden laughter coming from behind him made Albie start. He twisted round in his armchair to see one of Queenie’s many customers, an elderly woman in a baggy, navy blue serge coat and a headscarf, grinning at him from the corner of the room.

‘Yer right there, Queenie,’ the old woman cackled, exposing her stained and broken teeth. ‘They’re all the same, men, the bloody lot of ’em. Least they are in the dark with their trousers down!’

‘D’yer think Dad heard us coming in last night, Eve?’

‘Bloody hell, I hope not,’ Evie glanced sideways at Babs and pulled a face. ‘Anyway, it was hardly last night, was it? This morning, more like.’ She carelessly dropped the dirty plates from their Sunday dinner onto the draining board and stretched luxuriously, lifting her arms high above her head. ‘Can’t be helped, Babs, but yer gonna have to do the washing up all by yerself ’cos I’ve gotta get ready. I’m seeing Albie tonight, so I wanna look me best, don’t I?’

Babs silently carried on with what she was doing. First, she covered her dress with the cross-over apron that she took from the nail behind the kitchen door, then she lifted the kettle from the stove and poured boiling water into the enamel basin which stood in the big butler sink, threw in a handful of soda, and topped up the basin from the single brass cold-water tap. She slipped the plates and cutlery into the bowl and began scrubbing them clean. Evie made no effort to help her.

‘So when was all this decided then?’ Babs asked over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t hear no one say nothing about going out with him while we was in the car last night, apart from the stuff you told me about him asking yer to go flapping.’

‘You was too busy with that Chas,’ Eve said, shoving Babs in the back so that she slopped water onto the kitchen floor. ‘Saucy cow. Yer was making a right meal of it, weren’t yet? All over him.’

‘Don’t tell lies, Evie. Yer know it wasn’t like that. And yer can stop yer joking around and all. I’m just about fed up with you always getting out of doing everything.’

‘You ain’t gonna start, are yer?’ Evie levered herself onto the scrubbed kitchen table and swung her legs restlessly backwards and forwards. She hesitated for a moment then said, ‘Tell yer what, I’ll put the kettle on and we can have a cup o’ tea before I take meself upstairs to get ready. How about that?’

‘All right,’ sighed Babs. ‘At least yer’ll be doing
something
.’ She wiped her cheek with the back of her wet and greasy hand. ‘And yer can take one through to Dad while yer at it. Before he closes his eyes for his afternoon kip.’

Eve reached across Babs to fill the kettle from the tap and then set it back on the gas stove.

‘Yer still never said when he asked yer.’ Babs leaned sideways out of Evie’s way so she could reach the cups and saucers stacked on the single shelf that ran along the wall above the sink.

Evie took an envelope from her dress pocket. ‘It’s a letter,’ she explained, holding it out to her sister.

Babs didn’t take it from her. ‘Me sister’s a genius and she’s got a boy friend what can write,’ she sniped sarcastically.

‘All right, clever clogs,’ Eve sneered back at her. ‘So that means yer won’t be wanting to share the fiver that he put in the letter, does it? Shame, ’cos he said we should both get ourselves a little treat, and all.’

‘A fiver?’ Babs almost dropped the plate she was washing. ‘Evie, has that peroxide sent you completely out of that head o’ your’n? What on earth’s possessed yer to take money off the likes of Albie Denham?’

‘Aw, leave off, Miss High and Mighty. Why shouldn’t I take it?’

Babs’s voice rose with her anger. ‘’Cos he’s a crook and he pulls all kinds o’ dodgy strokes that you don’t wanna get mixed up with. That’s why.’

‘Aw yeah, and what kind o’ dodgy strokes are they then? Seeing as you know so much about it all.’

‘You know as well as I do, Eve.’ Babs turned to her sister and began counting on her wet fingers. ‘There’s the flapping, for a start. Then there’s his dad, he’s a bookie, and his old girl’s a moneylender. And then there’s the talk that he’s involved in the protection racket.’

‘Well,’ answered Eve pertly. ‘I should do all right for meself then, shouldn’t I? What with all that dough coming in.’

‘Evie! I don’t believe this. What the bloody hell’s got into you?’

‘Don’t be such a hypocrite, Babs. I never saw you complaining when we was in that club last night.’ Evie narrowed her eyes. ‘I know. How about you coming along with us tonight? Shall I tell him to bring Chas along for yer?’

‘You are kidding, ain’t yer? It was all right for one night, just for a laugh, but what would I wanna get mixed up with the likes of them two lairy bleeders for? Chas is a bleed’n ape and that Albie … Reckons he’s George Raft, how he struts about.’ Babs turned back to the washing up. ‘It’s just asking for trouble going around with that pair.’

‘Suit yerself.’ Evie shrugged dismissively and slipped down from the table onto the lino-covered floor. Very deliberately she went over and turned off the gas. ‘I’m going up to get ready.’

This was too much for Babs. ‘How ’bout the tea, yer lazy cow?’ she screamed. ‘Can’t yer even do
that
?’