The Family. Kay Brellend

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СКАЧАТЬ you know Jimmy’s moved in up the road?’ He took Alice’s elbow and steered her towards his car, which was parked close to the junction with Seven Sisters Road.

      Alice nodded and let out a dejected sigh. ‘Old Beattie came in and gave us the news. Mum’s gone mad. I told her to ignore him. I bet she doesn’t. I bet she’ll be up the road after him as soon as she’s had a few …’ She tailed off. As soon as her mother hit the whiskey she’d get reckless and belligerent. Rob knew as well as she did what Tilly was like. Their two families had lived cheek by jowl for too long not to know each other’s habits. ‘Glad I’m not living round here now,’ Alice said vehemently. ‘Bet you are, too …’

      ‘Yeah … But not because of him. He’s not going to affect my life ever again. I won’t let him.’ Rob opened the car door and helped Alice in, then tossed a coin to the young lad who’d been charged with keeping an eye on the vehicle while he went about his business. Despite Rob’s reputation as a hound you didn’t mess with, some of the local lads were sufficiently desperate to risk the consequences and try to steal the hubcaps or anything else they could prise free and sell.

      ‘Ta, mister.’ The boy beamed at the thrupence on his palm and hared off.

      Robert put the car in gear and headed up the road. As they passed the house where Jimmy and his family had just moved in, he didn’t even turn his head. But a muscle contracted spasmodically in his cheek.

      Alice glanced at her grim-faced cousin and wondered how to lighten the atmosphere. Getting a ride in a car was a treat for her, especially when she’d been expecting a long walk home. The last thing she wanted was to spoil a pleasant drive with more depressing talk about rotten Jimmy Wild. ‘So … what’s this I hear about you getting engaged to Vicky Watson?’ she teased him. Alice had already guessed it was more gossip than truth. Vicky had probably started the rumour in hope rather than expectation of it becoming fact.

      Robert smiled. ‘First I’ve heard about it!’

      Faye Greaves was standing close to the window when the open-top car and its laughing occupants sailed into view. She felt an illogical little pang tighten her insides as she watched the pretty dark-haired young woman enjoying her husband’s company. He obviously had a better side to him. She’d been on the point of moving away to avoid observing their contentment when her mother looked over her shoulder and also saw Robert and Alice drive past.

      ‘So, he’s off is he,’ Edie muttered, keeping her voice low so Jimmy didn’t hear. ‘I’ll have him next time he’s about. He owes us for a tea-set, and I’ll have the money off him for it, you wait and see. Tight-fisted git,’ she spat.

      Faye chewed her lip, feeling guilty. She’d called him a tight-fisted git, too, and to his face, but she’d discovered that Stephen Wild was anything but mean with money. He’d handed over far more than was necessary to replace the broken china. But she wasn’t about to let on that she’d been compensated. If they’d had any inkling of it, her mother and Jimmy – especially Jimmy – would have had the cash off her.

      She had said nothing to Jimmy about the loss of the crockery, and she knew her mother would keep quiet about it. Angry as she was about the damage, Edie didn’t want any more trouble with Jimmy’s sons; she was relieved just to have a roof over their heads after they’d absconded from Kent.

      Their old place, a poky, spartanly furnished terraced house in Dartford, now seemed a palace compared to the two squalid rooms that had replaced it. Faye would have returned there in a flash if she could. Not that there was any possibility of that.

      She thought back to the times their landlord, Mr Mackinley, had come battering on the door on rent-collection day. Rather than open the door to him, her mother would holler out of a bedroom window that Jimmy had sworn he’d paid everything up to date. Mr Mackinley would bawl back up at her in his guttural Scottish accent, telling her that she was a stupid woman who should know by now that she was saddled with a donkey. Through it all, Faye would sit on the bed, listening dejectedly to their raucous shouting and muttering her agreement with the landlord’s opinion.

      Faye had known for some time that, with Mackinley threatening to send in the bailiffs, a flit was imminent, but it had never occurred to her that they’d be dragged as far away as North London. Then one evening Jimmy had come home from the market empty-handed but with a sly smile that’d prompted Edie to demand why he was looking so pleased with himself when there was no food for their supper. Faye now knew that had been one of the rare occasions he’d given her mother a truthful answer. He’d run into someone from the old days, and they’d given him some right good news about how well one of his sons was doing.

      Faye’s eyes slipped sideways. Jimmy probably wasn’t feeling quite so chipper now the reunion had taken place and his sons had made it clear they wanted nothing to do with him. She turned to focus properly on Jimmy, who was frowning at the newspaper pinned beneath his elbows, tapping his teeth with a pencil. He’d been sitting like that for some time, leaving Faye and her mother to bring some sort of order to their seedy home. Faye turned away from the front-room window and swept the room with her gaze, taking in the stained and sagging flock mattress that covered the bed, which had been pushed against the wall to make room for the rest of the furniture, all of it shabby and clearly on its last legs. In the back room, where she would sleep with Michael and Adam, there was a tiny iron bed for her and a large flock mattress on the floor for the boys. All the bedding was in a similar sorry state with springs and wadding exposed in places.

      Faye’s eyes returned to Jimmy, who was squinting fixedly at the racing pages, sucking on his pencil. Luckily it seemed he hadn’t been eavesdropping on her conversation with Edie. A five-pound note was rare treasure and she wasn’t going to let anyone deprive her of it. She could get a decent secondhand tea service for a few shillings, perhaps some dinner plates as well to sweeten her mother and make her forget about bringing up the subject with Jimmy’s son when next their paths crossed. Faye would tell Edie she’d treat her to the new set from her wages. Fortunately she’d already found a job.

      Earlier that day, as they’d made their way along Blackstock Road towards The Bunk, she’d seen an advert for an assistant being placed in the window of a baker’s shop. The fellow had noticed her looking at it and had smiled and jerked his head, inviting her in. She’d smiled right back, knowing even before she pushed open the door that the job was hers if she wanted it. She’d told Michael to wait outside with their boxes and a few minutes later she’d emerged with a position that paid fourteen shillings a week. It wasn’t much, considering the long hours. She’d wanted more, but having seen her family go by carrying boxes of possessions the old miser had put two and two together and come up with somebody desperately in need of a job. So on Friday she’d buy the crockery for her mother and put the fiver in a hiding place.

      She wasn’t being greedy or selfish, Faye told herself; she just wanted to start a little nest egg that someday soon would take her and Adam – Michael, too, if he wanted to come – a million miles away from her rotten stepfather … and her pathetically weak mother.

      THREE

      ‘Wait a moment, for Heaven’s sake,’ Faye hissed as her mother attempted to delve into her bag before she was completely out of the shop. ‘At least let’s get up the road in case he sees and gets suspicious.’ She slung a glance over her shoulder at the bakery whilst walking swiftly away from it. But her boss, Mr Travis, was busy pulling down the shop blinds in the window furthest away from them.

      ‘Didn’t you get a pie?’ Edie moaned, peering in and poking at the contents of her daughter’s canvas bag. ‘You know your dad’ll be expecting a meat pie.’

      ‘They СКАЧАТЬ