Blood Line: Sometimes Tragedy Is in Your Blood. Julie Shaw

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      ‘Down you get,’ she said, gently urging Margaret to climb off of her. ‘Baby’s coming now. Remember Mammy’s baby in her tummy? Baby’s coming now –’

      ‘Baby?’ Margaret’s glass-blue eyes widened. ‘Baby, baby, baby!’

      She shuffled down now, energised, and ran towards the cold hearth. ‘Baby!’ she squealed, picking up a stray piece of coal, scribbling on lino with it as Annie convulsed in pain again.

      She needed to be down there with her daughter, Annie realised. There was no point in even thinking about her bed now. She needed to be down on the floor where Margaret was. And quickly.

      This wasn’t the way I’d planned it! she thought irritably, lifting her skirt.

      Agnes and the midwife rushed into the living room together, just at the point when Charles Hudson made his entrance. He slithered out, huge and glistening – a ten pounder, it turned out – and with a pair of lungs any town crier would have been proud of.

      ‘Oh! It’s a little boy, Annie!’ Agnes cried, her voice breaking. ‘A little gift from God to replace your Frank.’

      Agnes had never known Frank. She and Stan had moved into their house in Broomfields a while after he’d died, but Annie knew her neighbour’s emotion was genuine, and felt an unexpected rush of warmth towards her. She felt like crying too, her eyes filling with tears as she held both her babies, wishing above all that Reggie were home to hold his son. She gazed down at the angry pink bundle swaddled close to her chest. He’d be the light of Reggie’s life, she just knew it.

Chapter 3

      1932

      Charlie was a handsome boy. Everybody said so, especially the women. And he knew it, too. He’d heard it said often enough.

      ‘Ooh, your Charlie’s gonna be a heartbreaker!’ he’d hear them say to his mam. ‘Ooh, look at those eyes of his!’ they’d coo. ‘Look at that lovely head of hair!’ Then they’d ruffle it and mess it up, which annoyed him.

      His hair was black, like his dad’s. His eyes were greeny-blue, like his mam’s. He’d look at himself in the chipped bit of mirror propped above the basin in the scullery, and he’d wonder what it was about his face that was so special. Because it clearly was. The girls in school were always trying to hug and kiss him, and if he rewarded them with a smile they’d squeal in delight.

      It was different with the men, and especially with his father, who didn’t seem to trust him. Charlie never understood what it was that his dad disliked about him – was it because he wasn’t Frank? The baby that had come before and died? He didn’t know, but he felt it and it stung. Reggie either completely ignored him – sometimes it was like he didn’t even exist – or he’d pay him rather more attention than made Charlie strictly comfortable, always trying to catch him out doing something wrong, so he could give him a thump or a whack with his leather belt.

      ‘A sneaky bugger.’ Charlie had heard his dad call him that once. Which had hurt him, because he didn’t even know what he’d done wrong. But it had been all right, because he’d said it to his mam, and she’d given him hell for it. She always did. She was like an animal – his protector, was how he always thought of it. Oh, if she copped his dad giving him the belt for no reason she’d lay into him good and proper, would his mam.

      As well as waiting on at the Punch Bowl, which he’d done ever since Charlie could remember, his dad earned a few bob from boxing. He’d do it at the Spicer Street Club, where, unbeknown to the police, they would throw open their back doors and happily host a fight – and between anyone who thought they could throw a punch. It was a nice earner for the landlord, because he’d take bets from the crowd, providing a pot to be shared between him and the winner.

      Much as he disliked his father, Charlie loved being taken to watch a fight with him. Boxing was in his blood, and it enthralled him. For as long as he could remember he had watched his dad training in the back yard, punching away at a huge home-made punch bag that was hung from an enormous hook fixed into the house wall. Charlie had even watched his mam make it; it was actually a coal sack that she’d filled with pieces of old lino that had been scraped up, bit by bit, from his grandmother’s kitchen floor.

      Charlie trained too. He’d begun when he was three. The linoleum in the sack hurt his knuckles like mad, but he’d soon worked out that it was the one time when his dad would give him his time, so if he’d had his way he’d have punched away all day.

      And boxing was the one thing that made his dad proud of him. Never prouder than when he heard Reggie telling his mam, ‘That kid’s gonna be the next Jack Dempsey’.

      ‘Where’ve you been?’ Annie said now, pulling pins from her hair. ‘You should have been in half an hour back. We’re in a hurry. We’re off to Spicer Street. Your dad’s taking on Billy Brennan today and it’s worth a lot of money.’

      It was a Friday afternoon and Charlie was just home from school. He was tired – no matter how long his legs got, the three-mile walk was never less than punishing come a Friday – but this was the best news he’d had all day.

      ‘I met some mates and we had a kick around,’ he said by way of explanation, lingering for a moment to watch his mam doing her hair. It was black like his and his dad’s but soft where theirs was wiry, and he loved watching her doing it, seeing how she magically made it change, sliding the pins out that she’d put in the night before, in tight little crosses, to reveal curls that would spring out and fall onto her shoulders in big lazy S shapes. He thought she was beautiful and he was glad when people said they could see her in him. She was like a movie star, especially when she put petroleum jelly on her eyebrows. It made her look like that actress Greta Garbo.

      ‘D’ya think me dad will win, Mam?’ he asked her now.

      She grinned. ‘He better do, son,’ she said, pulling her pink cardigan over her shoulders. ‘I’ve got all my mates betting on him. Now go on, go upstairs and get changed, then come back down and wash your face. We have to go.’

      Charlie ran upstairs. He’d been the last one home, he knew, but, bar his mam, the house was empty. His big sister Margaret would have taken the rest off to the park, and she’d be giving them their bread and jam after as well. He had lots of brothers and sisters now – they seemed to keep arriving all the time. As well as Margaret, there was young Reggie, who was eight now, and Eunice, who was five, then two-year old Ronnie and little Annie who was still a baby. There was another one coming too, but not till next year, his mam had told him. And he was glad it wasn’t yet, because he didn’t know where they’d fit. His gran always said there was no room to swing a cat in their house, and he agreed. They were all packed in just like sardines.

      But this afternoon was his, and as he ran into the bedroom he felt a familiar sense of excited anticipation. When Reggie was nine he’d be allowed to come too, but for the moment, at least, going to the boxing was Charlie’s treat alone.

      And as he pulled off his jumper, he also had a brain wave. The week before, he had earned a small fortune – a whole thruppence – for running betting slips around the estate for Mr Cappovanni. Mr Cappovanni was a bookie and his family came from Italy, and Charlie had done work for him for a while now.

      Not that he let on quite how much he’d been getting. No, he usually hid it, СКАЧАТЬ