A Lesser Evil Part 7

'They are not what you know as a family,' Stan chipped in. 'I would call them a tribe. Right now there is only Alfie, Molly and their four younger children, plus Dora and Alfie's nephew, Mike.'

'Dora is Molly's backward sister,' Frank interrupted. 'Completely doolally, and like a walking jumble sale. I once saw her going out in odd shoes and just a petticoat!'

Dan winked at Fifi. He was enjoying this, and she had no doubt he would be imitating both Frank and Stan when they got home.

'But it never stops at just the immediate family,' Stan went on, getting a little agitated now. 'This number can swell at any time. They have so many relatives who come and stay, and there's the card parties.'

Fifi couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw Frank send a warning glance at Stan.

'Card parties!' she said brightly. 'Like bridge or something?'

'Look, Stan, there's Ted over there,' Frank said suddenly, pointing to a fat man with a big red face at the other end of the bar. 'We must catch him and see when the next darts match is.' He turned back to Fifi and Dan and apologized for rus.h.i.+ng off, but said if they needed any help or wanted to borrow any tools, they only had to ask.

'The Man Who Said Too Much,' Dan said in a mock chilling voice as the two older men left them. 'Maybe the card game is Happy Families and they won't let Frank or Stan play?'

'They sound a monstrous family,' Fifi said. 'But I suppose you think they were making it all up?'

'I suspect a bit of exaggeration,' he said with a grin. 'But I especially liked the bit about dopey Dora.'

By closing time Dan and Fifi had met several other neighbours, Cecil and Ivy Hela.s.s, Mrs Witherspoon from the corner shop, and a man called Wally who had only recently moved into a room below Stan, and they all had something more to add about the Muckles.

Mrs Witherspoon was a plump, seemingly kindly middle-aged woman, and she claimed they targeted any new people in the street, asking to borrow things and telling them hard-luck stories. She advised Fifi and Dan never to invite any of them in, as they would be back to rob them as soon as they got an opportunity.

Ivy Hela.s.s said that Stan had seen the two older children locked out of the house one afternoon when there was thick snow back in the winter, so he brought them in to get warm. Two days later he came home to find he'd been burgled, and two solid silver photograph frames taken.

'It was shameful,' Ivy said indignantly. 'That poor man lost his wife and two daughters in the Warsaw uprising, and all he had left was the two pictures of his family. They meant everything to him, and those children must have thrown the pictures away before they sold the frames.'

Wally said that Alfie was a peeping Tom.

Fifi didn't like the look of Wally at all. He had a beer gut spilled over his trousers, and food stains down his s.h.i.+rt. Although he was only about thirty, she thought she wouldn't be surprised to find he was a flasher himself.

But he claimed Alfie was in the habit of climbing along the wall at the backs of the houses, looking into lighted rooms. He warned her she should keep her curtains closed at night.

Despite the rather tedious repet.i.tions about the Muckles, the warmth of the welcome from their new neighbours went a long way to rea.s.sure Fifi that Kennington wasn't such a bad place to live. By the time they got home after the pub had shut, with a bag of chips each, she was feeling much happier and a little drunk.

'It's beginning to grow on me,' she said as she sat down and looked about the living room. With just the light from the table lamps and all their things in place, it looked quite homely.

'Even with the monsters across the road?' Dan asked, raising one eyebrow. 'Or is that part of the attraction?'

Fifi giggled. Dan was always teasing her about her curiosity. 'They sound much too awful even for me,' she said. 'That woman with the black hair who said she lived next to the coal yard said their house is absolutely filthy. She said none of the children were ever toilet trained, and they'd just do it on the floor. She claimed the council has been round to fumigate the place loads of times. She said they have terrible fights in there, and there's always dodgy people coming and going.'

'Don't take it too seriously,' Dan said evenly. 'People do get a bit vindictive about anyone different from themselves.'

Fifi knew he was right about that. Her own parents had proved it by being so nasty about Dan.

'Perhaps I'll put them under close observation,' she joked. 'I could make a study of them. Log what they do and at what time. If they really are responsible for all the crime around here, it could be useful to the police.'

'Then you'd better have a chat with the French dressmaker,' Dan said with a wide grin.

He had been far more intrigued to hear about the woman from Paris who sat sewing by her window all day than by the more salacious stories about her next-door neighbours. Apparently she only went out to give fittings for her wealthy clients, but it was generally supposed she knew everything that happened in the street. 'She might do some s.h.i.+fts for you. Or maybe I should study her!'

'We could call ourselves "Super Snoops",' Fifi giggled. 'For a slogan we could have "Nothing gets past us".'

Dan laughed. He was so relieved Fifi seemed happier now. For a minute or two this afternoon he'd thought she was going to take the next train back to Bristol.

He loved her to pieces, just to look at her lovely face made his heart melt, and he still couldn't quite believe that a girl like her could love him. But there were times when she was like a spoiled child, expecting life to be one long picnic in the sun. He'd got her well away from her parents' influence at last, and though it would probably be another nail in his coffin that he'd brought her to live here, Fifi needed a dose of reality.

Chapter five.

Fifi bounced along the street. She was happy because it was Sat.u.r.day, a lovely sunny day, and once she'd got the shopping she and Dan were going out for a picnic in Hyde Park. As she reached Mrs Jarvis's house at the end of the street, on an impulse she knocked on her door.

'h.e.l.lo,' she said as the old lady answered. 'I'm going down to Victor Values, is there anything I can get for you while I'm there?'

'Is that the new-fangled place where you have to serve yourself?'

Fifi smiled. Although Alice Jarvis was over eighty and very frail, she didn't miss much that was going on. Fifi had spoken to her for the first time a few days after they moved into Dale Street, a month ago now, and had been invited in for a cup of tea. The old lady lived in a Victorian time warp, still with the same heavy, highly polished or over-stuffed furniture her parents had brought with them when they moved in when she was a girl. She had four siblings, but she'd never left home as they did; when she married Mr Jarvis, he moved in with her and her parents.

Mrs Jarvis's one and only concession to modern times was the electric lighting, which she'd reluctantly agreed to have put in after the war, a short while after her husband died. Her home reflected the lives and personalities of all those who had lived there: a lace-trimmed tablecloth made by her mother, a grandfather clock that had been her father's pride and joy, dozens of framed sepia photographs of her brothers and sisters, and the piano in the parlour which they'd all played and sung around.

'Yes, you do serve yourself,' Fifi replied. 'But it's ever so much cheaper than the grocer's.'

'It sounds American to me.' Mrs Jarvis sniffed with disapproval. 'I don't hold with anything from there. And I like someone to serve me.'

'I'd rather save money,' Fifi said with a smile. 'And if I'm going for you, you're not going to miss being served personally.'

Mrs Jarvis wavered. She looked very stern in her old-fas.h.i.+oned black dress and thick stockings, with her white hair tied up tightly in a bun, but Fifi had discovered she was a warm and friendly person. 'Well, I could do with a quarter of tea and a packet of chocolate biscuits, if it's not too much trouble,' she said. 'I've got my niece and her husband coming tomorrow afternoon. They usually take me out to tea somewhere, but it's so nice out in the garden now, they might want to stay here.'

Fifi had a feeling Mrs Jarvis lived on little else but tea and biscuits; she hadn't seen any sign of food in her kitchen when she was in there last week. But she didn't know her well enough to start cross-examining her yet.

'Have you finished your painting?' Mrs Jarvis asked. The last time she had seen Fifi she'd remarked on the paint in her hair.

'Yes, it looks lovely,' Fifi said eagerly. 'The living room is pale green and the bedroom cream. We've bought a new carpet too. Miss Diamond thinks it very tasteful.'

'I hope she's kind to you?' Mrs Jarvis said anxiously. 'She can be very fierce.'

Fifi grinned. Miss Diamond in the rooms downstairs to her was a supervisor at the telephone exchange and quite formidable, laying down the law about everything. 'I can give as good as I get,' she said. 'She's got a good heart really. I'd rather have her living downstairs than certain people in this road.'

'Did you hear them last night?' Mrs Jarvis said, raising her hands in an expression of horror and alarm. 'Shouting and bawling, and the language!'

She was of course speaking about the Muckles. Hardly a night pa.s.sed without something going on there. If it wasn't a fight between Molly and Alfie, children screaming or music blaring out, it was the Friday night cards party when seedy-looking men left in the small hours, banging car doors and honking horns.

Last Friday, Dan had wanted to go over there because one of the women was screaming as if she was being viciously beaten. But fortunately it stopped suddenly and Dan let it go.

'We thought everyone was exaggerating about them when we first moved in,' Fifi replied. 'I don't really believe that the police can't do anything about them. Surely they could charge them with disturbing the peace, if nothing else?'

'They say Alfie bribes the police to turn a blind eye,' Mrs Jarvis said conspiratorially. 'I wish I could bribe someone to burn that house down and them with it. Mr Jarvis went over there once to try and stop their noise and soon after he was attacked coming home one evening. We couldn't prove it was them, but everyone knew it was. They broke his jaw and his ribs they are worse than animals.'

Although Fifi and Dan had found the stories about the Muckles a bit far-fetched when they first moved in, there was no doubt that some of the neighbours really were terrified of them. Mrs Jarvis's lips quivered and her voice shook as she spoke of them, and she always looked out of her window before opening her front door. Fifi thought it was awful that an old lady who had lived here for almost her entire life should spend her last years in such fear.

Fifi wasn't afraid of the Muckles, but she found watching them completely addictive. She knew she really shouldn't find them so fascinating, they were after all the absolute dregs of the earth. But they were a novelty, so far removed from the quiet gentility of the neighbours she'd grown up observing that she almost liked them for giving her so much entertainment.

Dan had bought a second-hand television, but Fifi watched the Muckles more often. It was like having a theatre on her doorstep, the family acting out a long-running serial. There was comedy when Dora, the backward sister-in-law, ran down the street wearing nothing but men's boots and a towel around her. She was running after Mike, the nephew, screaming that she loved him.

The serial had suspense when Molly and Alfie came home drunk; would it turn to a fight? Or would the night be filled with the sound of animalistic lovemaking later on? There was mystery when men arrived to play cards on a Friday night. Mainly they were as seedy-looking as Alfie, but some were smartly dressed, almost like businessmen, and Fifi was baffled as to why such men would want to play cards in such a grim place. Dan said that owning a handmade suit was in fact a hallmark of a villain, and however affluent these men appeared, they probably came from homes as rough as Alfie's. She was puzzled too that the police never seemed to act after complaints of noise and disturbance. Then there was tragedy as well, as the poor children all looked so neglected.

Where did Molly go when she went out in the evening, alone and dressed to kill? Why was it that the children took a pram full of was.h.i.+ng to the council laundry every week, yet not one of the family other than Molly ever wore anything clean? Where did they get the money to buy all those boxes of drink they carried home, when no one in the family appeared to work?

Yet most intriguing of all was that the Muckles had so many visitors. Hardly a day went by without Fifi seeing someone new go in there. Maybe the couple of teenage girls she'd seen were the two older daughters who no longer lived at home, but she didn't think all the callers could be family members. No one in the street had anything good to say about Alfie, so how come he had so many friends?

She wondered about the Muckles all the time. She would give anything to be able to turn herself into a fly and go into that house to take a look around. She knew it would be filthy, she was sure they lived on nothing but fish and chips, but however much everyone kept telling her how dangerous they were, she couldn't really believe that. To her they were all idiots, often brutal, always coa.r.s.e, but hardly dangerous.

After a little chat with Mrs Jarvis, Fifi went on to the shop. To her surprise she had come to like Kennington. It might not be what she was used to, but it had a kind of buzz about it, as though there were a million and one things going on right under her nose.

She even liked the flat now they'd done it up. It might have been very different if they'd had awful people downstairs, but no one could mind sharing a bathroom with either Miss Diamond or Frank Ubley. Dan laughingly called Miss Diamond the bathroom monitor, because on their second day she'd personally instructed Dan on cleaning the bath after he'd used it. She put plants on the windowsill, she went in for various things that made it smell nice, and she washed over the floor twice a week.

As for Frank on the ground floor, he was a gem, as keen as Miss Diamond about cleanliness, but also kind and very helpful. He had lent Dan tools and helped him put up some shelves. He advised them about the best places to get paint or timber cheaper, and he showed his pleasure in having younger people in the house by being delighted when they asked him up for a cup of tea and to inspect what they'd been doing to their flat.

It felt so safe living above such nice, decent people, and the low rent meant they didn't have to worry about money.

Yet it was the other neighbours who had really changed Fifi's mind about Dale Street, for they were all so fascinating. Back in Kingsdown in Bristol, none of the other tenants had ever spoken to Dan or Fifi. In her parents' street the neighbours had always seemed to lead such narrow lives, and though they were pleasant, they couldn't talk about any subject other than their homes, children and gardens. She hadn't thought anything of it when she was there, but now, after living here for a month, she realized that they were all afraid ever to let their real feelings show.

People around here didn't have that problem. If something good had happened to them, they wanted the world to know. They'd drag you in to show you their new television or three-piece suite, or a new baby. They aired their disapproval as well. Fifi had heard people ranting about their unscrupulous landlords, hated in-laws, and even children who had disappointed them. They liked to laugh at themselves too. Back at home no housewife would admit she'd made a cake and forgot the sugar in it, or burned her husband's dinner because she was chatting over the fence. But they did here, seeing no shame in showing they were flawed.

Fifi really liked that. It was real, it was good. She had always believed that the only way you could make real friends was if there was mutual opening up, seeing the differences in people and liking them for it.

Yvette the French dressmaker and Stan the Pole had come here in 1947 as refugees. Ivy Hela.s.s had been a dancer before she married Cecil, and it was said that John Bolton had robbed a bank and gone to prison for it. Fifi wanted to get to know everyone in the street, to hear their stories and make friends with them. But sadly, now she was working, she didn't get much opportunity.

She had been taken on by a firm of solicitors in Chancery Lane during her first week in London. She liked the work as it was more varied than back in Bristol. Sometimes, if there was no junior available to deliver doc.u.ments to one of the barristers in their chambers at the Temple, or the law courts, she took them. Aside from this breaking up the day and providing a chance to be out in the fresh air, she found the Temple appealing because it was so ancient.

It was exciting living in London. Everything seemed to go at twice the speed of Bristol. Rush hour had been terrifying at first; she couldn't bring herself to elbow her way on to buses and the tube the way everyone else did. But she learned to, and now she could run after a bus and jump on the back as it was moving, leap off at traffic lights, even cross the road dodging through cars. She loved the incredible mixture of people too. Businessmen in bowler hats with furled umbrellas, strap-hanging on the tube alongside manual workers. Young girls in market-style clothing, their hair in beehives and Cleopatra-style eye makeup, mingling with women who looked as if they'd stepped out of the pages of Vogue Vogue.

There were so many different nationalities too. In just one day she could hear Germans, French, Greeks, Australians and Americans, and see Africans, West Indians, Arabs, Chinese and j.a.panese. And the shops catered for everyone in Kennington alone you could buy anything from a kebab to a yam, fantastic sari material or halal meat. She and Dan had been up to Soho a few times at night, and had been both shocked and amused by the number of strip clubs and dirty-book shops. Yet even more incredible was that it was theatreland too. As people in evening dress hailed cabs or went into the expensive restaurants, just around the corner there were prost.i.tutes plying their trade.

Fifi really didn't miss Bristol, in fact sometimes she realized that days had gone past without her thinking about it at all. She had written home once, just to give her parents her new address. While she wrote to Patty every week, other friends had only got a postcard telling them how happy she was.

Happy didn't really adequately describe how she felt; she was joyful. Joining Dan in London had strengthened their marriage and bonded them even closer together. Here they were on an equal footing, both still rather wide-eyed tourists finding their way around.

Fifi loved shopping in Victor Values. Conventional grocers were so dark and cramped, but this shop had bright lights, with everything priced and arranged in wide aisles. Shops like this had been nicknamed 'supermarkets', and most people thought they were a five-minute wonder because they didn't see how they could keep the prices so low. Fifi didn't agree; she felt it would be the traditional shops that would be forced out of business.

She was on top of the world as she made her way home along the busy Kennington Park Road with two laden bags, enough food for the whole week. Dan had managed to get them a second-hand fridge the previous day, and she thought it would be bliss not to have to shop for meat and milk every day any more. She was also dying to get home to read the paper she'd bought. The on-going scandal about the call-girl Christine Keeler and John Profumo, the Minister for War, was so exciting. It had all started back in March when Christine's ex-lover had fired shots into the flat she was sharing with Mandy Rice-Davies, but now it seemed that John Profumo had been sleeping with a call-girl, and that she in turn was sleeping with Ivanov, a Russian attache. Every day there was a new revelation. Dr Stephen Ward, a society osteopath, owned the flat, the two girls had swum naked in Lord Astor's swimming pool, there were suggestions of kinky s.e.x and drug-taking, and goodness knows what else would be revealed before long.

About twenty yards before the turning to Dale Street there was a piece of waste ground where some houses had been demolished. As always, Fifi glanced through the broken fence panels because it was an improvised playground for the local children. There were usually dozens of children in there, building camps, playing pirates and occasionally lighting fires. Fifi's feelings were mixed about it. The child in her approved, for there were few places in London where children could have adventure and freedom. But her adult side worried, for it was after all a dangerous place, full of broken bottles, piles of rubble and other hazards.

To her surprise there were no children there today, despite the good weather. But as she walked on by she heard the sound of crying. Curious, she put down her shopping and stuck her head right through a hole in the fence to take another look.

One lone little girl was in there, sitting on the ground, hands covering her face, crying her heart out.

It was Angela, the youngest of the Muckle children.

As this was the child she'd seen being clouted by her mother on her first day in Dale Street, Fifi had put her under even closer scrutiny than anyone else in the family. It was clear she was the least favoured child. Her parents were always shouting at her, her older brother and sister bullied her, even her Aunt Dora appeared to have it in for her.

If Fifi had seen any of the other three children in apparent distress she would have walked on by. She had noticed the low cunning in their eyes and heard their foul language, and would suspect they were trying to trick her. They were known to s.n.a.t.c.h money from the hands of children on the way to the shop on a message and they'd slip into any open front door to steal. Fifi had seen them barge into old people, overturning dustbins and breaking milk bottles on the pavement. If reprimanded they would scream vicious abuse.

But Angela wasn't like the others. She was cowed, not c.o.c.ky, thin and malnourished. If her eyes met those of an adult they were fearful. Fifi hesitated. Common sense told her it would be better to ignore the child, but her crying was a plaintive bleat which plucked at her heart strings. 'What's wrong, Angela?' she called out.

The child started, uncovering her face. 'Nothin',' she said.

But it wasn't nothing. She had been punched; the flesh around her eye was so livid and swollen that her eye had all but disappeared.

Fifi a.s.sumed it had been done by another child, and that was why no one else was playing there. Remembering times when she'd been bullied as a child herself, she felt she had to do something, if only offer some sympathy.

She went back to the place where the fence had been broken down completely. 'Who did that to you?' she asked as she cautiously picked her way over the smashed-up fence panels.

The child's sharp features, the pallor of her skin, tangled dull hair, missing front teeth and dirty clothes made her an unappealing sight at the best of times, but with this injury to her eye she looked utterly pathetic. As Fifi came closer she started to get up as if intending to flee.

'Do you know who I am?' Fifi asked, a.s.suming Angela was frightened at being approached and questioned by a stranger. 'I live opposite you at number four, my name's Fifi Reynolds, my husband is called Dan.'

The child nodded. 'I've seen you,' she whispered. 'You were painting the walls.'

Fifi felt that meant Angela had watched her from an upper window late in the evening. 'I used to watch people when I was a little girl,' she said in an effort to win the child's trust. 'I used to make up things about them. Nice things mostly, like they were princesses or ballet dancers. Do you do that?'

Angela made a kind of half-nod.

'So what did you make up about me?' Fifi asked.

There was no response, but that was hardly surprising given that Angela's injury had to be hurting a great deal. 'Come on,' Fifi insisted. 'It's just a game. I'd like to hear what you made up.'

'That you were my big sister,' Angela replied, hanging her head.

At that unexpected and touching admission a lump came up in Fifi's throat. She could guess where that little fantasy had taken the girl. A place of safety across the street, where there were no fights or rows. A place where everything was clean and bright, perhaps with a big sister was.h.i.+ng and brus.h.i.+ng her hair for her. Did she imagine someone there who cared enough to cuddle her and make a fuss of her?

'Who hit you, Angela?' she asked.

The child shrugged, as if it didn't matter who was responsible.

'You must tell me. If you let children carry on being bullies they just get worse and worse. I could talk to their mothers about it.'

'It weren't another kid,' Angela mumbled.

'Well, who was it then? Was it your mum or your dad?'

'Dad,' the child whispered, looking fearfully at Fifi. 'But don't you go saying nothin' or he'll lay into me twice as bad.'