Paradise Lane (7 page)

Then someone made the mistake of tugging at the collar of Sally’s new raincoat. Although she was terrified, she opened her mouth and screamed so loudly that several of her attackers stepped away. But the big carrot-haired boy who had started the trouble remained, strong fingers crushing the navy gaberdine.

Sally had amazed herself with the sheer force of her lung power, yet the noise she had made seemed to create a chink in the shell behind which she had hidden for most of her seven years. During a couple of very long seconds, she studied her tormentor and judged his appearance to be as unfortunate as his attitude. Then, she bent her knee, drove it upwards and watched in horror as he collapsed in a heap. He writhed on the floor, his hands clutching the front of his trousers. Several children turned and ran away. Arthur ‘Red’ Trubshaw was not a man to be trifled with. That scraggy girl out of Standard One had hit him in a sensitive place, and he would no doubt be dangerous when he recovered.

She stared down at him, fascinated by the various contortions that further disfigured an already disastrous face. ‘If you ever come near me again,’ she said plainly, ‘I’ll set our whole street on you.’ The street loved her. Its inhabitants fed her, clothed her, minded her dad and her cat. ‘Paradise Lane and Worthington Street’ll cripple you, Arthur Trubshaw.’ She straightened the collar of her coat, walked away, stood in line as soon as the bell rang.

From the corner of an eye, she watched as Standard Four lined up. They were ten and eleven, the children in Standard Four. He must be a coward, she decided, if he had to pick on somebody from a lower class. Until today, she’d been ignored. But now, because she looked a lot better than usual, he had chosen her. And she wasn’t going to be all dirty again just so that Red would leave her alone.

The top class marched past first, and she noticed that the boy was looking at her. There was no anger in his face. In fact, had Sally been older and wiser, she might have recognized a grudging admiration in those pale blue eyes.

Craddock Street Junior Mixed and Infants was a cheerless place with tall railings round the flagged playground and an elaborate Victorian frontage that belied the squalor inside. In the junior department, the classrooms were positioned round a hall with a wooden floor that had donated many an unwanted splinter. Windows were high, beyond the reach of most children, so the only view was a patch of sky or, occasionally, a glimpse of sun.

After assembly, Standard Four filed out, its members subdued not only by a tyrannical headmaster, but also by the knowledge that the ‘cock’ of their class had been flattened by a thin girl from Standard One. Red Trubshaw caught Sally’s eye on his way out, winked at her. She tried not to shiver in her new black shoes. That flickering eyelid had meant
wait till playtime
. The thought of playtime terrified her, not because of the usual isolation, but because she knew that she had no more than two hours to live.

The situation was not improved by the fact that Miss Irene Lever pounced on Sally as soon as she entered the classroom. ‘Don’t you look nice?’ beamed the kind lady. ‘I’m so glad to see that your mother has managed to get some lovely school clothes for you.’

A hand shot into the air. ‘Miss?’

‘Yes, Jean?’

Jean stood up. Jean Irving lived on Worthington Street. Jean Irving was one of those people who seem to know everything. ‘Miss, her mam’s not there. She ran off, miss, to America, miss. And all the other women went to see her off, miss. They bashed her and turned her upside down, miss and took all her money and threw tomatoes at her, miss and—’

‘Thank you, Jean.’ Miss Lever patted Sally’s hand, asked her to take her place.

Sally glared at Jean Irving. A terrible coldness seemed to enter her bones as she looked at the grinning girl. ‘Jean Irving is telling lies, Miss Lever,’ said Sally clearly.

Nonplussed, Miss Lever pushed the spectacles along the bridge of her nose and closed her mouth with a snap. Never before had she known Sally Crumpsall to speak without being spoken to. The teacher was so shocked that she had to sit down rather quickly. ‘Sally, I—’

‘Miss, I know all about Jean Irving, so does my granny. She’s always telling lies. All the Irvings tell lies.’ The iciness was melting, as if speaking up warmed her, made her comfortable.

‘Sit down, Sally.’

Sally walked towards her desk. ‘And you can shut your mouth,’ she told Jean Irving, her tone conversational. ‘Because all of Paradise knows about your mother and the gin.’

Jean Irving clenched fists and teeth. ‘I’ll get you at playtime,’ she mumbled.

Sally sank into her seat. It was plain that there was going to be a queue in the yard later on. The thought of Red Trubshaw took away all the false courage, made her shake so much that she could hardly manage to hold her pencil.

Irene Lever watched her charges closely that morning. She was a good and fair woman, the exception that proved the rule in Craddock Street. Miss Lever wielded no cane, slapped no legs. She sensed that trouble was brewing, because never before had she known little Sally Crumpsall to be cheeky. When the register was marked, Standard One’s mentor made a vow to keep her eyes open at playtime. Unless she was mistaken, there was going to be a showdown.

Hiding in the toilets was no fun, because the toilets stank. Girls’ toilets weren’t as bad as boys’, but they were foul enough to make any sitting tenant vacate her place as quickly as possible. Sally had often wondered why the smell from the lads’ lavatories was so strong that it spread its tentacles across several corridors but, for the moment, her chief concern was to stay in one piece.

Jean Irving’s face appeared in the gap at the bottom of the door. ‘Scared of me, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Then why are you stood there like a lamp post?’

Sally decided not to answer such a stupid question. ‘Why are you lying on a floor that smells?’

Jean Irving snorted. ‘You should know all about smells, Sally Crumpsall. Nobody ever wanted to sit next to you ’cos your clothes were that rotten – we could tell when you were about a mile off. And the Paradise women did bash your mother, it weren’t a lie. And I’m going to wait here till you come out, then I’ll bloody well—’

‘Jean Irving, stand up at once.’

Sally almost died of relief when she heard Miss Lever’s voice. Miss Lever was the owner of several voices. She had a kind one, a teaching one and a woe betide you one. This was the woe betide. But not even a woe betide carried the ultimate threat for a Craddock Street schoolchild, because nothing on this earth could have persuaded Irene Lever to send one of her charges to Basher’s office. Ernest Bates, commonly known as Basher, had one talent. This solitary gift involved a cane or a strap, sometimes both.

‘Who’s in there?’ Miss Lever asked of Jean Irving.

‘Sally Crumpsall, miss.’

‘Then what were you doing on the floor, Jean Irving?’

‘Well . . . I were seeing if she were all right, ’cos she’s been in there ages, miss.’

‘Out. Get out this minute, Jean, and stand at my desk until playtime is over.’

Sally breathed more easily when she heard Jean’s clogs clattering their way through the outer door.

‘Come out, Sally.’ It was the kind voice this time.

She came out, stood staring down at the floor.

‘Has your mother gone, dear?’

Sally nodded.

‘Ah.’ This was such an unsavoury place, yet Irene Lever continued, grateful for a moment’s privacy. ‘I shall visit your father.’

‘He’s dying.’

The teacher fought a moment of nausea, decided never to spend more than ten seconds in the toilet shed again. ‘I am so sorry.’

‘Can I go now, miss?’

‘Yes.’

Sally walked into the playground, waited for the world to tumble in great lumps about her ears. A heavy hand fell on her shoulder, and she suffered an acute thrill of pure panic that almost riveted her to the floor. She kept telling herself that Miss Lever was just behind her, that everything was going to be all right, but Arthur Trubshaw was bigger than Miss Lever.

‘Sal Crumpsall?’ said a male voice.

She nodded, waited for the blows to begin.

‘I’ll see to you,’ he announced.

Her heart sank. He wasn’t going to kill her now, was promising her a ‘seeing to’ at some unspecified time in the future.

‘There’s no need for you to fear owt from now on, Sal. Anybody as can gut a lad like you gutted me wants praise.’

She lifted her head, saw smiles of encouragement on the faces of Red Trubshaw’s cohorts. ‘Sorry I hurt you,’ she said. ‘Only it’s a new mac. It were just the mac.’

The red-headed boy inclined his head. ‘I knew that,’ he said. ‘But nowt’ll happen to you from now on. If you want help here or at home, just yell “Red”. You’ve a gob on you that’d do for a rag and bone man. I reckon they must have heard you shouting down Manchester way. We could do with somebody like you as a lookout when we’re playing knock-and-run.’

Irene Lever slipped away unnoticed. At least Sally had a champion of sorts. The teacher entered the staffroom, listened while the headmaster regaled the audience with tales of this morning’s whippings.

Irene poured out her tea and sat near the window. Sometimes, she knew she was working in a prison. Always, she knew she was working for a sadist. In her mind’s eye stood a little girl in new clothes. How was poor Sally Crumpsall going to survive in this hell?

‘. . . said he’d set his dad on me,’ announced Bates to his small congregation.

‘I hope he does,’ mouthed Standard One’s Miss Lever into her cup. ‘Something has to change.’

Joseph Heilberg lingered in the doorway of his Derby Road shop. Several passers-by greeted him during their swift escape from Paradise Mill, and he waved to them, smiling sadly as he watched the sparks flying from clog-irons attached to feet that rushed homeward. Only this morning, Joseph had lain in bed next to his wife, had listened to work-bound feet dragging slowly along the pavements, as if each man and woman wanted to be on time but not early.

Most of these people hated their jobs, despised their employer, carried on simply to buy bread, coal, clothes for their children. Joseph knew many of them, knew the shape of a clock, the cut of a suit that would be pawned on Monday morning. The silver teapot woman passed by, then another lady who pledged her dead father’s watch at the beginning of each week. Joseph kept that item ticking, made sure it was safe and healthy every Friday when its owner redeemed it.

He pulled out his own watch, noted that closing time was almost upon him. This was Tuesday. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays were often quiet except for a few sales of unredeemed pledges and some visits from totters. The rag and bone merchants were a wily lot, often extracting items of value from waste, then trying to sell them on to pawnbrokers. Today’s totter had been particularly difficult, as he had arrived in a good suit. But Joseph had looked not at the diamond ring, but at dirt ground into the huge, outstretched palm on which it rested. ‘Your mother’s, you say?’ Joseph had asked pleasantly.

‘Aye.’

‘She died recently?’

‘Aye. Sad loss.’

Joseph had carried on as usual, had studied the ring. He was no jeweller, but he understood marks. ‘Her engagement ring?’

‘Aye.’

‘So this is quite old, then?’

‘Aye. Married nigh on fifty year, she were.’

The pawnbroker had handed back the item. ‘That ring is new. Did you find it on your rounds? Can’t you remember where?’

The totter had held his ground. ‘It were me mam’s. The owld man bought her a new one when she lost the other. See, I’d forgot till you said. She can’t have had this one more than ten year, happen twelve.’

‘More like five or six.’

The man had picked up his find and dashed from the shop. His round was probably out of Bolton, because Joseph recognized most Bolton totters. Somewhere, a heartbroken housewife was looking for a mistakenly discarded token of her husband’s love.

He put up his shutters, went inside, locked the door with three separate keys. Although the Reich was defeated, he did not forget. In spite of his best efforts at reasoning with himself, the fear of being targeted as a candidate for persecution stayed with him. Ruth often got cross with him. ‘This is England,’ she would say in German. ‘It will never happen here.’ Ruth was a clever woman with a simple soul. She was, he thought now, an enigma. Well-read, a good conversationalist, an excellent organizer, Ruth Heilberg saw only the good in people.

Joseph stood behind his desk, rooted about in the recent memory compartment of his mind. Ah yes, the books. He would carry one or two of Derek Crumpsall’s books round the corner, would visit the poor man. How on earth had that wife of Derek’s managed to carry such a weight from Paradise Lane to Derby Road? With determination, he answered himself. She wanted, she got. Then, of course, she left the man to die. Since the books, Joseph had refused to lend money to Lottie.

He called up the stairs, told his wife of his intention. She poked her head round the top of the stairs. ‘For a businessman, your heart is almost gentle,’ she chortled.

‘Your English improves,’ he replied. ‘So try with the cooking.’

He walked down Worthington Street, counted his blessings. He had three successful shops. His son ran and lived above one, Maureen Mason ran the second, and he and Ruth looked after the third. He worried about Maureen’s shop, because it was a lock-up with no accommodation, but all had been running well for several years now. Even through the war, Heilberg’s had ticked over with the help of friends and neighbours.

Joseph was happy in England. His understanding of the British dilemma had nursed him through internment. Even then, he had been fortunate, had worked alongside his wife right through the war. His hands twitched as he remembered all that sewing of Land Army uniforms, and he almost felt the old pain in his fingers. Strange times, those had been. A hundred German and Austrian Jews had watched the war, had flown the Union Jack at the end. Whenever he thought of his and Ruth’s families abroad, he closed his eyes in prayer. After two years, no word of any survivors had reached England.