Perhaps Tomorrow Page 5

  Queenie handed Mattie her mug of tea and, cradling it in her hands, Mattie made her way to the window. Kate was standing with her hands behind her back and swaying from side to side, setting her skirts flowing around her legs. Somewhere between the back door and the yard she’d whipped off her hair scarf to let her long blonde plait hang to her waist like a bell rope.

  Freddie was sitting on the cart with one leg hanging over and the other bent up. He said something to Kate and she laughed, then stood back as he shook the reins. Muffy plodded through the gates. Kate watched after him then headed back towards the house. She burst back into the kitchen and flourished the small white square.

  ‘I found it!’ she cried, with a flush on her cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes that Alfie Lennon would never see. ‘Thank goodness I got to it before it was ruined. I had better get changed.’ She bounced towards the hall door. ‘Oh, and Queenie, Freddie said he’d pop by later.’

  Something in the way Kate said Freddie’s name sent alarm bells ringing in Mattie’s head. Should she mention to Kate that Freddie had been seen slipping in the back door of Bessie Buckle’s house? She didn’t know. But if Kate was setting her cap at Freddie, her handkerchief wouldn’t be the only thing in danger of being ruined.

  As Mumble plodded along the familiar road towards the first delivery at the back of Whitechapel High Street, Freddie hooked his feet up on the shafts and pulled his tobacco pouch from his trouser pocket.

  He jerked his foot and nudged the reins looped around the brake handle. Mumble moved to the left in response and Freddie filled his pipe. He lit it then put his hands behind his head and leant back. A smug grin spread across his face as he thought about Kate’s silly story about mislaying her handkerchief. He wasn’t born yesterday, and he could see by the look in her eyes that she just couldn’t keep away from him. He smoothed back his hair and chuckled to himself. He couldn’t blame her, and the way she eyed him up and down, well . . . a look like that could get a girl into all sorts of trouble, which ordinarily he’d be happy to be but he had recently come around to thinking that he ought to look to his future. Although the job in his cousin’s yard had got him out of a fix he didn’t want to be a coalman all his life.

  A man like him, with brains and charm, shouldn’t have to grub a living plastered in coal dust each day. And now poor Brian had been at his rest for three years he felt it was time to get himself a more comfortable life with his cousin’s widow. In truth, Mattie had finished her mourning a year ago so it wouldn’t be seen as disrespectful as if he’d started courting her sooner but, at the time, he’d had other . . . interests, let’s call them, occupying his time.

  But no matter. What was a year or two? And he couldn’t rush her. Sweet Mattie might have eyes that sent a man’s pulse racing and a body that you’d want to feel under you but she was no fool. No sir. She’d seen off half-a-dozen men since her husband died, with their tails tucked right between their legs for trying to get their feet under her cosy table. But now Old Eli wasn’t able to run the yard it gave him the chance to move in. On the quiet like, nothing to make her bolt or run scared. Gentle, as you did with a horse getting used to a new driver. Just a ‘sweetheart’ here or a ‘honey’ to start, then perhaps a touch of the hand or a brush-up-close, seemingly innocent, but enough to set her lonely little heart fluttering. It shouldn’t take too much lovey-doveying. After all she’d been without a man for three years. It must be taxing her nature to sleep alone.

  ‘Afternoon, Freddie,’ a woman’s voice shouted.

  Freddie grinned. ‘Afternoon, me little darlings,’ he said, calling to the two women sitting outside their open front doors.

  They were dressed in plain nondescript gowns and grey aprons but had dispensed with their usual head shawls on account of the warm weather. On either side of them were a handful of grubby children playing in the dirt.

  The older one nudged the woman beside her. ‘You got a delivery for us then, Freddie?’

  They hunched up their shoulders and giggled.

  ‘Only if your old man’s not around,’ he called back, as Mumble plodded the wagon past them.

  A girlish blush, quite at odds with her lined face, flushed the older woman’s cheeks. ‘Shame on you, Freddie Ellis.’

  ‘You don’t have to worry about my old man,’ said the younger woman, who had a mane of unruly red hair. ‘’E scarpered a year back, so come round any time you like, ’andsome.’

  Freddie winked. ‘I’ll remember that.’

  He clicked his tongue to urge Mumble on then settled back again. He wondered if the redhead was truly without a man but then he turned his mind back to Mattie.

  As he delivered the afternoon orders Freddie resolved to ignore the likes of Bessie and Annie. He’d save himself for the woman who could keep him with a shilling in his pocket every day of the week – Mattie Maguire.

  By the time he’d shouldered the last sack of coal and trudged it through to the back of the Moon and Stars, Freddie’s imagination had already changed the sign on the yard’s double gates from Maguire & Son’s to Ellis & Co.

  As he strolled out of the pub’s side door, Mumble ambled on, pulling the cart unaided towards the last delivery, Latimer Dairy, at the end of the street. Freddie shoved his hands in his pockets and strolled along beside the cart, nodding a greeting to the women sitting outside their doors stuffing mattresses with straw.

  The horse came to a halt in front of the arched side entrance of Latimer’s. She pricked up her ears as she heard the lowing of the cows inside. Freddie grabbed a sack and swung it onto his shoulders. Jogging it a couple of times until it sat squarely, he started through the arch towards the coal shed at the far end.

  The dairy was in fact a courtyard surrounded on three sides by six low-roofed makeshift cottages. Ted Latimer, the owner, had taken off the front doors and made the downstairs rooms and sculleries in each of the dwellings into a stall for his cows while letting out the room above.

  As Freddie reached the shed, Ted’s daughter Ginny appeared in the open door of the far cottage. A slow smile crept across her lips as she saw him. Scooping her curly light brown hair off her face, she sauntered towards him.

  ‘Warm, ain’t it?’ she said, her eyes flickering down to his open shirt.

  ‘Fit to melt yer,’ he replied, kicking open the shed door.

  Bending forward Freddie shrugged the sack up his back then emptied the coal. He shook out the last few chips then turned to find Ginny standing in his path.

  ‘Yer right,’ she said, running her hands slowly over her chest showing above her neckline. ‘I do feel as if I could melt.’

  Freddie’s eyes followed her fingers as they traced a line across the swell of her breasts.

  ‘Why don’t you come into the shade of the byre and cool yourself while I fetch you a mug of ale,’ she said, running her hand up his bare forearm and disturbing the soft hair. ‘I thought I might join you seeing as Pa won’t be back for an hour or so.’

  He should say no. The hay delivery was arriving at five and Mattie had asked him to see it in. If he wanted to convince her that she should cast aside her widow’s weeds and marry him he ought to do as he promised, at least until he owned the yard.

  Ginny pressed herself against him and gave him a groin-tightening sideward look. ‘What do you say?’

  Freddie’s gaze ran slowly over her bare flesh then back up to her face. ‘’Ow long ’til your Pa gets back?’

  Chapter Five

  Nathaniel leaned in the doorway of 33 Minories, his eyes fixed on the solid-oak door straight across from him, while he tried not to attract the attention of the policeman strolling by on the other side of the road. He glanced up at the grand four-storey office and then back to the brass plate that had Mr A Stebbins etched into its burnished surface.

  After leaving Emma’s cottage, he’d caught the night stagecoach at the White Horse and crossed over the Bow Bridge just before six yesterday morning. It would have been quicker by train, but more expensi
ve than slipping the coach driver a sixpence instead of the proper fare. He was let off at Cambridge Heath Gate and after eating a penny breakfast in one of the chop shops he walked the mile or so to Whitechapel High Street – the very boundary of the city.

  He had been to London about ten years ago when he’d accompanied Mr Fairhead on a business trip but this time he was astounded by the press of people. Rough-shod labourers jostled with smartly dressed city clerks at the coffee stands as they handed over three or four coppers for their early morning drink. Between them, old women shuffled home after their early morning jobs as cleaners and young girls, with dark circles under their eyes, weaved their way between the crowds on their way to twelve hours of toil in half-lit factories.

  The prices, too, astounded Nathaniel. Everything seemed to be double, if not treble, the money it would have cost him in Essex. He’d thought he had enough money for a week or so but at these prices he’d be penniless in a few days. Luckily, it had taken him less than half-an-hour’s work to locate Stebbins. All he’d had to do was to work his way alphabetically down the addresses in the postal directory in the Aldgate Post Office until he found him.

  Nathaniel shifted position and the newly sharpened knife, which he’d tucked into the back of his belt, pressed into the small of his back. He would be caught and hanged, of course, but what did it matter? He’d already lost everything.

  Eventually, the oak door opened and Nathaniel froze as his eyes fixed on the man who had haunted him for the past four years. Blood pumped loudly though his ears.

  Amos Stebbins had fattened up and now had a sizeable paunch and side-whiskers that joined his moustache. His sharply pressed pinstriped trousers and long woollen overcoat with its plush astrakhan collar stood in stark contrast to Nathaniel’s threadbare suit. Stebbins’s light brown hair was just visible under the shiny silk top hat perched at a jaunty angle on his head, and a diamond tie-pin twinkled beneath the swirls of his cravat.

  Unbidden, an image of Marjorie entered Nathaniel’s mind: his wife, with her hair unbound, laughing as she pushed Lillian on the swing. In vivid detail, he recalled the golden fleck in her hazel eyes and her generous smile. Then, if that scene were not enough, his mind summoned up the small attic bedroom where Lillian and Rosina slept curled together. Knowing he would never hold his children again or feel their slender arms around his neck brought the sting of tears to his eyes. He blinked them away and slowly reached around and gripped the knife.

  But suddenly a feeling he hadn’t experienced since being dragged from Chelmsford Crown Court caused him to falter: indecision. He’d have been dead if he’d shown the slightest hesitation in Botany Bay but now, on a London Street crowded with respectable citizens, Nathaniel’s deeply buried moral code resurrected itself. It was wrong to take a life, even Stebbins’s. But how else could he make the bastard pay for what he’d done?

  Stebbins pulled out a fat cigar, jammed it in the corner of his mouth and lit it. He sucked on it a couple of times then exhaled a long puff of smoke, then turned towards the river and set off.

  Nathaniel shoved his conscience aside, fixed his eyes on his quarry and followed.

  A pleasant sense of well-being coursed through Amos Stebbins as he strolled down the Highway towards Maguire & Son’s. A number of the shopkeepers standing outside their shops touched their hats as he passed and Amos nodded benevolently in return.

  A couple of young boys dashed past and almost knocked him over but even being jostled by a handful of grubby guttersnipes couldn’t dispel the sense of gratification glowing within him. No, nothing could cloud his day, for George Hudson, that great champion of the railway, entrepreneur, and Member of Parliament for Sunderland, had invited him to lunch at the House. On the strength of this he had sent his clerk to the tobacconist to settle his overdue bill and to fetch half a dozen of his favourite Cuban cigars, one of which he was enjoying while he made his way to see Mattie Maguire.

  However, one small fly hovered over the day’s ointment. Cecily was adamant that she wanted gas installed throughout the house, plus the parlour and dining room redecorated, which was putting a considerable strain on his pocket. Added to which there was the terse letter from Mr Fallon, the chief banker at the City & County.

  Maguire & Son’s double-fronted door came into view and a satisfied smile lifted the corners of his moustache. Tucker’s men had done a better job than he could ever have hoped for by knocking one cart and a man out of service in a single blow. Now all he had to do was twist the figures to show that Mattie was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and the deeds to number six Cannon Street Road would soon be sitting alongside the others.

  He stopped on the kerb and waited for a cart piled high with jute bales to trundle past. Suddenly, a prickling sensation sent shivers between his shoulder blades.

  Amos glanced behind. The knife grinder was still pumping away on his treadle and the sailors in their knitted smocks and canvas trousers were still lounging against the wall outside the Hope and Anchor.

  He shook his head and, putting aside the odd notion, crossed the road. Inside the yard Maguire’s three drivers were loading their wagons for the afternoon round. One wagon sat idle and empty against the back fence.

  Mattie’s three employees grunted and strained under the sacks of coal.

  ‘Afternoon, Mr Stebbins,’ Pete and Billy said, as they swung a hundredweight brown sack on the back of a cart. The horse shifted in the harness and the wheels squeaked.

  Amos acknowledged them with a tight-lipped nod.

  Billy climbed on the wagon and took up the reins while Pete went to his rig and did the same. The two wagons rolled out of the gate.

  Amos caught sight of Freddie Ellis on the remaining cart. His eyes narrowed and his lips tightened further. Fornicator, he thought as he watched Freddie heave a sack of coal effortlessly onto the back of his wagon. With all the back doors Freddie slipped in and out of Amos was surprised he could lift his head, let alone a half hundredweight of coal.

  ‘Afternoon, there Mr Stebbins,’ Freddie said, giving him what Amos considered too familiar a greeting. He jumped down from the wagon, sauntered over and pulled a small tin from his trouser pocket. He took out his pipe. ‘Got a light?’

  Amos hesitated then offered him a box of matches.

  ‘Ta.’

  ‘I see Eli’s not back.’

  Freddie drew in another couple of puffs then curled the bulb end into his palm the way that working men did. ‘Poor old bugger’s still off.’

  Amos heaved a sigh. ‘I’ll have to have a word with the vicar. I’m sure the parish could do something to help. It can’t be easy for Mrs Maguire to have lost him from the rounds.’ He shook his head. ‘What that poor woman’s been through these last years.’

  ‘Don’t you worry about Mrs M. Even when Eli was here I was the one who took charge of things.’ He winked. ‘Of course, I let the old boy think it was him. Although I don’t like to brag, I run the yard.’

  Amos suppressed a smirk. If Freddie had truly been in charge the yard would have gone under years ago. ‘Mrs Maguire is blessed to have you to rely on.’

  ‘That’s what I keep telling ’er.’ Freddie bounded onto the cart. ‘I had best be on me way. I’ve got to see a man about a dog.’

  Freddie picked up the reins and sent the horse on. As the cart disappeared around the corner, Mattie walked into the yard holding her son’s hand. She was dressed in her usual dark navy work dress, complete with its ghastly stained apron and her headscarf.

  ‘Mr Stebbins,’ she said hurrying over. ‘Whatever must you be thinking of me not being in the yard to welcome you?’

  Amos waved away her agitation. ‘Think nothing of it, Mrs Maguire.’ He patted Brian on the head. ‘And young Master Maguire.’

  Relief swept over Mattie’s face. ‘That’s kind of you. Let me offer you a dish of tea before I show you the accounts – if you’re not in too much of a hurry.’

  ‘Thank you. It would be my pleasure,’ Amos replie
d, all the while hoping that after a morning’s housework Queenie would be snoring softly in the corner chair for the duration of his visit.

  Mattie turned towards the house and as she did Brian pulled away and dashed for the stables. Mattie tore after him so quickly her scarf slipped off and her hair tumbled out. She caught her son and brought him back to her side.

  ‘You pickle,’ she laughed, putting her foot on her scarf to stop it flying away.

  Amos watched, then his eyes moved to the crowded street, where he momentarily spotted a man he thought he’d never lay eyes on again.

  Nathaniel Tate!

  A cold hand clutched at his heart. He blinked and the man was gone. Amos swallowed hard to get the moisture back in his mouth. It’s the light playing tricks, nothing more. Do you hear? Nothing more.

  ‘I’m sorry about that,’ Mattie said, trying to keep her hair in order with one hand. She tilted her head. ‘Are you unwell, Mr Stebbins? You look pale.’

  Gripping her skirts in one hand and balancing the tea tray in the other, Mattie climbed the wooden stair to her office. Resting the tray on the handrail, she opened the door and found Mr Stebbins just where she’d left him twenty minutes ago, sitting at her desk. Thankfully, he seemed fully recovered from his earlier turn, which he’d insisted was nothing. Mattie had been alarmed but now the colour had returned to his face. He glanced up and smiled as she entered.

  ‘Just in time,’ he said, setting the pen back into the inkwell. ‘I’ve just finished.’

  ‘Already! I mean . . . It takes me two days to do the end-of-month accounts.’

  Mr Stebbins leant back and laced his fingers together across his colourful waistcoat. ‘I’m sure it does but you must remember’ – he indicated the book in front of him – ‘this is a simple matter for me.’

  ‘Of course it must be,’ she laughed. ‘After totting up the warehouse books mine must seem like a grocer’s bill.’

  ‘Mrs Maguire, it is a refreshing change.’

  ‘Well, if you’ve finished, would you rather take your tea downstairs in the kitchen? Queenie’s almost finished tidying up.’