are you?’
‘Me friend Annie Foster recommended me to come and get a job,’ Alice said quickly, for she’d heard the suspicion in his voice. ‘She’s been took on recently and said as you had vacancies. I work hard.’
‘Know Annie, do you? Well, I can’t complain about her. She does her quota and more.’
‘I can do that too,’ Alice promised eagerly.
Simon Wright gave a half smile. That sort of enthusiasm rarely lasted long in places like this. He guessed she was lying about her age but not by much. Alice Keiver could pass for fourteen, delicately built though she was. He often saw girls close to school-leaving age who couldn’t be patient and wait those last few months. Usually he’d play it by the book. But the factory had a large order to meet and they’d be one short again with Tina leaving on Friday. At least with the younger girls they were glad of the work. At the beginning they expected less and did more than their older colleagues to keep their jobs.
‘I’m not going to say it’s the easiest work, or the most interesting, but you’ll get your pay packet end of Friday’s shift without delay. Ten shillings to start.’
Alice nodded eagerly.
Simon Wright picked up his pen. ‘I need some details from you, Alice. Address?’
Alice gulped then quickly said, ‘Campbell Road. But I’m moving soon … soon as I can.’
On turning into Campbell Road on her way home from the factory Alice stopped humming and waved frantically. She’d spied her mum marching purposefully down the road. Alice put on a spurt and went to meet her and tell her the good news.
As Alice got closer she slowed to a walk again and some of her high spirits evaporated. She could see her mother’s expression now and read from it that something was definitely not right.
Tilly’s lips were compressed tight and her blue eyes were narrowed dangerously. As her daughter reached her Tilly snapped out, ‘You’ll have to get inside and take Lucy off Fran. I’ve left her with your aunt while I’ve been doing me rent collecting. Now I’ve got to go and see Mr Keane and give him some real bad news.’
Alice guessed that the real bad news was to do with unpaid rents. It wasn’t unusual for people around here to get in to arrears if they’d had no work. Usually her mum was quite lenient and would juggle figures this way and that for people she liked and who needed a bit of help for a few weeks. She’d been known to lend small items, like blankets, to women to pawn so they could scrape by till something turned up. But Tilly didn’t take nonsense off anybody. Alice knew that often people were tempted to take liberties. They’d use money that had been put by for rent on frivolous things. Billy the Totter turned up each week in Campbell Road before rent-collection day. He’d made it his business to find out when each house manager did the rounds in the hope of getting in first and laying his sticky fingers on the cash before the landlord got it. Alice knew her mother wanted to keep on the right side of her boss, Mr Keane, because she wanted his work.
Tilly’s thoughts were running along the same lines: she didn’t want to lose her job. It was a good one with perks. She took liberties … but not too many. She knew Mr Keane had in the past cocked a deaf’n to tales about her. In a roundabout way he’d let her know so long as she delivered the rents due he didn’t care too much how she got them, or how she robbed Peter to pay Paul. Of course he knew that she dipped in and fiddled here and there and had a little flutter with his money to try and make a bit of extra cash for herself; but as long as the figures tallied when the money was handed over he was satisfied.
‘I got the job at the factory,’ Alice ventured in the hope of lightening her mother’s dark frown.
‘Bleeding good job too,’ Tilly retorted. ‘’Cos if I lose me job over this we’ll need your money, every penny of it.’
‘What …?’ Alice started to enquire but Tilly soon cut her short and through gritted teeth told her what had gone wrong.
‘Those Robertsons in number fifty-two have gone ‘n’ done a bunk. Bastards must’ve took off early hours of Sunday morning. Nobody seems to have seen them since Saturday.’ Tilly stuffed her hands into her pockets to warm them. ‘Old Beattie who lives a couple of doors away from them reckons the lads had a barrow pulled up outside ready ‘n’ waiting. When she asked what it was for they said they was setting up in rag ‘n’ boning. She didn’t think no more of it, she said, or she’d have come and warned me.’
‘Did they owe a lot?’ Alice glanced across the road at the offending house. Usually she wouldn’t have had the courage to question her mother about any of her business. It would have earned her a clip round the ear for cheek. But her mother had started the discussion, and it seemed that securing her first proper job was passage to being allowed to know such things.
‘They owe a month; but it ain’t just that. I lent Jeannie Robertson a blouse to pawn. Good ’un, it was. Won’t see that no more. But that ain’t the worst of it. They’ve done a runner with every stick o’ furniture that was in the place. All of it Mr Keane’s.’
Alice’s jaw slackened and her eyes grew round. Naturally, it wasn’t unheard of for people to do a moonlight flit around here. But usually they just scarpered with their own measly stuff, and owing back rent.
‘That’s why they hired a cart,’ Alice ventured, and got a sour look from her mother for stating the bleeding obvious.
The Robertsons were known to be a family of ruffians. They were generally avoided as being the lowest of the low in a road where the dregs of society were said to congregate. Two teenage sons had lived with their mother at number fifty-two. Nobody knew where Jeannie Robertson’s husband was, and nobody had cared enough to ask for she was a blunt, unfriendly type. They’d moved from Lorenco Road in Tottenham and had been tenants for about two years. Since that time the boys had been known as violent troublemakers. They’d both been up before the magistrate recently for smashing the windows of St Anne’s church round in Pooles Park. The Lennox Road Mission had also been targeted when the boys were banned from the youth club because of their bad language and behaviour. Alice and Sophy had been warned repeatedly by Tilly to stay away from them, and they had.
‘Get in and take Lucy off Fran’s hands or she’ll be moaning and kickin’ up a stink,’ Tilly directed Alice. ‘Time she got off her arse and bucked herself up a bit,’ she muttered, and set off down the road.
Alice knew then that her mother was well and truly riled. She was never usually out of patience with her sister Fran, or if she was she kept it to herself. Alice felt the criticism was justified. In her opinion it was time her aunt got herself some proper work instead of cadging all the time. It was about time too that Bobbie and Stevie spent more time in their own place. It was a constant crush in the Keivers’ rooms.
Alice entered the dim hallway of her home silently praying that her mum would not lose her job over this. She knew too well what would happen if she did: she’d have to hand over every penny she earned from the factory job and manage to put nothing by for her new life.
As Alice knocked on Fran’s door to collect her little sister she realised why the Robertsons had gone on a Saturday night. They’d known that the Keiver household would be in drunken uproar. Now that Fran was over the worst, the Saturday night singsongs had started up again. The Keivers, and a good deal of the neighbours, wouldn’t have been in a fit state in the early hours of Sunday morning to notice a thing that went on.
