that she had already made a new friend, Nancy grinned. ‘What’s your name?’ she whispered.
‘Brenda. Brenda Butler.’
Michael listened miserably while Vinny and Roy explained the workings of the club to him. He already missed the smell of oil and petrol and the excitement he felt tinkering about with different makes and models of cars and bikes.
‘So the bulk of our profit comes solely from the booze. We buy that for peanuts off a guy called Ted, and in return, Ted gets treated like royalty every time he sets foot in here, which is most weekends,’ Vinny explained.
‘So, what will I actually be doing then?’ Michael asked, his voice devoid of any enthusiasm. He still thought his brothers were bang out of order.
‘You’ll just be doing the same as me and Vin. All we do of an evening is chat politely to the customers, keep an eye out for trouble, and generally make sure the place is ticking over nicely. My mates Pete and Paul work on the door making sure that only members come in. Don’t look so glum, Michael, you’ll love it when you get in the swing of it. It’s the good life, bruv,’ Roy said.
Sick of his brother’s lack of enthusiasm and sullen expression, Vinny stood up and grabbed Michael by the lapels of his new mohair suit.
‘What you doing, Vin? Leave him be,’ Roy ordered, when Vinny pushed Michael roughly towards the wall.
Vinny ignored Roy’s advice and gave Michael some home truths. ‘You are one ungrateful little cunt, has anybody ever told you that? It is about time you started acting your age and pulling your weight for this family like me and Roy have had to for years. Who do you think supports Mum, Brenda, Auntie Viv and Champ, eh? It ain’t our useless fucking father, that’s for sure. You owe it to us to chip in and that is what you shall do, so the quicker you put a smile on that miserable fucking face of yours and show a bit of spirit and gratitude, the better.’
When Vinny let go of him, a shocked Michael sat on a nearby sofa and put his head in his hands. Nobody argued with Vinny, including him, so there was no way out of the situation. He knew he was going to hate his new job, but he would just have to grin and bear it. What other choice did he have? ‘I’m sorry, Vinny. I’ll work hard for you, I promise,’ he said, meekly.
Feeling a bit guilty for obviously frightening his younger sibling, Vinny walked over and ruffled his hair like he used to when he was a child. ‘We don’t need you back here until tonight, so why don’t you shoot home, take your suit off and go out on your moped, eh? You’ve got your test next week, so you need to get some practice.’
Grinning falsely, Michael thanked his brother and left the club.
Mary Walker wasn’t having the best of days. She had got two customers’ orders wrong, dropped a plate of food and then scalded her hand with boiling-hot water.
‘Why don’t you have a sit down and I’ll bring you over a nice mug of tea?’ Shirley offered.
Mary smiled.When Shirley had asked for a job on Friday, the café had been that busy that Donald had asked her to start immediately. Shirley only lived a few minutes’ walk from the café, and therefore knew most of the punters really well. ‘OK then. I could do with resting my feet for ten minutes. I shall be a bundle of nerves until they get home, you know,’ Mary said, referring to her children’s first day at a new school. Christopher hadn’t been too bad this morning, but she had overheard Nancy crying in the bathroom, which had worried her terribly. The junior school that Christopher was attending was only five minutes from Nancy’s new school and the children had been adamant that they wanted to walk to and from school together. Mary had wanted to take them, but both children said it would make them a target for bullies if they turned up with their mother in tow.
Mary plonked herself down at a nearby table and was just about to start reading the newspaper when Queenie and Vivian Butler walked in with little Lenny.
‘Hello, sweetheart. How long you been working here?’ Queenie asked Shirley.
Pretending to read the paper, Mary carried on ear-wigging. It soon became obvious to her that Shirley knew Queenie and Vivian very well. Furious when somebody gave little Lenny money to put in the jukebox because it left her unable to hear the conversation properly, Mary scuttled out the kitchen to tell Donald the latest.
When Judy Preston got a bee in her bonnet, she found it very hard to shift it and the more she thought about Vinny and Roy Butler turning up at her house and barging their way in, the more irate she became. Her brother Johnny had been livid when she had told him and he was going to sort out Vinny and Roy for her. That wasn’t enough for Judy though, which is why she had decided to pay Albie a visit in hospital and give him a piece of her mind as well.
‘Come on, Mark. Get in your pushchair,’ Judy urged her son.
‘We going Nanna’s house?’ Mark asked excitedly.
‘No, we are going to see the cowardly tosser who has impregnated me.’
After having lunch in the café, Queenie and Vivian went to visit their mum in nearby Bow Cemetery, then parted company on the way back because Queenie felt it was her duty to visit Albie.
‘I would say give the old bastard my regards, but you know I don’t mean it,’ Vivian said, putting her headscarf on to stop the drizzle getting to her hair.
After telling her sister that if she hadn’t have suffered the misfortune of marrying Albie, she wouldn’t be visiting the old bastard herself, Queenie waved goodbye, then made her way into the London Hospital. As she reached her husband’s ward, she heard his name mentioned and her ears pricked up. Pretending to go through her shopping bag as though she was searching for something, Queenie surreptitiously looked out of the corner of her eye. There was a young blonde girl with a child in a pushchair, asking the nurse for directions to Albie’s bed. Wondering who on earth the tart could be, Queenie cautiously followed her into the ward.
As usual, being the miserable old bastard that he was, Albie had the curtains drawn around his bed. Queenie crept up to the neighbouring bed and put her forefinger to her lips to warn the senile old Mr Perry not to say anything. Surely her Albie hadn’t found himself a young bit of fluff? Queenie hadn’t fancied the dirty, disgusting old drunk for years, so how could anybody else?
Albie had been fast asleep until he felt a violent prodding on his right arm. Expecting it to be Queenie, Albie nearly had a cardiac arrest when he locked eyes with Judy Preston. ‘You can’t come here! What do you want? My Queenie’ll be here soon. You’re gonna have to leave,’ he said, his face twitching with anxiety.
‘Well, you should have thought of that before you got me pregnant, then sent your sons round my house to threaten me in front of Marky,’ Judy spat.
Unable to stop her legs from buckling, Queenie took a tumble and fell on top of old Mr Perry.
‘Get your hands off me chopper! Nurse, nurse,’ the stick-thin fragile ninety-four-year-old wailed, as he put his right hand on his private parts to protect them.
Pulling herself together, Queenie took a couple of deep breaths, picked up her umbrella and flew through Albie’s curtain like a bat out of hell. ‘You dirty fucking old bastard,’ she screamed, as she began to smash her brolly over her cheating husband’s head.
Judy stood rooted to the spot. Queenie was a typical, no-nonsense, hard-faced East Ender and just by taking
