his voice. ‘I am just interested in getting the money owed me. I do not run a charity, and if you can’t pay your rent I shall have to let the house to someone else. Do you understand that, my dear?’ He looked her slowly up and down.
Meg nodded dumbly and handed the man the rent book and the ten-shilling note.
‘If I take it all,’ Flatterly said, ‘it will be two and six off the arrears.’
‘I know that,’ Meg said. ‘But I need it for food.’
Flatterly smiled but his eyes remained cold. ‘I understand your father is in full-time work.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Then the rent should present no problem to him,’ Flatterly said, handing Meg back half a crown. ‘So next week I will return myself. I will want the full rent and a good bit off the arrears, otherwise I can make life very uncomfortable for all of you.’
Meg scuttled inside as soon as she could, shut the door and leaned against it. She felt really shaken. Flatterly’s animosity had been almost tangible.
‘Phew, sis!’ Terry said.
‘You heard that?’
‘Every word.’
‘We must make Daddy realise that Richard Flatterly will have us out of this house without a qualm if we don’t pay off something next week,’ Meg said.
‘I think so too.’
‘We have to make Daddy see that,’ Meg repeated. ‘But just for now, the problem is making the money I have left stretch, so tomorrow night you and I will go to the Bull Ring just before the stallholders close up and see what they are throwing out that we can use.’
It was what the really poor people did. Meg had seen them a few times: be-shawled women holding keening babies, usually with stick-thin children in tow as well, dressed in little more than rags. She had pitied them. Never had she imagined that she’d be joining them. Terry was looking at her, appalled.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Terry,’ she cried. ‘I like this no better than you, but it’s what we must do to survive.’
‘There’s no other way?’
‘Not that I can see.’
Terry sighed. ‘S’pose we must then.’
So the following evening, Terry and Meg grabbed two shopping bags they hoped to fill with cheap meat and vegetables. Ruth was safely in her cradle in the bedroom, and she was sound asleep, as was Billy. Sally and Jenny, were also drowsy, yet still Meg hesitated to leave them as her father was down at the Swan.
‘We’ll have to go if we’re going,’ Terry said. ‘It’s a fair step.’
‘D’you think they will be all right?’
‘Of course,’ Terry said heartily. ‘What could happen to them?’
Then, as Meg still dithered, he opened the door. ‘Come on, Meg. We’ll go past May’s and ask her to keep a lookout. And Dad’s not a million miles away.’
‘Huh,’ said Meg, stepping onto the street beside him. ‘He might as well be in Outer Mongolia. A fat lot of use he’ll be with a bellyful of beer inside him.’
‘I don’t know so much,’ Terry said. ‘When we told him about Richard Flatterly and what he said, it did shake him up.’
‘Yes,’ Meg said, ‘but how much? Didn’t bother him enough to offer me extra money . .’
‘Mmm, I suppose you’re right,’ Terry said. ‘But you would hardly let him near Ruth.’
‘He wouldn’t go near her anyway, Terry, not by choice,’ Meg said. ‘I really think he would like to pretend that she doesn’t exist.’
Terry knew what Meg said was true but there was no point keeping on about it so after a while he said, ‘I wish we didn’t have to skulk around for leftovers, but it will be nice to see the Bull Ring on a Saturday night,’ Meg smiled. ‘Yeah, it will and we can have a little look around. The stallholders won’t be giving stuff away till they’re near to closing up.’
When they reached the cobbled streets of the bustling market place it was almost as busy as it was in daytime, but they weren’t surprised, for they’d heard lots of stories about the entertainment to be had on Saturday nights in the Bull Ring. It was even better when darkness seeped into the light summer night because then the spluttering gas flares were lit and the Bull Ring was transformed into something resembling fairyland. Terry and Meg walked around looking at the stalls, edging between men dressed up to the nines, even wearing top hats, moving effortlessly on very tall stilts.
Elsewhere a boxing ring had been erected and inside it was a bare-fisted burly boxer, challenging the watching men to a fight. There was a prize of five pounds if any knocked him down, but there were no takers.
‘Too early see, ducks,’ an old woman said to Meg and Terry as they turned away. ‘When the men have enough beer inside them, they’ll think they can climb Everest and beat the champ with one hand tied behind their back.’
‘Have you ever seen it done?’ Terry asked. ‘Has anyone knocked him down?’
The woman gave a cackle of laughter. ‘Well, if they have then I’ve never seen it,’ she said. ‘And I don’t know how that man gets out of the chains either, ’cos I’ve examined them more than once.’
‘What man? What chains?’ Terry asked, and the woman pointed to a corner in front of Hobbies shop. They wandered over to see a man trussed up like a chicken. A table was put over him and a large shimmering gold sheet laid over that by his assistant. There was a lot of movement behind the sheet, a roll of drums, and then before they knew it, the man stood in front of them, unfettered and unharmed.
Even Meg was impressed. Then, as they were making their way to the area behind the Market Hall where a group of ragged-looking women were beginning to gather, Terry suddenly sniffed the air.
‘What’s that smell?’
‘Hot potatoes,’ Meg said. ‘And they taste as delicious as they smell, but I’m afraid we have no money for such things.’
‘I know,’ Terry said resignedly.
Meg suddenly felt very sorry for her young brother, but there was nothing she could do about it. They passed a man prostrate on a bed of nails. Terry’s eyes were standing out on stalks, for not only was the man lying there as if it was the most comfortable bed in all Christendom, but there was a young man standing on top of him. The girls standing around were giving little cries of alarm, but the man, whose brown skin gleamed in the light from the flares, and who was scantily clad with only a white cloth wrapped around his loins, appeared to feel no pain. Indeed, he had a big smile on his face.
‘How does he do that?’ Terry whispered to Meg when they were out of earshot.
‘Search me,’ Meg said. ‘There must be some sort of trick to it, but for the life of me I can’t see what it is. I mean, you could see the nails pressing into the man’s skin.’
