The pale winter sun shone through the old net curtains, but Alfie couldn’t bring himself to stir. He turned over in his bed and buried his head under the pillow, trying to block out the light. He’d have happily left the blackout blind down all the time, but his mother insisted he had to know when was day and when was night. It made no difference to him.
He’d never known a case of flu like it. Usually he prided himself on being able to weather most minor ailments, and his fellow workers on the docks were quick to condemn anyone who bunked off claiming they were sick. It took a lot to fell most of them. Alfie had never had their dedication or commitment, but he didn’t see it that way as he lay in his sickbed, powerless to alter the menace of the virus, weak as a baby.
He thought he was a martyr, bearing up as well as he could, but unable to lift a finger to help himself. Surely nobody had ever suffered so badly. One minute he was racked with fever, raging hot, the next he was shivering, and no amount of extra blankets could make him feel warm again. His mother piled his bed with everything she could find – old counterpanes, crocheted shawls and a moth-eaten candlewick bedspread – but they did no good. Then he’d be too hot again and throw them all off, calling for her to fling open the window and let in the cool air.
This had been going on for weeks. Alfie had been too ill to be bored to begin with, but now he was slowly growing tired of being stuck in this one room, the bedroom he’d had since he was a boy. He’d never been much of a reader, and his eyes hurt too much to squint at the newspaper. He couldn’t stand all the radio programmes his mother loved so much – he could hear ITMA – It’s That Man Again – floating up the stairs, and sometimes she would laugh out loud and join in with one of the catchphrases. He swore he would scream if she ever said ‘Can I do you now, sir?’ one more time, except he didn’t have the energy.
He had to admit she had looked after him, bringing him hot soup when he was cold, and chilled lemonade when he was burning up. All the same, he resented her for it, having to rely on her so much, as if he was nothing but a little boy again. He’d always taken blatant advantage of the way she spoilt him, taking it for granted that she’d be happy to wait on him hand and foot, and he hadn’t particularly noticed how she did it. Now every tiny detail jarred. The way she’d be so deliberately cheerful in the morning, pulling up the hated blind. The little song she’d hum as she brought him up his meals. The snippets of gossip she’d bring back, in which he had not the slightest bit of interest.
Even though his body was worn out, his mind was beginning to churn, rehashing old resentments and frustrations. He didn’t in the least care about being off work. He would rather his fellow dockers didn’t think badly of him for taking the time off, but he didn’t miss the physical work itself – he was happy to leave them to get on with it. He missed the company, though, and the opportunities it brought him for little deals on the side, always with an eye out for a profit. That was what made life worth living – getting one over on somebody, winning a game the other person hadn’t even realised they’d been playing.
The fact that he hadn’t managed to get Danny to do what he wanted still plagued him. Danny had somehow won without even seeming to try. He was safe as houses, doing his soft desk job, not getting his hands dirty. Alfie had begun to imagine how he’d teach the man a lesson if he ever got him alone, where he couldn’t cry out for help. The more he thought about it, the more it seemed like a reasonable thing to do. His feverish days and nights put strange images of vengeance into his mind. Before his illness, Alfie had done a deal with one of Clender’s men and got himself a crate of whisky off the back of a lorry. He’d hidden it in his wardrobe so his mother wouldn’t find it, and had been helping himself when his thirst got really bad. It was now nearly all gone, but it had further fuelled his hatred of Danny, and his obsession with the Callaghans.
Then there was Kitty. Even before the illness hit him, he’d decided to lie low. He could have sworn that with an extra few minutes he would have worked out a way of getting into her house that night, but that bloody interfering Pop Feeny had come along to spoil his fun. The real problem was, Pop might have recognised him. Alfie had scarpered as fast as he was able, but he knew Pop was no fool. He didn’t know if the self-righteous old ARP warden would have said anything to Kitty. He knew they were close, that Pop was almost like a second father to her, so on the one hand he might have felt obliged to warn her, but on the other he might not have wanted to frighten her.
He was fairly sure Pop hadn’t reported him to his boss down at the docks, or to the police. Alfie had prepared his excuse: that he had just been dropping round to see Tommy and check if the new bike he’d got through Frank was all right, or if the lad wanted Alfie to go ahead and get him a better one. He figured this would be plausible – Tommy could back him up that he’d made the offer in the first place. He hadn’t needed to use it, though. This was the one advantage of being laid up for so long. The odds were that by the time he eventually made it back into the outside world, everyone would have forgotten the incident.
He hadn’t though. He craved news of Kitty, but no matter how much salacious gossip his mother repeated when she got home from shopping, she never mentioned her. He was all too familiar with the progress of the Feeny twins, whose unexpected arrival was the talk of the neighbourhood, and the never-ending sorrow of old Mrs Kerrigan, missing her POW son Sid and now mourning Eddy Feeny too, despite her never having had a good word for him as far as anyone could remember while he was alive. There was the report that Mr and Mrs Mawdsley had had a goose for Christmas dinner and invited lots of their neighbours to share it. Alfie had not appreciated that titbit – it had been stuck-up Mr Mawdsley who’d led the complaints about the poisoned meat that had got him banned from the Sailor’s Rest and forced to go up to Clydebank.
Every now and again he would feign interest in his mother’s gossip and drop in Kitty’s name just in case it jogged her memory. It hadn’t done any good. As far as he could tell, Kitty was still working at that combined forces place in the city centre along with her brother. Yet again, he resented that Danny Callaghan, who he knew for a fact was no better than he was when it came to sticking to the right side of the law, was now some highfalutin boffin, safe and warm at his desk, while he, Alfie Delaney, worked all hours God sent labouring away and breaking his back. There was no justice in the world and his mind churned with hatred.
Alfie cursed to himself as he heard the door go downstairs and his mother cackling away to the ITMA theme. He took a small swig of whisky. When he was up and about again, he’d find a way of getting through to Kitty. She was going to be his and his alone. He knew that deep down it was what she wanted; she just hadn’t realised it yet. It was up to him to show her what she was missing.
‘So they’ve got you working here all day every day now, have they?’ Vera Delaney eyed Ruby with suspicion, her eyes narrowing into slits. She hoisted her wickerwork basket on her arm, like a weapon.
‘Y-yes.’ Ruby stepped back a little. She was much better these days with nearly all of the customers, but there were a handful who reduced her to the bag of nerves she’d been when she’d first arrived. Vera, being one of Winnie’s old pals, had been fed the tale that the girl was simple and could never be expected to amount to anything, and she behaved as if nothing had changed.
‘Well, that’s nice for Rita and Violet, knowing they’ve got someone they can rely on while they’re off having children,’ Vera went on.
Ruby looked puzzled. She often had trouble working out exactly what this woman wanted. She could tell the words should have been a compliment, and yet they didn’t sound like one, which confused her. ‘Yes,’ she said again.
Vera stood still, as if waiting for something more. Then she shook her head and tutted. ‘I’ll have some of those tins of soup for my Alfie,’ she said, pointing to the shelf above the till. ‘Chicken, if you’ve got it. That’s his favourite. He needs building up.’
Ruby reached down all the tins of chicken soup she could see.
‘Been took terribly bad with the flu, he has,’ Vera told her, as if this was the most important news in the world. ‘He can hardly move, the poor lamb. It’s breaking his heart to be off work so long.’
‘Oh,’ said Ruby. This wasn’t what anybody else she knew had ever said about Alfie, but she realised it would be foolish to point this out to his mother.
‘He works so hard, practically wearing himself out,’ Vera continued, her voice high and whiny. ‘It’s no wonder he’s been taken so poorly.’
Ruby nodded, wishing she would just take her tins and go.
‘Of course some folks round here have it easy, swanning around,’ Vera complained. Just at that moment there was a movement outside and the speeding figure of Tommy on his bike whizzed past the shop window. Vera puffed in annoyance. ‘Those Callaghans, for a start.’
Ruby shook her head, knowing full well how hard they all worked and the hours they put in week in week out.
‘That Kitty is no better than she should be,’ Vera said viciously, ‘and as for that Danny, my Alfie said he let him down. Then he goes and gets that cushy job in an office.’
Ruby wasn’t sure what to say to that. What did she mean about Kitty? That didn’t make sense. If she was no better than she should be, wasn’t that a good thing, not bad? She decided to stick strictly to the facts. ‘Danny’s not here now, he’s away on a course,’ she said.
‘Is he, now? Probably smarmed his way on to that an’ all.’ Vera gave her an exasperated look. ‘Winnie was right about you – you haven’t an ounce of sense in you. Come on, give me those tins and I’ll be off.’
‘You have to pay,’ Ruby pointed out.
‘I know that, you stupid girl.’ Vera threw her coins down angrily on the counter, just as Rita appeared from the stock room.
‘Anything else I can help you with, Mrs Delaney?’ she asked sweetly, shrugging out of her thick nurse’s cloak, as she had come straight from her shift at the hospital.
Vera glared at her, took her shopping, and swept out without a word, slamming the shop door.
Ruby looked at Rita with concern. ‘She’s not a very nice lady,’ she said, her voice trembling a little.
‘No, she isn’t,’ said Rita. ‘Don’t you mind what she says. You get off and make yourself beautiful – you’re seeing Reggie later, aren’t you?’
At once Ruby’s face transformed. ‘He’s taking me to the pictures. I’m so excited. It’s Bell-Bottom George, because he knows I love George Formby. Then we’ll get fish and chips.’
Rita beamed, delighted that this new friendship was growing stronger and stronger. Ruby had been through so much – she surely deserved a good man like Reggie James. He seemed genuinely fond of her and had been around several times since New Year to continue the chess lessons, and, if Rita wasn’t much mistaken, to gently pay court to Ruby.
‘Off you go, then.’ Rita shooed her out of the shop. She glanced at her watch. Not long and she could shut the place up and take herself over to her mother’s and pick up Ellen, giving her the excuse to check on her lovely new niece and nephew. She was deeply touched that Violet had called the little girl after her. It was the little things like that which made life worthwhile, she thought, struck by the contrast of Vera’s spite and the loving generosity she’d find over at her parents’ house. If you were brought up by the likes of Pop and Dolly, you learned how to take the rough with the smooth and to love and be loyal to your family and friends. If you were brought up by Vera, you ended up like Alfie. She said a silent prayer of gratitude that she had the parents she did.