Polly's War (43 page)

Polly let out a small gasp while Charlie said, ‘Surely not.’

‘Yes, I am. Belinda loved you too much to go running home, Benny. She’d been bullied by her father all her life and now she meant to stand by you; to protect the man she loved from the one who’d denied her love all her life. Sadly, she was the one who suffered most from his diabolical plan. I can’t prove it but I reckon if you put the squeeze on Percy Sympkin, he’ll squeal loud and clear that the eviction was not his own idea.’

‘Christ! Then Hubert Clarke was responsible for his own daughter’s death.’

‘Yes. I believe so.’

For several long moments there was no sound in the room but that of the clock ticking in loud solemn tones. Then from deep within its mechanism came a low growl that lifted to a steady whirling tone and finally erupted into a strident bong as it counted out the hour in ten doleful notes. As the last echo died away, it seemed to stir the occupants of the shadowy room back to life, though it was Lucy again who expressed all their feelings.

‘I reckon it’s time we fought back on Belinda’s behalf, don’t you? Time for the last battle.’

Polly looked at her usually homely daughter, eyebrows raised in mild surprise. ‘Is this my quiet, romantic little Lucy talking, who usually has no other thought in her head than what’s on at the pictures, or what colour lipstick she should wear?’

Lucy flushed, with embarrassment as much as annoyance since there was some truth in the accusation. ‘One minute you complain I’m too rebellious, the next I’m too quiet and romantic. Whichever, I’m not stupid.’

The teasing smile faded. ‘So you’re serious about this?’

‘I am indeed.’

Benny was on his feet, red-brown hair tousled from the constant raking of his fingers through it, round face a mask of pain. ‘Our Luce is right. It’s long past time we started to be a bit less -
nice -
or fair. Time we were a bit sharper on the uptake. And time we all stuck together instead of falling out between ourselves.’

‘The lad speaks sense,’ Minnie chipped in, unable to keep quiet any longer for all it was family business. ‘If you ask me, him what did this needs to be taught a lesson, hoist by his own petard as it were. And I reckon I know how.’ All eyes were upon her, mesmerised. ‘Everyone has some sort of weakness, an Achilles heel or a secret they’d much rather keep hidden. Even Councillor Hubert Clarke.’

Polly was staring at Minnie in surprise, coming slowly to life at this sign of new support. ‘That’s true.’

‘There must be summat he doesn’t want folk to know.’

‘Indeed there must.’

‘Well then,’ Minnie said. ‘All we need do, is find out what it is.’

Percy Sympkin not only squealed but wept with regret by the time Benny had done with him. Benny picked him up by his coat collar and hung him on a hook in his own front hall by which time he was only too ready to confess that it was Councillor Hubert Clarke who’d forced him to evict the young couple. He added the further information that it had also been Benny’s father-in-law who’d made sure that he never did get his allocation licence. Young Ron had gathered the petition signed against him from all those owing Hubert money. ‘They did it to buy themselves time, and put the mockers on you, lad.’

By the time Benny had heard the end of this sorry tale, he was purple with rage and flexing so many formidable muscles, that Percy was more than anxious to turn the tables on his former aggressor who now seemed chicken feed in comparison to Benny’s military brawn.

Benny unhooked him, stood him up straight and gently dusted down his rumpled suit. ‘Get me something on him, Percy lad. I don’t care what it is, I mean to make him pay. There must be some secret Councillor Clarke doesn’t want bruited about.’

It took Percy no time at all to come back to Benny with the results of his enquiries. There was a swirl of snow in the air, cold enough to freeze the waters of the canal when they met late one night, in a place where a discussion could generally take place without fear of interruption. The old stones of the bridges had probably heard more secrets than these two were about to spill.

‘This information comes free and gratis,’ Percy hastily assured Benny. ‘Glad to help, lad. Your Belinda were a right little treasure. Lovely lass.’

‘Get on with it, you smarmy toad,’ Benny growled, and so eager was Percy to help, he barely drew breath for twenty long minutes. Councillor Hubert Clarke was apparently up to his greedy neck in black marketeering.

‘He’s involved in so much funny business, stuff he doesn’t want the authorities to know about, I’m hard pressed to know where to begin.’ Percy took a breath and launched into his tale.
 

It seemed Hubert bought goods strictly for cash with nothing in writing and sold on at one hundred per cent mark-up, sometimes twice that amount. ‘Other stuff he hardly pays anything for at all. Them chairs he sold to Polly were a case in point. He got them for almost nowt as bankrupt stock and charged her the earth for them. He also has a nifty habit of invoicing a shop for stuff that never gets delivered, or so one of his van drivers told me.’

‘Then it wasn’t a case of careless paperwork. We really were defrauded of stock we’d paid for,’ Benny growled, his rage deepening.

‘Sometimes he buys stock in what he calls a ring, where he bids for them at auction but only against dealers who’ve agreed to drop out, so nobody pays too much for an item. They sort it all out between themselves beforehand, who’s having what. Sometimes its new bankrupt stock, sometimes second-hand. He doesn’t trouble too much what he buys so long as it’s cheap and he can sell it on to some poor fool who pays through the nose for it.’

‘Someone like us.’

‘Aye,’ Percy agreed. ‘And the poor souls who pay Ron week after week, knowing they’ll never settle their debt.’

There was a great deal more and by the time Percy was finished, Benny was spitting mad with fury at having been so used. How could he have been such a gullible fool? His former landlord tucked a grubby muffler about his neck and rubbed his hands together to aid circulation. ‘I saw another friend of yours the other day. Michael Hopkins.’

‘He’s no friend of mine,’ Benny growled, for he didn’t in the least approve of Lucy walking out on her husband, even if sometimes he did feel a tug of conscience that he’d never mentioned that rather odd conversation he’d had with Tom. He’d put it from his mind, deciding the man was a bit sick in the head, and probably couldn’t properly remember what he’d been doing these last years, or where he’d been. War did that to a bloke. Anyroad, Lucy had no right to be gallivanting with her fancy man, not while she was still married to her husband. All the same he was curious to hear about Michael Hopkins, and listened to what Percy had to say.

As the two men went their separate ways with a nod and a hand shake, Benny was satisfied that it’d been a most useful half hour. He’d discovered more about his father-in-law than he’d ever have imagined possible. He’d also learned that Joanna was not half so loyal as Hubert imagined. She had indeed spent much of the war keeping the soldiers and sailors happy, but not simply by knitting balaclavas. He took this nugget of information directly to Polly and together with Lucy, Minnie and Charlie, held what might be termed a Council of War.

It was agreed that Lucy’s task would be to discover more about the nefarious goings-on of Joanna Clarke. ‘If she has a few grudges of her own against Hubert, she might be glad to help. Particularly when she learns what really happened to Belinda,’ Lucy agreed.

Benny readily volunteered to keep an eye on son Ron, smiling at Polly’s caution to ‘go easy on him’.
 

‘Don’t worry. There are other possibilities I need to follow up first,’ he told her, which he wasn’t yet ready to divulge.

As well as investigating ways of getting the business going again, they were all given their separate jobs. Charlie, with a lessened degree of pain thanks to the new pills he was on, opted to hold the fort at Minnie’s house, keep an eye on the children when necessary and provide meals for them all. This was where they were all now living. Where else could they go? Polly said she was lucky to have such a good friend as Minnie who was prepared to take her family in when she hadn’t a penny to pay for their keep.
 

‘It wasn’t as if we were ever particularly close, you and me,’ she said, trying to find the right words to thank Minnie for her generosity. ‘But don’t you always manage to be there when one of us needs you? I do appreciate that, to be sure.’

‘I thought of leaving you out on t’street and giving you a brick to lay thee head on, but then I thought, happen not. Waste of a good Accrington brick,’ chortled the old woman, her cackling laughter making her false teeth click.

For all Minnie’s generosity everyone knew it was going to be hard. With no business and therefore no income coming in they would all need to find new jobs which, for Polly and Charlie in particular, wouldn’t be easy. Being poor was bad enough when you were young: in middle age, Polly said, it didn’t bear thinking about.

‘What you need do is to scupper Hubert, then maybe you’ll manage to salvage summat from the mire,’ Minnie kept reminding them.

It was to be Polly and Minnie who would set in motion the method by which they would achieve this seemingly impossible task, and hopefully win back some of the money he’d so artfully stolen from them. They weren’t sure of all the details and implications yet but the intention was to find a way to let him know that at some location, still to be agreed, there were goods for sale at a bargain price, strictly cash, no questions asked.

Minnie volunteered to act as decoy, since she was very nearly sure that he didn’t know her well enough to recognise her. Even if he did, she argued, he’d no reason to suppose she was friendly with the family from Pride Carpets but she doubted he’d ever paid much attention to an old woman who lived in a big old terraced house at the end of Pansy Street. ‘He might recognise our Michael, if he saw us together, but he’s not going to, is he?’

Lucy swallowed the lump which came instantly into her throat at mention of his name, turning her face away so no one would see the flicker of pain that crossed it. She’d had no word from Michael since he left. With each passing week her pregnancy was progressing and he didn’t even know about it, let alone the fact that she had, at last, left her husband. Clasping her hands tightly together she determined to hold fast to her strength and keep hoping that one day, perhaps tomorrow, he would come back to her.

In the meantime, perhaps her own marital problems would at least make it easier to prise some information out of Joanna Clarke. Lucy could certainly sympathise with the woman’s need for a lover, for all she didn’t care much for her choice. Tim Fenton was young enough to be her son, should in fact have been her son-in-law if Hubert had had his way. Lucy wondered if her husband had any idea about the reality of their friendship and rather doubted he did, since arrogant men such as Councillor Clarke, rarely imagined their wives to be capable of asserting themselves let alone having an affair. And not for a moment would he believe that he had subjected her to a miserable existence.

Joanna looked far from miserable when she opened the door to Lucy. She was smiling and dressed in a pretty pink housecoat that had a ruffled collar and hem. She looked like the perfect model of a housewife straight from the pages of
Woman Own
, except she probably wasn’t eagerly waiting for her husband to come home. Lucy couldn’t help glancing up the stairs behind her, as if half expecting to see lover-boy appear at the top of it.

‘Mrs Clarke, I’m Lucy Shackleton, Benny’s sister. I wonder if I could have a word.’

Joanna coolly responded that this wasn’t possible and would have closed the door in her face had not Lucy managed to get in one more short sentence. ‘I think I know why Belinda died.’ The door stopped closing upon the instant.

She was shown into the conservatory which apparently was the warmest room in the house, kept heated all year round to nurture Hubert’s carnations, his pride and joy. The lush greenery and sweet scents of the flowers was almost overpowering.

Joanna brought Lucy a sherry and then excused herself for a moment. She was back within ten minutes or so, dressed in a simple but clearly expensive scarlet wool dress which showed off her elegant figure to perfection. Her face was a carefully presented picture of cream foundation, powder, and a bright red lipstick. As she drifted by, Lucy caught the scent of Californian Poppy, which was almost too cloying in the sickly sweet room. She arranged herself delicately in a wicker chair and reached for her sherry. ‘What is this you have to say about my daughter? I hope you aren’t here to make trouble or reopen old wounds, Mrs Shackleton. My family has suffered enough.’

‘So has mine.’ Lucy kept strictly to the facts which she delivered as bluntly and smartly as she could. Then she sat back and waited with some trepidation for the woman’s reaction.

Joanna merely blinked and sipped her sherry. ‘I know all of this. Tim discovered it all for me.’

Lucy’s mouth dropped open but she quickly closed it again, remembering to mind her manners as Polly had instructed her. ‘You
know
that your husband was responsible for Belinda’s death, and yet you said nothing?’

‘
Indirectly
responsible. He didn’t personally kick her out on the streets. It was a mix-up, a mistake.’

‘Oh, I see. It was meant to be my brother, was it? It would’ve been all right for Benny to be chucked out. You obviously had no qualms about making him homeless. But didn’t either of you ever stop and think for one minute that Belinda might insist on staying on with him, the husband she loved, no matter what.’