Читать книгу East End Angel - Kay Brellend - Страница 8

‘For goodness’ sake, Jennifer! Can’t you clean this place up, once in a while?’

‘Why?’ Jennifer Finch was in the process of rinsing out her stockings and underwear. Turning from the sink she sent her sister a sullen look while listlessly dunking the smalls in a metal bowl. ‘This dump won’t look no better without the dust, you know.’ Lethargically, she glanced about.

‘It’s not a bit of dust that’s the problem, Jen, is it?’ Kathy retorted.

Jennifer had a couple of ground-floor rooms in a converted house just off Mare Street in Bethnal Green. The upstairs was unoccupied as the landlord had refused to mend the leaking roof and make it close to habitable. On arrival today, Kathy had found her sister’s flat in a state, as usual. Jennifer was always promising to have a spring clean, but never did. The only place that ever seemed slightly tidier was Jennifer’s bedroom, and Kathy reckoned that was to impress her scummy punters.

Jennifer’s sitting room had once been separated from the kitchenette by a partition wall. The landlord had knocked it down to a low level so now a few old cupboards, a small cooker and a butler sink with wooden draining board were on view.

The faded wallpaper had come unstuck where rain had penetrated through the ceiling and bay window, and now drooped, exposing cracked plaster beneath. The furniture wasn’t ancient but Jennifer didn’t take care of it and in the year since she’d moved in the upholstery had become stained. The square oak dining table was covered in odds and ends, and there was crockery on the floor. On top of a small radiogram was a smeary glass standing in an overflowing ashtray. The air inside the flat was heavy with the mingled odours of tobacco smoke and mildew. Jennifer rarely opened the windows in case Dot Pearson, who lived next door, was snooping on her, so there was a perpetual unpleasant fug clinging to everything.

Kathy shrugged out of her coat and, rather than lay it on the dirty sofa, hung it over a fiddle-back chair. She picked up the stack of dirty plates from the rug. The top one had remnants of newspaper and a fish supper stuck to it. She plonked the crockery on the draining board. Her sister ignored the angry crash and continued wringing out her washing.

‘I’ve told you before, you’ll end up with food poisoning, you daft ha’p’orth, if you don’t keep things clean.’

‘Good … hope I get raging bellyache and die. It’ll save me sticking me head in the gas oven,’ Jenny snarled.

Kathy grabbed Jennifer’s arm, spinning her round. ‘Don’t talk stupid.’ She stepped back as she smelled the alcohol on her sister’s breath. Immediately, her eyes slewed to the tumbler balanced on top of the radiogram. ‘You’ve been boozing again.’ She sounded more upset than angry, and Jennifer had the grace to blush.

‘So what if I have?’

‘You promised you’d lay off it.’ Kathy swooped on the dirty glass and gave it a sniff, recognising whisky.

‘Did I now?’ Jennifer narrowed her crusty eyelids. ‘Well, if you had my fuckin’ life you’d need a drink ’n’ all.’ She grabbed up the bowl and went outside to peg the washing on the line in the misty backyard. When the few scraps of cotton and silk were hanging limp in the still March air, she turned back to her sister. ‘Oh, just leave it. I’ll do it when you’ve gone.’ Jennifer seemed irked that Kathy had begun washing up the plates in the stained butler sink.

‘Have you been bathing your eyelids with warm salt water, like I said?’

‘If I remember, I do it.’ Jennifer still sounded irritated.

Kathy raised her eyes heavenward at her sister’s attitude.

‘You said you’d bring me some stuff over to clear it up.’ Jennifer came in, shutting the back door. She was constantly conscious of eavesdroppers the other side of the fence. She was sure Dot Pearson and her cronies thought they were better than she was. Jennifer grudgingly admitted to herself that on the whole they were better than she was, but she didn’t want anybody rubbing it in.

Kathy pulled a small brown bottle and a pack of lint from her bag. Having unscrewed the top, she upended the antiseptic onto a scrap of lint then wiped it over her sister’s closed eyelashes. She handed over the jollop. ‘Do it morning and evening till it clears up. And boil your flannels and towels and your bed linen or the infection won’t go.’ Kathy rubbed together her hands under the icy running tap and flicked them dry rather than risk using the length of frayed greyish cotton hanging on a hook. She knew she was wasting her breath with Jennifer. Her twin regularly promised to alter her way of life, but nothing changed.

Filthy sheets remained on the bed for months on end before seeing the inside of the copper situated outside in the ramshackle washhouse. Considering her twin’s profession, Kathy felt sick, knowing Jennifer slept on the detritus shed by strangers’ bodies …

‘Seen anything of Mum and Dad?’ Jennifer asked.

‘I haven’t been over to Islington for weeks.’

Despite Jennifer having been banished from darkening Eddie and Winnie Finch’s doorstep many years ago, she still asked after her family with poignant regularity.

‘Wonder how Tom’s doing?’ Jenny mentioned their younger brother.

‘Last time I spoke to Mum, she was on the warpath with him ’cos he’s good pals with the lads who live round in Campbell Road.’

‘Perhaps I won’t be the only bleedin’ disgrace in the family after all.’ Jenny’s giggle held a hint of malice.

‘It’s not a joke, Jen, is it, if he gets himself in bad trouble? Tom’s got to find a job soon and he won’t have any luck if he keeps larking about. Work’s hard to come by.’

‘Oh, pipe down, Miss Goody Two-Shoes.’ Jennifer’s complaint was tinged with amusement. Hearing about their brother’s bad behaviour seemed to have brightened her mood.

‘Did Mum mention me at all when you last saw her?’ she asked hopefully.

‘She never does, you know that.’ Kathy knew her brusque reply had hurt her sister but Jennifer seemed unwilling to change her seedy life in an attempt to win back her parents’ trust.

‘Don’t want no tea, do you, Kath? ’Spect you’ve got to be off.’

‘Trying to get rid of me already?’ Kathy raised her eyebrows. Jennifer didn’t look in a fit state to be receiving punters and that was the usual reason she’d tell her to go. Even dockers might expect a brass to make some effort with her appearance. Jennifer’s fair hair was matted and the old dress and cardigan she had on didn’t look as though they’d seen an iron in a long while. Kathy reckoned her sister hadn’t washed, or combed her hair, since she’d climbed out of bed. In fact, she looked as though she could do with a hot bath and Kathy told her so.

‘Better get meself tidied up.’ Jennifer tried to separate the tangles in her hair with her fingers. ‘Bill’s coming over this afternoon.’

‘Well, in that case, I am going.’ Kathy hated Bill Black and had done so since he had corrupted her sister when she was just fifteen and set her on the road to ruin.

‘Got any money before you go?’ Jennifer wheedled as Kathy picked up her coat. ‘I could do with getting a bit of grub in …’

‘If I thought you’d buy food with it, I’d lend you a couple of shillings.’ Kathy gave her twin a challenging stare. ‘But you’ll spend it on fags or booze or drugs, won’t you?’

‘I won’t, I swear. I’ll buy meself some chips and a loaf of bread.’ Jennifer blinked her diseased eyelids, giving her sister a winning smile.

Kathy had been treated to such solemn vows in the past. ‘Ask Bill to get you some shopping when he turns up.’ It twisted her guts to be hard-hearted but she’d lost count of the times her sister had pleaded for money because she was hungry, then spent it on one of her addictions.

‘He won’t give me nuthin’,’ Jenny spat. ‘He’s probably expecting me to give him something. But I’ve not had no work. Who’s gonna want me looking like this?’ She scratched at the crusts clumping together her eyelashes.

‘Leave it alone! You’ll make it worse.’ Kathy yanked at her sister’s elbow, dragging away her hand.

Kathy’s bubbling exasperation was threatening to explode. Her sister had been on the game for years, yet Kathy could never quite relinquish the hope that Jennifer would make a fresh start. ‘Why don’t you clean the place up, and yourself too while you’re at it?’ Kathy thundered. ‘Look for a proper job and stop wallowing in self-pity!’

‘Oh, fuck off!’ Jennifer flung herself down on the sofa. ‘Bleedin’ sick of you and your holier-than-thou crap. Go on, piss off. I know you want to. You only ever come here to crow and look down yer nose at me. If you really wanted to help, you’d give me a few bob so I don’t starve. You can see I can’t work looking like this.’

‘If you didn’t associate with scum, you wouldn’t look like that, would you?’ Kathy bellowed. ‘Where d’you think you get the germs from?’

‘Oi, oi. What’s going on? You gels having a bit of a barney then?’

Kathy spun on her heel to see a flashily dressed stocky man letting himself in with the key that hung through Jenny’s letter box on a bit of string. She picked up her coat and immediately shrugged into it.

‘Don’t go on my account, darlin’,’ Bill Black said with a foxy smile. His eyes lowered to look her over beneath the brim of a fedora shading his swarthy features.

Bill was well aware Kathy Finch despised him. Whereas he thought she was very comely, especially in her nurse’s uniform. He’d fantasised many times about ripping that off her. But he realised it must be her afternoon off as she was dressed in civvies. Jennifer had told him that her sister often came round, nagging at her to reform her ways. Bill didn’t want Jennifer doing that; she might be a pain in the arse with her constant whining, but she had her uses. That was why he’d stopped by …

‘I’ll see you in a week or two,’ Kathy told Jennifer. She stared coldly at Bill, until he shifted away from the doorway. She’d been at Jennifer’s before when he’d turned up and brushed against her to cop a feel. He wasn’t doing that again!

‘You come to see me or her?’ Jennifer barked, surging up out of the armchair in a fit of pique on noticing Bill giving her sister the eye.

Bill removed his hat and sauntered over to smooth Jenny’s dark blond hair. It felt greasy beneath his palm. ‘Don’t be a stranger now …’ he called out, riling Kathy, who banged the door shut.

Bill glanced at Jennifer with distaste. At the best of times she looked a mess but next to her pretty sister it was even more obvious. ‘Fuck’s sake, Jen, what you done to yerself?’ He stared at her mucky lashes, nose wrinkled.

‘Got fassy eye, ain’t I,’ Jennifer snapped. ‘Probably caught it off that last punter you brought me in. He stank to high heaven.’

‘Get the bath in, shall I?’ Bill suggested. He had a hole in his finances and could do with some money. A deal on some stolen goods he’d fenced had gone sour on him and he’d lost twenty quid.

‘Got a few bob to lend me?’ Jennifer asked sullenly.

‘You must be joking, gel.’ Bill snorted in disbelief. ‘I was going to ask you for a sub.’ He gave her rump a playful slap. ‘Once you’re done up to the nines, we’ll go out and see if we can find you a punter who’s two parts pissed and won’t notice you look a bleedin’ sight under the war paint. Then we’ll roll him.’

Jennifer huffed dispiritedly, but she’d sooner risk fleecing a customer than have to service him, the way she felt. She’d taken laudanum on top of the whisky she’d drunk earlier and reckoned she might throw up.