CHAPTER ONE
Sadie McCoy stood by the window looking out into the dingy street. It was Sunday morning, early, and few people were about, which made the street look even worse than usual. She was used to dingy streets, it was not that in itself that was bothering her, but the streets she had known were Belfast ones, with straight rows of red-bricked houses built back to back. This was a London street, and even after a month it still looked foreign to her.
She pulled the yellowish-white net back to the edge of the window so that she could see a bit farther. A black man came round the corner carrying a newspaper. There was no sign of Kevin. She sighed, dropped the net back into place. He had gone to mass. She did not like him going; she felt uneasy all the time he was away. She had dreams in which black-robed priests tried to hold on to Kevin and would not let him leave the church even when he wanted to. He laughed when she told him about the dreams and said she believed too many of the old wives’ tales about Catholics that she’d been told as a child. She was a Protestant. That was why they had come to London.
She filled the kettle at the small sink in the corner of the room, lit the gas ring and set the water to boil. She did all her cooking on this one ring. The landlady had promised another, but that was when they had first come, and now when Sadie asked about it Mrs Kyrakis looked vague and her English failed her. She was a Greek Cypriot but had been in London a long time, and her English failed her only at opportune moments. Fourteen people lived in her house, like rabbits in warrens, each tucked away in their separate holes, and downstairs in one room at the back Mrs Kyrakis slept and ate and collected her money. She was seen only on Friday evening, rent night.
It was a waste of time to bang on her door on any other day. And it was a waste of time to ask for anything. She would say, as she took the rent into her thick hands and began to count, ‘I see about it’, and then forget until the following Friday. They paid a lot of money to live in this one miserable room. At least it seemed a lot to Sadie and Kevin for they were used to Ulster prices. At home they could have had a whole house for the same money. In some parts of Belfast you could have a house for nothing. But that was because you could get a bullet through your head to go with it. So they paid their money and thankfully closed their door and no one bothered them. Here they had peace.
Sadie scooped a spoonful of tea into the pot and put it near the flame to warm, then took two cups down from the shelf. Kevin should be in at any moment and he would be dying for a cup of tea. He had gone out without breakfast. She had been lying beside him warm and snug in the old sagging bed which took up one wall of the room. ‘Do you have to go?’ she had asked him, knowing that he would go for he always did.
‘I don’t have to. But I feel better when I do.’
‘Ach, don’t go this morning, Kevin. Just this once!’
He had lain awhile and then got up. She had sat up and pouted at him.
‘Are you feared of what your mammy might say? But she’s not here to see you. Or is it the priest you’re feared of?’
She had a terrible tongue on her, she knew it full well. There were times when it just seemed to run away with her. Kevin had been mad with her, and they had had a row. That was why she was so restless now, going to the window every two minutes to see if he was coming. What if he didn’t come back? She closed her eyes, panic seizing her at the idea. Her ma had always said that her tongue would get her into real trouble one day.
Sadie opened her eyes and looked round the room, at its shabby broken furniture, the peeling wallpaper, the damp patch near the window that looked like an elephant, the torn linoleum, and her new red rug. If he was to abandon her here alone! Alone in this street. In this city. This enormous sprawling noisy city where she knew no one but Kevin.
A passing figure blocked the light from the window momentarily. She heard Kevin’s feet. As he came into the hallway of the house she flung open the door of the room.
‘Kevin!’ she cried, throwing her arms round his neck. ‘I thought you weren’t coming back.’
‘Not coming back!’ He made a funny face at her. ‘And where did you think I’d gone? Buckingham Palace?’
She laughed. Of course he wouldn’t have left her! They went into the room.
‘I’m a real head case,’ she said.
‘You can say that again!’
‘I’m sorry about this morning.’
‘That’s all right!’ He grinned at her. ‘I knew you would be after I’d gone.’
The kettle was boiling, clouding the room with steam. She poured the water into the teapot.
‘Would you like some ham and egg?’ she asked.
‘I certainly would. I’m starved.’
He lay back on the bed whilst she fried the bacon and eggs. The smell filled the room making their mouths water. The room would smell for the rest of the day but they did not bother about that now. When they went to bed at night Sadie would sniff the air and say, ‘I hate sleeping with the smell of cooking round my face.’
‘There!’ she said, flipping Kevin’s egg out on to the plate, and as she did so she thought of her mother standing in the kitchen at home in her flowered wrap-around overall doing the very same thing. Bacon and egg: her mother cooked more of that than anything else.
‘What are you thinking about?’ asked Kevin, looking up at her.
‘Me ma,’ said Sadie, mocking herself a little.
‘Aye.’ Kevin sighed. ‘It’d be fine to see our families once in a while.’
Sadie was not sure that she wanted to see hers. She had written to her mother after she and Kevin had been married at Gretna Green in Scotland, and her mother had written back to tell Sadie that she had broken her heart. Sadie didn’t believe that fully for her mother always exaggerated, especially when it came to the bad things in life. The good things she tended to underestimate. She would sniff cautiously at a good piece of news and say, ‘Yes, well, but –’ Kevin had written to his family too and his sister Brede had written back to say that she hoped they would be very happy together. But Brede was young, only seventeen, the same age as Sadie, and also she knew Sadie and they liked one another. Kevin said he thought his mother would wish them well but would be afraid for them, not knowing that in London nobody cared if you were a Catholic married to a Protestant. As far as they could see nobody cared here anyway. You could be writhing in agony half the night and no one would even come to see if you were being murdered. At home in Belfast people cared too much in some ways. They could never let you be. Kevin said that his father certainly would not wish them well. He would take it as an insult to himself, his family, and his religion. Kevin had betrayed them.
They ate at the little card-table with the torn green baize top. Most things provided with the room were torn or broken or damaged in some way or other. They ate quickly, enjoying the hot tasty food, mopping the egg from their plates with slices of bread taken from the packet that sat between them on the table.
‘Nothing to beat it,’ said Kevin, sighing contentedly. ‘Bacon and eggs!’
They drank their tea from bright red mugs. Sadie loved the vivid colour: it warmed her and made her forget the dreariness of the room. All the splashes of colour in the room belonged to them, the lime green sheets, canary yellow blankets, red-handled saucepans, pale blue plates, purple towels, and Sadie’s latest purchase, which she had been quite unable to resist, a soft, furry, scarlet rug. She had brought the rug home from the shop where she worked, hugging it close to her, excited by the idea of having it on the floor of their room where she would see it each morning when she opened her eyes. She had spread it out before Kevin who had admired it cautiously and then asked the price. It had cost more than they could afford, and she had taken it on hire purchase. They had enough on hire purchase, said Kevin, too much in fact, what with weekly payments to various clubs. They had come to London without possessions, Sadie even without clothes, and so, being forced to buy the basic necessities, they had bought on credit and were paying back weekly. Bright colours cost only a little more than plain, Sadie had pleaded, and Kevin had sighed and said, ‘Oh, all right then,’ unable himself to resist Sadie’s enthusiasm. But the weekly payments had grown until now they were a sizable sum and Kevin said they must buy nothing more until these debts were cleared. Sadie agreed. She did not mean to be extravagant. It was just that sometimes she saw things …
Money was tight. Sadie did not earn very much, travelling was expensive, and Kevin’s work as a labourer was casual so that sometimes he had a week between jobs. He did not much like working as a labourer, and would have preferred a job where he could use the skill in his hands, rather than the strength. Work on the building sites cut his hands, bruised them and toughened them, thickening the pads of his fingers, breaking the nails. But in spite of that, his fingers were nimble, and he could take apart old wireless sets and reassemble them with amazing speed.
‘Where’ll we go the day?’ said Kevin. ‘I’ll get the map.’
He spread it on the floor and they crouched over it. They were working their way round London, covering it systematically, area by area. In the beginning, when they had gone to all the famous places like Piccadilly and Hyde Park, Sadie had been thrilled just to stand in the streets and gaze. ‘Regent Street,’ she would say, shaking her head with disbelief. ‘Can you get over it, Kev? We’re really here.’ She liked London at weekends when they went exploring, but weekdays she hated when they went to work, pushing and shoving with the crowds in the morning, coming back pushing and shoving with the crowds in the evening, to return to the cold grey room to fry fish fingers on the smelly ring and then sit afterwards with the dark closing in on the street outside.
‘What about Kensington?’ suggested Kevin, stabbing the map with his finger. ‘We’ve never been there.’
‘Kensington?’
‘It’s a posh district.’
‘That’s for us then.’ Sadie jumped up.
Kevin washed the dishes whilst she dressed herself. She pulled on jeans and a sweater and tied her long fair hair back in a pony tail.
‘You don’t look any different from when I first met you,’ said Kevin. ‘Four years ago!’
‘I was only thirteen then.’ Sadie flicked her pony tail. ‘I thought I was looking mature these days.’
‘Oh aye, like an ould married wumman of two months standing! What’ll you be like after two years? Or twenty?’
They laughed and she put her hand into his. There were times when she found it difficult to believe that she really was married. Often when she woke in the morning she found that she had forgotten. She would turn to see his dark head on the pillow and would feel strange for a moment but as soon as he opened his eyes and smiled at her the strangeness went and it felt right to be married and living with him.
Kevin opened the door and they went out into the streets of London together.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I really fancied that house in the square,’ said Sadie. ‘The one with the black iron balcony. And the fancy car parked outside.’
‘You did, did you?’ said Kevin. ‘Should get it for a cool fifty thousand.’
‘Fifty thousand! You’re jokin’!’
‘’Deed I’m not. This is a fancy city, Sadie. And the prices are fancy to go with it.’
Sadie sighed. They would just have to start doing the football pools. Her father had done them every week for as long as she could remember; he would sit on a Thursday night at the kitchen table in his shirt sleeves filling in the coupon, licking the end of his pencil, frowning with concentration, and nobody would dare interrupt him until he said, ‘There, that’s done, you never know your luck,’ and laid down his pencil. Once he had won five pounds. Her mother had taken three of them, tucking the notes firmly into the pocket of her apron, and the rest her father had spent in the pub. It seemed a lifetime away, but she supposed, on a Thursday, her father would still be filling in his coupon.
She nestled her head against Kevin’s shoulder, he tightened his arm round her waist. They were tired, their feet were slow, for they had walked for hours, until Sadie had grown a blister on her heel. The daylight was going, the air was cool and lights were springing up stabbing the grey dusk. Now they would go home, she would make tea, and then they would sit and talk about the day when they would be rich. They wanted to travel the world, have children, and own a house.
As they turned the corner into their own street they were almost knocked over by two boys fighting. One was white, the other black. Many immigrants lived in the area. Sadie and Kevin had never seen so many brown skins before they came to London.
‘What’s going on then?’ Kevin seized both of the boys by their collars.
‘Lay off!’ The white boy kicked Kevin on the shin. Kevin took him by the shoulders and held him fast.
‘Less of that, young fella!’
‘Dirty ould Mick!’ The boy stuck out his tongue.
Sadie laughed. ‘Dear love us, I never thought I’d hear that in these parts. He must have seen you going into the church, Kevin.’
Kevin smiled too. But he kept hold of the wriggling boy. The black boy stood a yard away, his large dark eyes watching carefully.
‘I’m stronger than you, boy,’ said Kevin. ‘And don’t you forget it.’ He had fought often as a child and beaten most of the lads in his district, and then had come a time when fighting had sickened him.
‘Let go of him, mister,’ said the black boy, and suddenly he lashed out with a foot catching Kevin on the ankle.
Kevin winced but did not release the other boy.
‘Watch it!’ said Sadie. She felt as if she was back in Belfast again, involved in the life of the street. ‘Is he a friend of yours then?’ she asked, nodding at the boy Kevin held.
‘Sort of.’
Kevin pushed the boy away from him. ‘Away ye go!’
The two boys scampered across the street. When they reached the other pavement they stopped and turned. ‘Dirty ould Micks!’ they called together.
Sadie and Kevin laughed, joined hands again.
‘First time I’ve been called a Mick,’ said Sadie. She looked up at Kevin and saw that he was looking serious. ‘You weren’t bothered by them, were you?’
‘Course not. No, I was thinking of something else. It’s something I have to ask you.’
‘To do with being Mick?’
‘Yes, well in a way.’ Kevin cleared his throat. ‘You’re not going to like what I say –’
‘Don’t say it then,’ she put in quickly. ‘Sure we’ve had a lovely day and we don’t want it spoiled.’
Kevin sighed.
They walked the rest of the way along the street in silence. There were a few people about but no one spoke to them. Sadie had tried saying good morning to one or two of the women but they had looked at her suspiciously, watched her closely till she was out of sight but had said nothing. People were poor in this street and their poverty made them suspicious. They lived in close huddles, strangers in the city; they heard one another breathe through walls and fight with husbands and wives but they did not communicate with them, unless they were of the same family or race. At one end of the street lived a dozen or so West Indians. They herded together, held parties, made noises till late in the night. Sometimes when she heard them Sadie would wish that they would ask them to come and join them. She liked the sound of their singing. She missed people. She had always known everyone in her street, in her district, had stopped to chat, exchange gossip, commiserate over the bad news, rejoice over the good.
An Indian woman was leaning against the railings of the house next to theirs. She wore a sari, deep purple with a gold border, and she held a baby in her arms. As they drew level with her Sadie looked at her and smiled. The woman’s face did not move but her eyes seemed to soften.
Sadie took a step nearer to look at the baby. ‘What a lovely baby!’ she said.
The woman smiled.
Sadie put out her finger and touched the baby’s fat brown hand. He hesitated for a moment, eyeing Sadie’s finger with his large black eyes and then he grabbed it and pulled it towards his mouth.
‘He is cutting teeth,’ said the woman in very good English.
‘Poor wee fellow!’
‘Lara!’ a voice called from the house, a man’s voice.
‘I must go,’ said the Indian woman.
Sadie withdrew her finger from the baby’s hand. His mouth drooped petulantly making both Sadie and his mother laugh.
‘Lara!’ called the voice again.
‘Goodbye,’ said Sadie.
‘Goodbye,’ said Lara. She gathered the edge of her sari in one hand and took the baby into the house. He watched Sadie over his mother’s shoulder. She waved to him.
‘I think perhaps I’ve made a friend,’ said Sadie triumphantly.
‘Two friends,’ said Kevin.
‘Yes. Two friends.’
They went into their house. The entrance hall smelt of cat and boiled cabbage, though they had almost ceased to notice it now. Kevin took the key from his pocket and put it in the lock.
‘It’s not locked,’ he said in surprise.
‘Must have forgotten to lock it. Now that I come to think of it I don’t remember you doing it.’
Kevin put his hand round the corner and fumbled for the light switch. The light went on, and he stepped back in astonishment.
‘What’s up?’ said Sadie, coming in behind him; then she too stood still and gazed at the room. It had been turned upside down.
The drawers were open, and the cupboard door. Clothes were spread across the room, all their possessions had been pulled out and raked over.
‘What would anyone have against us here?’ said Sadie. ‘If it’d been at home –’
‘We’d have had a bomb through our window if we’d been in Belfast. But I don’t like the look of this at all.’ Kevin knelt down to pick up some of the things. ‘No one knows anything about us here. I think someone’s been in to see what they can steal.’
‘Steal? We’ve nothing worth stealing.’ Sadie shook her head with disbelief.
‘No one round here’s got very much. Depends what you have before you think anything’s worth stealing. Let’s see if anything’s missing.’
A number of things were missing: their bright red mugs, the furry rug, a purple tray with pink flowers painted on it that Sadie had coveted for two weeks and bought only on Friday, when she had got her pay. She exploded.
‘Of all the mean, nasty –!’
‘They’ve taken our cutlery too,’ said Kevin grimly.
‘And the butter and cheese has gone. What kind of monsters can they be?’ wailed Sadie.
Some of their clothes had also gone, the better ones, so that all they had left were the old ones they wore at weekends.
‘I’ve nothing to go to my work in,’ wailed Sadie. ‘I can’t go in jeans.’
She raged and stormed; Kevin sat quietly on the floor, his face dark and brooding.
‘We should have locked the door of course.’ He sighed, stood up. ‘We’d better go and have a word with old Crackers.’
Mrs Kyrakis’s door was closed and not a sound was to be heard behind it. Kevin knocked twice calling her name.
‘Sleeping,’ said Sadie loudly. ‘What an eejit!’
Kevin knocked again, several times. A woman came past, her feet slopping along the linoleum in felt slippers. She was a thin woman who went up and down the street in an overall and slippers every day, her hair in rollers. She reminded Sadie of the women in her street in Belfast.
‘She’ll not answer,’ the woman said. ‘The place could go up in flames and she’d not pay any attention.’
‘I’ll break the door down if I have to,’ said Kevin.
But the woman had already gone, not interested any further. She had dead eyes, thought Sadie. She shivered.
‘Mrs Kyrakis,’ said Kevin in a determined voice, ‘our room has been burgled and we would like a word with you. If you don’t open up we’ll have to call the police.’
He knew he would not call the police, and so would she. If he did call them they would pay no attention anyway, and even if they did and they came, they would look round the house and shake their heads. They had plenty of other things to occupy themselves with. Two red mugs and a tin tray and some cheap clothes …
‘Mrs Kyrakis,’ shouted Sadie desperately. ‘For dear sake, can you not hear us?’
A West African came into the hall and went up the stairs. He looked over the banisters at them.
‘This place is like a looney bin,’ said Sadie. She leant back against the wall and folded her arms. ‘I’m stopping here till she comes out. She’ll need to go to the loo sometime.’
Kevin laughed. ‘I’ve seen that stubborn look on your face before!’
The door opened suddenly, making them jump. Mrs Kyrakis stood there with the light behind her, holding a shawl round her shoulders.
‘What the devil you make that noise for?’ she demanded.
A sweet, suffocating smell emanated from the open doorway.
‘Our room’s been burgled,’ said Kevin. ‘And half our things taken.’
‘There must be a thief in the house,’ said Sadie.
The landlady shrugged. ‘What you want me to do about it?’
‘Come and see,’ said Sadie.
Mrs Kyrakis pulled her own door shut and followed them up the passage. She stood at the door of the room, looked round briefly, then shrugged again.
‘What you expect me to do? Fourteen people live in this house.’
‘If we searched the rooms we’d probably find our stuff,’ said Sadie.
‘Search?’ said Mrs Kyrakis with amazement.
Sadie’s shoulders slumped. Of course they couldn’t search the rooms. The inhabitants would never let them.
‘Sorry we bothered you,’ said Kevin sarcastically, but his sarcasm was wasted on Mrs Kyrakis.
‘Keep the door locked,’ she said. ‘Less bother that way.’
She went back down the passage to her own room. They shut the door. Sadie sat down on the bed and thumped her fist on the eiderdown.
‘Rotten, stinking, miserable –’ She could not go on, she was crying. She seldom cried and the tears took her by surprise. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. She felt Kevin’s arm round her shoulder.
‘Never mind, love,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll get over it. Sure, haven’t we got over worse?’
‘But we’ve not got much.’
‘We’ve still one another. Isn’t that the main thing?’
She stopped crying. She smiled at him. He was warm and solid and no one could take him away from her.
‘Course it’s the main thing. But if I ever get my hands on the hallions that did it –!’
Kevin laughed. ‘You’re a devil when you’re worked up. That was what I first liked in you.’
They tidied the room, and to make herself feel better Sadie scrubbed the floor and cleaned the window. After that they sat in front of the one-bar electric fire scorching their ankles and discussed how they would furnish the house they had liked in the square in Kensington, the one that Kevin thought would cost fifty thousand pounds.
