Paradise Court by Jenny Oldfield Page A

her fellow stall-holders on the market. They’d gone down the court specially to bang on her door and persuade her out for a natter; four or five skinny women with big voices and loud laughs. Their kids were in bed, minded by the eldest. Their old men were already here, drowning life’s sorrows. So they’d donned their bits of finery; their hats decked with ostrich feathers, their long fringed shawls, and they paraded themselves down to the Duke for a bit of a laugh and a singsong. ‘Come on, Annie, for gawd’s sake. Can’t have you moping about all on your own!’ They were family women and they took Annie’s case to heart. If their man walked out on them, like Annie’s husband had done, they wouldn’t half give him what for. If they could lay hands on him, of course; which Annie couldn’t with hers.
    â€˜You’re not wearing them old boots again, Annie!’ Liz Sargent protested when she answered their knock. ‘Them’s your working boots!’ She glared down at the offending articles; misshapen, boiled, resoled and stitched until they resembled old kippers.
    â€˜Them’s my only boots,’ Annie muttered. ‘They was his boots, and I wear ‘em in his memory.’ She put on a dark jacket which she grabbed from a peg in the gloomy passage. She turned her key in the lock and thrust it down her bodice. ‘Well, what we waiting for?’ she demanded.
    The women made their way back up the court towards the gaslight at the corner. ‘What you want to remember him for? That’s what I’d like to know.’ Liz thought badly of Annie for not putting her best foot forward, so to speak. ‘He was a rotten old bugger, so they tell me.’
    Annie sighed. ‘He was. But he’s the cross I have to bear, and these old boots remind me.’ She would say no more, but she marched ahead of her spruced-up friends, straight into the public bar.
    â€˜Now then, Mrs S.’ Duke addressed Liz, deliberately ignoring the bothersome Annie. ‘What’ll it be?’
    The orders went out; a sharp cry for a pint of porter or a drop of gin from each of the market women. If their menfolk were present, they kept well hidden, leaving the women to their own devices. Liz Sargent adjusted a small length of fox fur around her shoulders and grabbed her drink. ‘Any rate, I see you put your best hat on to come out with us.’ She nodded her approval at the bunches of fake cherries bedecking Annie’s black straw boater. ‘I suppose that’s something.’
    â€˜And it ain’t even bleeding Sunday!’ Annie scowled sarcastically.
    â€˜So who died?’ Nora Brady winked at Liz.
    â€˜No one died. What you mean? This ain’t my funeral hat!’ Annie glanced at herself in the fancy long mirror behind Duke’s broad shoulders. She tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear.
    â€˜Who got spliced then?’ The women gave wicked, knowing looks.
    â€˜Leave off, why don’t you? Can’t a woman have a bleeding drink?’ Poor Annie grew fed up with their teasing and sank her face into a pint of porter.
    The women made a great show of leaving her alone. They told Duke to be sure and take good care of her, before they drifted off in pairs to different corners of the room. ‘She’s all on her ownsome,’ they cheeked, thrusting bold faces across the bar at him and pouting their lips. ‘Poor lonesome Annie!’
    â€˜Silly cows,’ Annie grumbled. But she stayed put. If he did but know it, Duke was the reason she came in night after night with her earthenware jug, and she didn’t care who noticed it.
    Underneath the profusion of cherries and regardless of old man Wiggin’s boots, Annie wasn’t a bad-looking woman. Past her best, it had to be admitted, but sprightly. Well into her forties, her hair had lost none of its auburn tinge, though she hid this good feature by scraping it back