Kisses and Ha'pennies Read online

  Kisses and Ha’pennies

  Beryl Kingston

  About the Author

  Beryl Kingston is the author of 30 novels with over a million copies sold. She has been a writer since she was 7 when she started producing poetry. She was evacuated to Felpham at the start of WWII, igniting an interest in one-time resident poet William Blake which later inspired her novel The Gates of Paradise. She was an English teacher from 1952 until 1985 when she became a full-time writer after her debut novel, Hearts and Farthings, became a bestseller. Kingston continued writing bestsellers for the next 14 years with titles ranging from family sagas to modern stories and historical novels. She currently lives in West Sussex and has three children, five grandchildren, and ten great-grandchild.

  Also By Beryl Kingston

  Historical Fiction

  A Time to Love

  London Pride

  War Baby

  Hearts and Farthings

  Kisses and Ha’pennies

  Two Silver Crosses

  A Stitch in Time

  Avalanche of Daisies

  Suki

  Gates of Paradise

  Hearts of Oak

  Off the Rails

  The Easter Empire Trilogy

  Tuppenny Times

  Fourpenny Flyer

  Sixpenny Stalls

  The Octavia Trilogy

  Octavia

  Octavia’s War

  The Internet Revolutionary

  The Jackson Family Saga

  Everybody’s Somebody

  Citizen Army

  Fiction

  Maggie’s Boy

  Laura’s Way

  Gemma’s Journey

  Neptune’s Daughter

  Francesca and the Mermaid

  Non-Fiction

  Lifting the Curse

  A Family at War

  Kisses and Ha’pennies

  Beryl Kingston

  This edition published in 2019 by Agora Books

  First published in Great Britain in 1986 by Futura Publications

  Agora Books is a division of Peters Fraser + Dunlop Ltd

  55 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BS

  Copyright © Beryl Kingston, 1986

  All rights reserved

  You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  To RD

  Chapter 1

  The young man hurtling down the steep hill of Church Lane in his brand-new Morris Cowley was warm with brandy and too full of post-party euphoria to be cautious. It was a dark January evening, and gusts of rain sleeting blackly across his windscreen made it difficult for him to see where he was going, but he didn’t let a little thing like that worry him. He’d found from experience that people always managed to get themselves out of the way of his impressive wheels, especially if he sounded his horn to gee them up a bit.

  So he was annoyed and puzzled when he arrived at the junction of Church Lane and Mitcham Road to find that his way was inexplicably blocked by the progress of a very solid-looking tram. He clapped on the brakes at once, of course, but the car didn’t stop. In fact, it didn’t even seem to be slowing down, although he could hear the tyres screeching and his own voice yelling a warning somewhere a very, very long way away from his head. A cocktail of emotions shook themselves together inside his stomach, drunken anger, disbelief, excitement and a tightening knot of fear, and then his lovely expensive motor embedded itself in the side of the tram with a crunching thud that immediately had people running out of the pub opposite to see what had happened.

  For a few seconds he sat at the wheel too stunned to move, then he gave himself a shake and climbed stiffly out of his now up-tilted vehicle to inspect the damage. He was so upset he could have cried. The long grey bonnet of his most prized possession was cracked and buckled, water was pouring out of the radiator and his two magnificent headlights were torn out of their sockets like gouged-out eyes. The crowd were enjoying it all immensely, their faces shining with pleasure under their damp cloth caps, but before he could think of the words to rebuke them for their audacity the tram driver had arrived, and the tram driver was furious.

  ‘Why don’tcher look where yer going?’ he demanded. ‘You could a’ killed someone.’ His face was pinched with shock and anger.

  The young man drew his drunken dignity around him. ‘Look what you’ve done to my car, my man,’ he said. ‘Why didn’t you get out of the way? You could surely hear me coming.’

  ‘Oh, that’s lovely!’ the driver said, addressing the crowd. ‘Now it’s my fault. We ’ad right a’ way, mate. You should ’a’ stopped.’

  ‘How could I stop?’ the young man said plaintively. Really, how unreasonable tram drivers were!

  ‘Driving like a bleedin’ maniac!’ the driver said to his admiring audience. ‘Want lockin’ up, the lot of ’em!’

  ‘You’ve ruined my car,’ the young man said. ‘Two hundred and fifty pounds that cost me, I’d have you know.’

  If he’d hoped to impress the crowd by the mention of such wealth, the ploy misfired. Two hundred and fifty pounds was more than the driver could earn in twelve months, so this careless affluence simply infuriated him. ‘I don’t give a tinker’s fart fer your bleedin’ car,’ he said, as the faces all round him grinned and growled encouragement. ‘You could ’a’ killed someone!’

  The young man suddenly decided he’d had enough of all this. He would go home. That’s what he’d do. He tried to push his way out of the crowd. But the crowd was uglier than it had been when it gathered, and now it wouldn’t let him pass. Soon he was being jostled from hand to rough hand and angry faces were mouthing abuse at him, and a new kind of fear was oppressing his chest.

  By now, two more trams had arrived and, finding their way blocked, both drivers and several passengers had climbed out to join the fray. And among the travellers on the tram from Streatham were Anna Maria Pelucci and her best friend Pearl. They’d been to a dance at the Locarno and, as usual after such an event, Anna was feeling glamorous and pleasantly excited.

  ‘What fun!’ she said, gazing rapturously down at the heaving crowd and the two men circling and glowering at one another in the centre of it all. ‘It’s a fight!’

  ‘Oh lor!’ Pearl said. ‘I hope they don’t get violent.’

  Anna dropped a scathing glance at her friend’s naivety. ‘’Course they’ll get violent,’ she said happily. ‘It’ll be ripping fun!’ This was just the sort of occasion she enjoyed. The kind she conjured up in her dreams. Two strong men, tall, dark, brooding men, fighting to the death, for her love. Or not to the death, perhaps, because if they fought to the death there wouldn’t be anybody left to love her at the end of it. But fiercely of course, and very, very passionately. And afterwards the victor would take her in his arms and kiss her breathless and tell her she was the most wonderful girl in the world.

  ‘Are we getting off?’ Pearl asked. ‘It’s raining like billy-oh. We shall get ever so wet.’

  They were still standing on the platform of the tram and Anna was under the partial shelter of the roof, but Pearl had one foot on the first step down, as befitted her lower status, so she was getting splashed.

  ‘No, don’t let’s,’ Anna said. ‘You get a good view from up here.’ She’d taken another look at the combatants and neither of them measured up to her dream. One was only a common old tram driver and, although the rich one w
ith the car was young enough, he was horribly ordinary and had a very big nose. But she decided she’d stay where she was, because you never knew with fights. Anything could happen. Absolutely anything. And in the meantime, she’d got herself into a rather splendid position, nicely framed by the roof of the tram and well-lit by the street light. She made a very pretty picture in her new red coat and her new cloche hat, with her dark hair springing up on either side of her face and her eyes gleaming in the street light. She was sure they were gleaming. She could positively feel they were gleaming.

  ‘There’s your brother Georgie,’ Pearl said. ‘He’s come out the shop to see.’

  So he has, Anna thought, without much interest, glancing over her right shoulder at the off-licence on the other side of the road. ‘That’s all he ever does,’ she said scathingly, ‘look.’ She was quite fond of her brother but really, he was such a dry old stick. Afraid of his own shadow. Well, just look at him now, stooping like that, and pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose in that irritating way he had, and looking so stupidly worried. Silly boy! You’d think they were going to fight him. Really, it was quite an embarrassment to have to acknowledge him sometimes. Why didn’t he go back into the shop and get on with his work?

  ‘You gettin’ on or orf?’ a rough voice said from behind her back. There were two very old men in very damp raincoats trying to push past her. Very damp, smelly raincoats.

  ‘Don’t mind me, I’m sure,’ she said haughtily, pulling her body away from them as they passed. ‘Really! Some people have no manners at all!’ One day, when she was married to her nice rich handsome hero, she’d have a car of her own, and a uniformed chauffeur to drive her about, and then she’d never have to mix with nasty common people on trams ever again.

  ‘Here comes a copper,’ Pearl said, wiping the rain from the side of her face.

  Now that was better! Policemen always looked so nice and some of them were really quite good-looking. This one was a nice young policeman, and he looked impressively tall under his heightening helmet. A nice, young, keen policeman, with his notebook already open in his hand. She took action at once. ‘Come on!’ she said to Pearl. ‘Let’s go down and see if he’d like us to give him a statement.’

  ‘We didn’t see anything!’ Pearl protested, but her flamboyant friend had already plunged into the crowd.

  ‘Come the revolution,’ the driver was explaining loudly, ‘this maniac’ll be the first against the wall.’

  ‘Nah then,’ the policeman said, massively calm and important, ‘which of you two gentlemen is the howner of this vehicle?’

  ‘Perhaps I could help you, officer,’ Anna offered, wriggling through the crowd so that she could get her pretty face and her nice eye-catching coat right into his line of vision.

  ‘Are you the howner of this vehicle?’ he said, not even looking at her.

  ‘Well, no,’ she had to admit, smiling prettily at his bent head and willing him to look up at her. But nobody was paying any attention to her because the rich young man was speaking too, and far too loudly, in his dreadfully posh voice, ‘I am the owner, officer,’ so they were all looking at him.

  ‘Well now, sir,’ the policeman said, ‘if you’ll just tell me what happened. Take your time.’

  I might as well be invisible, Anna thought angrily. ‘This isn’t going to be a bit exciting after all,’ she said coolly to Pearl, who was puffing and panting beside her. ‘In fact, if you ask me, it’s going to be an absolute bore.’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ Pearl suggested. ‘I’m ever so wet.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Let’s. There’s nothing to keep us here. And this rain is absolutely dreadful. I’ll walk with you to the corner of Trevelyan.’

  Georgie Pelucci watched her disgruntled departure with affectionate sympathy. That was typical of Anna, he thought, pushing herself in where she wasn’t wanted and then getting cross and flouncing off in a temper when somebody else stole the limelight. Personally, he always did everything he could to keep out of trouble, but she always went rushing headlong into it. Smiling to himself, he watched until her red coat and Pearl’s brown one had disappeared around the bend in Charlmont Road. Then he went back into the off-licence to his nice quiet office and his nice warm fire and the important desk he always thought of as his father’s. There were only the accounts to do and then he could go home too.

  He’d almost finished when the shop bell rang. He glanced up at the clock, facing him blandly on the opposite wall of the office, and realised that it was well past closing time. Oh dear, he thought. He really didn’t want to serve anybody else at this time of night.

  But there weren’t any customers in the shop after all, only one rather pretty girl who was standing on the doormat opening and re-opening the door to keep the bell jangling. He could see at once that she wasn’t a customer, because she was dressed for travel in a long topcoat and wore a pink cloche hat pulled down over her ears and a knitted scarf mounded around her neck and shoulders. There was a battered suitcase beside her feet, tied together with string, and beside that a bulging handbag, scuffed with wear.

  ‘Yes?’ he said politely. ‘Can I help you?’

  His voice made her jump. ‘Oh!’ she said, ‘I’m ever so sorry to bother you. I can’t get no answer to the flat.’ Now that she’d turned to face him, he could see that she had a pretty, round face and that her eyes were very blue and very wide apart.

  ‘They’re out,’ he told her, wondering who she was. ‘Mr Chanter plays with a band on Friday nights.’ His father’s friend, Dickie Chanter, lived in the flat above the shop.

  ‘What about Aunt Tilley?’ the girl said. ‘She’s not out an’ all, is she?’

  ‘She’s a hat check girl,’ Georgie told her, admiring the plump cheeks and bright eyes of his visitor and feeling quite pleased to think she was a relation of Mrs Chanter’s.

  ‘When d’they get back?’ the girl asked, looking more worried by the minute.

  ‘Late,’ Georgie said, and as she bit her lip with anxiety he added, ‘I could let you upstairs to wait for them if you’d like. As you’re a relation.’

  ‘By marriage,’ she explained quickly. ‘Sort of cousin really. I always called her Aunty.’ She paused, her brow wrinkling with indecision. ‘Will it be all right?’ she asked. ‘Me just barging in like this? I wouldn’t want to get off to a bad start.’

  Georgie lifted the counter top to allow her to walk through to the door to the flat. ‘They won’t mind,’ he said. But she stopped with one hand on the doorknob and put her heavy luggage back on the floor again, frowning. ‘I shan’t be on me own up there, shall I?’ she said. ‘Tell you the truth, it makes me ever so nervous being on me own. Do you leave the shop when you lock up?’

  Georgie was alarmed by the turn the conversation was taking. There was a note in this girl’s voice that he recognised with growing anxiety. She was making him feel responsible for her, just as his mother did, inching him towards some action he knew he would regret.

  ‘Will they be long?’ she asked.

  ‘Quite a time, I should think,’ Georgie said, trying to extricate himself from the pressure she was putting on him. ‘Why not go home for tonight and come back tomorrow? I’ll tell them you called.’

  She laughed wryly at this, contracting her eyebrows and spreading her lips wide. Her teeth were small and regular and very white in the shop light. ‘Can’t do that,’ she said. ‘I live down Gillingham. I should ’a’ come in earlier. It’s me own fault. Only I would stop and watch an accident.’ She looked quite downcast.

  The expression made Georgie feel responsible, as that sort of expression on a woman’s face always did. He felt compelled to agree with her. ‘You shouldn’t be in this place all on your own,’ he said. ‘You’re quite right.’ Then he was very uncomfortable because he knew he’d said the wrong thing and his discomfort made him blush.

  She didn’t seem to notice his hot cheeks. ‘Can’t think of anywhere else to go though,’ she said. ‘Oh dear! W
hat shall I do? Are you the manager?’ And when he nodded, ‘You don’t live anywhere near, I suppose. My mum said I was to ask the manager if anything went wrong. I’m ever so sorry!’

  He had to admit that he lived a few minutes’ walk away. ‘With your family?’ she said hopefully, and now he was beginning to feel pressured. Surely, she didn’t expect him to take responsibility for her?

  ‘I couldn’t just come home with you, just fer a little while, could I?’ she said. ‘I’d be ever so obliged. I can’t stand being on me own.’

  ‘Well,’ he dithered, caught between the entreaty on the pretty face before him and the certainty of his mother’s disapproval.

  ‘I wouldn’t be a bit of bother,’ she said. ‘I could sit in a corner somewhere and just keep out a’ mischief till they came home. I’d be ever so obliged.’

  She was making it impossible for him to deny her. He was beginning to feel panicky. What could he say? He couldn’t leave her here to wait all alone when she’d made it so clear she was frightened, but on the other hand, he couldn’t go against his mother’s wishes, because she would be so patient in her annoyance and so long-suffering in her reproach and that would wear him down beyond endurance. And besides, what would Anna say?

  ‘I shouldn’t have asked you, should I?’ the girl said, smiling at him as he hesitated. ‘Never mind. It’s me own fault for mucking about.’

  He could feel the pressure of her dependence like an anchor dragging him down. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It’s quite all right. I’ll take you home for a little while. You can’t stay here.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I’m ever so grateful.’

  He’d done it now, he thought, looking down at her pretty round face. ‘I’ll lock up,’ he said. ‘It’s almost time.’