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  “You’ve got doubts?”

  He shrugged. “That’s not for me to say.”

  She opened her desk drawer and pushed three scraps of paper across to him. It took less than five seconds for his eyes to confirm the truth of her tale. The newspaper clipping had the name Hale in bold headlines. The society loan agreement photostat showed that Hale had been granted five hundred dollars repayable over a set period. The third item was a glowing account of John Hale opening a community centre which his prosperous company had seen fit to build for the town’s youth.

  “Satisfied, Joe?”

  He pushed the material back to her. “Yes!”

  “My son never had a decent thought in his head until he served time,” she said. “I despaired of him but now...” and her eyes moistened in motherly pride. “He’s justified the faith I’ve placed in him. I’m a sentimental fool, Joe. I know this will shock you – and the society. I’m going to give you a chit for twenty pounds. I advise spending it wisely. Take ten and get roaring drunk. Find a girl and take her home with you. Relieve yourself. But don’t make a habit of it. Mrs. Malloy does not like her bathroom occupied by strange women every morning.”

  Joe felt strangely touched. This was against everything he had considered possible. He wanted the money. He wanted the society behind him. If his plans were ever to reach fruition stage he had to have the backing of a solid community agency. But Mrs. Hale was putting trust in him. Placing him in an invidious position. If he failed her... He mentally rejected her wiles. What the hell! He was Joe Hawkins. Not a Hale. This stupid game was meant to soften him. He would not yield.

  “Try to better yourself, Joe” the woman said, writing the chit for his cash advance. “I believe there is good in everybody. I hope you won’t let me down.”

  He accepted the chit and smiled. “I won’t, Mrs. Hale.”

  Outside her office he breathed deeply. So much for that! The woman was a sucker for a hard luck story. Once his twenty vanished he could come back and beg for more. He would have a story to tell – all sobs and under-the-skin frustration!

  *

  Mrs. Malloy was short, fat and ugly. She spoke with a thick Dublin accent, and smelt of wash-tub detergent. Rubbing clean, almost raw hands on her apron, she stood in the doorway studying Joe as he eyed his room with candid disgust.

  “Bhoyo,” the Irish woman said, “forget your grand notions. This is Islington and the Society are paying for your keep. Back in the Auld Sod there are fine fellas wishing they could afford such luxuries. Take my Uncle Sean...” She sighed as if trying to find someone to do just that! “He lives in me mother’s auld house with its roof falling in and the rats climbing into bed at night just to get warmth.”

  “Where’s the loo?” Joe asked.

  “A fine thing...” She said “thing” like it had no “h”. “You’re everything Mrs. Hale said you’d be.” Her ugly features showed contempt. “You’ll be wanting a key, no doubt?” She walked to the window, fluffed curtains to hide the solid brick wall a mere three feet away. A thin shaft of light edged into the narrow confines of Joe’s “home” and served to highlight the shabby furnishings. “I’m Catholic,” the woman said stridently. “I’m agin mortal sinning but Mrs. Hale knows better than I...” She shrugged as if to state where Mrs. Hale stood in her estimation. “There’s an awful lot of terrible diseases in London today.”

  Joe grinned. The old biddy was trying to warn him against bringing home an “unclean” girl! Looking at her he wondered if any man had ever managed to get close to her soft-centre. She was roly-poly in a most nauseous way. A man would have to be blind, drunk, desperate or very insensitive to take this one to bed.

  “Patrick Kelly shares the toilet with you. He lives in the next room. You’ll be wanting to meet the dear boy...”

  Not me, Joe thought. I’m not going to get tied-in with a bunch of booze artists from construction sites.

  He knew all about the Irish labouring types and how they roamed the streets before the pubs opened and how they sang their “rebel” songs with a skinful of booze making each and every one of them imagine they could wipe the floor with all English inhabitants after the pubs closed. More than once his gang had waylaid a lone Irishman and beat the hell out of him. Just for kicks. Just to even the score, as Benny had once said.

  “If my husband was still alive – bless his soul – he’d tell you a few truths,” Mrs. Malloy remarked, retreating to the corridor outside Joe’s room. “He spent sixteen years in prison!” She got uglier as frowns creased her blubbery face. “What a rascal he was, Joe... broke heads like skittles in an alley, he did. There wasn’t a copper could tame my Mick.”

  “Charming,” Joe allowed.

  The woman scowled which only served to heighten her bushy eyebrows and those hard lines near her mouth. A discerning individual would have understood the terrible hardships which had produced such an unattractive female. Not Joe, though. He was filled with self-pity, and other people’s problems washed off his uncaring hide.

  Taking a Yale key from her apron, Mrs. Malloy said: “Breakfast is at seven-fifteen sharp.”

  “Seven-fifteen?” Joe wailed. Looking frantically around the sparse room he asked, “Where do I cook?”

  “Not in here! You can use the kitchen anytime after twelve noon if you have to eat in. My other bhoyos don’t do that.” She sounded anxious to put him off cooking.

  “I was told...”

  “Mrs. Hale doesn’t live here,” the woman said firmly. “She’s a lady. I’m not. Nor are my guests gentlemen.” The point was made and she relented briefly with a quick smile.

  Joe kept his retort to himself. It pleased him to have one thin-edge to wedge in Mrs. Hale’s door. He could always complain that his cash did not stress to restaurant or cafe meals. Any excuse was valid under the circumstances. He could not continue to live in this worse mousetrap which Mrs. Malloy called a room. It was ten times more horrible than his room at home in Plaistow – and that was bad enough.

  “I’ll be looking for a job,” Joe said, changing subjects. “In the city,” he stressed emphatically. “I’ll want a key to the post box...” He could see that locked cage attached to the letterbox downstairs.

  “You’ll get your letters at breakfast,” the woman said menacingly.

  “Why can’t I have a key?”

  Hands on wide hips she snapped: “’Cos nobody but me is allowed to sort the post. I don’t tru...” She stopped and swung abruptly.

  “You don’t trust jailbirds,” Joe finished.

  She hesitated momentarily, and then continued down the corridor as if afraid to pursue this line of questioning.

  What a bloody mess, Joe thought angrily. It’s as bad as prison. I’m trapped with nowhere to go!

  Closing his door, Joe examined the dingy room in detail. That brick wall hemmed him in as effectively as bars on a window. The tatty covers on the sagging bed were below standard issue even for the Scrubs. As for the small chest of drawers, the wardrobe and one tilted chair, they had come from Noah’s Ark and had been junk before an elephant sat on the chair or tigers sharpened their tearing claws on the other two items. A threadbare carpet from an Honest Ed’s bargain basement did little to cover dry rot floors. Wallpaper that was so faded to have lost its distinctive floral design completed the picture of misery.

  “Chrissakes, this is hell!” Joe yelled at that brick wall.

  The touch of folding money in his pocket drained some of his hate. Then, he swore aloud again. What woman, or girl, or even club hostess would come back to this... this... this stink-hole of an abode? He hurried to the bed and pressed down on its wilted mattress. The rusting groan of battered springs sent their squeaking lullaby through the house.

  “That’s bloody it!” Joe shouted. Rage boiled up inside him and he kicked the chair. Splintering wood confirmed his fears. It had been an impossible seat anyway!

  Thrusting arms into his jacket, he stormed from the room. His feet sounded like tanks rumbling do
wn an incline formed of loose shell. He tore past a startled Mrs. Malloy and slammed the front door. Anger made him unaware of the pretty girl in hot pants brushing past him as she fumbled for a key in her Indian-style fringed handbag. He could only visualise Mrs. Hale and hear her remark: “It’s not a palace...” Bloody right it isn’t, he thought. It’s a tragedy – a free prison for ex-cons to discover how society gave to those who had repaid their debts!

  *

  “Here’s your bloody money back,” Joe snarled as the twenty quid skittered across her desk. A fiver floated on an isolated air-current and drifted unheeled to the office floor.

  Bernice Hale smiled grimly. In all her experience she had never encountered such an irate young man nor had money thrown at her. Usually they came in with their hats in hand and begging in their weak eyes. But not Joe Hawkins. He was strong stuff.

  “When you make out a report be sure and mention this,” Joe growled, beginning to turn away.

  ‘There won’t be any report, Joe.”

  He halted in mid-step, stared at the woman facing him across the paper-littered desk.

  “What is wrong, Joe?”

  He leant on her desk, face twisted into a contorted mask of frustration. “Mrs. Malloy is an Irish pig and expects everybody to act like she was giving them the world on a silver platter.”

  Bernice smiled generously. “That’s not bad for you, Joe,” she said softly. “Your kind don’t normally stoop to poetic expression.”

  “You’re making a bloody fool of me,” Joe rasped.

  “I am not! Perhaps you haven’t stopped to examine what changes prison has worked inside your mind, Joe. Perhaps you always had a brain which could cope with the finer things your environment did not encourage. Perhaps not. Anyway, your choice of words strike me as being a notch above those skinheads I have the dubious pleasure of assisting.”

  Tm not a skinhead now,” Joe said, remembering his determination to disassociate with a former existence. He had to play his cards with masterly skill. He could not relax one single second in front of this woman. So much depended on getting accepted; established in an organised society to which she belonged.

  “You were one of the best...” and she laughed lightly, adding, “or worst.”

  “I was,” Joe affirmed proudly.

  “And?”

  “I’m not going to stay at Mrs. Malloy’s!”

  “Why not?”

  “God,” he exploded, “Have you seen that dump?”

  “Is it that bad?” she brushed a paperclip which had attached itself from a blouse button. His gaze automatically fastened on her breasts. Self-consciously she covered her treasure chest with a file.

  Joe got the message. She’s bashful after all, he thought. She’s a tease who can’t go beyond a certain set point. Once a guy gets the upper hand she’s putty.

  Bernice Hale quivered inwardly. She hoped Joe Hawkins had not noticed her infantile attempt to turn his masculine frustrations away from those abundant charms which, she knew only too well, excited less deprived males. In a way she detested her wonderful bosom. It was a target for lasciviousness, for speculation, for passes she did not want made. She could not, however, deny herself the pleasure of mental seduction. She was all woman. All female as Eve would have it. And in the knowledge of the exquisite power her chest measurements gave her she basked in either glory or torment.

  Joe calculated his chances. She was more than twice his age but he’d heard that the old ones were the best. Who was it who’d said: They don’t yell, they don’t tell and by jove they don’t swell? Could he make the grade? Or would that ruin his ambitions?

  He decided to play safe and ignored those hormones demanding he capitalise on the woman’s confusion.

  “I’d rather be in jail than stay in that room, Mrs. Hale,” he said with a measure of truth which lent sincerity to his voice.

  Thankful for small mercies, Bernice Hale breathed easier and placed the file back on her desk. The moment of indecision had departed on Adam-strength wings. Or the ones he wore before the apple was eaten! “I haven’t personally visited Mrs. Malloy’s establishment,” she admitted. “One of my colleagues gave it a recommendation.”

  “He didn’t look at my room.”

  “Nor have the experience of what happens to a man once those prison gates shut, eh?” She smiled to relax his tenseness. “Joe, tell me honestly – what did you dislike about Mrs. Malloy’s place?”

  He considered her question. The native cunning which had taken him to the top of a skinhead gang and brought him to that fragile pinnacle of success for those fleeting hours of glory came rushing to his rescue. He was totally incapable of matching intellectual fencing but he knew when to duck and weave once fists started to fly. And this was street warfare. He was the underdog, the underprivileged. She the power, the rich, the one able to take away or give freely.

  “I’m trying to get a decent job, Mrs. Hale. I need an address managers will respect. I need some comforts if I am to work my way to the top – not broken chairs and a bed that belongs in a dump.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Can you find a place yourself?”

  “Yes!” He shouted the word, anxious now.

  “I’m going to go overboard for you, Joe,” she said falteringly, not quite satisfied with her decision yet realising it was all she could do under the given circumstances. “I’ll advance you a loan. You’ll have to sign for it though,” she added pointedly.

  “That’s okay, Mrs. Hale. I’ll refund it when I get work.” He would have promised the moon plus a shilling for cash.

  “Mark my words, Joe – this is your lot. Blow the cash and you’re out in the cold.”

  “I won’t let you down, Mrs. Hale,” Joe said with mental fingers crossed she wouldn’t change her mind at this stage.

  She drew a chit across the desk, glanced at his face before writing figures. She could not know that Joe Hawkins was an actor. That the face he presented for her approval was but a facade behind which woodworm worked its nefarious quest.

  “Sign here, Joe.”

  Catching himself in the nick of time, Joe scrawled his brash signature. Fifty quid! No interest. No repayment date. Just a name and the money was his...

  “Let me know where you are staying,” she said softly. “I’ll want to visit you there.”

  He killed a thrill. If she came to his room he’d try her, for sure. Mother-age or not, she was everything a virile hunk of manhood dreamed about. He had seen her in a dozen erotic nights as moonlight filtered through those prison bars. Her, or a thousand panting females of all ages, all colours, all sizes. His face withheld the untold pleasures his mind conjured up and he kept his voice level as he said: “Thanks Mrs. Hale. I won’t let you down.”

  “You said that once before.” She laughed, handing him the initialled chit. “Joe Hawkins, you’re a challenge for me. You’re so like my son...” Tears moistened her eyes. She forced herself to regain control. “Remember where he went once he discovered that people are not all bad. Good luck in your job, Joe...” Her hand reached out and she stood – an attractive woman in her prime – as the lusting young man standing on the threshold of life let her warmth briefly touch his hard, unyielding, unsympathetic palm.

  CHAPTER THREE

  John Matson had once been a chippie working the London stage but opportunity and an inborn greed which knew no morality had taken the ex-carpenter to heights which only those owning a Rolls could ever aspire to reach. Thanks to a steal-happy thinking process and a desire to become larger than life had ever intended him to be, Matson was now perched on the apex of an expanding pornographic empire effectively covered by an equally profitable florist chain.

  The men Matson employed called him “God” – Joe Hawkins included. Matson could do no wrong, or so the tall, broad-shouldered golfer liked to believe. The castle in Spain, the residence in St. John’s Wood, the estate down in Surrey were all tokens of Matson’s income-tax-free rise to fame.

  That th
e days of wine, women and illegal takes were fast approaching their end did not unduly worry the Matsons of Soho. They had made their killings. They had the wealth supplied by suckers seeking second-hand thrills from books, dirty pictures and available women. In his rise to the stratosphere Matson had used, abused, and thrown aside a string of excellent writers, photographers, models. He had made enemies but he was backed by heavies and a Vice Squad accepting his payola to such an extent that anyone daring to voice a protest found himself being turned over and in possession of damaging material. That was the way Matson operated and Joe felt himself unique when he suddenly quit.

  He figured he got out just in the nick of time. Matson had not taken him on from sympathy. Matson had plans for Joe – another stretch inside, no doubt. In those three weeks working for Soho’s undisputed kingpin, Joe had found himself being set up like a pin in a ten-pin alley. Ready to be bowled over at the first signs of trouble.

  The second job proved less dangerous, more boring. It lasted exactly ten days – including a weekend off. Being a so-called accountant for a firm publishing sex manuals did not strike Joe as a route to the upper-bracket income levels. He quit, and appealed to Bernice Hale for help in securing a “decent” position with a City firm – without the necessity of explaining what he had done with eighteen months less remission.

  The excuse offered by a believing Mrs. Hale appealed to Joe. Studies took full time occupation. One could not work as a coal-heaver and make the grade in accountancy. So, Joe applied for jobs armed with knowledge and a lie tailor-made to suit a discerning, inquisitive employer.

  Stanman, Pierce & Solley had a reputation for integrity, a credit rating up to the moon orbit class, and a vacancy for a junior clerk which Joe landed. Mr. Pierce interviewed Joe and treated his prospective employee to a searching enquiry.

  “Mr. Hawkins, let me say you have admirable qualifications,” the dry starched City-man said as he examined the results of Joe’s standard test. Rubbing his cold hands on a linen handkerchief, Pierce carefully replaced the folded emblem of his manicure-clean life in a breast pocket and gazed at Joe through rimless spectacles. “You have managed to accumulate a remarkable total of points. Your chief ability appears to be speed – which is precisely what is required in this position.