The Bells of Bow Read Free Page A

and bent down to pick up their bags from the kerb. As they stood up they were nearly knocked over by two scruffy little boys who darted out from behind the baker’s shop and raced past them before disappearing over the wall of the Drum and Monkey, the pub which stood on the opposite corner.
    ‘Jenners?’ asked Evie, looking towards the pub wall behind which the boys had vanished.
    ‘Yeah,’ Babs nodded. ‘Another two. Seem to breed overnight, that family.’
    ‘How many they got now?’ Evie pondered as she repositioned her hat and fastened it securely with the long, pearl-topped pin.
    ‘Dunno,’ Babs said, shaking her head in wonder. ‘I’ve lost count and yer hardly ever see her to get the chance to ask. Probably too busy with all them kids.’
    ‘I think it’d be funny having more than the two of us, don’t you?’ Evie mused, linking arms with Babs. ‘I never wanted any more brothers or sisters.’
    Before the girls had moved more than a couple of steps, the heads of the two tousled-haired boys reappeared over the wall. ‘Guess what, gels?’ one of them whined pathetically. ‘There ain’t no empties to nick over here, not a single one.’
    ‘Nellie’s probably got ’em all hidden away from thieving little toerags like you two, that’s why,’ laughed Babs, turning round to face them.
    ‘We was gonna get ourselves fish and taters with the money and all,’ snivelled the other boy. ‘We’re really starving.’
    ‘Yeah, yer look hungry,’ said Evie, staring at the rosy-cheeked, chubby-faced child.
    ‘Chuck out yer mouldies for us, twins,’ he pleaded. ‘Go on. Please.’
    ‘Take this for yer cheek, yer pair of villains,’ laughed Evie. Taking a couple of coppers from her bag she flipped them towards the boys.
    The boys scrambled back over the wall to retrieve the shiny treasure. ‘Cor, ta, twin!’
    Now Babs was laughing too. ‘Twin! I dunno. We’ll have to wear labels round our necks till everyone knows which of us is the blonde one.’
    ‘I’d have thought that was quite obvious,’ snapped a short and bony elderly woman. Her narrow lips pursed, she moved towards them like a pint-sized sergeant major leading the troops on a parade ground. Trailing several yards behind the woman was an even shorter thin-faced ferret of a man who, apart from his wrinkled old man’s face, looked for all the world like a reluctant child being dragged back to school after the summer holidays by his bullying mother. The two were husband and wife, Nobby and Alice Clarke, the couple who lived downstairs from Minnie and Clara at number five.
    ‘Obvious, is it?’ asked Babs, hands on hips. ‘All right then, which one am I?’
    ‘Don’t yer start yer old nonsense with me, my girl,’ snapped Alice.
    ‘Bloody hell, twin,’ beamed Nobby, as he caught up with his wife. ‘What yer gone and done to yerself now?’
    Evie flashed him a dazzling, dimpled-pierced smile. ‘Like it, do yer, Nobby?’
    ‘Yeah, not half.’
    ‘She’s had them crackers in her hair again, Nobby. And bleach this time. Just look at her,’ fumed Alice.
    ‘I am, Alice, I am.’ Nobby was too busy gawking at Evie to notice Alice’s hand come round with a sharp wallop on his ear.
    ‘Oi!’ he complained, his face screwed up with pain.
    Alice’s response was to tut loudly and to grab the unfortunate Nobby roughly by the arm. ‘I dunno,’ she spluttered as she propelled him towards number five. ‘Throwing money away on them Jenner kids like it comes off trees and then blonding and waving their hair. Whatever next, eh? Tell me that. That Georgie Bell had better keep an eye on them girls of his or they’ll turn out just like their no-good mother. You mark my words if they don’t. What a family.’ Then she turned back towards the end of the street and, letting go of her husband, she tucked her fists into her waist and bellowed, ‘And now where’s that Micky got to?’
    As if on cue, Micky Clarke, Alice and Nobby’s