I watched Hugo Barrington when he gave his evidence. The same self-confidence, the same arrogance, the same half-truths spouted convincingly to the jury, just as he’d whispered them to me in the privacy of the bedroom. When he stepped down from the witness box, I knew Stan didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting off.
In the judge’s summing-up, he described my brother as a common thief, who had taken advantage of his position to rob his employer. He ended by saying he had no choice but to send him down for three years.
I had sat through every day of the trial, hoping to pick up some snippet of information that might give me a clue as to what had happened to Arthur that day. But by the time the judge finally declared, ‘Court adjourned,’ I was none the wiser, although I was in no doubt that my brother wasn’t telling the whole story. It would be some time before I found out why.
The only other person who attended the court every day was Old Jack Tar, but we didn’t speak. In fact, I might never have seen him again if it hadn’t been for Harry.
It was some time before I was able to accept that Arthur would never be coming home.
Stan had only been away for a few days before I discovered the true meaning of the words ‘eke out’. With one of the two breadwinners in the family banged up, and the other God knows where, we soon found ourselves quite literally on the bread-line. Luckily there was an unwritten code that operated in Still House Lane: if someone was ‘away on holiday’, the neighbours did whatever they could to help support his family.
The Reverend Watts dropped in regularly, and even returned some of the coins we’d put in his collection plate over the years. Miss Monday appeared irregularly and dispensed far more than good advice, always leaving with an empty basket. But nothing could compensate me for the loss of a husband, an innocent brother locked up in jail, and a son who no longer had a father.
Harry had recently taken his first step, but I was already fearful of hearing his first word. Would he even remember who used to sit at the head of the table, and ask why he was no longer there? It was Grandpa who came up with a solution as to what we should say if Harry started to ask questions. We all made a pact to stick to the same story; after all, Harry was hardly likely to come across Old Jack.
But at that time the Tancock family’s most pressing problem was how to keep the wolf from our door, or, more important, the rent collector and the bailiff. Once I’d spent Stan’s five pounds, pawned my mum’s silver-plated tea strainer, my engagement ring and finally my wedding ring, I feared it couldn’t be long before we were evicted.
But that was delayed for a few weeks by another knock on the door. This time it wasn’t the police, but a man called Mr Sparks, who told me he was Arthur’s trade union representative, and that he’d come to see if I’d had any compensation from the company.
Once I’d settled Mr Sparks down in the kitchen and poured him a cup of tea, I told him, ‘Not a brass farthing. They say he left without giving notice, so they aren’t responsible for his actions. And I still don’t know what really happened that day.’
‘Neither do I,’ said Mr Sparks. ‘They’ve all clammed up, not just the management, but the workers as well. I can’t get a word out of them. “More than my life’s worth,” one of them told me. But your husband’s subs were fully paid up,’ he added, ‘so you’re entitled to union compensation.’
I just stood there, with no idea what he was going on about.
Mr Sparks took a document out of his briefcase, placed it on the kitchen table and turned to the back page.
‘Sign here,’ he said placing a forefinger on the dotted line.
After I had put an X where he was pointing, he took an envelope out of his pocket. ‘I’m sorry it’s so little,’ he said as he handed it to me.
I didn’t open the envelope until he had finished his cup of tea and left.
Seven pounds, nine shillings and sixpence turned out to be the value they’d put on Arthur’s life. I sat alone at the kitchen table, and I think that was the moment I knew I’d never see my husband again.
That afternoon I went back to the pawn shop and redeemed my wedding ring from Mr Cohen; it was the least I could do in memory of Arthur. The following morning I cleared the rent arrears, as well as the slate at the butcher, the baker and yes, the candlestick maker. There was just enough left over to buy some second-hand clothes from the church jumble sale, mostly for Harry.
But it was less than a month before the chalk was once again scratching across the slate at the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, and it wasn’t long after that I had to return to the pawn shop and hand my wedding ring back to Mr Cohen.
When the rent collector came knocking on the door of number 27 and never received a reply, I suppose none of the family should have been surprised that the next caller would be the bailiff. That was when I decided the time had come for me to look for a job.