Rough Justice by Gilda O'Neill

know you treat her well – and don’t look at me like that, she told me, in case I expected her to pay it back out of what I give her. And I’ve bought her all them new clothes and got her hair cut all nice for her. You watch, she’ll be ground down by him in no time. And them two lousy kids of his’ll find a way to take advantage of her good nature, you can guarantee it. It’s not right, Bernie, you’ve got to put a stop to it. He’s not even bought her a bloody ring. Nell told me the tight sod hadn’t had time.’
    He looked across the crowded saloon bar – word had soon been passed around that there were free drinks to be had in the Hope and Anchor – and all he could see was a pink-cheeked, smiling beauty of a girl, who looked as if her every dream had come true.
    Bernie turned to his wife. ‘If you want her heart broken, Sylv, well then you do it. Cos me, I’m saying nothing.’
    They all stood on the pavement outside the pub, while Bernie captured the moment on his box Brownie – with Nell smiling as if she’d never stopand Stephen becoming agitated by all the attention.
    ‘How much longer is this gonna take, Bern?’ he complained, grinding out his cigarette butt with his heel.
    Bernie grinned. ‘If I’m getting it in the neck from Sylvie about all this, then you can have some of it and all. So just one more for luck, eh?’ He beckoned to his wife. ‘Come on Sylv, let’s have one of you and Nell. The two most beautiful girls in the world in one picture. Who could resist ’em?’
    Sylvia softened, if only for the moment, and she found herself smiling warmly. She linked arms with Nell and they beamed into Bernie’s camera lens.
    Stephen lit another cigarette. ‘Hurry it up, can’t you? I’m bloody freezing standing here.’
    The shutter clicked and Nell’s smile slowly dissolved, like the slush melting in the gutter.
    With a single glance back at Sylvia, Nell trotted along beside Stephen as he strode away from the pub in the direction of his ‘little palace’ in Turnbury Buildings, Wapping.
    ‘You know you’re both welcome over here with us for Christmas dinner,’ Sylvia called after them, grudging the offer to Stephen but wanting – desperately – Nell to see what Christmas could be like.
    ‘I don’t think so, thanks all the same,’ Stephen replied for both of them, flagging down a taxicab. ‘We’ll be fine indoors.’
    It seemed that Nell wasn’t going to spend Christmas with Sylvia after all. But the excitement of riding in a taxi for the very first time made it not matter – well, not quite as much.
    Nell wasn’t sure why she did it, but as Stephen leaned forward to speak to the driver she covered her brooch with her fingers, surreptitiously unclasped it from her collar and slipped it into her bag.
    When the taxi drove through a curved archway and drew up at Turnbury Buildings, it wasn’t exactly what Nell had been expecting. Rather than the collection of ‘little palaces’ that everyone had talked about, it looked more like a forbidding fortress with high brick blocks enclosing three sides of a tarmacked courtyard. Standing in a wasteland of demolished slums, bordered on the waterside by the wharves and warehouses, the Buildings resembled a giant tooth left in an otherwise gummy mouth.
    Nell saw curtains twitch as curious residents craned their necks to see who would be making such an entrance, and a crowd of wild-looking children playing in the yard despite the cold rushed over to the cab. Unlike the older inhabitants of the Buildings, who stared anonymously from behind the shelter of their windows, the youngsters weren’t nearly as shy. They stared openly at Nell as she stepped out of the cab and stood there shivering in her ivory satin outfit and smart hat, while Stephen paid the driver. She wasglad she’d taken off the brooch earlier – any one of the children looked capable of snatching it from her.
    ‘Chuck out your mouldies, Mr Flanagan,’ said one of them