The stubborn look on his cousin’s face as he pulled his arm free of Oliver’s restraining hand told Oliver all he needed to know about Willie’s frame of mind.
They were in their local East End pub, the Royal Crown, standing at the bar with their beers.
‘I thought like you meself once, Willie. In fact I was all for making meself a career in the boxing ring, but then I got to thinking—’
‘You mean that your ma got to thinking for you,’ Willie interrupted him. ‘Well, I’m not being told what to do by you, Ollie. Harry Malcolms reckons I’ve got a good future ahead of me, and that there’s bin talk of either the Richardsons or the Krays tekkin’ an interest.’
The mention of two of the East End’s most notorious gangs made Oliver frown.
‘If you go down that route you’ll be expected to throw matches as well as win them, Willie,’ he warned.
His cousin gave a dismissive shrug. ‘It’s only them lads that aren’t good enough that get told to lose, and that ain’t going to happen to me. Reggie came down to watch me sparring the other night, and he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t fink he wanted me on board.’
Willie might think he had what it took to make the big time but Oliver had asked around and the word on the street was that he was more boxing ring fodder than a future champion, and would end up merely as a sparring partner for more skilled boxers, working for a pittance in a boxing club rather than earning big money in prize fights.
The trouble with Willie was that he was easily led and just as easily deceived.
‘You’re a fool, Willie,’ Oliver complained, beginning to lose patience. ‘Throw in your lot with them and my bet is that you’ll end up with your brains turned to jelly, or working as one of their enforcers.’
‘You’re just jealous,’ Willie accused him, his cheeks flushed. ‘You know what your problem is, don’t you? It’s that mother of yours. My dad reckons—’ He broke off suddenly, looking self-conscious and scuffing his shoe on the ground.
Oliver froze. This wasn’t the first time there’d been dark hints thrown out about his mother.
‘Go on, Willie. Your dad reckons what exactly?’ he challenged, his voice hard.
‘Oh, leave it out, will you, Ollie? I didn’t mean nothing. It’s just that your ma always carries on like nothing’s good enough for her. Me ma reckons that it’s rich, her coming on the way she does when she works as a ruddy cleaner, but me dad—’
He broke off again, his face reddening whilst Oliver’s mouth compressed into a thin line of fury.
He should be used to it by now. After all, he’d pretty much grown up shrugging off the whispers and sly looks that people exchanged when they talked about his mother. The gossips whispered that the rich widower for whom she cleaned was responsible for her good figure and her smart appearance.
Oliver scowled. He was no stranger to the pleasure of sex–far from it–but the thought of his mother tarting herself up for her wealthy boss wasn’t one that sat comfortably with him, and all the more so because of the benefits that had come his way over the years, courtesy of Herbert Sawyer.
He bunched his fist and then slowly and deliberately relaxed it. He hadn’t come here to get involved in a fight with his younger cousin–or anyone else, for that matter. He’d left all that business behind long ago.
‘Please yourself,’ he told his cousin, putting down his beer glass, ‘but don’t come crying to me when you’re standing in the dock about to be sent down because you’ve used them fists of yours on someone you shouldn’t on Reggie Kray’s orders.’
‘Give over, Ollie. Come on, let’s have another drink,’ Willie tried to appease him.
Oliver looked round the bar. He wasn’t really in the mood for the kind of drinking session that Willie no doubt had in mind.
Before he could reply, the door from the street opened and a group of men came in, Reggie Kray in their midst. He was dressed in the dapper fashion he favoured, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
Automatically Willie stepped back–no one stood in the way of the Krays–lowering his head, almost as though in obeisance.
Reggie stopped, causing the enforcers behind him to trip over their own crepe-soled brothel creepers in their efforts not to bump into ‘the boss’. It wasn’t Willie Reggie stopped in front of, though, but Oliver.
‘Saw that photograph you took of me and Ronnie,’ he announced, drawing deeply on his cigarette and then exhaling before adding, ‘Smart piece of work. Me and Ronnie liked it. Next time, though, make sure you get some bits of smart upper-crust skirt in as well, not them old dames.’
Without taking his gaze from Oliver he called out to the barman, ‘Alf, give my friend here a drink.’ Then he continued, ‘Mind you, there’s to be no photograph taking in here, mate, understand?’
Oliver certainly did. The pub was a seedy dive where the Krays came to talk business, not flash their East End smartness for public view. Like rats coming up from the sewers, those with whom the Krays did business often preferred to conduct that business under the cover of darkness.
Paris
Emerald arched her foot, the better to admire the elegance of her new Italian leather shoes, and the slenderness of her legs in their Dior silk stockings. This time next week she would be back in London, and she couldn’t wait. The Dior dress she had been coveting, and which she suspected her mother would not have permitted her to have, on the grounds that it was too grown up, was safely packed ready to be taken back with her. By the time her mother got the bill it would be too late for her to do anything about it. She certainly couldn’t send it back as the couture gown had been made especially for her.
Emerald had known she had to have it the minute she had seen it at the autumn season’s show. She would wear it for the formal official photographs that would celebrate the announcement of her engagement to the Duke of Kent. His mother, Princess Marina, was well known for being stylish and elegant. Emerald intended to make it plain that, in future, as the new Duchess of Kent, she would be the most stylish and elegant member of the extended Royal Family. Emerald intended to be a very popular duchess.
With her future all mapped out and waiting for her, Emerald was impatient to put her plans into action. She planned to make sure that she encouraged the duke to fall in love with her from the minute they were introduced. The official purpose of being finished might be to equip girls with good social skills, but Emerald had been using her time in Paris to hone skills that she felt would be far more use to her than conversational French.
Today she was going to polish those skills a little more, having managed to escape from under Madame la Comtesse’s eagle eye. She smiled triumphantly to herself, but then frowned.
Trust nosy Gwendolyn to insist on coming with her, and dragging Lydia along as well. It served them right that they were looking so uncomfortable. Emerald was enjoying herself, though, basking in the admiration of the four young men seated at the table with them in the artistic quarter of Montmartre. But it was the solitary older man sitting close by, reading his newspaper, in whom Emerald was more interested, and for whose benefit she had just been admiring her silk-stocking-clad legs. Narrow-faced, with his dark hair just beginning to grey, there was something about him that sent a shiver of anticipation and expectation through her. Instinctively Emerald knew that he was the kind who knew a very great deal about her sex, the kind of man any woman would be proud to have as a conquest, the kind of man it would be a challenge to turn into a devoted admirer, unlike the four boys, who were making it plain that they were ready