THE PIE SHOP. Chapter Three. LIL'S STORY.

It had been a lousy Saturday right from the beginning. I woke up that morning with a splitting headache, hadn't fancied any lunch and, in the afternoon, had played badly for my football team The Casuals. We lost 3-0 to our greatest rivals, Pedro Street, and Arsenal lost to Spurs the same afternoon. That should have told me that the evening dance at the Town Hall wasn't going to be eighteen carat, but I ignored the feeling and went anyway. I wished I hadn't.

The girls were all in the sort of mood that makes blokes feel they have two left feet, two heads and a bad case of halitosis in both of them! The band was a two-bob job, often out of tune and clearly hadn't the faintest idea of what was required for a good evening's dance; the singer was even worse. Added to all that the beer had been served warm and my brother stung me for a couple of quid…just until next Friday he assured me…I believed him of course!

Now, in the drizzling rain, at half-past-eleven at night, I was on my way to The Pie Shop in the market. After all it was Saturday night and in those days (The mid-fifties) The Pie Shop was the regular place for everyone to meet after the dance at the King's Hall or wherever, I hoped I might find some of the lads there and they would be in a better mood than I was.

I turned into the market, halfway along the street the lights of the Pie Shop blazed out through the huge glass front-window like a lighthouse in a stormy sea. On either side of the street the flickering street-lamps reflected coloured beams of light from the raindrops soaking those labouring, with no great enthusiasm, to sweep the street clean between the now empty stalls to be ready for Monday's opening. That East End of London market place had been there since heaven knows when and would gradually become tidy and clear of the residue of a day's trading.

It happened every night except Sunday, had done forever. Cardboard boxes soaking wet and falling apart as the dustmen picked them up, orange boxes made of thin wooden slatts and held together by wire that stuck out in all directions and snagged your trousers as you passed if you weren't careful. Bright red onion bags and dull brown paper potato sacks all soaked and lying collapsed in the gutter their work done, their usefulness gone, defied the efforts of the workmen to pick them up in one piece; most dissolved into shreds in their hands, making more mess. And everywhere, fruit and vegetables in various stages of damage or decay were being shovelled into the back of the dustcarts. It was a job and someone had to do it, I was glad it wasn't me but the scene matched my mood perfectly.

It was late September and not yet cold enough to wear an overcoat, but the rain made it feel cold and the drops of water slipping off my Brylcreemed hair and dripping down the back of my neck heightened my feeling of discomfort. No one I knew would dream of carrying an umbrella! I dodged the slow-moving workmen and stood for a moment just gazing into The Pie Shop through that wide glass window, the one no one had ever dared to throw a brick through, then pushed open the heavy wooden doors. A blast of muggy air carrying the somewhat sticky smell of pies and other food hit me and made me wonder for a moment if I really wanted to go in. I only lived about five minutes walk away and the thought of a nice cool bed and an end to a rotten day was very inviting. I made another wrong decision and went in!

A quick look around the room told me that none of my closer associates were there; the room was only about half full. Perhaps they too had felt the drubbing we had taken that afternoon, maybe the dance that evening had been the last straw and they'd all gone home. I walked to the counter. "Pie and Mash please Lil," I said, then added "Rotten evening, no one about. Have they all gone already?" I should have known better of course, I'd been there enough times to know that Lil didn't exchange pleasantries with anyone. She just shrugged her heavy, broad shoulders and turning to the oven extracted the pie with her bare hands and swiftly dropped it onto the heavy china plate. The mash and likker were quickly added and a mug of tea plonked alongside the plate on the counter. I dropped the one-and-sixpence into her thick fingers. Then, having noted an empty table I grabbed both and with the practice born of long experience, moved rapidly across the room and deposited both onto the white marble table top without spilling any tea, or scalding my thumbs by letting them sink into the likker that reached to edge of the plate.

Feeling a bit out of things and wondering where all my mates had got to, I idly looked across the room. There was Sam standing imperturbably in his corner, did he ever move from there? I suppose he must occasionally but he always seemed to be there. From him my gaze wandered across the other people eating or quietly chatting. I didn't know them all but there seemed to be an air or depression about that matched my mood exactly. My eyes finally came to rest on Lil behind her counter. Standing there waiting for more customers to appear, her hands on her hips and grim expression on her face, she really did look the most formidable woman I ever did see.

To think of the Pie Shop without Lil in it would be the same as thinking about London without Big Ben or the Tower. She was part of the scene, even her skin looked the same colour as the walls of the Pie Shop, a sort of off cream colour, perhaps she had been built at the same time? On the rare occasions she was elsewhere her absence was immediately noticed and remarked upon. Of course there must have been a time when someone else occupied that space behind the counter. The Pie Shop had after all been there for three generations that I know of. I wondered who that someone else might have been, had she been like Lil? It wasn't the first time I had pondered that matter. I had even consulted the Oracle on local matters, my mother, she, having been born and lived all her life within a hundred yards of the market, knew everyone in and everything about the street market in which The Pie Shop was located.

To my surprise she had looked perplexed at the question…"Lil?" she had repeated the name as if it was the first time she'd heard it. "Uhmm…must have been her mother I suppose. She died a long time ago though. I don't even remember what she looked like. I remember seeing Lil in and about the shop when I was a very young girl. She's about ten years older than me. Why do you want to know?" I told her I was just curious and tried to change the subject. But I had aroused even my mother's curiosity by my question. "Her son Sam," she went on. "was a right little sod he was, always in trouble at school and always getting into fights. He couldn't 'alf fight though. Always had one mother or another down there complaining he'd thumped her son. Lil sent him into the army as soon as she could. If he was going to fight he may as well get paid for doing it she told everyone. He fought on a couple of Jack Soloman's bills too, before he went in. He was a different man after his service ended though. Seemed to want to stay in The Pie Shop all the time, never went out or got involved with any of the girls locally. Quite a few of 'em made it clear they'd welcome his attentions. He's not a bad lad though, if you're on the right side of him. Not someone to upset too often though." She had that right! So Lil remained a mystery woman and would probably have stayed that way if it hadn't been for Teddy Fenton.

You may remember Teddy, he played inside left for The Casuals, a very good player he was too. He was though, also an inveterate gossip. Tell him anything and in no time it was all over the manor. His ambition, he told everyone, was to become a reporter on the local newspaper "The Gazette". I wasn't surprised to hear that he done just that, which is how I came to meet him again many years later. We were at an Advertising conference in Brighton. I worked in the research department of a National Newspaper Group and was attending a plenary session to hear what the locals were doing to attract revenue from the larger advertisers. The speaker? Yep! That's right Teddy Fenton. He spoke well and what he said made a lot of sense. We'd both grown up it seemed.

It goes without saying that we had a few drinks together afterwards, well to be honest it was rather more than a few and it was getting late but we hadn't seen each other for years, must have been about twenty-five years come to think of it. We got to reminiscing, as you do after such a long passage of time and more than a few drinks. We re-lived some of the games we'd played for The Casuals, brought each other up to date with what had happened to some of the other members of the team, recalled the dances at the various venues around our manor and of course inevitably got to talking about the Pie Shop. "Remember old Sam?" I asked. Of course he did and he even knew what happened to him too. He actually did finally get married, to little Laura Perkins, she lived just around the corner to The Pie Shop, goodness only knows how they came to meet but they did and settled down in Essex somewhere.

His biggest revelation was about Lil. She had lived to good age and lived over the shop right up to the end. Sam inherited the shop and after a few years sold it to a distant relative of Lil's. So the family still own it and it still looks the same as it did all those years ago. Apparently, Teddy, just like everyone else who ever went to the Pie Shop, had wondered what made her tick and as soon as he had made the grade as a reporter for "The Gazette" he had made it his business to set about unravelling the mystery that surrounded her. What he found explained a lot. I sat and listened without making any interruption, except for the odd disbelieving "No!" or a surprised "Really?" and once an incredulous…"The Military Cross?"

At the end of his story I grinned. "I bet your editor loved that 'human interest' story," I said. Teddy shook his head. "I never told him about it," he said. "I reckon Lil had had her fair share of bad news, don't you? And of course there's Sam's family. They wouldn't know any of this would they? It could stir up all sorts of things best left alone...not least of which is the involvement of Harry Bigg in Islington." I couldn't help but agree. "Probably had someone else's share of bad news too," I said. "And I bet Sam's family would be a bit surprised to hear about Harry," I added thoughtfully, he had after all finished up in prison, might even still be there. "Still, it's quite a story, who else knows about it?"
"No one, as far as I know, I certainly haven't told anyone. Except you of course and I know you won't either." I nodded my head in agreement and looked across at the man I had known all those years ago. That younger man could never have kept such a secret. "The storey's safe with me," I assured him. At the same time I couldn't help thinking "Teddy's grown up." I guess the same was true of me too. Which is why Lil's life remains the secret it always was.