A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [33]
Stan had learned to ignore slights and ignorance; that he had to be dim because he was a dustman; that he’d never known anywhere better than Dale Street; or that he liked being called ‘Stan the Pole’. Sometimes he was tempted to grab people by their shoulders and insist they listen to his story before judging him. But he was only too aware that most people around here had no idea what had gone on in Poland during the war.
The truth was that he’d been a skilled carpenter with a wife and two beautiful daughters, until the Germans invaded. While he was off trying to defend his country, his wife and children were gunned down in the streets of Warsaw and his home destroyed. Stan felt he might as well have been killed too, for without his family he was nothing.
But the English didn’t understand, and how could they? Their country had never been invaded. London might have been heavily bombed, but English people had never experienced soldiers crashing into their homes in the middle of the night, or seen innocent civilians shot in the street just because they were out after curfew. He was just Stan the Pole, the man with the funny accent, another one of those immigrants who ought to leave England for the English.
As he looked down at the couple in the street below, laughing because their pile of belongings was toppling over, he realized that his daughters, if they had lived, would have been around the same age as the young blonde girl. Sabine had been dark, taking after her mother, and Sofia blonde, after him. A tear trickled unchecked down his cheek as he remembered them.
Alfie Muckle at number 11, right opposite number 4 and next door to Yvette Dupré, was watching Fifi through ahole in the blanket which covered his bedroom window. As she bent over to pick up a box from the pavement, his cock stiffened at the sight of her pert backside in her tight jeans.
Alfie was the same age as Stan the Pole, but that was the only thing they had in common. Stan was tall and thin, with a face as sad and loose-skinned as a bloodhound’s. Alfie was short and stocky, with a round, shiny face and receding sandy hair. Stan was an intelligent, honourable man, Alfie was a liar and a thief, and what he lacked in intelligence he made up for in low cunning.
Alfie’s bedroom was representative of his entire house. Distempered walls were stained with everything from thrown food, blood and grease, and the furniture was equally knocked about. The double bed he shared with his wife, Molly, was unmade, the sheets unwashed for weeks on end. It smelled sour, of sweat, feet and cigarette smoke, and the bare wood floor was littered with dirty clothes. Alfie and his family weren’t aware of either the mess or the odour, for they had never known any different.
‘Whatcha doin’?’
At the sound of his wife’s voice behind him, Alfie jumped.
Molly was forty-five, two years younger than Alfie, an overweight bleached blonde who, when she managed to take her hair out of curlers, put on some makeup and dress up, was still quite attractive in a garish way.
‘Doggin’ up the folk moving into number four,’ he said.
Molly came over beside him and flicked the blanket back to look out of the window, then looked back at Alfie, her sharp eyes taking in the bulge in his trousers. ‘You dirty bastard,’ she exclaimed. ‘You ’d’ave bin wanking over’er if I’adn’t come in, wouldn’t yer?’
There was no reproach in her voice, just a statement of fact.
Molly was seventeen when she married Alfie, already six months gone with their first child. They spent their wedding night in 1935 sharing