A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [37]
As always when Fifi got a whiff of scandal or intrigue, she was desperate to know the whole story. Bit by bit she pumped both Frank and Stan for more.
It appeared that Angela was the youngest of eight children, four of whom still lived across the street, and that their mother Molly was what Frank called ‘a woman of easy virtue’.
‘Then there’s the two half-wit relations, shacked up together,’ he spat out. ‘God help us all when they produce an offspring!’
Fifi looked at Dan and saw his lips were twitching with silent laughter.
When Stan intervened to say almost apologetically that everyone in Dale Street had good reason to hate the Muckles, and that but for them the street would be a good place to live, Dan asked why they hadn’t been evicted.
‘You can’t evict people who own their house.’ Frank shook his head sadly. ‘That’s the real problem. Alfie lords it over us. He knows there’s nothing we can do about him. The only place he can’t come in is this pub, thank God. He was banned from here years ago and it will never be lifted.’
‘How does someone like him get to buy a house?’ Fifi asked.
‘The legend goes that his grandfather won it from the man who built the street in a game of cards,’ Frank said. ‘Only Mrs Jarvis has lived here that long, and she was only a child at the time, so you can’t say it’s absolute truth. But the house was passed down to Alfie’s father, and then to Alfie. The house ain’t the only thing passed down through the generations, though.’
‘What else?’ Dan asked, his lean face alight with interest.
‘None of the Muckle men has ever done an honest day’s work, they chose women who became their punch-bags, and they pump out children at an indecent rate,’ Frank said with indignation.
‘They are not what you know as a family,’ Stan chipped in. ‘I would call them a tribe. Right now there is only Alfie, Molly and their four younger children, plus Dora and Alfie’s nephew, Mike.’
‘Dora is Molly’s backward sister,’ Frank interrupted. ‘Completely doolally, and like a walking jumble sale. I once saw her going out in odd shoes and just a petticoat!’
Dan winked at Fifi. He was enjoying this, and she had no doubt he would be imitating both Frank and Stan when they got home.
‘But it never stops at just the immediate family,’ Stan went on, getting a little agitated now. ‘This number can swell at any time. They have so many relatives who come and stay, and there’s the card parties.’
Fifi couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw Frank send a warning glance at Stan.
‘Card parties!’ she said brightly. ‘Like bridge or something?’
‘Look, Stan, there’s Ted over there,’ Frank said suddenly, pointing to a fat man with a big red face at the other end of the bar. ‘We must catch him and see when the next darts match is.’ He turned back to Fifi and Dan and apologized for rushing off, but said if they needed any help or wanted to borrow any tools, they only had to ask.
‘The Man Who Said Too Much,’ Dan said in a mock chilling voice as the two older men left them. ‘Maybe the card game is Happy Families and they won’t let Frank or Stan play?’
‘They sound a monstrous family,’ Fifi said. ‘But I suppose you think they were making it all up?’
‘I suspect a bit of exaggeration,’ he said with a grin. ‘But I especially liked the bit about dopey Dora.’
By closing time Dan and Fifi had met several other neighbours, Cecil and Ivy Helass, Mrs Witherspoon from the corner shop, and a man called Wally who had only recently moved into a room below Stan, and they all had something more to add about the Muckles.
Mrs Witherspoon was a plump, seemingly kindly middle-aged woman, and she claimed they targeted any new people in the street, asking to borrow things and telling them hard-luck stories. She advised Fifi and Dan never to invite any of them in, as they would be back to rob them as soon as they got an opportunity.
Ivy Helass said that Stan