A Lesser Evil - Lesley Pearse [40]
Although Fifi and Dan had found the stories about the Muckles a bit far-fetched when they first moved in, there was no doubt that some of the neighbours really were terrified of them. Mrs Jarvis’s lips quivered and her voice shook as she spoke of them, and she always looked out of her window before opening her front door. Fifi thought it was awful that an old lady who had lived here for almost her entire life should spend her last years in such fear.
Fifi wasn’t afraid of the Muckles, but she found watching them completely addictive. She knew she really shouldn’t find them so fascinating, they were after all the absolute dregs of the earth. But they were a novelty, so far removed from the quiet gentility of the neighbours she’d grown up observing that she almost liked them for giving her so much entertainment.
Dan had bought a second-hand television, but Fifi watched the Muckles more often. It was like having a theatre on her doorstep, the family acting out a long-running serial. There was comedy when Dora, the backward sister-in-law, ran down the street wearing nothing but men’s boots and a towel around her. She was running after Mike, the nephew, screaming that she loved him.
The serial had suspense when Molly and Alfie came home drunk; would it turn to a fight? Or would the night be filled with the sound of animalistic lovemaking later on? There was mystery when men arrived to play cards on a Friday night. Mainly they were as seedy-looking as Alfie, but some were smartly dressed, almost like businessmen, and Fifi was baffled as to why such men would want to play cards in such a grim place. Dan said that owning a handmade suit was in fact a hallmark of a villain, and however affluent these men appeared, they probably came from homes as rough as Alfie’s. She was puzzled too that the police never seemed to act after complaints of noise and disturbance. Then there was tragedy as well, as the poor children all looked so neglected.
Where did Molly go when she went out in the evening, alone and dressed to kill? Why was it that the children took a pram full of washing to the council laundry every week, yet not one of the family other than Molly ever wore anything clean? Where did they get the money to buy all those boxes of drink they carried home, when no one in the family appeared to work?
Yet most intriguing of all was that the Muckles had so many visitors. Hardly a day went by without Fifi seeing someone new go in there. Maybe the couple of teenage girls she’d seen were the two older daughters who no longer lived at home, but she didn’t think all the callers could be family members. No one in the street had anything good to say about Alfie, so how come he had so many friends?
She wondered about the Muckles all the time. She would give anything to be able to turn herself into a fly and go into that house to take a look around. She knew it would be filthy, she was sure they lived on nothing but fish and chips, but however much everyone kept telling her how dangerous they were, she couldn’t really believe that. To her they were all idiots, often brutal, always coarse, but hardly dangerous.
After a little chat with Mrs Jarvis, Fifi went on to the shop. To her surprise she had come to like Kennington. It might not be what she was used to, but it had a kind of buzz about it, as though there were a million and one things going on right under her nose.
She even liked the flat now they’d done it up. It might have been very different if they’d had awful people downstairs, but no one could mind sharing a bathroom with either Miss Diamond or Frank Ubley. Dan laughingly called Miss Diamond the bathroom monitor, because on their second day she’d personally instructed Dan on cleaning the bath after he’d used it. She put plants on the windowsill, she went in for various things that made it smell nice, and she washed over the floor twice a week.
As for Frank on the ground floor, he was a gem, as keen