Dancing in the Moonlight Read Online Free

Dancing in the Moonlight
Book: Dancing in the Moonlight Read Online Free
Author: Rita Bradshaw
Pages:
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wouldn’t last long,
the way they were guzzling it down.
    His father and two of his brothers were standing in front of him in a group that included Ernie and Donald Fallow, and he was half-listening to their conversation as his gaze wandered round the
throng. Tom had the advantage of being a head taller than any other man present and broad with it. Anyone looking at him would have added a good six or seven years to his nineteen years. From a
child he had been big and physically strong, and he had used the feeling of power this gave him to control and bully his peers, feeding on their fear.
    His eyes rested on his father and Tom’s lip curled. His da was rabbiting on like he always did when he’d had a drink. As usual the subject was the injustices doled out to the working
class by their supposed betters as the slump worsened. Not that his father was wrong; any fool could see that with the strikes and threats of strikes in the docks, shipyards, railyards and mines,
things were going from bad to worse, but that was all his da ever did – talk. Like the rest of his cronies. None of them had taken on board that the country was changing. There were no
overseas markets for Britain’s old industrial output, especially iron and steel and coal, and shipbuilding was dying on its feet. The Depression was going to get worse, not better, and no
amount of strikes would change that. Not for the North. And the unions were worse than useless. It was every man for himself, that’s the way he saw it.
    He shifted his weight slowly and took another sip of whisky. It was poor stuff. Not like the fine old malt he’d acquired recently from one of his contacts down at the docks. Patrick
McHaffie could get anything you wanted if you tipped him the wink along with a bob or two, but Pat’s petty pilfering was the tip of the iceberg. Like so many, Pat was gormless and would
forever be grubbing away and risking his neck for peanuts while the real money passed him by.
    It was common knowledge among dock workers and the fishing community that the Kane brothers from Sunderland’s squalid East End controlled the criminal fraternity on the south side of the
river. The Kanes had built up a nice business for themselves and had their fingers in umpteen pies – smuggling, extortion, protection rackets and a wide web of brothels – and he
wouldn’t want to lock horns with them. Not unless he was prepared for a knife in the back one dark night.
    Tom smiled grimly to himself.
    But on the north side, stretching from Cornhill Dock and Wearmouth Drops round to Potato Garth and the North Dock near Roker, now that was a different story. There were lots of small rackets
going on, but without any real leadership by one person or family. He intended to change that. Why else had he spent time inveigling himself into favour with the McHaffies of this world? He’d
seen the way the wind was blowing, and the next step would be the shipyards laying men off permanently, he was sure of it. Others might be prepared to go cap in hand to the foremen begging for a
shift here and there, but he was damned if he was. He wanted to get into the real money, the sort of money that came by being cannier than the herd.
    Over the heads of the crowd he saw the door from the scullery open. Lucy and his youngest brother, Jacob, stepped into the kitchen, each holding one of the twins in their arms, with Ruby and
John at their heels.
    Tom’s brown eyes narrowed. His brother had clearly gone next door with Lucy to fetch the bairns through for something to eat, but it wasn’t that which set his jaw clenching. It was
the way Jacob was shepherding them through the assembled company, his manner verging on proprietorial.
    Tom watched his brother settle Lucy on a chair with a twin on each knee and John at her side, before he and Ruby pushed through to the kitchen table. They returned with heaped plates of food
and, as Jacob reached Lucy, he bent down and said something that
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