New Arrivals at Mulberry Lane

by Rosie Clarke

  ‘I’ll go in myself rather than phone,’ Maureen said. ‘If you’re on the spot you sometimes get a few extra tins, but if you just ring up they don’t bother to tell you what they’ve had in.’

  ‘Good – and Peggy says please can you get some golden syrup?’

  ‘Everyone wants that, not just Peggy. I’ll do my best, Tom. Keep smiling and tell everyone we’ll have new stock tomorrow. I’m sure to get a few extra bits.’

  ‘You smile at them lot round the wholesaler, Maureen,’ Tom said. ‘That will melt their hearts…we can do with whatever you can scrounge.’

  Maureen sighed as she looked at obvious gaps on the shelves. The war might be getting a little bit better for the Allies but she thought the shortages got worse all the time. ‘You should learn to drive, Tom. I was thinkin’ of buyin’ a second-hand van. I’ll pay for your lessons. We could save on the delivery charge from the wholesaler and it would make your home deliveries easier – and if you have a useful skill, it might help to get you into the Army.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ Tom agreed. ‘Dad has learned to drive both trucks and tanks in the Army and he says he wishes he’d done it years ago. If he doesn’t stay in after the war, he’ll be able to get better paid work. I’ll book up for lessons straight away – if you’re sure about payin’?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. I ought to pay you more wages, but if I give you this it sort of makes up for it.’

  ‘You already gave me a good job when others would have thought me too young,’ Tom said, ‘but I’d love to be able to drive…’

  He was still grinning to himself when a customer came in and Maureen left him to it. She would walk to the wholesaler and purchase whatever they would let her have, but if Tom learned to drive it would be better for all of them. Maureen would purchase a little vehicle and learn to drive as well, because with three children she needed to be able to take them with her wherever she went.

  Chapter 3

  ‘Come to Granny,’ Mabel Tandy said, holding out her arms to the beautiful blonde-haired child in the cot.

  Beth was so sweet and good that it was a pleasure having her in the house. One of Mabel’s main regrets was that she had no sons or daughters to give her grandchildren. Her husband had died during the first Great War with Germany and she’d never wanted to marry again, despite several offers – but she knew that some of the offers were made with one eye on her profitable little business. The wool shop in Mulberry Lane had always brought in a good living, but these days it was more difficult to buy the bits and pieces she needed. To compensate, she’d started a sideline, taking in good-quality second-hand children’s clothes, which she washed and ironed, to be certain they were clean, before she sold them. She took a shilling in the pound on most things and one and sixpence if she had to do repair work on them.

  ‘Mo, Mo…’ Beth bubbled at her, making her smile. She was very bright and intelligent, forward for her age in Mabel’s opinion, but perhaps she was biased, because Ellie’s little girl was her grandchild in all but blood and she certainly couldn’t have been loved more if she really had been her own flesh and blood.

  ‘Yes, darling,’ Mabel said and touched her hands. ‘Mummy will be home soon and then she’ll take you out for a little walk.’

  Ellie Morris now did part-time work in the hairdressing shop, just next door. It meant that she was finished early most days and could look after her daughter while Mabel cooked their dinner. Ellie did most of the housework too, either early in the morning or in the evenings. She’d lived with her mother-in-law when she was first married but they didn’t get on and Mabel had offered her a home.

  Mabel Tandy refused to take rent from Ellie these days. ‘You’re not earning as much now, and you should save. The Army sends you part of his wage, but one day Peter will come home and…’

  She never finished that sentence, but they both knew what it meant. Peter Morris was Ellie’s husband but not the father of her child. Ellie had been raped just before Christmas in 1941 and unfortunately fallen for a child – or it had seemed unfortunate then, but now neither Ellie nor Mabel would wish it otherwise. However, Peter had wanted her to give the child away to the Salvation Army for adoption by a childless couple. Ellie had promised him she would before he left to re-join his unit after a leave in the spring of 1942, but then, after an accident falling down the stairs, which had fortunately not resulted in the loss of her baby, she’d decided to keep it.

  Ellie’s tumble down the stairs had happened because she felt dizzy soon after Peter left, and she’d wondered if something in the drink of cocoa he’d made for her the previous night had caused the sickness that made her lose her balance. Afterwards, she’d told Mabel of her suspicion, but both of them had decided it couldn’t possibly be true. Peter did have a violent temper; he’d shown it more than once, but he’d understood that the rape wasn’t Ellie’s fault and said that he’d forgiven her before he left. Yet both women were a little uneasy about his homecoming. He’d never written often, but since his departure after his last leave, not one letter or postcard had come for Ellie, which seemed strange.

  ‘Letters often get lost,’ Mabel told Ellie when she spoke of it. ‘It doesn’t mean anything…’

  However, it lingered at the back of their minds. Peter might not have had Ellie’s letter, to tell him she had a daughter, of course, but they had no way of knowing, because he did not acknowledge it – nor had he sent a Christmas card these last years, but none of that proved anything, because both letters and cards went missing in wartime.

  Sometimes, Mabel knew, Ellie wondered who had killed Knocker James, the man who had raped her. He’d been found dead of knife wounds the morning that Peter had returned to his unit. Peter told her he would kill Knocker if he got the chance, but everyone said it had been a professional murder – and, besides, Peter had been with Ellie at the time Knocker was killed. So he couldn’t have had anything to do with it, could he?

  Neither Ellie nor Mrs Tandy was sure about anything to do with Peter these days. Mabel sensed that Ellie was unhappy and uneasy about her husband’s return. When she’d married Peter in haste a few days before he was called up, she’d thought he loved her, but he’d changed when he came home on leave. Perhaps it was the war that had changed him. People said that war did change men, brutalising them, making them harder – but had that cruel streak always been there beneath the surface?

  Mabel knew that Ellie lay awake at night and wondered what would happen when he came back on leave because she came down in the morning looking tired and listless. Mabel was apprehensive about it too. She had seen the violence simmering just below the surface. It wasn’t her place to step in and say anything, but if he raised his hand to Ellie she would not stand silently by.

  *

  Rose nursed the little boy on her lap; Freddie was getting another tooth and had cried most of the night. She’d rubbed a little honey on his gums, just as her mother had told her to do with little Paul when he was teething, and it had seemed to ease Freddie for a while, but the tears were on his cheeks again.

  ‘Poor little boy,’ Rose said and rocked him gently. ‘It hurts, I know… but it will be better soon…’

  ‘Oh, you’ve quietened him at last,’ Peggy said, coming into the kitchen with an armful of baby things that needed a wash. She took them to the sink, filled a bucket with hot water and left the clothes to soak. ‘I got up to him three times last night but he just cried each time I left him.’

  ‘I know, I heard him,’ Rose said. ‘Mum used to put a little honey on Paul’s gums when he was teething, but the soothing effect only lasts for a short time…’

  ‘Is that your little brother?’ Peggy asked and took Freddie into her arms, smiling down at him as he patted her face and murmured, ‘Mum… mum…’

  Rose hesitated, and then inclined her head. ‘Do you want me to clean or cook, Mrs Ashley?’

  ‘Do you want to try making the cheese scones?’ Peggy said. ‘We might as well see what your c
ooking is like, Rose. I know you can make pastry. Those jam tarts looked and tasted good yesterday.’

  ‘Mum always said I made the best scones and cakes she’d tasted.’

  ‘Did your mother teach you to cook?’

  ‘No – that was Grandmother, but she died when I was sixteen…’ Rose turned away as her throat caught. She didn’t know what had made her speak of her family at all – but it would seem strange if she never mentioned anyone from her past.

  ‘I’m sorry. Were you very close to her?’

  Rose closed her eyes. Her father’s mother had been a strange, cold woman. They’d lived in her house over the pub, and she’d kept a long thin cane in the corner of the kitchen. Rose had felt that across her knuckles often enough in her early years, and on her legs.

  ‘You will learn obedience or you will suffer for it,’ Grandmother had told her. ‘My son was trapped into marriage to a slut because you were on the way – and I’ll not have you growing up to be like her.’

  ‘Mum isn’t a slut…’ Rose had tried to defend her mother, even though Mum had shaken her head wearily. The sadness in her eyes and the unfairness of it had made Rose rebel too often and she’d learned to ignore the sting of her grandmother’s cane. She’d learned to cook from sheer necessity, because she’d been told that unless she did things right both she and her mother would suffer.

  Rose hadn’t cried when Grandmother died of pneumonia. She’d seldom had a kind word from her, but she soon discovered that all the work her grandmother had done fell on her shoulders, because although her mother served behind the bar of their family’s pub and flirted with the customers, when the pub was closed she went upstairs to her room and seldom came out until the bar opened again. Rose took her meals up to her, but she ate very little. It wasn’t until a few weeks before her death that Rose realised her mother drank too much gin.

  ‘No, I wasn’t close to her,’ Rose said, realising that her employer was waiting for an answer. The only person she’d truly cared for was little Paul – and his death had made her realise there was nothing worth staying for… ‘I’d love to make the scones, Mrs Ashley. Shall we make some vegetable soup to go with them? We’ve got plenty of greens and potatoes, and there are some lovely carrots today. Reg brought you a box of vegetables from his allotment.’

  ‘He’s started to do that recently on his day off. Says he often has far too much for his family and so he thought of me…’

  ‘Yes, that was so kind of him.’ Reg was the postman and Rose liked him because he always stopped for a chat when he delivered the letters. Like most men who weren’t in the Army, Reg kept an allotment, rearing chickens as well as growing vegetables. He was in his late forties and too old for the Army, but he reminded Rose of her father – as he had been, until Paul was born. It was after the child’s birth that he’d turned sour and cruel…

  Rose dismissed the painful memories swiftly before they could bring tears to her eyes. She’d left all that behind when she decided to come to London.

  ‘I think vegetable soup is an excellent idea for today’s lunch,’ Peggy said. ‘It goes well with the scones – and I’m going to make a rhubarb crumble for afters as well as some jam tarts. That plum jam I made last autumn is delicious; I must make some more this year if I can scrounge enough sugar from somewhere.’

  ‘Then I’ll make the scones and the soup,’ Rose agreed and began to sort the vegetables for scrubbing and peeling. They were easy to do, because they were fresh dug. ‘I helped Nellie clean the bar first thing. She’s doing the bedrooms now, but I heard Freddie crying and came down to him…’

  ‘Well, he seems to have settled for a while,’ Peggy looked lovingly at her son in his cot; Fay was already fast asleep upstairs, for the moment untroubled by her teeth, of which she had almost all through now; Freddie’s were taking longer. She glanced at Rose ‘How old is your little brother now?’

  ‘My brother died,’ Rose said and her voice was so choked with emotion that it was a wonder anyone could hear her. ‘Paul was found in his cot… the doctor said it often happens that the hearts of young babies just stop beating as they sleep in their cots.’ Tears trickled down her cheeks and there was no way she could stop them.

  ‘Oh Rose, my dear,’ Peggy said and came to embrace her. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have asked…’

  ‘Yes, you should. You have the right to know.’ Rose sniffed and flicked the tears from her cheeks with the back of her hand. Peggy offered her a clean cotton handkerchief; it was large and white and had clearly belonged to a man. ‘Paul died in his cot and my father said it was my fault for neglecting him, and some people believed him and called me names over it; one or two spat at me in the street. But I swear I didn’t do it. I loved him. My mother said Father had suffocated the child – because he believed he wasn’t his…’

  ‘Oh, how terrible!’ Peggy said and turned pale. ‘The poor baby…’ Rose saw her look at Freddie and there was an odd expression in her eyes. ‘Your father couldn’t have done such a thing – could he?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I think he might have,’ Rose said, her eyes filled with grief and tears. ‘He didn’t believe the child was his and they had terrible rows over it – and then, suddenly, Paul was dead. He’d had a little cold, but I thought he was getting better and I was busy cooking and then when I went to pick him up, he was white and still…’

  ‘How terrible,’ Peggy said and nodded. ‘It must have been an awful time for you – and your poor mother…’

  Rose looked at her. She had wanted to keep her secret but it seemed the truth wouldn’t be denied, even though she’d decided she could never tell. Peggy Ashley had been good to her these past two weeks since she’d come to the pub and she deserved the truth. It was best to get it out now, even if it meant she had to move on again. The words trembled on her tongue and then she was suddenly pouring it all out.

  ‘My mother is dead… My father killed her with a hammer…’ Rose stared into the distance, picturing the dreadful quarrel between her parents after Paul’s funeral. ‘We’d come from the church after burying Paul. They were shouting at each other. She flew at him with her fists. He thrust her away and then picked up his hammer and… there was blood everywhere…’ Shudders ran through Rose and she covered her face with her hands as the dry sobs took her.

  ‘Oh, you poor child,’ Peggy said, looking at her in horror. ‘Whatever did you do?’

  ‘I ran outside and screamed as loudly as I could. One of our customers was passing in the street. He went in to investigate, but it was too late. We heard the shot and I knew what my father had done. He killed my mother and then shot himself with his pistol, which he’d kept cleaned and loaded from when he was in the Great War…’

  Peggy was staring at her in stunned silence. Rose felt hollow inside. Her employer would ask her to leave now. Who would want to employ the daughter of a murderer? Especially one who had murdered his own son and his wife – because her mother had sworn that despite his doubts and accusations the child was his son and Rose believed he’d killed him out of spite, despite the doctors saying he had stopped breathing in his cot.

  Peggy spoke at last: ‘That is a terrible story, Rose. I knew you were hiding something when you first came to me, but I trusted you because I sensed you’d been unhappy…’ Peggy was ashen, her face drained of colour. She looked at Rose and tears were in her eyes. ‘I am so very sorry, my dear. Obviously, you’ve had a terrible life – but I want you to know that as long as I have the pub, you have a home with me.’

  Rose looked at her, her throat closing with emotion as she held back a sob. ‘I thought you would want me to leave if you knew…’

  ‘No, Rose. You’ve already proved yourself to me. I would be sorry if you left. You are gentle and kind with the twins – and you help me in all sorts of ways. I think I was lucky you chose to come here…’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Ashley…’ Rose couldn’t speak for her tears.

  ‘Please, call m
e Peggy. You will be a part of our family now for as long as you wish…’

  Rose smiled at her, nodding because she was too full of emotion to speak. She wished that Peggy was her mother, wished that none of the past had ever happened, but it had and it would continue to dwell with her for a long time, perhaps the rest of her life.

  ‘Thank you… thank you so much,’ she whispered at last. ‘You don’t know how much that means to me, Peggy.’

  ‘I can’t take away your pain, however much I might want to,’ Peggy told her. ‘But you can find happiness here, Rose. There are good people in the lane and they will all take you to their hearts if you let them. Once they get to know you and see that you work for me, you’ll be accepted as one of us.’

  *

  Peggy hadn’t been able to get Rose’s revelations out of her mind since they’d talked the previous day. Watching her at work, noting how scrupulous she was in everything she did, Peggy thought how easily she’d become one of them. She was a pretty girl, fragile-looking but strong. Her eyes were an expressive grey and her hair had a smoky fairness that some people called ash blonde. Peggy’s heart had been wrung by the girl’s pitiful story: a mother that drank too much, a grandmother who treated her harshly, and a father who allowed bitterness to cloud his judgement to the extent that he had killed in anger.

  It had frightened Peggy that Rose’s father could murder a child in his bitter anger. Peggy’s husband Laurie hadn’t been home since before the twins were born. Laurie had been unfaithful to her before her affair with Able, but his fury when she told him she was having Able’s baby had been unreasonable. His affair didn’t matter, hers was unforgivable! After making sure that she allowed everyone to believe they were his children, Laurie had sent her a letter and a gift of five pounds to buy whatever she needed for the children after their birth – but he hadn’t come home on leave. People assumed the twins were his, but her friends knew the truth and there was little point in insisting on making it public when Able was believed dead. Laurie wrote to her every few months, short, unemotional letters enquiring how things were in the lanes and if she was managing. She replied with equally brief letters telling him that they were still making a small profit, just enough to keep the pub ticking over until the end of the war – until he came home to claim it.