by Annie Murray
‘Yeah,’ he said quickly. ‘Course.’ If there was one person in this world Den had everlasting respect for, it was Margaret.
They walked out into the street and she hurried away, giving an awkward little wave. ‘Bye then, Den – and best of luck!’
She heard his goodbye drift along the street behind her.
‘That’s another one Eb’s got leaving,’ Margaret said that evening as they sat round the table.
‘Who is it this time?’ Pa said, helping himself to a mouthful of cabbage.
‘Den Poole,’ Daisy said.
‘How do you know?’ He looked up at her, chewing.
‘He came and met me out of work and told me,’ Daisy said.
‘What – just now?’ Her father frowned.
‘He wants me to write to him.’ She cut up her kidneys in the thick, tasty gravy, only then glancing up to see that both her parents were looking closely at her.
‘That poor lad’s been sweet on you for years,’ Pa said.
‘No, he hasn’t,’ Daisy said, laughing in astonishment. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘Want to bet?’ her father teased, his face crinkling with amusement.
‘Philip,’ Margaret cautioned him. She did not approve of any sort of gambling, even in a joking sense. ‘And poor Mary – just another thing for her to worry about. Perhaps I’ll go and call on her.’
‘You’re just being silly,’ Daisy said. ‘But I can write to him if he wants. And Pa – I want to do a bit more on my jug tonight.’ She was making a straight-sided silver jug, playing with shape and dimension, always wanting to create something new and different. She had a little workroom of her own in the attic now, where she could try out more novel things than they made in the works.
‘It’s too dark,’ he said.
‘I can see for a while with the lamp, you know I can!’ She was jiggling with impatience, wanting to get up there, to get started. ‘My sight’s perfect.’
Pa rolled his eyes, forking up potato and cabbage. But he seemed in a good mood. ‘All right then, Miss Argumentative – just an hour. But no longer, all right?’
Carrying the oil lamp, she climbed up to the front attic room and the half workbench which used to be downstairs and was now set under the window. Three curved shapes had been cut out of the side of the bench, each for a person to sit at and work on the wooden block or peg which was set over it on a support at eye level, for hammering and shaping metal. In Pa’s shopping and Eb Watts’s, the men sat round whole tables like these, with six pegs, all working away with their gas jets and blowpipes to steer the flame more accurately on to the exact spot where they were working, with their tools for shaping and cutting and the skin pouches hanging from the edge of the table to catch the lemel and dust left over from the work.
Daisy stood the lamp on the bench, put her overall on and sat down, drawing in a deep, happy breath. Even after her work down in Pa’s shopping, or teaching at the school, this was something she had to do, a habit she had had since childhood when she came home from school: ‘Pa – I want to make something!’ From her youngest days she could remember her mother bent over this very peg, working on her own creations in silver.
Daisy knew she was talented. She could feel the materials work and shape under her hands and she needed to be able to do her own work like this, preferably every day. It was almost like breathing to her, or like food. Her one real ambition was to be a professional, respected, artist silversmith – even if she was a woman! – to be someone in the trade and to have her own thriving business.
As well as the workbench under the dormer window, the room contained a spare single bed along one wall, which looked spartan as at present it had no bedding on it except one pillow and a pale pink candlewick counterpane covering the thin mattress. On the other side of the little square room were a small cupboard and some waist-high shelves. On the lower shelves she kept tools and work materials. Along the top were a few of her treasures – items she had made and two made by her mother. One was a shallow, hand-beaten silver dish, the other a little silver jewellery box, the lid set with semi-precious stones, agate and opal. Inside was a tiny silver christening bracelet which Mom had made for her and which had been on her wrist from a time before she could remember. It was a slender ring with overlapping ends, neatly fixed so that the bracelet could extend its size as she grew. Engraved along the side, ‘Daisy Louise Tallis’ had taught her to spell her name. She had worn and worn it until it made a weal on her arm from pressing so tightly and she had wept when Philip had to cut it off when she was eight years old. She always kept it close to her as one of her most precious possessions.
Seated on the stool in front of the bench, she looked with satisfaction at all her tools neatly laid out: her pliers and snips, her files and saws, the rawhide hammer and Archimedes drill, her doming block and mandrel . . .
She placed the half-made jug before her and inclined her head to look at it, her eyes feeling along its shape, assessing every line. It was of an austere design, straight sided with a pointed, triangular spout which she was in the process of fashioning. But it was not right. She frowned, offended by the thing and by her own lack of judgement. Too big? Yes, just a little bit – out of proportion to the rest of it. Wrong.
Picking it up, she was full of a sense of dissatisfaction. She was never going to be good enough!
She took hold of the unattached spout to work on it. Usually her mind would be completely absorbed, the precision and choices involved in the work occupying all the space that might contain other thoughts. But tonight they kept intruding.
The talk she had had with Den came back to her; his dark, imploring eyes, his begging her to write. And that feeling she had had as he stood close to her. Was Pa right about Den, that he was sweet on her? As she had stood with him, she had felt something, a sort of power over him that she had never known before – or not in that way. She was an innocent as regards men. Most of the males she met were either older men, local workers or teachers in the school, or younger lads who she was teaching.
She pushed some strands of hair back from her face and picked up her piercing saw, preparing herself to cut with all possible care. Bother Den – she couldn’t help what he felt, could she? Why should she feel disturbed by it? She would write him an occasional friendly letter when she got around to it – what more could she do?
But as she worked at the edge of the spout, her heart started racing when another thought would not be shut out. Mr Carson. He had only been back in the school for a few days, but she could not help noticing the number of times she had caught him looking at her – the way he seemed to watch her with a slight smile on his face, his eyes still following her if she glanced back. She was becoming more and more aware of having grown up into a young woman – a woman who men found attractive.
‘For goodness’ sake, don’t be such a silly goose,’ she said out loud, leaning her head back to ease her neck. ‘He’s . . .’ She stopped talking out loud. He’s nearly twice your age and he’s married. He’s not looking at you like that.
But however many sensible talks she gave herself, she could not chase away the reality that this flamboyant and powerful man was paying her a very particular kind of attention – one that each time she met him and his eyes fastened on her, sent the blood pumping madly round her body.
Five
Margaret, who was serving out a dinner of chops, heard the knocking. She saw Daisy, who had been sitting with a dreamy expression on her face, jump as if she had been brought back from somewhere far away.
‘I’ll go.’ Philip got up from the table and in a moment Margaret heard sounds of greeting and laughter.
‘Annie!’ she called, her voice rising with happiness. ‘What’re you doing here? I thought you had no time to breathe, let alone come to see us.’
Her younger sister’s pink-cheeked face arrived around the door, smiling and looking energetic as usual.
‘Surprise evening off,’ she said. ‘We do h
ave to get out now and then, you know. I thought I’d pop over and see you all!’
Annie was dressed not in her nurse’s uniform but in her own clothes – a dark blue skirt and blouse and a long green cardigan. Clothes usually looked long on Annie because she was so petite – not that she could care less either way most of the time. Her hair was dragged hastily back into some sort of bun and her big-eyed, elfin face was full of life.
‘Hello, Auntie Annie!’ Daisy said, beaming at the sight of her. She loved Annie and had a joking relationship with her which included trying to improve Annie’s dress sense, without much success. Annie was always far too busy saving the world to think of such fripperies.
‘Hello, Daisy dear . . .’ She stopped to kiss Daisy’s cheek. ‘Hello, Mags. I suppose I’ve missed the little ones – are they in bed already?’
‘No!’ John said indignantly from the other end of the room where he and Lily were playing on the floor. ‘We’re not babies, you know!’
Lily ran up and hugged Annie in her intense way. ‘Are you looking after lots of wounded soldiers, Auntie?’
‘Yes, I am, Lily,’ Annie said, kissing her. ‘But they are getting better, or most of them, anyway!’
‘Trust you to arrive just when the grub’s up,’ Philip teased, settling in his chair at the head of the table, his jacket hung over the back.
‘I know,’ Annie said, inhaling gleefully. ‘Like a dog, I can smell a good meal from miles away – and that gravy smells delicious! It’s got to be better than what we get over there.’
‘There’s plenty – sit down,’ Margaret said. ‘John, Lily – you can stay over there and play for a while.’ They had had their tea earlier with Mrs Flett. Standing at the other end of the table from Philip, serving out the meal, Margaret eyed her sister. ‘Everything all right?’
Annie, who had done all her training at the Dudley Road Infirmary, had applied straight away to work in the new war hospital at the university in Edgbaston as soon as it got started. Already, when Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot in Sarajevo on 28 June, as tensions rose throughout the summer of 1914 and war was declared once the Germans moved into Belgium, plans had been well advanced. The university had been transformed in not much more than a week into the First Southern General Hospital.
‘Oh – yes,’ Annie said. ‘Very busy.’ She looked down for a moment, her face sobering.
At the beginning of the war, everyone had been talking about what was happening to the poor Belgians, with the Germans overrunning their country and committing unspeakable atrocities. Then when the fighting began, after all the rush to volunteer at the start of it all, had come news of the British Expeditionary Force having to retreat from Mons.
When Annie started at the First Southern General, she had been full of details of all the efforts to get it ready, the way that now the university’s grand main hall, with its stained-glass windows, was lined with rows of iron bed frames all made up and ready, as were a number of its academic departments. With five hundred beds in place they had filled a number with lads injured in training. But by the beginning of September they were waiting for the first convoy of casualties to arrive from France, through Selly Oak station. Nowadays, Annie said less about it, as if it was a relief to get away, or perhaps she had just become used to it.
Margaret sat down, pulling her chair in. ‘Do start.’ She said a silent prayer of thanks. Despite her and Annie’s strict Christian upbringing a few miles from Bristol, where their father was a Congregationalist minister, she had never managed to instil any observable religious feeling in either her husband or Daisy.
‘Guess who I’ve just been to see on the way here?’ Annie said, after they’d all started eating.
‘Who?’ Margaret said.
‘Mary Poole.’
The sisters had known the Poole family, in which Den was the only boy, for some years. It was Annie who first got to know them as she had worked for a while with her daughter Lizzie, at a time when things for the family had been especially bad. The Pooles still lived on a yard in Pope Street on the edge of the Jewellery Quarter.
‘Oh,’ Margaret said. ‘How is she?’ Despite her show of interest, she had a sense of misgiving, and knew she had not been wrong to feel this when Annie looked round the table and announced, ‘She’s expecting.’
Margaret almost choked on her mouthful of cabbage. ‘What – again?’ This all the more remarkable, being Mrs Poole’s second occasion of bringing forth a child after she no longer had a husband – nor had she had one for a long time.
Frowning, she glanced at John and Lily, her own cheeks flamed with blushes. It was bad enough even Daisy hearing all this – Annie was the end, really she was, always coming along with some terrible story! Daisy, however, was listening with avid interest. John and Lily kept their heads down, wise enough not to show that they had their ears thoroughly pricked.
‘I’m afraid so,’ Annie said. ‘She’s only just showing, but she told me straight out.’ Annie knew the Poole family well and had been a great support to them at one time. She knew Mary would not hide much from her.
All of them had grown used to the fact that Annie was prone to airing subjects usually considered too indelicate for discussion – the state of people’s anatomy, unexpected pregnancy and such – over the tea table. It was one of the reasons the children all looked forward to her visits. There was a kind of devilment in Annie, as if she liked to rub your nose in the earthiness of things. When she had first gone to train at the hospital on Dudley Road, she had been full of mischievous remarks about how every other building along the road seemed to be a public house, as if to provoke Margaret. And now here she was at it again. However, all of them baulked at asking any of the more obvious ‘how?’ and ‘who?’ questions about this particular development.
Annie, being less reserved, went on, ‘I said to her, “Oh, Mary – not again!”’
‘You didn’t?’ Margaret gasped. How could Annie say something so personal – to anyone?
Annie looked at her in surprise.
‘Well, what would you have said? I mean now, of all times, when there’re already so many out of work – and she won’t get a separation allowance, will she, not without a husband? I felt really exasperated with her. And Den’s gone, of course – I don’t think he knew or he might have thought twice about it. But then she said such a sad thing to me. She said, “I know it’s foolish of me, but I can’t seem to feel right – not since Nellie went.” I really didn’t know what to say to that.’
To all their surprise, Annie’s eyes filled – she was not one to shed tears easily. But they had all known Mary back then. It had been at one of the worst times in her life when she had just lost her little twin girl Ada through sickness and her husband had died. Because she had Nellie, the baby, she was hardly able to bring any money into the family herself, leaving it all to poor little Lizzie, who was only fourteen.
In desperation, Mary had taken Nellie to the orphanage. She always swore it was only for a while, that she would go and get her as soon as she was back on her feet. But she had never seen Nellie again. When she did go back to the home, even though it was only a short time later, they told her that Nellie had been adopted by a nice family, that she would have a good life and that Mary mustn’t bother herself about her again. They would never tell her where she was.
‘Of course someone’d want my Nellie,’ Mary sobbed afterwards. ‘She were lovely – the most beautiful baby I ever had.’
And Nellie had been lovely – blonde and blue-eyed and plump.
Annie wiped her eyes. ‘She said that she still feels as if a piece of her is missing – it’s her way of trying to feel better, I suppose.’
‘But she’s got little Ethel,’ Margaret said. ‘I mean, she must be, what – five? – by now.’ She was astonished by the sheer immorality of Mary Poole’s life, of how she ever managed to get herself into quite the messes she did in the first place. But by now they had all realized that not much was likely to change
.
‘And goodness knows what poor Lizzie thinks of it all,’ Annie said. ‘She didn’t say much, but she’ll be the one who ends up doing all the work as usual.’ Lizzie Poole, Mary’s oldest daughter, had long been the one to carry the can for the family’s problems. ‘She had to birth Ethel by herself, the midwife was so long in coming.’
‘Have you seen Aunt Hatt?’ Margaret said, feeling compelled to change the subject.
‘No – I popped in and saw Uncle Eb though,’ Annie said.
They exchanged news about family – had Margaret heard from Father and how were Aunt Hatt and Georgie and Clara and the children?
‘Oh, Aunt’s happy as anything,’ Margaret said, ‘running round after those grandchildren. It suits her down to the ground. And thank goodness she and Clara get along so well.’
‘Aunt always wanted more children herself, didn’t she?’ Annie said, laying down her knife and fork.
‘I imagine so, yes,’ Margaret said, hoping to head Annie off again before she steered the conversation back along paths which might involve unnecessarily physical details. ‘Rice pudding?’
They sat chatting for a time after John and Lily had gone to bed. When Annie got up to go she first hugged Daisy. Then embracing Margaret, she looked up at her, her face sombre, and Margaret suddenly saw that there was a world of things Annie was not talking about. She felt vaguely ashamed. Seeing Annie in her own clothes and not the grey dress, white apron and red cloak of her uniform, it was easy to forget what her work involved day after day.
‘See you as soon as I can,’ Annie said. ‘Time permitting.’
Oh, I expect it’ll all be over soon, they would have said not so long ago. But now everyone seemed less sure. ‘I’ll walk to the tram with you,’ Philip said. ‘It’s even harder with the lamps painted over – it’s not as if they gave off that much light in the first place.’
The city streets had been blacked out for fear of what the Germans might be intending to do with those Zeppelin airships that they had in their possession. Street lamps had been painted black halfway down the shade and vehicles were expected to muffle their lights. And Annie was going to have to change trams in town and walk from Colmore Row to the terminus in Navigation Street to get another tram down the Bristol Road.