A Child's Voice Calling

by Maggie Bennett

  ‘Oh, take no notice o’ him, Mum, he’s like a bear with a sore head these days!’ said Mabel, ignoring her brother’s scowls. ‘George, are yer comin’ up to the park with us? There’s goin’ to be music an’ dancin’ tonight, and the world an’ his wife’ll be there!’

  Annie put on her best jacket and hat, and hurried with Mabel, Alice and George to a transformed Battersea Park. Coloured electric lights gleamed in the trees and a military band played patriotic tunes like ‘Rule, Britannia’ and ‘Hearts of Oak’. These later gave place to songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas and later still to favourite music-hall songs. Ada Clay turned up all smiles, leaning on the arm of her newly engaged fiancé Arthur. Mabel was happy for her friend, but felt just a tiny bit envious when the young couple linked arms with a row of laughing revellers and cavorted gaily across the grass, zigzagging in ever wider circles while the indefatigable musicians played Albert Chevalier’s most popular Cockney ditty.

  Wot-cher! all the neighbours cried—

  Who’re yer goin’ to meet, Bill?

  ’Ave yer bought the street, Bill?

  To Mabel’s amazement her mother was pulled from her side by a smiling Mrs Bull and led away to dance arm in arm with a whole row of other neighbours from Sorrel Street; it gave her a strange feeling to see Annie Court enjoying herself like a young girl. She imagined a laughing, golden-haired Anna-Maria who had grown up with her sisters in that big house somewhere in Hampshire, and longed to know more of her mother’s history and the aunts she had never met.

  She turned to ask her sisters if they wanted to dance, but Alice had already joined a giggling group of school friends and Daisy had run off into the crowd with George. Standing alone and watching them all having fun, Mabel could not help feeling a little wistful. Harry Drover would be out somewhere with the Army, she thought, more interested in doing good work than in having a good time. Should she join her mother with the other local women? She might as well . . .

  That was when she felt an arm gently winding round her waist. She jumped back hastily, turning round to see who was taking liberties. Her face lit up in a radiant smile of joyous surprise. For there was her very own young man, bareheaded and with jacket unbuttoned, looking really handsome. ‘Harry!’

  ‘Shall we join in with ’em, Mabel? I’m not much of a dancer, but everybody else is doin’ it, so why not us too?’

  She needed no second invitation. Threading her right arm through his and with her left hand on her hip, Mabel stepped lightly back and forth and from side to side; the steps were a simple ‘grapevine’, backwards and forwards in time to the music, and Harry soon managed to follow quite well, without having to keep looking down at his feet.

  ‘I’m gettin’ the idea, Mabel!’

  ‘Yes, ye’re comin’ on a treat!’ she assured him, kicking up her heels and showing her ankles with the rest as she joined in the singing.

  Wot-cher! all the neighbours cried—

  Who’re yer goin’ to meet, Bill?

  ’Ave yer bought the street, Bill?

  They repeated it over and over, Mabel lost count of the number of times, and only lived for the sensation of Harry’s arm around her, his closeness, his living, breathing self, moving beside her, laughing over the words of the song.

  Laugh? Cor! – thought I should ‘a’ died—

  Knocked ’em in the Old Kent Road!

  Dancing, singing and laughing, she thought they must surely be the happiest couple in the park. Nine o’clock, ten o’clock, eleven: the sunset faded and the stars came out above them. The air was still very warm and filled with a heady country smell of trampled grass. The crowd began to thin out as families with children made for home, but Mabel and Harry still stood together in a moving sea of humanity, only half aware of the sights and sounds of the midsummer night, so lost were they in each other.

  The band struck up again with a song from a dozen years back, when men went off to fight in the Boer War.

  ‘Oh, listen, Harry, they’re playing “Goodbye, Dolly Gray” – it’s ever so sad.’

  ‘D’ye know the words to it, Mabel? Can yer sing it for me? Go on, please do!’

  Mabel’s clear voice rose obediently above the shouts and jostlings of the crowd, a little uncertainly at first but gaining confidence as she went on:

  ‘Goodbye, Dolly, I must leave you,

  Though it breaks my heart to go;

  Something tells me I am needed

  At the front to face the foe—’

  Other voices around them began to join in as she came to the end of the refrain:

  ‘See, the soldier boys are marching,

  And I can no longer stay;

  Hark! I hear the bugle calling—’

  A solitary ta-ra-ra-ra-ra was heard from the bandstand, an oddly melancholy sound, as if from a long way off, and Mabel paused before the final ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray!’.

  There was an enthusiastic burst of applause and cries of ‘More! More! Sing it again, Miss.’

  Flushed and elated, she looked to Harry who was gazing at her enraptured. ‘Oh, Mabel, I could listen to yer all night long.’

  When the song at last came to an end and the other voices died away, Mabel was conscious of a tiny shiver running down her spine and could not think why, perhaps because the air had chilled, though she still felt full of life. The rest of her family were nowhere to be seen. ‘It’s getting late, Harry. I suppose we ought to go.’ She sighed and wished that the night could go on for ever. She felt she wanted to cling to him and never let him go.

  So there they stood beneath the trees and his arm was again round her waist; it seemed to her as if the night was holding its breath. His head bent over hers and when she lowered her face she felt his forefinger under her chin, gently raising her head until she could no longer avoid his eyes.

  ‘Dearest Mabel, I shall remember this moment for ever.’

  ‘Oh, Harry, so will I – always.’

  His lips were upon her cheek and then pressed to her forehead; she felt his warm breath on her face. Her hand was caught and clasped in his.

  Then his mouth was upon hers and, light though it was, it took her breath away. She swayed and closed her eyes.

  ‘I can’t help bein’ in love with yer, Mabel.’

  Beyond them the band was still playing ‘Goodbye, Dolly Gray’.

  ‘I’ll wait three years, Harry,’ she told him quietly. ‘Or four or five or six. I’ll wait as long as we have to. And I’ll work hard and save all I can.’

  The kiss that sealed her promise held all the hopefulness, all the faith in the future that only the young possess.

  ‘Why, there you are, Mabel! Where on earth did you get to? We’ve been looking everywhere – it’s too bad of you!’ Relief and anger blended in her mother’s reproaches, while Daisy ran forward to fling her arms round her eldest sister.

  ‘I’m all right, Mother, there’s no need to fuss, I’m perfectly safe with Harry.’ Mabel spoke firmly and Annie bit her lip in annoyance.

  ‘Well, come home with us now – it’s very late, and time Daisy and George were in bed.’

  ‘You go on ahead, Mother, and we’ll follow,’ said Mabel firmly.

  ‘I want to walk with Mabel and Harry,’ announced Daisy.

  ‘So do I,’ added George.

  In spite of the lateness of the hour, Annie made no objection to this arrangement.

  The weekend newspapers were full of stories and pictures about the coronation, and Ada Clay came up with a specially juicy titbit. ‘Look at this in the Daily Mail, Mabel. Here, halfway down the page – and a photograph!’

  Mabel took the paper from her, following her pointing finger. She began to read aloud: ‘Lady Cecilia Stanley attracted much admiration when she appeared at a state banquet at the Mansion House, wearing a gown of white silk trimmed with Honiton lace and a tiara of graded pearls. She and Sir Percy Stanley, Bart, reside in Bryanston Square and Farleigh Hall in Hertfordshire. Pictured here escorted by Viscoun
t Eastcote, Lady Cecilia has captured the attention of London society during this coronation year, and is much sought after by hostesses for her beauty and wit.’

  There was a good deal more in the same strain.

  ‘That’s her, isn’t it, Mabel?’ said Ada. ‘The one your friend Maudie works for and makes out they’re as thick as thieves!’

  ‘Er, yes, I suppose she must be.’ Mabel stared hard at the picture of a dark-haired, smiling young woman who lived in such a completely different world from their own. She remembered Maudie’s boast: ‘Me an’ ‘Er Ladyship are like this, see?’ Was it possible that this society beauty, married to a rich man, even if he was old and bald, could have such a close understanding with a poor child of the streets? And if what Maudie said was true, the lady actually depended upon her maid’s discretion in order to plan clandestine meetings behind old Sir Percy’s back.

  Reg’lar little goer, she is, Maudie had said admiringly. Was this good-looking viscount a lover – a paramour of hers? Mabel did not know what to think, but in the glow of Harry’s love she would not have changed places with Lady Stanley, for all her beauty, riches and position.

  Ada showed the paper to Miss Carter and their new assistant at the Mission, and it got passed around in the Clay household to the accompaniment of much oohing and ahing. Mabel kept quiet about it at Sorrel Street, knowing how Albert in his present mood would scoff at such goings-on among a lot of toffs who never had to go short of anything.

  Jack turned up in an uncommonly cheerful mood and said how sorry he was not to have been home for the coronation. Mabel turned away in disgust, though she said nothing. ‘Never mind, Annie ol’ girl, I’ll take yer to the Grand next week,’ he promised. ‘Harry Tate’s on, and there’s that family o’ trapeze. artists we read about, remember? Go on, we’ll have supper at the Plough an’ make a night of it, what d’ye say?’

  ‘An’ abaht time, too,’ growled Albert, though Annie’s face lit up with a brilliant smile that took ten years off her and touched Mabel’s heart. For the hundredth time she wished that their father could always be like this, and she compared him unfavourably with honest Harry Drover. All right, so Harry’s earnest manner might amuse the likes of her friends’ young men, but how much preferable he was to one of her father’s kind, full of easy charm but not to be trusted once out of sight. She wondered if Jack was still meeting the girl in blue – and were there other women in the various racecourse towns that he visited around the country? Mabel had lost respect for her father ever since that time in Leicester Square when she had seen him meeting his . . . she shied away from the word ‘mistress’, but there were worse words. And she knew that Albert had never forgiven him for what had happened at Christmas. The atmosphere between father and son was tense, though they saw little of each other now that Albert was often away at secret meetings of railway workers. Whenever she or Annie questioned him, he would adopt a surly expression and mutter that the country was about to be brought to a standstill, just see if it wasn’t. As the thermometer in the backyard rose higher and higher, so did the tempers of the transport workers and stories of a blockade began to be circulated.

  While Mabel bade a loving farewell to the Babies Mission, Alice’s school-leaving day found her unexpectedly tearful as she closed her desk at Hallam Road school for the last time. One day she was a reluctant pupil living for the day when she would earn her living in the grown-up world, the next she was a hesitant fourteen-year-old looking for a job. With the general atmosphere of unrest almost palpable in the heatwave, Annie Court would not hear of Alice going further than walking distance to work, so she had to be content to assist at the sub-post office in Queen’s Road. Here she was not even allowed to touch the stamps, but only to serve sweets and newspapers under the eagle eye of Miss Chatt the sub-postmistress.

  ‘The silly old bag thinks the place would fall down if she wasn’t watching everybody through her pince-nez,’ Alice told her mother and sisters. ‘She’s taken a dislike to me already because Mr Munday smiles at me and says I look nice and cool in all this heat. It’s ’cause I wear short sleeves, like any sensible person.’

  ‘Well, don’t encourage the man, whatever you do.’ Annie was immediately on the alert. ‘Ought to be ashamed o’ himself, a married man making personal remarks to a girl no more than a child.’

  ‘Oh, he doesn’t mean anything by it, Mum. It’s just his way o’ making me feel at home in his poky little shop – and maybe to annoy Miss Chatt as well,’ answered Alice in a bored tone. ‘You should see the way she goes all coy and giggly when he comes out o’ his office. “Would you like a nice cup o’ tea, Mr Munday?” Never offers me one.’

  ‘I’m surprised she doesn’t expect yer to brew up for them both,’ said Mabel, a little amused.

  ‘Oh, no! No hand but hers must touch the special teapot she keeps for Mr Munday! She has a little kettle and a spirit lamp in a cubbyhole at the back, with a tin of McVitie’s biscuits, just for him an’ her.’

  Annie clucked her tongue in disapproval, though whether at Miss Chatt’s foolish behaviour or Alice’s bold comments on it was not clear. Mabel knew that her young sister was already disillusioned with her job, though she earned eight shillings a week, as much as Mabel had been getting after three years of carefully attending to the young children at the Mission.

  ‘D’yer realise that the miners are askin’ for five miserable pence a shift?’ Albert demanded in disgust. ‘Men wiv families to feed, scared o’ seein’ ’em out on the streets to starve – an’ she gets eight bob for standing be’ind a counter all day. It’s a bleedin’ scandal!’

  As usual it was left to Mabel to keep the peace as best she could.

  Meanwhile she had begun a new phase in her own life and although she’d felt nervous on her first day at the Anti-Viv, as the hospital was locally known, she very quickly settled in and showed herself to be the willing worker that Miss Carter had recommended. She was not at first allowed on the wards, but swept and dusted the doctors’ quarters, scoured pots and pans in the kitchen and sorted the laundry, some of which was foully stained and had to be sluiced by hand under cold running water. Knowing herself to be on trial, she tackled all these tasks with a will and earned the housekeeper’s approving nods; but she also got surly looks and sarcastic mutters from a certain Dot Watson, the girl who shared her shift and was supposed to show her the methods of working, where things were kept and so on. Mabel got given the worst jobs and set about them without complaining, which infuriated Dot all the more. She was one of those unfortunate young women with plain looks and a grudge against the world; she had a natural suspicion of anyone who worked with cheerful good humour. It made her feel somehow inferior and she disliked Mabel so much so that she looked out for an opportunity to get her into some sort of trouble.

  Still the heatwave persisted, with record high temperatures. Children died of dehydration, and men and women collapsed in the streets with heat exhaustion. All the windows of the Anti-Viv were opened to their fullest extent to let in a breath of air.

  It was in this situation, one week into August, that Albert’s dire warnings of a workers’ revolt exploded into reality. The country woke up to find that a national strike of transport workers had brought London and other major industrial centres like Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham to a standstill. Public incredulity and indignation were soon followed by widespread panic as the consequences became apparent. The city markets stood idle while on the wharves tons of accumulated fruit and vegetables rotted in the sweltering heat. The great railway terminals were eerily silent as passengers waited on platforms for trains that had ceased to run. Mailbags piled up, full of undelivered letters; food stocks began to run out in shops and the streets emptied as motor-buses and private vehicles felt the shortage of fuel.

  Albert was jubilant. ‘They asked for it an’ by Gawd they bloody well got it, a complete stoppage!’ His dark eyes flashed in triumph. ‘We got ’em where we want ’em at last!’ He was out of the house fro
m dawn till dusk, cheering Ben Tillett who publicly addressed the strikers at Tower Hill, exhorting them to stand firm. And when the Home Secretary Mr Churchill cancelled police leave and called out armed troops to deal with public assemblies of strikers Albert was scornful. ‘’E’ll ’ave to fink again when ’e finds ’alf the military on our side! The territorials won’t touch us, they’re all in sympafy wiv our ideals!’

  Late that night, tired of the tension within the family and irritated by the inconvenience caused by the strike, Jack Court rounded angrily on his son. ‘Ye’ll bring us all to disgrace, Albert, to say nothin’ o’ worryin’ yer mother to death.’

  ‘Oho, look ’oo’s talkin’,’ sneered Albert. ‘A model ’usband an’ farver ’oo never caused me muvver any trouble. Not much!’

  Jack evaded the mocking black eyes so like his own and attempted a more conciliatory approach, glancing sideways at Mabel in an effort to enlist her support. ‘Look, Albert, it isn’t that I disagree with the principles o’ the Labour movement; in fact, I go along with a lot o’ what they stand for. It’s just that I wish ye’d remember for yer mother’s sake if for nobody else’s that this is a respectable household, and—’

  Albert’s raucous yelp cut him short. ‘Is that wot it is? Well, blow me dahn, and there was me finkin’ it was a bookmaker’s ’ideout! Remember ’ow yer used to send me and the lads out runnin’ for yer? ‘Ow we gave the coppers the slip, comin’ rahnd the backyards wiv the bets?’

  Jack flushed. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Albert, what do I have to say to show I care about yer?’

  ‘Save yer breaf,’ came the bitter reply. ‘Save yer sweet talk, Jack Court, for yer fancy women!’

  ‘Albert!’ gasped Mabel, instinctively putting a finger to her lips, though Annie had gone to bed. Caught off guard, Jack stared blankly and had no reply to make. Something unsayable had been said out loud and Mabel felt bound to rebuke her brother. ‘Don’t yer ever dare let Mum hear yer say anythin’ like that, Albert. Not ever, d’ye hear?’