by Ruthie Lewis
She picked up one of George’s handkerchiefs, and stopped. The fabric was dotted with dark brown flecks and blotches. She could not think what it was at first, and then with a sudden stab of horror, she knew.
It was dried blood.
When George coughed, he always covered his mouth with a handkerchief, which he then folded carefully and put in his pocket. Feeling sick, she wondered how long he had been coughing up blood, and how long he had been concealing it from her.
She realised someone was watching her, and turned around. Mary was standing in the kitchen doorway, staring back. ‘He’s sick, isn’t he?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace. She staggered a little, putting one hand on the table to support herself as the full force of what was happening began to hit her. ‘Oh, Mary,’ she said, her voice faint. ‘What are we going to do?’
‘When Joe and I were sick, you looked after us,’ said Mary. ‘Now George is sick, and we’ll look after him. For as long as we need to.’
*
‘Come here, Jimmy,’ the Captain said. ‘I want to ask you some questions. Have no fear, boy, I’m not going to hurt you.’ He paused. ‘Unless, that is, I don’t like your answers.’
I took a couple of steps forward on legs like jelly. He watched me from under the brim of his hat. We were in the big room in his warehouse, and it was dim, with just a single oil lamp burning. I was mortally scared. I was scared of many things, I was scared of the dark, I was scared of the hole, but most of all I was scared of the Captain.
‘Your father betrayed me,’ he said, soft-like. ‘Your brother too. You know what happened to them, don’t you, Jimmy?’
‘Yes, sir.’ I said.
‘So that leaves you,’ the Captain said. ‘The last of your family. Well, there’s your mother, of course, but she’s of no account.’
‘What will happen to her?’ I asked.
The Captain raised a finger, and I quaked in my boots. ‘I’m the one asking the questions. Now then, Jimmy. Speak truthfully. Have you also betrayed me?’
‘No, sir,’ I said.
‘And now, Jimmy? Will you follow my orders, without asking questions or doubting me? Will you do everything I ask?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said.
He watched me for a long time ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You asked about your mother. I tell you what, Jimmy. I’ll let her live. I’ll pay the rent and buy her all the gin she can drink so long as you do what I tell you. If you ever give me cause to doubt your absolute loyalty, I will kill her before your eyes. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said again.
‘Good. Now, Mr Gould is refusing to pay protection. Tomorrow night I’m going to burn some of his cargoes, to show him who’s the master here. In the afternoon I want you to go along and scout out Acorn Dock.’
He nodded. ‘You’re a good boy, Jimmy. You made the right choice. You stick with me. I’ll make a man out of you, so I will.’
Chapter 16
By the middle of August it was evident to everyone that George was seriously ill. He began to fall behind in his work, and because he could no longer keep up, his employers docked his wages. The deductions were not large, usually only a shilling or two a week, but in that overstretched household every penny counted. Typically, George’s first thought was for his family, he felt humiliated that he could no longer look after them.
‘You mustn’t feel badly,’ said Grace, kissing his cheek. ‘No one could do more than you have done.’
George shook his head, covering his mouth while he coughed. ‘I have failed you all,’ he said.
In early September his health took a strong turn for the worse. Racked with spasms of coughing that brought up bloody sputum, on some mornings he struggled to even get out of bed.
Without George’s wages, the family would go hungry. There was only one thing for it, Grace thought; she herself would have to find work. That afternoon she wrote out a series of cards advertising her services as a seamstress and laundress, and then went out and posted them in shop windows around Rotherhithe. At first nothing happened, but after a while some of the more prosperous housewives in the district began sending her sheets to be washed and shirts to be mended, and a little more money began trickling in. Grace put aside as much of this money as she could, saving it for the inevitable day when George could no longer work at all.
At the end of September there came a spell of cool, calm weather, when the smoke that belched into the air from factories and mills descended and hung like a shroud over Rotherhithe, blurring the masts of the ships in the docks. The smoke ravaged George’s decaying lungs still further, and one afternoon he came home from work early. He did not say anything; he did not need to. The look of despair in his face said everything. No longer able to work, he had been fired from his job.
‘What shall we do?’ he asked after a while. ‘How will we get by?’
‘What you are going to do is rest,’ said Grace. ‘I shall find a way to look after us.’
The days and weeks that followed always remained rather blurred in Grace’s memory. Her routine was one of steady, unceasing work from dawn until dusk. Rising each day, she lit the stove and cooked porridge for the children and George, and then, leaving her husband in his chair in the parlour, wrapped up against the cold and damp, she took the children away to school, carrying Edith in her basket. Returning from lessons she gave the others a meal and then did laundry and repaired clothes all afternoon. The water and coarse soap dried her hands until the skin cracked and sometimes bled, and she was reminded of her days picking rags in the workhouse, but she could not stop.
Each evening she went out with Radcliffe as her escort to return parcels of clothes to their owners and receive her meagre fee. Back at the house she cooked dinner and then put the younger children to bed before finally sitting down exhausted in the parlour with Edith, George, Albert and Mary for company. Edith was still nursing, which added to her fatigue. She had tried the baby on porridge, but Edith had made her displeasure clear in a very vocal manner. She went through her days wrapped in a cocoon of weariness.
Mela called one afternoon, and saw at once how thin George had become and heard him racked with coughing. She drew Grace into the kitchen. ‘Did the doctor come?’ she asked.
The Clares, hearing of George’s illness, had pressed Grace to accept the services of their doctor, and Grace had finally persuaded George to see him. But, as with Rosa, there was nothing the doctor could do.
Grace nodded, fighting back tears. ‘Oh, my dear,’ said Mela, embracing her, and then the tears did flow and she cried silently into Mela’s shoulder for a few minutes. She had thought weeping might make her feel better, but in fact she felt more wretched than ever.
‘Oh, Mela,’ she said. ‘What am I going to do?’
Mela looked at the piles of laundry on the kitchen table. ‘Is this how you are making a living?’
Grace nodded. ‘Let us help you,’ Mela said. ‘We can lend you money until you find something else.’
‘No!’ Grace said emphatically. ‘This is my family, and I am going to look after them.’
‘You are making ends meet?’ Mela asked doubtfully.
‘Yes,’ said Grace. ‘I am.’
Mela looked at her. Her pretty face was sharp with concern. ‘Grace, why will you not accept help?’
Grace hesitated, struggling to find words. ‘Ever since Aunt Edith died, I have lived dependent on someone else. Not until I came here and married George did I ever stand on my own feet. I love your parents, Mela, and I always shall, for their goodness to me, but I cannot live forever on their charity. I must see this through, and I must do it alone.’
‘Will you at least let us send the doctor again?’
Grace shook her head. ‘It would do no good. He is very sick, Mela, and has been for a long time, and now he is declining fast. I don’t think the end is far away.’
Again they clung to each other, both weeping now. ‘I feel so helpless,’ Mela said. ‘Standing he
re and watching you suffer is agony. Is there nothing I can do?’
‘There is nothing anyone can do,’ Grace said.
*
Each day seemed to bring about a worsening of George’s health. He lost his appetite almost entirely, and would eat no more than a mouthful or two of the porridge and savoury stews she brought him. ‘Give the rest to the kids,’ he said one evening. ‘They need it more than me.’
‘You need to keep your strength up,’ Grace said.
George shook his head. The fight was going out of him. In his mind, he was already preparing for death. ‘There is one thing you can do for me,’ he said.
‘Oh? What is that?’
A ghost of a smile crossed George’s face. ‘You know I never had much use for reading and writing. But I see the kiddies all reading, and I think I might have missed something. Grace . . . would you teach me to read proper?’
And so, because there was nothing else she could do, she sat in the evenings and taught her husband to read while she watched him die. The effort of concentration took George’s mind away from his illness and pain, at least for a little while, and although she worried that she was tiring him too much, he insisted on continuing the lessons. ‘I want to read at least one book before I die,’ he said, and he grinned at her and for a moment she saw the old George once more. ‘It might have to be a short one.’
After a couple of weeks he had progressed to the point where she brought one of the children’s lesson books home and gave it to him. He read it slowly, sitting by the stove wrapped in blankets, head down, coughing from time to time. But he finished the book in an evening, and he smiled with real pleasure when it was ended.
‘Now for a real book,’ he said.
‘Give him the Alice book,’ Mary said.
‘I thought you said it was silly,’ said Grace.
‘Maybe I was mistaken,’ Mary admitted. ‘Let’s read it together, George. We can help each other with the words we don’t know.’
And so it was that for the last few weeks of his life, George Turneur and Mary the wild girl from the streets sat together by the fire and read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland aloud to each other, and watching them, Grace did not know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes she did both. Mary was a comfort to George in those dark weeks, and gradually Grace found herself handing over more of his care to the girl, allowing her to work and look after Edith. She saw a gentle, even tender side of Mary begin to emerge, and after a while she realised that this side had been there all along. It was the side of her that Joe saw, she thought; the caring and compassionate side, allied to a steely will, that had kept them both alive on the streets.
As the illness tightened its grip, George could no longer be left alone. Grace debated with herself about whether to close the school, and thought briefly about sending some of the children, at least, to Mr Ringrose. That brought back memories of her last meeting with him, and her feelings, and that in turn provoked a wash of guilt and shame. Her husband was dying, and she was thinking about another man. No; she would not go near Mr Ringrose.
It was Mary, again, who solved the dilemma. ‘You don’t have to close the school,’ she said. ‘I can stay home in the mornings and look after George. I know how to make him hot drinks, and we can read together. It will pass the time for him.’
‘What about your lessons?’ Grace asked.
Mary pulled a face. ‘I don’t mind. I only go because you didn’t want to leave me at home in case I ate all the food.’
‘That’s not true.’
‘You were right, though, I probably would have. And all I do at school is cause trouble.’
‘You don’t,’ said Grace.
‘I do. I threw a slate at Gabriel last week, remember?’
‘I don’t think you really intended to hit him,’ Grace said. ‘And he shouldn’t have teased you . . . Mary, are you sure?’
‘I said we would look after him,’ said the girl. ‘Please, Grace. Let me help. I want to.’
It was the first time she had ever heard Mary say please. She bent and kissed the girl, ruffling her hair which had largely grown out again. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
In October the cold deepened, and rain once again turned the streets of Rotherhithe to mud. Beyond the docks, the marshes were sheets of water. George was slipping away fast now. In the evenings, when Edith was asleep and the other children had gone to bed, they talked quietly about their short life together. ‘I’m sorry,’ George said once.
She kissed his cheek softly. ‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’
‘Yes, I do. I’m going off and leaving you with six kids to look after, and nothing more than a few shillings of laundry money to live on. I’m worried for you and the kids. How will you get by?’
‘Don’t concern yourself, my dear,’ Grace said softly. ‘We will manage.’
Silence fell for a while. ‘You must find someone else,’ George said. ‘You’re young and pretty, and you deserve to be happy. Find a fellow who will love you and look after you.’
Privately Grace doubted she would ever find a man who was willing to take on six children, but she was not going to upset George by saying so. ‘Let’s not talk about it now,’ she said gently. ‘It’s getting late, George. You should rest.’
‘I’ll have plenty of time to rest before long,’ he said, staring at his hands. ‘I’ve been thinking a lot recently. About Rosa.’
‘I know,’ Grace said. She could see it in his eyes sometimes, a look of dreaming and yearning as death drew near.
‘I should have been a better husband to you, Grace. I should have loved you. But I’ve never been able to stop thinking about her. I’ve missed her so much.’
‘I know,’ Grace said again. ‘We both have. Loving her is one of the things we share.’
The final week was terrible. George was in constant pain, coughing over and over and retching up blood, and Grace realised that watching this was taking a terrible toll on Mary. ‘You mustn’t bear this alone,’ she said. ‘I’ll close the school and stay home with him until the end.’
‘I can do it,’ Mary said. ‘I can look after him.’
‘No, my dear. You are too young.’
Mary looked mutinous. ‘Instead of closing the school, why not ask that other man to take it? Like you said he did when you were carrying Edith? I’m sure he’d do it again. He likes you.’
‘I can’t,’ Grace said.
‘Why not?’ asked Mary. ‘Because you like him, too?’
‘Yes,’ said Grace finally.
Mary planted her hands on her hips. She had grown at least an inch since she had joined them, and her face had become firmer too. ‘That makes no sense,’ she said. ‘Ask him. Write him a letter, and I will take it to him. You know the school needs to stay open. And it gets Albert and the twins and Joe out of the house for a while.’
Grace bit her lip. ‘All right,’ she said finally.
Mary carried the letter over to Bermondsey, and brought back a reply from Mr Ringrose.
My dear Mrs Turneur,
I am so sorry to hear of your husband’s illness. I shall pray daily for his speedy recovery. Meanwhile, I am more than happy to cover your morning class as before. Please do take good care of yourself.
Your faithful friend,
Walter Ringrose
Grace read the letter without emotion. The old frisson of excitement was gone, her tired mind had no room for it. There was nothing in her life now except work, and George.
*
Downstairs, the clock chimed two. George lay in the bed they had shared, the same bed where Rosa had died, his head propped on a pillow. An oil lamp glowed with smoky light. His face was hollow, the lines of his cheek and jaw and nose in sharp relief in the light, his sunken cheeks full of shadow. He had stopped coughing, and his breath came slow and shallow and ragged, bubbling a little in his chest. Grace listened with horror, remembering how Rosa had died two years before.
‘I hope I’ve been a goo
d man, Grace,’ he whispered. ‘I tried to live a good life, and I tried to be a good husband to you. Truly I did.’
‘No woman could have asked for a better man,’ said Grace, weeping.
He turned his head slowly to look at her, and his hand brushed her wet cheek. ‘Dry your tears, lass,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to a better place. And mayhap I’ll find Rosa there, waiting for me.’
‘I’m sure you will, George. I’m sure she’s waiting right now.’ A fresh flood of tears streamed down Grace’s face. ‘She’ll smile when she sees you, my dear. Remember how lovely her smile was? You’ll be seeing it again before long.’
‘Yes.’ George closed his eyes. ‘Rosa,’ he whispered. ‘Rosa . . .’ Softly he called her name, whispering over the bubbling sound in his chest, and half an hour later he called her name one last time while Grace held his hand. Then his breathing stopped and the soul of a good and generous man took flight and set out on its lonely journey to the better place that awaited him, far away. In the room the clock ticked softly, the only sound to break the silence of death.
Grace sat beside the bed for a long while, still holding his hand clasped in hers, sobbing quietly. He had been the best man she had ever known, and now he was gone from her life. She sat there in the light of the oil lamp, caressing the dead hand, mourning the things she had lost and the things she had never had, feeling the shadows close in around her. Never before had she felt so utterly alone.
She would remember George to the end of her days. She would have Edith, of course, always to remind her of what they had shared, and Albert and the twins would be his memorial too. When she looked at them she would remember his kindness and gentleness, the love he bore his children, the bond he had formed with Mary who had taken such fond care of him. Oh, poor Mary, Grace thought, weeping again, she will be devastated . . .
On the heels of the thought she heard the stair creak, and then the door opened and Mary came in, her newly grown hair flowing over the shoulders of her nightgown. ‘Is it over?’ she asked.