Jam and Roses

by Mary Gibson

  ‘What did you have to pawn to get her that dress and the sheet music?’ Milly asked.

  ‘Pawn? Nothing. I thought you’d given her the money?’ said Mrs Colman, giving her a puzzled look. Milly shook her head. ‘She asked me for it, Mum, but where would I get money for a dress like that?’

  ‘Well, if she never got it from you, then where the bloody hell did she get it?’

  On the following Monday, Milly dropped off Jimmy at Arnold’s Place before work, as usual. She left him outside, tucked up asleep in his pram, and went into a house that looked as if a steam train had ploughed through it. She stood at the door, immobile, unable to take in the devastation. She forced her feet to move, picking her way over kitchen chairs, reduced to kindling. Her skirt caught against the upended kitchen table and her feet crunched on the shattered remains of a glass gas lampshade as she walked to the sideboard. Both sideboard doors had been ripped off, and all her mother’s ill-assorted china plates and cups had been pulled out and smashed into pieces around it.

  Finally, she found her voice. ‘Mum!’ she called tentatively, then with fear grabbing her throat, she shouted, ‘Mum, where are you?’

  From behind the upended table came a whimper. Milly looked over it, to discover her mother cowering there, with hair dishevelled and wearing a torn, dirty pinafore. In her lap she cradled protectively her set of willow-pattern china jugs, which she had somehow managed to save from the surrounding destruction. She looked as though she hadn’t been to bed or changed since Milly had last seen her.

  ‘What’s happened?’ Milly asked, dry-mouthed, kicking away broken plates to kneel beside her mother.

  ‘Oh, we’ve had murders, I don’t know how he hasn’t killed her,’ her mother said hoarsely. She handed each of the jugs to Milly, with trembling hands. ‘Here, put ’em safe.’ And Milly did as she was told, finding an unbroken shelf on the sideboard.

  ‘Killed who, Mum?’ She guessed this was the old man’s handiwork, but who had been the target?

  ‘Don’t you go and do anything like last time! You’ve got a baby to think about now.’

  As if in answer to Milly’s question, Amy crept in from the scullery, dressed, after a fashion, for school, with a pale unwashed face, a bruise ripening on her cheek and hair sticking out at all angles.

  ‘What did you do to upset him?’ Milly asked her sister. But Ellen Colman shook her head. ‘It’s not her.’ Her mother’s shoulders began to shake and, swallowing her sobs, her garbled words began to tumble out all at once.

  ‘He’s dragged Elsie down Tower Bridge nick, this morning. Oh, Milly, I can’t let them put her away, you know what she’s like. They’ll make mincemeat of her in one of them places.’

  ‘What place? Mum, slow down and tell me what’s happened.’ She took hold of her mother’s hands, trying to focus her own mind as much as her mother’s.

  But Mrs Colman buried her head in her hands and began rocking back and forth. ‘Oh, me poor baby, Mill, she’s never been fitted for this world, has she? With her silly games and her grottos, don’t seem fair she was born in a place like this.’

  And her mother, so rarely angry, so perpetually stoical, picked up one of her broken china plates and smashed it into a hundred more pieces on the cold hearth. Milly put her arms round Mrs Colman’s heaving shoulders and held her while she cried, as if Milly were the mother and she the child.

  Eventually Milly coaxed the story from her. On Sunday evening when the old man rolled in from the pub, he’d attempted in vain to light the gas lamp. When he’d gone to investigate why the gas had run out, he’d found the meter empty and the lock broken. Dragging the family one by one from their beds to find the culprit, he’d proceeded to bounce each of them round the kitchen until eventually Elsie broke down and admitted her crime.

  ‘He kept us up all night, Mill, making us watch him smash the place up. Then this morning, he’s done no more than marched her out the house and up the station. Oh, me poor Elsie, what am I going to do?’

  Milly couldn’t believe that Elsie had the necessary criminal mind even to contemplate such a thing as robbing the gas meter. She could credit that she’d have no thought for the consequences, however.

  ‘Mum, are you sure it was Elsie did it?’ She took her mother by the shoulders and looked meaningfully in Amy’s direction.

  ‘She’s admitted it. Blamed you, in fact! Said when you wouldn’t give her the money, she decided to nick it.’

  Milly felt a surge of anger at Elsie, but she still couldn’t see her having the cunning to carry out the crime.

  ‘Did you tell her to do it?’ She shot an accusing look at Amy, whose face crumpled.

  ‘Why are you always trying to blame me? All I did was tell her Barrel showed me how to get money out of the meter.’

  ‘And you told her how to do it?’

  Amy nodded, shamefaced. ‘I didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to do it, though!’

  It all made more sense, now that Amy’s anarchic mind was in the mix, but of course, with her usual quicksilver survival instinct, she’d escaped the punishment, or at least most of it, the bruise on her face a testament to her loss of immunity at the hands of the old man.

  ‘Oh, Elsie, Elsie...’ Milly addressed her absent sister. ‘Mum, if I’d had the money, I would’ve given it to her!’ she said, feeling guilt’s stealthy hand grip her heart.

  And her mother said, ‘Of course you would have.’

  By this time Amy was crying as much as her mother, then Jimmy, perhaps sensing the distress coming from inside the house, joined his wailing to theirs.

  ‘All right, the pair of you, turn off the water taps!’ Milly ordered, realizing that she would have to start thinking clearly. ‘It’ll be all right. We’ll just have to make sure the police know it was a mistake. Amy, go and fetch Jimmy for me and, Mum, you’d better sweep up all this broken china.’

  Her mother heaved herself up from the floor and shook her insubstantial frame, glad to be upbraided. ‘You’re right, love. No good crying over spilt milk, is it. You get yourself off, or you’ll be late for work.’

  ‘It’s all right, I’ve got five minutes,’ Milly said more gently.

  After settling Jimmy and brushing Amy’s hair, she promised her mother she’d be back at dinner time to sort everything out. But, as she raced to clock in on time at Southwell’s, she realized she hadn’t a clue how she would manage to save Elsie from the jaws of this particular trap.

  All morning she was distracted, several times splashing herself with boiling jam and once nearly tipping a whole cauldron full over the feet of the forelady, who sent Milly to do jar washing as punishment. When the dinner-time hooter sounded, she bolted like a horse from the stall and almost ran past her mother, waiting outside the gates with Jimmy.

  ‘She’s not come home and neither has he.’ Anxiety scoured Ellen Colman’s face, and she licked cracked, dry lips. She had obviously been chafing all morning, and Milly wished now she’d simply abandoned work and gone to the police station first thing. She stroked her mother’s hand as it gripped the pram handle.

  ‘You’ll make yourself ill worrying. Come on, I’ll take the afternoon off, just let me go and tell Tom Pelton, then we’ll get her home, all right?’

  ‘Thanks, love, I don’t think I could stand to wait another hour.’

  But in fact they had to wait much longer than an hour. The reception desk at Tower Bridge police station was busy, and there was a long queue to see the desk sergeant who, when they arrived, was interviewing a broken-toothed, bald-headed man, loudly declaring his innocence. They joined the back of the queue, but Jimmy was restive, struggling in her arms, catching her anxiety. The sergeant, noticing Milly trying to pacify her hungry, crying baby, interrupted the bald man.

  ‘Young lady, why don’t you take the baby into that empty interview room?’ He indicated a door to the right of the desk. ‘It’ll be a while before I can get to you.’

  So while Mrs Colman kept their place, Milly fed Jimm
y in the clinical, airless interview room. It contained nothing more than a table and two chairs. Only a meagre light filtered in through the high barred window. As Jimmy nestled against her breast, Milly looked around, wondering if Elsie had been interviewed here. How frightened she must have been. Even at fourteen, she was still such a child. Milly tried not to think about the old man. What he’d done to Elsie had rekindled that old, slow burning hatred and if she allowed it to take over, she might very well end up in a cell beside her sister, on a far worse charge. As Jimmy suckled steadily, his dark almond-shaped eyes were like twin anchors, preventing her from whirling off in a torrent of anger which, deadly as a Thames current, threatened to suck her under.

  ‘That’s right, me little darlin’,’ she addressed him softly, ‘you’ll keep me out of trouble, won’t you?’

  She rejoined her mother and eventually they reached the front of the queue, where Milly explained, as calmly as she could, that they had come to take home her sister Elsie.

  ‘There’s been a mistake, and me dad’s jumped the gun. She didn’t rob the gas meter, did she, Mum?’

  Her mother stepped hastily forward and in the voice she reserved for priests and policemen, backed Milly up. ‘I should like to say, my daughter is innocent as the day is long, Sergeant, as her father well knows!’ But, as she warmed to her subject, her mother’s true voice betrayed her. ‘Honestly, she ain’t got a bad bone in ’er body, ’as she, Mill?’

  And Milly nodded vigorously.

  The sergeant looked at Milly, not unkindly; she was holding Jimmy after all. But his look was too tinged with pity for her liking, and Milly grew uneasy as he avoided her mother’s gaze, and addressed her instead.

  ‘Yes, madam, I know the girl in question.’ He looked down at his pad and coughed. ‘’Fact I was at the desk when she was brought in by her father. But I’ll have to ask one of the detectives to speak to you about it, miss. I can’t just let her go.’ Dropping his voice, he added, ‘Though having seen her father... if it were up to me... well, I’ll see what I can do.’

  He got up and disappeared down the corridor. Mrs Colman was fidgeting at Milly’s side. ‘What’s he mean, he can’t let her go? You said if we explained we could get her out?’

  ‘We will get her out!’ But Milly had never been good at hiding things from her mother and her own anxious face was the mirror of Mrs Colman’s.

  Just then, the sergeant returned. He beckoned them to follow and Milly found herself in the same interview room where she’d fed Jimmy. After a few minutes, they were joined by the detective in charge. Milly jumped up, but he motioned her to sit down and perched himself on the edge of the desk. He addressed her mother.

  ‘I understand from my sergeant that you’ve asked to take your daughter home and you say she’s innocent of the theft her father accused her of?’

  ‘Yes! And what’s more, he’s the one should be locked up, for assault!’ Milly blurted out before her mother could answer.

  The detective gave her the vexed look of a busy man, unwilling to invite complications. Ignoring her, he continued to speak to her mother.

  ‘I’m afraid the charge is a little more serious than robbing the gas meter, Mrs Colman.’ He leaned forward, spelling out the words as though her mother were an imbecile.

  ‘Your daughter turned very violent. She attacked her father with a knife she had concealed upon her person and then she turned it on a policeman. We’ve had no choice but to detain her. There’s no possibility of you taking her home today.’

  ‘Mary, mother o’ God, no!’ Her mother’s hand flew to her mouth.

  Milly tried to explain. ‘But you don’t understand. He’s a vicious man; she was just frightened. I’m sure if we could speak to someone in charge, we can explain. My sister doesn’t belong here...’

  His guilty expression told her she had no need to explain, and that even if she did, there was nothing she could say to get Elsie out of this fix.

  ‘Well, can we at least see her, please?’ she asked meekly, wanting no hint of her usual belligerence to turn the detective’s sympathies against her. Jimmy chose just then to smile at him, and the detective hesitated. ‘Very well, I’ll have to check what state she’s in,’ he said.

  As Milly heard his footsteps disappearing down the corridor leading to the cells, she whispered in Jimmy’s ear, ‘You’re my secret weapon,’ and was rewarded with a gurgling chuckle.

  The detective was soon back. ‘Well, she’s calmed down a lot, could almost be a different child,’ he said, puzzlement softening his previous severity.

  So, thought Milly, you’ve met the two sides of Elsie Colman, part fairy, part demon, no wonder you’re confused.

  The detective led them along the brown walled corridor to the back of the building, and down a flight of stairs to the cells.

  Elsie sat on the edge of an iron-framed bed that appeared to be attached to the cell wall. Her skinny legs were not quite long enough to reach the floor. She’d come out without socks or stockings and the jagged hopping scar branded her shin, reminding Milly of that other trap Elsie’d found herself in only last year. Her pointed toes rested like a ballerina’s on the stone flags. Her eyes, which had been lowered to her lap, darted an eager look at them. She had obviously been warned by the detective, for Milly could see her check the impulse to run to her mother. Mrs Colman had no such compunction and immediately rushed to gather Elsie in her arms.

  ‘Oh, me poor baby, have they hurt you?’

  The constable’s audible snigger was squashed by a look from the detective.

  ‘I can assure you, Mrs Colman,’ he said, without a trace of humour, ‘the constable here came off worse in the exchange.’

  And it was only then Milly noticed parallel scratch marks running down the constable’s cheek. Though her sister couldn’t land a punch, she made the best of her nails in a fight.

  ‘Can I count on you to stay calm and quiet, Elsie?’ he asked and she nodded, dumbly, the fire seemingly all gone out of her.

  ‘The constable will be just outside.’

  They left them together and only then did Elsie’s strained, white face crease into sobs.

  ‘Oh, Mum, take me home with you, I don’t want to stay here!’ Her long-fingered hands were plucking at her mother’s old coat, but Mrs Colman was incoherent with her own grief. Milly, though she wanted nothing more than to sweep her sister out of this hole, had to keep her wits about her.

  ‘Elsie, you’ve got to keep calm and tell ’em what happened. They said you brought in a knife.’

  The young girl’s face hardened as she turned to Milly. ‘If you’d just give me the dress money when I asked, I wouldn’t be in here. I’ll never forgive you!’

  Her voice was rising and Milly feared if she got any louder they’d certainly be turned out of the cell. Arguing with Elsie about blame would have to wait. She decided to hold her tongue and use her secret weapon. She thrust Jimmy into her sister’s arms and waited for him to work his magic. He put up a translucent-nailed finger to prod Elsie’s cheek and immediately she turned her lips to kiss its pink tip.

  ‘I knew you’d come for me, though,’ she said more calmly. ‘I could hear him crying for his dinner all the way down here.’ She looked at Jimmy, while addressing Milly.

  ‘Oh, Elsie, of course we’ve come for you, but you’re in bad trouble.’ Milly spoke as gently as she could. ‘The gas meter was bad enough, but attacking a policeman with a knife? What on earth possessed you?’

  The girl shrugged. ‘I only had the knife ’cause when he dragged me out of bed I thought he was going to kill me. I hid it up me sleeve. When they tried to lock me up, I got so scared, I panicked! I didn’t cut anyone with it, well, only the old man, he got one right across his neck. But I mostly just waved it about!’ she said, blowing the little boy’s hair as though it were thistledown.

  Milly groaned and at that moment the detective came back in. He held some papers in his hand.

  ‘Now, Elsie, I’m going to speak t
o your mother. Has she explained that you’re staying here tonight?’

  ‘No! Mum, don’t leave me here,’ Elsie whimpered, and her unwashed face was soon tear-painted. It broke Milly’s heart to see her cling to Jimmy as though he could save her. Milly lifted him gently out of her arms.

  ‘Be a brave girl, Elsie. I know you can, for Mum’s sake. We’ll come and see you tomorrow. I’ll get you out, I promise!’

  As they were hustled out of the room by the constable, Milly looked over her shoulder at the forlorn figure, seated in the same position as when they’d entered, toes barely reaching the floor, eyes lowered, fat teardrops rolling down each cheek. Milly fished into her pocket for a handkerchief she’d made out of an old sheet; it was embroidered with her name.

  ‘Give her this for me, will you?’ she asked the constable, who took it between finger and thumb and tossed it into the cell behind him.

  Mrs Colman stumbled up from the cells, with the detective and constable supporting her on either side.

  They were left at the desk, where the kindly sergeant explained, ‘Your daughter’s up before the magistrate tomorrow. I’ll just need you to sign some papers for me, Mrs Colman.’

  Her mother signed them like an automaton. ‘Get me home, Mill, get me home before I fall down.’

  17

  Withered and Flown

  September 1924

  Milly sat on an old kitchen chair in the back garden at Storks Road, a long narrow strip of ground, fenced on either side with a brick wall at the end. It was the sort of space her mother would have loved to grow a few flowers in, but the Arnold’s Place yards could only accommodate a brick lavatory and a wall to hang the tin bath on. Bertie had made his garden into a little haven of tranquillity. He’d planted lavender and climbing roses, past their best now, but still bravely blooming as the last of summer faded into autumn. Milly breathed in the evening scent of the thornless pink rose, growing nearest the back door. Bertie’s dinner was already prepared, cold meat from yesterday with bubble and squeak, and while waiting for him to come home from the shop, she’d been wandering around the garden, deadheading roses as Bertie had taught her to. Now she sat with a lapful of the faded blooms, absently picking off the bruised-looking petals. She was thinking of Elsie, the thorn in her side, whom she would gladly give a thousand thornless roses to have home once again, tormenting her. Since she’d left her mother, defeated and hopeless, that afternoon, she’d thought of nothing else but how she could free her sister. She was singing absently to herself ‘The Last Rose of Summer’, one of her mother’s favourite old songs, when she heard a noise behind her.