by Mary Gibson
‘Mum,’ she said gently, ‘I’ve been to see that Francis Beaumont again tonight.’
‘He’s not worth the ’apporth o’ coppers, useless!’ Her mother rarely spoke ill of people, and though a few hours ago Milly had shared her opinion, after talking to Miss Green, she now believed that no lawyer could have helped them.
‘It’s not his fault. The judge was biased, Mum. We’ll just have to wait till visiting day and see if there’s any way we can speak to someone at Stonefield. Perhaps they’ll see she shouldn’t be in there. Either way, the rules are we can’t visit for at least six weeks, so you may as well be out of it, earning a bit for some new crockery!’
Before her mother could object, Milly remembered her youngest sister, whirling like a dervish through the twilit streets. ‘Anyway, don’t you think it’s best if you keep Amy out of his way too? You know that with me and Elsie gone, she’ll be in the firing line?’
Her mother, who had been blowing the surface of the nut-brown brew Milly had handed her, paused. Surely Amy’s vulnerability must have occurred to her? But there were odd blanks in her mother’s understanding of the world, as if she had only enough energy to survive each day with the old man, with none left over to think about tomorrow. She lived from one day to the next, one Mass to the next, with no thought of changing anything in between.
‘Why have you stayed with him all these years?’ It was a question Milly had always wanted to ask her mother, since she’d been old enough to understand that there had once been an alternative.
Mrs Colman gave a bitter little laugh. ‘I’ll tell you a story,’ she said. ‘The first time he ever give me a wallop, we’d not been married six month and I was pregnant. He had to get up five o’clock of a morning to get to work and it was my job to wake him up with a cup of tea. Well, this particular morning, I overdid it, sleeping like a baby I was, when I feel him shaking me, shouting in me ear, “What’s the fucking time? I’m gonna be late!” Well, before I had a chance to come to, look at the clock or anything, he gives me such a punch I thought he’d knocked me teeth out. “And that’s for not waking me up in time!” he says. So I run crying to me mother with me split lip and she says to me, “You’ve made your bed, now you’ve got to lie in it.” Not a bit of sympathy, nothing. So that’s when I knew what my life would be, and it’s the same for all us women, love. We might share the bed with the men, but when it comes down to it, seems it’s always us that’s made it!’
Milly hadn’t heard the story before and she’d certainly never realized that her mother was pregnant when she married. It explained a little of the life of penance she’d allowed herself to live. ‘But if Elsie gets out, she’ll be working soon and if you went cleaning, don’t you think you could manage without him then?’
Her mother shook her head. ‘I know I get little enough of his wages, but it’s still more than I could earn cleaning. No, love, my old mum was right.’
They sat in silence for a while, her mother thoughtfully sipping tea and Milly wishing there was some way she could increase her own income and support her mother. Ellen Colman drained her tea and put the enamel cup down decisively. ‘But I tell you what, you’ve made me think twice about going hopping.’
Milly smiled, relieved that she’d at least been of some use today, even though it landed her with another huge problem. As if reading her mind, her mother said, ‘You’ll have no one to look after Jimmy, though... unless I take him with me?’
‘Would you be able to manage with a baby down there?’ Milly held her breath, pausing between relief at the answer to her problem and worry about letting Jimmy out of her sight.
‘Of course I would! He’s no trouble now he’s getting his fill on the bottles. I’ll have him in a bushel basket beside me while I’m picking, and it’ll keep Amy from wandering off like a little savage all over the place. She’ll stick to him like glue.’
When Milly looked doubtful, her mother said, ‘You’d be surprised what a help she is with him in the afternoons. She turns into a right little mother.’
Milly had to take her word for it, but in truth, she didn’t need that much convincing. If Jimmy didn’t go hopping, then Milly couldn’t work.
‘I think he’ll love it down hopping,’ she said wistfully, wishing she could be going too.
‘Hmm.’ Her mother pulled a wry face. ‘Well, he was made in a hop garden, wasn’t he?’
But later that week, the pain of saying goodbye to Jimmy threatened to undo all her resolutions. How could she let him go that far from her, when she’d fought so hard to keep him? It felt like a betrayal, and yet what would he know of it? He would be with his grandmother, just as he was most days.
Yet images of Jimmy buried in hop bines or rolling into the cooking fire distracted her as she stood on the platform at London Bridge, waiting to wave off the hoppers’ special. With Jimmy crooked in one arm, she waited while her mother and Amy settled themselves and the hopping box into the nearest carriage. She was being buffeted by the usual crowd of families rushing to find a seat and when the whistle blew, she still held him tight.
‘Come on, love, hand him over, the train’s going!’ Her mother held out both hands.
‘We’ll look after him... promise!’ said Amy. Before she could change her mind, Milly laid her cheek against Jimmy’s and whispered, ‘Don’t forget me, I love you.’ Then she thrust him into her mother’s waiting arms.
‘Bye, Milly!’
Her mother’s voice was drowned by the shrill whistle, and soon she and Jimmy were hidden from sight, as steam billowed up around the moving carriage.
Milly was grateful for the veil of smoke which hid her from the departing train. She didn’t want her mother to see the tears that had begun to fall. But she cried all the way back to Southwell’s, not caring what people thought of her, lost in the utter misery of being parted from her child. Many times she sniffed and flicked the tears away, waiting for the grief to subside, but it was as persistent as her passionate devotion to Jimmy. She arrived at Southwell’s early, and instead of going straight to the factory walked to Hickman’s Folly in hopes of meeting Kitty on her way to work. She was almost at the Bunclerks’ door, when Kitty emerged pulling on her coat while eating a slice of bread and dripping. A tangle of children tumbled out of the door after her.
‘Mind me shoes! You’re treading all over ’em!’ Kitty shouted, when Percy trampled her in an attempt to be first out of the house. Kitty looked up in surprise when Milly called her name.
‘Milly! What’ve you been crying for? You’re all puffy, you look terrible.’
‘That’s nice. I’ll know not to come to you in future when I need cheering up!’
‘I didn’t mean terrible. I just meant...’
‘Terrible?’
Kitty laughed and together they walked arm in arm to Southwell’s, while Milly poured out her heart.
‘Well, listen here, you might as well make the most of it and come out with me and Freddie tonight. Anyway, he wants to talk to you about Elsie.’
‘Freddie does?’
Kitty nodded, but wouldn’t answer any of her questions. ‘All I’ll say is that it’s worth hearing,’ she said enigmatically, and Milly hadn’t the energy to pursue it.
That evening, as she cleared away the tea things, Milly asked Bertie if he minded her going out to meet Kitty.
‘Mind? ’Course I don’t mind. Anyway, you need cheering up tonight.’
‘Well, so long as you don’t need me for anything here.’ Milly felt awkward. The terms of their arrangement were so loose sometimes she felt like a lodger, at others an employee, and sometimes she felt like a friend.
‘You don’t have to ask my permission!’ He chuckled, seeming genuinely surprised. ‘Besides, I’m out myself tonight. I’ve had a rare invitation over to Dulwich!’
‘Oooh, going over to see the rich relations?’ she teased.
But he pulled a face. Bertie wasn’t fond of his uncle, but as his livelihood depended on him, he liked to kee
p on good terms.
‘I’d rather be coming to the Folly with you, believe me!’
Kitty and Freddie were in their usual seats when Milly arrived at the Folly, but sitting with them was a young man Milly didn’t recognize.
‘What you drinking?’ Freddie got up and while he was at the bar, Kitty introduced the young man.
‘Milly, this is Bob Clark, Freddie’s brother.’
Bob gave her a shy smile. He looked nothing like Freddie, who was big-boned and fair. His brother was of a slighter build, with soft brown hair, a gentle expression and eyes that seemed happy to be lowered, exactly the opposite of Freddie’s sharp, darting looks.
‘Pleased to meet you, Bob. I didn’t even know Freddie had a brother!’
Bob Clark smiled and then looked down at the table. ‘Well, I work away from home.’
Freddie was back with the drinks in time to overhear his brother.
‘Go on, Bob, tell her where you work,’ he urged, breaking into a grin.
‘I work at Stonefield,’ he said.
‘Stonefield Asylum?’
He nodded. ‘Yes, I’m the gardener.’
Milly looked from Bob to Kitty, whose face was triumphant. ‘See, I told you it was worth hearing.’
‘Have you seen our Elsie?’ Milly whispered, leaning forward.
‘You don’t have to whisper, Mill, you can’t get arrested for talking to the bloody gardener,’ Freddie said.
‘I’m sorry, no, not yet.’ Bob shot an exasperated look at his elder brother; obviously he was used to being interrupted by Freddie.
‘But that’s one of the reasons we wanted to talk to you,’ Freddie went on. ‘Bob can help her, can’t you, Bob?’ But before his brother had time to answer, Freddie continued, ‘You just write and tell her to volunteer for garden duty and Bob will keep an eye on her for you.’ He sat back, basking in the adoring gaze of Kitty.
Finally, Bob lifted his eyes and managed to look directly at Milly. ‘It’ll be the best thing for her. If she gets on garden duty, she’ll have some fresh air, she’ll be away from... the others, and working with the plants, well, it’ll keep her mind off things.’
Milly was overwhelmed. Florence Green had promised such help might appear out of the blue, and she’d scorned her optimism, but now she felt like hugging the two young men. ‘Oh, that’s so kind of you!’ she said.
Kitty chimed in. ‘It was Freddie’s idea.’ For once Milly didn’t mind her trumpeting Freddie’s virtues at all.
‘I’ll write tonight. But, Bob, is it really as bad in there as they say it is?’
He began drawing patterns in a small puddle of spilled beer. ‘It’s not all bad. They’re well fed, we’ve even got our own farm. And clothes are all found, but she’ll have to work hard, probably sewing or laundry. It’s hard at first, getting used to people who’re so... different, it can be scary.’
‘He means the nutters,’ Freddie interrupted.
‘Don’t call ’em that!’ Bob said protectively. ‘It’s not their fault, and anyway, most of ’em are like Elsie. The courts just don’t know where to put them!’
Milly liked Freddie’s brother for that, and how could she not warm to someone who’d volunteered to help her sister? She asked him endless questions and came away with the impression that the asylum would be a harsher version of Edenvale, but with no prospect of reprieve and with the added anxiety of being surrounded by unstable, sometimes violent inmates. She wondered how on earth he’d come to work there.
‘I used to work at St James’s Vicarage, did odd jobs, then gardening. The vicar recommended me for the job. I was glad of it at the time – it was just after the war and with all the soldiers coming back, jobs were few and far between. And I love the gardening... it suits me.’ He spoke half apologetically, perhaps feeling a little in the shadow of his more outgoing, entrepreneurial brother.
‘I think Elsie will love the gardening too.’ She smiled. ‘Not that she’s had much practice with flowers around Dockhead!’
Suddenly Freddie looked up. Although seemingly absorbed by Kitty, he’d obviously been keeping one ear on their conversation.
‘’Course, if worse comes to worst, we can always spring her, can’t we, Bob?’
Kitty laughed nervously, but Milly saw Bob and Freddie exchange glances that looked entirely serious.
19
A Good Man is Hard to Find
September 1924
Bertie didn’t answer her call and the house was in darkness when she got home from the pub. Assuming that he was still at his uncle’s in Dulwich, she went upstairs to her bedroom. How empty it seemed without Jimmy; it was always his steady infant breath that gave the room its life and its welcome for her. She gravitated towards his cot, smoothing the blanket and then patting it gently, as though he were still there. Her mother had called Elsie ‘her baby’. Perhaps children, whatever their age, were always their mother’s babies. If she felt as hollow as this after Jimmy had only been gone a week, what anguish must her mother be feeling now. All down to the old man.
She went to the window overlooking the back garden and pulled aside the net curtain. A full, pinkish moon, riding high in an indigo sky, washed the garden with a pale blush. On the white climbing rose, a few late blooms glimmered, like fat candles. Suddenly her eye was caught by the orange glow of a match, and a face flared into life. Bertie was standing beneath the roses, trying to relight his pipe. His shadowy face, briefly defined by the flickering match, looked different. The flyaway eyebrows were drawn tight together and his normally amused mouth was set in a deep, unsmiling line.
She threw on a cardigan, hurrying downstairs and out through the scullery door. Picking her way along the moonlit path, she didn’t speak until she stood beside him. ‘Bertie? I thought you were still at your uncle’s.’
Though he must have heard her, he didn’t turn round, just continued to draw on his pipe.
‘I’ve been home for a while,’ he said in a low voice, finally turning to face her.
Now she could see that the sulphurous flare hadn’t lied. He looked miserable.
‘Are you all right? What are you standing out here in the dark for?’
He inhaled, lifting the rose nearest to him. ‘Smell that, Milly, it’s lovely.’
Rose scent vied with acrid pipe smoke and, normally, she would have made a joke about the smelly habit, but she instinctively knew he was in no mood for teasing.
‘Yes, lovely,’ she said, then shivered in the cool night air. ‘Don’t you want to come in? I’ll make us a cup of tea.’ She hugged her cardigan closer around her and he nodded, following her back along the path.
When the tea was made and they were sitting either side of the unlit kitchen fireplace, she ventured another question. ‘How was Dulwich?’
He shifted in his seat and pulled at the neck of his shirt, from which he’d already removed the collar. Before answering, he took another deliberate swallow of the hot tea. Sometimes his slowness infuriated her, but now she held her tongue and waited.
‘Not a pleasant evening. Uncle doesn’t approve of me, says I’m a disgrace to the Hughes name.’ His voice was dull and his face immobile.
Milly snorted with laughter. ‘Do me a favour! You? You couldn’t get a straighter feller! Uncle doesn’t know his arse from his elbow, if you ask me.’
This brought a hint of a smile back to Bertie’s lips. ‘Well, as far as Uncle’s concerned, anyone involved in the Labour Party has made a pact with the devil!’
But then something in his guarded look made her suspect this had nothing to do with Bertie’s political activities, and everything to do with her. She preferred to have it out in the open.
‘It’s not you he disapproves of, is it? It’s me.’
‘Did I say that? Strike me dumb if you don’t always want to be putting words in my mouth.’
‘You didn’t have to say it, Bertie. It’s obvious. Your respectable uncle was never going to be pleased, once he heard I’m living here. Dockh
ead caddywack slut? Is that what he thinks I am?’ And as he made to protest, she shook her head and got up. ‘Don’t worry, Bertie, I’ll find somewhere else to live tomorrow. I don’t want to cause trouble for you.’
He struggled to speak. When he was excited or animated, his words sometimes tripped over each other, and it was a while before he managed to say, ‘You’re doing no such thing! I’m a twenty-five-year-old man and I won’t be told how to live my life. It’s nothing to do with my uncle if I choose to campaign for Dr Salter – nor if I choose to have a live-in housekeeper!’
‘But, Bertie, he’s your livelihood, you can’t afford to upset him. He’s probably vindictive enough to sack you.’
‘Well, he can stick his job up his arse!’
For the normally placid Bertie, this amounted to as violent a show of temper as she’d ever witnessed. Unlike her foul-mouthed father, he never swore, and rage was alien to him. She had grown so used to being in his even-tempered company, she sometimes wondered how he and the old man could even be of the same species. But she knew, however brave his words were, his heart was not that of a fighter.
‘Don’t be a fool, Bertie. You need that job as much as I need mine.’
‘Well, there’s other work I can do! Besides, it wouldn’t come to that, we’re family. He just made his disapproval plain, loves to preach a sermon, you must remember that.’
And she did. Hughes had always made sure to rub her mother’s nose in the length of their tally slate, ever ready to point out the thriftiness of the proddywacks compared with the profligate habits of the drunkard caddywacks of Dockhead. It was absurd, as on any given night in Bermondsey, the religion of the drunks being kicked out at closing time was evenly balanced.
‘I’ve probably got myself upset over nothing. I daresay it’ll all blow over, Milly. You’re not to worry, and there’s to be no more talk of moving out. Hear me?’
Milly acquiesced because, for all her bold words, she knew very well there was nowhere else for her to go.