by Mary Gibson
It had been almost a year since he was put away, but Milly, to her secret shame, had hardly given a thought to Pat Donovan in his prison cell. But her reaction to Elsie’s incarceration had made her reconsider her indifference to Pat. In spite of all their antagonism, Milly had immediately wanted to move heaven and earth to free Elsie, and sometimes the imagined feeling of asylum walls closing round her would suffocate her, as though she were the one locked up in Stonefield. She doubted she could ever feel free, while Elsie was not, and realized, almost to her surprise, how much she loved her sister after all. But not Pat, which was no surprise. It seemed strange that, at one time, marrying him had even seemed an option. His sojourn at Her Majesty’s pleasure had in fact set her free, and now she would rather face the disapproval of a thousand Hughes, or struggle with all the mountainous problems she faced in keeping Jimmy, than lock herself into a loveless marriage. Her talk with her mother had made that much clear to her. Milly was the child of such a marriage, and it was not what she wanted for her own son. If Bertie had never come along, that night on Fountain Stairs, if he’d not been so kind, had never given her the lifeline of a place to live, perhaps she might have ignored her misgivings about Pat and persuaded him to marry her when he got out. She would never know, but she felt as though she owed her freedom to Bertie, and just hoped he wouldn’t be made to suffer for it.
So on this Saturday afternoon, the sight of old Ma Donovan on her doorstep hit her with the force of one of the old man’s wallops. The woman, short and pugnacious, was done up in her best coat and hat. Milly waited for her to speak.
‘Is your fancy man home?’ she said, tucking in her many chins, so that they creased like a concertina above her coat collar.
Milly’s instinct was to slam the door in her face, but traces of guilt about her own treatment of Pat stopped her.
‘I’m Bertie’s housekeeper, not that it’s any of your business. Now if you’ve got something to say and can be civil about it, you can come in. If not, you can sling yer hook!’
Milly was quite proud of her restraint. She put it down to Bertie’s example – she’d noticed that his slowness sometimes had a strategy behind it. It gave him time to think. And Milly was glad she’d not immediately told Ma Donovan to piss off as she would normally have done. For now the woman held out a letter.
‘I don’t need to come in. I haven’t come to black my nose in your dirty business. I’ve just come from visiting my Pat in prison. That’s where he is, in case you’re interested.’
The woman paused to see if her sarcasm had any effect, but Milly breathed slowly, waiting for Mrs Donovan to talk herself into a corner.
When Milly didn’t reply, Pat’s mother said, ‘I’ve told him that boy’s not his, which you know full well he’s not.’ Sharp eyes, buried in her fleshy face, searched for a reaction, but Milly stood, expressionless, still holding the front door open.
‘Anyway, it’s a mystery to me, but he wants you to have this.’ Mrs Donovan thrust a letter into her hand, turned and waddled off. Milly didn’t move from the spot, but took the letter. She turned it over. Stamped on the back was HM Prison, Brixton and Pat’s prison number. She walked through to the backyard and, seating herself on the old kitchen chair, opened the letter. Dear Milly, he’d written,
I’ve heard from Mum that you didn’t get rid of the kid when I told you to. I think you could have let me know, instead of keeping it behind my back. She says he don’t look nothing like me, but I reckon he’s mine and so I’m willing to give him a name and marry you when I get out. I know we haven’t had the best of starts, but I always did think a lot of you, Milly. Perhaps you could see your way to visiting me, as you’re going to be my future wife.
Love, Pat
Milly crumpled up the letter. Future wife! Prison had certainly changed his tune. What was she going to do now?
Perhaps Kitty would have some words of wisdom to offer. If the smooth progression of her friend’s romance with Freddie Clark was anything to go by, she seemed to know how to handle men. Since Jimmy’s departure, Kitty had been badgering Milly to make the most of her freedom, and had suggested they resume their old Saturday afternoon outing to the pie-and-mash shop and the Old Clo’ market. But Milly had declined. She needed to catch up with Bertie’s laundry and besides, being a mother had tamed the wild side of her that used to bowl along Tower Bridge Road singing at the top of her voice. But she needed to see Kitty, so after she’d hung out Bertie’s shirts in the backyard, she set off for Hickman’s Folly. When Kitty ushered her in, the tiny house seemed almost spacious. She was the only one home.
‘Mum’s taken the lot of ’em down hopping, thank gawd! And Dad’s gone down for the weekend with the husbands.’
Kitty explained that, as Pat was not there to do it, Freddie had offered to drive them all down in his lorry.
‘Didn’t you want to go with your dad and Freddie for a visit?’ Milly asked.
‘No fear! I hate the country, sleeping on straw with all them bugs.’ Kitty gave a visible shudder. ‘I’d rather be here. Look at me, I don’t know what to do with all this space. I’m wandering from one room to the next, looking for someone to trip over!’
Milly chuckled, but as there were only four rooms in the house, she thought the novelty might soon wear off. Still, it was certainly nice to be able to sit in the Bunclerks’ kitchen, stretching out her long legs, without kicking someone.
‘Anyway, what brings you here?’ Kitty asked. ‘I thought you was doing his laundry today.’
Milly was never sure about Kitty’s opinion of Bertie. She suspected that in her mind he was an outsider, a middle-class interloper in their closed tribe, to be politely tolerated rather than warmly welcomed. But Milly could no longer feel that way.
‘Oh, he doesn’t make a lot of laundry. You don’t get dirty working in a shop, not like the filth the old man brings home on him from the tannery.’ She fished out the letter from her handbag. ‘This is what I wanted to ask you about.’
Milly waited while Kitty took in the contents of Pat’s letter. When she’d finished, a small whistle escaped from her lips.
‘Leopard’s changed his spots! What are you going to do now?’
Milly let out a long groan. ‘I don’t know. That’s what I’ve come to ask you!’
‘Well, you’ll have to make your mind up quick, love, won’t you? Now he’s getting out early.’
‘What do you mean, early? You’ve got that wrong, Kit. He’s got another year to do.’
‘He’s told Freddie they’ve taken time off for good behaviour.’
Milly’s mouth went dry, and a fluttering in her chest signalled a rising panic as she insisted, ‘But he’s said nothing about it to me!’
Kitty shrugged. ‘Perhaps he wanted to surprise you.’
‘It’s a bloody surprise, all right, but did Freddie say when he’s getting out?’
‘Let’s put it this way, he might be hoping for a Christmas wedding!’
They spent the rest of the afternoon going through Milly’s options, but of course, she should have known, this was a decision no one could help her with. Perhaps she should be grateful it had been forced upon her. Afterwards her way would be clear and uncluttered, and all she’d have to worry about would be Jimmy... and Elsie, of course.
That evening she told Bertie she needed to write a letter, and asked if she could have some of his blue writing paper and borrow his fountain pen. She went to her room early and sat looking out of the sash window over the pretty garden, searching for words that were truthful, yet not unkind. Perhaps she should just tell him she’d fallen for someone else. It was true, in a way. It was just that the ‘someone else’ was her own child, and now the world revolved around him and his happiness. Pat Donovan would contribute nothing to that, she felt sure, and so Pat Donovan would have to go. She sighed in exasperation, crumpling the third attempt and throwing it into the grate. All Bertie’s paper would be gone at this rate. She began again.
Dear Pat,
I heard from Kitty you are getting out at Christmas and I’m really happy for you. Please don’t think you have to make any promises to me. It’s decent of you, but truly, Pat, I am doing very well now, with a job and a place to live, so you’ve no need to worry about me. The boy is healthy and contented and I’ve decided to bring him up on my own. So I want you to feel free to get on with your life once you come out and not to feel any obligation to me. I think it’s for the best, Pat, and if we see each other when you get out, I hope we’ll still be friends.
Milly
It was, she supposed, a cowardly letter, but would it help to add that she feared a man who kept guns in his toolbox might not be the best person to bring up her beloved child? No, it was the best she could do.
Bertie looked a little surprised next morning by his much reduced stack of writing paper. But it wasn’t his way to ask questions. He simply said, ‘I’ve got a stamp, if you need one.’
The next week dragged by, each day punctuated by the twin anxieties of Elsie and Pat, both far away, and yet still insinuating themselves into her daily life, so that she found herself living more in the brooding halls of Stonefield or the claustrophobic cells of Brixton than in the picking room at Southwell’s. She had heard nothing more about Elsie and the letter to Pat stayed stuffed in her bag all week. Once sent, there was no going back.
Each morning she registered the clocking-in machine, but after that, she hardly knew if she were sorting blackcurrants or filling jam jars. Yet her most persistent daydream was of her child, nestled in a hop pillow, tucked in a bushel basket, swinging from a bine, her little hop baby. After a couple of days, Kitty grew exasperated.
‘For gawd’s sake, Milly, you need to stop worrying about everyone else and start living again. There’s no sense in mooning around all week. Why don’t you come to the sewing circle at the Settlement tonight, take your mind off things?’
Milly was about to make an excuse, when Kitty interrupted, ‘And you could sew Jimmy a little outfit...’
It was true, she was doing no one any good, least of all herself, with her constant obsessing. For the time being, she’d done what she could for Elsie, and as for Pat, she just had to be brave and follow her instincts. Jimmy, she would have to trust to her mother and the presiding goddess of the hop gardens.
‘Oh, all right then,’ she agreed finally.
Kitty beamed. ‘We’ve all missed you, Mill. It’s been dull as ditchwater there without you.’
They met up outside the Settlement later that night, Milly following Kitty into the sewing room a little shyly. It had been almost a year, after all. The room looked the same, apart from the addition of some sewing machines, but the faces had changed. Some girls had left; Peggy Dillon had married a butcher and was now living above his shop down ‘the Blue’, one of Bermondsey’s main shopping streets. Kitty had told her about the wedding, which had taken place while she was at Edenvale. Kitty was convinced that the attraction was more for the meat than the man, adding wickedly that he resembled a pork sausage squeezed in the middle, topped with a face like a pork chop. Other faces were new and Milly didn’t recognize them, but she got the same warm welcome from Miss Green, who eagerly showed off the new Singer sewing machines that had been donated to the Settlement.
‘Can I leave you girls to practise on your own with the machines? I need to pop out for a minute.’ She smiled at the girls, who nodded, whilst others were already intent on their tasks, leaning over the wheels and setting the treadles whirring. Milly spent a half-hour getting to grips with bobbins and treadles, and had soon mastered the different stitching attachments.
‘You make me sick,’ said Kitty, who’d got her cotton entangled around the foot. ‘I practised all last week and still make a pig’s ear of it. You catch on first go!’
Milly laughed and got up to sort out Kitty’s machine.
It was at that moment that she glanced through the glass-panelled door into the corridor and saw Bertie, deep in conversation with Florence. She paused in surprise. He hadn’t told her he was coming to the Settlement this evening. His face was flushed, and excited-looking. Florence Green had her back to Milly, but when she rested her hand on Bertie’s arm and leaned closer to kiss his cheek, his face brightened even more. Milly felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest, ice cold, yet searing. She swallowed hard, unable to look away. Feeling pinned, caught in an invisible net, she marvelled at how this feeling had crept up on her. She felt an overwhelming need to know what they were talking about.
She slumped back down at her machine, all the fun draining away from the task. Even when Florence Green returned and sorted out an offcut of beautiful white lawn for Jimmy’s new outfit, Milly couldn’t rekindle her enthusiasm. She was fiercely annoyed with herself, knowing immediately what the pain in her chest meant, knowing, too, the complications she couldn’t accommodate in her life. She would be ruthless with her heart. There was no place for her in Bertie’s affections, and certainly no place in her life for a man. She was about to rid herself of one; the last thing she wanted, she told herself sternly, was another!
As the class ended, she began vigorously wrapping the half-made baby suit in tissue paper, so she could take it home to embroider by hand.
‘It hasn’t done you much good, gel, has it?’ She looked up sharply as Kitty came to her side.
‘What hasn’t?’ Milly asked in a flush of guilt. Had Kitty somehow divined her jealousy?
‘The sewing circle! You look even more miserable now than you did this morning! Want to come for a quick one at the Folly?’
‘Yeah, why not?’ She certainly wouldn’t be rushing home to make Bertie Hughes his evening cocoa. Perhaps she’d allowed herself to get too cosy at Storks Road. It wasn’t her home, not really. It was just fantasy to think that she belonged anywhere other than Arnold’s Place.
‘Come on, Kit!’ She grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her out of the sewing room. ‘Let’s go, if we’re going. I’m gasping.’
She trotted them along the riverside streets until they arrived, Kitty puffing for breath, outside the Folly. The pub, with its peeling paint and grimy windows, was a stark contrast to the trim, well-kept Settlement building. Milly pushed her way through the corner door and into the smoke-filled bar. Its small interior meant that benches and tables had to be pushed back against the walls, leaving only a small square space in front of the wooden bar. She squeezed round a group of young men, pints in hand, huddled shoulder to shoulder in front of the bar. They were laughing loudly at some joke, jostling each other playfully, and she had to be careful to skirt them without getting beer slopped all over her. Kitty spotted Freddie, sitting with a man who looked to Milly like a sausage squeezed in the middle with a face like a pork chop.
She whispered to Kitty, ‘Is that Peggy’s butcher?’ and Kitty hissed, ‘Yes!’
‘Jesus, Kit, you were right, he looks like a grilled dinner!’
Kitty let out a raucous laugh that made heads turn, and the girls squashed round the table, desperately trying to control their giggles. The young butcher introduced himself to Milly, sticking out a meaty hand, fingers clustered like chipolatas. She bit her cheek and kicked the still giggling Kitty under the table. Fortunately, Peggy arrived just then and her unsuspecting new husband stood up to buy them all a round of drinks.
Freddie had, that same evening, taken an unofficial delivery from a meat refrigeration ship. Both he and the butcher were well pleased with the transaction they’d just concluded, so were liberally buying the girls drinks. Milly’s capacity wasn’t what it had once been and before long, she found herself standing on the table, shouting to Maisie at the piano. ‘Come on, Maise, give us “A Good Man is Hard to Find”!’
Maisie could always be relied on to know the latest jazz songs and Milly joined in with her full-throated voice, becoming especially impassioned when she got to:
‘My heart’s sad and I am all forlorn, my man’s treating me mean,
I regret the day that I was
born and that man of mine I’ve ever seen.
Lord a good man is hard to find, you always get the other kind.
Just when you think that he’s your pal, you look and find him foolin’ round some other gal!’
‘Sh’true, Kit, true’s I shtand ’ere!’ She swayed precariously as she descended from the table on to the bench. She pointed her finger at Freddie Clark. ‘You hold on to ’im!’ Maisie launched into the chorus:
‘So if your man is nice, take my advice,
hug him in the morning, kiss him every night.
Give him plenty lovin’, treat your good man right.
For a good man nowadays is hard to find!’
Though Milly’s voice was still foghorn strong, her vision was weakened and her foot missed the edge of the bench, so that she found herself lying under the table. Kitty and the others ducked down, peering at Milly as she curled like a cat round the table legs.
‘Ahhh,’ said Kitty, trying to pat her friend’s head but missing her mark, comforting the butcher’s two-tone brogues instead. Milly banged her head against the edge of the table as she sat up. Looking round at all the other smiling bleary-eyed faces, Kitty explained, ‘She’s mishin’er Jimmy, turned out a good mum, ain’t she?’
Milly mumbled: ‘Then you rave, you even crave, to see him laying in his grave... no, thash no’ true, Kit, didn’t mean it...’
When the publican rang the brass bell, Milly’s legs, her pride and joy, failed her. She suffered the indignity of being carried between Freddie and the butcher all the way home to Storks Road. How she got upstairs to bed, she didn’t know, but from a long way off, she heard Kitty’s apologetic voice explaining, ‘Shorry, she’s just missin’ Jimmy. Sh’don’t usually get like this... She can drink anyone under the table!’ And someone replied, ‘Strike me dumb!’
20
The Right Place
October 1924
Her eyelids were stuck fast. She tried to open one eye, then closed it swiftly against the harsh light falling across the bed. She realized she was fully clothed under the covers. A wave of nausea broke over her as she rolled on to her back. Clutching the bedclothes as if they were a sinking boat in a storm, she forced her eyes open again, only to find that the room was spinning slowly round her. She let out a long groan as she remembered the night before. It had been Bertie’s voice. Strike me dumb he’d said, but what must he have thought of her? Her face burned at the memory. She simply couldn’t face him this morning.