by Mary Gibson
‘Where’s my Elsie?’ her mother asked fretfully.
The line seemed endless; a hundred inmates must have passed them already. But then Milly spotted her, squashed behind an obese woman. Giving a huge, toothless grin as she spied her family, the woman waddled off to one side, leaving Elsie exposed and vulnerable, weak eyes searching every table until she saw them. She started to run, but was held back by the attendant.
‘No running.’
Elsie checked herself. Her eyes were fixed on the three of them and Milly noted that they looked even larger and paler in her face, which had sharpened to a knife-like point, she had become so skinny. Her dress and white pinafore were two sizes too big, reaching almost to the floor. Her hair had grown and was tied back tightly so that all the bony edges of her face were visible beneath the pale skin. There was no pretty bow for Elsie in here. She came and sat down behind the table. And immediately her shoulders began to shake.
‘Wh-why, wh-y,’ she heaved in a sob and as she let go, cried, ‘wh-why did you le-leave me here?’
Her mother ran round the table and squashed her tightly against her breast, crying herself now. ‘Oh, love, we tried, we couldn’t do nothing about it! Milly went and got a lawyer and everything.’
Elsie looked pitifully at Milly. ‘But you’re taking me home now, ain’t you? I don’t have to stay here any more?’
‘Elsie, we can’t take you home today, love, you’ve got to be brave,’ Milly said.
But Elsie was inconsolable. She seemed unable to believe there was no hope of her going home, and Milly, who had known her own much milder form of incarceration at Edenvale, felt sure that if she were going to survive, her sister had to have some hope.
‘Elsie, listen to me, did you do as I said, and ask for garden duty?’ she asked urgently.
Elsie nodded, unpinned a handkerchief from the pinafore and blew her nose noisily.
Milly noticed it was the one embroidered with Milly, which she’d given her in the police station. It was somehow comforting to think that Elsie had managed to keep hold of this little piece of home.
‘And did you meet Bob, the gardener?’
She nodded again and said weakly, ‘He’s my friend. He let me help him plant a tree and everything.’ The young girl smiled to herself suddenly. ‘It was such a pretty tree and he said it was called a Tree of Heaven. And I told him he’d got that wrong, cos it must be a tree of hell in this bleedin’ place.’ And they all laughed with relief, that some spark of Elsie’s fire was still burning.
‘Well, love, Bob promised us he’d look after you, so behave yourself and they’ll let you stay working in the gardens,’ Milly said.
‘They’ve got me in the laundry too, sewing sheets and pinafores.’
She held up sore fingers for their inspection.
‘And do you get enough to eat, love?’ her mother asked. ‘You’re looking so thin.’
Elsie shifted on the chair. There was so little flesh on her, Milly knew that sitting on the hard wood must be uncomfortable.
‘There’s enough grub, I suppose. We’ve got real chicken’s eggs and proper meat from pigs and we get milk. But it all makes me sick. Can you bring in some bread and dripping next time? And bring Jimmy to see me,’ she added.
Her mother promised she would and then, after distracting Elsie with Dockhead gossip for another half-hour, came the moment they were all dreading. A brass bell sounded the end of visiting hours. Elsie jumped, her eyes widened and she began to cry again.
Ignoring all her mother’s attempts to soothe her, she turned red-rimmed eyes towards Milly, and in a low, choked voice said, ‘It was you got me in here, so you bloody well come back and get me out of it! You get me out, or I’ll never forgive you!’ Her voice was rising to a shrill scream and as she threw off her mother’s encircling arms, she drew the attention of the attendant, who came over to see what the commotion was all about.
‘That’s my sister,’ she shouted as her arms were grasped and she was dragged away. ‘She’ll come back for me!’
Milly’s legs felt like water as she rose from the seat and trailed back down the long corridor. Outside, a mizzle of rain fell from a leaden sky, turning the hulking, many-winged building a dull black. It seemed to gather its wings above them, warding them off, barring any way back, guarding her sister like a black-scaled beast that Milly felt powerless to fight. Feeling utterly defeated by the unassailable authority hanging over the place, she got on to the bus home without looking back, leaving Elsie, and hope, far behind.
The days and weeks that followed twined about her like a many-coloured thread. The gold of her happiness in Bertie’s love and their plans for a future together were inextricably bound to the black strand of sadness she felt whenever she thought of Elsie’s life. She didn’t believe it was her fault that Elsie was at Stonefield, but it was enough that her sister did. And then another colour wove itself in, the silver of her mother’s hair, all turned grey now, with the struggle to protect Amy, and herself, from the old man’s sustained violence.
So when Bertie suggested one day that they marry sooner, rather than later, she found herself hoping that somehow her marriage would be a solution, and that her own happiness would lessen the sadness of those she loved.
She wasn’t sorry to miss the next visit to Stonefield. Jimmy came down with whooping cough and she couldn’t leave him, so it was from her mother that she learned of Elsie’s further decline.
‘There’s nothing of her, Milly, skin and bone. I don’t like the look of her.’
Her mother had come straight from the bus stop after visiting Stonefield and still had Amy with her. Milly made them tea and toast, and they were now sitting in front of the fire, trying to get warm. The place seemed to have that effect, and last time Milly had taken days to get the chill out of her bones.
‘And she’s gone off in a world of her own, you know how she used to, only worse. I don’t like the look of her,’ she repeated, in a tone that Milly had heard the women of Dockhead use only of the dying. Milly could give no words of comfort. Instead she dug out a slab of cheese and some eggs from the larder, and parcelled them up.
‘Here, take these home, and don’t you dare give any to the old man. Hide it. You two look like you’re fading away as well. Doesn’t the bastard give you any housekeeping at all, these days?’
‘I think he’s got himself a fancy woman,’ her mother mouthed under her breath so that Amy wouldn’t hear, though her sister was bright enough to know when her mother was speaking ‘deedee’, as it was known in Arnold’s Place, and looked up sharply.
‘Don’t be stupid, Mother, who’d have him?’ Milly said tersely.
Her mother pursed her lips. ‘They say he’s very free with his money in the Swan and Sugarloaf, doling out drinks to gawd knows who, and the money goes somewhere, that’s all I’ll say.’ Her mother bent to pick up the rusty-black handbag at her side. ‘Say thank you to Bertie for the cheese and eggs,’ she said, picking up the parcel from the table.
‘I will!’
She saw them off and went back to the fire, musing over what she could do for her Elsie.
The next day as they left the factory for their dinner break, she took Kitty’s arm.
‘Are you seeing Freddie this week?’ she asked.
‘We’re going to the Grange Picture Palace tomorrow, want to come? You could bring Bertie!’
She was grateful that her friend was making an effort to get to know Bertie now, but this was one time when she didn’t want him to join them. She shook her head. ‘No, not this week, Kit. I really wanted to have a word with Freddie about his brother Bob.’
‘Oh, is it your Elsie? What’s happened?’
And Milly told her about her mother’s visit. ‘I know Bob’s been kind to her. I just wondered if he was coming home at all, or if Fred can get a message to him?’
‘Leave it to me, love. Me and Fred...’ Kitty waggled her little finger and smiled. ‘I get anything I ask, love, anything I ask!�
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Milly’s wedding day was fixed for the week before Christmas. She and Bertie would be married in a Catholic ceremony at Dockhead Church. ‘There’s no point in upsetting your mum any more than she already is,’ Bertie had said when she broached the subject. ‘It’s all the same God,’ he’d added lightly, putting aside his own Wesleyan affiliations to make life easier for her.
‘Bertie, you’re a diamond!’ she’d said, hugging him, grateful for his easy-going ways. After a life spent under the shadow of the old man’s tyranny, Milly still hadn’t got used to a man who was happy to defer to her, a man who seemed to turn every stony path into a pleasant country lane. She’d slowly begun to understand how rare a person Bertie was; he seemed to carry within him his own happiness and so she never felt the burden of having to supply it.
She made her own wedding dress, glad that it couldn’t be white and traditional. Instead, she bought from Petticoat Lane a bolt of brand-new ivory watermarked silk, the like of which she’d never been able to afford on factory wages alone. Copying from the latest fashions, she created a low-waisted, double-skirted dress, with three-quarter-length sleeves and a chiffon shawl. Sometimes the current shorter hems left her feeling like a leggy colt, so for her wedding dress, where she wanted to look and feel like a lady, she chose a soft handkerchief hem, which flowed and softened her legs. Though she’d wanted no bridesmaids, Amy had looked so disappointed that she’d relented.
During Amy’s fitting one Saturday afternoon, Milly noticed a change in her sister. She kneeled in front of Amy with a mouthful of pins, adjusting the hem to the pale peach satin dress. She’d been so full of excitement at being a bridesmaid, but now Milly sensed that an unusual lethargy had crept over her, dulling all her quicksilver energy. As she sat back on her haunches, studying the hem, Milly lifted the material and noticed a row of dark purple bruises on the backs of her legs.
‘What have you been up to, playing British Bulldog with Barrel again?’ she asked, naming the roughest of the warlike games that Amy delighted in. The girl hastily tried to pull the dress down.
‘The old man?’
‘He kicked me upstairs, said I’d cheeked him, but I hadn’t!’ Amy’s lower lip trembled.
The youngest Colman sister had always seemed to Milly the strongest, but since Elsie’s departure, she’d noticed patches in her armour. Whereas once she would never give an inch in an argument with Milly, now she caved in, resorting to tears, and though she still ran with the gang of urchins around Dockhead, sometimes at the end of her working day, Milly would find her waiting watchfully outside Southwell’s gates, with Jimmy in his pram. She had always been one of three, and now she was just one, a single vulnerable target.
Milly pulled her in close. ‘Now listen to me, if he starts on you again, you run out the house and come round here to me and Bertie, d’ye hear? Don’t matter what time it is, you come straight to me!’
‘But you’ll send me back, and then it’ll be worse.’
That was true. Even though Bertie’s uncle owned the shop, he still only received a salary – a good one compared to a docker, but there was still not enough coming in to support two families.
‘I’d take you in if I could,’ she said. But no doubt Amy, like Elsie, thought of Bertie as a rich man, and, compared with most of the residents of Arnold’s Place, she supposed he was.
After Amy’s fitting she sent her home with a jar of Southwell’s jam and a basin of brawn: her mother had said the old man was increasingly absent and there was precious little coming in for food. She took Jimmy with her to the front door to wave Amy off, and saw Bertie turning the corner into Storks Road. As Amy skipped up to him, he stooped to listen to her. No doubt she was prattling on about the bridesmaid’s dress. He ruffled her hair as she went on her way, clutching the parcel of food. He had a nice way with children, Milly mused. He was patient with Jimmy and was happy to give her son the Hughes name. One day, perhaps, she would give him a child of his own.
The thought made her smile dreamily to herself, and this was how he came upon her, standing in the doorway. Jimmy wriggled in her arms. At five months, his first tooth was coming through and he’d been unhappy all morning. Even Amy hadn’t been able to pacify him. But now he began excitedly twirling his little fists as he saw Bertie approach with outstretched arms. It was Jimmy’s favourite game of the moment and Bertie never disappointed him. He caught him from her arms, tossed him into the air and was rewarded with the baby’s throaty chuckle.
‘What were you smiling at?’ He shot her a look as he caught the baby.
‘Ohhh, I was just thinking, you’ll make a good dad.’
As he held the little boy in the crook of his arm, Milly saw his face grow serious. He handed Jimmy back to her. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, Milly.’
‘Gawd, don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. I’ve made me dress!’ she said, laughing. But when he didn’t laugh back a tightness caught at her chest and she steeled herself, immediately thinking the worst. What an idiot she’d been to believe that such an impossibly good man could ever be hers.
She was about to ask him to explain, when they heard a loud banging on the front door.
‘I bet you a pound to a penny that’s Amy back already! I told her to come to me if the old man started on her!’ She marched back down the passage and flung open the door.
‘Who is it?’ called Bertie from the kitchen.
There was a long pause before she called back.
‘It’s Elsie!’
22
She Didn’t Come for Me
November–December 1924
‘Get in here!’
Milly yanked her sister into the passage and slammed the door shut behind them. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and she felt trapped in the narrow confines of the passage.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘You didn’t come for me,’ said Elsie.
‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! What have you done?’
Elsie’s emaciated face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and beneath the shapeless asylum dress, her concave chest was heaving. Surely she couldn’t have run all the way from Kent? At that moment Bertie came out of the kitchen, paused for a beat and then whistled. ‘Strike me dumb, that’s crowned it,’ he said. ‘You’d better bring her in.’
As Elsie staggered forward, Bertie ran to catch her. He carried her into the kitchen, sitting her carefully in his chair, closest to the fire. She was trembling uncontrollably, little jerks visible as she tried to steady herself. He took off his cardigan and draped it round her bony shoulders.
Milly’s impulse to fire questions at the girl was held in check by Bertie’s small shake of the head. ‘All in good time. Let’s get her a drink, eh?’
Milly went silently to the kitchen, too shocked to even imagine how her sister had managed the twenty-mile journey from Stonefield on her own, when she’d only ever travelled outside of Bermondsey on the hoppers’ special. All the while she made tea, she could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock, punctuated by a low sobbing from Elsie and Bertie’s mumbled reassurances.
‘It’s all right, Elsie, you’re home now,’ he said, but Milly wanted to shout from the scullery that it was not all right, it was all wrong, and Elsie had a world of pain coming to her when they came to cart her back to the asylum again.
When she came in with the tea, Bertie was sitting opposite Elsie, her birdlike hand in his. ‘Drink your tea, duck, and tell us what happened,’ he coaxed as Elsie gripped his hand.
‘She didn’t come for me!’ She looked accusingly at Milly. ‘So I run away!’
Milly held her tongue and let Bertie prompt her sister.
‘But how did you get out in the first place?’
She gulped the tea and then held the cup out to Milly for more.
‘I was working in the garden with Bob. All day we was planting tulips and he was telling me about all the colours you can get: yellow and red, striped and even black. So
we finished all the beds and I was hungry, ’cause I can’t eat their grub and I didn’t want to go back in there because there’s a woman sleeps near me, keeps waking me up and saying I’m her baby and it upsets me. And I just sat down on the garden bench and I said to Bob, I think I’ll just sleep here tonight, and he looks at me funny. But Bob’s lovely, he never tells me off if I can’t do the gardening. Sometimes I just sit and watch him and he tells me all about collecting the seeds, so you have something for next year.’
Milly was about to jump in and hurry Elsie along, her nerves stretched to breaking point. She didn’t know how long they’d have before the police came knocking for her sister. But Bertie read her fidgets and gave her a look she’d come to understand. She sat back obediently, letting Elsie’s story tumble out. The clock ticked as Elsie slurped more tea, and Milly noticed her lips were cracked. She got up and went to the scullery, coming back with yet more tea, a plate of sliced bread and a bowl of dripping.
Elsie looked on hungrily while Milly spooned out the yellow fat and dark jelly, spreading it over the bread. She fell upon it as though she hadn’t eaten since she’d walked into Stonefield. After she’d wolfed it all down, she licked her fingers and stared into the fire.
‘If you’d come for me, I wouldn’t have had to run away,’ she said to the fire as it flickered and crackled. ‘Bob says to me, You don’t have to go back inside, Elsie. And then he gives me a shilling and says, You can get a forty-seven all the way to Tower Bridge, and you know your way home from there, don’t you? Just follow the river. And I said I did. Then he says, I’m going home now, Elsie, but I’m going out by the side garden gate and you can come and see me off. So I followed him to the little door in the wall, and he says goodnight and he goes... but he leaves the door open a crack. And after a bit I walked through it. I went to the first bus stop I could find and I asked the conductor if he was going to Tower Bridge and he said yes, so I give him the shilling, but he said it was too much and he didn’t have no change, so to keep the shilling.’ She dug into her apron pocket to produce the shilling. ‘So I sat on the bus for hours and hours, and when I see Tower Bridge and the river, I knew I was home.’