by Mary Gibson
Late one August evening, after a day of torrential rain, he came hobbling through the front door and collapsed into his chair in the kitchen. As Milly eased off his shoes, what was left of the paper soles came away in a soaking, red-stained pulp. His feet were bleeding.
‘Oh, my poor Bertie, why didn’t you pay the tuppence for a bloody tram!’
She preferred anger to the alternative, which was to wet his feet with her tears. She turned up the legs of his trousers. ‘Sit there and don’t move!’ she ordered and ran for a basin of water from the scullery. When she came back, she was surprised he’d obeyed her. He hadn’t moved, but he had his head in his hands, and when she lifted his chin she was shocked to see his face wet with tears. She gathered him into her arms. She knew it wasn’t for the pain in his feet that he wept, but for the anguish of not being able to provide for his family.
‘Don’t worry, Bertie, darlin’. We’ll manage, love, don’t get yourself so upset.’ But he seemed inconsolable, trying to hide his tears yet unable to stop them flowing, as though all the months of pretending had caught up with him in this one day.
Eventually his shaking shoulders were still and he pulled out a handkerchief. ‘Sorry, Mill, didn’t mean to cry in front of you.’
‘Don’t be a soppy ’apporth, Bertie. I’m your wife.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t – not normally. But it’s upset me today, and not just because of coming home with no job. It’s that so-called family of mine!’
She’d never told him of his cousin’s insulting behaviour towards her, at least not while he was awake, but for a moment she thought he might have found out.
‘Why, what’ve they done now?’ she asked fearfully.
‘I thought I’d have another go in Dulwich, the rain come on and I got soaked through, and the damn boot soles melted. I must have walked around in it for another couple of hours, but my feet were killing me. So when I found myself back in Dulwich High Street I thought I’d have to get a tram home, but I didn’t have a penny in my pocket. I shouldn’t have done it, but I was so tired and I didn’t think I could walk another step. I was passing Uncle’s shop, so I went in and he gave me the cold shoulder, didn’t expect much else. But then I said I didn’t have the money to get home and could he lend me tuppence for the tram. He could see the state of my feet, and you know what? He wouldn’t even give me tuppence out of the till! I’ve never felt so worthless in all my life. I just turned round and walked out. I wish now I had more of your fight in me, Milly. I would have liked to knock his block off. You would have done!’
Her heart bled for Bertie then, but she knew now was not the time to shower him with sympathy. His strength was in his principles, not his muscles, and to her way of thinking, that was a far superior strength than her own.
‘Now listen to me, Bertie Hughes, you’re not worthless. You’re a better man than I’ll ever be!’
He looked at her for a long minute, then lifted his eyebrow, a smile played around his mouth, and realizing what she’d said, she threw her head back and laughed. They both roared till they were breathless and their tears of sadness had been replaced by tears of laughter.
28
The Slut on the Stairs
September 1926
Milly suspected that Bertie’s chances of finding another job were diminishing daily, and she decided there was nothing for it but to seek out another source of income herself. A full day at Southwell’s and weekends taken up with sewing or selling her clothes meant that her options were limited, but she would think of something. She was preoccupied as she manoeuvred her way through the crowd of women arriving in the picking room and was almost at her station before she saw Kitty, already dressed in overall and mob cap, sharpening her stoning knife.
‘You’re back!’ Milly wrapped her arms round her bird-boned friend.
‘Thanks to you! Whatever you said to Tom finally worked. He came and got me himself!’
Milly picked up her own knife and began sharpening it on the long strop they kept by the conveyer belt. ‘I just told him that we was losing orders to Hartley’s! He did the rest. He’s a good bloke, Tom.’
‘Mum’ll be jumping for joy when I get home. She was getting worried about the rent, but we’ll be all right now.’
‘Talking of your mum, can you ask her to do me a favour?’
‘’Course, what is it?’
‘Bertie’s having no luck... I think I’ll have to go cleaning and I was wondering if your mum would put in a word for me?’
Kitty’s mother worked as an office cleaner in the City, leaving home in the early hours to clean banks and offices before the hordes of city workers began filing across London Bridge. The pay was poor, but it was an ideal job to combine with bringing up a large family. Milly reckoned if she left at four in the morning, she’d have just enough time to do a couple of hours’ cleaning before the morning shift at Southwell’s.
Kitty agreed to ask her mother, and the following Monday Milly found herself, before dawn, walking at a brisk pace across London Bridge, with Mrs Bunclerk at her side. A full moon still rode above the skein of river mist, and a cold wind whipped down the Thames. Milly breathed into the scarf wrapped up around her ears, grateful for the brief warmth on her cheeks.
Mrs Bunclerk had found her a job at a large insurance office and had agreed to show her the ropes. Milly guessed there wouldn’t be much to it, just lots of elbow grease and buckets of water, and she was confident she’d have the stamina for it. But she’d gone through hell with Bertie, trying to persuade him to let her do it. In the end she’d had to pretend it was as a favour to Mrs Bunclerk, who couldn’t keep up with the workload. Milly was glad she wasn’t alone. It would help to know what the supervisor liked, whether she checked every skirting board and door top, or if she was the sort who would let them skimp. Right now, she was just eager to get to Gracechurch Street and out of the biting wind.
The damp September mornings had begun to smell of woodsmoke, and this early rising in the chilly dark reminded her of hopping mornings. She could never think of those mornings without an aching longing, tinged with regret. So Mrs Bunclerk’s homely chatter cheered her, and soon the stone-faced, many-windowed insurance office came into view.
‘This is it, love, nothing special, though to hear some of them insurance brokers when they come in of a morning, you’d think it was Buckingham Palace. They let you know if you’ve not done the brass right, I’ll tell you that for nothink! Though their own houses is probably shit’oles.’
As she’d never met an insurance broker in her life, she couldn’t argue with Mrs Bunclerk’s opinion of them. Her only experience of insurance was Mr Allcot, who collected her mother’s penny policy money, and had always been a very polite man. Every week he’d taken the money, filled in the book and stayed for a cup of tea, if the old man wasn’t at home. Sometimes as a child, Milly would sit under the table, listening to his sonorous voice as he sipped tea, discussing with her mother the goings on in Arnold’s Place, and she would close her eyes and wish Mr Allcot was her father. She found herself wondering if any of the insurance brokers in this place would be like him, but from Mrs Bunclerk’s repeated warnings to make sure all the cleaning was done before they arrived, she doubted it.
‘They like to have it clean, but they don’t want to know how it’s done, you see, love. Bit like my husband, come to that!’ And Mrs Bunclerk gave a barking laugh, which rattled in her chest.
The supervisor gave Milly the job of cleaning all the back stone staircases and when that was done, she was to finish up with the front steps leading to the brass-studded double entrance doors. She began at the top, with her bucket of soapy water and scrubbing brush, working her way laboriously down the six flights. Whenever she needed clean water she had to return to the basement to fill the bucket and, by the time she’d done two flights, her kneecaps were bruised and chafed. After an hour, Kitty’s mother had finished her job and was going off to a large bank in Broad Street to do another hour there.
/>
‘I’ve got to get a move on, love. You be all right getting home on your own?’
Milly dropped the scrubbing brush into the soapy water and pushed back a strand of hair with her wet hands.
‘Oh, I’ll be fine, thanks, Mrs Bunclerk.’
‘Just make sure you’re finished before seven. That’s when the early birds get in. Bye, love!’
And Milly was left alone in the echoing back staircase, with still another flight left to clean. She started on the front steps at quarter past six, but she was certain she’d be finished before half past six and back home by seven. She hadn’t, however, counted on the white stone, which the supervisor said she would have to use on the front steps. Grinding the wet stone on to the steps until they were returned to their pristine whiteness proved a laborious, back-breaking task. The early sun was still low, and she was scouring away, head down, elbows out, backside up, when the elongated shadow of a man rippled over the sun-gilded steps. She didn’t like to look up. She’d been told to be invisible, so perhaps if she just kept grinding the stone, the shadow would simply pretend she wasn’t there. A long, pinstriped trousered leg, ending in a black patent shoe, arched over her head, quickly followed by a second leg. It was as if some gigantic spider had stepped carefully over an ant. It appeared she had been ignored, but as she glanced up at the retreating, suited figure, she saw him stop in the vestibule, and loudly address the porter who had just come on duty.
‘Jones, I’ve just had to step over the slut on the stairs! Could you get rid of her before the chairman arrives?’
‘Of course, sir,’ the porter replied softly, and Milly flushed as she saw him approaching her.
She would have liked to take the bucket of dirty water and tip it over the broker’s bowler hat. Instead she stood up and listened, cheeks flaming, as the porter told her, not unkindly, to finish up sharpish and be quicker tomorrow.
Walking back over London Bridge, she was dimly aware of the sky, enamelled in gold, turquoise and ruby red. Some retreating part of her recognized its beauty, but instead of enjoying the river’s expansive skies as she once would, she found herself trapped on those stone stairs, frozen in time, while the broker insulted her over and over again, seeing not a wife, not a mother, not a daughter, seeing nothing but ‘the slut on the stairs’.
She was still replaying the scene when she got home. Bertie had the children ready for her mother’s and they set off together. She said nothing to him of her mortifying morning, but he knew her too well.
‘You don’t look so chirpy this morning. Was it hard work?’
She knew he’d be glad of any excuse to dissuade her from office cleaning, but much as she’d like to, she couldn’t afford to give him one.
‘No more than picking a dozen bushel of hops,’ she lied.
As she pushed the pram, he carried Jimmy, but encircled her with his free arm. ‘You’ve got to be the most beautiful char in the City,’ he said softly, leaning in to kiss her cheek.
‘Bertie, in the street!’ she protested, but was secretly pleased.
In her old charring clothes or the hideous green Southwell’s overalls, she felt plain, ugly even. Perhaps that was why she found such pleasure in the clothes she created. They might be made of cheap materials, but she had the means to make something lovely out of her imagination, and for Milly it was always like breathing fresh Kentish air when she took up her needle and thread.
‘When did you start getting so respectable?’ he asked, pretending to be rebuffed.
‘When I married up.’ She pulled a wry face and Bertie raised his eyebrows.
‘Strike me dumb,’ he said, chuckling, and gave her another squeeze.
When they reached Arnold’s Place Bertie joined the stream of other casuals heading for Butler’s Wharf, ready to try their luck in the daily scrum for a day’s work. If Bertie could barge or elbow his way to the front, when the dock foreman threw the work tickets in the air, he might be lucky enough to catch one. But he had no sway with the gangers, no favours to call in; it would all be down to brute force and luck. She watched him as he disappeared round the corner, his familiar swinging walk, hand in one pocket, trilby hat slightly tipped, his three-piece suit, worn but still neat. He was a grocer, not a docker, she concluded, and she was his wife, not a slut on the stairs, but hard times bred hard choices and they simply could not be all that they would like to be. If she’d been seeing Jimmy off on his first day at school, she couldn’t have been more anxious.
A cry from Marie drew her attention.
‘All right, all right, don’t fuss. We’re nearly at your nanny’s!’
‘See Amy!’ Jimmy joined in.
‘Yes, we’ll see Amy too,’ she said, turning the pram towards her mother’s house.
When they arrived, Amy threw open the front door. ‘Hello, pickle!’ She lifted Jimmy from the pram and waved a letter in front of Milly. ‘We’ve got our letter!’
Milly felt her heart sink. Her mother and Amy would go to Horsmonden and that meant her children would have to go away with them.
‘Oh, that’s good!’ She feigned enthusiasm, knowing how anxiously they’d been waiting for the farmer’s letter. As Milly struggled to get Marie out of the pram, the disappointment on her face must have been obvious, for Amy gave her a rare hug.
‘Sorry you can’t come too, Mill,’ she said.
Milly was stunned. Never, in all their years down hopping, had Amy shown the slightest pleasure at her presence. Hard times might breed hard choices, but sometimes they held surprises too. Maybe it was just that Amy was growing up. At almost thirteen, she’d be starting work soon, though she’d already told Milly she wouldn’t go near Southwell’s.
‘I don’t think I can stand smelling of strawberry jam and marmalade like you,’ she’d said to Milly one day. ‘When I start work, I’m going to Atkinson’s!’
As far as Milly was concerned there wasn’t much difference, but Atkinson’s cosmetics factory was considered ‘clean’ work. She supposed it was better to smell of ‘California Poppy’ than strawberry jam, but either way it would be repetitive factory work.
‘How did you get on, office cleaning?’ her mother asked as soon as they were in the kitchen. ‘Bet it was blowy, going over that bridge first thing!’
Milly forced a smile. ‘It was all right.’
‘Perhaps I should come too,’ her mother said tentatively. ‘I should be paying my way.’
‘No! You’ve got enough to do looking after my kids all day. No!’ she repeated sternly. After this morning’s experience, this was something she wouldn’t give in to. ‘We’re managing all right, and Bertie might get called on today.’
‘Poor feller, he was made for better things, wasn’t he?’
‘He’s the same as any man, Mum. He’ll do anything to earn a bob or two. He can’t be fussy; none of us can,’ Milly said, remembering the long leg stepping over her on the office steps that morning.
Bertie stood at the dock gates all morning, but wasn’t called on. In the afternoon he hung about with a crowd of other hopefuls, but when the light failed, he came home having earned not a penny. He did this every day for a week, each day returning a little more defeated, a little less buoyant, until finally Milly couldn’t stand to see him diminishing in front of her eyes. In the early hours of Friday morning her mother had taken the children on the hoppers’ special to Horsmonden, and when Bertie came home that evening the house felt empty. They sat together after tea, in silence, she sewing and Bertie flicking through the job section of the paper, each pretending to be busy, each silently occupied by their shared worries. As Milly pictured Jimmy, tucked up cosily on the straw pallet in the hopping hut, an idea occurred to her.
‘Bertie, I’m thinking there is a way you can earn a bit of money. Why don’t you go down hopping with Mum? You could help her pick, or you might get work as a pole-puller?’
He looked up from his paper, not answering for a while. Perhaps this was one step down too far. Only the poorest
of the poor went hop-picking. He would be further than he’d ever been from his middle-class Dulwich relatives. He folded the paper.
‘But you’d be all on your own here.’
She smiled. ‘I’ll come down at weekends, on the lorry – with the husbands!’
He simply raised an eyebrow and Milly knew that, without even a battle, it had been decided; Bertie would go to the hop fields. That weekend, Milly went with him in Freddie’s lorry. Sitting together on the back board, crammed with visiting husbands, boxes and beer crates, Milly looked at Bertie for any sign of discontent.
‘Bit different from Uncle’s van,’ she said searchingly. ‘It’ll seem strange, not to be bringing down the groceries.’
He gave her a knowing look. ‘Surely you don’t think I’m too proud? The only thing I’m ashamed of, Milly, is not being able to support my family. No, it’s honest work.’ He leaned back against the side board, looking genuinely happy. ‘And at least I’ll be earning something for us at last.’
When they passed the turn-off to their special place high above Horsmonden, where he’d proposed, he reached for her hand and smiled. ‘I don’t care whether I’m pole-pulling or selling sugar, I’ve got you, and that’s all that matters to me.’
She put her arm through his and reached up to kiss him, drawing whistles from the men, but she didn’t care.