Billy swallowed. How to tell this pretty little girl that he was keeping out of the way of his drunken brother-in-law? Billy cleared his throat and responded uneasily to Alicia’s question, ‘I coom to see our Polly, only she’s busy, like. So I asked Mr Bittle if I could help ’im – to fill in the time, like. I hope your Dad won’t mind?’
‘I see.’ Alicia swung her skipping rope and continued down the path.
Though Billy dutifully handed his week’s earnings over to his brother-in-law, Mike, his life with Mary and her husband was, within a week of his father’s suicide, almost intolerable. Mike’s iron fists and vindictive temper became a menace to him, so he had found temporary refuge in the Woodmans’ garden.
On the second evening, Alicia paused to talk to him, as she passed him sitting on the steps. He was munching a large slice of bread which Polly had given him. He stood up immediately and took his cap off. She asked if he were going to help Mr Bittle weed that evening; Mr Bittle liked to get every scrap of weed out of the garden before the winter set in.
‘Yes, Miss. He said ’e’d be glad of help.’ He grinned shyly.
‘Well, I might as well get my sackcloth apron and help, too.’
Amused at having two volunteers, old Mr Bittle thankfully left them to kneel and weed, while he pruned.
II
Eight days after James’s suicide, his granddaughter, Theresa, Mary and Mike’s eldest daughter, gave birth to an illegitimate daughter, father unknown. As she lay on a straw mattress and shrieked with the pain of childbirth, her cries were, most of the day, almost drowned by the sounds of singing and raucous laughter in the court. A seaman had returned home with three months’ pay and his friends, including Mike, were busy drinking it away for him. A barrel of beer had been purchased and had been set up in a corner, and the stone flags of the court resounded to dancing boots.
As Mary worked with her daughter to speed the coming of the afterbirth, and the new baby squawked on its child-mother’s breast, the beer barrel became empty and the party began to break up. Mike’s unsteady tread could be heard in the downstairs room.
‘What the hell’s to do?’ he shouted up the stairs, as he heard the baby’s thin cry.
‘Our Theresa’s baby coom,’ his wife shouted back, as she eased a fresh wad of newspaper under her daughter’s buttocks.
‘Christ!’ Mike swung unsteadily into the tiny windowless bedroom. The smell of blood made him want to heave, as the afterbirth came clear. Behind him, Billy tried to peer round Mike’s back to see what was happening. He had never seen a human birth, though he had watched the horses foal in the warehouse stables.
‘Another bloody mouth to feed,’ Mike growled, anger against his daughter rising in him. ‘Haven’t you taught her enough to make her keep clear o’ the boys?’
‘Now, Mike, you know how she got the kid,’ Mary said in as soothing a voice as she could manage. ‘She can’t help it, with what she’s havin’ to do – and Father Gallagher frightened her so much, she wouldn’t swaller wot Auntie Kitty offered her to get rid of it.’
Bubbling with frustrated rage, unable to accept that his daughter walked the streets, he turned about and bumped into Billy.
‘Hm! Maybe she got it from nearer home,’ he snarled down at the boy. He seized Billy by the shoulder and shook him. ‘Eh?’
Billy cringed. ‘Me? I never touched ’er. I never bin with a woman yet.’ He tried to back down the narrow staircase. Mike gave him a push, and he turned and half tumbled, half stumbled, down the stairs. Mike came down after him.
If this one isn’t yours, the next one likely will be,’ he shouted suddenly, and clouted the staggering boy across the face.
Billy squealed.
Mary deserted Theresa and rushed down the stairs.
‘You leave our Billy alone, Mike. The lad’s only just past eleven! Don’t be daft.’
Billy tried to move towards the door. Mike lurched forward and caught him a stinging blow across the head. ‘You keep out o’ this,’ he yelled at his wife. ‘Months ago I seen him making eyes at her. He’ll get her again, for sure.’ Billy was caught in a corner of the room and whimpered helplessly, as he was struck again.
‘Mike!’ Mary caught his upraised arm and clung on to it. ‘You know how she got this kid. It weren’t Billy. I don’t know how we’d go on without her money.’
‘You sayin’ I don’t provide?’ The question was full of drunken outrage.
‘No, Mike!’ Mary dropped his arm and backed away from him. ‘But without wot she brings in, we’d not eat, many a time.’
In his furious frustration at their need for his daughter’s earnings, Mike forgot about Billy, and the boy slid noiselessly out of the open door into the court, where he stood panting against the blackened wall.
He heard Mary shriek, ‘No, Mike! No!’ and the thwack, as Mike hit her.
‘She’s no bloody good to anyone,’ Mike yelled back. ‘I’ll larn her to bring a brat to disgrace us – and I’ll larn you, too, you lazy bitch.’
As Mary began to scream steadily under Mike’s beating, Billy burst into tears. He felt his way through the now deserted court to the street and began to run.
III
He ran down into Great Homer Street and trotted aimlessly along it. Where could he go? What could he do? It was almost certain that Mary would not dare to take him in again. He had given his last week’s wages to Mike. He would have to work for nearly a week before he got any further wages, and he was already hungry. Tears made grubby lines down his face, as his feet thudded along the empty pavement and a fine rain began to soak through his clothes. His face throbbed and his teeth ached from the blows he had received. He was used to being trounced by the men with whom he worked, but nobody struck as hard as Mike did.
As darkness closed in, the public houses shut their doors and drunken groups began to roll slowly and unsteadily along the pavement. Billy became nervous for his immediate safety – drunks were not fussy if they found a boy, instead of a woman.
He hid himself in the dark doorway of a warehouse, huddled down and snivelled miserably. He longed despairingly for his mother.
Dare he go to Polly? What would her mistress say, if she heard him knocking on the back door in the middle of the night, even supposing the garden door leading to the alley were unlocked?
He wiped his nose on his sleeve. He decided that it did not matter how caustic Polly’s mistress turned out to be, Polly was the only person he could ask for help with any hope of getting it. He heaved himself to his feet and set out through the drizzling rain on the long hike to Upper Canning Street.
He was much too afraid to go to the front door of the house; nobody of his low origins ever set foot on a front doorstep. He tried the gate, which was the tradesmen’s entrance and opened on to a set of steps leading down to the front basement kitchen door. The cast-iron gate was locked and the spiked railings guarding the twelve-foot drop from the street did not encourage him to climb over.
He walked again down the street to the entrance to the back alleyway. Beyond the flickering gaslight at the entry, the darkness was so intense that, at first, his courage failed him. How was he going to find, in the dark, the correct, unnumbered, wooden back door?
Frustrated, he leaned his forehead against the unfriendly brick wall and cried again. He would have to wait until morning.
Behind him, on the pavement, he suddenly heard the measured tramp of heavy boots. The scuffer on the beat, he guessed. Fears of being arrested as a vagrant or for loitering with intent shot through his mind. As lightly as he could, he fled straight across the road and dived round a corner.
He found himself in a street of small shops and he crouched down in the darkest doorway he could find. The rain did not reach him there, and he dozed uncomfortably.
He was roused by the clip-clop of horses’ hooves and the rattle of drays, as milkmen and coalmen began their rounds. The rain had passed and the street shone in the early morning sun. He had little idea of time
, except that it was early, so he remained where he was, cramped and aching, until he heard a window being flung open and a woman’s voice from the shopkeeper’s flat above him.
Unsure of exactly where he was, he got up and stretched and then joined a growing number of people hurrying to work. Caught up in the crowd, he was soon lost.
In a desperate need to relieve himself, he turned into a back alley and thankfully paid a call against the wall. Then he went slowly back to the street he had left, to glance rather hopelessly up and down it. Finally, he stopped another youth, dressed as poorly as he was, to ask where Upper Canning Street was.
‘Oh, aye. You’re best off to come along o’ me. I work in Falkner Square garden.’
In their clumsy boots, they walked along together, and the gardener’s boy pointed out the side entry which led to the house’s back alley.
‘Ta, ever so,’ Billy said gratefully.
When he tried the door, it was bolted on the inside. He looked up at the ten-foot high brick wall guarding the garden; to deter thieves and vandals, it had great shards of glass embedded in the top.
‘Oh, Jaysus!’ he wailed.
He stared at the door’s unyielding woodwork and was just about to turn away, to see if the tradesmen’s entrance at the front was yet unlocked, when there was the sound of a woman’s quick step on the other side and the bolt was drawn back.
The door was opened, as if the woman were about to glance into the alley. Instead, she was faced with a small, but strong-looking youth.
‘Oh!’ she shrieked, and slammed the door in his face. He heard the bolt grating shut again.
He shouted, ‘Don’t be afraid, Missus. You know me. I’m Polly’s brother – Polly Tyson.’
‘Whoja say?’
‘Billy Tyson. I’m looking for me sister, Polly.’
The bolt once more squeaked open. Fanny put her head cautiously round the door, to take a good look at him. Then she opened the door wide. ‘Give me a proper fright, you did, standin’ there. I were lookin’ for the midden men.’ She surveyed his dusty rags of clothing, which looked even worse than usual after being soaked and then slept in in a doorway. ‘Coom in. You can sit on back step, like always. She’s up and layin’ breakfast for the Master. I’ll get ’er for you, though.’
Billy followed her up the garden path, past the pretty summer house and well-laid out flower beds, one or two roses still in bloom. To him, the garden always looked fit for the old Queen herself to sit in.
As they descended the steps into the brick-lined area surrounding the back door, Fanny said, ‘I’ll tell Mrs Tibbs you’re here and I’ll get Polly; but you’ll have to wait.’
Billy nodded and sat down on the steps still wet from rain. He shivered with the damp.
When Fanny opened the kitchen door, a delicious smell of frying pigs’ ears was emitted, and Billy could have cried again, this time with hunger.
Polly came hurrying out of the kitchen door, her face wrinkled with anxiety. ‘What’s to do?’ she asked.
He told her, and then went on, ‘I can’t go back, Pol. Mary’ll get it again, if I do – I’m sure of it.’ He looked at her imploringly.
Polly sighed. ‘I don’t know what to do for yez, luv. I really don’t. Nor for poor Mary neither.’ She clasped her arms across her breast, and looked round her in perplexity. Then she said, ‘See here. I got to serve the Master and take up the Mistress’s breakfast, and give Miss Alicia hers and get her ready for church – and I got to take her to church.’ She looked round, seeking somewhere dry for him to sit. ‘You sit on the loo here and wait for me.’ She opened the door of the servants’ lavatory, as she looked at her brother’s bruised face and bloodshot eyes. ‘You bin out all night?’
‘Aye.’
‘’Ve you got any money at all?’
‘No.’ He snuffled miserably.
‘Well, you stick here, and I’ll ask old Tibbs if she can spare a bit o’ porridge for yez.’
Used to Polly’s begging a little food for Mr Bittle’s helper, Mrs Tibbs splashed a ladle of thick porridge into an old soup bowl and pushed a tin spoon into it. She shoved it across the kitchen table to Polly. ‘I don’t know what the Master’s goin’ to say, if he ever finds out what I give that kid,’ she grumbled.
‘Ah, he won’t find out if you don’t tell ’im,’ Polly assured her. ‘Ta, Mrs Tibbs.’ She took the bowl out to her brother and then flitted silently back upstairs to the dining-room in time to hear Humphrey Woodman’s quick steps coming downstairs. ‘Send up porridge, quick,’ she panted down the blower to Mrs Tibbs. ‘’Is Nibs is comin’.’
While Mrs Tibbs prepared Elizabeth Woodman’s boiled egg and thin bread and butter and tea, Polly came out to the area carrying her own bowl of porridge. Billy opened the lavatory door as she put the dish on the step. She ran back into the kitchen, to return with two big mugs of tea drawn from the enamelled teapot on the back of the kitchen range. ‘There’s lots of sugar and milk in it,’ she told her brother with a smile, as she handed him one. A small grin relaxed his pinched face, before he eagerly gulped down the hot drink.
Polly leaned against the door jamb of the lavatory, as she began to shovel porridge hastily into her mouth. She said, ‘I bin thinkin’ what to do, and what I think is that you should go to Great-aunt Kitty. She’s only got one little room, but she’d never deny you a corner to sleep – and she might be glad to have a strong lad with her at her age. You can give her your wages for your keep. It’ll keep you out of the workhouse or an ’ome.’
It was an idea that had not occurred to Billy, but he looked uneasily at Polly, as he replied, ‘She’s a witch.’
Polly laughed. ‘Not her. She’s an old, old woman wot knows a lot, that’s all. She’s not even off ’er chump, like some old biddies. Remember how gentle she was with Mam?’
Billy reluctantly nodded agreement; she’d been gentle with him, too.
‘She might be able to think up somethin’ better for you. I don’t know what – but she might. She knows everybody.’
The tea and porridge restored Billy’s spirits a little. And Polly’s suggestion at least gave him hope of avoiding the workhouse – God and his Angels preserve him from that. Nevertheless, Great-aunt Kitty was uncanny – she seemed to know what you were going to do, even before you thought of it yourself!
‘Think she’ll do it?’
‘Sure she will. What else, anyway? And mind you go to work come Monday.’
He laughed suddenly, and gave her a playful nudge. ‘You sound just like Mam.’
Then, at the memory of his tart, capable mother, his face fell and he looked down at his boots. There was a silence between them.
Polly gave a tremulous sigh. ‘Poor Mam,’ she said.
She rummaged in her skirt pocket and brought out a six-pence, which she handed to Billy. ‘Here’s a tanner to help you out, duck,’ she added more briskly. ‘I got to get back to me work – there’s Mrs Tibbs callin’ me.’ She picked up the mugs and porridge plates from the steps. ‘Away, now. Give me love to Auntie, and tell ’er as I told you to come to ’er.’
IV
Though Great-aunt Kitty was surprised she was not displeased to see Billy at her door. He told her that Polly had sent him. She grasped his elbow with long, bony fingers and drew him into her tiny, foetid room.
‘Coom in, and tell me what’s to do,’ she invited, in her high-pitched, cracked voice. ‘Like a cuppa tea?’
Without waiting for a reply, she pushed him towards a wooden settle and then picked up a pair of bellows from the hearth and inserted them at the base of a few embers in her fireplace. She blew the embers into tiny flame, then added a few small pieces of coal to them and plunked a sooty kettle on top. She pushed an indolent black cat off a rocking chair and sat down herself. The cat stalked over to Billy and sniffed at him.
Billy shuddered and recoiled slightly from it, movements noted with amusement by his great-aunt. Tea won’t be long,’ she assured him. ‘It’s not that old.’
The cat sat down opposite Billy and yawned. It seemed to Billy that it was looking through him with its great green eyes; a real witch’s cat.
He jumped when Kitty got up suddenly and went to a wall cupboard. She opened it, to reveal a surprisingly large store of food for one so poor and elderly. She took down a loaf and a piece of cheese and put them on the table, together with a bottle of whisky. With a knife which looked like a dagger to a nervous Billy, she cut a big slice of bread and then a slice of cheese to put on top of it. ‘’Ere you are, duck,’ she said, as she handed it to him.
With his mouth full, Billy began to relax and he told her about Theresa’s child and her father’s rage.
‘Aye, I saw Theresa when I were with your Mam; I know’d the kid were about due. And I know Theresa’s on the game. She should’ve done wot I told her; then she wouldn’t have had to ’ave it.’ She paused to reflect, while Billy watched her over his slice of bread and cheese. Then she said, ‘Anyways, Mary should’ve called me to help with the lyin’-in. Mike wouldn’t ’ve touched either of ’em, if I’d bin there.’
Billy swallowed his current mouthful of bread with a gulp, as he again shivered. He had no doubt that Great-aunt Kitty, with her unearthly powers, could stop Mike dead, if she wanted to.
The old lady took the kettle off the fire and poured the reboiled tea into two tin mugs, one of which she handed to Billy; the other she laid on the hob to keep warm for herself. She slopped some milk from a milkcan into both mugs and followed it with generous spoonfuls of sugar from a tin. Then she offered the boy another slice of bread which, despite his timorousness, he accepted eagerly.
He wondered how she managed to have such a handsomely full food cupboard, though the rest of her room looked as skint as that of a family the day before payday, when everything pawnable would have been pawned.
Great-aunt Kitty was, in fact, a busy woman. Like many elderly women, she was in demand to help to deliver infants or nurse the sick or lay out the dead, for which she was paid a little either in cash or in food. Her main income came, however, from moneylending, illegal lending to hard-pressed housewives in nearby streets. She would lend them sixpence on a Monday, provided they paid her back eightpence on the following Saturday, when most of them got their housekeeping money from their husbands. The women were enormously grateful to her. She enjoyed their goodwill until they fell behind with their payments and she arrived like an angry raven on their doorsteps to collect. Knowing the borrowers’ ignorance of the law she frightened them with threats of Court proceedings, or, more practically, with the wrath of their husbands if she told tales of the wives’ borrowing. If they failed to pay her, even after being solemnly cursed with gruesome maledictions, she still made a tremendous profit from those who did meet their obligations.
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