She would find herself work outside the home. Her heart beat faster, colour staining her sallow cheeks. Thanks to her education at Miss Bainbridge’s Academy she wasn’t a total dunce, even if she’d never grasped higher arithmetic and the rudiments of French and Italian as well as Sophy. Perhaps she could apply for the post of a librarian or train to be a schoolmistress, and in the meantime, which would soften the blow for her parents at the thought of their daughter taking up employment, she could do voluntary work at the Sunderland Royal Infirmary or maybe the Eye Infirmary in Stockton Road. She had always been fascinated by what she had read about Florence Nightingale and the work she had undertaken in the Crimean War. Whatever, she wasn’t going to waste another day of her life. If Sophy could brave leaving Southwick altogether with next to nothing, then she could take this step. This day was a new beginning for them both.
The fire was now crackling and burning brightly in the heavily carved fireplace, Molly having long since left the room, and Patience walked over to the flames and held out her cold hands. But she wasn’t feeling cold inside. Suddenly she felt she had been presented with new possibilities, a direction to her life she would never have considered but for Sophy’s departure, and she wasn’t going to let anything or anyone change her mind.
The boys would back her. She nodded mentally to the thought. They knew full well what her mother was like and how miserable she’d been of late. Yes, they would speak up for her if necessary, but with or without them, she was going to do this.
The tall clock tower of Sunderland Central station could be seen from most of the town, and when Sophy set her eyes on it after crossing the Wearmouth Bridge, it drew her like a magnet. Suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do, and excitement briefly banished the sick, lost feeling she’d felt since the day before. It wasn’t just the truth about her mother which had caused her to feel she was floundering in an alien world but the fact that the man she had thought of as her father – the tall, handsome Frenchman with amber eyes and black hair and a warm smile – had only existed in her imagination. Her mother had been unmarried and her father could have been any one of a number of men, according to her aunt; there was no way she could ever know, and the secret dream that she’d carried in her heart, that one day she would try and find her father’s relatives in France was over. She was illegitimate. ‘Scum’, as her aunt had called her. That’s what people would think if they knew the truth about her beginnings.
She was one of the first of the early morning passengers when she entered the station by the main entrance off High Street West just after six o’clock. She stopped on the left of an archway by the weighing machine, wondering how best to proceed. She had never travelled by train before or even entered the railway station, although she knew the great iron-framed glass roof was a marvel.
She had only been standing there for a minute or two when a young couple with a little boy came into the station, the child immediately declaring he wanted a turn on the weighing machine and then a gadget whereby you could stamp out your name and other details on a metal tag. The mother, who seemed somewhat harassed, gave in to the child’s demands without protest, and once the boy was satisfied, Sophy followed them and did what they did at the ticket office, where she was asked her destination by the cheerful little man with his peaked cap.
She took a deep breath and then spoke clearly and firmly. ‘London, please.’
Chapter 9
Sophy stood staring about her. The attic room at the top of the four-storey terraced house in one of the maze of streets in Holborn was dark and grimy, the only daylight coming through a tiny window which was so filthy it was impossible to see out. The bare floorboards were devoid of even a humble clippy mat, the open fireplace hadn’t been cleaned in years, and the pervading smell – a mixture of damp, age and old man’s pee – had her stomach turning. A single iron bed with a heavily stained flock mattress stood against one wall, a small square wooden table with two hardbacked chairs against another, and on the shelf above the table sat a kettle, a couple of pots and a frying pan, and an oil lamp. A piece of wood with a number of hooks nailed into it had been fixed on to the wall next to the window.
‘See that there.’ The landlady pointed to a large black hook which could swing out from the grate over the fire. ‘You can put your pots on that an’ cook for yourself if you’ve a mind, and the kettle boils in no time on the steel shelf at the back of the fire. The lav’s in the yard along with the washhouse an’ tap.’
Sophy nodded. She couldn’t have spoken at that moment.
‘Old Mr Ferry, bless him, he lived here for years after his wife died. No trouble, he was. But being eighty odd, the stairs were too much for him in the end.’
‘He – died here?’ Sophy looked askance at the bed.
‘Died in this room? Dear oh dear, lovey, whatever put that in your head? No, he’s gone to live with his married daughter in Paddington, somewhere between the railway and the canal, he said. Mind, that isn’t an area I’d want one of my daughters living in, I can tell you. Slums mostly, and with all sorts of goings-on once it’s dark, if you know what I mean.’
Sophy wondered what this street and the ones around it were, if not slums. But she couldn’t afford to be choosey. Since arriving at King’s Cross station three days ago she had been staying in a small guesthouse close to the station while she got her bearings, but at three shillings a night for bed, breakfast and evening meal, she’d quickly realised she had to find inexpensive lodgings somewhere or the rest of her money would be swallowed up in no time.
‘Well, lovey, do you want the room or not?’ The landlady folded her arms over her dirty pinny. ‘It’s a week’s rent in advance, mind. Two bob it is, an’ that’s a bargain. It’s an extra tanner a week for the rooms down below, but they’re a bit bigger, mind. Still, it’s only you, isn’t it, so this should suit you fine.’
Sophy looked again at the soiled mattress. ‘Could you arrange to have that taken away? I – I shall be bringing my own mattress, thank you.’
The landlady nodded, the man’s pipe that was sticking out of the corner of her mouth bobbing. ‘I’ll get my Jim to see to it, dearie. When do you want to move in?’
‘Would tomorrow be convenient?’
Again the pipe bobbed. ‘If you don’t mind me asking, lovey, what’s a girl like you doing in this neck of the woods?’
Sophy looked into the lined face which seemed quite kindly under its coating of grime. ‘I’m – I’m going to be an actress.’
‘An actress, is it?’ Dolly Heath surveyed the strikingly lovely young woman in front of her and shook her head slowly. ‘I thought as much. Run away from home, have you? Don’t bother to deny it, dearie, I’ve seen it all before. When a slip of a girl talks like you do and dresses nice, ten to one she’s got a notion she wants to go on the stage. Did you leave under your own steam or did they throw you out?’
Sophy hesitated for a moment. ‘There was a row and I left,’ she said, which was true enough, just not the whole truth.
‘And where’s home?’
‘In the north.’
‘Well, this ain’t the north, dearie, and I hate to say it but they’ll eat you alive, given half a chance. I think you and me better have a little chat once you’ve moved in or it’ll be a lamb to the slaughter.’
Sophy didn’t know what to say. After a moment she fumbled in her bag and gave the landlady her first week’s rent. ‘Could I call back in a little while and’ – she wondered how to put it – ‘sort things out a bit?’ She needed to scrub the room from top to bottom with a great deal of carbolic soap for a start, and then tackle the fireplace and clean the window. And she would whitewash the walls. If she bought some coal and lit a fire once she’d blackleaded the fireplace, everything would dry quicker. But getting rid of the smell was the first priority.
‘You do what you want. Here’ – the landlady gave her the key to the door – ‘it’s your place now, as long as you pay the rent on time. I don’t p
ut up with no shirkers. An’ the front door’s always unlocked, all right?’
‘Thank you.’ Sophy looked about her again, hiding her dismay at her new home. And then she metaphorically rolled up her sleeves. The sooner she went out and bought the cleaning materials, the sooner she could make a difference.
By the time she left the building later that night to get back to the guesthouse in time for her evening meal, the room was smelling sweeter and was cleaner than it had been in years. Everything had taken far longer than she had hoped and she hadn’t had time to whitewash the walls, but she could do that tomorrow once she was in residence. She had decided she couldn’t afford another night at the guesthouse; the cost of her train ticket and the subsequent three shillings a night had depleted her money enough as it was. She needed to conserve every penny she could.
When she let herself into her new abode the next day and dumped her valise and bag on the floor, she was pleased to find that the only odour was one of carbolic soap, and the view from the tiny window over a sea of rooftops was as clear as day, thanks to the elbow grease she’d applied to the glass. She stood for a moment looking around her. Mrs Heath’s husband had come and disposed of the disgusting mattress the day before and she had washed the bedstead, so now she needed to buy a new mattress. She had no idea of the cost or where to go. After locking the door again, she went downstairs and knocked on the door at the back of the house where Mrs Heath lived.
‘Oh hello, dearie.’ Mrs Heath was dressed in a shapeless dressing gown, her hair in a net and her feet encased in what looked like men’s slippers. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I wondered if you could help me? Could you suggest a good place for bedding and a mattress, and I need to get a couple of other things while I’m about it.’ Sophy tried not to wrinkle her nose. A waft of air full of the smell of cabbage, pipe-smoke and something similar to what had been upstairs surrounded the landlady as she stood in the doorway.
‘You want to see our Arnold – that’s our eldest. He’s done right nicely for himself, has Arnold. Owns Heath’s Emporium, down near the market, and does a roaring trade in second-hand stuff and not rubbish either.’
Sophy didn’t want the landlady to think she was going to be one of the shirkers she’d spoken about yesterday, but felt she ought to make her position clear. ‘I can’t afford much,’ she said quietly. ‘Not till – till I get employment.’
Dolly nodded. She had warmed to this young girl with the beautiful face and hauntingly sad eyes. She dare bet there was a story to this one. ‘Tell you what, lovey. Give me ten minutes an’ I’ll come along with you to our Arnold’s and we’ll see what he’s got. All right?’
It was bitterly cold and there was the smell of snow in the air as they walked along Endell Street and then Betterton Street, crossing Drury Lane. Heath’s Emporium didn’t look half as grand as its name when Dolly stopped outside a ramshackle shop at the end of Macklin Street. They had passed numerous snotty-nosed, barefoot children on the way, children with eyes too big for their faces and dressed in an assortment of rags from head to foot. Somehow, on the train coming south, Sophy had imagined London would be full of smartly dressed, well-to-do, fashionable folk, but even as she had stepped off the train in King’s Cross she’d realised her naivety from the number of urchins begging for a penny from passengers or trying to sell them matches. And her three or four days of exploring parts of the city since had shown her depths of squalor to equal anything in the worst parts of Sunderland.
Arnold turned out to be a female version of his mother, and his wife a small, dumpy woman with a couple of little tots hanging on to her skirts, who immediately clamoured to get to Dolly. When Dolly explained the reason for their visit, emphasising that Sophy didn’t have a farthing to throw around and that she’d promised Sophy her lad would see her all right, Arnold smiled at his mother, revealing a mouth full of blackened teeth. ‘Never have any profits if it was left to you, would I,’ he said affectionately, before turning to Sophy. ‘What is it you’re after, love?’
The emporium turned out to be an Aladdin’s Cave, albeit a dusty, higgledy-piggledy one, selling a wide variety of goods. Amazingly, in all the chaos, Arnold seemed to know exactly where he could put his finger on any one item. With no trouble at all he produced a new-looking, stain-free flock mattress from amongst a pile of items at the very rear of the shop, along with a selection of sheets and blankets and a very nice plump eiderdown. ‘All came from a house clearance the other week,’ he told them. ‘Spinster lady, very clean and tidy. Want to see any more of her stuff?’
By the time Sophy left the shop she had bought the mattress and bedding, a thick hearthrug which would cover a good part of her little room, two flock cushions for the hardbacked chairs and a pair of bright yellow curtains for the window. Arnold had thrown in an old coal-scuttle, a knife, fork and spoon, a dinner plate and a mug. Sophy had been drawn to a small pink armchair in faded velvet but not only could she not afford it, it would barely have fitted into her small attic room. Arnold had only charged her six shillings for the lot, which even Sophy knew was a bargain, but he’d assured her he would make up his money with some of the other goods from the spinster’s house which were all in excellent condition. He was going to deliver all the items after close of work, which for him meant ten or eleven o’clock, but Sophy was pleased about that as it meant she should have time to whitewash the walls and perhaps even get them dry if she lit a fire as soon as she got home.
Home. She savoured the word as she and Dolly walked back towards Endell Street. And ridiculously, the little room felt like home already, probably due to Dolly’s kindness. She had seen several landladies over the last days and one or two had actually frightened her, and all the rooms had been too expensive anyway. She had already discovered that everything was more costly here than up north. Lamp oil was double the price at sixpence a quart, and candles a third more at sevenpence a pound. Even the piece of soap the shopkeeper had cut for her from a big bar had cost a penny; she could have had two pieces for that in Southwick. Half her money had gone already. She would have to concentrate on finding work now she had found somewhere to stay.
She had read the papers in the lounge of the hotel and made a list of all the theatres, deciding she would write to the managers asking for an interview over the next week or so. One thing she was absolutely decided on was that she didn’t intend to work the halls. She wanted to be an actress, a serious actress.
It was only last year that Henry Irving, the actor-manager of the Lyceum, had been knighted, and she remembered reading an article at that time in one of the newspapers Jessica had smuggled into the dormitory. The reporter had stated that in one fell swoop the theatre had risen above the music halls and had become respectable, and middle-class children who had been taken to the matinées at the Prince of Wales and had performed in endless drawing-room amateur dramatics, would now contemplate acting as a career. This would be particularly true of girls, the reporter had gone on with a touch of disapproval. Young ladies had always been taught that women should be humble and obedient, and that ambition and independence were unfeminine attributes, but on the stage they could see women expressing passion and achieving fame. This was a double-edged sword, and might encourage women’s suffrage – a dangerous notion, he had finished darkly.
‘Here we are, dear.’ Dolly interrupted her thoughts, and Sophy realised they were home. ‘Would you like a nice cup of tea before you go upstairs? If I know my Jim, there’ll be a pot on the go. Loves his cuppa, he does.’
When Sophy entered the quarters of the landlady she found Jim with his feet up in front of the range and a big fat cat purring on his lap. The kitchen-cum-living area was large, much bigger than Sophy had expected, and a portion of the room had been divided into what was obviously the Heaths’ bedroom, with a big brass bed and wardrobe against the far wall. A curtain had been strung up to separate the bedroom area from the living area but this was only partially closed, and Sophy could see another t
wo cats lying on top of the quilted eiderdown that covered the bed. The room was terribly overcrowded and more than a little smelly, but Jim beamed a welcome at them and Dolly pushed her down in the other armchair in front of the range, and Sophy felt herself relax. They were nice, this couple. She had been lucky to end up here. And then, for some strange reason, she had a great desire to cry.
She didn’t, of course. She accepted her cup of tea and a piece of fruit cake thankfully – she hadn’t eaten since the previous evening – and listened while Dolly told her about her twelve children and eighteen grandchildren and all their doings. After another cup of tea and an even larger chunk of cake – Dolly had noticed how quickly the first piece had gone – Sophy made her goodbyes and went upstairs to begin work.
The first thing she did was to light the fire. The little room was as cold as ice and it had begun to snow outside, big feathery flakes that swirled and danced outside the window. She had only purchased one small sack of coal and a bag of wood bits the day before, and she had barely been able to lug that up the three flights of stairs. In one way she thought it was lovely that she was tucked away all by herself at the top of the house, but the day-to-day practicalities of living in the attic room would be daunting for anyone less fit than herself. How old Mr Ferry had managed, she didn’t know.
It took her the rest of the day to painstakingly whitewash the walls and ceiling, and by the time she had finished her arm was aching fit to drop off. But the effect was dramatic. Suddenly her tiny home was brighter, and when she lit the oil lamp as it got dark, the white walls reflected the light. By standing on the little table and stretching to her full extent she had managed to reach the top of the walls and then the ceiling, but as she put the last stroke to the ceiling – she had painted the walls first as she wanted them to dry before bedtime – the crick in her neck told her she couldn’t have gone on a minute longer.
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