Keeping My Sister's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  Eva was shaking inside but she didn’t show it. ‘All right, I’ll play by your rules. But you will see, I’m not like the others. I’m the best thief there is this side of Waterloo.’

  Lumps let her go with a laugh. ‘The best thief!’ She staggered back inside the pub.

  Eva trudged home. What was she letting herself in for? Stealing a bit of money to help her mother was one thing, or nicking a bit of fruit now and again, but Liz English was a fence, a proper part of the thief’s game. Her father would beat the living daylights out of her, just for talking to the likes of Lumps. She suddenly got the urge to cuddle up in bed with Kathleen and talk about their dolls and their new cot from Uncle Dennis. But when she got home, her parents were arguing again.

  ‘Treat me like a cripple, would you?’ shouted Dad. ‘Go behind my back? I’ll teach you!’

  Eva covered her ears and ran upstairs. She peered out of the back bedroom window. Her dad was standing over her mum.

  She was on her knees now in the back yard, her hands covering her head as the blows rained down on her. ‘I’ll give you the Poor Law!’

  Eva knew then, she had no choice.

  8

  Peggy, August 1933

  ‘For God’s sake, Peggy, I’m desperate! How much longer are you going to be in there?’ Kathleen hammered on the door of the outside lavvy, hoping to dislodge her sister Peggy from her throne, but to no avail.

  ‘Not much longer,’ said Peggy. ‘Now, go away.’ She was spending at least half an hour in the evenings in the loo, and sometimes in the mornings too. But her time in that grim, damp outside lavatory was well spent, she reckoned.

  Nobody realized, but she was becoming quite an expert at piecing together the cut-up bits of newspaper that their mother put on a nail out there. It was a bit like solving a jigsaw puzzle. She liked to get in there early, before her brothers, because once they had been there was not much chance of getting enough of the story to make sense of it. In the past few weeks she’d gleaned quite a bit of information and read the latest stories on the Means Test. From what she had managed to gather, some of the Poor Law authorities which had shown kindness were now being forced to reduce benefits further and there were rumblings in the workplace about stopping anyone with Communist sympathies from holding a union position. Unemployment was rising and it was expected that there would be three million out of work by the end of the year.

  She now saw first-hand the dreadful effect of that, as her dad joined the men milling about by the shop looking for work. He had found something to do, minding the carts for one of the fruit and veg stalls up in Covent Garden for a family who lived around the corner. But it was just a few days here and there and paid pennies, most of which he seemed to spend drowning his sorrows in the pub. He wasn’t like the father she knew and respected any more. And the bruises and black eyes suffered by her mother seemed to be getting more frequent and harder for everyone to ignore, especially the neighbours.

  It was as if a certain level of argy-bargy between married couples was to be expected but Dad was just about crossing the line now. She’d seen the looks he’d been getting from Mrs Davies and Mrs Avens, who used to smile and say ‘Good morning’ to him. Now they shot him filthy glances and tutted as they went off to the communal laundry.

  Peggy was more than ready to leave school. She knew that her family needed her to start earning, and with that in mind, she’d applied for a job at the Post Office. She expected to hear back any day now and she was trying to walk taller and be more like the girls who headed off to work in the factories, rather than the schoolgirls playing in the street.

  Yet the thought of not learning more from her teacher, Miss Price, weighed heavily on her, and there was something, or rather someone else, she would miss too, although she never spoke of it. In the months since the battle of Tenison Street, she’d found an ally in her quest for knowledge in the shape of George Harwood. He regularly met her outside the school gates and they would dally along the streets towards her home while he told her all about the latest news from the shop floor, as well as anything he had managed to memorize from his father’s newspapers. George’s dad spoke very highly of a bloke called Wal Hannington out of Camden Town who had even been jailed for a year for his Communist views. George thought that was heroic but Peggy wasn’t so sure.

  Kathleen had spotted them once, walking home deep in conversation, and had run past, yelling, ‘Georgie loves Peggy!’ which was so embarrassing and silly. George blushed beetroot and Peggy had pretended not to notice.

  Sometimes they would wander along by the river to look at the barges but Peggy didn’t really like going down there too much because of the brasses who plied their trade in the murky alleyways. On more than one occasion they’d chanced across a punter with his trousers round his ankles and been told to clear off, in no uncertain terms. That time it was Peggy’s turn to blush. George was very gallant: ‘Don’t worry, Peg, I will protect you.’

  ‘I don’t need protecting!’ she said, shrugging his hand off her arm. But secretly, somewhere inside, she quite liked having George around. He wasn’t like the other boys of his age and certainly was nothing like her brothers. He was more serious and he had lovely clear blue eyes. He had been reading a lot of books lately about Communism. ‘It ain’t all bad,’ he said. ‘In fact, it makes sense for folks like us.’

  George had lent her a book to read on the subject. She hid it under her cardigan and stuffed it down the gap between the bed and the wall in case Mum saw it, because that surely would make her go spare. Filling her head with silly ideas, was what she’d call it, and that didn’t seem right when the family had real troubles of its own. Her mother was looking thinner than ever and spent so much time crying quietly that her eyes seemed to be permanently red-ringed and her face all blotchy.

  Peggy watched as her mother persuaded the rent collector for one more week’s grace. ‘You will have to pay next week,’ he said, putting a black mark next to their name in his rent book. ‘You know I’ve been reasonable, Mrs Fraser, because you are good tenants, but you are working and I hear that Mr Fraser is doing some odd jobs up at Covent Garden, so you have got to find a way to put some money aside for the rent from now on.’ That meant they were three weeks behind in total now. Peggy hadn’t worked out how they were still surviving at all but she knew that Eva had something to do with it. She had caught her stuffing a few shillings into her mother’s pinny and had seen the smile on Mum’s face when Eva came through the door.

  ‘I’m going to get work, Mum. I’ll find out what is happening at the Post Office,’ she said, laying her hand on her mother’s shoulder.

  Just then, Nanny Day bustled in. ‘Well, I prayed for a miracle and, Margaret, I think the good Lord has delivered it for us,’ she said.

  Mum looked up, disbelief etched on her fine features.

  ‘Grandad was on his shift as night-watchman and heard that the boiler man has been given the heave-ho, so he put James forward and the foreman said he can have a try-out, starting next week!’

  ‘Oh, thank God!’ said Mum, clapping her hands together. ‘Peggy, go up to the Post Office and see what is happening with your job and then get up to Covent Garden and tell your father the good news.’

  But before she could leave, Dad came through the door, with good news of his own, waving a postal order for ten pounds.

  ‘It’s compensation, for my finger,’ he said, as the whole scullery erupted into a scene of jubilation. ‘I can’t believe it but they have seen us right in the end.’

  ‘Whatever shall we do with it?’ said Mum.

  ‘We’ll pay off our debts to the rent first,’ said Dad, hugging her. Then he looked at his wife. She’d never had so much as a day off work in years. There was still a mark on her cheek from their last fight and the sight of it made him want to die of shame. That wasn’t who he wanted to be.

  ‘Let’s spend it,’ he said. ‘We’re going to have a little holiday.’

  The days in the run-up
to their trip to Southend-on-Sea felt like Christmas, only better.

  Peggy accompanied her mother to Oxford Street, where they went into the big shops, Marshall and Snelgrove, and Dickins and Jones, and bought new clothes for everybody. She felt herself blushing as the shop assistants fussed around her. Some places, like Selfridges, were full of snooty women who eyed them with suspicion, until her mother showed them the colour of her money.

  They got a printed cotton dress each for Peggy and Kathleen, with little flowers and sprigs of green on it, while Mum had a new blouse and a plaid skirt. Eva had a white dress with a frill around the bottom, which she was very pleased with, and the boys got new shorts, shirts and a little jacket each. To finish the girls’ outfits, Mum took ages choosing hats. Peggy gawped at herself in the full-length mirrors. She wasn’t used to seeing what she looked like from so many angles. Wealthy people, who could afford to shop in places like this, must be quite vain, she decided. In the end, after much discussion with the sales assistant, Mum chose knitted berets because they were practical as well as stylish, apparently.

  The whole street knew of their going away and there were a few envious glances and the odd snide comment about wasting money when others could barely afford to eat, but Peggy ignored them. It was their good fortune and why shouldn’t they go to the seaside like posh folks, just for once?

  Getting everybody ready and out of the door on time was like organizing an army. They got up early, so early that they could hear the costermongers wheeling their barrows out of the arches around the back of their street, whistling their way along. Mum smiled more than she had in ages, even when she noticed that Frankie had a proper shiner, which he had picked up from fighting again. That worried her mum sick because of his head injury but she knew, as they all did, that they couldn’t change him. It just seemed to be in his nature, the rough and tumble of the street. Eva tried to take the blame for it, in case Dad decided to hand out one of his beltings. But today was a happy day, a holiday, so he just shook his head, ruffled Frank’s hair and went back to sipping his scalding-hot tea, while the other kids ran pell-mell around the house with the excitement of the trip.

  Mum carefully packed up a carpet bag with some fruit and some margarine sandwiches, which she had made the night before and wrapped in brown paper. Peggy watched as her mother peered at herself in Dad’s little shaving mirror, smoothing stray strands of hair away from her face, before putting on her new beret. She was enjoying the preparation of it all, the fact that she didn’t have to go out and scrub floors for once, Peggy could see that. Peggy had never really thought of her mum as pretty but in that moment, she thought she was properly beautiful.

  It was a good day to get out of town because with the warmer days of July well under way, the river was starting to smell: the familiar, cloying stench. As they caught a bus across the water, Peggy watched the boatmen working the rubbish barges, their shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms, pulling and yanking at the city’s junk with their hooks. That had to be one of the worst jobs in the world, she thought.

  Settling down, all seven of them on the bus, Peggy realized that they had rarely, if ever, been out together as a family because one of her parents was always out at work. Frankie and Eva were the most excited and by the time they reached Fenchurch Street Station they were both starving hungry and demanding a bite of the margarine sandwiches. Mum shooed their little fingers out of her carpet bag, telling them to wait until they were on the train.

  As they made their way into the station, the noise and hissing of the steam engines was almost deafening. Peggy gave up trying to make herself heard over the din. There was a bit of a crush at the ticket barrier, as half of London seemed to be having a day out like them but they waited their turn and found their way onto the platform. Once Frank saw the steam train, with its shiny, bright-green engine, he forgot all about his hunger pangs.

  Dad was spruced up in his best blue serge suit with a little trilby hat, which he carefully placed in the luggage rack above their heads. He and Mum gave each other a little squeeze. It was the most affection that Peggy had ever seen between them and as the train got under way, she watched as her father placed his hand on her mother’s lap. She couldn’t help but wonder what life would be like if they didn’t have money worries. Would there still be fights and arguments? She drove herself half dizzy trying to work that out, as the glum little houses of London gave way to the countryside, whizzing past the window. There were open fields and small farmhouses – so much space compared to their little back-to-backs in London. No wonder everyone liked to go to Kent to go hopping. It was a different world.

  Peggy pressed her face to the glass to get a better view, just as Kathleen steamed it up with her breath and drew a little love heart. With a wicked glint in her eye, she wrote ‘G loves P’ inside it, before Peggy swept her sleeve across it and obliterated it, knocking Kathleen in the process.

  ‘Stop it, you two!’ tutted Mum, ‘You’re worse than Frankie and Eva!’ Kathleen poked her tongue out at Peggy, who pretended not to notice but vowed to get even later.

  After their sandwiches, there were games of I-spy, but when they got bored of that Frankie gave everyone a fright halfway through the journey by sticking his head out of the window. When Mum pulled him back in, his face was blackened with soot and she spent the rest of the trip wiping his face clean with her handkerchief, much to Eva’s amusement.

  The smell of salty air was the first thing Peggy noticed when they stepped off the train at Southend, and the cry of the seagulls. It was so refreshing after the choking smog of London, Peggy felt she had been dunked in an ice-cold bath. They joined the crowds thronging towards the seafront, with everyone dressed up in their best clothes.

  ‘Stay close together,’ said Mum. ‘And by that, I mean: Frankie and Eva, no running off!’

  Peggy walked a few paces behind her parents and her brothers and sisters, indulging a daydream that she was here with George Harwood, and maybe even had a pair of fashionable sunglasses like the little gaggles of ladies she saw bustling along together, sharing jokes. She looked down at her cotton dress and suddenly felt rather childish and unsophisticated, with her hair in bunches rather than waves or curls. On her feet, she wore flat, white sandals. She longed to wear heels like the older women, who seemed to tower over her, although she was not small for her age.

  The family made their way down Pier Hill, past the grand facade of the Royal Hotel and a huge statue of Queen Victoria. Jim made everyone hoot with laughter by suggesting that Her Majesty was pointing the way to the public toilets, rather than out to sea. Frankie and Eva couldn’t wait to get in the water; they dashed ahead down Marine Parade and were on the beach with their shoes and socks off by the time Peggy and Kathleen had caught up with them. Mum and Dad hired a couple of deckchairs and Jim went off to buy a bucket and spade. Peggy took the two youngest to the seashore. She wasn’t afraid of water – she’d learned to swim in the Thames in the hot London summers. There was just one problem – the tide was out and the sea seemed to be a mile away in the distance.

  Kathleen looked at the horizon and changed her mind, sensing that walking all that way might be too much for her. She turned and started to trudge back towards Mum and Dad. Peggy called after to her to see that she was all right, and Kathleen smiled and waved her off. The trio set off across the sand and soon found themselves sinking in mud which squidged between their toes. Peggy didn’t mind too much and neither did Frankie or Eva. The excitement of getting to the sea kept them going, through little clumps of seaweed with crabs scurrying about, as the wind whipped through their hair and salt dried on their lips. Twenty minutes later, they finally reached the sea and dipped their toes in. It was freezing! But the thrill of seeing such a wide ocean, with the horizon stretching for miles in both directions, made up for it. Frankie and Eva splashed about, shrieking with laughter while Peggy kept a watchful eye and did her best not to get her dress wet. In the distance, she could see Mum waving at her so
they set off for the long trudge back to the shore, with the wind blowing a gale behind them all the way, turning their legs blue with cold.

  Jim had busied himself building a sandcastle, which Frankie promptly trod on, creating a bit of an argument. Peggy watched her father taking it all in from his deckchair. He smiled a thin smile and seemed too exhausted to intervene and stop the banter between his two sons. Peggy realized, with a guilty pang, that this must be the first real sit-down he had enjoyed in years.

  Mum fussed over Kathleen’s hair, which had blown every which way, and when the battle with the elements proved too much, she declared it was time for something to eat. Sand had got right in between Peggy’s toes and no matter how hard she rubbed, she couldn’t get the gritty grains out and her skin felt tight with the salt from the sea as they strolled down to find a pie and mash shop.

  A small girl in the most beautiful embroidered dress and a coat with velvet edging and a little cloche hat smiled at Peggy as they wandered past. She had her leg in a caliper and walked with a pronounced limp as she held on to her father’s hand. He was a well-dressed gentleman and looked a bit like their doctor. ‘Polio,’ Peggy’s mum whispered in her ear. ‘Poor mite. Don’t stare, Peg.’

  It wasn’t the first time Peggy had seen a cripple, of course – she’d seen other kids who were lame – but there was something about that little girl, with her sweet smile, which made Peggy feel lucky, very lucky, to be healthy even if they weren’t rich.

  She turned to Kathleen, who had colour in her cheeks for the first time in months. ‘Are you enjoying yourself, Kath?’

  Kathleen nodded. ‘I want to see the animals in the zoo after dinner.’

  Peggy gave her hand a little squeeze. ‘We will.’ She forgave her for the silly teasing on the train about George Harwood. Peggy was the big sister, the grown-up, and it was her responsibility to live up to that role, she could see that now.