‘Daddy never let us play in the street,’ Dulcie said suddenly. ‘Do you think I should tell Granny that so she stops us?’
Susan felt as if her heart was being squeezed. It was too bad that this little girl felt she’d got to try and hold on to all her father’s old standards, on top of everything else she had to cope with.
‘I think you and May will be happier if you can play outside,’ she said carefully. ‘Granny’s house is very small after all, and she’s a bit old for little girls running around making a lot of noise. But maybe you should speak to Granny about it and make rules, like not going beyond your street. That’s what grown-ups call a compromise.’
‘Daddy hated living in Deptford,’ Dulcie said, looking up at Susan. ‘He must be really worried because we’re here now.’
‘No, he won’t be. He knows you are safe and well looked after with Granny. So don’t worry about that, Dulcie. What he’d want you to do is to try and like your new school, keep up your reading and carry on taking care of May the way you always used to. Do you think you can do that?’
‘Yes, miss,’ Dulcie said. ‘But what’s going to happen to Daddy?’
‘Why don’t you call me Susan now?’ the teacher said as she thought how to answer the question. ‘I can’t tell you what the outcome of your daddy’s trial will be, no one could. Do you understand what a trial is?’
Dulcie shook her head.
‘Well, it’s a special way of finding out exactly what happened the night Mummy died. Everyone who was involved in any way, like the police, neighbours, even me maybe because I know your family, get questioned by people called lawyers. Then the jury, that’s a group of twelve people who are specially picked because they don’t know anyone personally, listen to all sides of it all, and they decide whether your daddy did push Mummy, or didn’t. If they decide he didn’t, then Daddy will be free to come home again.’
‘But what if they decide he did push her?’ Dulcie asked, looking very frightened.
Susan sighed. It wasn’t known yet whether Reg would be charged with murder or manslaughter. She couldn’t possibly tell such a small child what the ultimate punishment for murder was, but she knew she must prepare Dulcie in part at least. ‘Then he will have to be punished, probably that will mean going to prison.’
Dulcie didn’t make any comment on this, but it was obvious she was mulling it over in her mind because her small brow was furrowed with frown-lines.
They had reached the High Street now, and Susan’s father was waiting in the car.
‘I have to go now,’ Susan said, bending down to kiss Dulcie. ‘But I’ll be back next week to see you.’
Dulcie clung to her briefly, then turned and ran home.
‘How did it go?’ Susan’s father asked once she was in the car. He looked anxious, as if she’d been on his mind for the whole hour until he picked her up.
‘I was right to go,’ Susan said. ‘They need help.’
Mr Sims gave a deep sigh, glancing round at her, dark eyes full of concern. ‘I suppose that means you’ve committed yourself to be the one that gives the help?’
‘I have to, Daddy, there’s no one else.’
Chapter Four
On a sultry day in August Susan Sims broke off from a family holiday in Broadstairs to come back to London to visit Reg in Brixton prison. She arrived just after two and stood apart from the large group of women gathering outside the prison doors, all too aware of the cold, hard eyes scrutinizing her and that the low whispers and occasional sniggers were about her appearance. She had thought her light grey suit and matching small-brimmed hat would make her inconspicuous, but they were all wearing gaudy cotton-print summer dresses, with bare heads, and to her dismay she realized her sober appearance had only defined what she really was, a middle-class, out of her depth, frightened Good Samaritan.
Glancing up at the high grey walls, she shuddered. Even in bright sunshine the prison looked bleak and forbidding. For a man like Reg who had worked outside for most of his life it had to be terrible to be locked in a cell day after day.
Susan had never imagined when she first called on the children at Maud’s home that her involvement with the Taylor family would take over her life. First she had gone with the children and Maud to St Thomas’s Catholic School in Deptford to enrol the children there, and then visited Miss Denning, the Welfare worker for the area, to make sure they had no intention of removing the girls from Maud’s care. Maud could barely read or write, so rather than take the chance that she might be manipulated or led astray by family, friends or neighbours, Susan became her adviser, secretary and confidante.
Writing to Reg to keep him informed of how his children were was all part of this, and it was a natural progression that Mr O’Keefe, Reg’s lawyer, should ask Susan to be a witness for the defence. The police had dropped the murder charge in favour of manslaughter, but O’Keefe seemed optimistic that a verdict of accidental death would be returned.
The first letter Susan received from Reg touched her deeply for it was so courteous and brave. Not one word about his own predicament, no snivelling or attempts to convince her of his innocence, just deep concern for his girls and his mother, and gratitude that Susan was helping them. Before long she found herself writing back to him far more than was really necessary, and as the weeks passed and she learned so much more about his past from both him and his mother, her admiration for him grew.
Maud had told her how it was when her husband died. Her four older boys all callously cleared off, unwilling to give any of their wages to keep their mother and younger brothers and sisters. Reg was only an apprentice builder at that time, yet he got odd jobs in the evenings and on Sundays and managed to save the family from starvation. It was he who later paid the fares for his two sisters to go to Canada. Even after he’d married Anne, he still helped Maud out, he always made sure she had enough coal for her fire, decorated her house, and during the war when he was overseas, he sent money back for her.
A sudden surge towards the prison door startled Susan. She had expected that the large doors would be thrown wide open, but instead only a small one within it opened, forcing the jostling crowd to form an orderly line. One by one they filed in, and Susan reluctantly joined them.
A door to the left of the lobby was clearly the way in to see the prisoners. A burly warder stood behind a counter, and as the other visitors were holding up their visiting orders as they approached him, Susan copied them. The man barely looked at the orders, just nodded the women through the door as if he knew their faces. Yet when it was Susan’s turn, he stopped her.
‘First visit?’ he asked curtly.
‘Yes,’ she whispered.
He took the order from her and studied it. ‘Are you his wife or girlfriend?’
‘No, his daughter’s teacher,’ she said.
‘What have you got in that bag?’ he asked, looking down at the small shopping bag on her arm.
‘Some books, fruit and cigarettes,’ she said. ‘Is that all right?’
He practically snatched the bag from her and rummaged through it, then placed it under the counter.
‘Can’t he have it?’ she asked.
‘We’ll decide that later, when we’ve checked it,’ he said curtly. ‘Go on through there.’
The corridors and gates seemed to go on for ever and she followed the women in front of her, feeling more intimidated by the minute, for it smelled awful, of disinfectant, stale sweat and damp. Finally she came to the last door, and yet another officer asked who it was she was visiting.
‘Mr Reginald Taylor,’ she said.
‘His number!’ he snapped at her, as if this was obvious. Susan didn’t know it and had to take the letter from Reg out of her pocket to look it up.
‘Five four seven nine,’ she said.
‘Five, four, seven, nine, Taylor,’ he yelled out, and a few seconds later the same cry was repeated by someone unseen further down in the room. ‘Number twenty-five,’ he said.
; That meant nothing to Susan, but someone behind her nudged her forward and pointed out numbers on each of the long line of booths ahead of her. As she walked along the narrow passage, booths either side of her, she got caught brief glimpses of men in prison grey beyond a metal grille. Each one of them had his hands up to it, desperate to touch his visitor even though the holes in the grille were less than a quarter of an inch square.
Twenty-five was empty, no one behind the grille. She sat down on the bench and waited for what seemed for ever. The seat was shiny with age and endless bottoms polishing it, names and messages had been scrawled on the walls either side of her, and she could hear a woman crying nearby, and a male voice trying to comfort her. Then suddenly Reg appeared behind the grille.
‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he said breathlessly. ‘I couldn’t believe it when they called out my name.’
He looked much thinner and paler than when she had last seen him back in Leahurst Road. His pale blue eyes had lost the sparkle she remembered and his hair was cropped even shorter. Yet it seemed to her he looked less brutish now, but whether that was because she knew him better, or whether it was that circumstances had really altered his appearance she couldn’t say.
‘But I promised I would visit today,’ she said, trying to smile.
‘People’s promises don’t mean much to me any more,’ he said with a shrug. ‘But I should have had more faith in you.’ He smiled then, and suddenly his whole face changed, making him almost handsome.
‘We don’t get long to talk,’ he said, moving close to the grille. ‘So tell me about the girls.’
‘They were very happy last week when I saw them,’ she said, going on to describe how his mother had got one of her neighbours to make them each a new dress. ‘Miss Denning, you know, the Welfare lady, was going to take them to Greenwich Park the next day for a picnic, so they were really excited.’
‘Is Mum coping with them all right? It’s not getting too much for her is it, what with the holidays and everything?’
The truth was that Susan had noticed a decline in Maud’s health in the last weeks. She wasn’t sleeping well at night with anxiety for her son, and by day she felt she couldn’t sit down and rest in case the girls got into mischief. Her biggest fear was that the girls would be taken into care, and this had robbed her of her appetite. Her legs swelled up alarmingly in hot weather, and though she tried to hide that she found even a short walk exhausting, she didn’t fool Susan.
‘She’s fine,’ Susan lied. It wasn’t fair to add to Reg’s worries right now. His trial was set for the middle of September and she felt he had to be kept buoyant until then.
‘I can’t begin to tell you how grateful I am for all you’ve done for my family,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘I don’t know what we would have done without you.’
‘That’s what friends are for,’ she said. ‘And speaking of friends, O’Keefe telephoned me last night to say your commanding officer is prepared to act as a character witness for you.’
‘Captain Duncan!’ Reg’s bright smile came back. ‘Bless him!’
‘Mr O’Keefe’s written to tell you all about it, but he wanted me to give you the good news today. Now, tell me how things really are with you. You never say in your letters.’
‘What is there to say?’ His smile vanished, even his voice went flat. ‘I’m doomed, Susan. I didn’t push Anne, but no one’s going to believe me.’
‘I believe you, and your mother does,’ she said stoutly. ‘O’Keefe and Captain Duncan do too, I think PC Hewitt does as well.’
‘But they won’t be on the jury. You can bet the prosecution will find dozens of people that will say I’ve got a nasty temper. Even if Captain Duncan does speak up for me, if they cross-examine him he’ll be forced to admit I got in a few fights in the army, and let’s face it, Susan, I don’t look like a choir boy.’
He didn’t, but Susan knew from Maud he had been one, and an altar boy, and that made her want to cry. ‘Oh Reg,’ she sighed. ‘I wish I could do something more to help.’
‘You’ve already stuck your neck out far enough for me,’ he said with a half-smile. ‘I bet that headmistress of yours isn’t best pleased. O’Keefe reckons the prosecution will call her as a witness. If he challenges her, and he’ll have to, where’s that going to leave you?’
Susan suddenly saw the explanation as to why Miss Willoughby had become so unpleasant to her before the end of term. Clearly she’d been told of her teacher’s support for Reg. ‘I’ll get another teaching job,’ she said defiantly. ‘Lee Manor isn’t the only school in London.’
‘You’re amazing,’ he said with open admiration. ‘I bet until all this happened the nearest brush you’d had with the criminal world was when someone swiped the milk off your doorstep. What on earth do your family make of you visiting a man in prison?’
‘They brought me up to believe in fighting for the right,’ she said simply. ‘Of course they were anxious about me coming here today, but they wouldn’t have tried to stop me.’
Before Reg had a chance to say anything more, a warder suddenly appeared behind him, announced the visit was terminated, and yanked Reg away, not even giving him time to say goodbye.
All at once Susan felt the real horror of his predicament, treated as a criminal even before he was tried, and slammed back into a cell without a chance to end the visit with dignity. As she hurried away from the prison, tears rolled down her cheeks for him. She guessed he had wanted to know a great deal more detail about the girls and his mother. He hadn’t even had time to give her any messages for them.
Maud had told Susan once how as a child Reg used to go up to Blackheath to look at the rich people’s homes, and Susan felt a twinge of conscience that her family home was probably one of the very ones he’d admired. It was a pretty Georgian villa overlooking the Heath, the front garden a profusion of flowering shrubs. Her childhood had been idyllic. There had always been nursemaids for each of the four children as babies, a woman came in daily to clean and wash, so her mother had plenty of time to spend with her children. It was a secure, happy home, the days marked by Father leaving for the office at eight-thirty and returning at six. School was a small private one nearby, they had a large playroom, a sand-pit and swing in the garden, all of them learned to play the piano, and Susan and her younger sister Elizabeth had dancing lessons too.
Every single August the entire household went down to the same large house in Broadstairs where they would be joined by various aunts, uncles and their children too. Hunger, debt and lack of warm clothing were unknown to her family. While there was no wild extravagance, her mother was a careful housekeeper, there were always good hearty meals, fires in each room in winter, toys and books. Yet her parents were modern in their thinking, the children were allowed to play ball games on the Heath, to ride bicycles, to bring schoolfriends home, and on many a night the house would resound with the sound of laughter as the children put on plays or concerts.
In 1938, when Susan was just seventeen, her elder brother Stephen, who was up at Cambridge, brought a friend home for Christmas. Susan took one look at Douglas Broadhurst, and although she’d always been shy of young men before, fell for him instantly. Everything about him, his height, slender body, dark floppy hair and clear blue eyes was perfection to her.
By the time Christmas had passed, it was clear to both her parents that there was a blossoming romance, for they’d noticed the way Susan sparkled and fizzed with Douglas, and that he looked equally entranced. They gave Susan a serious talking to, reminding her that she was very young, that she had yet to start her teacher training, and that Douglas had to concentrate on his studies. But right through the spring and summer of 1939 she and Douglas wrote to each other, and he often came as a guest for weekends.
But in September the war came, and both Douglas and Stephen joined the airforce, determined to become fighter pilots as they had both previously had a few flying lessons. It was then, at Christmas of 1939, that
Susan’s parents gave their permission for her to become engaged to Douglas, on the understanding they would wait until the war was over before they got married.
Douglas was shot down over the English Channel in March of ‘41, his Spitfire plunging into the sea before he could bail out. When Susan heard the news she wanted to die too, and in the months that followed she fully believed she would never laugh, dance or be happy again. It was her parents who pushed her back into finishing her teacher training, encouraging, cajoling, telling her that Douglas wouldn’t have wanted her to grieve for ever.
So teaching became the new love in her life. It filled the empty feeling inside her, pushed the loneliness and hopelessness away. She didn’t want or need a new man in her life, children were enough. Her brothers teased her sometimes, saying she would end up an old maid. But she didn’t mind, maybe she was in a rut, but it was a warm, comfortable one.
Then along came the Taylors, and suddenly she was jolted out of that rut, bombarded with new experiences that were often far from comfortable. She might have known love and grief, taught working-class children for some years, but she had no real knowledge of what it meant to be poor. To avoid embarrassing Maud she had to watch and learn how she ran her life. This meant groping her way through an almost alien language to understand the real meaning of what Maud said, because down in Deptford what often sounded like an insult could be an endearment and vice versa. She had to say goodbye to her own standards of hygiene, soon discovered that Maud would go hungry to feed the children and her fierce pride could not accept charity. Susan couldn’t buy a meat pie from the shop to give to Maud, that was insulting. But to bring something cooked from home and to say that it would go to waste if it was kept another day was okay. Likewise an old jumper would be accepted with pleasure to be unpicked and knitted up for the children – new wool was suspect. Yet as Susan found her way through this often baffling maze she began to see that Maud’s way was a good one, she kept face, she had standards that were never broken. Maud would never dream of stepping out into the street without her battered felt hat and her proper shoes. She went to Mass every single Sunday, and for that she had to put on her corsets, best dress and gloves too. Pride was everything when you knew you were very close to the gutter. It made you whiten your doorstep every day, clean the windows once a week, and always keep a few dried goods at the back of the pantry so that if there was an emergency in the street, a sudden death or sickness, you’d have a little something to offer your neighbour.
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