The Scarlet Sisters

by Helen Batten

  Charlie, stunned, just nodded.

  ‘You’re coming with us, then?’

  Charlie nodded again. Actually a fresh start, an escape, was a rather compelling idea. ‘Thank you,’ was all he could say.

  Clara looked at him, puzzled. ‘You’re totally sozzled, aren’t you?’

  ‘I may have had a drop of the old jag juice.’

  ‘More like a barrel.’

  He stared at her. His eyes always lost their sharp, fresh blue after his second pint. After his third they switched to a rheumy, glassy, vacant look, as if the shutters had come down.

  Clara decided to carry on while she was on a roll. ‘I also want Alice back from Luton.’

  Charlie stumbled backwards slightly. ‘Why do you want to do that?’

  ‘I’ve got plans for her.’

  ‘Well, William Russon’s got plans for her. She’s doing well. He’s not going to want to lose her, not after he’s trained her up.’

  ‘She can do better.’

  ‘How do you know? It’s a good job. What’s the family going to think?’

  ‘They can go to old Harry.’ Clara pointed her finger at him and jabbed him in the chest. ‘Listen to me, Charlie Swain – if you don’t write to your sister, I will.’

  Charlie knew when the game was up, so he took the path of least resistance and just nodded.

  But Clara still needed one more thing for her plan to work – money. She knew that her shop in the high street hadn’t used up all of Charlie’s secret stash as, at breakfast most days, he’d look up from his racing paper and cheerfully ask: ‘Hands up who’s my favourite girl today?’

  At which all of the sisters would sit up and put their hands in the air, and then, rummaging in his pockets, he’d say to the one who got there first (usually Katie): ‘Right, favourite girl, you can go and put this on Prince Dreamer at the 3.45 at Kempton.’

  And Clara would watch, narrow-eyed, as the chosen daughter would dutifully trot off to the bookies to put on a bet for her dad.

  Clara had searched everywhere, but she couldn’t find his pot of gold. Little did she know that Charlie had hidden the money from his war time ‘souvenirs’ in the outdoor lavatory cistern, while the loot he hadn’t managed to sell – which, years later, Dennis would pour out of a BHS bag – he had buried in the allotment underneath the roots of the apple tree.

  So Clara carried on. ‘And I want all the money you’ve got stashed away. I won’t ask where you got it or where you’ve been hiding it, I just want it.’

  ‘What money?’

  ‘Don’t give me that. Don’t even try. I know you’ve got it. I’ve seen you putting your hands in your pockets for the gee-gees.’

  There was silence. Then Charlie just sighed and said, ‘What for?’

  ‘To make us more money, before you gamble it all away.’

  Charlie looked at his wife, swaying slightly, weighing up his options. Ordinarily he would have responded with a ‘Get Lost!’ but Clara had bided her time and waited for a moment when he was supremely vulnerable. Charlie was distracted by an image of walking into the house and there being no one there – a cold, dark kitchen without a fire, a bedroom with no little girls piled on top of each other, arms and legs tangled up and hanging out everywhere, like puppies. He had lost one child already, and that hurt enough. Never to see the rest of them again – well, he felt physically sick.

  ‘I can’t live without you,’ was all he said.

  Clara nodded. She had somehow, finally, seized control of the household and their destiny. It was so easy that she wondered why she hadn’t done it before.

  Within days the Swain family had packed up their belongings and travelled from the quiet, prosperous banks of the river at Marlow, east into London, and almost out the other side. Within a couple of weeks, and with a bit of finessing, Charlie had managed to get himself the chief engineering job at the Seabrooke Brewery in Grays. And then within a couple of months Alice arrived back from her year in Luton, to much rejoicing from everyone, not least her mother.

  The Swain family immediately felt at home. They were still on the Thames, but it was completely different to its Marlow incarnation: it was not a tamed, bucolic playpen for anglers; it was open sea and choppy waves. No men in boaters wooing their maidens in rowing boats, but large barges and ships going into the Port of London, and fishing boats going backwards and forwards to the North Sea.

  Grays was next to the big docks at Tilbury. There were also chalk quarries, brickworks and, of course, the brewery. The people reflected the difference too – there was no West Country burr to their voice. They were estuary, rougher and tougher and generally poorer. Clara no longer felt like an imposter.

  With the extra money Clara had managed to wrench from Charlie, they rented a large house on the corner of the main road to London. Clara had chosen it specially, because its front room was a shop. It was the largest retail space that Clara had ever had, and she was determined to sell everything.

  Ways of preserving food and its transportation had undergone a revolution. Clara was able to fill her shelves with all sorts of new products that were terribly exciting to the 1920s housewife: tins of peas, beans, ham, meat loaf, pilchards, peaches, pears and apples. Then there was tea, powdered custard, Oxo cubes, Horlicks, Marmite and, the latest craze, which came from France – packets of crisps complete with blue twists of salt.

  There were big jars of sweets: mints, Black Jacks, sugar mice, sherbet, liquorice allsorts, toffees, lollypops and the sinister ‘unwanted babies’, which we now know as Jelly Babies – all of which the girls helped themselves to when Clara wasn’t looking. Clara also made cakes and pastries, while Katie and Bertha were given the task of making lemonade. The shop was colourful and filled with the smell of fruit and vegetables.

  Although Clara was a private woman, she was astute enough to realise the social aspect of shopping – it was one of the few opportunities housewives had to meet and chat. So Clara put a ‘resting chair’ in the corner, where the local gossips could hold court and draw people into the shop.

  As Clara’s shop prospered, Charlie acted as if he was proud of her. In the pub he would boast, ‘My wife, she’s a regular Mrs Selfridge, she is,’ or ‘Watch out for my missus – she’s giving Liptons a run for their money,’ but underneath the bravado, he was a bit uncomfortable.

  One night, wandering home from the pub and feeling hungry, Charlie had a flash of inspiration: he would turn his beloved shed into a fish and chip shop.

  At no time in British history did we eat more fish and chips: most families ate their dinner from the folds of old newspapers at least once a week. And in the days before health and safety inspectors, anyone could set up a shop in their backyard. Charlie reckoned he could open his shop three or four nights a week after work.

  The sisters watched as Charlie spent a weekend banging, sawing and going in and out of the haven that was his shed. Finally, a canister of gas and a big chip pan went in. Then Charlie produced a sack of potatoes and set the twins peeling, Dora mashing peas and Grace mixing batter. That evening, the Swain family sat around the kitchen table and tasted the first fruits of Charlie’s chippy.

  Even Clara managed a smile. ‘Blimey, Charlie, this ain’t ’alf good!’

  ‘Yes, Dad, scrummy,’ the girls agreed.

  However, the attempt was short-lived. Unfortunately, Grays was very well served for pubs; indeed, it had the reputation for having more pubs per head than any other town in the country. For the first couple of weeks Charlie managed to resist their lure, but then a Friday evening came along, and he’d had a hard day at work, and it was his mate’s birthday … Charlie started heating up the chip pan and calculated he had time for a pint. He swung over the fence and popped over to the pub across the road, where they were all celebrating. He was just going to have one … but then he kind of forgot and the next thing he knew Grace had run into the bar, shouting: ‘Dad, come quickly! Ya shed’s burning down!’

  Immediately there was
a stampede of merry men across the road, rolling up their sleeves ready to do battle with the flames. Unfortunately, they were disappointed – Charlie’s shed was already a smouldering wreck.

  Charlie put on a brave face and accepted his mates’ jokes, but he was subdued for the next few days. He avoided his family and friends and spent his time out in the yard clearing up the mess and building himself a new shed.

  Charlie decided to take the attitude that everything happens for a reason, and the reason his shed burnt down was that he hadn’t aimed high enough. Much to Clara’s extreme scepticism, less than a month later Charlie had rented a shop down the road and opened a more substantial fast-food enterprise.

  For the first few months Charlie’s new chippy was a success: on Friday nights there were queues stretching out of the shop, around the corner and down the street. Clara was surprised when Charlie even started to give her extra money. But, after a while, those queues started to dwindle – they stopped reaching around the corner, and then finally Charlie realised the queue never even left the shop.

  He couldn’t understand why: no one had anything but praise for the quality of his batter.

  In the end he had to shut the shop, which was a shame because Charlie was actually a victim of his own generosity. The reason people stopped coming in the shop was because they’d realised that, at the end of the evening, whatever food was left Charlie used to give to the poor and hungry that were hanging around his back door. Word got around and people soon decided not to go in the front, but just wait a little longer and get a free meal around the back.

  Charlie decided retail was not for him, and from then on stuck to engineering.

  Charlie and his daughters thought Clara’s plan was just to open a bigger shop but, not for the first time, they underestimated her. Six months after they moved to Grays, with the family gathered around the kitchen table, eating supper, Clara made an announcement: ‘You’re all going to have piano lessons.’

  There was a stunned silence. Then Grace piped up: ‘Don’t we need a piano?’

  ‘We do, Gracie, we do. Which is why I have bought one.’

  ‘What?’ Charlie put down his knife and fork and stared at his wife.

  ‘Yes. The shop is making good money and I’ve saved up and I’ve bought one. It arrives next week.’ And then she muttered, ‘How many cigarette cases and pocket watches does a man need, anyway?’

  The girls looked confused, but Charlie blushed bright red and stared down at his plate. Clara must have found his hidden treasure chest of ‘souvenirs’.

  ‘You’ll all start with the piano, but if there’s anything else you want to learn you can do that too.’

  The girls looked at each other.

  ‘Do you think I could learn to sing?’ Alice asked tentatively.

  Her mother nodded. ‘I think you should definitely learn to sing.’

  Alice had a wonderful soprano voice. She annoyed her sisters by breaking into old music hall songs at every opportunity, for example, ‘Where Did You Get That Hat?’ when Bertha tried out a new creation; ‘If You Were The Only Girl In The World’ when Grace walked past a boy she rather liked the look of (or ‘A Little Of What You Fancy’ if she was feeling particularly cheeky and their mother wasn’t around); and ‘Down The Road, Away Went Polly’ every time Dora picked up enough courage to leave the house. ‘I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’ was reserved for their Sunday promenades along Grays beach.

  Meanwhile, Bertha fancied becoming accomplished at something a little more sophisticated: ‘I’d like to play the violin,’ she piped up.

  The sisters rolled their eyes, and snorts of hilarity filled the room as the giggling infection started to spread.

  Bertha blushed, but Clara banged on the table. ‘Stop it, all of you. If Bertha wants to play the violin, she can play the violin. Can’t she?’

  She shot a threatening look at Charlie. But he had drunk a relatively respectable three pints and was feeling warm and sentimental towards his littlest, quietest daughter. ‘’Course you can, my darlin’.’

  ‘But where’s she going get a violin from?’ Grace giggled.

  ‘I think I know someone who might just have one,’ Charlie replied, unexpectedly.

  ‘Really?’ Clara asked.

  ‘Trust me!’ he said, and everyone rolled their eyes again.

  However, true to his word, a week later Charlie came back from the pub with a violin. It came without a case, however, and while Charlie didn’t think this would matter, as Bertha had to catch a bus across town to get to her lesson, she found it rather did.

  Nervously, she mentioned this to her mother and then, when nothing was forthcoming, she dared to ask her father.

  ‘What’s wrong with just carrying it?’ he asked.

  ‘People look at me and I’m really scared I’m going to drop it or knock it on something. An old man on the bus last week stopped me and said I really shouldn’t be carrying it around like that and did I know how much it was worth—?’

  ‘Well, I guess he’s got a point. All right, my dumpling, I’ll tell you what – I’ll make you a case,’ and he ruffled her red hair, which she’d spent quite a long time straightening.

  Bertha forced a smile. She had no doubt he would make her a case, but whether it was a case she would actually want to carry around – that was another matter.

  That weekend Charlie retired to his shed, and noises of banging and sawing floated around the yard. Katie and Bertha crept anxiously down the path and peeped in through the window. They couldn’t see anything – there was too much grime. At one point Charlie emerged and went off down the street whistling. The girls tried the door of the shed, but he’d locked it. Their father came back a few hours later with a can of varnish and the smell of the pub about him.

  But it wasn’t long before he emerged with his creation.

  ‘Bertha, come and look at this!’ he shouted.

  They all ran into the yard. In Charlie’s arms was what looked like a baby’s coffin.

  ‘Oh, my Lord!’ Clara clapped her hand over her mouth.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You gave me quite a turn,’ and then Clara started to giggle and then the others all joined in too. All except Bertha.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Charlie, confused.

  ‘It looks like something you’d bury!’ Grace said, laughing.

  ‘Cheeky besom – any more of that lip and I’ll swing it at yer head,’ he said.

  The girls stifled their laughter, but Bertha turned and ran up to the bedroom and buried herself under the covers. She knew she was going to have to carry that violin case the length of Grays for a very long time, and if her sisters all thought it looked like a coffin, everyone else would too.

  Which is exactly what happened. In fact, the whole episode was so upsetting it turned into one of those anecdotes which Nanna not only relayed to me many times, but is still repeated by members of the extended family: ‘Did you hear about the time Charlie made your Nanna a violin case that looked like a coffin?’ Yes, yes …

  The girls’ other forays into the musical world were more successful.

  Everyone was relieved when Alice’s singing teacher introduced some more sophisticated songs into her repertoire, such as the songs of Cole Porter, Ira Gershwin and Noël Coward. ‘I Wanna Be Loved By You’ was a particular favourite, and ‘Let’s Misbehave’ – she would grab any passing member of the family and serenade them, spinning them around.

  Meanwhile, the piano gave them something fun to do in the evenings; it even persuaded Charlie to stay home. Alice would usually sing, and one of the other girls play; Bertha would attempt to join in with the violin, and they would perform music hall songs. Clara would sit in the corner and watch with a rare, beatific smile on her face. On nights like those she felt as if she had pulled it off. Every time someone said to her, ‘All girls?’ or, ‘A house full of women! Your poor husband!’ Clara would reply, ‘Yes, we are blessed.’ She felt a fierce protectiveness and d
etermination that they did not have to be a second best. And the way she put this into action was to make them the very best she could. This meant nice clothes, nice manners and music lessons. Playing the piano and singing were the accomplishments of middle-class girls. It was one of the ways they were set apart, a cut above, but Clara saw no reason why, if they had the means, her girls shouldn’t have these too.

  But the music lessons were just the window dressing of Clara’s ambitions for her daughters. As the shop was doing well, the girls wondered why, whenever they dared to ask for anything: money for soap, a new hat, some new shoes, their mother would tell them to get creative with what they already had. Which meant they became brilliant seamstresses, but left the girls agreeing that their mother was a bit of an old Scrooge. Grace did a brilliant impersonation of her mother’s catch phrase: ‘You’ve got to cut your coat according to your cloth.’ Clara’s other catch phrase was, ‘If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing well.’ It’s been carried down the generations – only the other day I found myself using it on my daughters and felt a ghostly echo run down my spine.

  It was all a bit unfair really, because Clara was quite generous by nature. She gave my twin second cousins both an expensive pedigree giant poodle for their twenty-first birthdays.

  Clara was being frugal for a reason. Every night when the girls had gone to bed (and away from the prying eyes of Charlie), she would sit in the kitchen and count her shop takings. Luckily Charlie’s job at the brewery paid nearly all of the housekeeping costs, so Clara was able to squirrel away her profits in an old tin in her knicker drawer – keeping them away from Charlie’s acquisitive hands – until one day, when she did an audit, and she realised there was some missing. Charlie had found her stash and had been using it to pay his gambling debts.

  Of course, today, Clara would just have opened a bank account, but in the 1920s women didn’t have bank accounts – there weren’t even joint accounts. Clara’s only option would have been to give the money to Charlie to put in an account, which would have been like turkeys voting for Christmas. And so a game of hide and seek began. The money would be safe for a while, and then a pound or so would go missing, and Clara would have to rack her brains for a new hiding place. She never tackled Charlie directly about the missing money, and neither did he say anything, both colluding not to have the row.