An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Leaning forward on the bench, Charlie looked up at the sky beginning to pale to a flat watery grey. Rain before seven, clear before eleven. But in November English weather lore seldom held any sway – a few slits of washed-out blue to give a false sense of hope, then down the clouds would come again to drop yet more rain on London. Horizon and sky all awash with weather. Dramatic around the mudflats and creeks of Canvey Island or Erith Marshes maybe, but here at Beckton with the gasworks and the cranes and gantries, wharves and warehouses around the Royal Albert and King George V Docks, just plain dismal.

  The tea finished, he went up on deck to wait for young Willy Barnes to show up. The rain had settled into a steady downpour, bringing up the clean smell of the river as well as the pungent tang of the gasworks. On nearby craft, others were busy coiling ropes, drinking their own morning cuppa; one or two hailing him, remarking on the weather. As yet, no sign of Willy who should have been here by now.

  Orders from the foreman Sooty Wilson – so named due to a fall of soot over his face from the stove smokestack of his tug a few years back while in the act of dismantling it to see what had blocked it – were to take on sugar from the Jonathan Lang moored at the Charlton Bouys for the Tate and Lyle sugar factory.

  Charlie grimaced. Rotten stuff, sugar, when it rained. You finished feeling proper stuck-up – not the snotty kind like Cissy with her posh talk and her fancy manners – but the uncomfortable kind.

  That was in winter. In summer, September, Charlie recalled, it was wasps. Vacating every bakery in London, they came to swarm all over the craft, covered it, ropes, everything, until they were crunched underfoot. They were always too drunk with sugar to sting. But it was never a pleasant experience.

  Sugar had its benefits – spillage, a couple of pounds wrapped up in newspaper for Doris’s larder. Not that coal didn’t have its own good side, a decent lump for the grate at home. Not much could be done with grain unless you kept chickens in the back yard. One good thing, today’s load wouldn’t leave a massive cleaning-out job afterwards like coal or cement, something Willy out in the rain would be glad of this morning. And there was Willy at last.

  Clambering aboard, the sixteen-year-old had his jacket collar turned up around his large ears, his far-too-big cap dripping water. Willy had just obtained his Watermen and Lightermen licence. Allowed to work in the tideway now, today he’d be kept busy hauling tarps over the cargo to avoid weather spoil, working to get the barge away quick to make room for another. But for the moment, Charlie took pity on the lad looking like a half-drowned wolfhound.

  ‘Cuppa?’ he offered. Willy nodded gratefully, glad to go down out of the weather for a few moments until they poked off. A gangly youth, he stood lighting a ragged hand-made smoke with one hand, with the other stirring in his condensed milk. He too had a cast-iron stomach, taking it scalding, had to when there was work to be done. Charlie made sure of that.

  Up on deck, Willy unmoored, letting go stern rope then headfast, and poking off from the wharf with a twenty-nine-foot oar. Very soon the craft was pushing out quietly in the rain to work its way up river on the flood tide, Charlie aft steering with one oar, Willy walking for’ard with the other, along the narrow gunwale, the craft manoeuvred between others of all types and sizes lying at rest. Then, with both oars getting into the rhythm, they swung out and pulled steady.

  It was peaceful now, the banks gliding by, but an hour from now would see every wharf a chaos of lighters, tugs towing barges, craft pushing off from ships’ sides; cranes swinging, dockers and stevedores yelling, nets being swung over, crates humped about, gangplanks bouncing to the tread of porters. For the time being, it was good to savour the tranquillity of this young day, rain or no rain.

  A busy day had left it too late to get away on the ebb tide with yet another order for Barking Creek loading timber. It meant waiting for high water and Charlie saw no point going home just to come back. He went ashore for a cuppa at the local coffee shop, then over to the Roadsman where there was a good cabin built on that permanently moored barge with somewhere to sleep and a good cooking stove with an oven – home from home. Doris was used to him being away twenty-four hours on the trot. Bringing in overtime, she never complained.

  Very early the following morning, the rest of the world hardly astir, he was picked up by a tug with several other barges, then it was down to Barking Creek taking on timber.

  It was there he saw Bobby with another apprentice. Bobby didn’t look too happy in an old, beaten-up, flaking barge with splintered bow-boards, dents and a few caved plates, good enough for dock and canal work, but obviously not to Bobby’s taste. Bobby saw him too, there was no doubt of that, but as Charlie threw him a wave, he turned away.

  Charlie’s ready grin straightened. The lad was clearly still full of sulks about his opinion of the tuppenny-ha’penny daughter of some flopped-out docker. He’d put paid to that quick as kiss your hand when they got home this evening. He wasn’t having it and that was final.

  He turned on Willy, who was absorbed rolling himself another gasper instead of looking out.

  ‘Watch that bank, you bloody fool!’ he roared, quite unnecessarily, he realised, the moment he had. Yet couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Poke off, you daft sod!’ To which Willy, seeing the bank not that dangerously near, nevertheless jumped to attention, his look one of amazement at the sudden change in this normally mild-mannered man.

  Nine o’clock. Dad still wasn’t home.

  ‘I ’ate these long hours your dad does,’ Mum said, eyeing the clock on the kitchen mantelpiece, she and the rest of the family having had their own meal around five. Afterwards Cissy had gone out for an hour, round to Daisy’s to trim her hair. They had giggled and chatted in Daisy’s bedroom, talking of Saturday and what dancehall they should choose to go to, reading magazines together until Daisy’s younger sister, having to come up to bed, made them vacate the room.

  Back home now with not much else to do on a damp November evening, Cissy got on with a bit more of the jumper she was knitting herself, Dad’s dinner was still gently steaming under a plate, but no sign of him.

  ‘Be like soggy sawdust by the time he do get in,’ Mum said, as Bobby came in to inform her that he’d seen his father at Barking Creek, as he sat down to his share of the shepherd’s pie she put before him.

  ‘Well, let’s ’ope he won’t be long,’ she said mildly.

  Grabbing a knife and fork, Bobby chose not to reply to that. ‘Looks good, Mum.’

  ‘Was good, you mean,’ she put in. ‘Time you two ever get at it. Shame, seeing good food go ter waste,’ she remarked, as she bent to wriggle the poker among the coals behind the grating of the kitchen range, making the coals glow brighter and emit more heat, enough to make Cissy push her chair further away from it.

  ‘I don’t know me rear end from me elbow, never knowing when you two are doin’ overtime,’ Mum went on, though her tone wasn’t peevish. Overtime money was always welcome. ‘Did ’e say ’ow late he’d be, when you saw ’im?’

  ‘Just waved.’ Bobby pushed his empty plate back with a satisfied sigh; well built, in a few ticks he could put away a meal that took hours to cook. ‘What’s fer afters?’

  ‘Tinned pineapple an’ custard.’ She drew the jug of custard, now with a thick skin on top where it had been keeping warm on a trivet away from the direct heat of the hob.

  ‘He didn’t say anythink to you?’

  ‘Too far away.’

  ‘He could’ve done a bit of tick-tacking like you lot do when you’re too far for someone to ’ear you. Didn’t ’e signal he’d be ’ome late?’

  ‘No, he didn’t!’ Bobby said sharply, leaning forward to gobble up the sweet she’d put before him; the tinned pines were free, brought home by Charlie last week, something got for the trade of something else as usual.

  The plateful disappearing in five great spoonfuls, Bobby was up from the table before she could probe any further, a naturally slow-thinking woman, she was prone t
o taking her time whenever asking a question.

  ‘Going upstairs to charge,’ he announced, his chair scraping back over the kitchen lino.

  ‘You goin’ out then?’

  ‘What if I am?’

  Doris frowned at the unusually disagreeable tone. ‘There’s no need to talk to me like that, Bobby.’

  He moderated his tone immediately, his broad, good-looking face penitent. ‘Sorry, Mum. I’m just in a bit of a hurry.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ she conceded gently, loving him in her heart, calling after him as he made it down the passage and halfway up the stairs, ‘Who yer seein’?’

  His deep voice floated back. ‘No one perticler.’

  ‘Not that Ethel Cottle?’

  ‘It depends.’

  ‘Better not let yer Dad know, that’s all.’

  There was no reply. The door to the bedroom he shared with his younger brothers closing with more force than was needed.

  ‘’Ope ’e don’t wake them boys up,’ she murmured to Cissy.

  Within ten minutes Bobby was down again, in good suit, collar, tie and trilby. ‘Cheerio!’ came his call. ‘Might be a bit late.’

  ‘Remember you’ve got ter be up early for work in the morning,’ Doris called, her warning cut short by the slam of the front door.

  ‘You and Dad give him much too much rope,’ Cissy put in her spoke, staring hard at her knitting, but her mother only smiled.

  ‘He’s young yet. He’ll settle down with the right gel in time.’

  And I’m young too, thought Cissy, her needles clicking furiously for the life she yearned.

  She was in bed well before Dad got home. Mum, as always, stayed up for him, warming up his dinner yet again. Cissy, half waking from sleep, heard their voices coming from the kitchen below, muffled and indistinct.

  At one point, Dad raised his, a storm threatening to blow up out of it, but almost immediately his tone returned to conversational level with nothing to spark it off. Mum never retaliated enough for any argument to mature, and though a storm might certainly be brewing up over Bobby, Cissy had never truly known serious or prolonged rows in this house, though she guessed he was the cause of Dad’s raised voice on this occasion.

  Later she heard the stairs creaking as they came up to bed, their door next to hers closing quietly. For a while their voices droned on, muffled, slow, then finally silence, Dad beginning to snore gently.

  What time Bobby came home Cissy didn’t know, she was already asleep.

  Chapter Four

  The storm broke the following evening. Dad could never abide anyone sulking, his policy was always have out with it then done with it, despite Mum’s natural inclination to pour oil.

  Cissy arrived home from work to a quiet enough household. Mum was getting supper, Sidney and Harry long since come home from school. May as always was giving her tongue an airing on some lengthy saga about one of the women at the cardboard box factory where she’d worked since leaving school in the summer, Mum was not really listening.

  The boys had taken themselves off into the back room next to the kitchen to read their comics. No sound from them, The Magnet and Gem were avidly scanned from cover to colourful cover, the pair of them lying stomach down on the rag rug in front of an as yet dull fire banked up to burn through by the time the rest of the family migrated there for the evening.

  Coat and hat off, apron on, Cissy, with a still chattering May to help her, set about laying the kitchen table. Its plain deal surface perpetually hidden by green patterned oil cloth fastened under the edges with drawing pins, she flapped the everyday beigeplaid tablecloth on top, set out cruet and cutlery for the seven people soon to be squashed shoulder to shoulder around its narrow rectangle. Mum would sit at one end, more for easier manoeuvring than a place of honour. The other end was flush against the wall for want of room. Dad, Bobby and Sidney always sat in a row on the open side, Cissy, May and Harry had to squeeze between the table and the back wall, above them the shelf where pots and pans stood upside down to stop cooking grease getting into them.

  Cissy felt the tension come in with her father, who was home at a normal hour with no overtime. There’d been steady rain all day, but she was certain it wasn’t that which gave his usually benign features such a tight look. He didn’t even mention the weather or light-heartedly shake his cap about as he usually did. She was sure it had to do with Bobby, bad feeling lingering from yesterday. Mum too noticed it as he bent to peck her offered cheek. Her voice was touched by concern.

  ‘Everything all right, luv?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ was all he said, as he sat down in her chair out of her way, opening his evening paper to read until she had dished up.

  Cissy went on helping, washing up the cooking utensils to save Mum the job, May still prattling on about her workmates, doing little.

  Bobby, coming in a few moments later, dropped a kiss on Mum’s cheek with an ‘All right, Mum?’ but said nothing to his father as he went out and straight upstairs to the room he shared with his brothers.

  As Cissy got the plates down from the cupboard for Mum to ladle on steaming helpings of meat pudding, carrots and potatoes, she watched her father’s face grow even tighter. She felt guilty that in a way it was she who’d started it in the first place by mentioning the Cottle girl. It hadn’t been vindictive. She’d been taken by surprise that her parents hadn’t known. Yet she felt partly responsible.

  Dad looked up from his paper as Mum called the boys to come to the table, at the same time calling Bobby to come down.

  ‘What’s ’e doing upstairs?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mum said mildly.

  Cissy took her place at the table beside May. Her father folded his paper, got up from Mum’s chair to take his own seat while the two boys did their usual scramble to get to the table before the other, their chatter interspersed by May still on about the women she worked with.

  ‘They don’t ’alf ’ave a life, some of ’em,’ she gabbled.

  ‘Half, have,’ Cissy corrected, but a look from her father cut short any further correction.

  ‘I don’t know what’s goin’ on,’ he announced to the thin air. ‘Being snubbed by me own son a second day running and ignored by ’im at Barking yesterday. I know ’e bloody ignored me. It was plain as the nose on yer face. I ’ad his silence ter put up with at breakfast this morning, but goin’ off ter work on ’is own, not waiting for me – if that ain’t a snub, then I don’t know what the ’ell you’d call it.’

  He went silent as Bobby appeared. Where they’d have automatically sat next to each other swapping accounts of their day, talking shop, Bobby did a bit of signalling to a surprised Sidney to move up to let him sit at the end. Charlie gave a grunt, aware of the significance of the move, gazing as though mesmerised at the meat pudding Mum put before him, knife and fork idle in hand.

  ‘What’s special about upstairs, then?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  Charlie glared up at him. ‘Don’t come the old acid with me, son. Yer’ve bin sulkin’ fer two days now. Nothing riles me worse than sulkin’. Specially from a boy what thinks he’s a man. You was out with that docker’s brat last night, weren’t yer?’

  ‘It’s got nothink to do with you.’

  His father thumped his knife and fork down on the table. ‘Nothink ter do with me? It’s got everythink ter do with me, lad. Cissy told us about you and ’er, and…’

  ‘Cissy’s got no right.’ Bobby turned an accusing stare on her. ‘It ain’t none of your damned business, Cis, what I do.’

  ‘Bobby!’ Mum looked annoyed. ‘I won’t have strong language in this house – not from a boy your age.’

  ‘I’m not having her mixing it fer me. She’s got Eddie Bennett. All right for them ter go walking out together…’

  ‘We are not walking out together.’

  ‘I thought you were, dear.’

  ‘Well, I’m not.’

  ‘What’s this got ter do with ’im and that docke
r’s gel?’ Charlie thundered.

  ‘Just a minute, dear.’ Doris gave him a mild look then turned back to her daughter, her faded brown eyes full of concern. ‘I thought you two were going steady.’

  ‘Mum, we’re not. At least…’ Bobby forgotten for the moment, Cissy fought to defend her motives ‘.…’m not. I don’t feel I’m ready to start going steady with anyone.’

  ‘Of course you are, dear. In a few months time you’ll be twenty-one – old enough for any gel to start thinking of settling down.’

  ‘I don’t want to settle down.’ Her voice was a wail. ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Well, I think it’s about time you started thinking about it.’

  ‘Mum, it’s my life, not yours.’ For a moment Cissy forgot to whom she was talking. ‘What about what I think? It’s my…’

  The rest was cut short by a roar from her father. He who so seldom raised his voice that the sound startled her into silence.

  ‘You mind what yer say to yer mother, my gel. While you’re under our roof, you ’ave some respect, or get out and find yer own place.’

  ‘Charlie!’ Doris’s voice was shocked. ‘Don’t say them sort of things, luv. She didn’t mean it.’

  ‘I’m still not ’aving that kind of talk in my ’ouse. And, as fer you, miss…’ He turned on Cissy. ‘What’s wrong with Eddie Bennett? ’E’s the nicest bloke anyone could wish ter meet, and ’e’s a lighterman. A good respectable trade many’d envy. You could do worse than ’im, my gel. You think about that one. I’m not ’aving a daughter of mine turn ’er nose up at a decent-livin’ bloke as if ’e was dirt under ’er feet. Too much of this ellycution stuff, that’s what it is. It’s doin’ yer no good. My advice ter you is pack that lark in and get yer feet back on the ground if you don’t want ter end up an old maid. Eddie Bennett won’t always be there waitin’ fer yer.’

  Out of breath by unaccustomed and excited speech, he sat glaring at her, awaiting her reply.

  But it was Mum who spoke first. ‘You must admit, Cissy, you are being unfair to Eddie, dangling him on a bit of string. And he’s such a nice boy. He works hard. He could give you a really good home. You could both be so happy.’