An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Eddie felt his chest swell with pride in his achievement. Edward looked so like Dad…he no longer thought of his father as Alf. Those days had gone. No longer here, his father was Dad and would remain so to him to the end of memory. But thinking of him brought pain and he hastily dragged his mind away to turn it again to little Edward, soon to be demanding his morning feed from Cissy. But he didn’t want to think of her, so he turned his mind back again to business.

  Today he was going straight onto his tug. Joan, the girl who did his typing and paperwork part-time, would be in today. She would let herself in with a key, a reliable, trustworthy girl; she’d catch up with any work from the day before yesterday, take phone messages and leave them for him when he came in around seven or eight this evening to catch up with anything that might need doing, he finally going home around nine.

  It wasn’t the most satisfactory way to carry on a business and he could sense as well as see it going down and down, very slowly, like a feather or a leaf that had fallen off a tree being wafted up and down here and there by odd upcurrents of air yet always lessening the distance between itself and the ground. It had a dream-like quality to it, and sometimes he felt that if only he could take a sledgehammer to the whole thing, break it physically, or catch that leaf and pull it to the ground in one jerk, this nagging waiting for things to run themselves down would come to an end. He would be bankrupt and have to join the endless dole queue with others, relying on someone else to give handouts. In a way, left to fate, it seemed easier to bear. But he knew this was foolish thinking; that he would go on struggling until he, that leaf, came to rest among all the other fallen leaves to rot away, dreaming of how things might have been.

  It was having to fight for the money to pay bills, to pay wages, that was killing. He badly needed a proper crew instead of the bare three of them – Pete Robertson his engineer, Jack Stoker his fireman, and himself, skipper. They pulled together as best they could, took turns with duties fit only for a tea-boy, and made their own tea. They understood, sympathised and were grateful to have a job. But for him it was chaos. What he needed was a mate who could take over the skippering when he himself was needed in the office, but as it stood at present, there was not enough money coming in to pay a mate’s wage full-time. It was always a dilemma: save on crew and not get a job done properly, or pay out and gamble that work would come in enough to compensate for the outlay.

  Cissy on the other hand had been finding the going a little easier lately, so she said; even suggesting, as she totted up her takings last week, that it might be the start of better times and if it carried on like that they might begin putting something from the shop into the towage side to help kick it back into life. As if she thought that without her help he’d sink without trace. He was not prepared to stoop to handouts. It was her money – even though she used it to buy food, clothes, things like that. She could plough whatever was left back into her shop. He’d take care of his own end. He wouldn’t touch her money, not with a bargepole, he wouldn’t. It had been got from that one she’d been with in France, that he had gleaned from one of her letters, and he wanted none of it. He’d struggle or go under before taking a penny of hers to bolster the business he’d built.

  He turned into the main road to be met head on by its bustle, and made towards the swaying mob all trying at once to board the tram that would take him to Stepney. No time now to think; fight for a seat or stand strap-hanging. The conductor squeezed between passengers taking fares, giving out tickets, little faded green oblong things, the machine pinging like mad – anyone looking at this crush wouldn’t think that there was massive unemployment across the land. The air reeked of tobacco smoke and someone’s breath in your face, while on rainy days the dank odour of wet jackets and caps pervaded. And all the time the tram filled with the deep, hollow booming of men’s voices chatting about football, the wife, the boss, the state of affairs.

  Off the tram, Eddie walked briskly through Rotherhithe Tunnel to Bellamy’s Wharf where his crew of two were waiting for him. Instantly he felt his spirits rise. Nothing better than being on the river, and being master of your own decisions; working a vessel up or down river, its engines pounding under your feet, the power behind the noisy, cranking, clacking machinery towing a string of laden barges or nudging a big ship into a dock or to a wharf as a crew worked together like the parts of a well-oiled engine.

  Together they walked through the wharf, the roadsman waiting to pick them up in his boat to take them to where the Cicely had been moored the night before. A quick brew-up, and off to the first job of the day. Eddie, his eyes keen, set on the moment – up through the bridges, in the bridge-hole the tug’s engines compressing eardrums, the roaring rush of displaced water, then coming out the other side, engine quietening to almost nothing after the noise.

  During these moments he no longer felt bowed down by business worry; did not think of Cissy and the lie she still lived with him or even of his baby son. He was on the river. Nothing existed beyond the job ahead, the water beneath his tug’s hull. He was on the river. He was in his element.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  ‘You know, Mum, I’m beginning to think marriage is a killer of any loving relationship,’ Cissy sighed, her gaze following the groups of schoolboy football enthusiasts running about the playing fields, their shirts smudges of blues, reds and greens, their figures made small by distance, like their shouts of encouragement to each other. The football season was just starting and they were making the most of it on this the first Sunday morning in September.

  Cissy and her mother had taken to a regular wander on Sunday mornings to the recreation ground near to where her parents lived. It was pleasant sitting on the weatherworn, penknife-scratched bench for the sun’s warmth to pour down on them and do them a bit of good.

  Cissy dropped her gaze to Edward’s pram to assure herself that he was not lying in direct sunlight which it was said could give babies a permanent squint. The September sun lower in the sky now could find its way under a pram hood too easily.

  ‘I thought we would go on being so deeply in love with each other, but it all seems to have gone out of the window. Something has gone out of it – I don’t know what, and it worries me. I’m still so much in love with him, but he doesn’t want to know. All he does when he’s home is drool over Edward or read the papers and go to sleep.’

  ‘Well, he does work hard, I expect.’ Doris bent to readjust the pram’s covers a little. A slightly chilly breeze had sprung up after such a lovely warm start to the morning and over to the west the sky had turned a little greyish with a haze of thin, she suspected but hoped not, rain-bearing clouds.

  ‘Even so, Mum, I feel I’m just part of the furniture. He doesn’t even seem interested when I try to tell him about the shop. I’m sure we’re doing a little better these days.’

  ‘I’m glad to ’ear that, dear. I get so worried for you and Eddie.’

  ‘Does Dad get worried?’ She didn’t miss the oblique look her mother shot at her.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The reply far too hastily said.

  ‘What’s he say?’ she tested, aware of tension still between them.

  ‘Not a lot. ’E don’t say much these days about anythink.’ Doris straightened up from the pram. ‘I worry about your dad, Cissy. Been drawing into ’imself for a couple of years now.’

  ‘But he still hasn’t forgiven me, has he?’

  ‘Good Lord, Cissy, that’s bin over and done with fer ages. It was got over the moment you and Eddie got married.’

  ‘Sometimes I’m not so sure – at least not with Dad. I never realised how much I hurt him, you know. I wish I could do something to bring back how it used to be, when he used to laugh with me and at me. He never laughs now – not at me.’

  ‘It’s not you, Cissy, luv. He don’t laugh at no one. It’s ’avin’ no work and not able to get any – not at ’is age. They want younger men – if they ever want anyone at all. But ’e ain’t that old.’

  A
gain came a sidelong glance. ‘I was wonderin’, Cissy…Do Eddie ever ’ave any need fer ’elp on his tug? Your dad did quite a bit of towing in ’is time. He do know what he’s doing. He’s always bin a good waterman. Always dedicated to ’is work, ’e was. Never once shirked or caused trouble, and everyone looked up to ’im in ’is day. Still got it in ’im, if only someone’d give ’im a chance.’

  It sounded so like a character reference tinged with pleading that Cissy felt herself squirm with embarrassment. All she could mumble was: ‘I don’t know if he wants anyone, Mum. I could ask him…’

  ‘Oh, no! Don’t go asking ’im outright. I don’t want ’im to think I was beggin’. And I don’t want yer dad to know what I said either. I just thought your Eddie might be needin’ someone.’

  ‘I know.’ Cissy gave her a comforting smile. ‘I could put it in a round-about way so Eddie doesn’t feel obligated and if there is any chance…He’ll keep an ear to the ground for Dad. But at the moment, he’s struggling along with a crew of three, and that includes himself. He’s even had to do without a mate. It’s hard going. They don’t even have a lad on board. I think they all muck in as best they can.’

  ‘Yer dad could do odd jobs…’ The words were seared off as if they had burned her tongue, her mother’s round face reddening as she heard herself pleading on behalf of her husband for a job, any job, even to offering him on a level with a tea-boy. It was degrading and they both knew it. Cissy could have burst into tears for her.

  If he had heard them discussing him just then, he would have died from humiliation. He would, Cissy truly believed, have died rather than sink to what Mum was suggesting – most certainly would never have looked her in the eyes again. After all the respect he had known as a Freeman of the Thames, who would dare ask him to sink to doing the job a deck-boy would do, making tea, taking on all the dirty tasks? Dad was still clinging to his self-respect in the eyes of his family if no one else – no, she wouldn’t deign to insult him with dregs when what he needed was a long draught of hope.

  The look of horror on her face had not gone unnoticed by her mother whose lips tightened, making something more out of it merely, Cissy imagined, to cover her own tracks.

  ‘It was just a thought,’ she said sharply annoyed. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘I want to help you and Dad.’ It was Cissy who was now doing the pleading, making a bad job of it, and she saw the lips compress still more.

  ‘I’m sorry we’re a burden to you, Cissy.’ The paper bag that had held a couple of apples scrunched harshly and suddenly between her mother’s hands.

  ‘Don’t be angry, Mum,’ Cissy pleaded. ‘I didn’t mean to make it sound like that.’

  ‘If only I knew where to turn. But I don’t. Your sister May’s out of work now. And ’er bloke too. A nice boy. They’ve started courtin’ serious, but what ’opes have they got of getting married with not a penny to bless themselves with? And Bobby – I don’t know ’ow he’s managing. Spends hours down at the gates, just ’oping for the odd job to be ’anded out. It’s criminal. It’s beggin’, that’s what it is. And then to ’ave you look at me like that because I asked…’

  ‘I didn’t mean to!’ Cissy broke in desperately. ‘I’d do anything for you and Dad. I’ve not forgotten how you got him to forgive me for leaving home the way I did. If I could compensate for my stupidity – if I could take those years back, I would. I want to do all I can to make amends. I want to help you both but I don’t want you to think I’m imposing on you or being patronising.’

  ‘I don’t understand them long words, Cissy. It was learning words like that what gave you big ideas so you went off to find what you didn’t think you could get ’ere. Well, you found out, didn’t you? I’m not blaming you for wanting somethin’ better than we could ever give you, but it was the way you did it, and…’

  ‘You still can’t forgive me. Even you. So it’s obvious Dad hasn’t.’

  Doris began neatly folding the empty apple bag with exaggerated care, putting it back in her large black handbag. She didn’t look at her daughter. ‘As I’ve said before, it was over long ago.’

  But not forgotten, Cissy thought, watching her mother’s exercise with the paper-bag folding, a silent censure if ever there was one.

  Her mother leaned forward to put the dummy back into Edward’s mouth as he began to whimper. ‘Gettin’ near ’is feeding time, I reckon.’ She tenderly regarded the baby. ‘Getting a bit chilly too. It looks like rain over there. You coming back for a cuppa before you go on ’ome?’

  She appeared to have recovered from her moment of pique and Cissy nodded, getting up from the bench, drawing Edward’s blankets up over him. ‘It’s on my way home. I might as well say hello to Dad.’

  ‘More likely Eddie’s just worried about ’is business,’ Doris said out of the blue as they moved off towards home, startling Cissy. ‘You worrying about marriage not being all ’earts an’ flowers any more,’ she elucidated. ‘It do ’appen. Kids come along, jobs take an upper hand – if there’s any, that is. Wife looking after little ’uns, ’usband trying to be a decent breadwinner. No one can go on for ever like they was a couple of lovesick youngsters. It ain’t natural and it ain’t convenient. No work’d ever get done if we carried on like we did before we was married.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Cissy said glumly, gazing into the pram. ‘But with us it just seems there’s something in the way, and I don’t know what.’

  ‘It’s just nature.’ Her mother smiled, and dismissed the subject.

  ‘It is settled at last. Christmas we will move to Germany.’

  Theodore sat in his button-backed black leather easy chair, the one he used for thinking in when not at his bureau in his study in their fine apartment on Avenue du Mal Lyantey overlooking the Auteuil racetrack.

  He and Daisy had returned from yet another fruitless consultation over her continuing childless state. Although he would still do all he could for her, he had more or less become resigned to the idea of never becoming a parent. She hadn’t. And now her sweet brown eyes were full of tears and his own heart wept for her sorrow, watching her pacing, pacing, pacing his small red-carpeted study. How elegant she looked in that slim woollen dress with its Peter Pan collar. A dress to suit a figure unmarred by childbearing. But so much happier would she be were it a sack of a thing to disguise a bulging waistline.

  ‘We will go to Dusseldorf,’ he furthered. ‘I will find a good house and we will obtain for you a good specialist on problems of women.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to keep putting yourself out for me, Teddy,’ she sighed, still pacing. ‘Spending out good money taking me to Germany, just because of my selfish needs.’

  He put out a slim sallow hand and caught hers, bringing her gently to a halt. ‘It is my selfish needs too, my love. I am getting tired, tired of my long exile, which is self-imposed. I had intended to be in France for just a little while, after which, my fortune made, I intended to return to my homeland and boast of the wealth I had made here. My wealth I made, but I grew also older and set in my ways. Why bother to go back home? Would my stepmother, if still alive, care what I had made? No. So I stayed. But now the time has come…’

  She leapt at him as he paused, her arms going round him. ‘You’re not ill, Teddy? You’re not ill, are you?’

  ‘Of course I am not ill.’ He eased her rigid embrace. ‘I am weary – of France. I yearn now for my own country, my homeland, mein heimat. I need to converse again with others in Deutsch and hear it spoken to me. I am homesick, Daisy. After all these years, I am homesick.’

  ‘God, I thought…’ She shifted herself more comfortably on to his lap. ‘I remember once you talking about visiting your father’s grave. “When the time comes,” you said. It frightened me then. And hearing you just now, I thought such thoughts. I suddenly felt so awfully frightened. I really thought…’ She couldn’t go on and nestled her head against his chest.

  He smiled down at her, pulling his head back to gaze into her face.
‘The time has come, my dear. But not for what you think. We go now to Germany and I will enjoy to renew all my memories of my childhood and feel young again. In Germany, revitalised, I will live another fifty years or more.’

  Now she laughed. ‘That’d make you ninety-six – almost one hundred.’

  ‘I intend to live to one hundred,’ he announced emphatically and kissed her.

  Germany was all he said it would be. Taking a two-week trip on his own first of all, he found them a lovely old house, black and white with gables and windowboxes that in the spring and summer would be bright with flowers of all colours.

  Tired as she was from days of packing, the journey by car three weeks later, their belongings and furniture going on ahead in a van, Daisy could hardly contain herself from going completely hysterical with delight at the sight of the house he had chosen for them. Some ten kilometres from Dusseldorf – his office would be in the centre of Dusseldorf itself – it was situated in a pretty little village called Kaiserwerth.

  Her joyful squeals echoed through the house as she raced up the dark polished wood stairs to visit each of the three bedrooms, peering first from one bedroom window onto the loveliest little square she had even seen, despite the winter-bared trees around it and a powdering of overnight snow; then from another to glimpse a church spire which Teddy told her belonged to St Suidbert; a third window onto nothing but treetops going mistily and silently into the wintery distance.

  ‘Oh, Teddy, it’s wonderful,’ her voice echoed back down the stairs. ‘It’s so beautiful…The scenery, the outlook – oh, I love it! I’m going to be so happy here.’

  He smiled quietly, little Noelle’s hand in his, taking pleasure from her wild exuberance, and waited. It wasn’t a long wait. In seconds Daisy was tripping back downstairs to embrace him, before making more exhilarated rounds of the downstairs area – sitting room, living room, spacious German kitchen with a huge black range and hooks for hanging sides of bacon and ‘things’ as she squealed out, coming back to grab Noelle up in her arms for a specially conducted tour, particularly the room that would be hers. Most of the house was already furnished on his orders, prompting Daisy to stop in her tracks, to look at him with mingled anxiety and adoration.