An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  ‘Oh, Teddy! All this just for me? It must have cost the earth! You said you weren’t doing as well as you once did. Can we afford it?’

  ‘It has been done,’ he slowly smiled at her concern. ‘It is paid for, so do not worry, my dear.’

  But she was already off again, the four-year-old but petite Noelle in her arms, light as a feather in her continued excitement.

  In the master bedroom Teddy had installed a four- poster at the foot of which he’d had placed an antique ottoman. There by the window was a delightful dressing table, draped in the same colour pink as the drapes at two tiny diamond-paned casement windows, the wallpaper was all tiny pink flowers and the mirrors in the wardrobes gave the room such proportions that Daisy gasped, gasped too at the central white fluffy carpet covering the woodblock flooring.

  Noelle’s bedroom was done out in pale green; wouldn’t have been Daisy’s most favoured choice but Teddy had explained that the weather could get very warm in summer, so facing south, the room would appear cooler she supposed.

  The third smaller room was mostly white, already optimistically papered with designs of toys and animals. Daisy had already paused at this room on her first tour around the second floor and for a moment her hand had flown to her heart, her voice silenced briefly, her love flowing out to her husband and his certain belief that once in Germany she would bear him a child.

  When she finally came downstairs again with Noelle beside her, she kissed him. ‘Thank you,’ she said, and having interpreted that pause in her first moments of excitement, he understood implicitly what she was referring to.

  ‘I’m selling the Cicely.’ Eddie could hardly bring himself to say the name. Cissy had known for a long time that he’d named the boat for her.

  She looked up, startled, from dishing up his evening meal. ‘She’s all you’ve got. How can you…’

  ‘I’ve decided she’s more trouble than she’s worth. I’ve decided to get something I can rely on.’ It was almost as if he were referring to her, but she of course had no idea.

  ‘You can’t afford it.’ She stood with the gravy spoon paused over his sausage toad, her blue eyes wide with horror. ‘It’s coming up to Christmas and we can hardly afford to have a decent one, without us spending out changing tugs.’

  ‘I’m going to ’ave to. There’s one going that I’ve got my eye on, but I’ve got to sell one to buy one.’

  ‘But not this time of year, Eddie. And you love the Cicely.’

  ‘Ain’t no such thing as love in business.’ His voice sounded harsh even to his ears. ‘In times like these, ain’t no room for sentiment. I’m getting rid of ’er and taking up this offer. Harrisons are cutting down on their men and they’re selling off some of their fleet.’

  ‘Of course,’ she sighed sadly, understanding now. ‘It’s horrible, the state the country’s in, unemployment going up and up. Even big firms like Harrisons cutting back.’

  He ignored the sadness. ‘I’m gettin’ in quick and taking up the offer while it’s going.

  ‘It’ll cost far more than you’ll get for the Cicely. Have you a buyer for her?’

  She still spoke so nicely. He thought she might have lost some of that posh accent by now, but she hadn’t. Almost as though she thought herself a cut above all those around here, a cut above him. He took a vaguely vicious delight in his next words.

  ‘I’m letting ’er go for scrap.’

  ‘Scrap! You’ll get next to nothing for her.’

  ‘Better than shoving ’er up and down river like I’m doing now.’

  ‘But even that’s better than sending her for scrap.’

  ‘I’ve made up me mind.’

  ‘But you’re going to have to borrow on top of everything else. I can’t see the banks helping you. We’ve got no collateral without the Cicely. And you’re not going to one of those sharks to get what it’s going to cost you. Eddie, we can’t afford it! We can’t afford to take chances like this. We’ll be getting in over our heads.’

  He stood up sharply. ‘I’ll decide what we can afford and what we can’t.’

  Cissy dropped the gravy spoon noisily onto his plate, glaring at him. ‘You’re being silly, Eddie. How can we live? There’s no money coming in as it is – well, hardly enough. The lease on the shop expires next year and the rent’s bound to go up. We’re just about breaking even, what with giving your mother something for coming over here each day to look after Edward. And though I don’t begrudge her, it still all adds up. Don’t you see, until the tug you’re talking so grandly of buying begins to pay for itself, we’re going to have to rely only on what our shop brings in.’

  He shook his head at her. ‘Your shop. Not mine.’

  ‘Ours! How can you talk like that? What we both bring in is to keep the three of us. I thought we shared our responsibilities. It’s not my shop – it’s ours.’

  They stood glaring at each other. Her eyes were swimming with tears and he wanted suddenly to clutch her to him, the feeling consuming him. To hell with the past. The only person he was wounding was himself – confusing her, yes, but wounding himself, for she had no idea why he was as he was. Yet he couldn’t forget that she was still living her lie with him. Two years and still not a word about her daughter. He hated her for it, like a pain. Swinging away from her, leaving his dinner untouched, he went and grabbed his coat from the dark little passage to take himself off into the damp night to walk off that hatred like a pain. He would return later, calmed.

  By the time he got up for work next morning, it had abated, leaving in its place a dull ache of despondency that always followed these bouts. They were becoming ever more frequent and they frightened him. It was not Cissy he hated so much but what she was doing, doing to him.

  Four-thirty and pitch dark in January, she and the baby had hours before they’d get up. She thought he let her sleep on out of kindness to her, having no idea it was so that he would not have to speak to her in the mornings, the time when his hurt was at its strongest. He was not at his best in the morning, and he was afraid that one day he’d let it show and out it would all come, that simmering grievance. Then what would become of their marriage? She thought he still loved her. He did still love her. It was just that…but why go over and over it in his mind? It solved nothing.

  Sawing himself a couple of doorsteps, spreading them with margarine and jam and pressing them together to make a sandwich to stuff into a paper bag, his Thermos filled with tea, milk, sugar, he pushed the lot into his small haversack and quietly let himself out.

  Joan, his typist, would come in around eight-thirty to do whatever there was to be done. Today he was going straight to the Cicely, where he had her moored off Gravesend.

  Counting himself, she had a full crew at the moment on the strength of a good week’s towage last week and a promising start to this week as well; 1933 might be the beginning of better things, but he allowed himself to be only cautiously optimistic.

  Today he and Tom Ainsworth, another struggling one-man band like himself, were bringing a coaster up from the Medway around the Isle of Grain to Tilbury, but what worried him was the hard easterly wind this morning and too much swell for comfort.

  He said so to Tom, but Tom needed the work as much as he did.

  ‘Nothin’ ter worry about, Ed, a little breeze like this. I’ve brung a big’un up river in worse’n this.’

  ‘Not around the Isle of Grain. You’re dealin’ with the estuary, not bloody Blackwall point. A swell like this…’

  ‘It’ll be all right, I tell yer,’ the other one cut in confidently.

  But it wasn’t all right. Whatever happened, it seemed to happen in seconds, a chain of circumstances he should have predicted but didn’t. Somehow in a huge swell the Cicely got herself at right angles to the ship and was pulled round. The ship seemed to surge forward suddenly and the Cicely caught the full wash off the propellers. Before Eddie had time to think, his tug had capsized, throwing the lot of them into the water.

  He had
a glimpse of Tom’s heavy horrified face on the other tug as he went overboard. Then the water closed over his head, obliterating all sight of the world above it. He seemed to go down for ever, seemed to have no way of coming up, though which way was up he had no idea. Bubbles were surging around him, dragging at him, there was a heavy pounding in his ears – the coaster’s propellers thumping, churning the water or only his heart thumping? He didn’t know, except that it felt unbearable. He found himself fighting the drag of the propellers, his lungs bursting, the pounding becoming deafening. Then his muscles grew slack and useless, the thumping slid away into blackness leaving him no longer aware of anything, floating, half in and half out on the swell but he was no longer aware of that either.

  Cissy screamed.

  ‘Where is he? I have to see him!’

  The policemen had hold of her drooping body, supporting her. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Bennett. We’re taking you there now. Is there anyone can give eye to your boy?’

  ‘Neighbours,’ she said weakly. ‘Has anyone told his mother?’

  ‘Someone’s round there now. She’ll be at the hospital. Now, what neighbour?’

  ‘Anyone. Only hurry, please. I’ve got to be with him.’

  ‘Of course. Right now.’

  Led down to the waiting police car, she let herself be helped in while another policeman stayed behind to lock up her shop for her and find the neighbour willing to watch the baby while its mother was away.

  By the time Cissy reached the Southend hospital where they had taken Eddie, she had gathered her wits a little. The trauma of the shock still lingered, the policemen, their faces grave, entering her shop, taking her aside – something every waterman’s or seaman’s wife dreaded; the words accident, capsized, sweeping over her like a great wave.

  Hardly able to comprehend what was being said to her, her mind had conjured up only visions of Eddie’s body floating face down in the Thames; all the stories she’d heard of how it claimed victims, took them down to roll them around, nine days or so later to release its hold on them to fetch up in some backwater along with rubbish, old bottles, driftwood. All she could see was Eddie’s bloated body turning slowly, slowly in that quiet dirty water to be discovered by some lighterman’s lad or a group of children playing on the bankside.

  She had only gradually become aware of someone saying her husband was in hospital; had been lucky, saved by someone named Tom Ainsworth while the other three of the crew had not yet been recovered. Dimly, she had heard that she was being taken to the hospital if she were up to it, she by then weak and faint from what she had been imagining.

  The sight of Eddie came as a shock. She had expected to find him sickly faced, unconscious. Instead he was sitting up in the bed, though his expression was glum.

  ‘We’ve lost ’er,’ his first words. No greeting, no reassurance that he was fine or whatever – just, ‘We’ve lost ’er.’

  Dazed, Cissy sank down on the chair placed ready for her at his bedside. ‘Lost who?’

  ‘The tug. She went down. Like a lead weight. I’ve got nothing now.’ He looked as though he were about to cry. Cissy took his hand, it felt cold, the slim, strong fingers slack.

  ‘It could have been you, darling. Those poor men, but it could have been you too. Who cares about the tug?’

  He wasn’t listening. ‘There’s the insurance, but I owe the bank. They’ll take most of that with no boat as security. And I’ve still got to pay off the rest of the year’s insurance premium.’

  She couldn’t help it. She felt suddenly angry. He had hardly looked at her. She might as well not be here. He seemed utterly unmoved that she had been through hell earlier on, believing the worst and coming here to express her immense relief, her joy for his safety when he could have been lost to her for ever. And yet all he was worried about was the damned tug.

  ‘You were going to let her go for scrap for next to nothing anyway. So what’s the difference, you sending her for scrap or her sinking?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ He sounded lost. He still wasn’t looking at her, seemed as though he hardly knew she was there. ‘The way I feel at this moment, I don’t care. I’ve got past caring. It’s all a bloody rotten farce anyway – life…marriage…’ He gave a shuddering sigh. ‘Love.’

  He leaned forward and she caught him as his head touched against her shoulder. Her arms around him, his body shaking, racked by silent grief, she rocked him gently, the despondency in his voice draining away her anger. And now she was crying too, sending up damp prayers of thanks that he had been saved.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  By Christmas they had settled in, Noelle was delighted with the first fall of snow. The Christmas carols drifting from St Suidbert sung in German sounded so much more lovely, people in the square greeting each other, candles in all the windows and, from the local inn, loud and lively singing every night.

  ‘They know how to celebrate the festive season,’ Daisy said, overcome by it all, and had Theodore look at her with a bemused expression as if to say, what is so strange about that?

  She hadn’t had time yet to meet those of the village, except for two who had come to the door with welcome cakes but as she’d been in the bath at the time, they had given them to Theodore and left without her seeing them. But it didn’t matter. She would meet them in due course once she was proficient enough in German to converse with her neighbours. She was studying very hard. After all, this was to be her home. When writing to her parents, she could add that she now spoke German as well as French. She could just hear her mother saying as she read: ‘Fancy, now!’

  Theodore seemed rejuvenated. A new man, he took her out and about showing off his country. They went out several times to restaurants over the festive season. Everyone was so sociable, whole families going together to eating places. On these occasions, Noelle was left with a young woman Teddy had found in the village. Coming twice a week, Alda, a chubby, rosy-cheeked girl of seventeen, also kept the house scrupulously tidy leaving Daisy to cook, wash and iron. As yet Daisy hadn’t had much to do with her, her German so rapid and she had no English at all so Daisy could only just make her needs understood with a lot of comic gesticulating that made Alda smile, but then the girl was always smiling, never frowned, the easiest-going person Daisy had ever met.

  January was white and crisp. Towards the end of the month, the snow was deep but the road meticulously cleared, Theodore took them to Altstadt, the part of Dusseldorf where he had been brought up as a child. His early memories must have been happy ones, she thought as she watched him gazing reflectively about him at the narrow cobbled streets and tall narrow four-storey houses, each washed a different pastel colour, like rows of cachou sweets. Some were topped with curved façades. Others had steep roofs with windows set in them standing proud, their window frames elaborately carved. It was a place to make anyone feel happy. She could understand how he felt.

  With a sort of inherent pride, he took them to see the market place with its equestrian statue of Jan Wellem, the city’s ruler from 1679 to 1716, who, Teddy added, had improved the city’s trade so greatly that it became one of Germany’s most important industrial towns.

  ‘It was Jan Wellem who built our first synagogue here,’ Teddy said with such pride to his tone that Daisy looked at him sharply, for the first time realising that for all he did not practise his religion, it was nevertheless engrained deep into his soul from generations past.

  For a moment she felt suddenly excluded. Unable to help it, she found herself saying: ‘Come on, Teddy, I think Noelle’s getting a bit bored.’ Noelle was indeed tugging at her hand, smelling some sweet cakes being made nearby.

  ‘Can I have a cake, Auntie – can I?’ Daisy insisted she called her auntie, despite that Teddy was Vater to her rather than Onkel which he disliked, laughing that in a way it made him feel old, an old chap.

  Almost reluctantly, he smiled that lovely slow smile of his. ‘Of course,’ he said, coming back to the present.

  They spe
nt the rest of the day down by the Rhine and, despite the cold, Theodore made snowballs to throw at Noelle which she threw back, her efforts resulting in their disintegrating into powder the moment they left her small hand, making her squeal with frustration.

  On the way home they had coffee and cake in a small restaurant. Daisy, who under Teddy’s tuition found learning to read German far easier than speaking it, took one of the newspapers folded over in racks for people to read as they drank; with an effort made out that President Paul von Hindenberg had given the chancellorship to Adolf Hitler whose party had won nearly twelve million votes in the recent elections. It seemed deadly dull and not worth reading, politics were bad enough – in German they were utterly boring.

  But it said that a great torchlit procession was to be held in Berlin in celebration of the post and she found herself wishing she could be there to see it. Berlin of course was too far away for it to be considered, so she settled herself to trying to decipher a brief account of Amy Johnson’s round trip from London to Capetown and back in her Gypsy Moth aeroplane. The rest of the news concerned something about South Africa quitting the Gold Standard, whatever that meant, but as that was again politics, she turned to the fashion pages instead. At least she could look at the pictures without fighting with the words.

  Theodore too had been scanning the main news in the paper he had selected. She noticed afterwards that he went very quiet and decided he must be again thinking of his old home. He had been quiet then for a time. So she left him in peace to think his thoughts.

  Noelle tucked up in bed after supper, a little German fairy story told to her by Teddy, which he said his father had told him as a child, Daisy took herself upstairs for a hot bath. Nothing could be more delicious, she thought lying there soaking, enveloped in steam, than a hot bath after a winter’s day. Afterwards, in her nightie and dressing gown, wet hair wrapped in a warm towel, she made for her and Teddy’s bedroom, the all-enveloping warmth from the kitchen range reaching even up there, and sat down by her dressing table to write a reply to Cissy’s latest letter, already one week old.