Flossie waited the whole of the next day for her mother to sober up. During this time she sat with her grandparents who, although disinterested in her, were inoffensive. They seemed happy enough to sit on a couple of rickety wooden chairs, each holding a pint of porter, with Mary Ann balancing the listless Henry Junior on her knees. By afternoon both were dozing off, so Flossie offered to watch the infant whilst they took a nap on an old iron bed without sheets or pillowcases, and just overcoats to keep them warm.
Once Mary was clear-headed enough to pay some attention to her son, Flossie busied herself collecting rubbish stored in the privy to heat up the range. Knowing full well there was no food to be had, she visited the nearest grocers, purchased a few meagre ingredients and provided the family with a rare hot meal. Using an old newspaper as a tablecloth, the family tucked into a feast of whelks and batter pudding, bread and pork dripping.
With food in her belly, Mary seemed ready to impart her side of the story. Indeed, once she’d started, she couldn’t stop. So much information gushed out of her that Flossie’s head began to reel.
In a nutshell, it emerged that she was powerless to resist the charms of handsome young Henry Oxer. However, after marriage, he rarely worked, was violent and had introduced her to the demon drink, causing the lurch from workhouse to prison. Sam had come along and rescued her, not just once but twice. She’d tried hard to make it work with him, but he finally betrayed her, forcing her to abandon her girls to Dr Barnardo’s and return to Henry in a state of destitution.
Knowing her mother’s penchant for lying, Flossie found this tale of woe hard to swallow. How had Sam betrayed her? And why would he have done? He had saved her and put up with her drinking and slovenly behaviour for years, so surely if anyone was to blame, it was her.
Seeing that her daughter doubted her word, Mary’s tone changed.
‘You always took his side – always blaming me, never him. I slaved to earn the extra pennies to put food on the table when he didn’t come home nights.’
‘You can’t possibly remember half of what happened in The Crick, you were too drunk!’ Flossie lashed back, her eyes flashing. ‘You spent our money in The Huggens. We often had no tea. Then you decided to come back here and abandon us without as much as a hint of guilt. Four years, Mother. Four years not knowing what happened. How could you?’
Mary shifted uneasily in her chair.
‘Then we find out our name’s Oxer, not Grant. How is that?’
‘I think you should see this,’ Mary said, pulling a crumpled piece of parchment from a nearby drawer and handing it to her daughter.
Flossie unfolded it and started to read. A quizzical look crossed her face. It was a birth certificate.
Florence Gant, born 2nd March 1869 at 10 Duke of York Court, Milton. Father: Samuel Gant. Mother: Mary Gant, formerly Allen.
‘So, Sam is my father, not Henry Oxer. But Florence Gant? Is that a spelling mistake?’
‘No, it’s Sam’s real name,’ Mary said quietly.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s as I say. Sam’s family name is Gant, although it was never legally my name, of course. We changed it to Grant later so as people couldn’t find us.’
Flossie’s eyes rolled in confusion. ‘What are you saying? You are not making any sense. First you have me called Florence Oxer these four long years, now you tell me my name is Gant!’
Mary turned to face her daughter. ‘I cannot be certain that Sam is your real father. You could be Henry’s, as Lottie most definitely is.’
Flossie’s jaw dropped open. ‘But you’ve just shown me my birth certificate.’
‘That is the absolute truth,’ Mary continued, casting her eyes to the floor. ‘Of course I told Sam I was positive he was the father, but I had been with both of them.’
Sensing her daughter’s dismay, Mary tried to justify her actions. ‘With a husband in and out of gaol, I was lonely and in need of a man’s company. Sam was kind and gentle, so different to Henry. I was pretty in them days, but when Henry had been using his fists on my face, it would send Sam into a rage, the like of which I hadn’t seen before. He’d have killed Henry if I hadn’t begged him not to. “He ain’t worth going to the gallows for,” I used to say. Anyway, I felt safe with Sam; I knew he’d protect me.’
They sat in silence for a while, Flossie utterly mystified.
‘So why on earth did you return to Henry? And then have Lottie?’
‘You’re too young to understand, girl. But you will one day. Things happen between people that you don’t expect. You make mistakes and then you pay for them. That’s why I wanted better for you and your sister.’
Flossie was still finding it hard to believe her mother, but decided to let her continue to reminisce about the past, absorbing information along the way.
It seemed that when Sam first arrived in Ipswich he found work at Ransome’s Works, which dominated the dockside with its foundries, workshops, warehouses and timber yards. Nearly half of the workforce were migrants who, according to the Oxers, had changed the character of the community beyond recognition. Down Bishop’s Hill, ancient timber-framed merchants’ houses were now accommodating dozens of families, with shacks erected in their back gardens to house yet more.
Mary first met Sam in Dalby’s lively Ales Store. She had noticed him looking at her, and when he finally plucked up courage to ask her where she worked, she’d replied, ‘At Pretty’s, in the boning’, which hadn’t meant anything to him. ‘Don’t you know a Pretty girl when you see one?’ she’d added coquettishly, running her hands over her pulled-in waist. The confused look on Sam’s face made her smile. ‘William Pretty the Drapers, on Westgate Street, making boned stays and corsets’…
When Sam saw the joke, he laughed out loud. That was how it all started.
Mary’s expression changed as she described what followed. Once convinced that she was with child and in fear of Henry’s wrath should he doubt her fidelity, she and Sam left Ipswich in the dead of night. They found lodgings in Milton near Northfleet, and Mary’s mother Fanny Allen came from Essex to help with her confinement. But finding a job that paid enough to keep them all proved hard for Sam and the money soon ran out. With Flossie just a few months old, Mary decided to return to Henry.
‘I couldn’t keep up the pretence and be the “wife” Sam wanted. I was young, I missed Henry. Oh, he’s a wrong ’un, that’s for sure, but he had a twinkle in his eye I couldn’t resist. He wanted me back, so I decided to give him another chance. Course, I realised in time, a leopard can’t change its spots. He didn’t pay no bills, got into trouble again, so they sent us all to the Union Workhouse. I gave birth to Lottie there. You were barely three years old. They let us out after three months when Henry was sober enough to get a job, and his parents agreed to let us live with them here in Bond Court. All of us in just one room. It was hard, but with both Henry and Fred pinching stuff we got by. Not long after I was pregnant again, and we was all delighted when it was a boy… John, we called him, after my brother.’
After draining the dregs of porter in Fred Oxer’s tankard, Mary took a deep breath. ‘He was only a month old when he died. Overlaying, it was. Could have been me or Henry that did it. We were both near unconscious, been in The Angel, you see.’
Overlaying, or suffocation when a sleeping parent or sibling rolled on top of the baby, was common when entire families slept in the same bed. In fact, a quarter of all babies died this way before their first birthday in one-room homes, and more often on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.
Mary slumped into a chair, tears rolling down her cheeks. Flossie was quite taken aback by this show of seemingly true emotion. The first of her lost boys, she thought. She left it a few minutes before asking her next question.
‘So what happened after that tragedy?’
‘Henry just carried on with his old ways. Got so drunk once, he
was arrested for throwing the first punch outside The Kings Head, then failed to turn up for his court appearance and got fined ten shillings and sixpence, with twelve shillings costs. Of course we couldn’t pay, so he went to gaol for a month. They put him on the treadmill every day in St. Helens. No point to it, just slow, back-breaking punishment. He abandoned us good and proper after that and went missing. His mother blamed me, so I had to find somewhere else for us to live. I knew Sam had come back to Ipswich; I’d seen him around so I waited outside Ransome’s and talked him into giving us another try. That’s when we changed our name to Grant and came to The Crick to throw the debt collectors off the scent.’
‘So you were just using him,’ Flossie said, unable to hide her disgust.
Mary shot her a look of indignation, her piercing eyes creating a chill in the air.
‘I gave him best part of ten years, didn’t I? But you don’t know the half of it. There’s more to tell, but it’ll have to wait. I need to get something nourishing for my boy; he’s started a dreadful cough.’
Flossie knew only too well what that really meant. There was no drink left in the house, so wrapping her shawl round her shoulders, Mary tucked an empty gin bottle out of sight under her arm and headed for the door.
‘Wait,’ Flossie shouted, ‘I’m coming with you.’ She knew it was the only way of ensuring that Henry George wouldn’t go to bed hungry.
It was icy as the pair turned the corner.
‘Henry will be out of clink soon,’ Mary said, the moisture in her breath forming a tiny cloud before her. ‘Happen things will get back to normal for a while.’ In the dark, she couldn’t see her daughter shaking her head.
Chapman’s on the corner of Waterworks Street denied Mary’s plea for groceries on tick, so Flossie reached into her purse and bought a quarter of corned beef for tuppence, a pennyworth of pickles and another pennyworth of milk. Against her better judgement, a few more of her pennies disappeared over the counter at The Cow and Pail getting her mother’s gin bottle refilled.
As they passed a fishmonger’s drying house, several children were enjoying the warmth of a crackling fire, ducking and darting between the smoking herrings and sprats. They all looked so innocent, Flossie mused. Just like her and Lottie all those years ago. Now there’d been so many revelations, nothing would ever be quite the same again. They’d never know for sure if they shared the same father.
‘I thought you were going to make Ipswich your home now,’ Mary stammered unconvincingly when Flossie announced she was leaving. ‘I was just getting used to having my daughter back. What will I do without you?’
Casting her eyes around the insanitary court with its overflowing tank emitting a choking stench, Flossie could find no words. Mary dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. Crocodile tears, that’s what those are, Flossie thought. Money’s in short supply, and will be even more so when Henry gets back with an unquenchable thirst.
Seeing her daughter was clearly not going to change her mind, Mary’s simpering tone quickly changed to sarcasm. ‘I dare say you’ll be heading for Northfleet, then. Do as you will, but I’ll let you find out for yourself what really happened there. That will be plain to see.’ Grabbing the old carpet bag, she thrust it at Flossie. ‘I wasn’t the one at fault and, as I told you before, I had no choice but to leave you and Lottie at Barkingside. I did it for your own good.’
Flossie stared silently at the shabby woman standing before her, then picking up her carpet bag, walked slowly down the rotting staircase. As she waited for two women carrying steaming, stinking buckets to pass in front of her, Mary shouted down her final words.
‘You lived a life of luxury at Dr Barnardo’s compared to what it would have been like if I’d brought you back here. So be grateful for small mercies.’
Flossie passed through the tunnel without looking back.
Mary had reason to be pleased the next day, despite the rent being due. It was Monday, pawn day. She joined the brigade of women making their way down Fore Street pushing their possessions in prams, or carrying them underarm, towards Sneezums pawn shop. There was always a long queue on rent day. In the slightly better-off streets, a runner with a handcart would call for freshly washed sheets wrapped in brown-paper parcels so no one could see what their neighbours were pawning.
Mary had no need to pawn her chenille hat with its tattered feathers this week; she had a brand-new marcasite brooch, still in its pretty wrapping, which Flossie had left on the table. Mr Sneezums would be surprised she’d been given such a gift of quality, and once he’d looked at it through his magnifying glass, would give her enough money to buy a quarter of gin. Then Mary would be off to the bottle department at the back of The Fruiterers Home Inn, which opened early on a Monday.
12
20th January 1886
My darling sister,
It was so good to hear from you and I am relieved that you have left Barkingside and found employment, even if you look upon it as only temporary. I was never greatly happy at Dr Barnardo’s, but I accept that it suited you more. Hearing of your harrowing experiences in Ipswich made me despair, and I am desperately sorry that our mother is in dire circumstances and so sadly unchanged in person. Though I find it hard to come to terms with the possibility that we have different fathers, rest assured, dearest Flossie, that I will always consider you to be my true sister. It was you that I looked up to for support and guidance and you who never let me down. I concur that the bond between us should not, and will not, be broken by this. Please write to me again when you have found Sam and discovered what caused the ‘unbearable state of affairs’ that led our mother to abandon us so heartlessly.
Well, as you surely can tell, I have grown up these past eighteen months. No longer the complaining child. My time on the farm was hard and I suffered hugely from loneliness, despite the kindness of my guardians. I am now living in Winnipeg, which is so much better, and have secured a position as a general maid in the household of local businessman J. Y. Griffin. He has a pork-packing business which dresses 250 hogs a day! His cook told me that the city was little more than a collection of shacks ten years ago, but now, with the opening of the Canadian Pacific Railway, we are experiencing a period of great prosperity. Already hundreds of Chinese immigrants are arriving every day to work on the railroads and settle here in the Prairies. Once there was only Charley Yam and Fung Quong who sold Chinese medicines in town, but now they are everywhere. They will surely find the bitterly cold winters and the Red River springtime flooding hard to get used to.
Some things here, Floss, remind me of home. Winnipeg Lake has paddlewheel excursion boats, and there are freighters and steamboats transporting fish on the busy Red. Other things are completely different, Main Street is extremely wide and all the buildings well spread out. There are long planks stretching across the mud for you to walk from side to side. It seems a new shop opens every day now on Portage Avenue, and we also have an opera house. I’m afraid to say our frontier town also has more than its fair share of saloons, variety theatres and places of disrepute as we have been flooded with young men seeking employment. You would be amused to hear of the vaudeville show I attended quite recently. The acts rivalled any we saw at Rosherville Gardens all those years ago. A particular highlight was Oscar, who made the sweetest music imaginable with the aid of forty wine glasses! However, most of the theatres are being forced to close now as the newspapers are calling them ‘shops of harlotry’.
Anyway, I must tell you about the biggest event Winnipeg has ever seen – the return of our own Little Black Devils, back from the North-West Rebellion. I doubt you will have heard about it, sister, but the Canadian Government have won the last in a series of battles fought to protect the British Empire from another native uprising. I will now endeavour to explain the cause of my own excitement.
We spent three days in the heat of summer welcoming several thousand volunteer soldiers returning
from the front – our city’s own 90th Winnipeg Rifles (named the Little Black Devils by the enemy) amongst them. A hastily erected Victory Arch, spanning Main Street, was decorated with electric lights, bunting, flags and banners, and all the shops had spruce trees with lanterns. I had just managed to find a space on the platform when the troop train arrived, and I was shocked by the sight of our ragged, sunburnt soldiers who have been gone these four months. Most now had beards and some marched in trousers fashioned from oat sacks, while others had hats made from supply bags dyed with coffee. Still, none of that mattered or lessened the cheering. It seemed as if every Winnipegger was there to cheer the two and a half thousand volunteers marching down Main Street and under the arch. It was an age before the official business was over, but finally they were released to celebrate. You can imagine what it was like! The taverns remained open all night and the police were instructed not to interfere.
We girls, being greatly outnumbered, had the time of our lives and it will come as no surprise to you, my clever sister, that I met the man of my dreams. Private Daniel O’Keefe, B Company of the Queen’s Own Rifles – so tall, so handsome, with such ice-blue eyes. We danced in the streets, hardly noticing the rain which began running like rivers between our feet. Looking like a pair of drowned rats, we eventually sought refuge in a shop doorway and spent the rest of the night engrossed in one another’s company, oblivious to the damage being done all around us.
We were so shocked the next morning to see that the storm had ripped the decorations to shreds. Evergreens littered the sidewalks and the streets resembled a quagmire.
Thankfully, the bright sun quickly dried everything and by evening the city was ablaze with Chinese lanterns. From every quarter, rockets were firing. The parades continued, and without fear of further rain we young ladies were able to dress up for the occasion. We don’t always wear bonnets these days, so I let my hair fall in rag curls. I wore a white cotton dress adorned with lace collar and pockets. I had seen it in a shop window and managed to save enough to buy it – even though it took three months. I am so glad I did, as I had, without doubt, the best night of my life. Daniel said our pretty faces brought gladness to the hearts of the returning soldiers.
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