by Beezy Marsh
‘I’m not sure,’ said Ivy, ‘but it was under Annie’s mattress. I think she might have a fancy man and she’s keeping a picture of him under her bed!’ She gave a little snort of laughter as she waved the old photograph of Henry Austin under Annie’s nose. ‘Maybe that’s what she was doing last night!’
Annie made to snatch it back from her, but Mum was too quick. All the colour drained from her face as she grabbed the old picture from Ivy and held it between her shaking fingers: ‘Ye gods and little fishes, Annie! Where did you get this?’
Annie opened her mouth to reply but her mother had coloured up now, like a kettle coming to the boil, and steam was almost coming out of her ears: ‘You have no right to have this! You have no right, my girl!’
Right on cue, Bill ambled into the scullery, with his little mug of hot water and a shaving brush from his daily ablutions. ‘What’s all this, then?’
‘Nanny Chick gave it to me, years ago,’ said Annie, who was shaking almost as much as her mother’s fingers. ‘It’s just a picture of . . .’
‘It was never hers to give, Annie!’ Mum cried. Realizing this was no laughing matter, Ivy and Elsie retreated to the safety of the hallway.
Bill peered at the photograph, made a little ‘hmm’ to himself and then turned his back, walking slowly over to the sink and sloshing his dirty shaving water down the plughole. He wasn’t going to get involved.
Annie clasped her hands in front of her, like a cat’s cradle, the game she used to like to play with Nanny with a ball of wool when she was little. ‘Nanny wanted me to have it, Mum. She wasn’t trying to cause any trouble, I know it. She just wanted me to have a picture of him, of my dad.’
‘How long have you had it?’ said Mum, holding the picture to her chest.
‘Years, since just before Nanny died,’ said Annie.
‘And you never once thought to tell me about it?’ Mum shouted. ‘Never once! You went skulking about behind my back and hiding it under your bed, for the love of God. Lying to me. What’s got into you!’
‘No!’ said Annie, standing up. ‘You lied to me! You made me into a liar because you let me believe he was alive all those years I was in Suffolk, and now I know he wasn’t.’
It was as if someone had taken the wind right out of Mum’s sails then, because she sat down, deflated, at the table. Bill came over to her and put his hands on her shoulders. He glared at Annie: ‘Don’t you dare talk to your mother like that, you cheeky little blighter.’
He raised his hand to her, as if he were going to strike her. But Annie moved away from him and stared him down. ‘I’m not a little girl any more, Bill. Do you think you are just going to belt me one and get away with it?’
‘Oh, don’t you work your ticket with me!’ he shouted. ‘Or you’ll find out.’
‘Please, both of you, stop it!’ Mum sobbed, burying her face in her hands.
‘I know the truth about what happened to my dad in Notting Hill when I was just a baby,’ Annie began, ‘despite all your best efforts to hide it.’
Mum glanced up at her, as if she were looking at a total stranger who had just walked into her kitchen, dragging the past in with her, uninvited.
Annie could feel the triumph of what she was saying surging through her body, as if the years of secrecy, of creeping around and hiding things were finally being thrown off: ‘Yes, I found out! I know you loved him, I know you did, Mum, so why didn’t you just tell me he’d died like that?’
‘You’ve no right to be meddling about in my business . . .’
‘It’s my past!’ cried Annie. ‘It’s not wrong to want to know about my own father, is it?’
But Mum had heard enough. She stood up, opened her hand and delivered a resounding slap right around Annie’s face, sending her reeling backwards, into the kitchen door.
‘That’s right!’ Mum yelled, as Annie fled the room, clutching her face. ‘Get out of my sight!’
22
May 1934
You can see a lot of London from the top deck of a bus.
Annie had never had the time to travel about up in town, but now, with her few belongings stuffed into Nanny Chick’s old carpet bag, she had all the time in the world and nowhere in particular to go.
The noise of Oxford Circus thrummed in her head as the policeman standing in the middle of the road directed the traffic with his white-gloved hands. Lorries were parked up haphazardly as motor cars chugged through and a sad-looking dray horse waited his turn, surrounded by choking fumes. Paperboys yelled the headlines, while women in fancy coats and mink stoles stepped lightly along the pavement on the arms of men wearing trilby hats and wide-legged trousers with turn-ups. Everyone was so smart, it made Annie feel rather small and shabby, watching it all from her vantage point but not really being part of it.
She hopped off the bus and made her way down the warren of backstreets, past some dodgy-looking blokes at a betting shop joshing around with some girls leaning out of a window above them, wearing a lot of make-up, by the look of it. Annie hurried on, her fingers working over the coins in her pocket, wondering whether she should stop for a cup of tea now or keep going a bit longer.
In truth, she hadn’t a clue where she was heading. She’d never been this far into town before but had no intention of going home. She’d waited until the front door banged shut, signalling that her mum was off out to work and Elsie and Ivy had gone to secretarial college, before grabbing her things – including her precious rag doll – shoving them into Nanny Chick’s old carpet bag and scarpering down the stairs and out of the front door, before Bill could say another word to her.
Her mum didn’t want her there, she was sure of it, and she didn’t want to spend another moment living with the lies under that roof. She’d been a fool to believe everything she’d been told, she could see that now. She just wanted a fresh start. But where would she go?
Her feet were aching by the time she reached Covent Garden, with its burgundy-tiled station. Outside, the barrow boys were shouting to each other as they loaded wicker baskets and crates onto the backs of carts. There was barely room to move, with so many wagons vying for space, and there was such a cacophony of noise that Annie almost had to cover her ears. Flower-sellers, old girls in long skirts, stood on the street corners with their shawls drawn around their shoulders as the afternoon drew to a close, shouting, ‘A penny a bunch!’ to anyone who’d listen.
Annie stopped outside a cake shop, her stomach rumbling. She couldn’t really afford to waste money on such luxuries, but she was starving hungry, so she went inside and bought herself a nice iced bun. She sat down on a bench and ate it, watching the world go by, feeling a bit better for having some food inside her.
A plan began to form in her mind. She needed a job, and although she’d only ever worked in a laundry, she knew how to be polite to people. So, perhaps she could try some shop work? Licking her fingers, she went back into the baker’s shop and asked whether he might need any help. But he just shook his head apologetically.
‘You could try some of the pubs, love,’ he said. ‘They’re often happy to take on a nice-looking girl to help behind the bar: the punters like it, if you know what I mean.’
He was trying to be helpful, she realized that, but as she skirted around the pubs near the market, she couldn’t quite get up the courage to go inside and ask; mainly because of the drunken oafs falling out of them into the gutter.
She’d almost lost hope and dusk was starting to fall when she spotted the sign in the window of a little pub with a bow window, down a side street next to the Theatre Royal. A solitary figure stood outside in the semi-darkness, the light of his cigarette burning brightly.
Annie drew nearer so she could read the notice. It said: ‘Help wanted.’
The man opened the door for her, and she stepped inside.
Ralph and Mavis Hartwood were an East End couple, born and bred, who had been in the pub trade for generations, but since Mavis had had their daughter, Daphne, four years ago
she’d been getting cold feet about being up West and was hankering after a return to their home turf.
‘She could use an extra pair of hands around the place to keep her happy,’ said Ralph, almost conspiratorially. ‘I need someone to take the weight off her feet and a load off her mind. She’s not been herself lately and she worries about our little girl hanging around the pub all day with nothing to do. We’ve got a spare room at the back, nothing fancy, but you’ll be comfortable enough and I won’t charge you rent. Are you any good with kids?’
‘I helped raise my two stepsisters,’ said Annie, brightly. ‘So, yes, I suppose so.’
‘Well, if you can take Daphne out during the day and help out behind the bar in the evenings, that would be just what we are after,’ said Ralph. ‘I’ll get you to meet the wife.’
He disappeared around the back of the bar and yelled up the staircase: ‘Mavis! I think I’ve found the right girl for us.’
A ruddy-cheeked woman appeared at the foot of the stairs, carrying a beautiful dark-haired little girl in her arms. The little one smiled shyly at Annie.
‘Annie here is looking for work and is good with children. She’s from a laundry family in Acton,’ said Ralph.
‘What brings you this far up into town, then?’ asked Mavis, with a note of suspicion in her voice.
‘Didn’t get on with my stepdad, really, so I fell out with my mum,’ said Annie. It was more complicated than that, of course, but she didn’t want to go into the ins and outs of her family secrets with complete strangers.
Mavis smiled and her whole face lit up: ‘Oh, you poor thing. Sounds terrible. Chuck you out on your ear, did she? You can tell me all about it over a cup of tea. Not that I would tell a soul, you understand, I’m as silent as the grave, not one to gossip.’
Ralph raised his eyebrows but said nothing and Mavis popped the child down at Annie’s feet.
‘Say hello to Annie, then.’
Annie knelt down and looked into Daphne’s big brown eyes and eager little face. She was so sweet, Annie almost cried.
‘Will we go out and have fun together?’ said Daphne.
‘Yes,’ said Annie, climbing the stairs behind Mavis, with Daphne in her arms. ‘I promise we will.’
Later that evening, as she was settling herself into her new room, the pain of the row with her mum had diminished a bit, so that she felt numb, she gazed out across the back yard of the pub and the rooftops of Covent Garden, their tiles all glossy in the rain.
She’d grown used to Elsie and Ivy clattering up and down the stairs, Bill shouting for something or other and her mum asking her to help get the plates washed up. But now there was a completely different set of noises: the creak of the old pub staircase, the shouts of the market traders, the drunks in high spirits, people bustling about, motor cars in the street, right outside.
There were times she’d dreamed of having a room of her own, and now she had one, with dark wooden furniture, a dressing table and even a mirror, just for her. It was like being cast adrift in a little boat on a vast sea and not quite knowing where she was heading.
There was a gentle knock on the door and Mavis appeared.
‘Mind if I come in?’ she said.
Annie wasn’t used to anyone knocking on the door and asking her permission to enter, so she nodded and Mavis came in and sat beside her on the single bed.
‘I thought this might help you sleep,’ she said, handing her a mug of Ovaltine.
Annie sipped. It was delicious.
By the time her head hit the pillow, the shock of the row with her mum had faded into the background and she slipped willingly into a deep sleep.
Annie relished the chance to go off visiting the museums and parks around London with her young charge.
‘I really want the best for my girl,’ said Mavis. ‘So I’d like you to take her to places that I don’t have time to go. Show her a bit of history. I don’t want her growing up thinking that drinking in pubs is all that life has to offer.’
Ralph rolled his eyes but said nothing. Bringing up the girl was Mavis’s responsibility and he just didn’t understand what she was so worried about. It wasn’t as if Daphne was sitting at the bar, drinking pints, was it?
Annie was only too pleased to take her off and see a bit of culture. All the years she’d missed out on schooling and the time she’d spent stuck scrubbing away at the washboards meant she was probably more excited than Daphne to go and have a look at some proper history.
In the mornings, after sorting out breakfast for the family and tidying up the beds, while Mavis went for a lie down, they’d set off through Covent Garden, marvelling at the porters with stacks of wicker baskets balanced precariously on their heads bringing the fruit and veg in. The record was held by one man with a dozen baskets up there; the women were wider than the pub doors, and probably stronger than the fellas.
Ralph liked to tell a funny story about a bet that one of the costermongers’ wives had years ago, that she couldn’t carry her hubby down to the Borough over the water without dropping him – she did it, stopping only to consume a whole bottle of gin on the way, with him still slung over her shoulders.
Annie and Daphne rode the Underground up to the Natural History Museum, to see everything from huge dinosaur skeletons to beautiful butterfly collections in glass cases, with their wings like brightly coloured silk hankies.
Daphne’s favourite day out was at London Zoo in Regent’s Park, and Annie loved seeing the animals, but she was careful not to let the little girl stick her fingers through the bars of the cages. ‘You can look, not touch!’ was her watchword, just as it had been with Elsie and Ivy up at the baker’s shop in Acton High Street.
In the evenings, she helped out behind the bar, which was Ralph’s pride and joy – he was always mopping it down and cleaning it. She quickly learned how to tot up drinks bills in her head and give the right change, how to pull pints using the brass-topped china pump handles and even change a barrel of beer – although the cellar was damp and creepy, so she hated going down there. The Nell of Old Drury had been a pub for centuries; Ralph had teased her it was haunted, and she believed him.
The pub was a popular watering hole for lots of actors and music-hall stars, with the Theatre Royal being just across the way, and Annie got used to seeing some very famous faces horsing around before a show, cracking Ralph up into a booming laugh and making Mavis smile more than she had ever seen. There was something about the way the light bounced off all the gleaming glasses and reflected in the mirrors behind the bar that made the whole place glitter with life.
The first time she spotted the comedian Arthur Askey he was pretending to have trouble climbing up onto a bar stool. He was a small man, and the way he flailed his legs about had the whole pub in tears of laughter. At the end of his little routine, he took a deep bow and said, ‘I thank you,’ but the way he said it, sounded like ‘I thang yew’, which gave Annie a fit of the giggles. He said it to her every time she handed him a drink after that, just to make her laugh.
Annie was a bit shy at first, but she found a scrap of paper and he signed it for her. That was the start of her autograph collection. Ralph gave her an old notebook and she stuck the signatures in, one by one.
Max Wall was a particular favourite. She was a bit scared of him when she first saw him drinking moodily in the corner one lunchtime.
‘He’s a funny one, looks a bit miserable, if you ask me, but it’s just because he’s working on his routines, Annie, don’t take it personal. He’s bleeding hilarious once he’s in the limelight,’ Ralph explained.
When he came over to chat to Annie one lunchtime, Max was so charming, she was quite smitten with him; he was a handsome bloke. She also liked the music-hall duo Flanagan and Allen, who had a play on over the road at the Royal, and they would take it in turns to tease Annie by ordering drinks for each other and changing their minds at the last minute, until she told them to stop it. There was never a dull moment behind the bar.
One day, after closing time, when they were wiping the tabletops down, Mavis said to her: ‘Do you ever think about your family, Annie? Your mum must be worried about you.’
‘Oh, I haven’t had any time to think about them much these days,’ Annie said, scrubbing the table with renewed vigour.
‘Well, perhaps you should get in touch, just to let them know you are doing well?’
‘No,’ said Annie, firmly. ‘I don’t think that would help. It was difficult, the way I left things.’
‘But a mother would never forget her daughter. I’m just thinking if I ever fell out with Daphne when she was older, it would kill me not knowing where she was or what she was doing,’ said Mavis. She glanced over at her little girl, who was quietly flicking through a picture book.
‘I’ll think about it,’ said Annie, turning away.
The truth was, most nights, when the shouts of chucking-out time had died down and the streets of Covent Garden fell silent for a few short hours before the market got going again, she lay there missing her mum, George, Ivy and Elsie, Aunt Clara and even – and she couldn’t work this one out – Bill, of all people.
She wasn’t sorry for saying what she had said, though, and the lies still hurt, like a kind of ache in her chest when she thought about it all. Then, before she knew it, dawn would break and she’d have so much to do with little Daphne and all the excitement in the pub, it was easy to push it all to the back of her mind.
And as the days turned into weeks, the distance between her and the folks back in Soapsud Island seemed to grow, until it was so vast that she didn’t know how to cross it any more, or whether she even wanted to.
23
September 1934
‘Oo’s the omi of the carsa?’