All My Mother's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  ‘I’d never go anywhere near a married man, you know that!’ Annie’s cheeks were burning scarlet with humiliation. To think she’d almost . . .

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ said Mavis, patting her on the arm. ‘There’s plenty more fish in the sea for a lovely looking thing like you.’

  Annie looked away, so Mavis wouldn’t see the tears which were stinging her eyes.

  ‘Love, why don’t you take a minute for yourself and then you could pop down to the cellar and change that beer barrel for me? We’ve got a party to get ready for!’

  It was as if a light had gone out in her world.

  Everyone got as drunk as lords that night, linking arms, waving paper hats, cheering in 1935 as they sang ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at the top of their voices, spilling out into the street to wish each other ‘Happy New Year!’ Annie sang along with them, smiled her best smile and even had a little dance, but it was all an act. Inside, she couldn’t wait for it all to be over, so she could just curl up in bed and cry. She wept hot, angry tears for her stupidity in trusting Stanley, and for fate, for making them meet after the Tiller girl and after he’d got married to the music-hall act.

  The worst of it was, she couldn’t get rid of the feeling that she was supposed to be with him. No marriage vows or even a baby born out of wedlock could change that. There was such a connection between them, he’d lit a spark of something in her and there was no going back.

  26

  February 1935

  London laboured under leaden skies all month long.

  Porters emerged from the freezing fog, scurrying like worker ants, rushing about with their baskets full of fruit and veg, but Annie could barely muster the energy to get out of bed.

  She stopped bothering with her hair and her make-up and picked at her food. Mavis started to check how much she was eating, so Annie would take a big bite of a sandwich and when her back was turned, she’d chuck the rest in the bin. Her clothes seemed to hang off her skinny frame and the cold whipped through her coat, but still she felt nothing but heartache for Stanley.

  Only Daphne kept her going, with her cheery little face and her inquisitive nature, seeing the world through excited eyes on their trips up to the art galleries and museums. The constant pull of that child on her arm when she’d seen something new forced her back to reality and, for a brief moment, she’d smile and laugh, but inside Annie was only half living.

  Stanley occupied her mind, creeping into her thoughts at night and haunting her daydreams; every time she rounded the corner into Drury Lane, her heart would skip a beat, in the hope that she might catch a glimpse of him. The man with the straw-coloured hair and the smart jacket at the bus stop, the one hailing a cab, or inclining his head to light a smoke, all of them could be Stanley. But they never were.

  She imagined angry exchanges with him, in which she slapped his face for the way he’d come on to her in the back of the cab. Or a shouting match, in which she revealed she knew about him cheating on his wife and knocking up the Tiller girl. But they all ended the same way – with him smiling at her, reaching out his arms and pulling her close. And each time she was powerless to resist.

  One wintery afternoon, when the pub was closing, there was a loud knock at the door. Annie went off to answer, to tell the punter he’d have to come back later because there was no pulling him a pint now.

  She held the door ajar and caught sight of her Aunt Clara, dressed in her best hat – the one she’d worn to Nanny Chick’s funeral. Annie was so shocked, she didn’t know what to say, but Mavis bustled up behind her and flung the door open wide: ‘You must be Annie’s auntie? Come on in, I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what they’ve been feeding you up here, Annie,’ said Aunt Clara, huffing her way up the stairs, ‘but it ain’t enough because if you stand sideways, you’ll disappear!’

  Mavis gave her a knowing look: ‘That’s why I wrote to you. I need you to talk some sense into her because, Lord knows, I’ve tried, and she isn’t listening to me.’

  ‘You wrote to my aunt?’ said Annie. ‘But how?’

  ‘I may have made a note of the address you sent that Christmas card to,’ said Mavis, pulling a little square of paper out of her tea caddy and waving it in the air. ‘Just in case of emergencies. Well, this is an emergency, as far as I can see. We have got to get you over this moping about for Stanley or you will end up in hospital, the way you’re going.’

  ‘I’m perfectly fine,’ said Annie, stiffening.

  Mavis mouthed, ‘She’s not,’ at Aunt Clara, as if Annie were a small child.

  ‘Oh, Annie,’ said Aunt Clara, giving her a hug. ‘We’ve missed you so much and I’ve got so much to tell you! George is doing wonderfully at work and has moved out into lodgings down the Vale, and the girls are at secretarial college. You’d be so proud of them. Bill got a job too, down at C.A.V., the electrical factory, but the main thing is your mum is worried sick about you.’

  ‘Does she know you’ve come to see me?’

  ‘Well, no, not exactly,’ said her aunt, fidgeting with the clasp on her handbag. ‘I asked her how she’d feel if I were to bump into you up in town, if I were just shopping and we were to meet, just by accident. And she cried and said she’d be so overjoyed to know you were fine. But more than that, she would want to talk to you, properly, woman to woman, to explain things.’

  Mavis had a look of rapt attention and drew up a chair. ‘So, her mum’ll have her back, then?’

  ‘Of course she will, no question,’ said Aunt Clara.

  ‘Anyone would think you were trying to get rid of me, Mavis!’ cried Annie, only half jokingly. ‘That’s nice, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, love,’ said Mavis, patting her arm, ‘I’m not, you know that. You’ve saved our bacon by being here with us, but a girl needs her family . . .’

  ‘So, you do want rid of me!’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Mavis. ‘You have helped me through some very tough times, just by taking the weight off my shoulders, and now I’m trying to help you. Your family will always be your family, come what may, so it’s best to heal rifts while you still can. And maybe that will take your mind off things round here. Why don’t you just go and see your mum? You don’t have to leave here, but it can’t hurt just to go and talk, woman to woman, like your auntie says.’

  The following Saturday afternoon, with her heart in her mouth, Annie boarded the bus to Shepherd’s Bush.

  From there, she climbed aboard the rickety old tram, which rattled its way back to Acton, past dreary soot-covered little houses. She was shocked at how drab everything looked after the bright lights of London, and how shabbily everyone was dressed compared to people up in Theatreland, stepping out in their finery.

  She wasn’t being snobby about it; she just saw the world through different eyes now. As she stepped off the tram on Acton High Street, she spotted a little huddle of kids, fighting over who was going to take an empty lemonade bottle back to the corner shop to get a ha’penny, while their mum pleaded with them to pack it in, or get a thick ear apiece.

  Everything about the poor woman was sagging, from her stockings to her face. Only her hair seemed to have any energy left because that was sticking up in all directions, well – the bits that she hadn’t managed to fasten back from her face with clips. She opened her mouth to say something as Annie stepped in between the little boys, who were wearing shorts three sizes too small and whose cheeks hadn’t seen the damp end of a dishcloth in weeks, by the looks of it.

  But before she could speak, Annie had produced an apple for each child from her bag; she’d stocked up on some fruit from Covent Garden to bring home for her family.

  ‘I do feed ’em, you know!’ said their mother, plonking her laundry bundle down on the pavement, her face red from a mixture of embarrassment and the sheer effort of hoicking the family linen down to the communal wash house.

  ‘Got two little sisters myself,’ said Annie, smiling at her. ‘I know what it’s lik
e, with them fighting all the time, that’s all.’

  The woman blushed, and smoothed her hands over her creased housecoat, which was covered in stains. She looked Annie up and down. Annie realized then that she was like a stranger round here, in her smart coat and hat, and heels, with her neat handbag and its shiny metal clasp.

  ‘Well, ain’t you kind,’ the woman muttered, to no one in particular.

  ‘Kindness costs nothing,’ Annie murmured, and she turned and headed across the High Street and down the lane, back to her home.

  As she wandered down Fletcher Road to their front door, with its flaking green paint, she recalled the countless times she’d skipped up the front path as a little girl coming home from work, pushed it open and gone to chat to Nanny Chick in front of the fire.

  Those days were long gone. Now she thought it only polite to knock.

  The door swung open and before she knew it, she was being pulled into an embrace by her brother, George, who stood a full five inches taller than her. He seemed to have shot up. ‘Gorblimey, Annie, don’t you look the bee’s knees!’ he said. ‘Where’ve you been hiding, then?’

  ‘Oh, George.’ She hugged him, feeling foolish for not having been in touch sooner. Ivy and Elsie were next down the hallway, surrounding her with questions about what it was like around Covent Garden, and could they go up West and go dancing with her? They had both blossomed into beautiful young women, with the same high cheekbones as their mum: Ivy brimming with confidence, with tumbling curls, and Elsie the quieter of the two but no less attractive for it. The look on Bill’s face when he came into the hallway and overheard their plans to go out dancing quickly scotched their plans though.

  He leaned over and gave Annie a little peck on the cheek. ‘It means a lot to all of us that you’re here.’ He cleared his throat, self-consciously, and turned to George: ‘We’d best be off to the hardware store to pick up those nine-inch nails we need.’

  ‘What nails are those?’ said George, with a puzzled look on his face. Bill nudged him in the ribs and whispered, ‘Women’s talk.’ And they disappeared out of the front door as Elsie and Ivy scurried off upstairs with a ball of wool and some knitting needles.

  Mum stood on the threshold to the scullery, looking older and careworn.

  She reached out her arms: ‘Thank God, you’re home.’

  ‘Aunt Clara says the family you’re working for are good people,’ Mum said, settling herself down at the table, which had a freshly baked Victoria sponge waiting to be sliced. ‘But she wasn’t lying about you being thin as a pin, was she?’

  ‘Oh, I’ve just been out of sorts, that’s all,’ said Annie, as Mum cut her a huge piece of cake and pushed it towards her.

  ‘I’ve made your favourite. You’d better eat that, then, and you can tell me all about it,’ said Mum.

  Annie picked up the cake and ate some, savouring her mum’s cooking and the sticky jam oozing out of the sides. It was the best thing she’d eaten in ages.

  ‘Well,’ said Mum, ‘is he worth making yourself sick for?’

  ‘I thought he was the one,’ said Annie, ‘and it hurt so badly when it turned out he didn’t want me because he was already married. It just didn’t seem right, still doesn’t.’

  Mum clasped her hand. ‘I know how badly love can hurt but you have got to keep going because another man will come along, the right one.’

  It was so comforting to hear her mother’s words of advice; Annie realized then how much she’d missed her. ‘I want to be with him!’ she said, as a great tidal wave of grief swept over her. ‘He makes me feel differently to anybody else, I love him, Mum!’

  ‘But he’s married, isn’t he?’ she said, softly. ‘You have to think carefully and don’t let your heart rule your head. What’s the point of wasting your life wishing on a bloke who’s with someone else and, from what Aunt Clara heard, is a bit of a ladies’ man, in any case?’ Mum added, matter-of-factly. ‘Now, eat another piece of cake. You still look peckish.’

  Annie knew she’d couldn’t just put her feelings to one side, but just speaking to Mum about it made it a bit better, at least.

  Once the cake was eaten, Mum poured some tea from the huge brown teapot, which had a lovely new knitted cosy on it. ‘I wanted to say sorry for how we left things before,’ she said. ‘It was wrong of me to slap you, but I was so shocked, I didn’t know what else to do.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Annie. ‘I shouldn’t have got angry with you like that and I just thought it would be better if I left.’

  ‘I never wanted you to go,’ said Mum. ‘I’m still trying to understand how you found out so much in the first place . . .’

  ‘It was when I was sick with the scarlet fever,’ said Annie. ‘Aunt Clara told me some things.’

  ‘Well, she kept that quiet!’ said Mum, folding her arms. ‘I thought you’d just found some address and an old photo in that sewing box, that’s what she told me. I’ll be having words with her.’

  ‘Oh, Mum, please don’t,’ Annie implored. ‘It’s all water under the bridge now, surely? I was really ill and she was just telling me a story because she was worried about me. I can’t even remember half of it, it was like a dream, or maybe I did dream it, but she told me about the old days in Notting Hill.’

  ‘What did she tell you, exactly?’ Mum’s fingers were rapping lightly on the table in front of her.

  ‘About the two Austin brothers, Arthur and Henry, and the sisters, Emma and Kiziah, and Clara, of course,’ said Annie.

  ‘I see,’ said Mum, colouring up. Her fingers stopped moving. ‘Well, it wasn’t helpful of her to go raking over the past like that without telling me first or asking if I minded.’

  ‘Maybe this was a mistake,’ said Annie, rising to leave. ‘I don’t want you to get upset with Aunt Clara over this.’

  ‘No, wait,’ said Mum. ‘Please, I’m sorry, don’t go. It’s just . . . you can’t know what it’s like, to love someone and lose them so young. I had to carry on somehow, build a new life. For all of us.’

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ said Annie, throwing her arms around her mother. ‘I can’t imagine how hard it must have been to keep going, through all those years without him.’

  ‘I worked my fingers to the bone to keep you, and so did your nan,’ said Mum, staring into space. ‘I’m not expecting a medal for that, Annie, it’s just what families do – they keep going, they survive.’

  ‘I’ve always been grateful for everything you’ve done,’ said Annie.

  Mum gave her a weak smile. ‘There were certain things I kept to myself because I was afraid, Annie, afraid to lose you, I suppose. But it seems that life has a way of working things out, and I lost you anyway.’

  ‘You haven’t lost me, Mum, I’m right here,’ said Annie, resolutely.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything, exactly as it happened,’ said Mum. ‘Just don’t judge me, I’ve had enough judgement to last a lifetime . . .’

  27

  August 1914

  ‘Britons! Your Country Needs You!’

  Posters of Lord Kitchener appeared in shop windows all over Acton, his finger of military might calling on men to volunteer to fight Germany in the war.

  Hope Cottage was alive with the gossip of who had enlisted during those early weeks of the conflict. It seemed that all the bright, enthusiastic faces on the High Street – the delivery boys, the apprentices – disappeared almost overnight to go and fight on the Western Front.

  Bessie’s boy, Thomas, caused a bit of a stir by turning up at the laundry gates in his khakis, with his cap perched on the back of his head. He was a tall, gangly lad and full of fun. ‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ he told her, with a grin, as the laundrymaids flocked around him to admire his new outfit. ‘It’ll all be over by Christmas, you’ll see.’ But Bessie didn’t think it was a laughing matter. She sobbed into her apron as he handed her a photograph he’d just had taken with his new army mates, up in Kensington, and made him promise to write to her often. The Missus was cros
s, too, because he was her best carman and now she’d have to rely on Bill, the laundry hand, to drive the cart for her and, God knows, he wasn’t the most reliable.

  The war seemed far enough away not to affect their lives too much, and Emma’s daily battle was on the home front, just to make ends meet and keep the rent collector and the tallyman happy. She’d been on her own for nearly ten years now, since Henry died. It was a strange thing, grief, because although the years had rolled by, she still missed him as much as if it had only happened yesterday. She kept his picture on the mantelpiece in the scullery, so he was always watching over her, and kissed it goodnight before she went to sleep, longing to feel his arms around her. She’d hidden a little love letter he wrote her, long ago, in the back of the frame, to keep it safe forever.

  A loud knock on the front door could still make her jump out of her skin, in case Felstone and his men had tracked them down and wanted to settle their debt, with no Henry to protect them any more. They’d kept themselves to themselves, as far as the neighbours were concerned. Her mum had told one particularly nosy woman down the road that Emma had been widowed young and was too upset to talk about it and, as she expected, word spread. Most folks had been bereaved in some way; life went on and the unspoken rule was that there were certain things that were not for children’s ears. At least she could be sure of one thing: her little girl Annie was out of harm’s way in Suffolk, with her Great-Aunt May, being well fed and looked after. Of course, there might come a time when Emma would tell Annie that her dad had died, but that day was a long way off. Besides, she only had a few precious days a year with her daughter and she wanted that time to be filled with happiness, not grieving. God knows, she’d cried enough for both of them when he’d gone. Life was hard enough without burdening her with the sadness of the past. That could wait until she was old enough to understand and there was no harm in that, was there?