by Tara Hyland
‘You’re right, I don’t have the money,’ the girl answered in her soft Cork brogue. ‘But give me another week and I’ll get it to you.’
‘Sorry,’ Annie said curtly. ‘I told you at the beginning – you don’t pay up, you’re out. You’ve got half an hour.’ Annie made to turn away, but the girl put her small hand on to the woman’s arm, stopping her.
‘But I don’t have anywhere else to go.’
‘Well, that ain’t my problem.’ The older woman made her voice deliberately harsh. She’d heard too many hard luck stories in her time. If she’d listened to them all, she wouldn’t have this house still. ‘If it weren’t for you messing me round, I could’ve let that room to someone else this past week. I’ve got bills to pay and all, missy. My kids have got to eat, too, you know.’
At that, the girl looked devastated. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think. Look, I’ve got a pound here.’ She rifled through her coat pockets and held out her hand to show the note, to prove she was telling the truth. ‘But I need it,’ she said quickly, closing her fist and sticking it back inside her pocket, as though she was afraid that Annie was going to whip it clean away from her.
The young woman’s remorse seemed so genuine that Annie felt her heart soften a little. She was used to people trying it on, but this girl seemed different. Despite her better judgement, the older woman suddenly wanted to know more about this Miss Healey and why she was here.
‘So what do you need the money for?’ the landlady asked.
Franny’s face closed up. ‘I – I just need it, that’s all,’ she said evasively.
It was the girl’s guarded expression that finally told Annie exactly why she was there. Suddenly it all made sense – the crying; the desperation to stay. There was a woman two streets away, Mrs Riley, who served as an unofficial midwife in the area, and she was also known to provide other services, too. Annie hated the old bag.
‘So you’re up the duff then?’ Annie was matter-of-fact. ‘And you’re here to get it seen to?’
The girl looked horrified. ‘No, that’s not it,’ she protested weakly, but Annie was already shaking her head.
‘Look, it doesn’t take a genius to figure it out. And trust me, I won’t go blabbing to the peelers.’ Although Annie had retained her Irish accent, after more than a decade in the East End, she’d picked up some local slang along the way. There was a pause, and then before the Galway woman could stop herself, she asked, ‘When’re you getting it done?’
For a moment Annie thought the girl was going to deny it again, but then her shoulders sagged and her eyes filled with shame and misery. ‘Tomorrow morning,’ she whispered.
Annie sighed heavily. It wasn’t that she was opposed to what the girl was planning to do. For someone young and alone like her, it might well be the best decision. But it was the thought of this pretty little thing being at the mercy of that old butcher, Mrs Riley, that bothered her. A couple of months earlier, Annie’s neighbour and friend, Evelyn Dunne, had fallen pregnant. Struggling to feed six children already, she hadn’t been able to face having a seventh. She’d kept the news from her husband, and secretly saved up the money to go to Mrs Riley. ‘With any luck she’ll mess me up enough so that this don’t happen again,’ she’d joked to Annie beforehand.
But it hadn’t seemed so funny afterwards when, white-faced, Evelyn had described how she’d lain for an hour on the filthy kitchen table while old Mother Riley had poked at her first with a knitting needle, and then used a crochet-hook to scrape the fetus away. Seeing her friend doubled over in pain, Annie had urged her to go to the Royal London Hospital, just a five-minute walk up the road, but Evelyn had insisted she was fine. Later that day, the woman’s twelve-year-old daughter had found her dead in bed, the mattress soaked through with blood. The trail had led the coppers back to Old Mother Riley, but no one was speaking up, so she hadn’t been charged. It wasn’t the first time she’d got away with something like that.
‘Look.’ This time when Annie spoke her tone was softer. ‘Maybe I was a bit hasty before. Why don’t we head downstairs for a brew, see if we can’t sort something out, eh?’
The girl’s gratitude was so palpable that it was almost enough to convince Annie that she’d made the right decision.
Over a pot of tea in the kitchen, Franny told the woman everything that had happened to her over the past few months. It was a relief to have someone to talk to. She’d always complained about the constraints of the farm, being beholden to her parents. But alone in London, she’d had to grow up fast, and it wasn’t easy or pleasant. She hadn’t realised how lonely she was until now. For the first time in a while, she felt as if someone cared. And it was nice to be out of that cold, damp room. The kitchen might be old and worn, but it was spotlessly clean, and the landlady wasn’t as fierce as she’d first seemed.
Annie listened patiently to the girl’s story, sympathetic if a little scornful. The girl was breathtakingly naïve. Imagine! Expecting to come to London and find this Sean Gallagher! And, even if she had found him, she was as likely to get him down the aisle as Annie was to meet the King.
‘So how far along are you?’ she asked now.
The girl dropped her eyes, clearly embarrassed to be talking about something so personal.
‘Three months,’ Franny mumbled. ‘Maybe four.’
‘Well, it’s probably too late to get rid of it anyway,’ Annie said.
‘Then what am I going to do?’
There was real fear in her voice. Annie realised that the younger woman was looking to her not only for an answer, but a solution. And although it went against every instinct for self-preservation, she was inclined to break her cardinal rule and take pity on the girl. An idea had been forming in her head as Franny told her story, and now she decided to share it.
‘Look, maybe I can help you out. You could stay here until you get yourself sorted. Not for free, of course,’ she added quickly, not wanting the girl to get the wrong idea. ‘This ain’t no charity – you’ll have to pay your way, like everyone else. But I’d give you a good rate. I need a bit of help around here, and in exchange you could keep that room you’re in. And I know of a few cleaning jobs that could bring in some extra cash. That’ll allow you a bit of breathing space. You can have the baby, and then decide what you want to do from there.’
Franny looked at the landlady in astonishment. This was the last thing she’d been expecting when the formidable woman came hammering on her door earlier. ‘You’d do that for me?’ She sounded almost confused; she couldn’t believe her luck. ‘But why?’
Annie shrugged, as though it was no big deal. ‘You seem like a nice girl, and that bloke of yours sounds like a right so-and-so.’ She snorted her disapproval, showing exactly what she thought of the man in question. ‘You ain’t the first to get caught, and you won’t be the last. We’ve all been there, love, and I reckon we women have got to stick together, right?’
At that, Franny threw her arms around the woman’s neck.
‘Thank you, thank you!’
Embarrassed by the display, Annie pushed the girl gently away. ‘Hey, there’s no need for that,’ she said gruffly. ‘You might not be thanking me after you’ve spent a day on your hands and knees scrubbing some snotty cow’s floor!’
But despite the harshness of her words, Annie Connolly was secretly feeling happy about the arrangement herself. It would be nice, she decided, to have another woman around the place.
Chapter Five
Islington, London, February 1949
Mrs Simpson ran her index finger along the mantelpiece, inspecting for dust. Franny stood nervously by. This was always the worst part. She could just about handle cleaning the house, but she hated the way the old bag then went round painstakingly checking everything she’d done. Having worked there for the best part of two years, she was hardly likely to start cutting corners now.
‘And did you polish the good silver?’ The upper-class accent was affected, the snobby disdain was not. Maybe it would have bee
n easier for Franny to swallow if she’d been cleaning at one of those big, white townhouses in Mayfair or Belgravia, but they all had their own live-in staff. So she was stuck with snobs like Mrs Simpson, middle-class women who lived in newly-built semis in Islington and Hampstead, and were married to men with white-collar jobs – the kind who only recently could afford their own help, and liked to look down on their cleaner as a way of asserting their social status.
Franny struggled to hide her impatience. She was itching to get out of here.
‘Yes, ma’am. And dusted the crystal,’ she added, pre-empting the next question. She hated the cut-glass animals that the lady collected, and couldn’t understand why she took such pride in the ugly ornaments. It had been made clear to Franny that if she dropped one, it would be deducted from her wages. ‘Is that everything?’
Unable to think of anything else to pick on, the older woman went to her large leather handbag. She made a big show of keeping it on her whenever Franny was in the house – as though she expected the younger woman to steal from her. Counting out the money from her purse, Mrs Simpson handed it over reluctantly, clearly resentful of having to pay her cleaner.
‘Thank you very much.’ Franny pocketed the cash quickly. She didn’t bother to count it: there was never a tip, never a little extra, even at Christmas. But she made sure to sound grateful every time, aware of how much she needed to keep the woman sweet. Mrs Simpson was always making little digs about how expensive Franny was, threatening to find someone else. So far, Franny had stood firm, mainly because Annie had told her to. ‘You’re charging less than you should be already,’ she’d insisted. ‘She’s just trying it on.’ Franny knew this was true, but she was also aware of how precarious her position was. As a cash-in-hand employee, she had no rights and she wasn’t sure how easy it would be to find new work.
Mrs Simpson saw her to the door – again, Franny suspected, to check she wasn’t taking anything with her, rather than out of any sense of good manners. It was only half four, but outside it was already growing dark. The air was so cold that Franny could see her breath forming clouds of condensation. Buttoning her coat with icy fingers, she jammed her hands into the pockets and hurried to the tube station, to begin the forty-minute journey back to Whitechapel. It would have been easier to go straight to the club where she worked in the evenings, but that would have meant not seeing Cara, and she hated when that happened. Franny had promised her daughter that she would be back to put her to bed, and she was determined not to let her child down.
Motherhood had brought out the best in Franny. Cara, her daughter, made all the hardships worthwhile. And over the past two and a half years, there had been many hardships. The East End slums could get you down. Overcrowded tenements, unemployment, the constant poverty . . .
The birth itself hadn’t been easy. Cara had been a big baby, and although Franny had full hips, her pelvis was small. Annie, experienced in these matters, had acted as midwife, mostly because they couldn’t afford a real one. To Franny’s shame, she hadn’t been very brave. Afterwards, Annie had joked that they’d been able to hear her screams five streets away, but at the time it hadn’t been funny. Thirty hours of labour in that airless room – because the attic might be cold in the winter, but that couldn’t even begin to compare to the stuffy heat of late spring, when not even the faintest breeze seemed to filter through the tiny window.
Worst of all, she’d got an infection afterwards. She’d been sick and feverish for days, until Annie had finally been forced to get the doctor round. He’d given her some antibiotics, which had cleared up the blood-poisoning, but he’d also said that she might struggle to conceive again. Frankly, after everything she’d been through, Franny wasn’t sure she cared. She loved her daughter more than anything, but she wasn’t sure there was enough money in the world to make her go through that again.
On the way back from the tube station, Franny bumped into a neighbour and got caught up talking, so it was nearly six by the time she reached the lodging house. Cara must have been listening out for her, because as Franny stepped into the hall, her daughter came waddling out to greet her. At twenty-one months, she had that soft roundness of a toddler, and was all rosy cheeks and big green eyes. It was those eyes which were her only gift from her mother. Even at this age, Franny could see more of Sean in her, and the crop of dark hair on her head was all her father.
‘Mama home! Mama home!’ Cara tugged at her mother’s skirt as she spoke in her pidgin English. Turning her attention to her daughter, Franny felt the tiredness melt away. It was times like this when she remembered why the constant struggle was worthwhile.
‘Come here, sweetheart.’ She scooped the child up for a cuddle. ‘Oh, you’re getting heavy, aren’t you?’ she teased, pretending to buckle under her daughter’s weight. ‘What have you been putting in here?’ As she began to tickle Cara’s tummy, the child laughed delightedly, and Franny felt the instinctive pull of love for her daughter that still took her by surprise.
At first, when she’d started living with Annie, she’d thought about having her child adopted. It would have been the easiest solution, to give her baby to a well-to-do family, where she’d be guaranteed a good upbringing, while also allowing Franny to get on with her life, her mistake left firmly in the past. But as the months had gone by, and she’d started to get bigger and become attached to the child growing within her, she’d realised it wouldn’t be that easy. It helped that there were a lot of women in the area bringing up children on their own, their men either lost in battle, or demobbed and departed back to where they came from. Franny was just one more, her situation hardly worth dwelling on.
‘All right, Aunty Fran?’
Annie’s eldest, twelve-year-old Bronagh, came out into the hall. Along with her ten-year-old sister, Maureen, they took turns watching Cara when they weren’t at school. The two girls doted on Franny’s child, and were like little mothers to her. Franny knew how fortunate she was to have found Annie. Her lodging house might not be much, but she was ruthless about keeping it clean: a lot of the other tenements were overrun with rats and mice. But best of all, the Connollys were like one big extended family to her and Cara. Annie’s children treated Cara like one of their own, even five-year-old Danny. Cara had already formed an attachment to him. Now that she could walk, she toddled around after him, trying to call his name like he’d taught her: ‘Da’nee, Da’nee.’
‘How was she for you today?’ Franny asked Bronagh. Like her mother, she was a strapping girl, big for her age, but she had a sweet, gentle nature and loved children, often talking of becoming a nurse or a teacher one day. ‘Not too much trouble, I hope.’
‘No trouble at all.’ The girl nodded towards the common kitchen which the Connollys shared with all their lodgers. ‘Mum’s in there, we’ve just finished our tea.’
Cara tugged at her mother’s sleeve. ‘Dindins?’ She turned hopeful eyes up at her mother.
Franny smiled down at her. ‘That’s right, pet.’ Annie had offered time and again to let Cara have her dinner with them, but it was one of the few rituals Franny was reluctant to relinquish. She was out grafting so much that it felt important to maintain some role in her child’s life, so she always made time to feed Cara and put her to bed, even on the nights she had to work at the club.
Shifting Cara onto her hip, Franny carried her through to the kitchen. Annie was in there, picking nits out of Danny’s hair. Like Cara, his hair was as black as the soot from the chimney, and they might have passed for brother and sister if it hadn’t been for his swarthy complexion. At five, he was a good-looking boy, tall and strong for his age, and already a handful. If there was mischief afoot in the street, he was usually at the centre of it. The previous week, he’d brought home three tins of corned beef which he’d stolen from Mr Burke, the grocer. When Annie had found out what her son had done, she’d marched him back to the shop, made him return the tins and then let Mr Burke take him out the back for a thrashing, before giving him a good
whack herself. He hadn’t been able to sit down for a day, but had taken both punishments with a stoicism that had astounded the two women.
‘There’s not much to eat,’ Annie greeted her friend.
Franny grinned. ‘There never is.’
With his mother temporarily distracted, Danny took the opportunity to squirm from her lap and, whooping loudly, ran from the room and out of the front door.
Cara stretched out her hands to follow. ‘Da-nee! Play with Da-nee!’
But Franny held her fast. ‘No playing at the moment. It’s dinner time now.’
Annie shook her head in despair at her troublesome son. ‘He’s got the devil an’ all in him, that boy,’ she remarked darkly, not for the first time. ‘Like his father.’
But she didn’t bother to chase him, knowing he could already well look after himself. Instead, she started to do the washing up, as Franny began to prepare dinner for her and Cara.
A quick hunt through the cupboards and larder revealed that Annie was right: there wasn’t much food left. It might be three years since the war ended, but rationing was still in place. It was the end of the week, so all the eggs and cheese had gone, which meant it was bread and dripping again. Franny cut three slices of bread, spreading them with the beef dripping and then sprinkling salt on. She gave one piece to her daughter and kept the other two for herself, but seeing how quickly Cara devoured her share, Franny gave her another half from her plate.
Annie saw what she was doing and remarked disapprovingly, ‘It’s you who should be eating that, Fran. You’re dead on your feet, girl, and you’ve got a long night ahead.’
But Franny, busy watching her daughter stuffing the bread into her mouth, only laughed. ‘Give over with your fussing. I’ll get something at the club later.’
After Cara was fed, Franny took her upstairs to their little attic room and put her to bed. As always, her daughter insisted on having a story read to her. Conscious that she had little time left before she needed to leave, Franny reluctantly agreed. But luckily the child was tired from her day of playing, and her eyes began to close after a few pages.