The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  Nanna was having her Sunday lie-down, and so were Mom and Dad, in their room opposite, with the door closed. Nanna had on the old black dress she always wore: she would mourn her beloved Sidney for the rest of her days. He was taken from her young and tragically. He had suffered a blow to the head at work in a foundry, from the end of an iron girder. After it, as Nanna would say, ‘he was never the same again’. At the age of thirty-eight he had taken his own life, leaving Freda Adams with Jen and three boys to bring up, two of whom the Great War had taken from her as well. The only remaining brother, Uncle Bill, lived not too far away.

  Nanna had a head of thick yellowish white hair that in her youth had been a fierce red like her daughter’s. In the morning she would lean over and brush it out, sweeping it all up to the top of her head where she fixed it with pins into an elaborate pile so that she always looked rather grand. Her face had the pale, papery look of someone who was once pink and freckled. She was leaning back now, her hair still up, but she had taken off her little black lace-up boots and they were standing by the bed as if about to perform a dance, though with her sore hip joints, she wouldn’t be doing any dancing herself.

  There was a twinkle in the old lady’s eye.

  ‘Well, you ain’t going to get to heaven, are yer?’ she said softly as Aggie stood at her door, wiggling her bare toes against the cold.

  Aggie grinned back at her. ‘Have a nice sleep, Nanna.’

  Nanna raised the hip flask jovially from where it had been tucked under her skirt. She had inherited it from her husband Sidney’s father and it was a classy-looking thing with a silver top. It was Nanna’s most prized possession. Every so often she limped off to the Outdoor at the bottom of the street and had it topped up with something strong and cockle-warming, ‘to keep me going’.

  ‘You behave yourselves. I know you’re up to sum-mat, you two. I don’t know if I want to know what it is.’

  ‘We’re not, Nanna – honest!’ Aggie said in a tone of hurt innocence. ‘We just felt like staying in, that’s all.’

  ‘Hmmph,’ Nanna said. ‘Well, you’d better close up my door as you go.’ She tucked the flask back alongside her. ‘Then I shan’t be any the wiser, shall I?’

  Aggie pulled the door to and tiptoed up to the attic, where John was waiting. The curtain separating boys from girls was pulled back to let in a grey light from the window. John’s skinny form, dressed in baggy shorts, was lying face down on the boys’ mattress looking at a dog-eared copy of The Champion comic. But he sat up as soon as Aggie appeared. He was all knees. Like a lot of little boys, his shorts were concertinaed up at the right side because instead of unbuttoning when they needed to pee, to save time they rucked up the leg of their shorts and did it like that, leaving distinctive folds. Silas was starting to have the same cock-eyed look.

  ‘What’re we doing, Aggs?’

  Aggie was two and a half years older than John and they had always been playmates. Even though he was getting big now, sometimes he still looked up to her and she had always been good at thinking up games and pastimes to entertain them.

  She knelt solemnly on the mattress beside him.

  ‘I’ve got a plan. But you’ve got to promise me, swear you won’t tell anyone.’ From up her sleeve she produced a round-ended knife from the kitchen. John’s brows puckered.

  ‘D’you swear?’

  John raised his blond lashes to stare at her, then nodded.

  ‘You’ve got to do everything I say to make the plan work.’ She leaned close to him, talking in a fierce whisper. Close up, John smelt of gravy, which was spattered down his jersey. ‘You listening to me?’

  He nodded hard.

  ‘We’re going to do some spying. See this?’ She held up the knife. ‘We’re going in there.’

  She nodded her head towards a rough, rectangular hatch in the wall half obscured by the blue dividing curtain. It was there to allow access to the adjoining attic, in case the stairs in either house caught fire.

  ‘Through there?’ John said. ‘Why? There ain’t nothing in there. It’s just Mrs Larkin’s attic.’

  ‘How do you know? You been in?’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘See – you don’t know nothing unless you find out.’

  ‘But our mom’ll flay us!’

  ‘How’s she going to know, if we don’t tell ’er? I heard them both snoring down there. Come on – if we’re quick . . .’

  ‘But what’s the point?’ John grumbled, still drawn back to the comic’s derring-do adventures.

  ‘It’s spying,’ Aggie said witheringly. ‘I thought you were going to be my assistant – I thought you were brave. You’re worse than a girl!’

  This pricked John’s pride. He clambered up and stood on his bony legs and tried to pull the right leg of his shorts down straight. ‘No, I ain’t! Come on – give us the knife then. Bet you can’t get it open without me.’

  The walls of the attic were painted bright blue and the paint had also been washed across the plywood hatch. Aggie knelt down and peered at it. It seemed strange to her now that they had never tried to open it before. She tested the edges of it with her fingers. A gaggle of silverfish fled out of the way of this intrusion.

  ‘It’s a bit loose – I can get the knife in here,’ she said excitedly.

  ‘What if there’s someone in there?’ John stood behind her.

  ‘Who’s gonna be there? Mrs L can’t get up the stairs.’

  ‘What about him?’ John said.

  Aggie hesitated. She’d forgotten completely that Mrs Larkin had a lodger, a pale, ill-humoured man.

  ‘He can’t be in there – we’d hear him. He dain’t live up here.’

  All the same, her hands began to tremble as she inserted the knife’s tip into the frame of the hatch and jerked it back and forth. It was all quite easy in the end: there seemed to be nothing much holding it all together. A few moments later, with a crackling noise which seemed deafening, she was able to push the thin hatch door open. Behind her she heard John gasp.

  They were looking through into another attic room much the same as theirs, but with more light coming in from somewhere. There was nothing in the room – no furniture or sign of anyone living there. All they could see was mess. The floor was scattered with bits of stuff and a thick layer of dust and dirt. Some of it was a pale colour and there was a strong, bitter smell. Aggie realized the white stuff was bird droppings. The walls were a filthy colour and the corners full of dark spider’s webs.

  ‘Uggh,’ she said.

  ‘Go on, then,’ John said, nudging her from behind. ‘You chicken?’

  ‘Course not!’ She was the spy, not him, she thought crossly, and with a lurch of fear, made herself step through the hatch. John immediately followed.

  They saw then why the next-door attic was lighter than their own. At the back of the house there was a ragged hole in the roof, slates teetering at the edge, through which they could see the grey sky. Aggie realized that they were walking on damp, squelchy stuff. Right beneath the hole was the dried-out body of a dead pigeon. It had been there a long time. Aggie recoiled from it. She wanted to go back.

  But John was the one excited now. He moved round the room, exploring.

  ‘Sssh!’ Aggie scolded. ‘Don’t thump about – she’ll hear you!’

  ‘Look.’ John was squatting down at the far side of the room. ‘There’s another’un here.’

  She thought he meant a dead bird, but tiptoeing over she saw that in the grimy darkness of the wall there was another fire hatch, identical to the one from their own attic except in one respect – it was already loose and flapping half open.

  ‘We can go in there an’ all – let’s open it up!’ John was the one keen on spying now. Aggie was beginning to wish she’d never started it. What if someone found them?

  ‘Don’t, John – you can’t go in there. That’s Mrs Southgate’s house!’ Because there was no number thirteen, the next house was number fifteen, Rose Southgate’s.<
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  John turned to her in the gloom. ‘So what?’

  ‘What if Mr Southgate catches us?’

  ‘He won’t – what’d he be doing up here? If there was anyone in there we’d be able to hear ’em. Look –’ He was pushing on it and Aggie could see that the flimsy partition was beginning to give way. John gave it another shove in the bottom corner and almost fell into the next room.

  ‘Oh, Johnny –’ Aggie moaned softly. But she was excited and curious too, and edged forward.

  The roof of the Southgates’ house was not in such a bad state as Mrs Larkin’s, so no light was coming in and she had to wait for a few seconds for her eyes to adjust. As with their house, there was just a high gable window. She looked around.

  The floorboards, though dusty, were clear of mess and there was nothing much up there. On its side, along the length of the room, lay a narrow cupboard, too tall to stand upright. There was a tea chest by the far wall under the window and Aggie tiptoed over and peered into it. There were a few items at the bottom – an old saucepan, some boots which she thought must be army boots and something made of cloth, like an old curtain. She saw a fishing rod with its end snapped off lying close to the wall near her. Other than that, there appeared to be nothing to see.

  John was creeping across, trying to open the door of the cupboard but it was awkward as it was lying on its side.

  ‘Leave it, John,’ Aggie said desperately. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  But he ignored her. There was no key for the cupboard and he could not get it open with his fingers. He gave up and moved to its top end. Something caught his eye in the corner of the room, behind the cupboard. Aggie was in an agony as he stepped round the piece of furniture. Supposing Mrs Southgate came up and found them. She’d never forgive herself. The shame of being found poking around in her house!

  John was bent over, rifling through something. Aggie’s eye wandered. There was nothing to see here – they must go, get out before they were found . . .

  John gave a small, startled cry and stepped abruptly back, tripping over the corner of the cupboard and sprawling across the floor.

  ‘You stupid!’ Aggie hissed.

  Both of them froze, eyes fixed in horror on each other.

  But John was on his feet in a second. ‘Look –’ He grabbed her and pulled her to where he had been standing, though she was struggling to go the other way.

  ‘Stop it – we’ve got to go!’

  But he forced her. He was all a-quiver. All she could see was a dusty old canvas thing – a kitbag.

  Then her whole body seemed to turn to ice. There were feet advancing up the lower flight of stairs.

  ‘We’ve got to go!’ She yanked at John’s arm.

  ‘Look – quick!’ He pushed something out of the way and she glimpsed, in the fold of the bag, a metal thing with a dark handle.

  ‘I’m going . . .’ Running on the balls of her feet as fast as she could, she dashed to the hatch. To her relief, John followed. The footsteps below stopped, as though the person, who Aggie knew must be Mrs Southgate, had stopped to listen.

  ‘Pull it shut!’ Her lips were right by his ear.

  They closed the hatch as best they could and hurried across the attic of Mrs Larkin’s house until they were back in their own bedroom, yanking on the board to make it right, as if no one had ever even thought of passing through it. To Aggie’s relief the hatch from their room lodged itself back in place. They threw themselves on the boys’ mattress and lay hardly daring to breath. It was already as if those other attics were another world, not real, from a fairy tale.

  Nothing happened. They began to breathe more easily, to giggle.

  ‘Did you see?’ John squirmed on to his stomach, his face serious, full of drama. ‘That were a gun!’

  ‘Don’t be daft – course it wasn’t.’

  ‘It was – I’m telling you, I saw it!’

  ‘You never – it was a . . . a . . . One of them tools . . .’

  Aggie started to question what it was she’d seen. She’d barely had a second in the dark room.

  ‘It was a hammer – for banging in nails.’ She meant a chisel but couldn’t think of the word.

  John sat up, full of it. ‘P’r’aps he’s a spy. That Mr Southgate. P’r’aps they’re looking for him!’

  ‘Who?’ Aggie frowned.

  ‘I dunno – the peelers . . .’

  They were silent for a minute. ‘I dunno what it was,’ John said after a minute. ‘I thought it was a gun – that was what made me jump. Gave me a fright.’

  ‘It was a hammer,’ said Aggie. ‘D’you think I don’t know what a hammer looks like?’ Her indignation expanded. ‘And all that noise you made – you nearly got us caught. Real spies ain’t s’posed to make a sound – you and your silly ideas! And don’t you dare tell a word about any of this – to anyone.’

  ‘I won’t,’ John said, crestfallen.

  ‘Oh!’ Aggie leapt to her feet. ‘The others – I’ve got to go and get ’em!’

  Eight

  ‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Rose groaned, closing the front door behind her. ‘Take your wet shoes off,’ she told Lily. ‘Don’t go walking them through the house.’

  It was even more wet and blustery today and Rose had been out for her bits of shopping, wishing she could have left Lily behind with someone as she struggled along trying to carry her bags and keep the pair of them covered by the umbrella. By the time they got back home they were half soaked.

  But she had no one to leave Lily with, no family of her own close by, and while Harry’s family were only a few miles away, it was no good looking to Harry’s mom for any help. She was a mean-spirited woman if ever there was one.

  After she’d fed Lily and put her to bed for a nap, she went to her chair by the fire in the kitchen and sank into it with a deep sigh. Everything was in place – she worked hard to keep her house as neat and spotless as she could and now she could relax for a few moments – but if only there was someone to talk to!

  Toasting her feet by the old black range, as the rain ran down the window, she thought about her acquaintances on the street. She wasn’t really close to anyone but she did quite like Susanna Taylor. She was not too far off Rose in age and a very straight, pleasant person. They had a friendly chat from time to time, but the Taylors seemed very tight knit as a family, keeping mainly to themselves. And Mrs Taylor was a strange woman, she thought. For all her airs she looked the sort who might turn and punch you and Rose kept out of her way.

  She found herself thinking about Aggie’s mother, Jen Green along at number nine. Everyone seemed to like her and she was bosom pals with that chatty Dulcie Skinner from the Mansions. They’d known each other since they were at school and Rose envied their easy friendship. Apart from that, Jen Green hardly had time to draw breath with all that family and her husband poorly. The thought of all those children made Rose shudder. The song floated through her head, ‘The rich get richer and the poor get children . . .’ Not her though – not if she could help it. She’d done all the childbearing she was prepared to do.

  Jen was a good soul, and mostly cheerful with it. Rose saw quite a bit of Aggie, bless her – she had a soft spot for the child, all eyes and knees. She reminded Rose of herself at that age. But she felt that Jen Green was wary of her, as if she thought Rose was above her – or rather as if she thought that Rose thought she was above her . . . Which wasn’t true at all, but because Rose was pretty, with a striking combination of dark eyes and blonde hair, good with a needle and with a gift of dressing herself well on next to nothing, and because she was shy and unsure what to say to people, they often took her for being stuck up. Really, she would much rather have made friends but wasn’t too sure how to go about it.

  Looking for comfort she went to fetch her commonplace book and sat leafing through it, in search of all the lovely things she had written. Even holding the book made her feel better. The inner pages of the deep red Morocco cover were so pretty; a very pale
green covered with a pattern of tiny gold leaves and blue flowers. The book had been a present from her employer, Professor Mount, years ago, when she left service to get married.

  She read her curling hand, one of her favourite hymns,

  Not now, but in the coming years,

  It may be in the better land,

  We’ll read the meaning of our tears,

  And there, some time, we’ll understand.

  By the time she had softly sung her way through it and reached the lines, We’ll catch the broken thread again, And finish what we here began, Rose had tears running down her cheeks and could no longer sing or see the words to read. She put her hands over her face and gave vent to her feelings for a few moments, until she could control the sobs which shook her. Even she was surprised by the force of her own anguish. Eventually she sat straighter, wiping her eyes.

  ‘I must stop this,’ she said to herself crossly. ‘Letting go like this. Where’s that ever going to get me?’

  Picking up her book again, she turned to the back, to the few items she had stuck in. Mata Hari’s smouldering gaze met her on the next page. Rose drank in the sight of her gorgeous golden dress, the folds hanging down around her body as if she was a goddess, and she gave a sigh. She had stuck the picture in because of Mata Hari’s clothes and also – though she could hardly admit it to herself – because of her desirability as a woman. Deep inside her, though she barely recognized it, was a longing to be desired and desirable. For with Harry, all she had ever done was try and avoid relations with him. All the more so now.

  Turning the page she came upon her cutting about the British Empire Exhibition, last year. Her face twisted bitterly. Even now, the thought of how much she had longed to go made her burn with anger and resentment. She’d begged and begged Harry – as she never had for anything else.