The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  This side of Price’s was ‘Auntie’s’, or Tippet’s pawnbrokers, to give it its formal name. It was a busy shop, especially on Mondays and Fridays when the Sunday-best clothes were being taken in and out. Aggie liked to look in the window and see what was new. There were always medals in there now, old soldiers fallen on hard times. John Best’s medals had disappeared into Tippet’s. They were still there in the window, a heartbreaking sight.

  There was always something going on out there. I should be watching properly, Aggie thought. She imagined her card, with its copperplate lettering: Agnes Green: Spy. The street was busy as ever at this time of day, children playing, swinging round the lamp posts, games of hopscotch and tipcat going on; two women talking by a front door. Over the other side, a man with a white pot of paint in his hand was redoing the number at twenty-five. A dog ran past, a brown mongrel, limping. It would be nice to stroke something. She held her hand out.

  ‘’Ere – come on, doggie – come and see me.’ But the dog ignored her and hurried on with a hunted look.

  When she glanced up again her attention was caught by the sight of a man next to the Mission Hall, walking along tentatively, somehow different from everyone else. Then she saw his white stick, feeling his way in front of him. He wore a brown coat and hat and had a nice face, Aggie thought. She didn’t remember ever seeing him before.

  As she sat watching, Rose Southgate came into view, walking from her house, holding Lily’s hand. Aggie looked wistfully at Lily’s nice little shoes.

  ‘Af’noon Mrs Southgate!’ Aggie called to her.

  But Rose Southgate didn’t answer. She was staring ahead of her. When she and the blind man were about to pass each other, Aggie saw Mrs Southgate stare hard at him. She must have spoken to him, because he stopped, and so did she. They talked for a few minutes. Mrs Southgate was shaking her head. The blind man held out his hand as if to stop her, then he turned back and walked in the same direction as Mrs Southgate. Aggie watched them disappear, frowning.

  ‘Aggie!’ May came running up to her, jigging about. ‘Get out me way – I need to go!’

  ‘Go round the back way,’ Aggie tutted. But May didn’t fancy the dark entry.

  ‘Let me in – you come with me, Aggs!’

  ‘No,’ Aggie said grumpily. ‘You’re a big girl – you can manage.’

  May was too desperate to argue and ran into the house.

  Then Aggie’s attention was caught by another unusual sight. A policeman was coming along Lilac Street. He was very big, a head taller than most other people, and he was walking fast, looking at the house numbers.

  Ooh, Aggie thought. I wonder what’s happened? Her heart beat faster. Was this something Agnes Green: Spy should know about?

  Loping along, he was soon very close, then standing over her.

  ‘Nine – that you?’ He leaned down.

  Aggie cringed, frightened of the big man in his uniform.

  ‘I’m looking for a Mrs Green – that right?’

  ‘That’s my mom,’ Aggie whispered.

  ‘Right.’ The policeman drew himself up straight again. ‘Well – you’d better let me in then.’

  Sixteen

  ‘It’s all right, Mrs Green,’ the constable kept saying. ‘He’s being looked after.’

  Aggie watched, clinging to the door frame between the front and back. Mom was sitting ashen-faced at the table, Nanna standing close beside her.

  May appeared suddenly from the privy and stood round-eyed at the back door, awed by the sight of the constable, looking so big in their little room.

  ‘I knew this’d happen,’ Mom kept saying, too shocked to cry. ‘I knew he should never’ve gone out there . . . I told and told him! He wouldn’t listen . . .’

  ‘His barrow’s been taken in by someone – I was to tell you it’s at number twenty Tillingham Street.’

  ‘Our John can go and fetch it,’ Mom murmured. ‘Thank you.’ It wasn’t far off.

  Once Nanna had shown the constable out, May ran to Mom and buried her face in her shoulder. Jen picked her up and sat her on her knee, absent-mindedly rocking back and forth. Aggie went to her grandmother for comfort.

  ‘Your father’s been taken bad,’ Nanny Adams told her. ‘He collapsed in the street. They’ve taken him to the hospital.’

  ‘I knew I should’ve got him a doctor!’ Jen cried.

  Aggie searched her grandmother’s face, unsure from the way she was talking whether the hospital was a good or a bad thing.

  ‘Will ’e be all right?’

  ‘I expect so, bab.’ She patted Aggie’s arm. ‘That’s what hospital’s for – for making poorly people better.’ Half under her breath, she added, ‘Or so they say. Now, you run along and take May back outside. Keep an eye on the others, Aggie – there’s a good wench.’

  Once the children had gone out, Jen’s pretence crumpled immediately.

  ‘I don’t know what to do . . .’ She got up and moved about, agitated as a lost child. ‘I’ve never been in one of them places. I don’t want ’im in there – it’s all wrong!’

  Hospitals may have been for caring for the sick, but to many people they were terrifying places. The hospital and the workhouse seemed almost one and the same; enormous red-brick buildings with gables like frowning eyes and, inside, long corridors reeking of grief and disinfectant.

  ‘You can visit,’ her mother said. ‘There’ll be days when you’re allowed – Sundays I expect.’ Sounding unsure, she added, ‘I don’t s’pose he’ll be there long. But he was bad – you could see that. P’raps it’s for the best.’

  ‘How do I get there?’ Jen was working herself up, wringing her pinner in her hands. ‘How do I know anything? I mean he might’ve . . .’ She looked wildly at her mother. ‘He’s got consumption, I know he has! What if he . . . ? We’ll never manage!’ The words rushed out of her. ‘Oh, why did I have to catch for a babby now? We’ll have to go on the parish – we will!’

  ‘What’ve I told yer?’ Freda Adams came back at her, bolt upright now, and so fierce that Jen jumped. ‘I don’t want to hear you talking like that ever again! Over my dead body will we fall on the parish. I’ll go out collaring myself! I don’t mind hard work – but we’re not putting ourselves at the mercy of those wicked people ever again. D’you hear?’

  Rose Southgate had reached home again that afternoon, breathing so fast she might have been running a race. What in heaven’s name did she think she was doing?

  Harry was in, where she had left him, sitting in the back by the fire. Trying not to show any of her seething emotion in front of him or Lily, Rose took her hat and coat off and set a kettle on to boil. Lily lingered in the front room. Before she could stop her, Rose heard the child lift the lid of the piano and gently tinkle on the keys. Lily had been sworn to secrecy about the piano tuner, but she was unable to resist looking at the instrument.

  Rose screwed her eyes tightly shut, knowing what was coming next. Harry lowered his paper furiously.

  ‘You can stop that racket, yer noisy little bugger!’

  The lid of the piano closed abruptly. Lily stayed in the other room rather than come and brave her father. Rose could imagine the hurt on her face. She wanted to scream at Harry, at his rough, ignorant brutishness – that’s how she saw him now. Dear God, how had she come to marry him? But she didn’t want to fight, to have him storm out, so that she’d have somehow to make it up to him later. It just wasn’t worth it.

  Swallowing down her feelings she busied herself in silence, making tea and putting away her few groceries. But her mind was spinning. Thank goodness she’d gone out when she did, by pure chance! If she hadn’t . . . Well, it would have been disastrous. She trembled to think of it.

  When she had set off to the shops earlier that afternoon, she had been thinking of the piano tuner, Arthur King. In fact, since his visit she had not been able to stop thinking about him. For one thing she still owed him half a crown. That had to be scrimped for. But it wasn’t that. She just could
n’t get him out of her mind, his voice, the terrible sadness of losing his sight. He must have been gassed, she thought. Those scars round his eyes – weren’t they burns? His blindness made him remote, but also added an intimacy that would not have been there otherwise. And it moved her to tenderness. She had had to take his arm, and she had been able to look closely at him without him seeing. And then there was the way he had played to her, the way they talked . . . She would have liked the conversation to go on for hours. She had felt like a plant, drooping with need of water, and he had offered her a running stream.

  Then, this afternoon, he had appeared right in front of her! As he felt his way along the street towards her, her pulse had taken off so fast she felt quite faint. He drew level and she almost let him go past. But she just could not bear to let him go without their speaking, without hearing his voice.

  ‘Oh – hello,’ she said shyly. ‘It’s – I’m the lady whose piano you tuned the other day . . .’ In seconds she realized that this was not much help. How many pianos did he tune in a week? ‘Mrs Southgate, Rose Southgate – number fifteen, Lilac Street.’

  ‘Yes,’ Arthur King said. ‘Of course. I know your voice. And in fact I was just on my way to see you.’

  ‘Me?’ Her heart rate picked up even more. Harry was in today. Oh, thank God she’d stopped Mr King on the way! ‘Why? I mean, it’s me that should be coming to see you. I still owe you . . .’

  He was shaking his head. ‘No – that’s just it. I was coming to say that I miscalculated. It won’t be necessary. You’re fully paid up. I thought you should know, that’s all.’

  ‘Oh . . . Are you sure?’ She wondered how this could be.

  But he wasn’t going to explain. ‘Quite sure,’ he nodded. For a moment, he smiled. ‘It’s perfectly all right.’

  ‘Well, thank you,’ she said. Which didn’t seem enough. ‘That’s very kind.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  There was a silence, after which Rose said, ‘I’m just going to the shops, otherwise I’d ask you in.’

  ‘Oh, no – that’s quite all right,’ Arthur King said. He made a humorous face. ‘I’m really on my way to another customer. But of course I don’t get anywhere very quickly.’

  He turned back and they walked side by side.

  ‘Would you . . .’ She couldn’t bear to let him go, not now she had seen him again. ‘I mean, you could come and have a cup of tea another day?’ Did this seem wrong and forward of her? Why did his being blind make it seem less so?

  ‘I’d like that. But of course I am working in the week. So unless you have a selection of instruments for me to tune . . .’

  ‘No – hardly.’ Rose laughed. ‘What about Sunday?’ She seized on the idea. Harry would be out. He was always out fishing. ‘The day can be long and lonely with just myself and Lily,’ she added.

  ‘Yes.’ He seemed surprised, and pleased. ‘Sunday it is then. About three? Or would that be too early?’

  ‘No . . .’ Come at two, come at one, she thought. Just come.

  She trembled now, in her kitchen, unpacking the bargain cut of meat she had bought, at the thought of him turning up here with Harry waiting inside. She eyed her husband as he sat by the fire. There was an acrid smell of the stuff he cleaned his brushes with. She saw his strong, straight hairline at the back, his thick neck, so alien to her. She thought of Arthur’s slender one and a pang of longing went through her. Already she felt she had begun on something unstoppable.

  I must try not to feel like this, she thought, standing by the table, her hands clenched. This is madness. What am I doing? I haven’t even been straight with him. I’ve told lies. Yet she did not want to think about it, or to let go of the sense of delight at the thought of seeing Arthur King on Sunday. Wasn’t she just being kind to a casualty of the war, a lonely blind man? Where was the harm?

  Turning to Harry she said in a bland voice, ‘D’you want some tea?’

  ‘This is the first time me and Tommy’ve ever been apart,’ Jen said to her mother that night. ‘In thirteen years.’

  Exhausted and miserable, she crawled upstairs, barely able to make it to the top. She thought she would fall into bed and sleep immediately. But the bed felt cold and bleak without Tommy. She kept turning this way and that trying to get warm. Her tears came at the thought of him, sick and probably frightened, in a strange bed in the hospital. If only she could go there and lie beside him. Tommy wasn’t the sort of man who could stand being away from home and everything he knew. He was like a child in a way, bless him, she thought. He hadn’t been away in the war. He had tried to volunteer again in 1915, even though they had Aggie, and John a babe in arms by then. He’d been ashamed, with all the other blokes joining up. But they turned him down once more. She had been so relieved, but Tommy was shamefaced.

  ‘I can’t even do that right,’ he said. He saw himself as the runt of the litter, not much good for anything.

  But he wouldn’t have survived the war, wouldn’t have lasted five minutes, she thought fondly. Her Tommy, the daft thing.

  Tommy’s mom had died when he was only five. A weak heart, he was told later, but all he knew was that doctors came and she was taken away and he never saw her again. He’d never go near a doctor if he could help it. His big sisters, Cissy and Flo, did their best to look after him. Their dad, Ollie Green, then took up with a foreign woman called Marta. Jen never really knew where she came from or if they ever married. Tommy never liked her much though she seemed to be doing her best.

  The Greens and the Adamses all lived in Kyrwicks Lane, one of the old districts in Balsall Heath. So she must have seen Tommy all her life but he lived up the other end, near the livery stables. The first time she could really remember him, she’d have been seven, Tommy eight. She could see him in her mind now, flying along the road on his knobbly-kneed little legs, face alight and full of mischief. He was going full pelt and kept looking behind him as if someone was chasing him and a moment later a bigger boy appeared, looking furious, but Tommy had already flicked off along an entry and vanished. Jen had been at the kerb with some girls. She could remember wanting to laugh at the sight of him, of thinking, He looks nice . . .

  At fourteen and fifteen they started courting. Not seriously then, but it grew. They’d been together ever since. Hinged together, she thought, like the top and bottom of a box. She couldn’t imagine anything else.

  Tommy’s health had never been very good. He had trouble with breathing, often went down with bronchitis and other chest problems. Despite that, he had always had a lot of energy in the bedroom department and ways so winning she could hardly ever resist him. Tommy loved it – all of it – making babies, the sight of her carrying them, all the faces at the windows. She knew it drove him to despair when his health let him down and he couldn’t earn. But it didn’t stop him wanting to make another one – and Jen enjoyed the making too, if not the rest of the whole exhausting business, and by the time she minded it was usually too late.

  Wiping her tears away she smiled for a moment, thinking of his exuberant lovemaking when he was well. She reached out and stroked his side of the bed.

  ‘You’re a rogue, Tommy Green,’ she whispered fondly. ‘You’ll be the death of me. But you’d better not go and die on me yourself . . . Because I love you, damn you . . .’ More tears came at the thought. Gradually she fell asleep. I’ll come and see you, soon as I can, was her last waking thought.

  Seventeen

  That Saturday evening, as dusk was settling over the city, Phyllis Taylor stepped off the tram in Digbeth. Instinctively she looked around her as if checking for danger, then made her way up Digbeth towards the Bull Ring.

  She could have sent one of the girls in for Saturday night bargains in town, and sometimes did. But every so often she felt restless, wanting to get out of the house and the neighbourhood. Her neighbours there didn’t much like her. She’d never learned the trick of saying quite the right thing to people and she got their backs up. She was as good as any
of them – what was wrong with them all, turning their noses up at her, her, James Taylor’s widow? It was damn nice to be free of them all for a bit.

  She also enjoyed walking the streets in the darkening evening. It gave her a feeling of excitement, though with an edge of dread, with memories of old times. But she liked the shops as evening gathered, the lights from the windows and naphtha flares brightening the market stalls, the festive feeling of everyone milling around, vying for the knock-down meat and fruit and veg.

  Phyllis was dressed as ever in her heavy green coat and an extravagant hat with a wide, floppy brim fitting snugly over her magnificent head and coiled black hair. She had sat on the tram with her bags in her lap, turned towards the window to show that she didn’t intend to get into any conversation. She wanted to let her thoughts roam, like a guard checking a building for points of entry.

  Dolly had stopped being sick and was looking more normal. She had found a job in a toy factory, though this was not something about which she was especially happy.

  ‘It’s so boring,’ she complained. ‘And it doesn’t half make my back ache, bending over that bench.’ She had a job painting the black spots on white tin dogs. She moaned about the smell of the paint as well. She’d been carrying on about it just before Phyllis left the house.

  ‘You, madam, aren’t in a position to create about anything,’ Phyllis told her. ‘You’re lucky I haven’t turned you out on the street to fend for yourself. That’s what most mothers would’ve done.’

  She heard Dolly mutter something in the scullery.

  ‘Dolly, don’t talk like that!’ Susanna reprimanded her from the table. ‘You’re a bad girl! And you’re bringing all this trouble on all the rest of us as well. What am I s’posed to say to David? You’re making me tell lies.’

  There were more mutterings from the scullery. Insurrection was breaking out. Phyllis swelled with anger.

  ‘What’s that you said, you wicked girl?’ she demanded.