The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  Forty-Nine

  That night, in the early days of 1900, when Hetty arrived in Birmingham, she had not the first idea where to go. Darkness was already gathering when the train pulled in. She walked with dragging feet along the crowded platform and out of the station. In her desperation to get away from Ada and Ethel she had thought of nothing else. During the journey her mind had been full of the horrifying scene she had left behind, the crumpled figures of the little boys, the wounds on Ada, the seeping blood . . .

  And now, once again, she was on the streets with nowhere to go. A sense of despair filled her.

  The city at night seemed even more frightening than before. Coventry at least was home, but now she was alone in this big, strange place. She found herself in a warren of dark streets not far from the station, among the other figures moving in the gloom. There was an occasional gas lamp round which were gathered gaggles of children, either sitting dumbly on the road or wrangling shrilly with each other. The street was narrow, and even in the enclosing darkness, had a grimy, threatening feel to it. People moved close to her in the dark and quite soon, to her discomfort, she began to attract attention. Men who passed stopped and stared, turning back to watch her walk on; some nudged her, and one man forced himself up against her, squeezing her breasts and making lewd comments.

  ‘How much?’ his moustachioed mouth hissed.

  Hetty tried to ignore him and walk on, but he persisted beside her. His thin, rat-like face peered out from under a cap and his voice rasped at her.

  ‘Too stuck up to speak, are yer? I said, ’ow much?’

  Hetty shook her head and walked on.

  ‘You don’t wanna walk round ’ere if you ain’t offering,’ the man said crossly.

  ‘What’s up, Bert – trouble?’

  Terrified now, Hetty found herself faced by a group of four lads, blocking the road in front of her. She could see they were some kind of gang as they all had a similar look, caps on their heads and what looked like colourful scarves at their throats. Peakies, she thought. She’d heard of these gangs who called themselves the Peaky Blinders, vicious enough to knife you to get what they wanted.

  ‘What’ve we got ’ere, then?’ the tallest of them said.

  He and the one beside him must have been brothers, they were so similar. The two hanging behind looked very young. She kept her arms folded, one hand clutching her waist to protect her hidden bag of money.

  ‘This moll’s on our patch but she ain’t coughing,’ the one said who had first grabbed her. He was one of them too, she realized. She was surrounded now.

  ‘Oh – is that so?’ The tallest of the lads who was evidently the leader of all of them, placed his feet wide apart, challenging her with a swagger.

  ‘And who might you be, then?’

  ‘She’s with us,’ a voice said from behind Hetty. Someone elbowed in among the gang of Peakies. ‘Come on, Susan – you’re coming with us.’

  Before she had even managed to see who her rescuer was, Hetty found her arms being seized on each side and she was pulled away down the street. To her surprise the lads put up no resistance. She took in that she was being steered along by two girls. One, she could see, was a pale blonde, the other dark, both with their hair fixed up in elaborate styles with pins and coils round their ears.

  ‘What the **** are you doing out here on your own?’ the dark-haired girl demanded, in a thick Irish accent. ‘You never do dis place on your own – not even in the daytime! And you don’t do it anyways – this is Ma Hegarty’s patch. You can’t just move in on it, you know.’

  ‘I . . .’ Hetty could think of no lie she could tell that was any more help than the truth. ‘I don’t know where I am – I’ve just got here.’

  The blonde girl let out a string of filthy curses which ended with, ‘. . . and what’re we getting ourselves stuck with her for?’

  ‘Oh, I think the old lady’ll be pleased to have her, don’t you?’ the first one said. ‘Listen now – what’s your name? Not Susan, I don’t suppose?’

  ‘Hetty.’

  ‘Hetty,’ the Irish girl said. ‘Well, I’m Mary and this is Dora. You come wit us. You’ll not want to be out here at night – it’s not safe. Those Peakies – halfwits and eejits dey are, every one of dem, but dey think they own de streets . . .’ She jerked Hetty’s arm. ‘Come on – in here.’

  They were at the mouth of an alleyway, a stinking, fetid place, and Hetty tried to draw back, the overpowering stench of sewage and rotting refuse stinging her nostrils. She could hear sounds from the warren of buildings around, shouts and crying children, and the air was full of smoke. Desperation rose in her again.

  ‘Where’re we going? What if I don’t want to come with you?’

  ‘Oh, you do,’ Dora said, suddenly nasty, digging her nails into Hetty’s arm. She could tell the girls were not going to let her go, now they had got their claws into her. She was frightened of them, even though they had rescued her from the Peakies. Both of them reminded her of Ethel, the ruthless, calculating natures she could hear in them. Getting caught up with them felt like going back to the life she had just tried to escape. But the streets were terrifying and she had no idea of where to go to find anywhere better.

  ‘You’re coming to meet Ma Hegarty,’ Dora said. ‘She’ll decide what to do with you.’

  They dragged her further along the alley and as soon as they had her there in what was almost total, engulfing darkness, Dora, who had suddenly become the leader, said, ‘Right – let’s see what you’ve got, then!’

  The girls grabbed her even tighter and shoved her back against the wall, their spare hands that weren’t pinioning her against the slimy bricks, rummaging among her clothes. It only took seconds for them to feel the promising lump stashed at Hetty’s waist.

  ‘Ah, now – what have we here?’ Mary yanked the bag from her waistband. ‘Treasure!’

  ‘No! That’s mine – it’s all I’ve got!’ Hetty fought back as savagely as she could, grabbing Mary’s hand which she drew up to her lips, and sinking her teeth into the girl’s wrist. She tasted blood.

  ‘Ow! You filthy bitch!’ Mary hit out at her, flailing and slapping in the dark. ‘She’s bitten me, Dora – get her.’

  ‘We’ll ’ave to learn this one some manners.’

  Hetty felt the other girl move round her and seize her by the shoulders. The two girls yanked her whole body forward, then shoved her forcibly back again. Her head cracked against the wall and she knew nothing more.

  ‘The best thing,’ Dora instructed her, ‘is to make them do it between your legs. Some of ’em are so far gone they’ll do whatever you tell ’em. But –’ She jerked her head in the direction of where Ma Hegarty was enthroned in the back room. ‘She’ll give you a sponge – you dip it in the vinegar, then put it up. If the old lady finds you’ve got a bun in the oven she’ll flay you alive. She don’t hold with doing away with ’em – and it costs.’

  Hetty had come round after her blow on the head, to find she was lying on a lumpy straw mattress in the back passage of the slum house, being observed by a bloated woman with bloodshot eyes. Hetty gave a whimper. Her head was pounding and moving sent shooting pains through her neck.

  ‘Looks all right.’ The voice came rumbling from a throat that vibrated with alcohol and pipe tobacco and the cadences of County Limerick. ‘Looks a strong girl, not a bad face. I’ll take her. See to her.’ She started to shuffle away. ‘She’s coming round now.’

  Hetty realized that the woman was addressing someone who turned out to be Dora. There were other distant sounds in the background and there was a strong smell of coal dust and smoke around her. Dora’s face loomed into Hetty’s wavering vision.

  ‘So – you’re awake. Get yourself up, then.’

  Hetty sat up, groaning. Her bladder felt full to bursting and her head was pounding. She felt her waist.

  ‘Where’s my money? You stole it off of me! Give it me back!’

  ‘Money?’ Dora gave an exaggerate
d, innocent shrug. ‘I dunno what you’re talking about. There ain’t no money here belongs to you.’

  Hetty groaned again, defeated, drew her knees up and rested her aching head on them. ‘I want some tea. And I want to pee.’

  Ma Hegarty was a shrewd, rough, drunken, fearsome, occasionally sentimental businesswoman. Including Hetty, she was housing nine girls at that time. None of the ones Hetty got to know in the few weeks she was there had anything much in the way of family. They were waifs and strays, some orphans, some having left home because it was hell one way or another. Hetty heard tales that made her hair stand on end. Taking up with Ma Hegarty was a living which gave them a roof over their head. Some knew almost no other.

  Mary had run away from home in Ireland, where she had had a baby by her father, hoping to make her fortune across the water. Dora had grown up in an orphanage and had no one in the world. Hetty quickly saw, with a sense of despair, that she was just like them. And here she was, sucked back into this again. All life ever seem to offer her was making a living with her body. She wanted to run away again, but now she had no money and no real idea where to go. Quickly she decided to bide her time. She’d look about her. And then, one day, she vowed to herself, she’d be off.

  It happened even sooner than she expected and in quite a different way from what she envisaged. She dreamed of escaping to a different part of town, getting herself a factory job, trying to make herself respectable. Instead, she met James Taylor.

  She was paired with Dora when they went out on the streets and they were working a particular patch in Balsall Heath. Most of the encounters took place in back alleys, often against the warm bricks of factory walls, unless the man had anywhere better in mind. Dora became annoyed quite quickly because she was not much of a looker. She had a narrow-eyed, malnourished look whereas Hetty was very handsome. With her wide, curvaceous body the men went for her instead.

  So, after all her resistance at Ada’s place, Hetty found herself back in the situation of letting men use her as Mr Gordon had done. She followed Dora’s advice about how to protect herself. The feeling of a man thrusting against her brought back the most terrible memories. As soon as she was working, she took her mind somewhere else, anywhere, out into the fields and villages where things had seemed free. She thought about Nancy and dreamed of living with her on her farm. Most of the men were quick, and when they were finished she would come to as if from a dream.

  But one evening, a warm, August night when it was only just turning dark, she was standing at the end of an alley on the Moseley Road, waiting for Dora. Dora had made her hide so that she’d have a chance, and she was the one working this time. Hetty still only had the dress she had arrived in and didn’t feel at all grand or smart, but she knew she had a good body, a strong bearing and she leaned against the wall, dreamily glad that it was Dora the whiskery, portly man had chosen.

  The place where she was standing was a short distance in towards town from the Methodist church. After a short time, Hetty heard footsteps approaching and a tall, well-built man appeared, giving the impression, in the gloom, of being smartly, if not expensively dressed. He was hurrying along, head down, seeming preoccupied, and only looked up at the last moment, sensing someone there on the pavement.

  He raised his head to show a young, striking face, with a big, almost hooked nose, dark eyebrows and thick, sensuous lips. Hetty was immediately taken by the face. You could not call the man handsome, but there was something fascinating about him.

  He removed his hat. ‘Evening,’ he said. Instead of moving on, he stopped, seeming curious, but then was unsure what to say.

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. ‘Are you waiting for someone?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ Hetty said coyly. She couldn’t stop looking at him. She had never seen a man quite like him before.

  The man stood still, gazing at her. In his eyes she thought she saw interest, a touch of humour – and desire. He turned away for a moment to look back along the street. There were a few other people about and he seemed to be locked in a struggle with himself. Still holding his hat, he stepped closer, looking apprehensive now.

  ‘Are you working?’ He spoke so quietly she could barely hear.

  Her heart started thumping. He didn’t look like her usual sort of customer.

  ‘I am,’ she murmured, lowering her eyes.

  There was a silence, but he could not afford to stand there in uncertainty. It would be too obvious to everyone what transaction was taking place.

  ‘Oh, Lord,’ she heard him breathe. For a second he hesitated, then hurriedly came close to her and reached out his arm. ‘Come on.’

  He told her he worked for the engineering firm to which he had once been apprenticed. He rented a couple of rooms nearby and smuggled her upstairs. In her turn, Hetty told him she was eighteen, though this was two years older than the truth. There was something about him, a mixture of fraught desire and decency, that humbled her and she tried to speak nicely.

  From the beginning, James had been in no doubt about what she was, where she had come from. At first she thought he was trying to save her soul while satisfying his own needs. But once he had let off steam the first time, he made her tea. He looked at her in a way no man ever had before – directly, into her eyes. When he asked her name, she said, ‘Phyllis,’ just like that, as if somehow she already knew she was to be someone else. It was a name she had once seen in a story book and she thought it sounded gracious. It sounded like the person she wanted to be.

  ‘Tell me about your family,’ he said, that first time she sat in his simple, bachelor’s sitting room.

  ‘They ain’t no good,’ she told him, lowering her head in shame. ‘I ain’t seen my mother or father for years now.’

  ‘And this is how you live?’ he asked, seeming surprised. Did he think she was out there for the fun of it?

  Face thick with blushes, she nodded.

  ‘A lovely girl like you,’ he said sadly. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her. ‘Shouldn’t you like to be living a different life?’

  Her gaze met his. Something lit in her then that had never gone out. She felt as if with him, she could be different.

  ‘Yes,’ she said longingly.

  Fifty

  All that week Rose kept the poem close to her heart, tucked between her dress and camisole. She read it over again until she no longer needed to look to know the exact words. The line, ‘. . . time nor ties, nor distance make love less’, burned in her mind. He loves me, he still loves me . . . After the way he had looked at her, his anger and hurt, she had doubted whether even that could be true. But he had sent her this ardent message. He had not wanted their love to die.

  She did not like to think about another line of the poem, ‘friend of my former day . . .’ Those words made the message a final, regretful goodbye. It was too unbearable to believe that.

  A plan began to form in her mind. It was the only way she could ease herself. She would go to Arthur that Sunday and say that she was prepared to face whatever it took for them to be together. She would leave Harry, taking Lily with her; they would run away, go anywhere, so that no one would know them. She would be his wife and care for him, he could get work somewhere . . .

  The idea gave her a new lease of energy. She took the tram out to Moseley with Lily to see Mrs Lacey and came away promising to bring her a set of tea-table linen, each mat embroidered with cowslips, bluebells and hollyhocks.

  ‘They’ll be so pretty!’ she told Mrs Lacey. ‘I can see them already. I’ll buy the finest cotton to work on.’

  ‘I’m sure, Mrs Southgate,’ Mrs Lacey assured her. ‘No one has ever been disappointed with your work yet. If you could do even more I’d be happy!’

  From the draper’s she bought a length of fine white cotton and the coloured threads she needed and got to work. Summoning up all the patience she could, she gave Lily some scraps of cloth and showed her how to begin stitching – running stitch, then chain stitch �
� and Lily took to it very well.

  ‘You’ll be able to make lovely things when you’re bigger,’ Rose told her. Lily beamed at her approval.

  She found patterns for the flowers and set to work. Even though she was in a state there was always a magic to the work that Mrs Mount had taught her, threading the colours in and out until these beautiful shapes were etched on the cloth. This was one thing she was good at. And she was burning with energy and ambition. She would make money to bring away with her. She was stitching her way to freedom, to love! Perhaps, once she was safely with Arthur, she could begin her own little business in some small town somewhere in the north where they could be safe and no one would know their background.

  As much of the day as she could she spent sewing. Once it grew late enough for there to be any chance of Harry coming home, she packed it away, neatly rolled up in a box at the back of the cupboard in the front room. When she took Lily to Muriel’s house for her piano lesson, she managed to be calm, chatty and polite. Because now, inside, she kept telling herself there was going to be an end to this, a way out. And she was happy.

  Every second of Sunday morning hung heavily. It was sunny and Harry pottered in and out to the yard, the back door open, fixing his bike, fiddling with his fishing tackle. His permanent expression now was one of self-righteous aggression. I am the man of the house, his bearing said. And I am hard done by. The rest of you can fall into line.

  ‘You not going to church then?’ he asked, as Rose made no attempt to ready herself and Lily. There was an edge of sarcasm to his tone, as there was when he’d quip, ‘Say one for me,’ whenever she set off. The fact was that she really only went to church to get away from him and find some other company. Most of what went on there went right over her head, though she did like the chance to sit still and think her own thoughts.