The Women of Lilac Street

by Annie Murray

  ‘We’ll need to arrange somewhere to go.’

  ‘Yes, dear.’ She could see that his lack of sight made everything more difficult, the world an even bigger obstacle than to her. ‘I think for Lily’s sake we must do our best.’

  Arthur turned to her. ‘You astonish me, Rose. Your voice is so soft and gentle. But you’re made of steel. I never would have thought it, not at first.’

  ‘Not always,’ she said, thinking about it. ‘Not most of the time. But with you, I know it’s right. Even if it’s wrong, so far as everyone else is concerned.’

  Arthur put his arm round her. ‘I believe you’ve got more guts than me.’

  ‘No, I’ve never done anything! Not been a soldier and all those terrible things you’ve had to do. But just for once, I’m sure. And we mustn’t wait too long, dear. We can meet at weekends and plan.’

  ‘What about Mrs T?’

  ‘She doesn’t know who I am, does she? Why can’t I just openly come in? I’ll take my wedding ring off.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs T’d be funny with you whoever you were.’

  ‘Well, we can meet outside sometimes. The park or somewhere if it’s difficult with her. And work out what we’re going to do. And I can still send Aggie if necessary – so I’m not up and down to your house too much.’

  Arthur shook his head. ‘This is madness, Rose. Pure and simple.’

  ‘No – it isn’t!’ She squeezed his hand tightly. A power seemed to flow through her. She could do anything, get past any obstacle so long as she knew that the two of them were in it together. Nothing else mattered. ‘We’re going to manage it, whatever anyone else might think or say – and they’re not going to know, are they? Just you and me. Whatever it takes, we must be together – and soon!’

  He turned to face her, reaching out a hand gently to stroke her cheek. ‘God, I do love you, Rose. You’re an amazing woman. Whatever else . . . However wrong this is . . . I feel as if I’ve just been given back my life.’

  She leaned forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder, and for several moments they sat in silence, in the wonder of it.

  Fifty-Five

  Phyllis sat with her children round the table that night. She had roasted a bit of beef and the smell of the meat and crisp potatoes filled the house.

  ‘You’re not eating much, Mom,’ Susanna remarked as Phyllis took two small potatoes and some cabbage along with a modest slice of beef.

  ‘I don’t seem to feel that hungry today,’ she said. ‘Must be the heat.’ She was perspiring heavily, but she knew that it wasn’t much to do with the muggy evening. She kept eyeing the clock. Its tick was ratcheting up the tension inside her though time itself seemed to be moving very slowly, as if arrested by the thickness of the evening air.

  Attention was soon removed from her by Dolly, squeaking, ‘Ooh! It’s kicking me again!’ She pressed a hand to her right side, beneath her ribcage. ‘Oh, my word, I’m sure I can feel its foot sticking out the side!’ Dolly never spoke of the baby as ‘he’ or ‘she’. ‘It feels really peculiar.’

  ‘Well, what d’you expect?’ Rachel retorted.

  Charles looked very displeased to have the reality of the baby forced upon him.

  ‘Dolly, quiet,’ Phyllis cautioned her, feeling as if she was going to explode. She was so taut with nerves that the last thing she needed was Dolly’s carry-on. She got up from the table. ‘Get this lot cleared up. I’ve got to go out.’

  ‘Where’re you going, Mom?’ Susanna asked.

  ‘Madge Lines’s. I said I’d give the Cradle Roll to her. It won’t take long.’

  ‘Oh,’ Susanna said, surprised. It was so unlike their mother to go out of an evening, except to a very occasional Bible study, for duty’s sake.

  ‘I’ll just go up and get the papers.’

  Upstairs, out of sight, Phyllis’s movements became faster, more furtive, but with no hesitation. She had thought this through many times over. Now all she had to do was act.

  In a cloth bag she had put some papers to look like the Cradle Roll, the church’s list of babies and young children. She already had one or two other items in the bag and now she went to her drawer and drew out one of her little brown bottles of smelling salts and slipped it into the pocket of her dress. She looked in the glass over her chest of drawers to make sure her hair was tidy, then slipped a cardigan on, despite the heat. She cursed. Why did this have to happen in the summer? It was just coming up to ten to eight and still light outside. If it was November or December it would have been dark for hours, making her job much easier.

  Her face looked back at her from the glass, its fleshy folds pulled into a grim expression.

  ‘So,’ she whispered, narrowing her eyes. ‘Come on, Hett. Time to get moving.’

  Going downstairs she could hear the clash of pots and pans and Rachel and Dolly squabbling over the washing-up. Normally she would have waded in but tonight she was not going to get involved.

  ‘Shan’t be long,’ she called from the front. She was about to open up, but changed her mind and went through to go out the back way. She could feel the family looking at her, but she ignored them and went out into the yard.

  The air was full of the smells of smoke and cooking, of fried onions and boiled cabbage. She walked through the entry and the street was alive with children playing out, ropes swinging and boys running wildly back and forth. Phyllis eyed the street carefully to see if anyone who mattered was looking at her. That tattling bitch Dorrie Davis was nowhere in sight. She pulled herself upright, and made her stately way to the end of Lilac Street.

  Half past eight was when she’d instructed Ethel to meet Charles. Once again she cursed the fact that there was no darkness to hide in, but if she’d suggested meeting much later it would likely have scared Ethel off.

  ‘I don’t want you near my house, you understand that, don’t you, Ethel? Charles is a good lad. I’ll send him with the money. After that you must leave us alone. It’s a lot of money, Ethel – there won’t be any more.’

  Ethel, avid with expectation of this windfall, would have agreed to anything.

  Ever since, Phyllis’s mind had played with images of things she’d like to do to Ethel. If only she could have thought of a place where they could meet next to the cut. She pictured herself rolling Ethel’s body over the canal side into the black water, the splash of her foul existence and the memories that went with it disappearing for ever! It was no good – Ethel might be greedy but she wasn’t completely stupid. She would never have agreed to meet by the cut and in any case on a hot summer evening it would still be crawling with joeys and other boats. At the time, the first place that had come to mind was St Paul’s churchyard. It seemed a good place for her religious-minded son to appear before Ethel.

  Phyllis lengthened her stride. She did not want to draw attention to herself but she was determined that she would be there first. Sweat broke out under her arms and down her back. Turning into the end of St Paul’s Road, the street stretched before her, seeming endlessly long. Suddenly she was filled with dread that there would still be something going on in the church: it was Sunday, after all. But surely by now, the evening thing they did – evensong, wasn’t it – would be over?

  By the time she passed under the railway bridge she was in a state of such nerves that when a train came roaring over it, she emerged shaking.

  ‘Come on – for heaven’s sake pull yourself together,’ she admonished herself.

  She walked on past the entrance to the churchyard to check how busy it was. In these crowded streets any secluded space was a lure for kissing couples. A man turned out of the gate as she came along but she could not see anyone else and it seemed to her that the church was quiet as well, though the porch door was open.

  Reaching the end of the street, she turned round and made her way back as if she was out for an evening stroll. As the road was clear, she went in quickly through the gate, and ducked down to hide behind the wall and a bush growing at the edge of the graveya
rd. The light was fading, though it was nowhere near dark. The church clock said eight twenty-five.

  Time seemed to crawl by and she could feel her heart thumping. There were footsteps in the distance and a young couple came along arm in arm and disappeared under the bridge. As soon as the next lot of footsteps approached under the bridge, she knew it was Ethel. Crouched low, she watched. The dark-clad, shuffling figure was in view now. Phyllis shrank even lower, shaking with nerves. She reached into her bag and withdrew something which she inserted into the left sleeve of her cardigan. Then she tucked the bag down at the edge of the bush. With her right hand she took the little bottle from her pocket.

  As Ethel turned into the churchyard, Phyllis cowered behind the bush until she had moved past, then as fast as she could, slipped soundlessly across the grass as the woman shuffled towards the entrance.

  ‘Where are yer, then?’ she heard Ethel muttering resentfully, at the porch door. ‘Anyone in there?’

  Ethel didn’t hear her at all. Phyllis, who was at least a head taller, shoved Ethel into the dark porch, and reaching round with her right arm, pushed the bottle of smelling salts close under her nose. Its vicious blast of ammonia made Ethel’s head shoot back and she let out glugging sounds of distress. But Phyllis had her pinned from behind with both arms. Ethel struggled, whimpering at the pain of the vapours knifing up through her nostrils.

  ‘Right, Ethel,’ Phyllis said, her mouth next to Ethel’s right ear. ‘It’s me, Hett, in case you’re wondering. Thought you were coming here to get rich, didn’t you? Only it doesn’t happen like that – not if you tangle with me. I’m not falling for blackmail, having you round my family like a bad stink.’ She jerked Ethel, who whimpered, obviously still suffering.

  ‘What if I was to give you money, eh? You’d be back, sucking on us like a fat grub. I don’t owe you, Ethel. I’ve lived my life and worked hard to better myself and you –’ She gave a yank with her arms, pulling Ethel so that she whimpered. ‘Are not going to wreck it.’

  She reached inside her sleeve and drew out the size ten knitting needle, thin and sharp.

  ‘See this? This is what’s going to happen if you ever, ever come anywhere near me or my family again. I’ll stick this thing in your ear and up into your rotten, filthy head. And when they drag you out of the cut, no one’ll see the tiny hole in your ear – they’ll think your heart gave out, an old lag like you. No one’ll ask too many questions.’

  Ethel squirmed, trying to protest. Phyllis gripped her harder with her right arm though she had removed the bottle from under Ethel’s nose.

  ‘Don’t mistake me, Ethel.’ Her voice was a growl now. ‘You come near me or mine one more time and I will finish you. Without a thought. You’re not getting any money – not now and not ever. If I see you in my neighbourhood ever again, I’ll come for you. I swear it. You got that?’

  Ethel nodded, a whining sound coming from her.

  ‘You get right away from here,’ Phyllis warned, beginning to release her. ‘And don’t you ever come back.’

  Ethel turned and in the gloom looked into Phyllis’s eyes. ‘Never thought you’d be like this with an old pal, Hett,’ she whined.

  ‘I’m not Hett. Hett’s dead. And you’re not my pal. Never were.’

  Ethel stared at her. Her eyes were still running and had gone red as had her nose. She looked truly pathetic. ‘You’re a bad woman, Hetty Barker. You may look all respectable, but . . . Saying things like that to me – in a church! You’re evil, you are!’

  ‘Well, that makes two of us, then,’ Phyllis said, tucking the needle back into her sleeve. ‘But don’t you ever forget what I’ve said. Come near us again and –’ She made a slashing motion across her throat.

  Leaving Ethel in the porch, she went and retrieved her bag, put her bits and pieces into it and disappeared into the gloom under the railway bridge.

  July 1925

  Fifty-Six

  Aggie soon felt at home in the Mansions. The family set to and cleaned up the house, bit by bit. All the children did what they could. It was as if with their dad passing away, everyone had grown up a little and they were pulling together to support Mom.

  ‘Lucky I’m not further on,’ Jen said soon after they arrived, eyeing her growing belly. It was the time in a pregnancy when she had most energy. ‘Another few weeks and I’ll be the size of a battleship.’

  ‘I just wish I could get this off,’ Freda said, looking gloomily at her plaster cast. She could move it more now but it was still always in the way. ‘I could curse it, I really could. I can’t get down to anything properly.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll be gone soon enough,’ her daughter said. ‘I should make the most of it.’

  ‘I expect I can sort those curtains out,’ Freda said.

  Jen set about sweeping and washing the house out and burning sulphur candles to get rid of the roaches and silverfish and any lurking bedbugs. Although it was a school day when she did it, Jen kept Aggie home and shut up the house for the day to fumigate it. Aggie spent that warm day playing out with May and the other little children who were not at school. Another day she helped her mother polish the old range, which had been much neglected, and cleaned up the heavy Dutch oven, which had been left behind as well.

  Now she was living so close to Babs, their friendship grew closer. Aggie barely thought about going to see Mrs Southgate any more. Instead of being relaxed and sweet the way she had been before, Mrs Southgate was now odd and intense in a way that made Aggie uneasy. Every so often she ran an errand for her and was glad of the money, but these days she was having much more fun with Babs and her brothers, who were a harum-scarum bunch, full of laughter and mischief. They had an orange box shackled on to some old pram wheels and liked to push each other in it, roaring up and down the yard until everyone shouted, ‘Get out from under my feet!’ and banished them to the pavement outside.

  The two yards were almost identical and because Aggie had often been to Babs’s house in one yard, she found the other quite easy to adjust to. Even Mary Crewe felt familiar as she came in and out, looming in the entry, muttering to herself. The girls walked to school together, and once home, they ran back and forth along the entry in and out of each other’s yards. There were some people she didn’t like much, like the Peters kids next door, but she kept out of their way as much as she could.

  It already felt to Aggie as if they had been there for a long time.

  One Saturday, in mid-July, something very sad happened. Aggie was playing at the bottom of their yard near the brew house with May, Babs and the others, when a kerfuffle broke out. Loud, distressed wailing noises were coming from Mary Crewe’s house. The noises grew louder. Aggie and Babs stopped their game of fives. Everyone looked round.

  ‘Where is it?’ Mary was shouting hysterically. ‘Give it back! Who’s got ’er? Someone’s stole ’er – give ’er back to me!’

  Aggie felt her stomach turn over. She had never heard anything quite like it before. Mary’s shouting made her sound like a big, shrieking child.

  Babs made a face, pushing her bottom lip out and rolling her eyes. ‘It’s Mad Mary. Sounds like trouble.’

  Aggie got to her feet. ‘Come on –’ She pulled on Babs’s arm. ‘Let’s go round to yours.’

  Babs shrugged. ‘All right, then.’

  They slipped round the entry into the other yard, but Mary Crewe’s yells followed them, echoing round the yards, and there was no escaping her.

  ‘Who’s got it?’ she was yelling to anyone who would listen. ‘I know one of you’s stolen ’er. Give ’er back, now!’

  ‘Oh, my,’ Dulcie Skinner said. She slipped round to find out what was going on and came back looking upset.

  ‘It was her “babby”,’ Dulcie said. ‘That bundle she carries about with her. Someone must’ve slipped in and took it.’

  Aggie found herself hoping it hadn’t been John or one of the Skinner boys. Whoever it was would be in for a hiding.

  ‘So has she got it back
then?’ Babs asked.

  ‘Yes – it was one of them Dawson boys,’ Dulcie told her, shaking her head. ‘Went in and took it for a joke – he thought it was funny. D’you know what was in there? A rag doll – a little scrappy thing. Poor soul.’

  Aggie felt the sadness of this go into her.

  They thought that was the end of it, but the next day, Mary Crewe disappeared. No one saw her go out of the yard, and her sister Eliza was beside herself, saying Mary must have got up in the night or early that morning but she hadn’t heard a thing.

  Soon everyone on the street was talking about it. Dulcie, who had known the sisters for years, tried to comfort Eliza.

  ‘She’ll’ve just gone on her wanderings, bab – she’ll be back. Don’t you worry.’

  But by six o’clock that evening, people were out searching the streets for Mary. Dulcie called round at the Greens.

  ‘Cooee?’ Her head appeared round the door. Freda and Aggie were clearing up the tea. ‘Jen not ’ere? Oh, course – she’s down at Price’s, I’d forgotten with all this going on.’

  ‘Cuppa tea?’ Freda asked. ‘Kettle’s boiled.’

  ‘Ooh, no, I’d better not . . . Oh, go on, then. Joe’s gone out searching with some of ’em. Poor Eliza, she’s beside ’erself. I mean, Mary’s always been a wanderer – but this is different.’

  Freda brought the pot to the table and sat down creakily.

  ‘That arm of yours feeling any better?’

  ‘Not so bad,’ Freda said, nursing it in her lap.

  ‘Flaming nuisance that must be.’

  ‘I remember Mary as a child,’ Freda said, changing the subject. ‘Her family lived up the road from us.’

  ‘I remember Jen saying,’ Dulcie nodded. ‘Was she always a bit – you know?’

  ‘No. Not the sharpest, ever, but she was all right. It was her mom dying young the way she did, then that husband of hers running off, and then the children . . . Everything piled on top of her, that was what did it.’