A Plague on Both Your Houses

by Ian Porter

  The meeting ended with Frau Burchardt saying she would love to come and visit Dorothea in the marketplace sometime. She mentioned that she had a business meeting coming up next Thursday at her bank, which was quite close to the market area, so could pop along then if it were not inconvenient. She was told warmly that would be most fine indeed. It was lard day, so she would see the stall being busy.

  “Perfect!” said Frau Burchardt, before adding conspiratorially, “my meeting is on a somewhat delicate matter you understand, and I would rather not advertise the fact that I am visiting my bank, so I will arrange for Aldo to drop me there a little early, and then she can drive the motor back to the square and help you on the stall for a while before returning in due course for me. How would that be?”

  It was confirmed that it would be very nice. And Aldo too was her usual enthusiastic self about the chore.

  Chapter 14

  “Men burned and maimed to the condition of animals.”

  Harold Gillies, Queen Mary’s Hospital

  plastic surgeon, 1917

  Nash was concerned that the net was drawing in on him. The man he had beaten up on the ferry had clearly followed the objector onto the ship and waited to see who he met. And now this man would have passed on a description of his assailant. Nash laid down the law to his contacts at the No Conscription Fellowship. They had to improve their security. The authorities being able to follow an objector needed to have been a one-off success. And Nash appreciated that he too had to be more careful in future. His Woolwich Ferry venue was no longer viable so he came up with not only an alternative venue, but a different method of meeting his objectors.

  Queen Mary’s Hospital Sidcup was dealing with the huge number of horrifying facial injuries incurred by men at the Front. Most were so badly injured that during their stay they never left the confines of the hospital, but there were still plenty who managed to get out for a walk in the grounds, and some even managed a little stroll in the nearby park or along Sidcup High Street. Consequently a man could roam around the area with bandages covering his entire face and nobody would bat an eyelid. And while Sidcup was a south of the river suburb, it was only seven or eight miles from the Blackwall Tunnel so was within range for Nash’s horse.

  His latest ‘Richard’ had been bandaged up, dropped at the hospital by the NCF and was waiting to be contacted. Ruby travelled with her husband by horse & cart as far as Sidcup railway station where, repeating his Silvertown modus operandi, he left the vehicle with some wreck of an injured soldier who was clearly too woebegone to make off with it. They then disappeared into a booth of the lady’s toilet in the station, where Ruby bandaged her husband’s head. She then got on a train heading for New Cross, and was to make her way home from there on the tube.

  Nash was to walk up the hill from the station to the hospital, where his objector would be wearing a particular style of boots with a splash of red paint on the right one, so he could be recognised. The man had been told to roam around close to the hospital until he was contacted. Not having a set place to meet and both parties not being recognisable added a new level of security. Once Nash spotted his man, he would spend some time reconnoitring to ensure the coast was clear, before making contact. The two men would then pop into the gentlemen’s toilet at the station to unravel their headgear before picking up the horse & cart and making their getaway.

  Ruby’s train stopped en route at St Johns, the place where she had lived when first settling in South London six years earlier. But since becoming a Suffragette and moving to the East End she had been so tied up, first of all with the Votes for Women campaign and then the war, that she had never found the time to go back to look up her old friends and acquaintances. She had not planned to get off the train at St Johns, but when it pulled in there, on a whim she jumped out.

  She made her way along the road in which she had lived. On turning the corner she had been initially surprised not to see any little groups of gossiping pinafore-clad women on the pavement; nobody cleaning a front step or chastising a naughty child. But she soon appreciated that many would be working at a factory at this time of day; or some might be doing a shift on the railways or at one of the many other jobs women were now tackling that before the war had been the exclusive domain of men. Ruby smiled as she remembered ticking off her husband over the attention he had been given by that firewoman.

  She knocked on the door of the woman who used to live next door to her. Lizzy was a real old character, who would know all the news and gossip. There was no answer. She was about to try the next door along when a young woman on a bicycle hove into view. It was Ruby’s old mate Edna from when she worked at the Peek Frean’s factory in Bermondsey. She was wearing a police woman’s uniform.

  “Gawd help us!” exclaimed Edna down the street. “Look what the cat’s dragged in! Ruby Martin as I live and breathe!”

  She jammed on the brakes, skidded to a halt, threw the bike into the gutter and moments later the two women were hugging. Ten minutes of excited catching up and leg-pulling followed. This included Ruby dropping the bombshell that she had married an older man whom she had met while working on an ocean liner, and she was now Mrs Nash if you please. Then accompanied by the sauciest, least subtle Marie Lloyd-like wink she could manage, Edna asked what it was like to be married to an old fellow. Ruby responded by asking how the most dishonest woman in Peek Freans, who somehow managed to regularly squirrel knickers full of bourbons and custard creams past the security guards, had managed to get herself into the police force.

  “Takes one to know one see,” said Edna. “If you’ve been on the other side of the law you know what to look for when you’re a copper don’t you.”

  “Well, you’re the first copper this old Suffragette has ever hugged!” exclaimed Ruby, crying with laughter.

  “Funny you should say that,” said Edna enthusiastically, “I’ll have you know you inspired me you did. After you went off to the East End I joined the cause! I didn’t join your lot ‘cause I didn’t like the violence, but I joined the Lewisham branch of the Women’s Freedom League. We might not have done the sort of stuff you lot did, burning things down and the like, but we still got up to some right old shenanigans I’ll tell you. Managed to get myself pinched. Wouldn’t pay the fine of course. Off to Holloway clink I went. Surprised I didn’t bump into you there!”

  “You didn’t put all that on your police application form I’ll wager!” giggled Ruby.

  “Don’t make me laugh! And now I’m the best copperette you’ll ever see in all your life! Nick you as soon as look at you!”

  “Remind me not to introduce you to my husband!” said Ruby knowingly.

  The joy of so unexpectedly meeting an old friend, and such a character at that, had Ruby forgetting momentarily the horror she herself had endured in Holloway and the fact that loose talk could get her and Nashey into trouble. She had just hinted to a policewoman that her husband worked on the wrong side of the law.

  “Oh, bit of a lad is he?” asked Edna. “Don’t worry, old friends is old friends. And besides my job is to nick young lads up to no good, not old East End fellers doing what comes natural!”

  They continued their merry banter for a while longer before Ruby crooked her head towards the front door outside of which they were standing.

  “Where’s old Lizzie Dripping then?” she asked.

  Edna’s face, and the conversation, plummeted.

  “Passed away. Remember Joe, her husband? Got called up soon as they brought in conscription for married men. Quick as you like poor Joe cops it. Soon as he’s dead the separation allowance is stopped. Army’s on the ball when it wants to be. Not so clever with paying out the widow’s pension mind. So she had no money coming in. Didn’t have no one to look after the little uns. Couldn’t get no home work. She were starved for weeks till the allowance came through. Gave every crumb she had to the little uns of course. Don’t know what k
illed her in the end, tell you the truth. Flu probably. She had it right enough. She just faded away.”

  It was time for a cup of tea. Edna wheeled her bike with one arm, and put the other round her old friend as they walked up the road to her little terraced house. The conversation turned as melancholy as it had been joyful. Many of the women Ruby had known had died for a variety of reasons. Some were dead within a year of their husband being killed at the Front for similar reasons to Lizzy. Neighbours had rallied round the best they could, but they all had their own problems and responsibilities.

  And Ruby realised that unlike in Bow, the women of St Johns didn’t have Sylvia Pankhurst and her charities looking out for them.

  Another young woman Ruby had known, had been working in Greenwich at the time of the Silvertown explosion. Ruby had heard that shrapnel from the blast flew across the river and into the Greenwich gasometer, causing the whole thing to blow up in a huge fireball. But there had been no coverage of such a thing in the press. Edna confirmed this to be true, and little Blondie, Ruby never had known her real name, had been killed in the inferno.

  Ruby told Edna about her various jobs in Bow. For her part Edna relayed how interesting her work as a policewoman was, a lot of it helping fellow women in one way or another. But she had only just returned to duty after a bout of flu so was on more mundane work at the moment overseeing queues and the like, while she recovered her strength. Ruby questioned her friend further about her duties as a police officer, before going on to report that neither she nor her husband had caught the flu. She appreciated that they had been lucky, telling Edna that many of the girls in her football team and those she had played against, had been down with it.

  “Football! You! At your age! Since when?!” exclaimed an incredulous Edna.

  This led them back into the world of leg-pulling and giggling. The war was forgotten again for a while.

  Chapter 15

  “German spies continue to abound in France. They are met with all sorts of disguises. Simple looking peasants working in the fields, sham priests, Germans dressed as Sisters of Charity or as hospital nurses.”

  Illustrated London News

  The trip to Sidcup went as planned. Nash was confident there were no government men around, and he duly picked up his objector without fuss.

  The one injury Nash retained from his villainous days was a certain stiffness of the neck, courtesy of escaping from a burly policeman’s headlock. It didn’t give him any pain but his range of neck movement was impaired. So given that he didn’t usually have a lot in common with his objectors, and was not one for idle small talk with men at the best of times, little attempt was made to crane his neck to speak once his charges were under the coal sacks on his cart. Journeys to the East End were quiet affairs.

  But this man had recently come from the trenches and had some shocking news to relay so, when there was nobody on the street within listening distance, Nash found himself leaning back and swivelling a little to converse. The man told Nash that he had seen huge numbers of soldiers in field hospitals with a new strain of flu. It was a far more deadly virus than the previous one, and that had been bad enough. A large number of soldiers had died. It was decimating the British army. Fortunately it was fairly clear that the Hun must have it in their ranks too, as trench warfare had been severely curtailed by both sides for a while, and now the Germans were even in retreat.

  On arrival at their East End destination, Nash gave his new charge a walking tour of the area.

  Many of Nash’s safe houses were in Shoreditch and Spitalfields, the latter of which had been where a young prostitute friend of his had been killed by the Whitechapel Murderer thirty years earlier. The piecemeal, uncoordinated, unplanned slum clearance in the area that had followed the killings, had actually made the already appalling overcrowding worse for a while, as places such as the police no-go area known as the Flower & Dean Street rookery, were not adequately replaced. Only the destruction of the infamous slum known as the Jago, in Shoreditch’s Old Nickel area, had been an unqualified success. Here now stood the impressive Arnold Circus development of decent tenement housing for the regularly employed poor. The novelist Arthur Morrison, who had written about the Old Nickel publicising its horrors, had succeeded where the area’s most infamous son had not. The pen had been mightier than the knife.

  The area as a whole remained a rabbit warren of slum alleys and courts, which Nash knew like the back of his hand. And while there were no longer any specific no-go areas for the authorities, there were still plenty of places that were probably best left unchecked, particularly at night, by anyone working alone in any sort of official capacity. This Victorian throw-back of a place was ideal for Nash’s purposes. He could hide objectors here, away from prying eyes, with much more certainty than anywhere else. Men could be absorbed; disappear. But Nash had to accept that his objectors could stand out like a sore thumb. And most of his charges were middle class Quakers who had lived, at least until they had been abused, beaten and threatened during the war, very sheltered lives. Living in this area, they could be forgiven for believing they had simply swopped one living hell for another. Consequently Nash was careful where he placed his men. Shoreditch was his preferred spot. He now had a few objectors living at different addresses in the Arnold Circus development, and had others living together in a derelict Victorian furniture warehouse.

  While a walking tour was useful in showing new arrivals where all the local infrastructure they were likely to need was located, the main purpose was to impress upon them how close the East End was to the City of London. One end of Petticoat Lane emptied out on to Bishopsgate, a main thoroughfare of the City. Battered cloth caps and horse dung gave way to shiny top hats and motor car fumes, like a muddy river cascading into a shimmering ocean. Liverpool Street railway station was only yards away, as for that matter was Bishopsgate police station, full of those who might ask a man for his identification papers.

  Consequently these Quakers were under orders never to venture out on to the three main roads; Bishopsgate, Great Eastern Street and Commercial Street. These bay-windowed and beguiling streets held the slums within their grasp like a fisherman’s net. The objectors were to stay inside the net. All the time these fish were beneath the surface they would survive.

  The manager of their property, usually an old associate of Nash from his villainous days, was the only local person who knew their true identities. Their cover story when passing the time of day with anyone was that they were struggling artists attracted in to the area by low prices, the interesting racy character of the East End and the way this melting pot part of London accepted people who were a little different. They had not been recruited into the army for one reason or another. That reason could be kept vague so people could make up their own mind about what it may be. The manners, politeness and quietly spoken gentility of the men Nash was helping; the fact that they were thought to be artists and the tell-tale mention of them being different, led many locals to believe they were homosexuals. An assumption was made; the army didn’t want ‘cuddle pups’.

  Nash would go into local pubs and make conversation with landlords and their bar flies about the local artist colony at the nearby warehouse, just to gauge what people’s thoughts were about the men. Were there any suspicions?

  Most people had not even noticed their arrival. The No Conscription Fellowship’s good quality costume design had meant the men had blended in to their new surroundings nicely. Most people were far too busy with their own frantic lives to concern themselves with a few extra people adding to the overcrowding in the area. And when Nash had found drinkers willing to offer an opinion about the artists, it was clear there was no great love of these newcomers, and plenty of crude remarks were made about them, but nobody proffered any suspicions that they could be conchies.

  One old bar-fly in the Ten Bells, several sheets to the wind, had once put forward the theory that they could
be German spies, but Nash had quashed that easily enough. He had derided the man as being a daft old sod, because surely the whole idea of being a spy was to blend in to the surroundings to pass yourself off as a normal Englishman. And besides, what was there worth spying on in darkest Spitalfields? Passing yourself off as a rum cove artist, well away from the docks or any other place of spy interest, was hardly the best of tactics. Nash had gone on to jokingly accuse the accuser, suggesting he was more likely to be a German spy, as you couldn’t get much more typical an Englishman than an East End drunk! This had set off plenty of good natured ribbing of the man by all and sundry, with the pub landlord’s wife bringing out from behind the bar a battered old policeman’s helmet. This she enthusiastically plonked on the man’s head, suggesting as she did so, that he looked remarkably like the Kaiser in it. Cue much raucous merriment at the old man’s expense.

  Nash left his latest objector in Shoreditch with some confidence he would be safe there, and set off for home content with his long day’s work. He was tired though not as tired as his horse. Nash let his old nag take a good swig from the horse trough in Brick Lane. Nash stepped down and gave his four legged friend an appreciative tap on the neck.

  “I’ll tell one of the girls to get you some feed, soon as we’re home boy.”

  The horse brought his head up from the trough and looked at Nash with what the guilt ridden owner considered contempt. The guilty man felt the need to defend himself.

  “Think yourself lucky. Know what they’ve brought in now to get us to eat? Bleeding tinned fish if you please. Muck! And horsemeat an’ all. Plenty of that about I can assure you. And did you see all them motors south of the river. It’ll be like that here soon enough. So don’t give me that look.”