by Ian Porter
Their pursuer spent a few moments scanning the platforms, before showing something small cupped in his hand to a ticket collector, who stood aside and allowed him to pass through. It was obvious the porter had been shown police identification.
Ruby whispered to Nash that her colleague would not do that if he was there off his own bat. He would be loath to break police regulations by using his ID just to avoid paying for a rail fare or platform ticket. He was there on police business.
A train pulled in. Pemberton slid behind a pillar and watched, no doubt hoping to see them get on. He was out of luck. He then seemed to decide he had lost his quarry. He grimaced, said something under his breath, and ran for the station exit.
Ruby and Nash straightened up. Trains ran from Shoreditch to their local station, Old Ford, every fifteen minutes. The route was a leisurely multi stopping affair via Hackney. The train would probably be too crowded for them to discuss what had just happened, but there would be time for them both to think before putting their heads together at home. They knew one or both of them were in trouble.
Ruby looked at her little bird, and then at her husband to ask him something.
“Didn’t canaries used to be sent down mines to see if there were trouble brewing?”
Chapter 33
“We’re telling lies; we know we’re telling lies; we don’t tell the public the truth.”
Lord Rothermere, proprietor of the Daily Mail,
Daily Mirror, Glasgow Record & Sunday Mail,
and Sunday Pictorial
With the People’s Palace security work finished, Ruby had been given a new duty. The military authorities had declared cinemas and music halls were off limits to their personnel due to the flu. The soldiers would have been informed of the restriction by their sergeants back at the barracks but most of them were bound to ignore the instruction. Ruby and Pemberton were to tour round the queues and turf out any uniforms they saw. She was not looking forward to it as the soldiers were sure to kick up a fuss, and the public would then wade in with their four-penny’s worth in support of the men.
The only saving grace was that she had a guardian angel watching over her. Nash had given Freddie the job of following the two police officers from a discreet distance, and keeping a close eye on Pemberton.
Backyards were no longer sufficient to contain the increased passion for the national pastime of washing and scrubbing. The streets were now full of pillow cases, shirts, bed covers and the like, hanging from lines strung between lampposts or anything else suitably high. Water, a cleaning agent and billowing in the fresh air were all this linen needed to recover its past glory, which was more than could be said of its owners.
It made good cover behind which Freddie could hide. The fourteen year old was terribly excited by such clandestine work. It was just like being a spy. He was to report back to Nash if and when anything out of the ordinary occurred.
Ruby stood outside the local cinema, where she and Nash had first met Bert. Two scruffy looking men, complete with brushes, rectangular metal buckets and satchels of advertisements, were busy pasting posters on to walls. They pasted over some of the inducements to go to see the latest Perils of Pauline film. Ruby looked on with idle curiosity, hoping Charlie Chaplin’s image would appear. But she was surprised and disappointed when, rather than the Little Tramp emerging, an ad campaign for the cinema itself started to take shape.
‘Best ventilated theatre in London without draughts’, read the new posters.
Ruby lost interest. A nearby screech of brakes took her attention. A motor driven van had come to a sudden halt on the street corner. A big bundle of newspapers was thrown out of the back of the vehicle onto the pavement. The paper shortage throughout the war meant newspapers had got thinner and thinner. Such a large bundle had been a thing of the past.
A newsboy was beckoned over to the van. He put his head in the back to be told something. Whatever it was had him rushing to unwrap his new delivery. He stopped and gawped at the top copy for a moment. The three other newsboys waiting for their deliveries read over his shoulder. Another newspaper van approached at speed. This was a prompt for the fortunate first with the news to exercise his lungs. He grabbed a pile of newspapers from his pile.
“Turkey surrenders! Hun fleet mutinees! Hun appeal for armistice! Read all about it!”
Apparently the war was over. The newsboy was quickly besieged by those eager to indeed read all about it. Yet there were some who walked past him with little more than a sideways glance.
Ruby thought it not so surprising. The end of the war had been coming for a while. And for over four years the populace had chosen to believe almost every word the press had printed about the conflict. Even when they knew the newspapers were being less than accurate with their reporting, people accepted that such things were all part of the war effort. But now, with the flu-drenched streets of London bearing no relation to the self-satisfied victorious country painted in the newspapers, people had grown contemptuous of what they were being fed.
True, the devil may care attitude Ruby had experienced in Trafalgar Square was still about. There were queues at popular restaurants, the shops were busy, theatres and music halls were booming. Because after all, the flu could kill you tomorrow. But elsewhere, on the streets, outside the factories, amongst the majority, Ruby saw depression. Because yes, the flu really could kill you tomorrow. It had killed. People you knew. Loved ones, neighbours. People had become preoccupied with something other than the war. The Hun may have been beaten, but the Spanish Lady was proving just as great an adversary.
Ruby’s deliberations were interrupted by a little wave of people creating the start of a queue outside the ticket office of the picture palace. Soon enough they were joined by a couple of soldiers with young women on their arms.
“Here we go,” said Ruby, with weary resignation.
She nodded to Pemberton to join her. But what she had assumed would be the inevitable altercation failed to materialise. The soldiers accepted that they had already been told they were not allowed in cinemas, and had been caught trying it on, so they simply slunk away with their tails between their legs. And as they did so, a voice from the queue spoke up. But it was not in defence of the soldiers. It was a quiet “thank you miss” to Ruby for moving the army boys on. Other people in the queue had kept themselves to themselves. Passing bystanders had not so much as cast a glance their way. It was clear that people no longer wanted to be in close proximity to soldiers. The word was out.
Ruby noticed that Pemberton had left her to deal with the soldiers. He had stayed very much on the periphery of things. She suspected the reason was that he was afraid of catching the flu himself.
It was understandable. Dr Alice had recently confided to her that a high number of the people suffering most from it were not, strangely, the young and old, as you would expect, but fit adults in the prime of their lives. Ruby had replied by telling Alice what she had heard from a police sergeant about the Russian flu epidemic of thirty years earlier having left older people with an immunity. Alice had agreed that could be a factor, but it didn’t explain why younger people were also less effected. It was her belief that the mutated virus was causing the immune system to attack its own body. The stronger one’s immune system, the stronger its reaction to the virus. One effectively drowned in one’s own juices. It was thus a disproportionate number of people aged between twenty and thirty five, those at the height of their body’s physical powers, who were dying. People like soldiers. Like police officers.
Chapter 34
“The doctor is not unsympathetic but he has seen it a hundred times. He is hoping it will all end quickly so that he can sign the death certificate and get back to bed in time to catch a few more hours’ sleep before dawn brings the next round.”
Melanie McGrath, Silvertown
– An East End Family Memoir
There were now fourte
en hundred Metropolitan police officers ill or worse with the flu. Having two officers working together had become a luxury the force could no longer afford. The shortage of personnel meant those who were still fit had to become Jacks of all trades. Pemberton now had to tour the local picture palaces and music halls, not just to keep military personnel out, but to ensure that everyone left at the end of each performance, as councils now insisted that such places were emptied every four hours while all windows were opened to aerate the halls.
Freddie’s surveillance of him while he was working with Ruby was thus short lived, much to the boy’s chagrin.
And Sergeant Granger had to admit that WPC Nash had always shown great ingenuity and an ability to respond well to any unforeseen circumstance that came her way. Consequently she had been given a wide range of new duties to perform alone.
She toured the chemist’s shops and doctor’s surgeries in the area, to maintain a police presence in an attempt to ensure no rioting or looting broke out. She also had to patrol near funeral directors, to keep an eye on rows of newly arrived unpolished empty coffins lined up along the pavement. There was such a shortage that other funeral directors might be tempted to swipe a few.
When told this, Ruby immediately thought of her husband’s duties at Selby’s. She wagered that was exactly what the old devil was getting up to.
The shortage of wood meant that she also had to show her presence one step down the chain, outside wood yards and carpenters’ workshops. And if she happened to pass a window through which she could see someone on the telephone, she was to tap the glass to grab their attention, and then give them the sideways thumb as a hint to hurry up and finish their call. If they ignored her, she entered the building and told them brusquely that London had a thousand telephone operators down with the flu so get off the line so others could have a go. She was also under orders that if a fire broke out anywhere, she was to attend and then ask any passing man in the vicinity to help the sparsely manned fire engines.
All these duties she did with enthusiasm but the one she faced with dread was in helping the overstretched London Ambulance Service. There were occasions when bodies had to be recovered from houses in which they had lain unattended for days.
******
Dr Alice had seen Maud when she had originally collapsed, and again yesterday. On that occasion her patient had felt severely exhausted, weak, short of breath, dizzy, had a throbbing headache, chest pains and hacking cough. The advice had been to stay in bed, keep warm and ask Nashey, Ruby and anyone else who was willing to enter, to bring hot poultices to prevent the lungs from becoming congested.
But today Nash had tracked Alice down and asked her to come as soon as she could, as Maud’s condition had deteriorated badly. On entering the bedroom Alice’s worse fears were realised. Maud’s hair had turned white overnight and she had slipped into trembling, shouting, confused delirium. Her head was back, mouth half open and dribbling the blood-stained greenish yellow sputum that had been coughed up. Her cheeks had turned from the sallow pallor of yesterday to a blue discolouration, her lips and ears purple. They were the usually fatal signs of cyanosis. Nineteen of every twenty ‘blue’ cases died.
Alice stayed with her patient. In normal circumstances she would have had to use a triage method whereby she would leave to attend someone who had more of a chance of survival. But the fact was that survival appeared to be largely dependent on one’s age and sheer luck. There was nothing she could do as a doctor. She was simply a palliative nurse.
She stayed with Maud and watched her skin start to turn the colour of mahogany. Maud made one last fight for breath, gurgling horribly. It was as if she were drowning. She reached out and grabbed at her doctor as if Alice were a lifeguard proffering a life belt. And then she was gone.
Alice did not feel a thing, other than horror at her own numbness. Was this what the war and this disease had reduced her to?
******
The Nashes were fed up with paying a good slice of their income to the avaricious owner of their near-slum property. The last time Nash had found a new cockroach lodger in the place, he had carefully gathered it up into a matchbox and taken it round to the landlord’s rather more salubrious home. On the front door being opened by a maid, he had barged into the hallway and set the insect free from captivity. The maid’s shrieks soon had the man of the house arrive on the scene, where Nash told him in his most intimidating voice, that he would only be paying half the rent from now on unless the house was kept in better condition, and woe betide the man if he sent round any of his bully boys to get the balance.
The landlord, a man called Sharples, had threatened eviction from the safety of a letter. And there were plenty of hours in the day or night when neither tenants were about, when the first one of them home could return to find all their worldly goods and chattels thrown out on the street outside, and the locks changed. But Sharples was well aware that Nash’s threats were not to be taken lightly, though it was the lady of the house who concerned him most. Evicting a police officer, even one who was only a woman, could have repercussions. The police force were not an organisation with which you wanted to fall out.
Consequently, relations between Mr & Mrs Nash and their landlord were somewhat tense. But Sharples had every right to get Maud’s half of the dwelling ready for a new tenant. That said, he was not unwise enough to use his set of keys to let himself into the house unannounced.
The front door was open but the landlord knocked on it in any case. Nash appeared and nodded unenthusiastically for him and the two heavies he had astutely brought along, to enter the house. On walking in to the passage, the three strangers wrinkled their nose. Sharples took the stench to be evidence of a business involving death being in progress. The slaughter of animals in the backyard for the cats’ meat trade, most likely.
“May I point out to you Mr Nash that it is a requirement of your tenancy that no noxious trade may be entered into in these premises or in the yard without,” said the landlord pompously.
The suspicion that Nash was involved in animal slaughter was quite ironic given that he was looking at his landlord as if the man was a piece of offal that had become trapped under his boot. But when Nash answered, he sounded surprisingly conciliatory.
“It’s not me guvnor,” he said. “You’ll have to take it up with the other tenant. It’s her fault.”
The landlord looked perplexed.
“I was given to understand that Mrs Kemp had, sadly, passed away. It is the sole reason I am in attendance here today.”
Nash turned and headed up the passage to the foot of the stairs, giving the men a nod for them to follow him. They all trundled up to the first floor, and followed Nash into Maud’s bedroom.
“There you are,” said Nash. “Take it up with her.”
Maud’s body lay there on its deathbed, looking at them through pennies over the eyes. The stench was overpowering.
“You boys have been a bit too quick off the mark,” said Nash. “It’s not been two days. Ambulance ain’t been round yet. My wife says as how she could use her uniform to get ‘em round sooner but I said no. Why should we be treated any different from any other poor bastards?”
It had the desired effect. The three men rushed out of the room and tumbled down the stairs in varying degrees of distress. Nash noticed that the landlord had turned out to be tougher than his two henchmen. He was the only one not retching in the gutter outside.
“Now fuck off out of it!” shouted Nash as he slammed the door on their backs. But point made, the need for fresh air soon had him reopening it.
******
When male workers had gone off to war and many of their jobs were filled by a new female workforce, one job women did not take over was street cleaning. It was non-essential, non-war work. Streets were left to their own devices. As a result, the streets of Bow, not the cleanest at the best of times, had reverted to t
he filth of a bygone era. But November 11’s yellow autumn morning sunshine turned the dirty streets of Bow aptly golden.
Many people had stood vigil all night waiting for the big day to dawn. At half past ten the Union flag was raised on Bromley by Bow Town Hall. By noon there were flags flying from nearly every building. Hundreds of thankfully redundant munitions workers streamed out of the factories at which they had gathered for one last time, and marched down Bow High Street singing patriotic songs. Trolley bus guards left their posts, their vehicles now marooned in the crowds. Stranded passengers cheered as soldiers broke into foxtrots. People packed into cinemas, but didn’t wait for the professional entertainment to begin. They serenaded each other with singing and flag waving. Come the afternoon the main thoroughfares were so packed that the tram system was at a standstill. Crowds linked hands across the road behind bugle bands and drummers.
Their joy was literally infectious. Had the influenza bug been a predator lying in wait, it would have licked its lips.
One of its recent victims was taking her last journey. Maud’s cortege was on its way to the church, surrounded by the sounds of bells, hooters and whistles. She had always religiously paid her funeral insurance even when things were tight, and now she had beautiful black stallion horses with ostrich plume feathers and a marked grave to show for it.
Nash was a pallbearer. Ruby was wearing her police uniform. Not because she believed it looked suitably formal or smart, but because all police leave had been cancelled for what was sure to be a busy day. She had told her sergeant that she was going to the funeral. He could sack her if he liked but she was going. Granger would have loved to have called her bluff and finally got rid of WPC Nash, but with such staff shortages he was not in a position to do so. He agreed that she could take time off mid-shift to attend the funeral, and could work till midnight to make up for it.