Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  But now all was different. She needed the money very much indeed. She and Jessie had worked out that if she did not earn, her forty-four pounds would last her for at least a year, for her needs were small.

  ‘And I’m a fair manager,’ Jessie had said cheerfully. ‘You can eat with me, on account of feedin’ two works out as cheap as feedin’ one sometimes. It’s amazing what I can do with a piece of soup meat and a pennorth of pot herbs. A dinner fit for a king, that is. You can live on ten bob a week here, easy. And when you do start working, you can earn as much as that in a week easy, if you put your mind and needle to it. There are people living on that and feedin’ a couple of kids ’n’ all in these parts. So you’re rich.’

  But not so rich that she felt she could ignore her legacy. She wanted to earn money for herself – that was becoming an ever more important factor in planning for her future – but she also wanted to feel safe. And that meant saving as much of her money as she could, to keep in store for the time when she could no longer work. She was not sure when or how that might be; she had just a hazy vision of herself in a state of elderly uselessness and wanted to prepare against that day.

  This was what she told the lawyer, expressing herself in direct and simple terms.

  ‘I need the money my mother left for me,’ she wrote. ‘And I need it now. I am now in my thirtieth year, having recently celebrated a birthday, and I believe myself fit to take control of my own property without my father’s consent or control and without the supervision of a husband. I therefore ask you to investigate the provisions of my mother’s will and tell me whether I may have this money, and when. Letters sent to me care of Old Street Post Office will find me –’

  And then she set about thinking of work. Despite Lizah’s objections, Jessie took her on the third day after she came to live in her house to see the workshop where she spent her days, leaving her little house at seven in the morning and returning any time after six at night, clearly tired but still with some of her native energy in her.

  ‘It’s not so bad,’ she told Mildred cheerfully as they walked through the long street past the flat-fronted little houses northwards towards Clark Street. ‘The others talk and laugh a bit and it’s friendly enough. And at least he keeps the place dry and clean. There are shops I know where the girls have rats runnin’ over their feet while they work, and they have to hang their dinner bags on the wall to stop the buggers getting at their food before they do. Old Joe knows better’n that, at least –’

  But not much better, Mildred thought in dismay as she stood in the doorway of the workshop and looked around. It was on the third floor of a house that abutted a school on the corner of Clark Street, and they could hear the children shrieking outside in the playground as they climbed the rickety wooden stairs. It was still only a little after seven, but the children, some of them very small, were already there, for their parents, as Jessie had explained to her, left them there on their way to their work.

  ‘Nowhere else for them to go,’ she gasped as they reached the end of the last flight of stairs. ‘They’re safe there. Noisy little devils, ain’t they?’

  But it wasn’t the noise of the children, shrill though they were, that Mildred found disturbing. It was the smells which assaulted her from all sides. The stairs reeked of cats and dirt, and as they passed the second floor, of a particular cloying sweetness and Jessie had laughed when she had seen her wrinkle her nose.

  ‘Old man there, Jack Cohen, makes coconut ice, sells it down the Lane,’ she said. ‘Tastes better’n it smells, thank God – Come on, here we are –’

  The workshop was the most tightly packed room Mildred had ever seen. Overhead were skylights so grimy that little light filtered through, and gaslights were hissing with great naked flames to illuminate the work benches, of which there were three. On the far side was a bank of whirring sewing machines over which grey-faced men were bending, pushing heavy pieces of cloth through as the bobbins in front of them bounced and jumped with the speed of the treadles which each worker was frantically pedalling. On each side of the three benches women sat, barely able to see each other over the masses of garments that were piled in front of them, and all had their shoulders hunched and their heads down as they watched their fingers fly through the fabric, as behind them a great pressing machine hissed and fussed out great gouts of steam as the man who operated it disappeared and reappeared in the mist like some horrid ghost in a pantomime. But there was nothing pantomimic about all this; it was very serious and very real indeed, Mildred thought as she smelled the acrid reek of damp cloth and tailor’s soap and chalk and, above all, human sweat. And felt sick.

  Not that the workers seemed to object. They were chattering at the tops of their voices, laughing a good deal too, and as Jessie came in there were cries of welcome and banter that she replied to with great aplomb, and Mildred lingered at the door watching her and thought – I wish I was like that. Able to look at people and laugh and just be happy – but I’ll always be what I am. Quiet and dull and plain –

  ‘So Joe and Rae ain’t here today!’ One of the women on the nearest bench called. ‘So you think you can play games, sleep late, come sauntering in here like a bleedin’ duchess, already! Listen, Jessie, misbocher to the guv’nor you may be, but you’re also a worker here, and I’m in charge right now. So what’s in it for me I shouldn’t tell Joe the time you comes to work, eh?’

  ‘A frosk in pisk,’ Jessie said at once and everyone laughed.

  ‘Listen Jessela, the day you hit me in the face’ll be the day you turn up your toes for good,’ the woman said, but without rancour. ‘So, who’s the mouse at the door, already? You getting so fancy schmancy you got yourself a maid?’

  ‘This is my friend. Just come to live down here. From over the other side o’ London –’ Jessie said, and waved her hand vaguely at Mildred, who stepped forward nervously. ‘Just visiting, see, a friend. No more’n that –’

  Mildred felt eyes on her and knew she was being looked over as critically as she ever had been in her father’s drawing room and she felt her face fall into the same sullen lines it had been used to under those circumstances, and someone called, ‘So smile already! We don’t bite!’ and almost against her will, she felt her lips lift. These people are really rather agreeable, she thought, surprised. They’re not staring to be critical or to judge me. It’s just that they’re interested –

  ‘Good morning,’ she said, and bobbed her head and one or two called back, ‘Good morning!’ and then returned to their work. Clearly there was little time to waste in this place and soon she felt that they had lost interest in her, and she could just watch and listen as they went on with their own chatter, paying her no attention at all.

  The garments they were making were men’s overcoats, thick in cloth and richly lined in satin and she watched as the women, with expert flicks of wrists that must have been as strong as iron, turned the sewn coats briskly from side to side as they stitched in the satin linings, whipping their needles along at an incredible pace. Some of them were sewing buttonholes, setting stitches so close together it seemed to Mildred that it must take hours to make just one hole, yet they grew beneath those nimble fingers at an incredible rate and she thought – I can’t do this sort of work! I can smock a child’s nightgown, sew a few seams, but this? For hour after hour? I would never survive it –

  But Jessie came towards her with a parcel, dragging it in front of her with both hands. ‘Here you are,’ she said quietly. ‘Can you get back with this? Don’t try to work on it till I get home. I’ll show you how – they’re tricks to the work, it ain’t as tough as it looks, believe you me.’ And Mildred took the parcel, and almost reeled, it was so heavy, and with one last grin from Jessie to sustain her, and a nod from the women on the nearest bench, escaped into the odorous hallway to start her journey back to Jubilee Street.

  ‘I’ll see you about seven,’ Jessie called after her. ‘Don’t worry about supper. I’ll bring a couple o’ pieces fish ’
n’ ’taters from Corb’s over in Whitechapel. Just make sure the kettle’s on the hob –’ And Mildred nodded and dragged her parcel down the stairs and out into the street, grateful for the fresh air.

  It took her a good deal of time to get back to the house. The parcel was so heavy that the rough string that tied it cut into her hands and she had to stop and rest it every little while. But that didn’t matter, for it gave her the chance to look about her.

  At first she had been alarmed by the streets of the East End. Her own part of London, quiet, restrained, respectable, with passers-by neat and busy and politely behaved, could have been on another planet, let alone in another country. Here the streets buzzed with life and busyness. There were stalls on every corner, some selling fruits and vegetables, great piles of earthy potatoes and golden onions and glowing carrots jostling the bright oranges and, occasionally, greenish bananas, and others piled high with old clothes and boots. There were men selling papers and women selling sweets from grubby trays and men with cats’ meat slices threaded on long spears and okey-pokey sellers with their pink and white confections and pitch and toss players, all huggermugger in the greasy streets, filling them with noise and life and excitement. There seemed to be a pub on every corner and as she reached each one, she drew back into herself a little, alarmed by the smell of gin and beer, even at this hour of the morning, and very aware of the reeling noisy people who clustered round the doors like bees at a hive. But they paid her no attention and she was able to slip by safely enough. Indeed, no one paid her any attention at any time. It was as though she had been part of this street furniture herself for all her life, so easily did she fit into it, and she was grateful for that.

  It was not so easy to slip into the work that Jessie had provided for her. After that first evening when Jessie sat with her and showed her how to fit the linings into the coats and how to make the special long felling stitches that held them there she spent her days at it, but it was agony for the first few. Her wrists ached abominably and her fingers stung with the many injuries she did them with the sharp needles, and became rough and sore, so rough that even touching her own skin made her jump with pain. Jessie showed her how to rub her fingertips with soap before starting to sew, so that she had some protection, and also how the soap film made the work slide more easily through her hands, and at night she rubbed them with lanolin, and at last, it got easier.

  By the end of her first month she was putting the linings in ten coats a day, which was half the output of the experienced people working at Clark Street, but she was content enough. Joe Vinosky, who had been told by an expressionless Jessie that she was doing the extra work herself, in the evenings, to get herself a bit of extra cash, paid the fully experienced rate of tuppence a coat. ‘If he knows it’s you, ducks, and you a starter, he’d only give you a penny a coat, the tight-fisted old devil. So keep quiet about it and you’ll do fine.’

  And to Mildred’s delight she did do fine. Each week Jessie brought home her wages of eight shillings and fourpence, and Mildred would at once give her tenpence, which was her payment to Jessie for the effort she made fetching and carrying for her.

  ‘It isn’t right you should do all that dragging, to help me, and not get paid for it. I have to give you something for it,’ she had insisted, and they had settled on the rate of a penny per parcel and both had been content with that. Then Mildred handed over her rent of two shillings and added another two shillings for her food, for it was agreed they would share their cooking costs as a matter of commonsense and economy. That left her three shillings and sixpence each week, and on that she felt rich. She could save it and add to her other little store of money and when she worked out that she could grow that to a magnificent fifty-three pounds by the end of her first year of independent living, she was elated, as excited as if she had been given a small fortune.

  When she told Jessie proudly of how well she had organized her finances Jessie made a face.

  ‘You don’t want to get too worried over it, ducks,’ she said. ‘You got to do some livin’ too. I mean, I’m all for saving for a rainy day, but what about spendin’ for the sunny ones? Clothes, now –’ And she smoothed down her newest gown, which this time was in a rich raspberry velvet lavishly draped over the hips and so tight at the waist that it showed off her undoubtedly magnificent bust to great effect. ‘You want to get yourself a couple o’ nice things to go out with Lizah in. It was different when you was stuck up West, but now you’re one of us, he’ll expect you to look good –’

  ‘I’m not spending money on clothes,’ Mildred said shortly. ‘I have enough that is serviceable and I can easily make another gown cheaply if I need one. I have no wish to waste my money so.’

  ‘Well, that’s up to you, o’ course,’ Jessie said taking obvious delight in her own appearance as she primped in the mirror over her fireplace, for they were sitting in the kitchen as usual. ‘But you still don’t want to get too excited about savings. Things can go wrong. There can be slack times when the work just ain’t there to let you earn the money. Or you can get ill –’

  ‘I’m never ill,’ Mildred said stoutly. ‘I have an excellent constitution. So you will see, by the end of my first year I shall have saved enough to bring my total to fifty-three pounds and maybe more. I shall always make sure I have enough. I will not waste a penny, not even if I am able to get my legacy from my mother. I still have great hopes of that – and when I have it, oh, Jessie, you will see what I shall do! I have such plans!’

  ‘Plans with Lizah?’ Jessie said, cocking a sharp little glance at her through the mirror.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Mildred had said and reddened. ‘It’s not – I mean, I’m independent now. I only make plans for myself –’

  And Jessie had grinned at her knowingly and made another of her interminable pots of tea and said no more. But Mildred knew she was still thinking of Lizah and making plans for her with her brother, but she refused even to think about that.

  Not that she never thought about Lizah. He came often and sat in the kitchen to talk to her, trying to persuade her to go out as they had been used to do, but she was less willing to do that nowadays. The little kitchen and her bedroom upstairs had become very dear and comfortable to her, hot and stuffy though it became as April and May gave way to blazing June, and she felt so tired after a day’s sewing that she wanted nothing more than to stay put, her feet up on the fender and a cup of tea at her side as she drowsed through the evening. She was content and settled in a way she would not have thought possible only a few weeks ago.

  At first Lizah complained about her unadventurous ways and tried to persuade her to change her mind, but as she showed herself more and more unwilling to go out he became less and less eager for her company, so that by the middle of June he came to visit no more than once or twice a week, which made Jessie frown a little, but pleased Mildred well enough. She felt more and more tired, less and less interested in dealing with him and Jessie took to watching her with sharp eyes and wondering.

  In late June, Mildred found herself forced to look clearly at her situation in a way she had been trying not to do for some weeks. She had at first wondered what was happening to her, but then put the changes which she noticed in her constitution down to the change in her circumstances. The lassitude, the feelings of sickness, the differences in her body’s rhythm, all of these she well knew could occur to any woman who had altered her way of living as drastically as she had done. There was no need to be concerned any further than that, she told herself, and would sit and sew industriously, letting her mind wander as it usually did over her familiar fantasy of small flat and friends and flower shop, refusing to think of anything else.

  It was eventually Jessie who made her pull herself out of fantasy into reality. She was in the scullery one morning, washing out the bowl and jug from her room, her head bent over the sink, when Jessie came in and stood leaning against the door jamb watching her. Mildred, who had woken feeling particularly weary and ill at
ease this morning kept her head down over her work, and would not look at her.

  After a long pause Jessie said abruptly, ‘Millie, how much longer are you goin’ to go on like this and not talk about it?’

  ‘Talk about what?’ Mildred still kept her head down, scrubbing at her already clean wash bowl with all the energy she could muster.

  ‘Oh, come on, ducks. This is me, Jessie Mendel, remember? Not the cat from next door what ain’t got more sense than whiskers. When is it due?’

  ‘When is what due?’ Still she kept her head down.

  ‘The bleedin’ baby you got inside you, that’s what,’ Jessie said loudly. ‘An’ I’ve got a right to ask, seeing as I imagine it’s going to be misbocher of mine. I mean, it’s Lizah’s, ain’t it? So what are you goin’ to do about it?’

  19

  ‘Oh, my Gawd,’ Lizah said. ‘I never even bloody well thought about it. Would you believe it? After all these years I been puttin’ myself about and I never even thought about it.’

  ‘A right pair you two are!’ Jessie said tartly. ‘You never thought and she never knew.’

  ‘How could I?’ Mildred lifted her head wearily. Even talking seemed an effort. ‘I have no experience of such matters. I should have considered the possibility, I know, but I did not. So there’s an end to it. No point in talking more, is there? Here I am, and in this state, and I see no sense in discussing what might not have happened. Because it did.’

  Lizah shook his head and moved a little as though to come and sit down beside Mildred at the table. He had been standing just inside the kitchen door ever since he had come in, his hands thrust into his trouser pockets and his chin tucked down hard into his collar, clearly in a state of some confusion which sat uneasily on his usual jauntiness. Lizah Harris not quite sure what to do or say was not a scene familiar to any of the people who knew him. But even as he moved forwards he stopped and looked at the rigidity of her back as she sat there, and stood still.