Never Look Back

by Lesley Pearse

  Fanny felt a surge of intense admiration for the plain-speaking English lady. She had grown up surrounded by immigrants, and mostly they were the kind that ran out of ambition and energy a few weeks after they got off the boat. They stayed in their squalid, overcrowded tenements, and as the years went by they blamed others for their poverty and lack of success. Yet this woman in her expensive furs was proof not only that with a will, courage and determination anyone could make it out of the Lower East Side to Fifth Avenue, but that you could still retain kindness, and humility too.

  ‘I thought at first you were crazy,’ Fanny said hesitantly, all at once very ashamed for prejudging her. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Matilda took the girl’s hand in her gloved one and squeezed it. ‘Fanny, perhaps I am crazy, wanting to smell the East River on a cold March day, and see sights I know will stir up painful memories. Even crazier for wanting to go back to a country I’ve almost forgotten, and almost certainly outgrown. But when you’re as old as me you get that way. I have a hankering to see if the river Thames is as wide as I remember, if the Tower of London can still scare me. I guess too I want to die in my own country where no one knows about the more scandalous parts of my history.’

  Fanny’s eyebrows shot up into two inverted Vs.

  Matilda chuckled at her shocked expression. ‘Oh yes, Fanny, I’ve been quite a girl in my time, but that’s a long story and much as I’d love to tell you about it, this might be my last chance to look at the old sights and remember how it all came about.’

  Fanny knew that was a signal for her to go. She wasn’t hurt for she sensed Matilda meant exactly what she’d said. She got up and tucked the rug more securely around her. ‘I’m real glad I met you, ma’am,’ she said. ‘You enjoy your trip and if you want anything just holler.’

  ‘I knew I was right to choose this boat,’ Matilda said with a warm, appreciative smile. ‘You put me in mind of myself as a young girl.’

  Fanny went back to the wheel-house and Matilda concentrated on the view across the bay. The sky was dark grey, the wind strong and bitterly cold, but that suited her, she didn’t want warmth and bright sunshine slanting her mind towards only the happier memories.

  As Giuseppe steered towards Ellis Island, she found her eyes remained glued to the majestic Statue of Liberty, even though it had no place in her past. It had been erected only a few years ago, just as Ellis Island with its new immigration department was a recent development. Yet goose bumps came up all over her as she gazed on it, staggered by not only its vast proportions, but the sheer beauty of it. She hoped it would give all those poor huddled masses arriving in America the comfort and inspiration that were intended.

  Giuseppe slowed right down as they approached Ellis Island. The huge new immigration building was impressive with its domes and spires, yet it was already dubbed the ‘Isle of Tears’. A German steamer had just docked and a thick stream of passengers was pouring down each of the gangways. Although she knew their voyage across the Atlantic had taken less than half the time her own had, as the tug drew nearer she could see from their pale, drawn faces and the stoop of their shoulders that for most of them the journey had been an unspeakable nightmare of overcrowding, rotten food and sickness.

  She began to cry as she thought about what was in store for them. While the rich got swept straight into New York, with no thought that they might be undesirable in some way, the poor had first to pass through ‘assessment’. How many of those black-coated men with long whiskers who looked hardly capable of carrying their own baggage would make it through the stringent medical? Then there were the literacy and competence tests for others to stumble on. In her time all were welcome. Maybe that welcome didn’t run to decent homes or well-paid work, but at least they didn’t face the humiliation of being turned around and sent home because they didn’t fit the bill of what the American Government perceived as ideal immigrants.

  Even above the sound of the sea, wind, seagulls and the tug’s engine, she could hear the pitiful cries of hungry and sick children. Women with frightened eyes clutched babies to their breasts, scanning the sky-line on the other side of the bay in hope that the relatives who urged them to come would be there to greet them.

  Sadly Matilda knew they had more misery and shocks in store for them. New York might be prosperous but a great deal of that wealth had been made out of people just like these. She knew the evils of those appalling East Side tenements built by unscrupulous speculators, their only thought to wring as many dollars a square foot out of them as they could. If she had her way she’d force those men to live there too. She wondered how long it would take to break the new arrivals, living in tiny dark rooms, one tap between four families and a privy shared by the whole block.

  Yet today these immigrants would be lucky if they even got one of those hell-holes. Most would end up tonight sleeping in some squalid flop-house in conditions even more crowded and unsanitary than on that ship. Unless they were very smart they’d be robbed of their money and possessions too. There were infectious diseases to contend with, many of their children wouldn’t survive a year, let alone to adulthood. If they thought they were starting a new life where racial, social and religious prejudice didn’t exist, they were sadly mistaken. America was for the brave. It took a strong body, a stout heart and determination to make it.

  Matilda shook herself out of such pessimistic thoughts. For those who had the will it really was a country where dreams could come true. Just a few miles outside the busy cities was a land of incredible beauty. She hoped that every poor immigrant trudging into that building today would get to see its sparkling rivers, its mountains, forests and endless prairies. They had arrived too late to see real wilderness as she had – the vast herds of buffalo were gone now, the Red Indians who had survived had been robbed of their hunting grounds and pushed into reservations. Trains sped people from coast to coast and the paths that had been taken by the early pioneers in their covered wagons had all but disappeared. But there was still so much to thrill, so much opportunity for those with the nerve to grasp it.

  An hour or so later as the tug chugged back towards the piers in East River, Matilda wiped away the last of her emotional tears and turned her mind to her future.

  She had experienced so much in this land – joy and sorrow, poverty and riches, great love and passion too. So many of those she’d loved were dead, their graves marking places she could never forget. Yet on balance the good memories outweighed the bad. She had had so many dear, good friends, lovers who had filled her heart with bliss, and she’d seen and done things few women of her generation could even imagine. Even the immense evil she’d encountered, the terrible anguish and pain, was in soft focus now, only the happiness, humour and sweetness remained important to her.

  She was ready now for what lay ahead. Tomorrow she would book a passage home to England, a first-class cabin where a steward would wait on her, imagining she’d been born to such luxury, and she’d spend the voyage polishing up her role as a grand lady.

  It pleased her to think that the stories of London Lil would remain in American folklore for all time, but she must leave her here, kiss Lil goodbye and forget her.

  Up in the wheel-house Giuseppe was at the helm, and Fanny was silently watching Matilda. Several times during the last hour she had seen the woman crying and her heart went out to her. She wished she knew her full story. Was she a widow? Did she have children and grandchildren? Or was that Irishman she’d spoken of the only real love in her life?

  But as she watched, Matilda stood up and moved right into the bows. She bent over, one hand supporting herself on the rail, while with the other she appeared to be fumbling under her coat.

  Fanny didn’t draw her father’s attention to this, thinking perhaps Matilda was adjusting her stockings. But suddenly there was something small and bright red in the woman’s hand. She brought it up to her lips, appeared to kiss it and murmur something to it. Then, lifting her arm, she threw it into the sea.

 
As Matilda sat down again, Fanny slipped out of the wheel-house and looked over the side of the tug. The small red article was bobbing along on the surface of the water. Not a handkerchief or scarf, as she’d expected, but a red satin garter!

  Fanny knew it must have some special significance to the old lady, perhaps a memento of her first love. She would give anything to know the full story.

  Chapter One

  London 1842

  As Matilda Jennings wearily turned into Finders Court at seven in the evening, she caught a fleeting glimpse of a tuft of flame-red hair as its owner bobbed down behind a handcart. No one but her two half-brothers had such fiery hair, and if they were hiding from her it meant they’d been up to mischief.

  ‘Luke! George! Come ’ere at once, if you know’s what’s good fer you,’ she yelled.

  Matilda was sixteen and a flower-seller. She was dirty and exhausted from a long day which had started at four that morning in Covent Garden market, yet despite having walked London’s streets all day hawking her wares, she still managed to exude a defiant air of robust vitality.

  Her blue dress was ragged, muck-splattered from filthy streets, her calico pinafore heavily stained. But her thick, butter-coloured hair was neatly braided beneath a mob-cap, her cheeks were rosy, and when she gave one of her ready smiles her bright blue eyes sparkled.

  Most of the people who bought Matilda’s flowers probably assumed she was a country girl, perhaps selling produce from her own garden. They wouldn’t know the pink cheeks were caused by wind burn, or that the merry smile was just part of her salesmanship. There was a bony, malnourished body beneath the voluminous dress and petticoat, her shawl hid her shoulders invariably stooped from the cold, and once her basket was empty she hobbled home painfully in worn-out boots to the kind of tenement that would make her flower-buying customers shudder.

  Finders Court was ten two- and three-storey ramshackle houses leaning drunkenly on each other around a tiny squalid yard. The upper windows, many of them boarded up with bits of wood and rags, almost touched the ones opposite. Each house had some ten or twelve small rooms, and most of these were occupied by more than one family. It was just off Rosemary Lane, London’s largest second-hand clothes market, and just a few minutes’ walk from the Tower of London and the river Thames.

  At dusk on a chilly March evening, as always the court was teeming with noisy activity, costermongers trying to entice the frowzy women in grubby caps leaning out from upper windows to come down and buy the remaining goods on their handcarts, groups of dirt-smeared dock workers discussing the day’s work, or the lack of it. Old men and women were flopped down on doorsteps, taking a rest before staggering up the stairs with their sacks laden with the proceeds of a day’s scavenging work. Ragged children manned the water pump, filling their buckets and jugs, while younger siblings fought and played around them.

  With only one privy shared by upwards of five or six hundred people, slop pails emptied along with rotting rubbish from windows, the stench was overpowering. Donkeys and horses were tethered overnight and it was quite a common occurrence for a pig to be rooting around in the yard too.

  As the owner of the red hair remained hidden behind the cart, Matilda yelled again, louder this time, in a strident tone which reminded her uncomfortably of the boys’ mother, Peggie. Perhaps they heard the similarity too, and knew Matilda was just as capable of giving them a good hiding, for this time both boys emerged somewhat nervously.

  ‘’Ow many times ’ave I told you to get up ’ome and set the fire afore I get back?’ she yelled, side-stepping other children in her path and grabbing Luke, the older boy, by the ear. She would have caught George too, but she was hampered by her basket. ‘Your father will be ’ome soon for his supper and he wants a cuppa tea before he goes out again.’

  Luke was ten, George eight. Skinny, foxy-faced little runts with nothing in common with their older sister but identical bright blue eyes. Matilda had looked after them from birth, but since Peggie died four years ago she had taken on the role of mother. She had loathed Peggie, and often she disliked her brats too, but for her father’s sake she did her best for them.

  As she hauled Luke closer to her, the smell of him made her gag. ‘Whatcha bin up to?’ she gasped.

  He didn’t need to admit it. The stench was unmistakable. ‘You dirty little sod, you’ve bin collecting pure again!’ she exclaimed in horror.

  ‘Pure’ was dog’s excrement. The lowest of the low collected it up and sold it to the tanners to treat their leather. There were a great many disgusting ways for poor people to make a living in London, but this one was the worst in her book.

  Putting down her basket, she dragged both boys by the ears to the pump where a simple-minded lad from across the court was filling a bucket. She commanded him to continue pumping and pushed Luke right under the stream. Grasping his hair firmly with one hand, and using a rag she kept in the pocket of her pinafore, she scrubbed him down, hair, face, body, right down to his filthy bare feet.

  ‘It’s freezin’,’ he wailed, his teeth chattering as she finally let him go to grab George and give him the same treatment. Luke’s thin worn shirt and ragged breeches were stuck to his scrawny frame and he shook himself like a dog, showering her with water. ‘We only did it for you, Matty. We got a whole sixpence.’

  If that explanation had come from almost any other child Matilda might have been touched. But Luke was a habitual liar and already an incorrigible rogue. She knew that if she hadn’t spotted him, he and his brother would have nipped off to spend the money on themselves, probably waiting until she’d fallen asleep before crawling into the bed beside her in their stinking condition.

  As so many people were watching and listening, Matilda didn’t make any reply until she’d got both boys, still dripping and shivering, up the rickety stairs to their room at the top of the house.

  ‘Take your clothes off and put your night-shirts on,’ she said curtly as she closed the door. ‘I’ll deal with you in a minute when I’ve got the fire going. And don’t even think of running out or you’ll be sorry.’

  The room was very dark because one of the two small windows was broken and had been replaced with a piece of wood. There was little furniture: an iron bed in which she and the boys slept – Lucas, their father, had a makeshift one, a flour sack filled with straw – a bench, a rough wood cupboard and a small table were all there was apart from their father’s chair. It was solid oak with arms and seat smooth with years of constant use and Lucas jokingly called it the Bosun’s chair. It was the only thing of any value they owned.

  Matilda lit the candle first, then, taking it over to the fireplace, she raked the old ashes to one side, hastily dipped a bit of rag into the oil pot, and lit it from the candle, laying a few twigs over it. She didn’t look round at the boys behind her, but she guessed by their silence they were signalling to one another, trying vainly to work out some plan to get out again tonight. But even they wouldn’t dare run out in their ragged night-shirts which barely covered their bony bottoms, and they hadn’t another change of clothes.

  In a few minutes she’d got the fire going well, slowly adding more dry wood, then small pieces of coal. She held her icy hands to the blaze while she prepared what she was going to say to her brothers.

  Appalling as Finders Court would be to someone from the upper classes, Matilda took some comfort in knowing it was one of the better tenements in the neighbourhood. At least here no one operated a penny-a-night shelter for the absolute down-and-outs. She knew of courts where there were as many as thirty people huddled in one filthy room, without even a blanket to cover themselves. In those, runaway children and orphans as young as five or six slept alongside criminals, prostitutes, beggars and the feeble-minded, and their corruption began from their first night in such places.

  Matilda was an intelligent and sensitive girl. Spending her days in the better areas of London, she had observed every aspect of the huge divide between rich and poor. It wasn’t just that t
he rich had grand houses, servants and ate well; their children were protected.

  Most of London’s poor relinquished all responsibility for their children long before they even reached Luke’s age, turning them out and expecting them to find work to keep themselves. While Matilda wasn’t against Luke or George working – after all, she’d started as a flower girl at ten – both she and her father believed it was their duty to hold the boys close to them in a family home until such time as they were mature enough to cope alone with the temptations and dangers of London.

  With this in the forefront of her mind she turned to them. With their faces clean for once and shivering violently, they looked pitiful. Matilda pulled up the bench to the fire and ordered them to sit down.

  ‘Jennings have never collected pure,’ she said firmly, taking up a position at the side of the fire, her hands on her hips. ‘Jennings have always been watermen. Being a waterman is a respected craft, like being a carpenter or a builder, and it’s been passed down from father to son for five or six generations. So what do you think Father will do when I tells ’im what ’is sons ’ave been doing?’

  ‘’E’ll strap us,’ George snivelled, his eyes wide with fear.

  ‘That’s what you deserve,’ she said, nodding her head. ‘But it will break ’is ’eart, that’s what. Collecting pure is a job for beggars. It’s worse than scavenging in the sewers, as nasty as pickin’ pockets. We ain’t got much, but us Jennings ’ave always ’ad pride. That’s why we don’t share this room with no other family. We pays our three and sixpence each week and we ’olds our ’eads up. There’s folks in this court what thinks we is ’oity-toity, but that’s because they’re jealous of us. You go out grubbing around picking up that stinking stuff, and you shame our family name.’