by Mary Gibson
‘The union’s not going to let them starve, Nell. Eliza James has been writing to the newspapers – she’s got thousands of loaves on the way and food coming from all over. She could do with a hand at the Labour Office tomorrow, sorting it all out. Why don’t you go over there?’
‘I will, if me dad lets me.’
The thought of her father’s iron rule caused her to hesitate and she slowed her pace. Perhaps she should just go home now and face the music. Ted had been hurrying them on, elbowing his way through the ambling crowds around the Tower, so that Nellie and Lily were trotting to keep up with his long strides. Now he gave an exasperated sigh and, grasping her hand, almost dragged her past Traitor’s Gate. With every half trot, she felt a stab of pain from her bruised ribs, but Ted held her fast and looked in no mood to slow his progress.
‘For God’s sake, Nellie,’ he said fiercely, ‘you’ve got to grow up and start making your own choices. You’re taking on the bosses. Don’t you think you should start standing up to that bullying father of yours?’
Ted had an infuriating knack of always making her feel like a stupid little girl, and he was one of the few people who could leave her tongue-tied. With anyone else, she gave as good as she got. All she knew was that the excitement she felt when she was with him outweighed the uncomfortable sense of somehow being less than herself.
‘How long do you think we’ll be on strike, Ted?’ Lily asked, diverting Ted’s attention. Nellie shot her friend a grateful look. Lily was the only one she’d told about her father’s threats to chuck her out.
‘As long as it takes! Us dockers will stay out till you get your eleven shillings, and I’m telling you the government’s getting desperate to get us back to work. Why else would bully-boy Churchill be sending in troops?’
‘I hope it ends soon.’ Nellie sighed.
‘Well, I don’t. I’d like to see Asquith and all his lot beggin’ on their knees, and then I’d like to string ’em all up from Big Ben!’
‘Well then, you’re no better than Churchill, are you?’ she snapped.
Nellie was shocked at the vehemence in Ted’s voice. What, for her and the other women, was a fight for a few shillings to feed their families, seemed for him a war, and it was one Nellie wasn’t sure she wanted to be involved in. The Tower’s wooden drawbridge, with its sharp-toothed portcullis, came into view. Nellie shuddered, remembering this was the place they used to put traitors. Ted’s talk was sounding perilously traitorous. But when they arrived at Tower Hill, surrounded by other workers, singing songs, gathering round the glowing hot-chestnut carts and tea stalls, the air of camaraderie quietened her unease. There were more speeches and then Nellie felt the fervour around her swell, as someone on a soapbox shouted: ‘If they want a war, they’ll get a war, and a bloody one at that!’
A roar went up that froze Nellie’s heart. She didn’t want war; all she wanted was for her family to have to struggle less. Suddenly a deep wave of longing for her family swamped her. She saw the trusting faces of Freddie and little Bobby and stalwart Alice; even her red-faced, perpetually angry father seemed like an anchor, preferable to all the shifting sands and swirling moods around her. Nellie felt as if a new world was coming into being and that everything close to her was changing. A sudden chill wind blew up from the river and Nellie shivered. It was the coldest she had felt all day.
5
Down and Out
When the speeches were over, they walked back over the bridge to Bermondsey, but their earlier childish mood seemed dampened. Ted had turned sombre, after hearing of two more deaths during a riot in Liverpool. They’d happened at a strike rally and the soldiers hadn’t hesitated to open fire, killing two innocent bystanders. Nellie’s bruised ribs were hurting at every step and her head was banging. Only now did she fully realize how close she’d come to being one of those fatal statistics. If the crowd in Southwark Park hadn’t been so good-natured, that soldier’s rifle might have been the last thing she’d seen. When they got to Lily’s house, Ted announced he would walk Nellie home. She was shocked; it wasn’t something he’d ever done before. She attempted to check her bubbling excitement at the idea of being alone with him. They were always surrounded by other people, and now a half-hour, walking beside him on this balmy night, would make up for all the wounds of the day. But what if he was just feeling sorry for her as a battered casualty of the class war, still with her furious father to face? She decided she didn’t care about his motives; she was just happy that it was Ted beside her. When he put his arm round her, she held her breath, not wishing to acknowledge it in case the spell was broken. Linked now, they bumped against each other awkwardly, his long stride outstripping hers. But with a quiet determination she began to match him, and however ungainly their progress might have looked, to Nellie it felt as if she was walking on air. At the corner of Vauban Street, she stopped him reluctantly.
‘You’d best not come to the door, in case Dad sees you,’ she said quietly.
‘I don’t care,’ he said, pulling her into him more tightly.
‘Well, I do. If he sees you with me, that’ll be it. He’ll be angry enough as it is, when he finds out I’ve been out on strike today!’
She’d managed to ignore the prospect all day, but now the conflict with her father would have to be faced. George Clark’s temper could turn vicious, especially if he thought he’d been made a fool of. Nellie knew her defiance fell into that category and right now she was sick with fear at what her father might do.
‘Well, I’m proud of you, Nell. You’re definitely grown-up enough for me.’
The words smoothed all Nellie’s ruffled feathers from earlier and, as he leaned down to kiss her, she let him. Nellie had sometimes allowed herself to dream of being kissed by Ted, but now the sensation took her by surprise. She felt as though she were floating up to meet him. When he drew his face away, he was smiling.
‘I always knew you’d be a good kisser, Nellie Clark.’
She was breathless, but had enough sense to seem unconcerned. ‘Well, don’t get too used to it, Ted Bosher! I’ve got to go!’
Nellie ran off to her house without looking back, her feet flying and her heart soaring, knowing that his eyes were following her. She didn’t look back until she heard his footsteps ringing on the cobbles, as he turned for home.
Her heart was thumping as she stood before her own front door. Excitement at Ted’s kiss and fear of her father had turned her normally sturdy limbs to jelly. Trembling, she waited for the courage to knock on the front door. She felt the cut on her forehead, and pulled the front roll of her hair forward to hide it. Then she buoyed herself up with the knowledge that her father was certainly no bigger than the docker who had squashed her, but before her hand could reach the knocker the door was flung open.
‘Git in ’ere!’ Nellie was grabbed by the meaty hands of her father and frogmarched into their kitchen. Alice was still up and sat hunched in a chair by the table, her apron screwed up in her hands as she twisted at it. Nellie was smitten with guilt when she realized her sister’s face was red and swollen from crying. At her feet was a laundry bag, tied in a loose bundle, out of which poked the corner of Nellie’s blue cape.
‘Oh, Nellie, what you done?’ her sister wailed. ‘He won’t listen!’
‘You keep yer trap shut, Alice, this is nothing to do with you!’ her father shouted.
Suddenly Nellie, who had said nothing so far, found her voice. Being surrounded all day by women who had started sticking up for themselves after lives spent ‘keeping their traps shut’ had rubbed off, and now she burst out, ‘Don’t you shout at her, she ain’t done nothing!’
Her father raised the back of his hand, but she ducked out of the way, crying out as she cracked her already bruised ribs on the edge of the sideboard.
Her father was breathing heavily. ‘No, I’m not wasting me energy chasin’ you round the kitchen.’
Alice grabbed at Nellie’s skirt and then her hand, squeezing it tighter and tighter
as George Clark pronounced sentence on his daughter.
‘You don’t bring home your wages, then you’ve got no rent money, have you? So you can sling yer hook!’
He grabbed up the bundle of clothes and threw it at her with such force that she staggered.
Her sister wailed again and she heard crying coming from upstairs. Her brothers had been unseen witnesses to the drama playing out in the kitchen, and now she heard their feet on the stairs. They crept in, white-faced and red-eyed.
‘Please, Dad, please,’ sobbed little Bobby, the softest-hearted of the two when it came to his adored sister Nellie. He ran to throw himself in supplication round his father’s legs.
‘Alice, get him off me, before I give him one.’ He shook one of his trunk-like legs, as though flinging off an annoying puppy.
Her father’s massive physique dominated the little room. They had all edged as far away from him as they could and now he stood isolated, with his back to the fireplace. Nellie felt an iron band tighten round her throat, growing tighter the more she resisted the tears, tears she wouldn’t shed in front of her father, or the children for that matter.
‘What you waiting for? Go on, sod off and see if yer Bolshie friends’ll give you a room for nothing! Bosher’d make you pay, but not in shillings!’
She thrust out her chin and clenched her fists, mirroring her father’s pose; they looked more like two prize-fighters than father and daughter. Nellie burned at the humiliation. She knew she should try to placate him, if only for the sake of the children. Who would look after them? Alice couldn’t have the burden, and they’d get no tenderness from George Clark, but his insinuation rankled too much.
‘Well, if that’s what you think of me, I’m off!’ Nellie battled to control her voice. She snatched up the bundle, ran to her sister and kissed her, whispering, ‘Don’t worry,’ in her ear. She hugged the little ones and kissed them in turn.
‘Don’t cry, kids, Nellie’ll make sure you’re all right. I’ll come back and see you!’ And she gave them a brave smile as she turned her back on her father and walked out of the kitchen. Giving the front door a good slam so that the frame rattled and the window shook, she turned to face the night alone.
She marched to the end of the street and then stopped, realizing she had nowhere to go. The night was still warm; the intense heat of the day had permeated the tar-block roads and a smell of melting pitch wafted up to her. The previous evening, in their tiny airless bedroom, she had cursed the stifling heat, but now she blessed it. At least she wouldn’t freeze, if she had to sleep in a doorway. But where could she go? Ted’s? She dismissed that option. Her father’s disturbing suggestion about Ted had made that impossible, but in any case he lived in lodgings with his brother Ginger, so there’d be no way of decently putting up a sixteen-year-old girl for the night.
She considered going to Lily’s mum’s, but Lily Bosher and her parents lived in just two basement rooms of a house. Nellie knew that, if there was no room for Lily’s brothers, then there’d certainly be no place for her. Lily’s mother Betty was a decent woman, but always hard up. Anyway, she’d have to walk under the railway arches to get there and she didn’t fancy that, at this time of night. She looked up and down Spa Road. The pubs would be turning out soon and the last thing she wanted was the attention of any drunks, staggering home. She walked back down Vauban Street, passing her own front door again. She stared at the shuttered windows and they seemed to stare back at her like the eyes of a stranger.
I’ve got no home now, she thought, and the realization was enough to start the dammed-up tears flowing. With no one to see her, Nellie allowed herself to weep. She dropped her little bundle on to the cobbles, sat down upon it and sobbed, chokingly, still trying to stifle the sounds of her misery in case her father should hear.
In the stillness of the deserted street, she became aware of a dull, rhythmic thumping, coming from Wicks’s carter’s stable yard, next door to her house. It must be old Thumper, the biggest of the dray horses. The Clarks’ scullery wall was the only thing between them and the horse stalls in the stable next door, and when the big horse was restless he would kick the wall of his stall and make their scullery shake. The heat was obviously keeping Thumper awake tonight. Nellie realized there was somewhere she could go. It would be warm, it would be dry and she wouldn’t have to face anyone at all. She could slip out early tomorrow morning and no one would be any the wiser! All she had to do was get inside the bloody place.
She stood up, wiping her tears with the sleeve of her jacket. The double wooden gates to the carter’s yard were locked with an iron chain, but her little brothers had a favourite way of circumventing the rudimentary security. Bobby had demonstrated one day how leaning on the ill-fitting gates, just where they met, allowed enough space for a body to squeeze through. Nellie reckoned she might just make it. She pushed hard at the middle of the gates till she could force her shoulders through, then, wincing with pain, she squeezed her bruised ribcage through. Half in and half out of the yard, she had the uncomfortable image of herself stuck there till old man Wicks came to unlock in the morning. She sucked in her breath and crammed the rest of her body through, then, like a cork popping out of a bottle, she tumbled to her knees on the cobbles inside the yard. She was in! She tugged at the bundle of clothes until that followed her too. Creeping quietly up the yard between the double row of horse stalls, she came to the end building where the hay and carts were kept.
‘Shhhh, quiet, you bugger!’ she hissed as old Thumper stirred at her presence and gave his stall a kick.
She tried the hayloft door and it opened with a creak, revealing the bales of hay stacked in a bay at the far end. Suddenly weariness washed over her. The day had been the most eventful of her short life. She had defied her father and been on strike. She had marched with thousands of people through the street, been caught up in a near riot, looked down the barrel of a gun, been virtually squashed to death by a docker and then kissed by a man, and now, at the end of this remarkable day, she was homeless, alone, and with no idea what the future would bring. The temptation to lie down and weep came with the fatigue, but Nellie refused.
No, she thought, I’ve had me cry. Crying’s not going to help me now.
So, instead, she burrowed into the sweet-smelling hay bales, creating a little nest for herself. Alice always teased Nellie that she could fall asleep standing up in a snowstorm. Now, within minutes, she had fallen into a deep, exhausted sleep.
6
Penny-farthing Promise
Nellie had been dreaming of Ted Bosher. He was galloping over Tower Bridge, on Thumper. Ted was shouting a warning that she couldn’t quite make out, then he halted in the middle of the bridge, where she stood, straddling the gap between the two halves. He leaned down to scoop her up, but the bascules started to rise and they both tumbled through the gap down to the murky Thames below. She was falling, falling, and could hear Thumper neighing as the inky water rushed up to engulf her, but, at the moment of impact, she woke. Sitting bolt upright, she found herself looking at a dark figure who was bending down, scrabbling at something in the hay. She screamed and then he screamed.
‘What are you doing here?’ His mouth was open in shock.
‘None of your business, Sam Gilbie. What are you doing here?’
‘I work here!’
‘Oh, my Gawd, is it morning already?’ Nellie jumped up, plucking at straw.
‘No, no, it’s not morning. It’s nine o’clock at night! I’ve just come to see to the horses. Your dad had to cope on his own today, with the rest of us all out.’
Nellie sat back down in relief, then she saw the object Sam had been searching for among the hay bales.
‘What’s that?’
‘If you tell me what you’re doing here, I’ll tell you what it is.’ He was shielding the object with his body, but she caught sight of a metal frame and a brass plate with the word Ariel stamped on it.
‘I’m here, because me dad chucked me out.’ F
or some reason, admitting this to Sam threatened a return of the tears she had tried so hard to keep at bay. She struggled to control her trembling lips.
‘Oh, Nellie, I’m sorry! I know he’s against the union, but I never thought he’d do something like this to his own daughter. What’ll you do?’
Nellie shrugged. ‘I’ll manage somehow.’ She didn’t want to talk about it with Sam. She didn’t want him to think badly of her father, which was puzzling to her, as she didn’t care a hoot what Lily or Ted thought of him. Why should Sam Gilbie’s opinion matter?
‘Anyway, I’ve done my bit. Now you tell me what that is.’ She craned her neck, trying to look at what was behind his back.
He stepped aside and pulled out from the straw an old penny-farthing bicycle.
She didn’t know what she’d expected, but this was the last thing she’d imagined he’d be hiding. ‘Oh, Sam, you don’t see many of them these days. Where on earth did you get it?’
Sam carefully brushed off the straw, revealing the large front wheel first, then pushed it out to the centre of the floor so she could see the whole frame and the smaller back wheel.
‘It was me dad’s,’ he said proudly. ‘He rode it all the way from Hull to London, long before I was born. If he hadn’t done it, I’d have been a northern lad instead of a Bermondsey boy!’
For the first time, Nellie noticed his smile. It gave his face a sweet expression she’d never noticed before. Not that she’d spent much time in his company. She had a few vague childhood memories of him. There had been some precious country outings, organized for children by the Bermondsey Settlement, where his parents had sometimes helped out. She remembered how the brake, decked with paper garlands and drawn by two massive dray horses, had trundled up to the settlement, where they were all ready in their Sunday best for a day out in Kent. It had been like a day in heaven, the first time she’d seen fields and, more mysterious still, cows! She remembered a dark-haired young Sam, sitting up at the front, eager to hold the horses’ reins. She remembered too his spirited mother and his father, who seemed much more fun than her own. Sam, at sixteen, had got his wish to become a horse driver himself. He was a favourite of her father’s, who thought him a decent hard-working boy. He often praised the way Sam had shouldered the burden of supporting his family, after his father had died. When she encountered him going in and out of Wicks’s yard, he would always have a ready smile and it felt natural to stop and chat. Only at Pearce Duff’s gates did she find herself being irritated by him. His face then was always either too hopeful or too disappointed, depending on whether it was before or after she’d refused his offer of a lift in the cart.