‘A pub,’ he suggested.
He had temporarily lost his bearings in the fog. He dragged her along till he saw the bleary glow of lamplight spilling out into the night. Anywhere would do, so long as his friends were not there. The sign was unfamiliar. It would do.
It was crowded and smoky inside. He hung on to Theresa, fearing she would make a run for it if he left her while he fetched the drinks.
‘Gin?’ he asked, and she nodded.
He managed to find a corner table just as its occupants got up to leave and shoved Theresa on to the bench seat and squeezed in beside her.
‘Here.’ He pushed the gin, a large one, in front of her and she downed half of it at a gulp.
‘Better?’
She nodded again.
He took a pull at his pint and decided that he would do the talking first. He started telling her what had happened in the street since she left – the births, the deaths, the marriages. She was listening, he was sure, but she gave no sign of it. She just stared at her drink, and occasionally took a sip. It was half an hour before Harry paused for breath.
‘Another?’ he asked, and took a chance this time, going up himself to get the glasses refilled.
‘Ta.’ Theresa took a sip and fiddled with the glass. Harry waited. ‘I never thought Ellen’d marry Gerry,’ she said at last.
‘No, well – that’s how it goes, ain’t it? Things never do turn out like you wanted, do they?’
She shook her head. ‘They didn’t turn out right with my young man.’
Treading carefully, he said, ‘West Ham, wasn’t it, that he lived?’
‘Yeah.’ She sighed. ‘Only it went all wrong.’
He had no idea whether she was telling the truth. It hardly mattered. The fact of it was that now she was a common prostitute picking men up off the street.
‘Look, Theresa,’ he said, ‘I know you. I know you didn’t choose to do this. I want to help in some way. Couldn’t you get a proper job? There must be something . . .’
She gave a bitter laugh. ‘You must be joking. Who’d take me on?’
‘Plenty of people. You don’t need references. You could get a factory job.’
She shook her head. ‘They’d take one look at me and they’d know.’
‘You could buy some different clothes, do your hair plain.’
‘No, no, it wouldn’t work.’
‘Well then, there’s places you can go. I’ve read about them. Refuges for women – like you. They take them in and help them, find them decent employment.’
It was as if he had turned a switch. She began to talk.
‘Yeah, yeah, I know. I been to a couple. They delouse you and the doctor comes and does horrible things to you and they give you bloody awful dresses to wear and make you scrub floors and do laundry and sew. And all the time they preach at you. Then they get you a job as a skivvy. Place where they put me, everyone knew where I come from. The women wouldn’t talk to me and the men all wanted it for free. I left after a week. I was better off on the streets.’
‘But you went back, another time,’ Harry persisted.
‘Only because I was ill. I knew they’d look after me better than what they do in the hospital. Not throw me out the moment they stitched me up.’
‘But surely you don’t want to keep on the way you are?’
In answer, Theresa drained her glass and pushed it towards him. He took the hint and bought another. The gin was having no noticeable effect on her at all. He guessed that she drank heavily most of the time.
‘I could help you,’ he said.
‘Oh yeah? How?’
‘I could find you somewhere to live, some decent lodgings with nice people. Not on Dog Island – I know you won’t want to go back there – but somewhere else. I got friends all up and down the river. I could lend you some money if you needed it, so you could get some new clothes and things, and then you could get a factory job.’
Theresa looked sceptical. ‘So what’s so bleeding wonderful about a factory job? On your feet for twelve or more hours a day, too hot or too cold, horrible smells all round, and some bleeding dragon of a forewoman breathing down your neck and fining you the moment you open your mouth. And what for? Twelve, thirteen bob a week, if you’re lucky. D’you know what I earn?’
Harry shook his head.
‘Five, ten bob a night. A night! Last week, this bloke give me half a sov. Half a sov for half an hour, just for being nice to him. Said he’d come back again, too. Easy. You don’t get money like that in no bleeding factory.’
‘You don’t get a dose of the clap in a factory, neither,’ Harry retorted. ‘And what’s going to happen to you when you get old? You won’t be able to work this pitch much longer. Younger girls are coming in all the time.’
‘Dunno. Don’t think about it.’ Theresa shrugged.
Harry could see that he had to be brutal. ‘You’ll be down the Highway doing it for fourpence, that’s what. And you won’t even be working on your back. Fourpence for a quick one up against the wall with some drunken sailor, that’s all you’ll be fit for. If you live that long.’
She was unmoved. ‘My glass is empty,’ she said.
Harry ignored her. ‘You can’t go on like this.’
‘So? I’ll die young. I don’t care. Ain’t nothing much to live for.’
‘Let me help you.’
‘You can smash that Charlie for me.’
‘What?’ The sudden vehement hatred after the dull apathy shocked him.
‘That bastard Charlie Billingham. It was him what did for me.’
He did not follow her. ‘Charlie? But I thought . . . the bloke in West Ham?’
She shrugged. ‘Weren’t no bloke in West Ham. I just made that up for that bleeding bitch Siobhan. She believed it and all.’ She gave a harsh laugh. ‘She’s playing across the road there. Did you know that?’ Her face was contorted with jealousy.
‘She may be up there on the stage, but she’s just the same as you,’ Harry said gently.
‘What?’ For the first time, she looked right at him.
‘She does what you do, only she’s not so honest about it. She doesn’t so much sell it as bargain with it, but it all comes to the same thing.’
‘Oh.’
She sat silent for a long while, frowning at the glass. Harry took it away, filled it up, replaced it.
‘I’m glad you told me that.’
‘It makes it better, does it?’
‘Sort of – yeah, yeah, I suppose it does.’
He gave it one last try. ‘It’s not too late, you know, Theresa.’
She sighed. All the fight had gone out of her. She was just a tired, worn woman with a grotesque layer of face paint.
‘Wouldn’t you like to give it up?’
Longing came into her eyes. She was far away, looking at somewhere quite different from the scruffy pub. Harry wondered if it was Trinidad Street in the days before Siobhan came along.
‘We had some fun, didn’t we, when we was kids?’ he said.
‘Kids! Blimey, sometimes I wonder if I was ever a kid. It’s like – like that was someone else.’
He put a hand over hers. ‘Give it a try, eh? You could do it, you know. You could break out. I’d help.’
But she shook her head.
‘No. I’d never stick at it. I seen other girls try. But they always come back. Ain’t worth the effort.’
She defeated him. He had nothing to say in the face of such fatalism.
‘Well, is there anything I can do?’
With a spark of life at last, she flashed him a grin. ‘You can give me some of that money you was on about. After all, you owe me. I been wasting good time sitting here jawing with you. I could’ve earned another half-sov.’
Harry dug in his pockets. It would all be wasted, he realized. She would probably stay here and drink it. But reasoning had failed, and he could see no other way to help. He took out all that he had, all his spending money for the week, picked out
some coppers for his fare home and pushed the rest across the beer-puddled table. Theresa reached out, but he kept his hand over it.
‘Promise me you’ll go to a doctor to find out if you’re clean.’
She pouted and half turned away from him.
‘Promise!’
‘I hate doctors. They poke around inside of you.’
‘Better than going down with a dose.’ He began to draw the money towards himself.
‘All right, all right. I promise.’
‘Good.’ He took his hand away. In a trice, the assorted silver was out of sight.
‘You got to promise something too,’ she said.
‘Oh, what?’
‘Never to breathe a word about me to anyone. Not a word. You promise that?’
He agreed. She seemed to relax a little, trusting his word.
‘You always round this way?’ he asked.
‘Yeah. On and off.’
‘I’ll come back, and if you change your mind, if you want to make a new start, I’ll help you. You’ve only got to ask.’
‘Yeah, right.’
There seemed to be no more to say. He stood up and hesitated, looking down at her, wishing he had the words to change her.
‘’Bye then, Theresa, and – God bless.’
‘’Bye, Harry. You know something?’
‘What?’
‘Ellen was a fool not to marry you.’
He left.
During the journey home and all through the next week, he felt that he had handled it badly, that he could have done more. He had never liked Theresa much, she was too hard-edged and quick to find fault, but that was not the point. She was part of his childhood. He had teased her and pulled her hair as a boy, speculated about her as an adolescent. Her mother had helped his through births and miscarriages. It was terrible to think that a girl he had grown up with was out on the streets of London selling her body to any man who came along.
For the life of him, though, he could not think what else he could have done or said. She seemed sunk in her present existence, not even wanting to get out. He wished there was someone he could discuss it with, but he was bound by the promise he had given not to tell anyone. He knew that once the news was out it would be all up and down the street and chewed over for weeks. The only person he could safely share it with, who could be trusted to keep it to herself and perhaps give some good advice, was Ellen. But he never got to have long conversations with Ellen these days. It was just as he had said to Theresa, things never did turn out the way you wanted. It was easy enough to say, difficult to accept. Certainly he had not accepted it.
Ellen drew back the curtain to look out into the street. A thick yellow cowl of fog enveloped the world. She could not see the houses on the opposite side, except for one faint smear of light in someone’s bedroom window. Further down the road, the feeble glow from the streetlamp made another point of reference, but apart from that there was nothing to prove that the street was there at all. She fought back a quiver of irrational fear. She was alone in the house except for the babies. It was Saturday night and Gerry was out seeing someone about a not-to-be-missed bargain, and the lodgers were down at the Rum Puncheon. She looked at the ground outside. The line of the kerb could just be made out, which gave her an immense sense of relief. It was all right, she was still anchored to the earth. Without that friendly stretch of pavement that she knew so well, swept daily and scrubbed weekly, she might have been adrift in the universe. The prospect frightened her. She was used to living with people all around her. Being without them made her feel unprotected, prey to any danger that might come prowling through the fog.
She went back to the warmth of the kitchen, but even here she was not completely at ease. The range did not seem to be drawing properly. She could not settle to anything. There was a pile of mending that needed doing, and for the first time in eighteen months or so she had been to the Settlement and borrowed some books, but even the new world waiting inside the cloth covers could not hold her. She kept running upstairs to check on little Teddy, putting a hand on his chest to make sure he was still breathing, and tucking his tiny hands under the covers when he fought himself free of the shawl that swaddled him. But she knew it was not really him she was anxious about. She told herself it was the fog. It was enough to make anyone nervous, especially when they were on their own. That was not true either. Fog had never really worried her before. She just felt a vague unease, a sense of something wrong, and the fact that she could not put her finger on it made it worse.
The time went slowly by, measured out by the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece – a massive piece in funereal black mock marble, with pillars on either side of the face, that Gerry had picked up cheap somewhere. Ellen never had liked it, but he had been so delighted with it that she hadn’t had the heart to tell him to take it away again.
‘Gives the place a bit of class,’ he had said.
Ellen thought it depressing. She had dressed up the rest of the mantelpiece with the brightest pieces from the stall to counteract it.
At about half-past ten, when she had just put the baby down after his feed, there was a scrape and a thump on the front door. Ellen jumped up, her heart beating wildly. She was halfway across the parlour when the door flew open and banged against the wall and a dark figure stumbled into the room. She bit back a scream.
‘That the . . .? Where the bleeding . . .?’ a slurred voice demanded.
It was Archie, rolling drunk.
Ellen took a deep breath, then regretted it. The smell of him filled the air. ‘Not here, Mr Turner. Wrong house.’
He stood swaying, trying to focus on her. ‘Ellen? Ellen Johnson?’
‘You’re in the wrong house, Mr Turner. Try next door.’
‘Bloody Johnsons. Always putting their noses where they’re not wanted.’
The fear was pulsing strongly now, but she tried hard not to show it. She repeated the words yet again, keeping her voice as steady and calm as she could make it.
‘Go next door, Mr Turner. This is my house. You’re in the wrong house.’
She sent a silent prayer that he would comply. Archie might be undersized, but she knew how vicious and totally unpredictable he was when drunk.
‘Wrong house, wrong house? What you mean, wrong?’
He stopped as it finally got through to him that the door was the other way round from his own. Abruptly, he turned and stumbled out again. Ellen slammed the door and shot the bolts, something she had never done before. The men would just have to knock and identify themselves before she opened it to them. She went back into the warmth of the kitchen and collapsed into her chair, her knees shaking. She looked at her hands and found they were trembling. Then she heard the sound of falling furniture next door, and her own distress was overlaid by worry about poor Milly.
It had been a nice quiet evening at the Turners’. Both girls went out with their young men, Johnny went down to the Crofts’ and Bob was packed off to bed by eight. Milly was able to do a bit of mending, make a pot of tea all to herself and doze in front of the range with nobody making any demands upon her. It was as good as a holiday. Promptly at ten, Ida and Florrie came home, escorted to the door, as was proper. Soon after, Johnny came back. They chatted for a while about their various evenings, then began drifting off to bed. All was still well on the surface, but Milly was beginning to get the familiar crawling sensation of Saturday-night fear. Sometime soon, Archie would be home.
‘Come on, get a move on,’ she nagged at Florrie, who was lingering in front of the range.
She did not want any of them up when he arrived. It only made it worse. She prayed that Harry would be good and late. It was often past midnight by the time he got back, but what with the fog, he might come home earlier. Florrie disappeared upstairs and Milly began to get ready for bed. Perhaps if she was up there when he arrived, he would take it out on her in that way instead of hitting her. Trouble was, he was usually incapable of doing it when he was drunk, an
d that made him angrier, so he still ended up hitting her.
In the early days when they were first married, and for quite a few years afterwards, she had taken a certain pride in her bruises. After all, it only went to prove that he loved her. But as time went by, childbirth, miscarriages and sheer hard work weakened her and the attacks became more vicious. It was no longer a case of a couple of punches and some bad language. He would fling her against the wall, throw furniture, kick her when she was down. The pride degenerated into a dogged endurance. That was the way he was. She simply accepted it.
She had just put her foot on the stair when she heard the Billinghams’ door bang open. She stood still, listening. A couple of minutes later it slammed shut and her own flew open. She wanted to run upstairs, but could not. She just stood there, waiting.
Archie staggered across the parlour, knocked into a chair, picked it up and threw it aside. It broke. Milly whimpered.
‘What are you staring at?’ Archie demanded.
She shook her head, speechless.
‘Wassermatter? Cat got your tongue?’
In two staggering steps he was across the room and grabbing at her. She cowered back against the stairs, but he just reached out and got hold of a handful of blouse, and jerked her up till her face was only a couple of inches from his. His contorted features swam before her. His breath made her faint.
‘Wassermatter, eh? Eh?’ he was shouting.
She tried to answer. Her lips moved, but nothing came out. Whatever she did was wrong. If she said something, he was sure to take exception to it. If she stayed silent, he did not like that either.
‘Stupid bleeding cow. All your fault. You brought it all on me, didn’t you? Eh? Didn’t you?’
Sweat broke out all over her. She could feel it standing on her forehead. Her body was clammy with it. The blood was thudding in her ears so loudly that she could no longer think. Hardly knowing what she did, she nodded.
‘Thass right. Proud of it. All you fault.’
He had hold of her shoulders and was shaking her. She fell back against the stairs and her head hit the riser with a crack, but there was no merciful loss of consciousness. She let out a wail. It was her one defence. Once, she had bitten back the screams for fear of upsetting the children. Now she screamed and cried out from the first, for this was what he wanted. He liked to hear her. The sooner he knew he was really hurting her, the sooner it was over.
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