‘Left out of the shop and just keep going up the street. About fifteen minutes for a strong girl like you, on the right. Christopher’s.’
Nell nodded, getting worried now that Mr Peacock would be wondering where she was. This was supposed to be just a quick errand, but now she was going to be away most of the afternoon.
She set off again, a little uneasily as she was now in an area she didn’t know at all. She peered at the shop signs, darting her eyes between both sides of the road for fear of missing Christopher’s. Finally, there it was, with a man she presumed to be Christopher himself sitting outside in a chair, straw boater on, white coat, apron, bushy moustache, cleaning beneath his fingernails with a knife.
As Nell panted towards him, he looked up and smiled. She explained between short breaths who she was and where she’d come from – that he was the third shop she had tried, so she really hoped he could help her as she was getting worried about how long she’d been away from Peacock’s – and handed him the note.
He had a red face with lines by his eyes that suggested he was quick to laugh, thought Nell, a kind face, and as he opened the note and read it a smile spread beneath the moustache, confirming her impression.
‘So you’ve come all the way from Peacock’s in Stratford with this?’ said Mr Christopher.
Nell worried that this meant he couldn’t help with whatever it was Peacock needed, and nodded.
‘And I’m the third place you’ve tried?’
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
Mr Christopher let his hands drop into his lap, glanced down at the note and smiled again. He looked sideways at her, opened out the note, and held it up so she could see.
It was a Peacock’s butcher’s receipt, and on it, in Mr Peacock’s familiar scrawly handwriting, was the phrase, ‘Send the silly cow further.’
Her cheeks flushed.
‘What did you do to deserve that?’ asked Christopher.
‘I … I gave a lady the wrong change,’ she stammered.
‘Ha, did you? Too much or too little?’
‘Too much, sir.’
‘Well, if you’re going to give someone the wrong change, always make sure it’s too little.’
‘I will, sir.’
‘Have you learned a lesson today?’
‘I have, sir, yes.’
He leaned back and thrust a hand into the pocket of his apron and pulled out a sixpence.
‘Now, take this and use it to take the tram back to Stratford.’
‘Are you sure, sir? Thank you, sir. I shall return next week and repay you.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he laughed. ‘It was worth sixpence of anyone’s money to be a part of this caper after the day I’ve had.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Nell, giving a small curtsy. ‘Good day to you.’
‘Good day to you, young lady. By the way, what’s your name?’
‘Nellie, sir. Nellie Painter.’
‘Very pleased to meet you, Nellie Painter,’ he smiled. ‘You watch that change, now.’
‘I will sir, thank you sir.’
Chapter Twelve
When she left school Nell worked full-time at Peacock’s for a couple of years. She hated it. It wasn’t as if she could become a butcher even if she wanted to – whoever heard of a female butcher? But it was bringing in money, and the welfare of her mother and siblings was the most important thing. Harriet was a different person since Billy’s death. She never sang any more. She barely smiled. The spark had gone from her eyes. After long, backbreaking hours cleaning other people’s houses the last thing she could face was tackling her own. There was no plaster dust any more. She longed to come home and find plaster dust again. So Nell took on more of the housework, uncomplaining, unquestioning, becoming a second mother to the Painter siblings while Harriet sat by the fire most nights staring into the flames.
One evening as she was walking home from Peacock’s she began to sing ‘The Models from Madame Tussauds’. She never sang at home now, except quietly while washing the clothes in the back yard, but would often make the journey to and from Peacock’s pass quicker by singing some of the songs she’d heard with her father at the halls. On this occasion she was lost in the song – it wasn’t one of her favourites at the time, a nonsense song about the waxworks in Madame Tussauds coming to life in the middle of the night – when she stopped at the kerbside waiting to cross the road.
‘Every night when the clock strikes one,’ she sang, ‘they all come to life when the clock strikes one.’
The road cleared and she began to cross, not noticing the smartly dressed man with the top hat and cane next to her who was listening intently.
‘Murderers, clergymen, thieves and lords,’ continued Nell, ‘they’re all very happy at Madame Tussauds.’
It was the only verse she knew, so as she reached the opposite side of the road she stopped singing.
‘Don’t stop, my girl. Pray continue with the song,’ said the man in the top hat.
Nell started, and looked at him.
‘I beg your pardon, sir,’ she said, half question, half statement.
‘I’d like to hear the rest of the song,’ he said, looking down at her with a kindly smile.
‘I … I can’t remember the rest, sir.’ Nell knew she was blushing. She’d been so lost in her own world she’d almost forgotten that someone could hear her sing.
‘In that case I’d like another song, if you didn’t mind,’ said the man, still smiling.
‘Would … would you like to hear “The Boy I Love Is Up in the Gallery”?’ she asked, nervously.
‘I think I should like that very much,’ he said.
So, standing by the roadside in her work clothes, Nell gave the man the first verse and chorus.
‘What’s your name, girl?’ he asked.
‘Painter, sir. Nellie Painter.’
‘And what do you do for work, Nellie Painter?’
‘I work in a butcher’s shop, sir.’
‘Well, Nellie Painter,’ said the man, reaching his thumb and forefinger into his waistcoat pocket and pulling out a card. ‘When you have a moment free of prime cuts and scrag end I’d like you to come and see me. I’m always looking for talented singers for the halls and I believe you to be a talented singer. Bring your father.’
‘My father passed away, sir.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. But do come and see me.’
‘I shall do my best, sir,’ said Nell, taking the card from his outstretched hand. He touched the brim of his bowler hat, smiled at her again and disappeared into the crowd.
She looked down at the card. ‘A. Walter de Frece,’ it said in embossed print, while underneath in smaller letters it read, ‘The South of England Hippodromes, Ltd’, followed by an address at the Camberwell Metropole.
The world swam for a moment and her stomach felt as if a hundred butterflies had been released into it. Walter de Frece? The Walter de Frece? Why, he was Vesta Tilley’s husband and one of the leading impresarios of the day! Vesta Tilley! Her absolute heroine! And he wanted her, Nellie Painter, the butcher’s assistant from Stratford, to go and see him!
Gripping the card in her hand Nellie practically floated home. She’d not felt this happy since, well, since before her father passed. She burst through the door and ran into the parlour. There she saw her mother sitting in the chair, pale, her eyes empty and dark, staring at nothing in particular, exactly as when Nellie had left that morning.
It was then that she realised there would be no journey to Camberwell to see Mr de Frece and definitely no singing career in the halls for Nellie Painter. She knelt down at the hearth, placed the card to one side, rescued the fire from where it had nearly expired, poured on some more coal, watched the flames flicker higher, picked up the card again, rain her coal-dusty fingers over the embossed lettering and dropped it into the flames. Its edges went black, the card curled and the name A. Walter de Frece twisted, distorted and was gone for ever.
; Given that she was sharing a bed with three siblings, the only time Nell felt she had even remotely to herself was when she was in the yard with the laundry. She was working all day Saturday, so Sunday afternoon had become laundry time, where she’d scrub the clothes and make her hands raw again, sing softly to herself and think of her father’s bright blue eyes and smile and then sometimes she’d cry silently, tears dropping from her cheek into the hot, soapy water.
When she turned 16 she was able to leave the butcher’s behind and take a job at a laundry in Forest Gate, where she soon proved herself to be indispensable. She was good with the customers, good with the money and she knew her way around a box of soda crystals like nobody the owners had ever seen.
Away from the smell of raw meat and blood Nell found the laundry a much more pleasant place to spend her working hours. It was always hot and damp and the work was hard, but it was work she knew well, and she enjoyed the interaction with the customers and also the respect she earned from the owners. At home Harriet had emerged slightly from her grief-stricken torpor and Nell was able to share the domestic duties a little more. She almost felt, indeed, that her life was her own, probably for the first time ever.
Chapter Thirteen
The first thing Nell noticed on meeting Harry Greenwood was that his eyes were the same piercing blue as her father’s. He had a sweet face, she thought, that narrowed towards a slightly elongated chin. An honest face, she’d call it, and faintly inquisitive, but it was his eyes that first drew her in. The sheer sparkling blue of them. He was also very funny. He’d arrived one day to paint the upstairs rooms and straight away she’d noticed the frequency with which he’d appear in the doorway, lounging against the jamb, lighting a roll-up cigarette and chatting away about all sorts of nonsense, telling her stories. At first she was short with him, telling him that even if he didn’t have work to be getting on with she most certainly did.
But he kept up with the stories and eventually she cracked.
‘I was painting this vicar’s house, over West Ham way,’ he told her, between draws on his cigarette. ‘It was a big house and I was there a few days. The vicar, he couldn’t abide the smell of paint so he went to stay somewhere else. Anyway he had this parrot that he called Nebuchadnezzar, see, and I’ve always been told you can teach parrots to speak. So I went up to this parrot on the first day and said, “Say bugger off. Go on, say bugger off”, but it didn’t say nothing. All the while I was there this parrot didn’t say nothing, even though every time I’d pass it I’d go, “Say bugger off. Bugger off. Bugger. Off.” But the bleedin’ thing never said a word the whole week I was there.
‘Anyway, I finished the job, packed up my gear and left and this parrot watches me go and never says a word, same as it’s never said a word all week. I go back the following week to pick up my money, knock on the door and this vicar answers. I say who I am and expect him to tell me what a lovely job of painting I’ve done on his house, but instead he gives me a filthy look and walks off back inside without a word. I’m standing there like a lemon on the doorstep wondering what I’m having, when a maid comes to the door, young girl, and she hands me an envelope with my money in it.
‘She’s just about to close the door with a thank you when I says to her, “What’s up with his nibs?” And she looks behind her, steps out onto the doorstep and pulls the door to. In this quiet voice, half giggling, she tells me that he comes home from his week away and the first thing he does is go up to the parrot and say, “Hello there, Nebuchadnezzar. Have you missed me while I’ve been away?” And blow me down if, bold as brass, the parrot doesn’t go, “Bugger off!”’
Nellie looked up at him, saw his eye twinkle and the corners of his mouth tugged at by a smile, and was overcome by a wave of laughter. Her whole body rocked, so convulsed was she that she had to stop what she was doing, kneeling down over a sunken vat soaking some restaurant tablecloths, and put both hands on the floor to steady herself. She hadn’t laughed like this for as long as she could remember, certainly not since her father had died. When she’d got her breath back a little she looked up at him, he looked back at her, and she was overwhelmed by a sudden compulsion to see more of this young man.
Harry Greenwood was six months younger than Nell, was Stratford through and through and had grown up just the other side of Stratford railway station from the Painters, his family occupying half of a small house in Channelsea Street. His father Thomas was a fish smoker and fishmonger from Whitechapel and, on their first walk together on Wanstead Flats a couple of weeks after they met, Harry told her his father had died from influenza about six months earlier. Tears welled as he did so, but he tried to make a joke of if by looking away in a dramatic pose and saying, ‘I can never look a kipper in the face again.’
He had big dreams, he told her, dreams of having his own business, a painting and decorating company with its own yard and own lorry with ‘Henry W. Greenwood’ written on the side, but, like Nell, without a father bringing in a wage, his priority was to help keep the household going. It remained unspoken but they knew they shared a painful bond, the loss of a father before his time, something that drew them together beyond simple attraction. They both carried their losses within them, both damaged, both half orphaned, and it helped bind them closer together.
They were drawn even closer together when Harry’s mother Esther died. She’d ostensibly been running the fishmonger’s business since the death of her husband but in the summer of 1896 began acting strangely, having outbursts of temper which were utterly out of character, and being rude to customers. She complained of headaches, so Harry took over the business while Esther stayed at home with Harry’s younger brother Charlie looking after her. Her head pains grew so bad, however, that Harry and Charlie eventually took her on the trolleybus to the hospital at the Leytonstone Workhouse. Almost immediately on admission she slipped into unconsciousness, remained that way for a week and died on 7 September. She was 44 years old. Harry had just turned 18 and he’d lost both his parents.
Even aside from their respective brushes with tragedy they both knew it was serious from the start, and nobody was in the least surprised when they announced their wish to get married, and soon. It was May 1897, Harry was still 18 and Nellie just 19. The haste was partly due to love’s young dream, partly also due to Nell’s suspicion that she was carrying their first baby. Sure enough, just before Christmas, seven months after their low-key marriage at West Ham Register Office, their first child was born, a daughter, given the name Cecilia May: Nell’s middle name and the month of their marriage.
At the turn of the twentieth century the Greenwoods had set up home at 13 Buckingham Road, a house that looked out over West Ham Cemetery, where Nell’s and Harry’s fathers both lay. When they arrived neither had ever been to visit, but they took a certain amount of comfort from the proximity. They moved in with two children, Cissie and Lilian Blanche, who was born in 1899, a weak and sickly child, and died five months later from a combination of gastritis and pneumonia early in 1900. The Greenwoods’ first visit to the cemetery across the road was not to visit the graves of their fathers but to bury their daughter.
Meanwhile Nell had worked her way up to managing the laundry and was developing a keen business sense. Several suggestions she’d made had been taken up by the owners and proved to be successful, allowing them to be comfortable leaving the sensible young mother in charge of the business.
Harry meanwhile was still finding work as a painter and decorator, although he avoided trying to teach pets to talk after the parrot incident. Relying largely on word of mouth, sometimes he would be at home for a few days, and then boredom would kick in and he’d take a few coins from the jar under the sink and while away the afternoons in the pub, swapping stories and betting tips with other men who were between jobs. There were some days, however, when he just wanted to be on his own, when the sparkle left those blue eyes and the drink would make him sad. He was always quick to cry, but the wretched four months with Lilian h
ad pummelled his soul. By then it was becoming clear that Cissie was developing scoliosis, which would leave her badly stooped – a hunchback in the vernacular of the time. He knew that hunchbacks didn’t usually live long, and that she was also unlikely to marry and could be restricted in the jobs she could do when she was old enough. He doted on Cissie, and she was a joy to have around, but when he drank alone in a dark corner of a backstreet pub he would weep quietly to himself at the respective fates of his two girls.
When a son was born in 1902 and named Christopher Henry it looked as if the gods were smiling on the Greenwoods at last: he was healthy and giggly, with a shock of blond curls, but the boy died of bronchitis at just a few weeks old in the summer, and the Greenwoods made their second visit to West Ham Cemetery as grieving parents in the space of two years. They were both just 24 years old.
‘I can’t bear looking out of the window and seeing that cemetery any more, Harry,’ said Nell one day. ‘We’ve got to get out of here.’
Chapter Fourteen
The following week Harry found some painting work in a shop in Forest Gate. Finishing early and with time to kill before he needed to head home, he called in at a pub for a glass of beer to pass the time.
He sat at the bar talking to the landlord, a stout, red-faced man from the Midlands, and after around ten minutes a boy came in carrying a wicker basket of clean, folded linen.
‘Bring it around and drop it in the kitchen, Charlie, there’s a good chap,’ said the landlord, before turning back to Harry and saying, ‘I don’t know what we’ll do when they go.’
‘Who?’ replied Harry.
‘The laundry up the way. They’re leaving, moving to the south coast apparently.’
‘Nice,’ said Harry.
The boy reappeared.
‘Tell your father to send the bill round,’ said the landlord, ‘and not to be disappearing to Bexhill before he does.’
‘I will, sir, yes,’ said the boy.
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