Across the carriage her husband was looking out of the window, his bright blue eyes looking sharp and happy. He was excited.
‘It’s an opportunity, doll,’ he implored. ‘Silvertown is a busy place, busier than here. There are big firms there, not to mention the docks. We’ll never go short of work.’
‘I’m only coming to look, Harry. Nothing’s decided.’
‘I think you’ll like it, doll, I really do.’
‘You’ve not even seen it yourself, yet. You’ve just met a fella in a pub.’
‘Got a good feeling about this, Nell. Fresh start.’
She rested her head against the window and looked past her reflection to the single towering chimney of Silver’s looming up out of the fog.
‘How many more fresh bloody starts do we need?’ she said, almost to herself.
‘So, what did you think?’ he said later, passing his cap from hand to hand, practically hopping from foot to foot. They’d just left Joe Moore, whom Nell had told she’d think about it and let him know, and were waiting for the train back to North Woolwich.
‘It was better than I expected,’ she admitted.
It was a fine building, for this area anyway. A solid, sturdy terraced property with a large shop window, a shop entrance and a separate door that led to the living accommodation upstairs. Good-sized rooms, too; enough space for now at least. The laundry had twice as much floor space as the North Woolwich one, as well.
Business-wise, she was almost convinced. It was a much better location than where they were. Being so close to the railway station there would always be a constant stream of people, not to mention the thousands that must work in the factories at the end of the road. But it was in the other direction that she was most intrigued. From the upstairs window she could see the ships’ funnels and constantly moving lines of cranes at the docks, not much further beyond the end of the street. The Silvertown dock gate was barely five minutes’ walk as the crow flies.
If she could get in with the shipping lines, even just one, then there could be plenty of regular business, she thought. Think of all the linen the liners have, or even the merchant ships: tablecloths, uniforms, bed linen – one large ship could keep them in work for a week on its own. That could be what makes this a real opportunity, she said to herself. For one thing, Harry knows the docks. He was a post boy there as a lad and knows them inside out. And, for all his faults, he’s got the talk and he speaks the language of the docks. There actually could be something in Constance Street.
‘Will we take a punt, Nell?’
‘I’ll think about it,’ she said as the train pulled in.
He jumped forward and opened the carriage door for her.
‘That’ll do me, doll,’ he said as he followed her in, ‘that’ll do me for now.’
Chapter Seventeen
The Greenwoods arrived in Constance Street in the same month war was declared, July 1914. Win, Norah, Annie and Ivy were enrolled at Drew Road School, a two-minute walk from their new home. Harry painted the entire interior and the place smelled and looked fresh. Within a week the laundry was up and running and open for business, although everything was overshadowed by news of the war. The men’s talk in Cundy’s was of enlisting, especially among the younger fellows, but the dockers thought they would be refused anyway as their services would be better employed where they were.
‘You can’t fight a war without dockers on the quaysides,’ said one. ‘The country and the war effort would grind to a halt in a week.’
At the age of 36 and with five daughters to support, Harry toyed briefly with the thought but soon discarded it. War was a young man’s game, he was too old for this fighting lark, and besides, he’d barely been in a punch-up in his life, let alone anything more serious. With a newly established business and a large, young family to support, there was no way he could countenance it. Besides, Nell would have his guts for garters if he announced he was going off to war. They both knew what it was like to lose a father at a young age; there was no way he was going to risk leaving five young girls to face the world without him.
No, there were younger, better men than him to see off this war. His place was in Constance Street.
The war seemed to make little impact on the street, at least at first. The docks carried on largely as normal, as did the factories. There would be the odd man in khaki in the street and a few of the younger lads signed up, but most of the men of Silvertown were in occupations deemed vital to the war effort.
At No. 15, Harry and Nellie settled in to their new home. The five girls shared two small rooms upstairs and the Greenwoods were soon an established part of the Constance Street community. Other traders from the street called in to welcome them and introduce themselves: Harry’s new friend from Cundy’s, Frank Levitt, the butcher, brought his aprons and overalls in on the first day they opened. Jacob and Laura Eid, a quiet Jewish couple with faint German accents, arrived with a couple of loaves of bread and some pastries from their family bakery on the other side of the road.
‘These might help see you through the day with a cup of tea,’ smiled Jacob.
‘Everyone is very kind here,’ said Laura. ‘You’ll like it. The street looks after its own.’
Business was fairly slow to get going, the odd shirt and the table and bed linen from Cundy’s to begin with, a few old customers from North Woolwich, but with caution and uncertainty about the possible effects of the war at home many people had imposed their own household austerity.
In August they went a whole week without anything coming in. Nell had never known anything like it. There were only so many times she could rearrange the ironing boards and clean the drying racks. It was hot, too, and the air was fetid and heavy. There was no breeze and the smoke from the factories hung over Silvertown in a yellow-brown cloud. The girls were restless and irritable. It was then that Nell remembered an idea she’d had when Harry first mentioned the possibility of moving here. She found him upstairs, going through all his pockets.
‘What are you at?’ she asked him.
‘Oh, nothing much, doll. Thought as we’d no work on I’d scrape together the price of a drink and pop along to Cundy’s for one when they opened. I’ve a rotten thirst on me.’
‘You can forget that for a start,’ she replied. ‘I know you, I wouldn’t see you until last thing tonight and you’d end up owing Frank Levitt a load of money you’d borrowed off him.’
He looked guilty.
‘Here’s what you can do. Take the handcart and go up the docks. There are ships in and out all the time, big ones,’ she said. ‘They’ll all need laundry doing. Go and see what’s come in this morning and sound them out. Tell them that whatever they usually pay we’ll do it cheaper.’
He was gone for the best part of the day. Nell spent the time reorganising the ironing boards, cleaning the irons, soaking the scrubbing brushes and trying to keep busy. She was on her hands and knees scrubbing the shop doorstep in the late afternoon shade when she heard the familiar squeak of the handcart as Harry returned.
She straightened and put her hands on her hips.
‘Any luck?’ she said, cautiously.
‘See for yourself,’ he replied, nodding down at the barrow and lifting off the covering cloth.
She stood up and peered into the cart. Inside was a bundle of heavy white cotton. She reached in, took a handful and lifted.
‘Jackets,’ she said.
‘Half a dozen white stewards’ jackets,’ said Harry, proudly. ‘Property of the SS Tongariro of the New Zealand Shipping Company, currently berthed in the Victoria Dock.’
‘It’s not much,’ said Nell, holding up one of the jackets and noticing what appeared to be a vomit stain on the sleeve. ‘But it’s a start.’
Two days later Harry took the jackets back to the Tongariro, spotlessly white, starched and pressed. When he arrived at the gangway the purser came ashore and examined each one.
‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Not bad at all.’
‘We’re on our way, doll!’ he said when he got back to Constance Street. ‘We’re really on our way!’
It became a routine, Harry wheeling his cart along Constance Street to the docks, taking back clean laundry or collecting dirty linen. In the laundry itself the hot summer of 1914 meant hard work in the laundry among the steam and the damp. Win was old enough to lend a hand when she wasn’t at school, and a couple of local girls came in to do shifts when they were busy.
Harry got to know some of the crews when they’d remain in port for a few days and developed the habit of staying on board for a farewell drink when he’d delivered the clean linen. On one occasion in the autumn of 1914 he was in a mess room on the lower deck getting thoroughly stuck into a bottle of rum and regaling his new pals with some of his best anecdotes. Sitting there in the light of an oil lamp he looked around at the faces and saw a world of experience. These men had seen things he could only dream of, whereas Harry hadn’t been much further than Walthamstow. He remembered his time as a post boy running around the quaysides and feeling the energy of the dockers, the crew men, the officers: it was like the port was one organic being and these great ships were the beating heart.
He was spellbound hearing stories of exotic places like the Sargasso Sea, Port Said, Batavia, and the people and the adventures – and sometimes the women – that his new friends encountered there. He had to admit that it made a part of him yearn to go with them. He loved Nell and he loved his girls, but somewhere in him, he thought, was a sailor and an adventurer waiting to get out – one that would never get the chance.
‘Harry? What are you still doing here?’
It was the purser, a young fellow from Scotland whom he liked very much.
‘Just having a drink, Donald,’ he replied, realising he was possibly a little more drunk than he should be. ‘Come and have one.’
The purser began to laugh.
‘Harry, the reason I’m asking is because we’re underway. We’ve just left the docks and turned into the Thames. We’re going to Chile, Harry.’
There was a pause as the realisation seeped into Harry’s mind, followed quickly by the implications.
‘Oh my Christ,’ he said, grabbing the table with both hands, eyes wide and flashing with fear, ‘she’ll bloody kill me.’
Fortunately for the unlikely bibulous stowaway they were being shown out to the Thames estuary by a pilot boat based at Tilbury.
‘Don’t worry, Harry,’ said the purser. ‘The pilot will come alongside when we’re off Tilbury and take you ashore. Somehow I don’t think you’re cut out for the South Atlantic.’
‘I’m barely cut out for South Woodford,’ he gasped with relief, to roars of laughter.
Once on the pilot boat, Harry watched the giant cargo ship steam off out into the estuary and beyond. There was a small pang of regret as it made steadily for the horizon while he, rum maudlin, made unsteadily for the landing stage and the long train journey back to Silvertown.
It took him a while to get home, trundling through southern Essex into Fenchurch Street, walking to Liverpool Street and taking a train out through his old stamping grounds in Stratford and Forest Gate. He toyed briefly with calling in at Cundy’s for a nightcap before old Cundy rang last orders but immediately thought better of it. Drink had got him into enough trouble already today. He walked past the pub, along Constance Street and let himself in through the front door. He took off his boots, climbed the stairs and undressed silently in the parlour. Then he slipped into the bedroom and as quietly as possible tried to get into bed without Nell noticing. After a few metallic pops and twangs as the bed springs adjusted to his presence, all was quiet and he pulled the blanket over himself with a huge sense of relief.
‘And where the bloody hell have you been?’ came a firm voice from the darkness.
In February 1915 Nellie gave birth again, at the age of 38, to a boy the Greenwoods named Charles Albert Russell. Having lost two previous sons in infancy the couple were understandably cautious, but optimistic.
‘He’s a fighter, this one,’ said Harry.
‘He’ll need to be,’ said Nellie.
Chapter Eighteen
Nell hadn’t been asleep long when something woke her. At first she wasn’t sure what it was. It wasn’t the baby crying, it was something distant. Silvertown existed to a soundtrack of industry: in the daytime the clank and roar of the factories and the occasional throaty rasp of a ship’s foghorn from the docks, and at night the low hum of the engine of industry idling until the early shift clocked on in the morning. But this was something punctuating the hum, a series of distant booms a few seconds apart. She got out of bed and looked out of the window but the street was empty and quiet. If there was a fire at one of the factories – which wasn’t unusual – then there would be a glow in the sky. She couldn’t see anything, so went back to sleep.
The first day of June 1915 dawned bright and sunny but there was an edge to the air. The word had arrived with the first trains of the day and filtered along the streets into the houses, shops and factories. Harry had gone out early, a barrow of clean linen for a troop supply ship in the Vic, but within minutes he was back and agitated.
‘Just bumped into old Ted Erdmann,’ he said. ‘You’ll never guess. The Hun bombed the East End last night.’
‘What?’ said Nell, looking up from the shirt she was ironing.
‘A Zeppelin came over last night, dropping bombs on Whitechapel and Stepney. People killed, houses flattened, the lot. In the middle of the night when folk are abed.’
‘Ted told you this?’
‘Yeah, he was collecting some flour off the early train and the guard told him. Flew in, bold as you like, and dropped bombs on people in their beds. Ordinary people like you and me, doll.’
Nell put the iron down, feeling the blood draining from her face and a cold feeling creeping through her stomach. Ordinary people in their homes, people like them, children like the girls, babies like Charlie. The war had no business coming to east London. The war was at the front, in France, in Belgium. How could the Germans bring the war into people’s homes like that?
‘Many killed?’ she asked with a dry mouth.
‘Didn’t say how many, just that people had been killed. In their beds, in their parlours, in the street getting off a tram, standing minding their own business having a fag, on the way home from the pub …’
He tailed off, noticing Nellie’s shock.
‘’Ere, don’t you be worrying, the chances of us copping a bomb, well, there’s little chance. We’re more likely to drown in a Thames flood than have a bomb drop down the chimney.’
He realised that this was small consolation, walked over and put his arms around her.
‘We’ll be all right, Nell, I promise.’
‘I don’t care about me and you,’ she replied. ‘It’s the girls, and Charlie, that’s all I’m worried about.’
‘Indestructible, us Greenwoods,’ he said, laughing. ‘It’ll take a lot to get rid of us, you see if it doesn’t.’
He let her push him away, and walked out of the door. She watched him as he wheeled the handcart past the window, the familiar squeak of its axle a dissonant accompaniment to his tuneless whistling. She knew he was probably as frightened as she was.
As the day passed, word spread about the previous night’s atrocity and the stories became more outlandish. Nell sensed the darkening of the atmosphere and she didn’t like it. There were stories of German spies shining lights into the sky to guide the bombs, dead children in the streets, a couple found burned alive in their bombed home, their charred corpses kneeling in prayer next to their bed.
Mary O’Bri
en came in from next door looking anxious.
‘Sure, isn’t it a terrible thing altogether?’ she asked, just needing someone to talk to. Mary was in her late forties and with no children to look after, and Nell sometimes had her in to help with the ironing and folding. More to give her something to do than because she needed the help, if she was honest.
‘And barely three weeks after the Lusitania, God rest their souls,’ she went on. The sinking of the Lusitania had been the talk of the docks, and having occurred off the coast of Mary and her husband’s home county of Cork, Mary had felt an extra shivering resonance.
‘I wonder, will they come back tonight?’ said Mary, and Nell detected the pleading for reassurance in her question.
‘I shouldn’t think so, Mary,’ she replied, folding a sheet. ‘They’ve damaged this part of town already, why would they want to come back and bomb the same area? And anyway, we’ll have come up with a way of stopping them getting this far again, I’m sure.’
It was far from convincing but it was the best Nell could do. Mary stood there, chewing her lip.
‘If you want to make yourself useful, Mary, there are some bunk sheets for the Aquitania there that could do with the iron run over them,’ she said.
Around mid-morning Nell stood by the open shop door and looked out into the street. During the day Constance Street was largely the preserve of its women. The men were nearly all at work, leaving early and arriving late, with only Harry and the shopkeepers undermining the daytime matriarchy.
On sunny days Nell liked to stand in the doorway in the mornings before the sun passed overhead. She’d close her eyes and let it warm her face, listening to the Silvertown cacophony and occasionally breaking her reverie at the sound of a passing neighbour’s greeting. On this morning, however, things felt different. There was a tangible tension in the air, as if the factory hums, clanks and screeches were more urgent somehow, more anxious. There were no cheery greetings, indeed, no greetings at all, just, ‘Did you hear? The bombs! So close!’
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