Constance Street

by Charlie Connelly

  And then the spell was broken.

  ‘Long live the King,’ someone shouted.

  ‘Long live the King,’ came the murmured response from the throng.

  The evening was fairly restrained, most of the bacchanalian behaviour having burnt itself out during the day. As the air cooled and the street lamps came on, there was the clink of crockery being piled and the tinkle of gathered cutlery. The piano was pushed, lifted and jolted back inside the pub, sending it even further out of tune, and the radio sets were taken back into homes or away from windows. Table cloths were lifted and folded, chairs taken back inside and the tables themselves, around which family dramas and frolics were played out every day, were folded, lifted and carried back to their usual places. In the kitchens, kettles were boiled, sleeves were rolled up, and tired women sighed as they prepared to tackle the washing up. Upstairs, children lay asleep in their beds, exhausted and sunburnt from the day’s excitement, little cardboard and tissue paper hats placed reverentially in a spot where they’d be seen as soon as they woke the next morning.

  As the night progressed, the few last stragglers left Cundy’s, the door was bolted behind them and lights over the signs were extinguished. A few minutes later the pools of light on the pavement outside the windows disappeared as the last of the staff flung a bar towel over a shoulder, took one last look around, turned off the lights and plodded wearily up the stairs. The street was empty now and lights winked off in windows all along its length. There may have been intense hardship in the area, it may have been a hard way of life at a particularly tough time across the nation, but, hemmed in there between the Thames, the factories and the docks, in streets that sat on marshland below the level of the high tide, Constance Street had forgotten all that for just a day.

  Now it had returned to normal, save for the bunting that linked each house and shop and fluttered in the breeze as the full moon came out from behind a silver-tinged cloud and threw the faint shadows of paper flags gently onto the street below.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  It was exactly a month since the King had died, the ailing monarch having been given a lethal dose of morphine and cocaine by his physician just before midnight on 20 January 1936 in order that his death would be announced in the following morning’s edition of The Times rather than the ‘less appropriate evening journals’. Earlier in the evening the physician, Lord Dawson, had released the famous statement, ‘The King’s life is drawing peacefully towards its close.’

  Harry Greenwood woke early. It had been a fitful night in a ward filled with coughing, moaning, snoring, farting men in a draughty room high up in Whipps Cross Hospital.

  He began coughing, a rattling, phlegmy cough that shot mucus into his mouth. He turned sideways and propped himself uneasily on his elbow, holding his hand a few inches in front of his mouth, and coughed hard and long. Globules of yellow slime smacked into his palm, its membrane streaked with blood. He tried to examine them but his hand was shaking so much from the DTs that his rheumy eyes could barely focus. He slumped back on the thin, lumpy mattress and balled the grey, sweat-soaked sheets in front of his chest in his trembling hands. His breath came shallow, rasping and gasping as he lay there staring at the wall and his salty sickness tears rolled onto the pillow.

  The dreams had been bad, again. A bombardment of images, of a dead girl in rubble, of dead men with flesh burnt red and black floating in the sea, of coughing up rivers of thick black fluid, of being submerged in dark water and hearing the muffled sound of a voice calling his name, a voice he recognised as Cissie’s.

  A few miles away Nell woke early too, finding the sheets balled tightly in her hands. When she sensed the presence in the bed next to her for a moment she felt her heart leap, then remembered it was Rose and that neither of them had wanted to sleep alone in Harry’s absence.

  ‘You awake, Mum?’ said Rose, who lay with her back to her mother.

  ‘Yes, love,’ said Nell. ‘You all right?’

  ‘Yeah. Did you sleep much?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘No, me neither.’

  Harry had had a bad cough since not long after the jubilee street party. Nobody was too surprised by its persistence: he was in his late fifties and had been a heavy smoker since his early teens (not to mention having spent most of his adult life in the fume-shrouded dampness of Silvertown, living over a laundry that gave out warm, moist air for most of the day), but it seemed to become gradually worse. The drinking didn’t help, of course. The number of times his clothes would ignite after he fell asleep in front of the fire ensured this was no longer as funny as it once was, and the number of occasions he came home late after being taken off a ship at Tilbury had increased in regularity.

  When he was found asleep on a bench at Tilbury in the rain the morning after again being put off a ship there, the cough worsened. He’d made his way home in wet clothes and nursing a hangover, arriving in Constance Street coughing, shivering and pale. Nell had tempered her anger when she’d seen the state of him and sent him up to bed where he remained for the rest of the day and night, the night King George had died.

  He’d felt a little better the next morning and got up, dressed and announced he was going to the dock to pick up his van. He was gone for a long time, until eventually the van pulled up outside, driven by a man Nell had never seen before, a stout man in heavy, waxed trousers and a cap. Harry was in the passenger seat and was then helped up the stairs, looking even frailer with the docker’s meaty arm around him.

  ‘Hello, doll,’ Harry had said, weakly. He was almost paper white and waxy.

  ‘He came over all queer, missus,’ the docker told her. ‘Near collapsed in me arms, he did. His eyes rolled and he could hardly breathe. We sat him down and gave him tea and he kept talking about taking his van back, but he was in no condition to drive.’

  He helped him into the armchair, where Harry flopped down like a rag doll.

  ‘Rotten cough he has, too,’ added the man, holding the van key out to Nell. ‘Wants to get that seen to.’

  He nodded at Nell and the sound of his thumping footsteps down the stairs gave way to Harry’s rasping breathing. His eyes rolled sideways and met hers.

  ‘Roll us a gasper, doll,’ he croaked. ‘Please.’

  For the next three weeks he’d improved and declined. While the nation mourned its king, 15 Constance Street fretted around Harry. The street rallied around one of its biggest characters. The Eids sent over bread, Stagg’s fried fish shop a few doors up would send him down a supper every now and again, while the regulars at Cundy’s would come and sit at his bedside telling stories. After an appropriate length of time there’d be a furtive, over-the-shoulder glance to make sure Nell wasn’t watching and a hip flask would be slipped from an inside pocket and the lid unscrewed. Harry would grasp it eagerly and tip the contents into his mouth, and the stories would begin again, louder and funnier than before.

  Nell and Rose lay in the darkness, neither wanting to articulate their thoughts or, more importantly, their fears. At night they’d often hear him shouting in his sleep, sometimes angry, sometimes terrified, and one or both would go to him and his eyes would flick open, frightened and agitated. Then the coughing would start again.

  One night Rose had gone in while he was murmuring in his sleep and becoming more agitated. In his thrashing he’d kicked his legs clear of the sheet and they looked so thin and white, she thought, his knee joints standing proud and the scar on his thigh looking red and angry.

  ‘It’s all right, Dad,’ she said soothingly, and his eye snapped open and his hand shot out and gripped her forearm so hard she yelped in pain. Immediately he apologised, saying, ‘Sorry, Rosie, I’m so sorry,’ and the tears flowed onto the sweat-soaked bedding and the coughing started anew.

  Now, as she and Nell lay blinking in the dark, they almost wished they could hear the coughing and shouting from the next room. There and then, it seemed more bearable than the silence.

  The do
ctor had diagnosed chronic bronchitis a week earlier, taking Nell to one side to express another worry.

  ‘I’m concerned about his heart,’ he said, pursing his lips. ‘I think that episode at the docks might have been something to do with his heart. The coughing and the laboured breathing are putting an extra strain on it, and if it’s weak then that would be a cause for concern. At the first sign of any fainting or chest pain, I think you should get him to a hospital. He’s fine here for the moment, I think, but any deterioration and we will need more specialised help.’

  Joan and Rose had noticed how quiet Nell had become since Harry was taken bad. The laundry was running nicely – it practically ran itself – and Harry’s younger brother Charlie was helping out by making the runs to and from the docks, but the atmosphere was tense. Ruby, Joan and Rose would take turns sitting with Harry, dabbing the sweat from his brow, emptying the chamber pot, bringing up a bowl of steaming water for him to breathe in, but Nell would stay downstairs during the day, folding laundry and going through the accounts. In the quiet moments of the day the muffled sound of Harry coughing would resonate through the ceiling and emphasise how much his presence was missed. Normally during opening hours he’d either be in the laundry joking with customers and the girls or out in the van, in which case there would be an expectancy in the air about his return.

  Then came the morning when, as they busied themselves preparing for the working day, they’d heard a thump from upstairs. When Rose and Joan burst into the room they found their father on the floor, gasping for breath and with skin as pale and waxy as death. Since that day, three days before Nell and Rose woke up together in the azure light of the pre-dawn, Harry had been in Whipps Cross Hospital.

  ‘He’ll be all right, won’t he, Mum?’ said Rose’s voice from the dark.

  ‘He’d better be, love,’ said Nell. ‘We’ll go and see him later.’

  The day was strangely upbeat after that. The laundry was busy, which helped to make the time pass quicker, neighbours would keep dropping in to ask after Harry, and Nell and the girls felt more confident with each improvised prognosis.

  Lil Smale came in to see if there had been any developments and had a long chat with Nell, the two women sitting behind the counter reminiscing. Lil recalled how when she first stayed at Constance Street and couldn’t sleep for nightmares, Nell would carry her to her bed and read her The Adventures of Pinocchio.

  ‘But every time, you’d start all over again, at the beginning,’ said Lil. ‘I think I must know the first few pages off by heart, even now, but I’ve no idea what happens after that.’

  Lil was quick to laugh, which helped to lift Nell’s spirits, and when they came to close up for the day there was a curious optimism in the air, as if any moment Harry would come bursting through the door babbling about what he’d seen at the docks.

  ‘A baby elephant!’ he’d announced one day a year or so earlier, blue eyes flashing. ‘Right there in front of me on the dockside, a bleedin’ baby elephant in a little cage! Put its little trunk through the bars, it did. I held out me ham roll and it took it! Bold as you like! Took it in its trunk and popped it in its mouth, whole! It looked delighted with itself! Wish I could have brought it home.’

  ‘I remember the palaver we had over that Christmas goose,’ Nell had said, ‘let alone a baby elephant. For one thing, baby elephants grow into great big adult elephants. Imagine having to get round one of them when you’re heading out to the lavvy with your Stratford Express.’

  ‘Yeah, doll, but imagine the fun,’ he said, putting his arm round Nell’s shoulders. ‘We could give all the kids rides and the Eids could retire early on the takings from all the rolls.’

  Nell bolted the shop door and went through to the passage. ‘Ready, girls?’ she called upstairs. A flurry of activity indicated that Rose and Joan were on their way down the stairs.

  Harry had had a quiet day, for him. He’d eaten his bread and jam for breakfast but hadn’t touched much of his soup at lunchtime. For one thing the shaking in his hands made eating soup an arduous task. The nurses were kind and had changed his sweat-soaked sheets to make him a bit more comfortable, and the coughing seemed to have subsided a little. He hated the coughing fits, the way his whole, tired, shaking body would jerk and spasm, and the coloured lights would appear at the fringes of his vision like shooting stars, or the flares he’d seen going up at Gallipoli.

  The days were long and boring and he yearned for the bustle of the docks, the familiar faces, the grand, elegant, majestic ships easing their way in through the locks, the cranes constantly on the move, the shouts and the whistles, the men rushing back and forth with sack barrows and crates. He missed the docks. He missed his girls, too. They all came in to see him when they could. Maybe they’d be in tonight when they’d finished up, although they wouldn’t have long, with the visiting hours being so strict.

  It began to get dark. He’d come to dread the night, with the terrors it brought, the terrible images that would flicker across his subconscious. He almost feared sleep these days. He lay back on the bed and looked at the ceiling. He rested an arm across his chest but it felt heavy, as if pressing down on him, but when he let his arm slip to the side again he still felt its heaviness on the middle of his chest.

  Joan and Rose waited a moment while Nell locked the street door and then the three of them set off towards Silvertown Station. They’d just reached the corner by Cundy’s when Mr Douglass, the butcher who’d taken over from Frank Levitt, called after them.

  ‘How’s Harry?’

  ‘Not too bad,’ said Nell. ‘We’re just going in to see him now.’

  ‘Give him my best, won’t you? He’s one of the good ones, is Harry.’

  Nell smiled back at him, said she’d be sure to pass on his good wishes, and the three of them crossed Connaught Road.

  Still feeling the pressure on his chest, Harry was suddenly conscious of a rhythmic rumbling deep beneath him. The engines, he thought, the engines are starting. He sat up and wondered where everyone else had gone, but saw the bottle and the glass in front of him and thought, well, it’s nice and warm and, at last, thank goodness, a drink. I’ll pour meself one in a second once I’ve loosened this overall, it’s so tight I can hardly bloody breathe.

  Nell bought their tickets and looked at the timetable on the board. They had about five minutes to wait. It was dark now, but the night was clear and she could see the stars, a rare thing in Silvertown.

  ‘Look, girls,’ she said, ‘look at the stars.’

  Harry’s chest felt suddenly easier, to his immense relief. He could breathe more easily too, and there was no urge to cough – the first time there’d been no wheezy tickle in his chest for weeks. He breathed deeply and looked around the empty mess room. It was spotless, all whitewashed ironwork and rivets. Must be a brand new ship, he thought.

  He looked at the bottle on the table again, and the ruby red rum inside. It looked delicious. It had been days since he’d had a drink so he was going to savour this one. He didn’t want to drink alone, though; this was a bottle to be shared, even if there was only one glass out. No, he’d wait. For the others.

  He became aware of the rhythmic throbbing again. The engines. The engines had started. They were sailing. Oh blimey, he thought, I’ve only bleedin’ gorn and done it again. She’ll be having my guts for garters. And I’ve not even had a drink!

  A door opened. It must have been an external door, he thought, because the light behind it was dazzling. A figure stepped through it. He shielded his eyes from the light and as they adjusted he saw it was a young girl, no more than 16. She looked familiar, too. Very much like Cissie, he thought, but she was standing straight. The more his eyes grew accustomed, though, the clearer her face became. It couldn’t be, though. It really couldn’t be.

  ‘Cissie?’ he said.

  ‘Tell you what,’ said Rose, blowing on her hands, ‘this platform must be the coldest place in the country when that wind whistles through.’
/>   ‘Well, you will only wear that thin coat,’ said Joan. ‘No wonder you’re cold.’

  ‘I’m telling you, you could wear any coat on this platform and that wind would go right through you,’ said Rose. ‘Look at it, it’s a natural wind tunnel. It comes right in off the sea, up the estuary, up the river and then gets funnelled along from North Woolwich. This must be the coldest place in the country.’

  Above the hiss and clank of the rubber works Nell heard the puff and whistle of the approaching train. She looked across at the deserted platform opposite and suddenly remembered the day Harry had appeared there, like a mirage emerging from the steam as she’d stood on this same spot twenty years ago, almost to the day, making another pilgrimage to a hospital. She shuddered and pulled her coat tighter around herself.

  ‘I think Rose is right,’ she said. ‘You don’t get many colder places than this.’

  ‘Cissie!’ cried Harry. ‘I don’t bloody believe it! How are you, gel?’

  ‘Hello, Dad,’ she smiled. ‘Everything’s going to be fine now.’

  ‘But the engines,’ he said, ‘they’ve started. We have to go!’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ said Cissie. ‘It’s definitely time to go.’

  She turned and walked through the door, leaving it open for him to follow. He stood up, blinked against the light a couple of times, looked down at the bottle for a moment, and strode towards the door.

  The train eased itself to a halt, the engine sending out a hissing cloud of steam. The girls, keen to get into the relative warmth of the carriage, opened the door and climbed in.

  ‘Come on, Mum,’ said Joan. ‘Get in here out of the cold.’

  Nell looked up to see the stars again, but they were all hidden now, behind the smoke.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven