Constance Street

by Charlie Connelly

  Harry’s funeral was probably the biggest Constance Street had ever seen. The hearse was pulled by two magnificent horses with black plumes on their heads. Every door of every house and shop was open and the people stood in sombre silence, bareheaded. The carriage driver, immaculate in formal suit and silk top hat, clicked his teeth and the horses set off, the clop of their hooves on the cobbles echoing around the street. They passed Cundy’s, where the curtains were drawn as a mark of respect to one of its favourite patrons (indeed, Nell would later comment that Harry had received more wreaths from pubs than anywhere else, some of which she’d never even heard of), and the procession made its way the short distance to St Mark’s.

  That night, Constance Street gave Harry a good send-off. Cundy’s was packed with people, its busiest night in years, the light and warmth from inside spilling out onto the pavements. The piano tinkled and songs were sung and the smile returned to Nell’s face. She declined, however, to reprise her Vesta Tilley performance. She was 58 now, older than Vesta herself had been when she took her final bow.

  Rose detached herself from her new beau, a brewery driver named Charlie White, and came over to Nell.

  ‘All right, Mum?’ she said.

  ‘Yes, love, I’m fine.’

  ‘Dad would have loved to be here,’ she said.

  Nell smiled at her. ‘Oh, he’s here, love,’ she said, her face creasing into a smile. ‘He wouldn’t miss this for the world.’

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  The Greenwood Christmas of 1937 was given extra spice by the wedding of Rose and Charlie White. Christmas Day had seemed a sensible day to get married: the family would all be together anyway and nobody would have to worry about trying to get time off work; also, the previous year’s festivities having been given a melancholy air by the absence of Harry, the latest Greenwood nuptials would ensure that the day would have happy memories for everyone.

  Nell thought the world of Charlie. Well, he was a Stratford boy, so he had to be all right. He had a good job driving for the Taylor Walker brewery over at Limehouse and used to deliver to Cundy’s as well as loading his lorry at the beer stores close to North Woolwich station. One day he’d popped in to the chemist on Albert Road where Rose worked and had been immediately smitten by the girl with the big, pale blue eyes. It didn’t take Rose long to notice that the young fella from the brewery with the nice smile was buying a lot of headache pills and cough syrup, and when Charlie plucked up the courage to ask her to go for a walk with him in the Royal Victoria Gardens the following weekend she agreed without hesitation.

  By this time Kit had taken over the hairdresser’s next door to the laundry, meaning the Greenwoods now had three businesses on Constance Street. Kit, always the most fashion-conscious and outgoing of the girls, had been courting Albert Dunbar for some time, and gave birth to Lorna in 1931.

  Lorna would be one of Rose’s bridesmaids for the Christmas Day wedding. As well as the fact that Christmas Day meant most of the family would be around, including Annie back from Devon, on a practical level given the straitened times it also meant saving money by combining Christmas with the wedding celebrations. St Mark’s was barely five minutes’ walk away, which made the whole occasion about as low maintenance as it got.

  The day itself was shrouded in a classic Silvertown fog (so thick that they all had to reconvene a few weeks later to take the official photographs), the church was freezing and the vicar was drunk and wearing his carpet slippers, but nobody seemed to mind.

  The economy wedding represented tough times for Silvertown in the late thirties. Even the fog seemed symbolic of how this former industrial powerhouse was now largely forgotten outside its watery borders, hidden from the rest of London. Unemployment was higher than ever and the overcrowding of some of the housing, much of it in terrible condition, was chronic.

  The poverty in the area was some of the worst in London and, while there wasn’t a pawn shop on Constance Street itself, the pawnbroking establishments in the area did a roaring trade. Yet people still retained their dignity: there was an old woman from Andrew Street who for a small fee took people’s items to the pawnbroker’s in a pram she pushed through the streets so that people weren’t seen going in and out of the shops.

  The spirit of community still held strong. The island mentality forged over the decades meant the community looked after its own. Children still played in Constance Street, the boys improvising cricket bats from pieces of wood and pretending to be Len Hutton or Wally Hammond, or kicking an old tennis ball around the cobblestones and dreaming that Charlie Paynter, the manager of West Ham United, might happen to be passing and take them for a trial at Upton Park. The girls would skip using a long rope, seeing how many they could get in a line, shrieking and laughing as the rope passed under them. On warm nights people, especially the women, sat out on stools or on their doorsteps talking across the street to each other, setting the world to rights.

  The 1936 Battle of Cable Street, when Oswald Mosley’s blackshirts tried to march through a predominantly Jewish area of east London and were put to flight by locals, was far enough away not to have threatened Silvertown directly but near enough to cause unease and extra vigilance around the Jewish businesses in the area. The people here were Silvertown people first and foremost. The hardship and relative isolation created a firm bond that overrode all other considerations. The Tate Institute, opened by Sir Henry Tate ostensibly just for the employees of his sugar refinery, provided a focus for the whole community: people could go in for refreshments, even use the bar, borrow books and read the newspapers, pensively boning up on the rise of Hitler in Germany. Silvertown remained solidly united and left wing: if Mosley’s fascists had ventured further east after Cable Street, they would have got short shrift from the marsh dwellers.

  On that foggy, cold Christmas Day, then, as Rose Greenwood married Charlie White and the party carried on late into Christmas night, Silvertown was, against the odds, battling on and surviving.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Nell never minded being woken by the sound of a baby crying. It gave a sense, she felt, of the circle of life still turning. Twenty-five years she’d lived at 15 Constance Street now, since just after poor Cissie had died, and the eaves had resonated to all sorts of sounds in that time. The explosion, the arguments, the laughter, the songs, the parties, the tears, and plenty of babies crying. She wondered whether buildings retained their sounds, whether everything was stored in the fabric of the building, whether the cries of Rose and Charlie’s four-month-old daughter Valerie were making the old place remember Ruby, Joan, poor little Charlie and Rose herself crying in the same way. She sucked her teeth as she realised it didn’t seem five minutes since Rose was a baby, yet here she was, a mother herself now.

  It was 7 September 1940. It was more than four years since Harry had died and the place still felt big and empty without him. Some of the girls had left Silvertown now; only Kit, Ruby, Rose and Joan remained. The others visited often but they had their own lives and their own families. She could see why they’d want to leave Silvertown with its claustrophobic ambience, the smoke, the noise, the hardship, the feeling of being hemmed in by water on all sides, but Nell appreciated the closeness of the community. Many of the things that made it unappealing, she thought, also made it appealing. Rose and Charlie seemed happy, anyway. She’d overheard Rose telling the baby that she had dock water in her veins – indeed, she’d practically been born on the Thames when Rose went into labour on the Woolwich Ferry – so maybe they would stay. Certainly Nell couldn’t see herself living anywhere else.

  Roused by Val’s cries, Nell got up and went to make the tea. It was rationed now, but nobody should start the day without a cup of tea, she thought. She stood at the sink and looked out at the back yard, still half expecting to see Harry lolling against the back gate, puffs of smoke drifting up to the sky.

  The laundry was quieter these days, but they were still getting by. This war was having a much more noticeab
le effect on Silvertown than the last one, everything from the identity cards and ration books to the postbox at the end of the road having its top painted yellow (special paint, apparently, that would change colour in the event of a gas attack). The air-raid siren was a regular event. Too regular, thought Nell, especially for business people having to leave everything and troop off to the shelter in Tate & Lyle’s. Well, it wasn’t really even a proper shelter: it was a basement behind an unloading bay so the entrance was at lorry-bed height. The women had to be lifted into it, and last week Ruby had been in the bath when the siren had gone. She’d only had time to put her dressing gown on, and when the men went to lift her into the shelter she went straight and stiff as a board – if she’d bent her legs she’d have had everything on display. ‘Bleedin’ ’ell, love,’ they said, ‘bend yer legs, will yer?’ but she stayed ramrod straight in order to preserve her dignity.

  Once again Silvertown itself seemed cosseted from the war, up to a point. The docks were a protected occupation, as were most of the factories, so only a few of the men were going off to fight. They couldn’t even have Anderson shelters, as the old marshes were too wet: you only had to dig down a couple of foot and the hole would start filling with water. Hence the unofficial shelters at Tate’s and a little further afield at the swimming baths on Oriental Road.

  But if Silvertown folk were used to anything it was inconvenience and hardship. The children still played in the streets, and the men went to work, if they had work, and came home via Cundy’s. Like most streets of its kind the women came together whenever one of their own went into labour. Where men would gather around a car with its bonnet up and each give their opinion and advice, so broken waters and contractions would have the street’s womenfolk gathering to do exactly the same.

  After breakfast Nell got ready to go and visit Norah and John over at Shepherd’s Bush. They’d run the grocery so well that after a couple of years John had been offered a job as a buyer for a chain of greengrocers and the family had moved over to west London. Norah was working at Tower Cressy, a children’s home in Notting Hill, from where they fostered children and would adopt a daughter, Carol, after the war. Nell wondered how they found the time, as Norah was still as bustling and busy as ever and managed to keep the house spotless on top of everything, and John was up, out and away every day long before dawn to get to Covent Garden market. Well, maybe today she’d find out.

  She put on her coat and straightened her hat in the mirror at the top of the stairs. She was starting to look her 62 years, and some days she certainly felt it. Not today, though. Today was a warm, sunny late summer’s day, with a deep blue sky almost completely untroubled by cloud. Sometimes it was good to get out of Silvertown, to get off the island, and this was a beautiful day to do just that. She descended the stairs, squeezed past Valerie’s pram in the passage, opened the door and stepped out into the street. A trio of girls ran past, their shrill giggles adding to her cheerful mood. Constance Street looked good in the sunshine, she thought. The shop fronts were a little sparse thanks to the war, but the shopkeepers were house-proud and kept their signs and sills brightly painted and clean. It had been almost exactly a year since war had been declared, she reflected, and the hardships hadn’t been much worse than they usually were.

  She caught the smell of freshly baked bread on the breeze coming from the Eid Brothers bakery and watched as one of the boys from No. 24 carefully chalked a wicket on the front wall of the house, tongue sticking out of the side of his mouth in concentration as he did so. She walked past the café and Kit’s hairdressers, where she could see her daughter deep in conversation with a large middle-aged woman in the chair who was turning her head from side to side, examining herself in the mirror. She passed Cundy’s, not yet open for business but its brass lamps glinting in the sunshine, the smell of the previous night’s stale beer pushed into the street by the fan in the window, and thought of Harry singing ‘Ain’t It Grand to be Bloomin’ Well Dead’ there on jubilee day. She crossed to the station, turned back and looked the length of the street that had been her world for the past quarter of a century. The sun was behind her, the sky was clear blue and the cobbled road led her eye to its far end and the dock cranes in the background. She smiled to herself, then turned into the station to catch her train.

  Chapter Forty

  Charlie was on the move that day too: he had to go to Woolwich to pick up a part for his van. He kissed Rose goodbye, galloped down the stairs pulling on his jacket, jumped into the van and with a crunching of gears headed to the end of Constance Street, turned left along Albert Road and made for the Woolwich Ferry.

  Rose spent the day playing with Valerie and talking to Joan. As the sun passed over they sat in the back yard, skirts pulled up over their knees to get some sun on their legs, the door to the laundry open so they could hear the tinkle of the bell over the shop door if anyone came in. Val lay on a blanket in a shady spot by the fence. A radio played in a yard a few doors down, big band music drifting up on the breeze and rising just above the general Silvertown hum.

  They talked about the war, how in the previous week there had been sporadic German bombing raids on the Albert Dock, and only a couple of nights earlier bombs had fallen on Prince Regent Lane just the other side of the docks.

  ‘Bit close for comfort,’ said Rose.

  ‘You’ll only cop it if your name’s on it,’ said Joan. ‘Besides, they’re only after the docks, not the houses.’

  ‘All the bleedin’ trouble we go to with the blackouts and it only needs a moonlit night for the Thames and the docks to light up like Piccadilly Circus,’ Rose lamented.

  They thought for a moment about putting Val in the pram and having a walk.

  ‘Not much point,’ said Joan. Lyle Park was now pitted with anti-invasion trenches, while much of the gardens had been turned over to growing potatoes. ‘If I want to look at a load of spuds I can just pop next door to the shop.’

  As the late afternoon began to cool they moved inside.

  ‘Better think about what we’ll have for tea,’ said Rose.

  ‘Well, I’m going over the shops in Stratford with Kit, so you needn’t worry about us,’ said Joan. ‘Mum’s staying with Norah tonight and Rube’s at a friend’s over the other side of the river. Will your Charlie be back?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Rose. ‘I think he was meeting Ruby’s Ernie over the other side and they’ll probably have a drink.’

  ‘Looks like just you and the baby then, gel,’ said Joan. ‘Well, there’s plenty in.’

  She stood up and brushed her skirt down.

  ‘Poor old Val,’ she said. ‘All she’s ever known is rations and blackouts and gawd knows what else.’ She addressed Val directly, calling out, ‘Don’t worry, gel, it won’t always be like this. It might get worse ’fore it gets better, but it will get better.’

  She kissed the baby and kissed Rose on the cheek.

  ‘See you later, Rose,’ she said. ‘You’ll not be short of grub, anyway.’

  With so many ration books in the house they didn’t do too badly for food in the circumstances. Charlie seemed to be able to get his hands on a few extras too; he knew plenty of people at the docks, where the occasional crate or sack might conveniently be misplaced into, say, a brewery van.

  ‘I’ll look to get some work over there,’ he’d said. ‘Save me being out driving all over the shop all day.’

  Rose took the baby upstairs and sang her gently to sleep, then went to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. No sooner had she set the kettle over the gas than the air-raid siren began to wail.

  ‘Oh gawd,’ she said, ‘here we go. Hark at bleedin’ moaning Minnie. Just when I’ve got the baby off an’ all.’

  She sighed and began to gather a few things together to help Val and her pass the time over at the Tate & Lyle shelter.

  ‘Quarter to five on a Saturday afternoon,’ she said, ‘as if there’ll be a raid at a quarter to five on a Saturday afternoon.’r />
  She packed a bag with a few essentials but didn’t think they’d be gone long. And at least it wasn’t the middle of the night. She’d buttered a currant bun from Eid’s, a bit of an extravagance under rationing, but Charlie reckoned he could lay his hands on a bit of butter that week. She ate the top half and left the bottom half for later, when the all-clear sounded.

  She went upstairs to pick up Valerie from the back bedroom, the one where, although she didn’t give it a thought, she’d slept as a baby herself – the bedroom in which she’d been blown out of her cot when Brunner Mond’s had gone up in 1917.

  ‘Come on, gel,’ she said to Valerie, who started to cry in protest at this sudden and rude arousal. ‘I know, I know,’ said Rose between shushing sounds, ‘I don’t like it any more than you do. But the sooner we can get over there the sooner we can come back.’

  She picked up the baby, picked up the bag she’d prepared and carefully made her way down the stairs. She opened the door, looked back for a moment trying to think whether she’d forgotten anything important, then stepped into the street and closed the door behind her. She turned, noticed that the factory sounds had stopped – one advantage of a daytime siren was that you could down tools for the duration until the all-clear – and then began walking down Constance Street, joining a trickle of neighbours, all slumped shoulders and rolling eyes at the inconvenience.

  Rose was halfway over the station footbridge when she first noticed the low hum. She stopped and looked to the east, to where the noise was coming from. There were a lot of specks in the sky, she noticed, and there were white puffs of smoke appearing around them. Some of the specks were silver and the sun glinted off them; others were larger and black. At first Rose thought they must be British planes in formation, heading up the Thames on some kind of training flight, but then she heard a few distant thumps – bombs dropping on the Ford works at Dagenham, she found out later – and the cold realisation sank into her stomach.