The Flower Girl

by The Flower Girl (retail) (epub)

  The engine suddenly burst into noisy life.

  ‘There y’are, Cis.’ He straightened up and rubbed his aching back. It was hard for him to acknowledge how quickly he’d grown soft, sitting at home all day – starting a truck would hardly have taken his breath away in the old days. ‘Now, are you sure you don’t wanna wait till Gladys gets back and I’ll come with yer?’

  ‘I’m sure, Ern,’ Cissie shouted over the engine noise, reassuring him for what seemed like the hundredth time that she could manage alone. She clambered up into the cab. ‘You’re doing me a much bigger favour keeping an eye on the kids.’ She smiled sheepishly. ‘Yer know how Lil would’ve carried on.’

  With that, Cissie slammed the cab door shut, released the handbrake with surprisingly little effort, and pulled off the waste ground, taking her eyes off the cobbled surface of Linman Street only to flash a quick, triumphant grin at herself in the rear-view mirror before turning at a cautious crawl into Upper North Street. She could just imagine what Ethel and Myrtle were saying about young women driving trucks by themselves.

  She felt so pleased with herself, that it wasn’t until she came to a shuddering halt at the junction with East India Dock Road that Cissie even thought about whether she could remember how to get to the lock-up where Davy kept the stall.

  When she eventually pulled into the narrow turning off Middlesex Street, where the Petticoat Lane and other local street traders kept their stalls and stock, Cissie was hot, sticky and more than a little angry with herself. She had driven around in circles for almost an hour before she had recognised the street she wanted. If she was going to make a success of being the breadwinner, and be able to keep herself and the kids out of the workhouse, she really would have to do better than this.

  With a weary sigh, and her dress clinging stickily around her thighs, Cissie dropped down on to the hot tarry blocks of the roadway. Raucous shouts and appreciative whistles greeted her from across the street before she could even begin to restore her modesty.

  Mortified, Cissie hurriedly averted her eyes. She knew she should have worn her black costume, they’d have shown respect to a widow. But it was so hot, and she had to be strong and determined if she was going to carry on, so why shouldn’t she wear a summer’s dress on a flaming hot day?

  ‘Had a good eyeful have yer?’ she snapped at them. ‘Why don’t you just sod off and get on with what yer meant to be doing? Or is that yer job, shouting at women?’

  Her indignation only had the effect of sending the two men, who she now saw were supposedly repairing the wheel of a stall, into loud, impertinent laughter.

  Furiously she dragged her handbag out of the cab and began frantically digging around in it for Davy’s keys. The keys she had definitely put in there before she left. She could even remember taking them off the hook inside the cupboard door. If only her hands weren’t trembling so much.

  Cissie eventually did manage to find the keys, and then, after more struggling, to find the right key on the bunch, and finally to get it into the padlock, and to fold the high doors back on their hinges.

  She stepped inside the lock-up. After being outside in the bright late morning sunshine, it took Cissie a moment to focus in the gloom, but then, there it was, the stall.

  She bit her lip, still vaguely aware of the men’s raucously crude remarks coming from behind her, but they no longer had any effect on her, not now. Compared to this, they meant nothing. It might have been just a few pieces of wood and wheels covered in a dusty tarpaulin throwover, but to Cissie the stall was as potent as a dried rose petal falling from between the leaves of a book of love poetry.

  Slowly, she reached out and lifted the edge of the cover and ran her finger along the red and green painted surfaces. The colour stood out fresh and bright as jewels in the dim light of the lock-up. It was as though Davy had parked it there just the night before.

  But he hadn’t.

  She pulled her hand away.

  Davy hadn’t been there for six whole long, agony-filled weeks. Weeks that had passed in a hateful blur of disbelief, pain and denial.

  ‘Oi!’ one of the men called out. Angry that Cissie hadn’t succumbed to his charms, he had become hostile instead. ‘What you up to over there? Who give you permission to poke about?’

  Cissie spun around to face him. ‘Not that it’s anything to do with you, moosh,’ she hollered back across the road, ‘but this lock-up was me husband’s, and now…’ She hesitated, the words were almost choking her.

  ‘And now what?’ the man sneered.

  ‘And now,’ she managed to go on, ‘it’s mine. All right? And you can keep yer dirty mouths shut and yer filthy talk to yourselves and all, you dirty pair of buggers.’

  With that, Cissie turned back to the stall, and with energy that surprised her, she ripped off the heavy sheet, threw it to the ground, and set about dragging the stall outside.

  By the time she had finally manoeuvred it out on to the road, and had checked that the lock-up and truck were secure, Cissie felt worn out, but she was damned if she’d let the two now sniggering men see what an effort she was finding it all.

  ‘Right,’ she said loudly, grasping the handles firmly and shoving the unwieldy contraption forward. ‘That’s me organised. I’d better be on me way. Got lots to do. Unlike some people I could mention.’ She treated them both to a brief sneer of contempt. ‘See you then. Gentlemen.’

  ‘I think yer’ll find, darling,’ one of them retorted gleefully, ‘that yer meant to pull the bleed’n thing, not push it!’

  * * *

  The journey to Davy’s pitch was even worse than the drive to the lock-up from Linman Street, even though she had, as soon as she was out of sight of her sarcastic adviser, actually followed his suggestion and had started pulling the stall.

  By the time she reached her destination, Davy’s old pitch, Cissie’s hands, unused to such punishment, were blistered and sore, and her dress felt damp and horrible. But at least she had made it. She positioned the stall between St Botolph’s church and the entrance to Aldgate station, close by the door of the old factory building – just where Davy had always put it – then she leant back against the rough brick wall to recover.

  She gave herself a few moments, then, summoning more strength than she thought she possessed, she set about getting the vases, jars and buckets from the compartment under the stall and setting them out in neat rows on the banked painted shelving. Cissie found it oddly soothing, arranging the containers. She had always had a flair for that sort of thing, an eye for making things look nice – putting a lacy doily here, a little mirror there. It was one of the things that Davy had always admired in her.

  When she was satisfied with her display, she ran along to the cigarette kiosk by the station and asked the man inside the little glass-fronted booth where she could get some water to fill them up.

  The man seemed surprised by her request, and when Cissie insisted that she had every right to be there with the stall, he called across to a shady-looking group of men who were sitting on old orange boxes by the newspaper stall in the station forecourt playing a disorderly game of chase the lady.

  The toughest-looking of the group rose slowly to his feet and stared at her. Despite the weather, he was wearing a dark, heavy suit and a snap-brimmed hat which cast shadows across his face. There was something about him that made Cissie uneasy, and something vaguely familiar too, but as soon as he spoke, it was what he had to say rather than his identity that was of most interest to Cissie.

  ‘You ain’t got no flowers,’ he growled, inclining his head towards the stall. ‘So you might as well piss off out of it. Anyway,’ he added, jerking his thumb over his shoulder to a stall on the other side of the station, ‘Richie there’s selling all the flowers they need in these parts.’

  ‘Do what?’ Cissie gasped, taking in the presence of the rival stall for the first time. She’d been so preoccupied with setting up, she hadn’t thought of looking along the street to check out whether
she had any opposition.

  ‘You heard,’ he said, his tone uncompromising. ‘The pitch’s taken.’

  Cissie shook her head, not in disagreement, but in realisation of her stupidity. ‘Flowers,’ she said, dropping her chin in a picture of complete misery. ‘I never thought to bring none. And I never thought no one’d take our pitch neither.’

  ‘Our pitch? How d’yer mean?’ the man asked with a frown. ‘Here, you in this with someone? Has someone sent yer?’

  Cissie shook her head dejectedly. ‘No. No one sent me. It used to be me husband’s pitch.’

  ‘Right,’ he said, as though something had just occurred to him. ‘You’re Davy’s old woman, ain’t yer?’

  ‘I’m his widow if that’s what yer mean,’ she answered bleakly.

  ‘That’s different, darling,’ the man said, suddenly friendly.

  ‘Is it?’ she asked hopefully.

  ‘Yeah. Course it is.’ He said something to a bulky, older man in a flat cap who was leaning against the paper stall and then sat back down on his orange box. The older man nodded and, levering himself away from the stand, he made his way over to Cissie.

  ‘He was a regular fixture here, your Davy,’ the man said to Cissie.

  ‘You knew him?’

  ‘Yeah, I knew him,’ he said with a nod that made his chins quiver. ‘Now you come back tomorrow – with some stock this time – and there won’t be no other flower stalls for four hundred yards around. You can guarantee that.’

  ‘But how—’

  ‘You just take my word for it.’ He held out his great rough paw to her. ‘Fat Stan,’ he said. ‘I’m at yer service, Mrs Flowers.’

  * * *

  ‘Flowers!’ Cissie shouted at herself yet again as she parked the truck on the waste ground. ‘Flaming flowers! I’m so bloody, sodding stupid!’ She smacked her hand hard on the steering wheel. ‘All that effort for nothing.’ She felt so worn out that all she wanted to do was go home and put her feet up, but she knew she had to go into Gladys’s first.

  She was so tired that she didn’t even have the energy to stop Matty screaming up and down the street with three of Gladys’s kids while one of the grimy-looking Godwin boys sprayed them from a length of hose that was snaking out of his house and along the pavement.

  ‘Glad? It’s only me,’ she called as she willed herself along the passageway of number four. ‘I’ve come for Joycie.’

  ‘Blimey!’ Gladys exclaimed. ‘You look like you’ve been out bleed’n labouring.’ She was sitting at the table with Joyce on her lap, somehow managing to hold the lively toddler still with her arm while she was peeling her way through a mountain of mud-covered potatoes. She dropped her knife into the saucepan of water and put Joyce down so that she could get to her mother. ‘Sit yourself, girl, and I’ll put the kettle on.’

  ‘I could certainly do with a cup o’ tea.’ Cissie sat down and hauled Joyce on to her lap. She planted a kiss on her daughter’s dark, shiny hair and then put her back, protesting, on the floor.

  ‘Here, Joyce,’ Gladys said over her shoulder as she lit the gas stove. ‘Let yer mummy have a rest, eh? While you play with them bricks what Auntie Glad showed yer.’

  Joyce thought for a moment, working out which option she preferred, her mummy or the bricks. Her decision made, she let out a wailing yell of ‘Mummy!’ and held her arms out to Cissie with a pathetic tremble of her bottom lip.

  Without saying a word Cissie lifted her on to her lap again, in fact, she didn’t say another thing until Gladys had made the tea and had sat herself down opposite her.

  ‘I’m stopping yer from getting on,’ Cissie said, inclining her head towards the pile of unpeeled vegetables.

  ‘Don’t you worry yourself, girl,’ Gladys reassured her good-naturedly. ‘There’s no rush. Nipper’s over with Ted Johnson – they’re talking about their old army days as usual – and Ernie won’t be in for a while yet. He had to pop out, see.’ Gladys leant forward and smiled conspiratorially. ‘Yer know that new girl up the road? That skinny little thing. The one who’s got the upstairs rooms in old Ruby’s house.’ Gladys was wide-eyed, trying to encourage Cissie to join in with her enthusiasm. ‘You know, Tilly Mason.’

  Cissie nodded lethargically. ‘Tilly, yeah.’

  ‘That’s her. Well, she come round earlier. Come to say that her Bob told her to tip my Ernie the wink that they’re looking for men down the brewery. That’s where he works like. Her Bob, I mean. So Ernie went straight down there, didn’t he.’ She took a gulp of tea. ‘Mind you,’ she added, not wanting to push her luck, ‘I don’t suppose nothing’ll come of it. Never does, nowadays, does it?’

  Cissie’s only response was a vague lift of her chin.

  ‘It was right nice of her though, that young woman bothering herself like that. I mean, she don’t know us from Adam, does she? Only been in the street for five minutes.’ She laughed happily to herself. ‘And only been married for that long and all, I reckon, the way her and that husband of hers look so soppy at one another. Good to old Ruby she is though. Well, so Sammy told me. Did all her shopping for her and that when she was poorly.’

  Still Cissie said nothing.

  Gladys tried another tack. ‘So, ain’t yer gonna tell me all about it then? Come on. Tell us. How’d you get on?’ Cissie lowered her eyes and began slowly stroking Joyce’s hair. ‘Terrible.’

  ‘What? Didn’t sell many?’

  ‘I didn’t sell none.’ She raised her head and looked directly at Gladys. ‘I forgot to get any flowers, didn’t I?’

  ‘You what? A flower stall with no flowers?’ Gladys failed completely to suppress her laughter. ‘You silly mare!’

  ‘And there were all these horrible men, all looking at me and saying all these things,’ she added sulkily. ‘And I don’t think it’s very funny.’

  ‘I do,’ Gladys grinned.

  Cissie shook her head. ‘No, Glad, it ain’t funny at all. I’ve had a rotten, stinking day. A stupid waste of time with nothing to show for it. And there was another stall on the other side of the station. So, take my word for it, it ain’t funny at all.’

  ‘Whatever’s got into you, Cis? Where’s your sense of humour?’

  ‘I’ve lost it. Can you blame me? Lost it, just like I’ve lost me husband.’

  She stared down at the worn lino. ‘Yer wouldn’t believe my luck. There was this bloke, Fat Stan he called himself, promised he’d sort out the pitch for me, he did. Get rid of the other stall, like, so I’d have a free run.’

  ‘I don’t understand. That’s good ain’t it?’

  ‘It would be if I had any money to buy stock.’

  Gladys reached out and laid her hand over Cissie’s. ‘Getting yerself all upset over it won’t help, now will it, love?’

  ‘What d’you want me to do? Burst into song?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cis, I didn’t mean to upset yer.’ Gladys sighed loudly as she topped up their cups.

  ‘I still can’t believe he’s gone, yer know,’ Cissie said as much to herself as to Gladys.

  Gladys put the cosy back on the pot and shifted it out of Joyce’s reach, then she took Cissie’s hand in hers. ‘I honestly don’t know what to say.’

  ‘There’s nothing no one can say. Nothing.’ Cissie picked up her cup and sipped mechanically at the hot tea. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks.

  ‘Don’t, love, don’t cry.’ Gladys saw the anxiety clouding Joyce’s face. She reached out and took the toddler back on to her lap. ‘You’ll upset the little one.’

  Cissie bent forward and swiped at her tears with the hem of her crumpled dress. ‘It’s her and Matty I’m really worried about, Glad. How am I gonna manage? How? Tell me that. I might as well sell the stall for firewood, much good it’ll do me.’ She began weeping noisily. ‘How am I gonna manage?’ she wailed.

  Gladys’s look of concern was replaced by a frown. ‘I’d say you’ll manage like a lot of other people manage. By struggling from day to day, doing yer best to survive on h
andouts from them bastards from the RO. And having to put up with ’em treating yer like rubbish just so’s yer can put a bit of bread and marge on the table for yer kids. That’s how. But you won’t have to go through all that, will yer? No. Cos if you use yer brains, and yer’ve got plenty of them, and yer pull yourself together, stop moaning and stop and think about it, you’ll realise that yer can do it. Yer’ve got a good little business you can run there.’

  ‘But yer don’t understand.’ Cissie sobbed into her hands. ‘No one understands.’

  Gladys held Joyce, who was now also crying, tightly to her chest. ‘I know something I don’t understand, girl, how you can say you’re worried about yer kids, and then you go frightening this little love with all this carrying on. You wanna stop feeling so sorry for yourself.’

  The anger in her usually placid, easy-going friend’s voice shocked Cissie into stopping crying as instantly as a tap being closed. ‘You meant that,’ she gasped through her fingers.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ snapped Gladys, drying Joyce’s tears on her apron. ‘Now you just listen to me, Cissie Flowers. We’ve been mates me and you, good mates, since before you ever knew Davy. And I’ve always liked yer. Liked you a lot. But I reckon you should know, for yer own good, that there’s plenty around here what don’t. And they’re just waiting for you to be knocked down a peg or two.’

  ‘How d’yer mean?’ Cissie was now listening attentively. She was mystified by what she was hearing. ‘I ain’t done nothing to no one. Why wouldn’t people like me?’

  ‘Well, for a start, just listen to yerself. Since yer’ve come into this house, it’s all been about you. Your trouble. Horrible blokes looking at you. Going on and on. Well, how about me? Have you even thought to ask how I am, how I’m managing?’ Gladys hesitated a moment, then added, ‘And you used to be able to laugh at yourself.’

  ‘If you’d just lost your husband—’

  ‘God forbid,’ Gladys interrupted, flicking her eyes towards the ceiling. ‘But that’s not what I’m getting at, Cissie. I ain’t talking about what I feel about yer.’ She rattled her spoon absent-mindedly on the edge of her saucer. ‘Look, I might as well be blunt. You’ve got a terrible name for yerself round here. The name of thinking that you’re better than everyone else in this street. What with all yer nice clothes, and your driving, and the way you look.’