Her Father's Daughter

by Beezy Marsh

  On the afternoon of the ninth day of the strike, Harry came trudging down the road, his hands in his pockets and his cap pulled low.

  Ethel was just pushing William in the pram, to get him to drop off, and she rushed up to meet him. ‘What’s wrong, pet?’

  ‘We’ve had word from the Trades Union Council,’ he said, staring straight ahead. ‘Our leaders have met the Prime Minister and told him that the General Strike is to be called off unconditionally, from tomorrow.’

  ‘But what about the miners?’ Ethel gasped.

  ‘They’re still out but the TUC is saying everything’s in place to sort their pay. They’ve sold us out.’

  ‘Well, perhaps it’s for the best,’ she said, laying a hand on his shoulder as they walked on together. ‘Everyone tried. There’s no shame in that.’

  Ethel was relieved that things would be getting back to normal at last. She hated not being able to take William into the city to go to the shops and having to worry about where their food was coming from, not to mention fearing that Harry would get hurt or arrested every time he left the house.

  He turned to her, his cheeks hollow and tears brimming in his eyes. ‘That’s not the worst of it. The government says that there’s nothing they can do to force the factories to take the strikers back.’

  ‘Well, they can’t sack everyone,’ said Ethel. ‘The whole city’s been out.’

  ‘You’re right, they can’t, but they can sack the union men they see as troublemakers, to make sure it doesn’t happen again,’ said Harry. ‘I’ve lost my job.’

  17

  Ethel

  Clapham, March 1929

  Ethel was jolted awake by the sound of Mam coughing through the thin bedroom wall.

  She rubbed her eyes and swung her legs out of the bed, feeling the chill of the linoleum under her feet as she wandered over to the window. Pulling back the curtains, she saw that the street was shrouded in a thick, yellow mist.

  It was another pea-souper; no wonder Mam’s chest was bad.

  Newcastle was full of soot and smuts and there were many mornings when the fret on the Tyne hung so low you could barely see a hand in front of your face, but the air down here was so full of fumes that some days the whole city struggled to draw breath.

  They’d been in London for over a year now, but she still had so many things to get used to and she didn’t like to trouble Harry with it because, well, he hadn’t quite been himself since the General Strike.

  For the first week after he was sacked, he lay in bed, just staring at the ceiling. He wouldn’t wash or shave; Da said it wasn’t right for a man to let himself go like that. He wouldn’t eat with the rest of them, so Ethel had to bring him his meals on a tray which she’d leave outside the bedroom door. Then, every night when she came to bed, he’d get up, go out and walk the streets for hours. Sometimes, when he finally came home, Ethel would hear him pacing up and down in the scullery, muttering to himself.

  Da had tried to talk to Harry, to make him see sense, but they’d nearly come to blows before Ma begged them to stop it. She didn’t like to dwell on his odd behaviour. Harry never spoke of it in any case so it was all forgotten.

  Everything started looking up again from the moment that Harry and a few of the other lads from the factory got together and went off to London in search of work. He lived away for about a year, sending his wages home to Ethel. She thought she’d find that very hard but when he left, it was like a black cloud over their house had lifted. His moods had weighed on her and his strange behaviour and nightmares, well, they hadn’t really been getting any better either. Ethel loved Harry, of course she did, but with him gone, she could focus on the baby, and Mam and Da were so supportive of her, she even found time to go out and see Ada on a few occasions, which was nice. She wrote telling Harry of every little snippet about William that she could think of and he wrote back to her, long letters – too long, he had such a way with words! – promising her that he carried her in his heart every day. Before she knew what was happening, twelve months had gone by and then he wrote that he’d found some lodgings and she and William should come and join him.

  Ethel hid the letter in the pocket of her apron for a few days before she broached the subject with Da.

  ‘You’re not leaving us and going down to London on your own!’ he cried, slamming his hand on the table, sending Mam scurrying off into the pantry.

  It had been ages since he’d lost his temper like this. His eyes were alive with rage and spittle formed in the corners of his mouth, which had twisted itself into a snarl. ‘I won’t let him break up our family, Ethel. It isn’t right!’

  ‘But, Da,’ she pleaded, sitting down opposite him and clasping his hands. ‘I’m his wife, he has every right to ask me and the bairn to go down to London to live with him, surely you can see that.’

  Da looked away for a moment and then exhaled heavily. ‘All right, of course, I know you are right. It’s just, you have been so much happier lately and the boy is blossoming here with us all to help. How about we all go to London together? It can be a fresh start for everyone. I’ll get myself a job, we can help you with the rent.’

  Mam stuck her head around the pantry door. She had blanched from the shock of Da shouting but the colour was slowly returning to her cheeks.

  ‘What do you think, Mam?’ said Ethel kindly. ‘Would you like to come to London?’

  Mam’s voice was so quiet, she was almost whispering. ‘I’ll be very happy to come and live with you and do whatever your da thinks is best.’

  Da leaned back in his chair and beamed at Ethel. ‘Well, that’s decided, then. You’d better write to that husband of yours and tell him to find a place big enough for all of us!’

  Within a few weeks, they’d sold off all their furniture and packed everything up, lock, stock and barrel, and moved to London. True to his word, Da had wasted no time in getting himself a job, at the grocer’s up on Clapham High Street, so they never ran short of fruit or veg and William was all the better for it. Harry hadn’t minded them all coming down; if anything, he seemed happy because Ethel found it easier to settle in with her folks under the same roof.

  Ethel peered out of the window, wringing her hands together to get some warmth into them as she watched the shadowy shape of a man making his way up the street carrying a long pole. It was the knocker up; he tapped on the windows to get folks up for their shift at one of the many factories up the road in Battersea. Their whole side of town was given over to industry of one sort or another and if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction, you knew about it. The stench from the tanneries was enough to turn your stomach.

  But Ethel knew that they had much to be grateful for. Harry was working at the cardboard-box factory and they had food on their table. It was soul-destroying work, being a machine hand and making those boxes day in and day out, but he did it to keep the family afloat. There were many whose husbands had given themselves over to drinking or gambling because of the despair of the dole queue and whole families had ended up in the workhouse or living hand to mouth, relying on the parish for help, and all the shame that brought with it. However strangely he’d behaved, Harry had never put her through that and he lavished all the love that a father should on his son.

  He was forever tinkering away in the back yard with William, hammering some wheels onto a plank of wood to give the boy a cart to ride up the street on with the other kids, or carving him a little sailing boat to take up to the pond on Clapham Common.

  William was growing up to be a healthy little lad, sturdy and strong – although Da couldn’t quite get over the fact that his grandson now spoke with a Cockney accent instead of a Geordie lilt. It was just Ma who was a worry, really. The move hadn’t suited her at all and she was getting very picky with her eating, so her clothes seemed to hang off her and her apron strings went twice around her waist.

  Harry was still snoring softly, facing the wall with his back turned to her, as he always did. Ethel knew better than to
try to get near him in the night because it brought on the terrors. He’d wake the bairn with his screaming and half the neighbourhood too. The nightmares had started the moment he lost his job and no matter how hard she tried, he wouldn’t talk to her about them. She’d seen the sideways glances from the neighbours after his worst ones. He sounded like he was being murdered and then he’d weep, and she’d try to console him, but he’d just brush her off and grunt, ‘What’s done is done.’

  It was scary, seeing a grown man crying like that, and she knew from the looks Mam and Da exchanged that it wasn’t something they approved of. Ethel sighed. Harry wasn’t the man she’d married six years ago. He’d changed, and not for the better.

  ‘No rest for the wicked!’

  Ethel smiled at Doreen, the woman from over the road who was on her hands and knees on her front step, scrubbing for dear life. It wasn’t yet nine o’clock, but she was already hard at work with carbolic soap and a stiff brush, to get it gleaming.

  ‘I’ve got to do mine later,’ Ethel replied, tucking her pile of dirty linen under one arm and giving her a wave as she made her way up to the communal laundry. She liked it up there, it was a chance to get out of the house while Mam looked after William and chat with the other mothers. It had taken a while for some of them to accept her and they still laughed about the first time she’d gone in on washday and they could barely understand a word she said.

  She’d only asked where the mangle was and one of the women had looked up from her washtub, wiped some sweat from her brow and said, ‘Sorry, love, I didn’t catch that, are you foreign?’

  It was the same in the shops, too, so she’d tried to change the way she spoke, to fit in with them. Whatever the differences in their accents, they were just hard-working folk and they meant well.

  On the corner of Edgeley Road, a gaggle of little kids were poking at a dead rat in the gutter, its eyes glazed and its tongue bloated and sticking out of its mouth. ‘It’s as big as Missus Anderson’s cat!’ one cried.

  Ethel shuddered. The long-tails made their nests over on the railway line which ran along the back of their yards and she lived in fear of one getting into the house.

  The rhythmic clatter of the trains going by was just a part of the daily cacophony of noise in their neighbourhood. There was a constant round of comings and goings, from the muffin man who rang his bell on Sundays, to the delighted squeals of stampeding kids, to the tallyman, the milkman and the coal merchants. Once a week the rag and bone man would wend his way past their front doors on his filthy cart, pulled by a scrawny old piebald nag, shouting for ‘old iron!’ as he headed towards Clapham High Street. William wanted to feed that horse, like the other bairns, but Ethel wouldn’t let him, in case he caught something nasty from it.

  As she hurried by, one of the kids picked up the rat and swung it by its tail. It landed, with a splat, at her feet and she screeched and dropped her washing as they scarpered.

  She was just tutting to herself and picking up her bundle of bedsheets, which were now covered in filth, when a fella crossed the road to help her. Before she knew what was happening, he’d picked up half the linen and was handing it to her. ‘Those cheeky little blighters! Are you all right?’

  ‘I’m fine, honestly,’ she said.

  There was a roundness to his features, from his glasses to the shape of his face, which reminded Ethel of one of her favourite schoolteachers back in Benwell. It was silly, really, but it made him seem familiar and as he helped her to her feet, she beamed at him and said, ‘I’m Ethel, by the way. I live just a few doors down.’

  He held out his hand to her and she shook it. ‘Len,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘At your service, Ethel.’

  He paused for a split second and then caught sight of the wedding band on her finger. ‘Well, I’d best be off. I’m late for work.’

  As he walked off, whistling to himself, there was a jauntiness to his stride, a real spring in his step, and that made Ethel smile more than she had done in a long time.

  Going for a night out at the talkies with Harry down at the Majestic on Clapham High Street was the highlight of Ethel’s week but he didn’t seem to share her enthusiasm for the cinema any more. He stood glumly in the queue beside her, his hands thrust deep into his pockets and a muscle twitching in his cheek.

  ‘Is everything all right, Harry?’ she said gently.

  ‘Oh, stop going on at me!’ he replied roughly, pulling away. ‘There’s nowt wrong with me, I’m just tired, that’s all.’

  Ethel felt tears sting her eyes. He couldn’t have hurt her any more if he’d slapped her. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t seem to get close to Harry. It was like being with a dancing partner who kept treading on her toes. She was sure he wasn’t doing it deliberately, but it didn’t make it any less painful.

  A couple in the queue behind them started whispering to each other and she overheard the words ‘lovers’ tiff’ and felt colour rising in her cheeks.

  It was a relief when they got into the auditorium and she could lose herself in the fantasy of her surroundings, with the beautiful balconies and ornate plasterwork in white and gold, making it seem like a palace. As the lights went down and the film started, she sought out Harry’s hand and gave it a little squeeze. Her heart sank when there was no response, but she wasn’t going to let him spoil her night out watching Cupid in Clover.

  She loved romances but that wasn’t the only reason she enjoyed coming to the flicks. She studied the actresses and the way they spoke, with their perfect red mouths rounding over their lines. She’d copy them at home, when no one was around, to improve the way she spoke. Little by little, she was changing her accent and it was true she probably sounded a bit posher than most in her street.

  Sitting there in the dark, she was fascinated by the smouldering glances that the leading ladies gave and the way they laughed, or cried, or gazed shyly up from under their lashes. This was how they got what they wanted; it worked for them on screen, so why not for her too? She didn’t want to be plain little Ethel from Benwell any more.

  Before Ethel knew what was happening, tears had started to roll, silently, down her face. She wiped them away. Harry seemed to have grown tired of her and Ethel had grown tired of herself, in any case. She needed to be someone new; someone fun and exciting, someone who Harry would want to hold in bed at night and talk to, like he used to. The city was full of possibilities; the world around her was changing fast, with electric lights and motor cars everywhere.

  Now she was in London, perhaps she would change too.

  Politics was the only thing that Harry was remotely interested in over the coming months and when a general election was called in May, he was cock-a-hoop about it.

  He spent hours poring over The Evening News, devouring every last dreary detail of how Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin faced a growing threat from the Labour Party.

  ‘The common man will have his say at the ballot box, you mark my words,’ he said, glancing up from his paper. ‘And the common woman too, Ethel. You’ll be able to vote for the first time!’

  Ethel feigned interest but really, she wasn’t that bothered about having the vote. Besides, politics had brought their family nothing but trouble; she still hadn’t forgotten all the upheaval caused by the General Strike when Harry had lost his job. All women aged twenty-one to twenty-nine were going to be able to go to the polls for the first time and the whole thing had been nicknamed the ‘Flapper Election’ after the dancing girls. Ethel would have given her eyeteeth to be a flapper girl, out on the town up in the West End, dressed in her glad rags. Instead, she had a steak and kidney pie to attend to and was feeling more like a drudge with every passing day.

  She served it up for the three of them because Da was out at a church meeting. Mam took hers and ate it on her lap, sitting by the fire she’d lit earlier. It wasn’t cold at all, but she’d been complaining of a chill and her cough wasn’t getting any better. In the fading light of the late afternoon, Ethel c
ouldn’t help noticing how drawn Mam was looking as she sat there picking at her food. What’s more, her skin had a definite yellow tinge to it.

  ‘Mam,’ said Ethel, popping some boiled greens on Harry’s plate. ‘Do you think you might go and see a doctor about that cough of yours?’

  Mam shook her head. ‘Oh no, pet. There’s no need for that. I’m just a bit under the weather. And anyway, it costs too much. I’d rather you save the money in case William gets sick.’

  ‘You’ve not been right for a while now,’ Ethel said.

  ‘It’s probably just the change of water down here,’ said Mam. ‘Plays havoc with your digestion. It’ll be better soon, you’ll see.’

  But it didn’t get better and by the time the autumn came around, Mam had taken to her bed. Every day brought some new agony: pains in her side, aches in her hips, and she was wincing in agony and barely had the energy to feed herself. Ethel went to the butcher’s and got some beef bones to make a broth for her, to try to nurse her back to health.

  Eventually, after Da insisted, Mam agreed to see a doctor. Ethel wasn’t sure who to go to, so after consulting Doreen, the lady opposite, she went to fetch the doctor who was widely thought of as the kindest, and not too expensive either.

  Dr Perkins was a small, slight man, balding, with tufts of greying hair at either side of his head, giving him the appearance of an owl. Ethel had only seen a doctor once in her life – for scarlet fever as a young girl – and she remembered a giant of a man with a booming voice and big hands, so this little fella, with his voice almost a whisper, was a turn-up for the books.

  While Da and Harry stayed downstairs in the scullery, Ethel held Mam’s hand as the doctor examined her. When he pulled up her nightgown, Ethel was shocked to see Mam’s ribs, but lower down, beneath her belly button, she was all swollen.

  The doctor prodded at her and she winced.