The Fisherman's Girl

by Maggie Ford

  ‘I’ll say I’m sorry to Annie,’ Josie broke in. ‘I won’t do it again.’

  ‘I mean your own dress. I’ll wash it for you.’

  ‘You don’t have to.’

  ‘I know. But I will.’

  She received a thankful kiss on the back of her neck exposed by her short hair. In this at least she was in fashion if nowhere else, with her hair shorn off into a back shingle. Two years ago her daughters had finally persuaded her to get rid of the long tresses that had been wound into a chignon which she had worn since she was a young woman before and during the Great War.

  ‘Get away with yer!’ But she smiled at the kiss. Doling out a portion of potato on to a plate, laying two piping hot sausages beside it and a dollop of baked beans that had been keeping warm in a saucepan to one side of the kitchen range, she handed the meal to Josie. ‘Take your plate and go and eat.’

  She was still smiling after Josie grabbed her tea and went off into the other room; the other three had still to come back for theirs. She could hear them talking together, Josie’s high twittering voice joining in.

  Peggy’s smile grew contemplative, broody. Josie was so excitable, so effervescent, so unpredictable, a natural rebel. Whatever would happen to that girl she sometimes dreaded to think. But such fears were dashed away as her other three daughters exploded into the kitchen to collect their tea.

  Chapter Three

  To the gentle throbbing of its engine, the Steadfast glided smoothly up the now full Creek. Danny looked about him. It was a perfect April evening, the air still, the water quiet but for the gentle arrowing from the Steadfast’s bow wave. Thin flat clouds lay across the fading pale blue in golden streaks that would soon now blush crimson, then purple, after the sun had gone below the empty horizon. The weather held the promise of a fine tomorrow. He glanced at the others in the boat.

  Dad was at the helm, while the other three, Dad’s brothers Reg and Pete and young Tibb Barnard, sat with backs to the bulwark. The cockles in baskets at their feet sent up a strong fishy tang. Each man felt weary but content, for it had been a good haul, fetching maybe a shilling a basket at Billingsgate or, if they were lucky, one and six, though with often strong competition from the Dutch. Once the holiday trade started in a few weeks, it would be threepence a pint to the public, highly salted water adding to the flavour. Trade remained excellent in summer, but during the approach to it and again at the end of the season, things could be a bit up and down. Salted down for sale in London, though, they’d last up to six weeks, preserved, hard as dried peas, needing to be soaked in fresh water for up to two days before use.

  A small pang of hunger ground in Danny’s stomach. His dinner would be waiting for him and Dad. Friday meant sausage and mash, with baked beans and lots of thick brown Bisto gravy. Apple and custard to follow – Mum never varied her daily meals – and a big mug of hot strong tea, a meal to blow a man out and stop him moving for the rest of the evening. But there’d be no sitting back stretching out on the settee after the meal tonight. As soon as it was over, it would be down the sheds to begin boiling the cockles.

  He thought of Lily. It would have been nice to see her tonight, but he’d see her tomorrow, perhaps take her to the pictures in Southend. It was showing Seventh Heaven with Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor. A Harold Lloyd film was the second feature. He might get seats at the back so that while the audience shelled peanuts, mesmerised by the love scenes, and read the words that came up on the briefly darkened screen – The Jazz Singer and the second full talkie Lights of New York were still reserved for London and other big city cinemas – he would cuddle her, hopeful she might let him steal a kiss. She’d probably balk at any further advances. Maybe later in the dark after getting off the bus home she might allow him a bit more licence but not too much. No girl did. Not a decent girl like Lily.

  He rather liked Lily – slim and vivacious, her dark hair bobbed and her eyebrows plucked into that permanently surprised look that girls in the fashion magazines had. She was tall but he still had to bend to kiss her. He had to bend to kiss most girls.

  He hoped in a way that Lily would last longer than most of them, who in the end always had a way of becoming possessive. ‘We are going steady, aren’t we, Danny?’ ‘I’ve told my mum about you and she’s thrilled I’m going out with you.’ They tugged his arm to stare longingly at engagement rings in jewellers’ windows. That sort of thing. Every time he looked into the eyes of some of them, he could almost hear the wedding bells chiming.

  Twenty-six was what people called a marriageable age, but there was still lots of life to live before settling down. None of his mates had as yet, and he didn’t want to be the first, be the butt of their jokes. But Lily was different. Every time he saw her or even thought about her, like now, there would be a sort of churning in his stomach that wasn’t hunger – well, hunger, yes, but a certain sort which he had to breathe deeply to dispel. Even then it wouldn’t quite go away, not for ages, until his mind was distracted by something else.

  It was his father who distracted it. Daniel Bowmaker’s stare was directed at the shrimp boats already back and anchored out in the Ray, unlike the cockle boats which would remain in the Creek. The shrimpers did all their boiling on board. The small crustaceans died fast and a shrimp cooked after having died was no good whereas cockles lived on in their shells, safe and fresh in their own liquid until brought to the shed for boiling.

  ‘Home already.’ He said it with a tinge of pleasure in his tone. ‘Cold enough today to send shrimp out to deeper water, I suspect.’

  Lily put away for a moment, Danny regarded the silent boats and nodded. ‘Not easy these days. They say the river’s gettin’ too dirty for ’em. Lot more cargo boats mucking it up these days.’

  His father grinned. ‘We’re in the best business, lad. One thing about cockles, you know where they are. Shrimps – they can move off somewheres else. Here today, gone tomorrow. Nets get full on seaweed and them useless shore crabs and have to be got rid of before they try again, or get torn on lost anchors and stuff. Shrimpers – huh! I’d soonest use me feet out on the mud any time than mess about castin’ bloody nets and cookin’ on board.’

  Danny could understand his father’s devilish glee at the difficulties shrimpers apparently suffered. Further down the road lived the Bryants, shrimpers, the couple old now, their children married and moved away, except for their youngest, George.

  ‘You’ve never got over it, have you, Dad? All these years. And all over nothing.’ It had been nothing much to start with.

  ‘Nothing?’ His dad glared at him, oblivious to the others grinning covertly, knowing the old old story. ‘Nothing! You call a man what burned me, nearly lost me me livelihood, nothing? No, I’ll never get over that, so long as I live. I never want anything to do with ’em and I’ll see off any of me family what has anything to do with them, and that’s clear to everyone and’ll always be so.’

  Breathing heavily, he turned his eyes back to guiding the forty-foot wooden bawley towards the hard where he would kill its engine and bring it to rest just off-shore where the beach, strewn high with long-discarded cockle shells, raised its continuous odour of decaying fish into the air.

  Danny continued to look at his father. Sad to think of the years that old feud had gone on. Not an open one, merely a silent ignoring, a passing by in the street without glancing at each other. Everyone around knew of it, accepted it, even forgot it, the humour of it long since spent, the gossip long since died. Even the cause of it had now become obscure to many.

  Danny had been a toddler, his sisters not yet born. Even to him, from the bits that Dad in his brief recourse to the matter in moments of angry recollection had let slip, it was a sketchy argument over a clod of mud tossed by the then-young married man, Dick Bryant, in a moment of high spirits. The clod had hit Dad on the forehead. Standing there in surprise, mud oozing down his face, his young pride injured with those around him bursting into guffaws of laughter, he had launched himself a
t Dick Bryant. He’d floored him, almost killed him it was said, others having to drag him off the bleeding face with its smashed nose and broken jaw. To this very day Bryant sported a crooked nose. Seething from his undeserved injuries, Bryant had stolen aboard Dad’s boat, so the story went – a different boat to the one he now had – to set fire to it. Those running to the blaze had seen a man hurrying off. Someone had said they’d recognised Bryant. It was obvious to all that he bore Dad a grudge and though Dad had never been able to prove it was him, it wasn’t hard to point a finger when afterwards, it was said, Bryant’s bruised and battered face wasn’t seen for a long time in the pubs Dad frequented.

  That had been in nineteen hundred and five. Today, twenty-four years later, the vindictive act was still an open wound in Dad’s side.

  Those in the boat came alert. The Steadfast’s hull gently scuffed the creek mud as they eased the planks over the slowly incoming tide across which they’d make the shore, each with a wicker basket at either end of a stout wooden yoke, both as full and weighty as a sturdy man could carry on to the shell-strewn beach that slithered underfoot, shells crunching and rustling and tinkling together at each step, to the mushers, as the cockle sheds were called, where the small shellfish would be boiled for their meat to fall free.

  The boilers lit, it would take time to build up the steam pressure necessary for cooking the batches, so young Tibb was left to watch over it while the rest went home for their supper. After their return and Tibb’s departure for his own meal, the round tank and sifting tank would be filled with fresh water. Two steel nets with their weighty three and a half gallons of raw cockles would be placed into each cooking pot, the lids fastened down, the cockles cooked for six minutes. Still in the nets they’d be tipped into a sieve over the cold water tank, be shaken back and forth some sixty or seventy times until the meat fell through the holes leaving empty shells on top to be tossed through the hatch to form a mountain which would be crushed for garden grit and land drains – another source of income. Better than shrimps, Danny grinned, glancing at his dad as he laboured up the beach under his load. Shrimps gave only one income and that was that. His dad had no doubt chortled over that fact in his time.

  Once the last of the haul was in the shed, they turned for home. It was growing dusk. Already the tide had turned, was receding. The Thames boasted a hefty rise and fall, and the river to the Pool of London was being constantly dredged to allow the ocean-going liners and cargo ships with deep draughts to reach their docks and wharves.

  For some unaccountable reason, Danny’s thoughts turned back to Lily. There would be no chance to see her this evening because he would work through the night, boiling and sieving cockles.

  Tomorrow they would rest. They’d need it. No good killing themselves and it wasn’t yet the holiday season. Tomorrow evening he would see her. She would put her arms about his neck, glad to see him, and maybe she might even be a little more receptive of his caresses. But he was glad Lily wasn’t like the others he’d been out with. Maybe she didn’t go over the top and let him have his way as some of them did, but then neither did she talk wedding bells. He liked Lily, a lot.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be seeing your Ben tomorrow, as usual.’ Pam glanced up at Connie with a look of unconcealed disdain.

  Tomorrow was Sunday, Connie’s fiancé’s day off. They would go off to church together, climbing cobbled Church Hill hand in hand, gazing in each other’s eyes, daft as brushes, hardly noticing the steep climb that left most people puffing at the top. Connie would wear her best dress, hat and coat, Ben his suit, polished shoes, stiff collar and tie and trilby.

  He came every Sunday, or she went to his people. He lived in London, Bethnal Green in the East End, in a flat in what was known as Waterlow Buildings. His family were East End Londoners. Ben spoke with a Cockney accent, and while this family had an accent too, it was certainly better than Cockney.

  Pam felt jealousy prick her stomach. A common East End Londoner. She had seen some of them, their behaviour when they visited Southend or came here to the sheds. Noisy, brash, full of their own importance, seeing themselves as the salt of the earth and most of them with not two brass farthings to rub together. Yet this whole family was crowing about Connie and Ben’s coming engagement. If she were to tell them about whom she was going out with, they’d look as though she was telling them she’d just committed a murder, especially Dad. She could almost see his face going purple and his voice booming out that he would rather see her dead at his feet than bring that George Bryant into his house. It wasn’t her fault, was it, to fall in love with George, the pair of them asked to pay the penalty for some stupid feud that had started well before either of them had even been born?

  Connie didn’t seem to notice her disdain. She was living in paradise; saw nothing but her fiancé’s face as she carted him off to church whether he liked it or not. She never used to go to church before; probably buttering up Reverend King, the vicar, Pam supposed, paving the way to having the wedding held there in St Clement’s. A fine high church if ever there was one. Its stone tower dominated Leigh, had sat high above it on the cliffs for a thousand years, a landmark for miles around. She could have picked a more lowly church, more convenient. Pam could imagine the guests having to toil up that hill to see her wed. She felt a giggle rise up inside her at the vision of everyone in their wedding best arriving at the church door hardly able to get their breath, the church filled with puffing and sighing as they eased into the pews. You wouldn’t hear the organ for all their blowing – like a gale blowing through the nave. Though no doubt they would hire wedding cars to take them round by road. Pam felt her pleasant little bubble burst.

  Anyway it was more than a year away yet. A lot of money needed to be saved up first, for the cars to avoid the hill, for the cost of the church – with organ and bells, so Connie would keep reminding everyone, though where such money was coming from was all in her dreams.

  Ben Watson was the son of a tugboat skipper, the tug not even his dad’s, for the man was employed by a large tugboat company. Ben himself worked on a tug. Dirty, smelly work as far as Pam could see.

  She looked at Connie over her copy of Picture Show. ‘So when are you getting engaged?’ She knew full well when they were, and Connie knew she knew, but Connie appeared quite unruffled, her head bent over a book.

  ‘End of next month. End of May. I’m hoping his family and ours can have a little get together. The weather should be fine by then, and warm I hope. It’ll be a bit of a holiday for them.’

  ‘Not for him and his dad,’ Pam said, going back to her magazine. ‘Him and his dad see enough of the Thames, I should think, chugging up and down it all week.’

  ‘I don’t suppose his mum sees much of it, stuck there in London.’

  ‘Well, I suppose she’ ll be pleased to get out of London. Might as well make the best of a free day out.’

  Connie looked up at her, her feathers ruffled at last. ‘That’s not a nice thing to say about someone. Ben’s mum’s very hardworking, looking after her family. And she’ll be making some sausage rolls and things.’

  ‘No more than she ought, I suppose.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Connie slammed down her book and Pam realised she had gone a bit too far, been a little too frank.

  ‘It’s not supposed to mean anything.’

  ‘It sounded very catty to me.’

  Their mother came into the room, a pile of freshly ironed sheets and pillowcases in her arms ready for taking up to change the beds for Sunday.

  ‘What’s all this bickering for then?’

  When Mum’s tone sounded sharp like this, all wrongdoing stopped; memories of a slap across the back of the head as kids still lingered to command respect even though the slaps had ceased years before. Both girls buried their heads back into their reading, but Mum wasn’t finished.

  ‘I don’t like the way you all go on at each other lately. Pam, you never seem to have a good word for anyone. You and An
nie, both sulking, looking down in the mouth. Josie too, sometimes. I don’t know what’s wrong with you all. Connie never looks miserable.’

  ‘Well, she wouldn’t be,’ Pam shot back, risking the memory of a slap. ‘She’s in love. Us other three aren’t, are we?’

  ‘Then it’s about time you were. At least you and Annie. Josie’s still too young, but she’s got her friends to take her mind off boys. It’s about time you and Annie started looking for a decent boy each to settle down with.’

  So saying, she went off up the stairs, each step creaking at her weight as much as they could for one as small as she, her mind already turning to what she would provide for Connie’s engagement party.

  George was sitting in the glass-sided seaside shelter halfway between Leigh and Chalkwell when Pam reached him. He was staring out to sea, ignoring the two couples who shared the bench under the ornate green wrought-iron roof and who all but crowded him out with their belongings and their eagerness for a sea view. The bench facing landward, separated from the more desirable one by a glass partition, remained vacant but for a man and a child.

  The two couples were in turn ignoring George as they too stared at the gentle waves just below lapping against the sea wall that sloped down to the beach. The strip of sandy beach was submerged but for a small corner by a breakwater where a little family huddled like castle defenders against hostile marauders, the sea their moat, their goods – bags of food, flasks, towels, shoes, windbreak, buckets and spades – gathered about them as if for a siege.

  Soon the water would recede, the beach be taken over by dozens coming off the train at Chalkwell from London or off the bus from Southend, seeking less crowded beaches than those of that more popular resort on this warm Whitsun Bank Holiday Sunday morning.

  Seeing her, George got to his feet, leaving a vacant space which the man and child behind immediately came round to fill, the now completed group instantly breaking into conversation as though George had been an interloper.