Hot Pies on the Tram Car

by Sheila Newberry

  Sheila Newberry

  Hot Pies on the Tram Car

  Contents

  Part One

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Part Two

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Meet Sheila Newberry

  1925, And All That

  A Recipe for a Paradise Pie (As Baked by Florence)

  An Exclusive Chapter From The Punch and Judy Girl

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Also by Sheila Newberry

  Angel’s Secret

  Bicycles and Blackberries

  The Canal Girl

  The Daughter’s Choice

  The Family at Number Five

  Far From Home

  The Gingerbread Girl

  The Girl With No Home

  Hay Bales and Hollyhocks

  A Home for Tilly

  Molly’s Journey

  The Poplar Penny Whistlers

  The Punch and Judy Girl

  The Watercress Girls

  Dedicated to the fond memory of my constant writing

  companion, a little dog called Lizzie.

  1994–2005

  PART ONE

  London, 1925

  ONE

  THE first tram car of the day came to a grinding halt at Paradise Corner. The huddle of folk under the flaring streetlamp parted ranks and climbed thankfully aboard. A young woman in a tightly belted mackintosh arrived at the last moment just as the bell clanged, shaking the raindrops from her umbrella, crying, ‘Wait for me!’ The conductor clipped another tuppenny ticket. It would be dark again when she journeyed home after long hours treadling a sewing machine. It was March, but not yet spring in suburbia.

  A light was showing upstairs in No. 1 Paradise Buildings, a solid, red-brick Victorian terrace of small businesses with accommodation above. The pie shop at street level still had the blinds down, and the grille was bolted across the adjacent basement entrance.

  Josefina gave a final rub at the condensation on the sash window, relishing the squeak her fingers made. She let the curtain fall back into place. ‘Rose Marie’s gone,’ she reported to Florence, returning to her chair by the stove.

  ‘Got wet even in that brief dash across the pavement, I suppose,’ Florence observed, moving the big saucepan off the heat, before adding flour to water bubbling with melted lard. She beat the mixture into a glossy ball, then scooped it out on to the floured preparation table. The kitchen was spotless; Florence too was well scrubbed, shrouded in a white apron, her brown hair strained back off her flushed face and concealed under a mob cap. Now, she flattened nuggets of the pastry between her palms and pressed them round the bottle-shaped beech-wood moulds. These would be filled with the chopped cooked pork then topped with circles of pastry, which she crimped with finger and thumb, before the batches went in the oven. The mutton tartlets would be made next, to be baked in the shop oven as required, and sold piping hot.

  Josefina wore a pinafore over her school clothes, despite the early hour. On her first morning at Florence’s, two years ago, she’d ventured into the big kitchen full of cooking aromas; seen the pestle-and-mortar bowl where herbs, grown in pots on the windowsill, were ground, and the bowl of hard-boiled eggs which later she’d learn to tap and peel, only to be despatched back to her bedroom with the stern words: ‘No sitting around in your night attire! It’s unhygienic!’

  She’d wept then, because she’d been used to creeping into her mother’s side of the bed in the mornings, snuggling up when Stella whispered, ‘Go back to sleep, darling, there’s a good girl.’ Sometimes they’d stayed in a small hotel, with sweet-smelling linen on the beds. More often, they put up in a back-street boarding-house with other theatricals, where there were grease-spotted tablecloths and chipped plates in the dining-room and an overwhelming smell of boiled fish. But the old-style music halls were in decline since the advent of the cinema, and bookings scarce.

  Josefina’s mother was partnered in her act by her husband, referred to grimly by Florence, her mother’s step-sister, as ‘that dago’. Jose’s smouldering good looks, his expertise with the Spanish guitar, confirmed his ancestry, but he’d been born in the East End of London. Josefina’s thick mop of straight black hair, those lustrous dark eyes couldn’t be denied: despite her reservations, Florence had insisted he marry Stella six years ago.

  I should never have indulged that girl, paying for those singing lessons, Florence often sighed to herself. Stella wouldn’t have run off with that wastrel if she’d been apprenticed to a trade like young Rose Marie. Still, Stella does have a lovely voice, a real talent. She might have sung in opera. Her eyes misted over. All she’d wanted was for her to be happy.

  But Jose wasn’t cut out to be a father. He wanted to take off for Europe with Stella, but not Josefina, then four years old. It was almost time for her to start school, Stella told her sister defensively when they turned up at Florence’s unexpectedly; she needed a proper home. Florence could look after her; they promised to keep in close touch and send money for her keep. Affectionate letters from Stella arrived spasmodically, but not a penny came Florence’s way. Not that she worried about that, for Josefina had taken her mother’s place as one of Florence’s girls.

  Now she checked the eggs were cool enough for shelling, advising Josefina, ‘Put a couple to one side, then you can mash them with butter and make sandwiches for our breakfast. I’ll slice the bread for you when I’ve lined the tins with pastry. The new tenant upstairs is bringing her little girl down to us at a quarter to eight: I said we’d look after her until it’s time to go to school. Her mother has to work, she’s a widow—’

  ‘What’s that, Aunty Florence?’ Josefina rolled an egg in her palms.

  ‘Someone whose husband has died.’

  ‘Like you, Aunty?’

  ‘I’ve never been married, but nevertheless, I’ve brought a family up, eh?’

  ‘What about Manny, in the shop?’ Josefina asked, a trifle too innocently.

  ‘What about him? I’m his boss: that wouldn’t do.’

  ‘He must be lonely, living in the basement by himself.’

  ‘He’s lucky to have a roof over his head, and a job, on account of him having a gammy leg. He was invalided out of the army during the war. Anyway he’s too young for me – he’s not yet thirty . . . Florence paused, anticipating what the child would say next.

  ‘How old are you?’ She dug a knife in the softened butter to spread on the bread.

  ‘Never you mind, get on with your task.’ But she smiled at her niece.

  ‘Why are you Mummy’s sort-of sister?’

  ‘Well, my father was well over forty when he met my mother, and she was no spring chicken either – you work that one out for yourself! So I was an only child, until my father was widowed and by that time he’d got used to having a woman around, so he married Stella’s mother, whose husband had also died. I was fourteen and Stella was only five, but I was really pleased to have a sister. Then, later, Rose Marie came along. I had to care for both girls, after Stella’s mother died of pneumonia. Satisfied?’

  ‘Did your father die of – what was it you said? – too?’

  ‘He died of old age –
that’s as it should be – some time after that. Then I had to run the shop as well as make all the pies. That’s when I took on Manny.’ Florence put out three plates, cut the sandwiches into quarters. ‘The upstairs child may be hungry . . .’

  ‘Why does it say, W. Flinders & Son, under Paradise Pies on the shop, Aunty? We’re all daughters.’

  Florence poured the tea, passed a cup to her niece. ‘The son was my father, silly. His father set him up here. Before my time. Eat up. I’ve got pies to fill.’

  She was brushing the fluted tops of the pies with beaten egg when there was a tentative knock on the outer door. Josefina ran to open it. A young woman with shingled fair hair, wearing a shabby coat, stood there, gently pushing her child forward.

  ‘This is Yvette, and you are Josefina, I know. We are a little early—’

  ‘Come in,’ Florence called, rinsing her hands at the sink. ‘Have you time for a drop of tea? It’s not long brewed.’

  ‘Thank you, no. My first day at work – I don’t want to rush.’ She had a slight accent.

  French? Florence wondered, though her surname was Bower. This was a cosmopolitan area. ‘See you about two, then,’ she said. ‘Would Yvette like something to eat?’

  The child shook her head, compressed her lips mutinously.

  ‘Thank you, no. She had her breakfast,’ Yvette’s mother said.

  ‘Then take this for your lunch, my dear. I don’t suppose you had time to prepare anything, did you?’ Florence wrapped the sandwich in a square of greaseproof.

  ‘I–I was too nervous. . . couldn’t eat a thing then, but thank you, Miss Flinders.’ She put the package in her bag. ‘Goodbye, Yvette. Be good.’ She clattered down the uncarpeted stone steps to the front door.

  ‘Take Yvette to your bedroom, while I clear up here,’ Florence told Josefina.

  Yvette followed her reluctantly, through to the room she shared with Rose Marie. ‘Your whole apartment smells of cooking,’ she said disagreeably. ‘Of pies!’

  Josefina looked at her. Yvette was small, pale and skinny, with fuzzy blonde hair which had obviously been curled overnight in rags. She wore skimpy clothes and unsuitable shoes for the time of year, cracked patent leather with thin soles.

  ‘You need a pie or two to fill you out,’ Josefina returned smartly, ‘or you might get washed down a drain in the rain.’

  ‘I’ll tell my maman you said that!’

  ‘And I’ll tell my aunty I don’t want you for a friend. I shan’t walk with you to school. Anyway, I don’t s’pose you think the Board school is good enough for you!’

  Unexpectedly, Yvette began to cry. ‘You must take me; Miss Flinders promised!’

  Josefina’s resentment evaporated instantly. ‘Oh, come on, sit down and I’ll show you my dolls. This one is Carmen, see, she’s dressed for flamenco dancing, because she came from Spain. I’m half-Spanish myself. She’s more an ornament really. This is my baby doll, she belonged to Rose Marie—’

  ‘Your sister? She’s very pretty. We’ve seen her from our window.’

  ‘Rose Marie is my aunty too, only she’s too young to call that.’

  ‘I’ve got a doll that was my maman’s, when she was a little girl in France, that makes me half French! She brought it with her when she got married. The doll is called Clarice, and she has a wax face and real hair. You can comb it and curl it. But you have to be careful with her, like your Carmen. Maman says she is very precious.’

  ‘She cost a lot of money, d’you mean?’

  ‘Oh hundreds of pounds!’ Yvette could see Josefina was impressed. ‘Maman has a real French perfume bottle too - you can spray it on you, puff, puff.’ She squeezed an imaginary soft rubber ball. ‘But it doesn’t smell so good any more.’

  ‘Like the pies!’ Josefina performed a somersault on the unmade bed, and ended up giggling, on the pillow. A feather floated down on to her hair.

  ‘How did you do that? Show me!’ Yvette commanded.

  ‘Girls, time to leave for school, and for me to open the shop,’ Florence called.

  *

  Rose Marie had been entrusted with a special repair today, a tear in the layered skirt of a dance dress. She enjoyed hand-sewing, which gave her legs a rest; it made a nice change to leave the busy hum of the machines behind in the main workroom for the quiet room where two middle-aged seamstresses worked.

  ‘All this modern dancing,’ one of her companions said after a while, approving her almost invisible stitching. ‘Madam must have caught her heel in that. She always brings her little disasters to us. Are you almost finished? She wishes to wear the dress on stage tonight.’

  ‘Miss Short’s having a fitting downstairs for a new gown,’ the other seamstress looked up over her wire-framed spectacles. ‘She’ll collect this, in about an hour.’

  ‘Have we some rhinestones to match these on the bodice?’ Rose Marie asked. She’d had an idea. ‘I could sew two or three on each of these panels, including one to conceal the repair. What d’you think?’ she asked diffidently. She could just picture the effect when the skirt swirled in the dance, and the lights caught the sparkling gems.

  ‘I think you’re right. If you go on as you are, my dear, I can see you progressing on to design in the years to come.’ She passed the little box of semi-precious stones.

  ‘Thank you,’ Rose Marie accepted the compliment gracefully. How many years to come? she thought. I want to see more of the world outside this dress shop, like Stella. I want to wear dresses like this, only I’d take care of them, and go dancing in the evenings, not back to the pie shop. ‘My sister’s on the stage, too,’ she added, ‘she sings.’

  The woman who wore the spectacles removed them, rubbed at a red mark low on her nose. ‘I’m glad you haven’t had your head turned by that, my dear,’ she said.

  *

  Lilli Bower had been working industriously all morning, mostly on her knees, sweeping between the tip up seats, dusting down the red plush, picking up the litter from the floor. She thought ruefully that at least she’d learned something from her mother-in-law, how to clean a house. She’d never picked up so much as a duster in her old home, though when the servants left during the war, she’d helped her mother with the cooking.

  Every now and then she looked up at the stage, where the big screen was hidden behind the velvet curtains, imagining them swept aside and the dazzling beam from the projection room in the lofty regions above, wavering, then steadying, as the picture appeared, to the delight of the audience.

  The Golden Domes cinema in Camberwell certainly lived up to its name, with wonderful gilding and plaster ornamentation. When the music started, the lights dimmed, you’d be in another world, Lilli thought. She’d love to see the new Lilian Gish picture.

  She still had the ladies’ room to tidy: the powder bowl to replenish, the mirrors to clean. Another cleaner saw to the foyer, and the manager’s office at the front.

  Lilli straightened up at last, satisfied that she had done all that was expected of her. The splendour of the Golden Domes reminded her of the château in France where she had spent her youth, before she met her soldier husband at the end of the war, and such was the euphoria after the Armistice, she’d married him, despite her mother’s disapproval, and come to England, where their daughter was born. It had been a real culture shock. They shared a back-to-back house in the Midlands with her husband’s family, all mill workers. After a big row with his mother one day, Lilli had pleaded with her husband to take her away, for them to set up on their own. When he refused, she walked out on him, taking little Yvette. Eventually, she’d ended up in London, having sold her jewellery to help them survive. She was too proud to go home to her own family. This job, menial as it was, meant she could carry on. She was very fortunate to have a kind landlady who’d help with Yvette, and another new friend in the pie shop. It was Manny who’d told her about the vacant flat and the job going at the cinema. She’d have to walk there until she got paid, but life was looking up at last.
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  *

  Rose Marie was followed by others from the tram car into the pie shop that evening. Manny served her first, wrapping a hot meat and potato pie in a cloth, then she dashed outside to the waiting tram car to give it to the conductor, to keep him going until the end of his shift. Her travelling companions emerged from the shop, dispersing in various directions as the tram departed. Even those lucky enough to be in regular employment appreciated a ready meal, and not having to feed precious pennies to the gas meter.

  Manny waited by the shop door as usual to exchange another word or two with Rose Marie. He was a cheerful chap, not very tall but of a stocky build. A wide smile transformed his plain features, despite displaying his uneven teeth.

  ‘Had a good day, Rose Marie?’

  ‘Yes. Did you, Manny? Lots of customers?’

  He nodded. ‘Hot pies always go down a treat in weather like this.’

  ‘Well, I’m hoping for something different for my supper! ’Night, Manny.’

  He watched as she opened the door next to the shop, then closed it behind her. He listened to the echo of her footsteps as she climbed the stairs.

  Manny limped back to welcome in a new customer.

  ‘Heard your pies are the best,’ the man said.

  ‘Made in Paradise,’ Manny replied, with a wink.

  Rose Marie was not best pleased to discover a newcomer in her bedroom, when she went to get changed. There were two little girls, not one, lolling on the bed, looking at some picture books.

  ‘Out you go,’ she told Josefina and Yvette. ‘I don’t want to be a peep show!’

  ‘Come on, Yvette,’ Josefina said. ‘She’s always grumpy when she gets in from work. We’d better lay the table for supper, as you and your mother are eating with us.’

  Florence overheard this exchange. She sympathized with Rose Marie, for she could remember the lack of privacy when she was growing up and had to share a room with Stella. She didn’t comment though. She was tired, and still busy cooking.

  When Lilli arrived, she sniffed appreciatively. ‘That smells good, Miss Flinders.’