by Mary Gibson
THE BERMONDSEY BOOKSHOP
Mary Gibson
www.headofzeus.com
Also by Mary Gibson
Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts
Jam and Roses
Gunner Girls and Fighter Boys
Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams
Hattie’s Home
A Sister’s Struggle
First published in the UK in 2020 by Head of Zeus Ltd
Copyright © Mary Gibson, 2020
The moral right of Mary Gibson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
A catalogue record for this book is available fromthe British Library.
ISBN (HB): 9781788542647
ISBN (E): 9781788542630
Design: Rory Kee
Girl: © Richard Jenkins Photography
Background: © Getty
Author photograph: © Hugh Dickens
Head of Zeus Ltd
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Contents
Welcome Page
Also by Mary Gibson
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1: Cuckoo in the Garret
Chapter 2: Blood on the Lino
Chapter 3: The Tin Box
Chapter 4: He Who Runs May Read
Chapter 5: A Fairy Godmother
Chapter 6: Rasher
Chapter 7: Nora
Chapter 8: Martin
Chapter 9: Rich Man, Poor Man
Chapter 10: The Bermondsey Triptych
Chapter 11: A Dangerous Situation
Chapter 12: Chibby
Chapter 13: Mudlark
Chapter 14: Bermondsey to Belgravia
Chapter 15: In My Father’s House
Chapter 16: Reviled Beloved
Chapter 17: A Pair of Gold Earrings
Chapter 18: Pieces of Silver
Chapter 19: Elocution Lessons
Chapter 20: Bleedin’ Likely
Chapter 21: Two of a Kind
Chapter 22: A Faithful Knight and True
Chapter 23: Nemesis
Chapter 24: The Whitesmith
Acknowledgements
Author’s Note
About the Author
An Invitation from the Publisher
For Jo
1
Cuckoo in the Garret
1920
‘Oi, Noss Goss! Where ya goin’?’
‘Mind your own business and me name’s Kate!’
Noss. She’d earned the nickname because her family thought she asked too many questions. Which was true. Not stopping, she sped past the young boy, her dark curls tumbling from their restraining clips. He was lounging against the ancient brick house, one of a long row that descended in ever-increasing dilapidation towards the Thames. Here they halted in a tumble of sagging roofs and broken windows.
The boy, her fourteen-year-old cousin Stan, stuck up two fingers. ‘Only asking!’ He pushed himself off the wall and ran to keep up with her.
‘Ask no questions, you’ll be told no lies. That’s what your mum’s always telling me. So, shut yer gob and piss off. I’m late for school!’
She soon outstripped him and he yelled, ‘Janey says you’re common as muck and your mother was a slut!’
Kate slammed to a halt. She’d risk the cane and book for being late rather than let him get away with that. She sprinted back towards him and, barely stopping, swung her fist into his cheek, speeding off again before he could retaliate. She smiled as she ran.
‘I’m telling me mum! She’ll chuck you out and good riddance!’ he called after her, rubbing his face.
But Kate ignored the stupid boy. He was only copying his older sister, Janey, who’d made it her life’s mission to ruin Kate’s.
*
After school Kate hid herself in the garret, keeping out of Aunt Sylvie’s way, until she heard a voice sharp enough to put her teeth on edge. ‘Kate, get yourself down here!’
She hadn’t got away with it after all. Stan had dropped her in it. Kate took a deep breath and ducked down the steep garret stairs, taking her time. This was the one place she would never hurry. Her mother had died after a fall from the garret stairs in the house next door, which had once been Kate’s childhood home. Kate didn’t intend to follow her. Aunt Sylvie would have to wait.
‘You took your bleedin’ time!’ Her aunt had the Bermondsey Recorder open on the kitchen table.
‘Sorry. I never heard you,’ Kate lied. She’d found it best never to mention her mum to Aunt Sylvie. When she’d first gone to live with her aunt, Kate had been full of childish questions about her mother. Why did she have to die and leave her? What had she looked like – for her face had faded over time – but most of all, she’d wanted to know that her mother had loved her.
Aunt Sylvie was a tight-lipped, sharp-tongued woman and would answer, ‘You and your questions! This…’ she’d pinch Kate’s small nose, ‘will get you into trouble one day. Curiosity killed the cat.’ And once, when Kate had asked ‘which cat?’, she’d got a slap for her cheek.
Now she stood, waiting for Aunt Sylvie to speak. Asking no questions.
‘It says here,’ her aunt prodded the column of situations vacant, ‘Boutle’s is looking for girls. Get yourself ready, we’re going down there.’
‘Now? Why?’
Aunt Sylvie rolled her eyes. ‘Why d’you think? You’re fourteen now and it’s time you got yourself a job.’
‘Why can’t I wait till the end of the year, like everyone else?’
‘You need to start paying your way.’ Aunt Sylvie got up, closing the subject.
‘But I ain’t finished me education. Not even got me report or nothing!’ Kate’s naturally rosy cheeks flushed deep crimson.
‘Finished your education? Don’t make me laugh! You’ll never be no more’n a skivvy or a factory girl,’ her aunt sneered, then muttered, ‘That’s if you don’t end up on the streets. Like mother, like daughter.’
Kate should have been used to the insults, but she clenched her fists. ‘Don’t you talk about my mum like that, you mean old cow!’
Aunt Sylvie had a powerful right-hander that came out of nowhere. A sharp slap squashed Kate’s rising anger and she cursed her own quick temper. Why could she never keep her mouth shut?
‘I’ll say what I bloody well like in me own house. Now go and put your best frock on, and comb your rat’s tails. We’re going down Boutle’s.’
With her cheek stinging and her blood pumping, Kate dashed out of the room straight into her cousin Janey, who put out a solid arm to bar her way. Janey was eighteen now and thickset. She pinched Kate’s nose, making her gasp for breath.
‘You got your answer there, didn’t you, Noss Goss? Right across your earhole!’ Janey smirked.
Kate slid under her cousin’s imprisoning arm, giving her a parting kick in the shin. Janey answered with a clout, which Kate evaded, wrestling her to the floor. She grabbed handfuls of her cousin’s straight sandy hair and tugged hard.
‘Mum!’ Janey screamed, and Kate leaped for the stairs. ‘I’d kill you if I wasn’t clocking on in five minutes, you gypsy br
at!’
‘You couldn’t catch me if you had wings on your feet!’ Kate laughed and, reaching the shelter of the garret, slammed the hatch closed.
The fight with Janey was nothing unusual. Her cousin had tormented Kate from that day, eight years ago, when she’d arrived at Aunt Sylvie’s house, clutching her father’s hand and full of questions. Why had her mum gone away? Why was her dad leaving her here? Janey hadn’t taken long to coin Kate’s nickname of Noss, but it had taken years before she’d stopped asking: ‘why?’
The garret was scary. Unseen creatures scurried among the high rafters, approaching and retreating, never showing themselves. It was dark. The tiny dormer window, with three panes boarded up, let in scant light. The roof space loomed above, its timbers black. She pushed open the dormer and let weak sunlight spill in. Looking out over the saddle-backed roofs of the terrace tumbling towards East Lane river stairs, she let her eye rest on the sluggish Thames. It flowed just yards from the last house in the lane.
At least she had the garret all to herself. She’d shared Janey’s bed until she was ten, and there hadn’t been a night when she’d not been pinched, prodded and kicked out of bed, often waking up on the cold lino in the early hours. When Aunt Sylvie finally gave in to Janey’s pleadings and removed Kate from the bed, there was only one place for her to go. The cousins all shared a bedroom, but she certainly couldn’t go in with Stan. He was getting curious enough about her developing body as it was. No, Aunt Sylvie said, the garret was where she belonged. But on days like these it felt not so much a punishment as a blessing.
She remembered that other garret, in the house next door to Aunt Sylvie’s. It had been her childhood home until she was six. Her parents had rented a room at the top of the house, with the garret as a bedroom for all of them. It was one of the few sharp memories of her life before coming to Aunt Sylvie’s. No, Kate thought. This garret wasn’t such a bad place. It certainly felt more like home than anywhere else in this bloody house.
She breathed musky river air deep into her lungs and noticed that the trembling in her body slowed. So, she would be a factory girl. Why was she surprised?
‘You’ll be all right, Kate, gel,’ she whispered.
She spent a full five minutes trying to tame her black curls. ‘Gypsy rat’s tails’, Aunt Sylvie called them, swearing Kate never used a comb. But however hard she tried to repress the springy ringlets, they managed to escape. In the end she yanked them into a tight knot at the nape of her neck. She took down the ugly brown frock from its hook on a rafter. Even the smell as she slipped it over her head made her gag. It had covered Janey’s body for far too long before being handed down to Kate. It smelt of her cousin. She tugged at the hem.
‘Ugh! You must look like Granny Erlock,’ she said, grateful there was no full-length mirror in the room to confirm her judgement.
‘Come on, I ain’t got all day!’ Aunt Sylvie’s voice boomed from below. ‘All the jobs’ll be gone before we get there.’
Their walk to the factory in Wild’s Rents was largely silent, except when Aunt Sylvie told her to slow down. Kate, quick in her ways, would always run rather than walk, and she continually found herself a few strides ahead of her aunt.
‘We ain’t runnin’ a race!’ Aunt Sylvie complained.
‘I thought you said we needed to hurry cos all the jobs would be gone?’
‘You’ve always got to have the last word,’ Aunt Sylvie puffed. She was a short, sandy-haired, square-built woman of about forty, but she looked older. A perpetual frown of disapproval creased her forehead, at least when Kate was around. They traipsed up Long Lane and as they turned into Wild’s Rents, Kate spotted the factory. She deliberately said nothing, enjoying her aunt’s confusion as she searched for the building. It could hardly be missed. An insistent, deafening thud came from stamping machines cutting out tinplate; stinking black solder fumes snaked above a hotchpotch of buildings. Kate slowed down at the gates – they looked like the entrance to hell. She wanted to cry. But Aunt Sylvie turned back, giving her a searching look, and instead of crying, Kate grinned.
‘You cheeky mare. You’re dragging your feet on purpose! Get in ’ere and don’t you dare show me up.’ Aunt Sylvie grabbed her arm, pulling her into the factory yard.
Kate was expecting a grilling. But the energetic, bright-eyed factory manager surprised her with a pleasant smile and a brisk, kindly manner. Almost as if he knew how daunting the place must appear to her.
‘We’ll take you on for a trial. You’ll be under Miss Dane in the soldering shop. Seven shillings a week – that all right, Mother?’ Aunt Sylvie nodded eagerly and Kate guessed she’d never see a penny of those seven shillings.
‘You can start tomorrow, then, Miss Goss. Eight o’clock, sharp!’
Tomorrow! She felt a mixture of excitement and nausea, which must have been obvious, for the manager smiled. ‘Don’t worry, I was your age when I started here – oh, about twenty years ago. You soon get used to the smell and the noise – first five years are the worst!’
She giggled and Aunt Sylvie jabbed an elbow into her side, not understanding his joke.
*
Once home, Aunt Sylvie surprised her by saying she could keep a shilling of her wages for herself. Of course, it would have to buy her clothes and soap, which took the shine off a little. But still, a whole shilling to spend on herself seemed like a fortune.
‘Can I go and tell me mates I won’t be going back to school?’
‘All right, but don’t stay out late. You get yourself to bed early. If you’re late clocking on, you’ll get a fine and it won’t be me paying it! And no hanging round the gas lamp with them boys!’ Aunt Sylvie lowered her voice as if Kate, who was waiting to make her escape, couldn’t hear. ‘Don’t want history repeating itself.’
Kate’s heart suffered a familiar wound. The soft memory of her mother, battered by small, daily hammer blows of innuendo, had long grown pitted and faded. Aunt Sylvie never missed a chance to make it clear that Bessie, Kate’s mother, had tricked Archie Goss into marriage. The nature of the trickery was unclear to Kate, but her mum, she said, was a devious tinker slut, born in a caravan and brought up in Romany Row. A shell, like the toughened tinplate she’d soon be working with, had gradually wrapped itself around Kate’s heart. She had learned it was best to preserve the memory of her mum in its sealed casing, locked away even from herself.
*
Aunt Sylvie wasn’t her only relative in East Lane. In the first house, farthest from the river, lived her spinster aunt Sarah. And this evening, feeling suddenly ashamed at having to explain to her friends why she couldn’t return to school, Kate decided to go there instead. Neither of her aunts had warm temperaments but at least Kate had something in common with Aunt Sarah – they both loathed Sylvie.
‘She sent you round for your tea again?’ Aunt Sarah asked. It was a running battle between the two women as to whose responsibility Kate was, Sylvie arguing that as Sarah had no kids, she should have been the one to take Kate in.
‘No. She’s making me start work early.’
Aunt Sarah rubbed finger and thumb together. ‘Money. That’s all she cares about, apart from Archie, of course. Sun shines out of our brother’s arse, according to her.’
‘How does she know, when we never see his arse?’ Kate asked, grinning. She sat at the kitchen table, eyeing some warm jam tarts.
‘You’re a cheeky little ’a’porth.’ Aunt Sarah pushed the plate towards Kate. ‘Here y’are. Don’t tell her, though.’
‘Why don’t me dad never come to see me?’ Kate asked, chomping on the hard pastry. Aunt Sarah was a terrible cook, but the jam made up for it.
‘He’s been busy making his fortune, according to her.’
‘What, for eight years? It’s taking him a long time.’
Aunt Sarah sighed. ‘He never got over your mother. He don’t want to come back here and be reminded.’
This was one of the variety of reasons she’d been given over the y
ears for her father’s continued absence. None of them made sense to her. ‘D’you think he’ll ever come for me?’
‘Course he will. Don’t forget he had five years in the army. You don’t make no money in a war… well, not unless you’re selling the guns, you don’t.’ Aunt Sarah sniffed. She had very strong opinions and would share them freely with whoever would listen. ‘He’ll make it up to you, Kate. I’ll say this for him. He’s a clever man. Our mum and dad scrimped and scraped helping him go to college. Give him everything. Us girls didn’t get a look in. Anyway, he was always very good making money. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s abroad, we ain’t heard in a while…’
‘What’s he like?’
‘Smart! Always dressed lovely. Handsome! Like I said, he got a scholarship. A cut above the other boys. That’s your father. Too good for the girls round here, including your mother… well, that’s according to her.’
‘Why?’ Sometimes, if Aunt Sarah was in a good mood, she would let slip pieces of information that Sylvie kept a tight lid on.
‘How many times have you been told to keep your questions to yourself? Sylvie don’t like us talking about it. Have another one.’ She pointed to the jam tarts and leaned her elbows on the table. ‘But I’m not answerable to her and you’re old enough to know now.’
Kate felt her heartbeat quicken at the prospect of finding a new piece in the puzzle of her life.
‘She tricked him into marrying her.’
Kate felt immediately deflated. ‘I know that.’
Aunt Sarah cocked her head to one side. ‘But you don’t know how, do you?’
Kate shook her head.
‘She got herself pregnant! So then course he had to marry her.’
‘Why?’
‘Jesus, no wonder you got yourself that nickname! Why? Because when a woman’s got herself pregnant she’s a slut – unless the man marries her, that’s why.’
Kate had a vague idea of how a woman could get pregnant and she was pretty sure she couldn’t do it alone.
