The Bermondsey Bookshop

by Mary Gibson

  ‘So, me mum, she got herself pregnant. Was it like the virgin birth and Dad felt sorry for her, like Joseph?’

  ‘Joseph! You’re sharp enough to cut yourself. That’s what I get for answering your bloody questions. Go on. Get back to her.’ Aunt Sarah stood to shoo her out.

  ‘One more question – please. Tell me what she looked like, me mum – was she pretty?’

  Aunt Sarah stopped for a minute and studied Kate. ‘Bessie, pretty? Archie thought so. Hair black as yer hat, eyes blue as the sky. If you really want to know, go home and look in the mirror, gel. That’s why Sylvie took against you. You’re the face cut off of your mother.’

  *

  That night Kate slipped up to bed early, grateful she had an excuse to escape before Janey got back from an evening out with her workmates. The garret was reached through her cousins’ bedroom via steep, ladder-like steps, at the top of which was a hatch, normally propped open so that Kate could hear Stan’s snores or Janey’s scolding. Kate squeezed between their empty beds. Stan’s was curtained off, though it offered Janey little privacy, another reason Kate preferred the garret.

  She climbed the stairs, pushed open the tiny dormer window for air, hung up her brown dress and lay down on the narrow bed. It wasn’t so much a bed as a shelf: a few wooden planks, supported by roof struts. Its timber, black like the rest of the roof, was as old as the house, which had been there for at least two hundred years. Her mattress was of plain ticking, stuffed with straw from the nearby stables. She pulled the blanket up under her chin and, staring through the dormer at a thin sliver of moon, she began to conjure the dream of her dad returning for her.

  It was a nightly ritual she looked forward to. She wove the tale into many strands and numerous variants. Now she smiled at the image of her dad turning up at Boutle’s on her first day. Disgusted with Aunt Sylvie for sending his daughter to work at a tin basher’s, he would call her out from the factory in front of everyone. All the other girls would look impressed as he drove Kate away in his own motor car. Dark green with silver chrome it would be. They would stop off at Aunt Sylvie’s to get her clothes and Janey would be sick with jealousy. ‘Oh, don’t worry about those old rags, Sylvie,’ Dad would say. ‘I’ll buy my daughter all new!’ And then they would drive to a lovely house over the other side. Mayfair, maybe. But tonight, she had barely reached the new house before she was lulled to sleep by the soughing river, sucking and shushing along the foreshore.

  She was soon asleep and must have slept deeply, for she didn’t hear the hatch close, nor the wooden latch turn. But in the morning, after the dawn had turned the river red and she’d hurriedly slipped on her everyday blue frock, she discovered that the hatch was stuck fast and as she tugged at it, she heard Janey’s laugh below.

  ‘I told you I’d get you back!’ Janey called up through the closed hatch. ‘You made me late, now you can have a taste of your own medicine. You won’t be clocking on today, you tinker brat! And don’t try shouting for help, Mum and Stan’s already gone out. Bye!’

  Her Aunt Sylvie wouldn’t be back before twelve. She did early-morning office cleaning before going straight to the wharf on Bermondsey Wall to sort beans. Kate slumped back down onto her bunk. She’d lose her job before she’d even started! And if she did, Aunt Sylvie would get out Uncle Tom’s heavy docker’s belt. Aunt Sylvie’s husband had died in the war, and whenever she got a good hiding Kate wished he’d taken his belt with him. She flung herself off the bunk and knelt down at the hatch.

  ‘Stan! Are you still there? I’ll buy you fags with me first week’s money if you let me out!’

  She was met with silence.

  She stuck her head out of the dormer window, considering making the two-storey drop to the street below. But she could barely fit her head through the opening, let alone her whole body. She stamped on the hatch, jumping up and down, risking falling through and breaking her neck rather than let Janey win. But the thick old boards were iron strong. She was a prisoner.

  Kate had heard tales that all the garrets in the lane had once been a single open attic space. Smugglers of old had used the long passage to get themselves, and their rum, ashore and onto the highway as discreetly as possible. They would land their contraband at East Lane river stairs, offload it into the first house and pass along the secret passageway to a waiting cart at the end of the lane, far from the customs officers on the river front. It might just be true. What if she could make the journey in reverse? But first she’d have to find an opening through her own garret.

  She rarely ventured further than the area around her bed, but now she lit the lamp and held it high. She skirted an old tin box and immediately tripped over a beam. The paraffin lamp flickered. She’d used her last match to light it. Shielding it with a hand, she steadied herself, waiting until the flame settled. She felt her way to the end wall, but found no connecting door or entrance, just rotting lathe and crumbling plaster. She was about to turn back when she saw some crude planks nailed to the old lathes. Putting down the lamp, she tugged at a plank and tumbled to the floor, pulling the plank with her. Careful of the rusted nails studding the rotten wood, she worked on the next plank and the next until an opening large enough to take a broad-shouldered man emerged. Braving cobwebs and ancient droppings, she put the lamp through into next-door’s garret. But what if it was still being used as a bedroom, just as she and her parents had once done?

  She peered in. It was empty. But it no longer resembled the cosy place her mother had made it when Kate was a child. Instead, the large bedstead and washstand, with its pretty china bowl, had been replaced with a narrow cot, covered in sacks, and a table stacked with empty beer bottles. This must be where next-door’s grandfather slept and drank his remaining years away. But, fortunately for Kate, he was out or downstairs. She crawled through and tiptoed across the cluttered floor, hearing echoes of her younger self reciting nursery rhymes back to her mother as they lay together in the big bed. She never remembered her father being with them. Though he must have slept there sometimes. It seemed strange to be in this place for the first time in eight years. Seeing it like this made her old life seem even further away.

  She found what she was looking for. This time it was easier. A hinged door with a wooden catch allowed her easy access into the next garret. Filthier than her own, it looked like the last occupants had been the smugglers themselves. Clay pipes littered the floor, and bunks similar to hers lined the eaves. The dust of ages on the garret floor moved and she cried out as it rippled towards her. She leaped over the rat as it scurried past. Not caring now if she alerted the inhabitants below, she scooted for the end wall, but was astonished to find there was none. An unbroken roof space ran the length of several houses. All she had to do now was get through centuries of bird droppings, old nests and spiders’ webs – and the quicker the better.

  Shielding the lamp, she sprinted the length of the attic space until her way was blocked by another wall. This must lead into the last, most dilapidated house in the lane, where mad old Longbonnet lived in the few habitable rooms. Why they called her Longbonnet Kate wasn’t sure; either it referred to her tall fedora with its black feather or, more likely Kate thought, her extremely long nose. She had a squint-eyed stare that had given all the kids in the lane nightmares at one time or another, simply because of the tales they wove around her. Longbonnet had once chased her all the way to Parker’s Row because Kate had mimicked the old woman’s cracked, quavery voice for her friends’ entertainment. But when she caught her, Longbonnet had given Kate a penny – for giving her a bloody good laugh, she’d said. Still, Kate didn’t fancy meeting Longbonnet today on the garret stairs.

  Quietly, she examined the plaster wall till she found a similar square opening as in her own garret, but there were no planks covering this one. She eased herself through and felt her way till she came to a brick wall. This was definitely the end of the terrace, the last house of East Lane. The river – and freedom! – were just a few feet away. ‘But how
the bloody hell do you get out of here?’ She looked up, asking the ancient cross-beams.

  And the answer came from out of the shadows in a cracked, quavery voice that made Kate jump. ‘This way.’

  Kate whirled round to see Longbonnet herself, pointing to a wooden pulley, with a frayed fragment of rope running to a narrow door in the back wall.

  ‘I… I…’ Kate stuttered, backing towards the door. ‘I’m escaping,’ she finally managed.

  And Longbonnet shook her greasy ringlets. ‘You think you are… go on… out, quick!’

  Kate darted to the door, flung it open and flew down wooden stairs leading to a cobbled yard below. Thank God for old Longbonnet – and the smugglers. She was free!

  *

  Like a greyhound let out of the gate, Kate ran all the way to Boutle’s. ‘Please, God, let me be on time and I’ll start going back to Mass!’ she pleaded.

  But when she arrived at the factory and bounded upstairs to the manager’s office, her heart sank. His cheery smile of yesterday had been replaced by a frown. Pulling out a watch from his waistcoat, he tapped it. ‘What time do you call this, Miss Goss!’

  ‘Sorry, sir!’ She was aware of a trickle of sweat making its way towards the end of her nose. She cuffed it. ‘I was detained on an unforeseen family emergency, sir.’

  His frown deepened. ‘Oh! I know you were detained all right, but what was the nature of this emergency, might I ask?’

  She took in a deep breath and blurted out: ‘False imprisonment!’

  He seemed to consider this seriously before asking, ‘Whose?’

  ‘Er.’ She fiddled with the belt on her dress and realized that the frock was now more black than blue and was ripped at the hem. God knows what she must look like. ‘It was me stepsister… well, it was her that locked me in the garret. So, I reckoned if the smugglers could escape through the garrets, so could I, and I crawled through them all, though they was bloody scary, and I run here as fast as I could!’ She finished on a breathless, high-pitched note and saw him cover his mouth.

  ‘I see. Well, Miss Goss, you’ve shown great determination to get here for your first day of employment, and I like that in a young person.’

  ‘Will I get a late fine?’ she asked, thinking of Aunt Sylvie’s warning.

  He smiled. ‘Not this time, but might I suggest a visit to the ladies’ for a quick wash and brush up? Those old garrets seem to have left their mark on you.’

  He gave her directions and it wasn’t until she looked in the mirror on the lavatory wall that she realized what he meant. Her face was as black as her hair, which looked like a nest vacated by some of the rats she’d surprised along the way. There wasn’t much she could do with the hair, but she scrubbed her face with a piece of grey soap until it stung.

  When she entered the soldering shop, Miss Dane, the forelady, gave her a broom and a cloth and explained her job – sweeping up and tidying around the benches. Some of the women raised their heads and then their eyebrows at the sight of her and she felt her face turn scarlet. Kate gave the young woman whose stare lasted longest a bold grin. ‘Me complexion’s naturally rosy.’

  ‘And I suppose you’ll be telling me your frock’s naturally filthy, you cheeky little bugger,’ the young woman said, with a half-smile. ‘Here, come and clear round this bench, and watch your hands! These soldering irons are red hot.’

  The day passed quickly enough, with plenty of fetching and carrying and cleaning to keep her busy. But she wasn’t looking forward to answering Aunt Sylvie’s questions about her ruined frock. She tried to slip in unnoticed, but Stan was lounging in the lane and wandered over, looking surprised as she approached.

  ‘How did you get out? I opened the hatch when I got back from school and you was gone! I thought you’d run away. No such luck!’

  ‘Sod off, Stan. You could have helped me.’ He came in with her and as she tried to sneak upstairs, he called Aunt Sylvie’s attention. ‘Mum! Kate’s ripped her dress!’

  ‘Look at the state of you! Didn’t they give you an overall?’ Aunt Sylvie asked, inspecting the stains and lifting the torn hem.

  ‘They didn’t have one to fit me,’ she lied. ‘It’s filthy there.’

  ‘Well, you’ll have to wear it till you can afford to get another one at the old clo’ market. Get it washed and dry it over the range.’

  This was the only conversation she had with her aunt about her first day at work. Not that she cared. What was there to say about sweeping up solder and washing off flux anyway? But as she was helping Aunt Sylvie make the tea, Janey walked in, and the look of astonishment on her cousin’s face was reward enough for a good day’s work done.

  2

  Blood on the Lino

  1920–23

  Kate soon learned that Miss Dane had eased her in gently to the soldering room on that first week. She had sent her on errands all over the factory, either taking order slips to the tinplate store or checking the solder and flux supplies. Another of her ‘jobs’ was running to the grocery shop on the corner of Wild’s Rents to get Miss Dane her daily sandwich. Kate seemed to be everywhere but the soldering room. And when she picked up her first wage packet, she felt that perhaps factory work was going to be more fun than school.

  It was during her second week that she realized she’d actually become a slave in hell. Eighty women worked ten hours a day soldering seams on all manner of tins, from large paint drums to fancy biscuit tins. Along each of the four workbenches were ranged twenty coke ovens. These kept the soldering irons white hot at all times. The whole room was a gigantic furnace. Ash blew out of the ovens in grey powdery clouds every time a soldering iron was inserted or removed, and it was Kate’s job to wipe the soot from around the ovens and benches, keeping the surfaces as clean as possible for the women to work. Flux fumes, thick and tacky, stuck to her throat, while the smell of solder burned her nostrils. And because Kate was incapable of moving slowly, she was covered in a sheen of sweat from clocking on till clocking-off time.

  Marge, the young woman who’d met her with the boldest stare on her first day, had proved to be one of the friendliest. She urged Kate to slow down. ‘You’ve got to learn to pace yourself, Kate,’ she’d warn, ‘oss you’ll waste away. You ain’t chubby as it is!’

  And it was true. After a while, the blue frock began to swamp her, and as she grew taller the hem rode ridiculously high. It would be months before she could afford a new dress out of her shilling allowance, but when she pleaded for a loan, Aunt Sylvie refused. She suffered agonies of embarrassment as the dress grew shabbier. And all her pre-sleep dreams became prayers that her dad would come back before it fell apart completely.

  But Archie Goss didn’t come back to save her, not during the first month at Boutle’s, nor the first year. She became even more inventive in weaving her bedtime tales about him, constructing elaborate reasons for his failure to return to her.

  Only when she was asleep would he appear in the sort of dreams she could not control, and sometimes they were not happy ones. They might end with Archie shouting at the shadowy figure of her mum, blaming her for some small offence. Or he would be walking away from Aunt Sylvie’s, as on that first day, not even stopping to kiss Kate goodbye. Surely in reality he had stopped to kiss her? Or was that just another of her dreams – waking or sleeping – which were shared with no one? Her sorrow at her abandonment and her fading hopes of a rescue were hidden just as carefully as the memory of her mum. No one would know about them. She’d make sure.

  By the time she was seventeen, Kate was as tough as the sheets of tinplate stacked in the yard and as sharp as the guillotines that cut them. She needed no one but herself.

  *

  ‘Conny, move yourself. Sweep up this solder, me feet’s sticking to the floor!’ Kate called to the girl whose job it now was to clean the soldering room.

  She was sure she’d been twice as quick when it was her job to keep things tidy. Surely, she’d jumped to it before the ash from the coke ovens had ev
en built up? She hadn’t had to wait for Miss Dane to come and chase her. But Conny was impervious. The girl circled the broom around Kate’s feet, languidly succeeding in moving debris from one spot to another, raising clouds of coke ash in the process.

  ‘Giss that broom, Conny, you’re making it worse!’ Kate cleared the area around her bench in a few swift swipes. ‘And see if you can wipe a cloth from one end of me bench to the other before you come and pour out the tea!’

  Conny gave her a slow smile and a nod, failing to be cut by the sarcasm as she swirled the cloth around the bench in sleepy sweeps. Kate peeled off her overall and Marge, the young woman who’d first taken Kate under her wing, gave her a shoulder barge as they walked to the end of the bench for their tea break.

  ‘Why don’t you go a bit easier on that poor girl? She ain’t on piecework, is she? And she’s working clever! Like I always told you to do. You’ve got to pace yourself. Besides, you ought to remember what it’s like doing the dirty work.’

  ‘We’re all doing the dirty work! There ain’t no clean work in this place, not unless you’re in the office.’

  Kate picked up one of the tin cans they’d converted into teacups, soldering on the handles to save their fingertips from scalding. She spooned condensed milk in and eyed the oil drum that served as a tea urn. Each of the benches had a similar makeshift urn, with a tap soldered on and heated by a coke oven. Conny hadn’t even got the water boiling and was still finishing her cleaning.

  ‘Oh,’ Kate said, exasperated, ‘I can’t wait for her, I’m gasping.’ She began spooning tea into the large pot. ‘I’ll make it meself.’

  ‘How’s things at home?’ Marge asked, pointing to a bruise on Kate’s cheek.

  She shrugged. ‘You know me Aunt Sylvie – always quick with her hands. But she’ll come unstuck one day.’ Kate pressed the bruise, which was still tender.

  ‘What did you do this time?’ Marge asked, sipping the scalding tea as quickly as she could – their tea break only lasted ten minutes.