by Mary Gibson
‘But you do know your Aunt Sylvie was blowing it all up. Stan’s got a broken cheekbone and two shiners.’
‘Oh! Well, I can live with that. Just don’t do it again.’
‘I won’t need to,’ he said with a cocky grin, looking more like the Rasher she’d known as a child. But however confident he was, she couldn’t believe that there wouldn’t be consequences.
7
Nora
Kate was dreading it. Even though Johnny had persuaded Mr Smith to drop the interest, she still had to repay the loan. She made her way reluctantly to the moneylender’s house. The blonde woman threw open the door and, with a stony face, stood aside to let her in. As she entered, Kate felt herself trembling, imagining the woman attacking her from behind. But no blow came as, without a word, she showed Kate to the office.
Mr Smith smiled at her as if she were his long-lost daughter. ‘Ah! It’s young Kate Goss. Come in, sweetheart. Have a seat.’
She’d never been invited to sit before. The sixpence was sweating in her hand and she just wanted to drop it and run. His smile never faltered as he waited for her to speak.
She coughed, choking a little as the words tumbled out. ‘Mr Bacon says you’re waiving the interest on my loan so I’ve come to pay me tanner.’ She held out the money.
He gave a hearty laugh. ‘Quite right! The interest’s a trifle. There was some misunderstanding over my status, so – purely as a gesture of goodwill, you understand – I’m letting you off – you’ll just be repaying the principal.’
She thought she preferred him vicious. But then he opened up the cash box and, remembering the pain of crushed fingers, she hastily dropped the coin into the box before snatching back her hand. He kept the fixed smile on his face and turned to her with eyes like stone.
‘And if I can ever do anything else to help Mr Bacon or yourself – you can be sure I will.’
He turned away and she rushed out of the house. In the street she put the hand that had held the sixpence to her face. It had the oily smell of dirty silver. Johnny might think he’d tamed Mr Smith, but the man’s offer of help was more chilling than any threat and she knew, if he ever got the opportunity, he would do them harm.
She hurried home to get ready for her afternoon’s cleaning at the bookshop and was surprised to find Janey standing outside Aunt Sylvie’s house. Janey stared at her and as she passed grabbed her arm. ‘You nearly got my brother killed, you ungrateful gypsy brat.’
Kate yanked her arm away. ‘If it had been me, I’d have made a better job of it,’ she said nonchalantly, pushing past her.
Up in her garret she threw open the dormer window and leaned out – just in time to see the motor taxi turn up. It was like watching a wounded hero returning from the war. Aunt Sylvie helped Stan from the taxi, which was such a rare sight in East Lane that a circle of curious neighbours quickly surrounded it. Dear God in heaven, he’s only bloody waving! Kate thought as Stan raised a weary hand in greeting to his well-wishers. Janey rushed to her brother as if she really did love him and Aunt Sylvie nodded regally to the crowd, making a show of helping Stan walk, though there was nothing wrong with his legs. As he made his way to the door, he looked up to her high perch and before she could duck back in, he pointed two fingers at her, aiming an imaginary gun. She replied with two fingers of her own.
What a big kid. His threats didn’t scare her half as much as Mr Smith’s niceties. She turned back to the envelope she’d picked up from the doormat on her way in. The letter was from Boutle’s. Before she read it, she gazed deep into the blackened roof space. Sometimes she thought she could see lights up there, pinpricks, twinkling like daytime stars. Perhaps they were just tiny holes in the roof, but she liked to think of them as her own private slice of heaven. Please, please, let them take me back! Praying, but not to God. In this sparse room, where she’d slept as a child, she’d recently found herself talking to her mother. Asking for advice, for help, for comfort. If anyone ever found out, she’d be sent to Cane Hill asylum for certain.
We are inviting all women who were laid off in September to return to work. Wherever possible, previous positions and salaries will be offered.
‘Thank you!’ she offered up to the little daytime stars, which seemed to shine the brighter. She wondered if Johnny would understand.
She sorted through the orange crate which served as her larder: the remnants of this week’s groceries were a pinch of tea and half a loaf, along with a dish of dripping and one of jam from Aunt Sarah. Just enough for breakfasts until she started work. But if she could keep on her extra jobs at the bookshop and the Marigold, life would take a turn for the better, she was sure. She’d be able to pay her rent and her loan and still have two pounds to spend on food and clothes. Riches! She clutched the letter to her heart like a holy relic and thanked her mother for watching over her.
The memories had begun to return soon after she had moved in here. The landlord had changed the room so much that the mere look of the place couldn’t have prompted them. It must have been the feelings. She felt safe and in danger all at the same time. She wished she had a better memory of her father during those childhood days. But his prolonged absences meant that in her mind’s eye he was always coming or going, and she remembered, now, that her mother would change at each arrival and departure. There was one time when she’d been snuggled up in bed with her mother and had drifted off to sleep blanketed in love and security. But she’d been woken by the noise of her father’s return and found the bed empty. Creeping to the hatch, she’d looked down into the room below to see her parents kissing. She’d felt rage, jealousy, and she’d begun to scream. It was one of the few times her mother had spoken harshly to her. Calling up to her not to be so silly, that this was her daddy and she should be happy to see him. Kate only knew that when her father was back she lost her mother. Perhaps all kids felt like that sometimes, she didn’t know. But she remembered he usually brought her presents from his travels. He would smile, ruffle her curls and always send her to bed early. It was on one of his visits home that she was first banished to a bed of her own. But it was in his absences that she got to know him best. For then her mother would talk about Archie Goss to Kate in such glowing terms that her childish imagination made him the sort of prince who appeared in Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Her mother said he would come back and take them to a beautiful place, which Kate imagined as a castle, in a country full of trees, flowers and streams. There would be plenty to eat and new clothes every day and her mother would have someone else to do the laundry. And so, Kate found herself both longing for and dreading her father’s return. But now she was grown up and the years had robbed her of so much, she was left only with the longing.
*
The relief at getting her job back was quickly tempered by the realization that, with morning and evening jobs as well, she’d usually be working a fourteen-hour day.
‘Where are you rushing off to?’ Marge asked her on her first Monday back.
‘The bookshop!’
‘I’ve got you a nice bit of meat pudding we can heat up in the coke oven. You need feeding up, gel!’
‘Thanks, Marge, but I can’t stop. This is the only time I’ve got to do their cleaning – the hours are so awkward. Still, I’m not complaining – if you hadn’t found it for me I would’ve starved while I was laid off.’
Her friend looked her up and down. ‘Seems to me like you starved anyway. I’ll save you a bit for your tea.’
Kate waved her thanks and scooted out of the factory. During the lay-off she’d got used to hanging about in the shop, chatting to whoever was volunteering. Sometimes she’d even stayed till opening time at four thirty, when workers coming home from nearby factories or shops would start to pop in. Often Johnny would come to meet her. Then they’d sit in the reading room together and he would talk about the stories he planned to write. Always he’d offer to take her to eat at the Central Hall Dining Rooms before her bar stint at the Marigold, knowing as he did that at hom
e the orange crate was bare. Sometimes she would accept, and gradually her unease over his flashes of rage diminished as he revealed more of his kind and generous nature. There were, too, the walks home after the Marigold closed, when she let go of doubt and, giving in to the sweetness of his goodnight kisses, she seemed to know all she needed to know about Johnny Bacon.
Johnny wasn’t the only person she’d started to trust. Slowly, she’d begun to feel exactly the way Ethel Gutman had wanted her to feel. As if she were one of the club, even one of a family. And Kate wouldn’t let her down now that she was back at the factory. She’d carry on doing all the work Ethel had given her – just in double quick time. Today, however, she was surprised to find the shop locked up. She’d expected Miss Gutman would be going through the submissions for next quarter’s Bermondsey Book. Johnny had been talking about it for weeks. The December number was now proudly displayed in its bright blue-and-yellow cover on every free shelf and Johnny had been asked to submit another article for the March edition.
Kate knew where the spare key was hidden. She reached into the crack below the step and eased it out. The reading room wouldn’t take long – she’d done as much as she could last night after the lecture – and now she quickly mopped and polished. Afterwards she hurried down to do the shop, but at the bottom of the stairs, she paused. Someone had let themselves in.
Kate had never experienced being stopped in her tracks by someone’s appearance, but now she was faced with the most beautiful woman she’d ever seen, and all she wanted to do was stare. The woman, who looked in her mid-twenties, was wearing a white fox-fur jacket over a grey day dress. The hem was cut in the latest handkerchief fashion, which revealed far more than was usual, and Kate couldn’t help noticing her long, slender legs in their silk stockings. Everything about her was graceful. Her neck rose swanlike above the white fur collar. One hand rested on her hip and with the other she drummed a distracted tattoo on the table. Kate studied her perfectly sculpted profile. Visible beneath the wide-brimmed grey hat were fine, arched brows and long, dark lashes. Her nose was straight and delicate, her cupid’s-bow lips half parted, almost as if she were about to speak. Kate had never seen feminine perfection until now. The women she’d grown up with had been forced to build an inner strength and a hard shell. Her mum had seemed the exception – but she knew her memory was filtered through loss. Ethel wasn’t conventionally pretty, Lucy was. But neither had the impact of this woman. She seemed as perfect and vulnerable as one of the porcelain figures on the bookshop mantelpiece. Kate thought the woman might easily be shattered by a look. The only strong feature about her was her chin, which jutted slightly beyond her lower lip. But this was the very thing that made her beautiful, for without it, she would have been merely attractive. Instead, she was stunning.
The woman turned, without appearing to see her. Kate didn’t know what to do. Should she ask her who she was? Or would that seem rude? She decided to go about her business. She didn’t own the shop, she was just the cleaner. But as Kate moved towards the scullery the woman became aware of her and asked, ‘Excuse me, do you happen to know where Miss Ethel Gutman is?’
When she spoke it was like music that you wanted to stop and listen to. She had a faint foreign accent, which added to the sing-song quality of her voice. Kate was aware of her own silence.
‘Umm. No, madam,’ she said finally, ducking into the scullery. She felt flustered as she gathered her cloths and a tin of beeswax; she couldn’t help notice her own chapped hands, her fingers that, even now, still bore traces of bruising. She held them up. The hands of the lady waiting out there in the shop were protected by fine kid gloves. ‘Oh well, at least you work!’ Kate said to her hands.
‘They look as if they work very hard,’ the musical voice declared, and Kate turned to find the woman standing at the scullery door.
‘Oh, madam, don’t come in here, you’ll get your clothes dirty!’
The woman stood on the threshold and eyed the bucket and mop which blocked her path. ‘Do you think Ethel will be long? She said I should meet her here this afternoon. I know I’m a little early, but…’
‘You could wait in the reading room… upstairs?’ Kate waved her duster at the woman, hoping the threat of dirt might make her move. ‘It’s quite comfortable.’ She needed her out of the way now – she’d have to fly round with the beeswax as it was or she’d find herself with a late fine.
The woman agreed and followed Kate upstairs. ‘Help yourself to books. Here.’ Kate grabbed a copy of The Bermondsey Book’. ‘This one is good. My friend Johnny Bacon wrote it. She opened it at Johnny’s article and left the woman to her reading.
As she polished the downstairs table she noticed an earring. A pearl drop. She suspected it was real. She ran upstairs with it. ‘Is this yours, madam?’
The young woman put a hand to her ear. ‘Oh, dear, yes. My husband would have been very upset if I’d lost this. He gave them to me as an anniversary present.’ She tried to put the earring on but fumbled and dropped it. Kate dived under the reading table.
‘Got it!’
‘Would you mind helping me? My husband loves to see me in them, but they’re so fiddly it takes me ages to get the things on.’
Kate stood beside her, feeling oddly shy to be touching the delicate ear. Deftly she found the piercing and hooked the earring through the lobe. Then she spotted something on the slender neck. ‘Oh, madam. You’ve got a bruise there.’ She lifted the loop of shining hair and touched the purple-and-green mark. It was an oldish bruise, like those on her own fingers, and she guessed it had once been black.
The woman’s creamy cheeks paled even further. ‘Yes, as I said, I’m very clumsy.’
‘You must be, if you picked up someone’s hand and put it round your neck!’ Kate was immediately horrified that she’d actually spoken her thoughts aloud.
‘What a ridiculous idea!’ The woman gave a nervous laugh. ‘No! That bruise is from a choker – it matches these earrings. But it really is too tight… My husband is having it altered, actually.’
But Kate wasn’t convinced. She’d earned enough of them from Aunt Sylvie over the years to recognize the type of bruise fingers made.
‘Sorry, madam. My mistake.’
‘Yes. It was,’ the woman said, with a small flash of steel. Which Kate thought was all the better for her. Perhaps she wasn’t porcelain all the way through.
*
Kate had been docked half an hour’s pay for being late back at lunchtime and Miss Dane hadn’t been happy with her. She found herself wondering about the perfect woman who’d cost her sixpence. She didn’t look the normal type of young volunteer, but then again, nor did Mrs Violet Cliffe, who, Johnny said, had already proved her worth, using her contacts to line up all sorts of well-known speakers who otherwise wouldn’t have ventured to Bermondsey. But Kate thought the woman in the white fox fur didn’t have that necessary idealistic gleam in her eye. So when she arrived to make the tea for the Monday-night French class, she was surprised to see the mystery lady seated at the front and leading the class. The new French teacher glanced at her for a brief second then looked quickly away, and Kate noticed that tonight she’d wrapped a white scarf round her slender neck.
French class never usually finished late, but tonight the students gathered around their new teacher and it was dark before Kate finished clearing up. When she arrived at Dockhead, she saw what looked like a Sister of Mercy from the convent standing in the shadows. It crossed her mind that this was an unusually tall and well-built nun, but as she hurried by, she felt a hand grab her wrist.
What she’d taken for a wimple was in fact Stan’s head bandage, secured under his chin. She laughed at him. ‘You look a right idiot in that!’
‘Oh yeah?’ he said, through an immobile mouth.
‘Got a gobstopper in your mouth, Stan? I can’t understand a word!’ She grinned and he twisted his grip tighter, till her wrist burned.
‘Wanna know something that’ll make you
look like the idiot – Noss Goss? For someone’s always asking questions, you don’t know sod all about nothing.’ He attempted to laugh, but winced.
His two black eyes, staring from beneath the bandage, gave his face a skull-like look and she might have been frightened if he hadn’t looked so ridiculous.
‘Heard from your rich dad lately? When’s he coming to take you away from all this?’ he mocked her in a falsetto voice with a fluttering of his sandy eyelashes. ‘Oh, I forgot… he’s overseas, ain’t he? So rich he can’t afford a fuckin’ stamp to send you a letter from Canada?’
She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of taking his bait. He’d love an excuse to wallop her. She wrenched her hand away.
‘But he don’t need a stamp, cos he’s back in this country!’
She froze.
‘Now who’s the idiot?’
His small eyes glittered with enjoyment as he watched her dry-mouthed shock.
‘You’re a liar.’
‘He’s even been to our house. That’s how much he cares about you, couldn’t be bothered to pop next door and say hello!’
He was so pleased with himself he forgot his pain and shouted after her as she ran from him.
‘He ain’t interested in you!’
At that she wheeled round and, at a run, took a swing at his laughing face. ‘Take it out of this!’ she shouted, smashing her fist into his broken cheek.
‘Ow! You soddin’ crazy mare! Don’t you know it’s broke!’ He held his face, grimacing in pain.
‘Good! Well, now it’s twice as broke!’
She ran to East Lane, but instead of going straight to her own house, she stopped at Aunt Sarah’s.
Her aunt’s long grey hair was in plaits and she was hugging a hot water bottle. ‘I’m just going to bed, Kate. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’
Kate shook her head. ‘No! I just found out me dad’s back in the country! Why didn’t I know?’ She heard her voice crack and controlled herself. Aunt Sarah was never moved by tears. ‘I should’ve been told!’ she said, more firmly.
