The Bermondsey Bookshop

by Mary Gibson

  ‘No,’ he said sadly.

  ‘And what about the pool, have you swum?’

  He fidgeted. ‘The pool’s for the older boys, Mummy. I told you that.’

  ‘No. Surely not. Your father told me all the facilities were available to you.’

  Kate could see Paul squirming uncomfortably. ‘Do you need to go?’ He nodded.

  She offered to push him to the bathroom but was quickly overtaken by the male nurse. ‘I’ll take him, miss.’

  She waited outside the lavatories and just as the door was closing, saw the nurse place powerful hands around her brother’s thin chest, hoisting him out of his chair like a sack of coals before dragging him into one of the cubicles. Ungentle hands. She clenched her teeth, wishing her father were here so that she could break his nose, the way she had once broken Janey’s. And then she feared her own temperament. What if the Gosses were simply a violent-natured family – and she was just like all the rest of them? ‘Dear God, let me be a Dye in my heart,’ she prayed, using her mother’s maiden name.

  When they emerged, Paul wouldn’t look at her. He was a seven-year-old boy; perhaps he found it embarrassing to need help going to the toilet. She insisted on pushing the chair. ‘I can manage!’ she said and stared at the male nurse till he retreated. On the way back to Nora she noticed Paul’s brace was chafing his neck. As she bent to adjust it she saw that his shirt was ripped near the collar. He pushed her away.

  ‘I’m sorry, Paul. I was just trying—’

  ‘It’s not you,’ he whispered, blinking back tears. ‘I hate him.’ He shot a look at the retreating nurse. ‘I’m sure he hurts me on purpose. They all do it, slinging me about as if I haven’t got any legs, but I can walk, Kate! It’s just I’m too slow and they get impatient. It’s quicker to stuff me in a chair.’

  ‘Try not to be upset, Paul. Stay brave for your mummy and I promise, I’ll get you out of here one day.’

  He stopped crying and looked at her with a sort of adoration. ‘I thought it would be my daddy that rescued me, but now I think it’ll be you!’ he whispered, smiling heartbreakingly up at her.

  She realized what a terrible thing she’d done. The thing Longbonnet had warned her against – making a promise you can’t keep. And she determined then that she wouldn’t be the one to let him down.

  *

  Kate wanted to keep out of her father’s way as much as she could. Should he decide to come home early from his office or take a day off, she couldn’t trust herself not to confront him about the people most on her mind – her mother and her brother – so she volunteered for extra shifts at the bookshop to keep herself out of harm’s way. Not long after the open day at Paul’s school, Kate was serving a customer in the bookshop when Nora paid an unexpected visit. She waited patiently by the fireplace while Kate marked off the cost of the book on the young man’s subscription card. When he’d gone, Nora turned to face Kate. She had the look of a hunted animal.

  ‘What’s the matter, Nora? Shouldn’t you be with Dad at Mrs Cliffe’s benefit concert?’

  There was no one else in the shop and she drew Nora to the table at the back, where, beneath the overhead light, she could see her face more clearly. Though Nora had done her best with a chiffon scarf, the marks on her throat were visible to Kate, who was transported back to their first meeting in this very place. Back then, the bruises had already begun to fade, but these were purple and fresh. Kate knew Nora well enough now not to pussyfoot around the woman’s misplaced loyalty and pride. ‘What did you do wrong?’ she asked, gently plucking the scarf from Nora’s elegant neck.

  Nora clutched at it but too late. The fingermarks clearly ringed her throat.

  ‘Chibby found out about my visits to Paul.’ Nora put up her delicate fingers to hide the imprint of those other, coarser ones.

  ‘So, he did this?’

  Nora didn’t attempt to deny it. ‘His temper has always been his failing.’

  ‘Don’t make excuses for him, Nora! This is a bit more than just temper. I can’t believe I waited for him all those years and he turns out a bloody wife beater!’

  Nora flinched, almost as if Kate had aimed a blow herself.

  ‘So, how did he find out about the visit?’

  ‘From Mr Woolf. Apparently, the school fees haven’t been paid for last year. Mr Woolf telephoned to chase the money and told Chibby he hadn’t raised the subject at the open day as Mrs Grainger and Paul’s sister seemed to be enjoying the occasion so much, and he wouldn’t have wanted to spoil it…’

  ‘Oh, no. Did you tell him it was just the one visit?’

  ‘He didn’t believe me. It was terrible, Kate – his rage, when it comes… it’s like there’s a devil in him and nothing I say makes any difference. I thought he might kill me.’ She massaged her neck. ‘He’ll feel awful tomorrow.’

  Nora was trembling so violently she was unable to keep her limbs still. Kate put a ‘closed’ sign on the door. The reading room wasn’t being used for a class that night, so she helped Nora upstairs and arranged two armchairs together so that she could lie down. She made tea, forcing Nora to have hers extra sweet.

  ‘Has he always been like this?’ Kate asked quietly.

  ‘No. Before our marriage he never laid a finger on me. In fact, he was quite the opposite, treating me like a fragile doll, sending me to England to keep me safe – I was very young, only eighteen when I fell pregnant. But the war ended soon after I had Paul. Chibby came home, we married and things began to change. I sometimes wonder if he felt trapped into marrying me – because of the baby.’

  It was a too-familiar tale – the same one her aunt had repeated about Kate’s own mother. She sat in silence for a moment, taking in the sequence of events. ‘So, you and Dad weren’t married when Paul was born?’

  ‘No, we weren’t married. Why do you think my mother’s family wanted nothing to do with me?’

  ‘Why don’t you leave him?’

  ‘Because I love him. He was my salvation, you see. I was a sixteen-year-old girl in the middle of a battlefield, orphaned, alone. You can’t imagine what it was like, with the constant shelling and my whole world obliterated, the terror as the Germans got closer and closer.’ She shuddered at the memory. ‘Chibby was there when I needed him.’

  ‘But you said yourself, he was a different man then.’

  Nora shook her head. ‘I think he’s the same – underneath. He feels such remorse, shame… afterwards. He cries. It’s pitiful.’

  Kate thought it was pitiful, but not for the same reasons as Nora.

  ‘Besides, where would I go? How would I live? I have no money of my own to speak of, just the jewellery, everything else is in the business – and what about Paul’s schooling?’

  ‘What about it? Dad hasn’t been paying the fees anyway!’ Kate said. ‘And you don’t really want him to stay in that place, do you?’

  ‘No,’ she admitted in a quiet voice. ‘But let me ask you something, Kate. If you are so disapproving of Chibby, why don’t you leave him?’

  Clever Nora, to deflect Kate’s questions with one of her own. She thought for a moment, wanting to be honest. ‘Because I love him – or at least I’ve loved the idea of him for too long to let it go.’

  ‘You see! We’re the same, you and I, Kate.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Kate said, knowing that in one crucial way it wasn’t true at all. They were both women who loved Chibby, both with inheritances depleted by him, but Nora looked on what was left of hers – those black velvet drawers full of gold – as a mere trifle and Kate saw hers as holding everything she most needed: answers.

  18

  Pieces of Silver

  Kate didn’t look up when her father came in. She was soldering a pewter inkstand, a present for Ethel, to mark the fourth anniversary of the Bermondsey Bookshop. It was the most ambitious thing she’d attempted. The inkwell was sunk in a solid pewter octagon with a hinged lid and she was attaching a fan-shaped stand designed to hold pens. It was fiddly work and she�
�d just got the soldering iron to the right temperature. She would once have put down her tools straight away. Tonight, she could barely stomach the sight of him.

  He watched and waited while, with a steady hand, she finished her soldering.

  ‘It’s a fine piece of work.’ He stood over her, hands in his pockets, an appreciative smile on his face.

  ‘It’s not finished. I’ve made this little ornament to put onto the lid.’

  She pointed to a tiny replica of the torch of learning, which she’d copied from the bookshop sign. She wiped her hands on her long apron, still not looking at him. The acrid smell of hot solder filled the air and her father pushed open the French window. He took out a cigar, lit it and stood with his back to her. Blowing smoke into the damp garden, he said in an even tone, ‘I should tell you Nora confessed to me about your visit to Paul’s school. She was wrong to disobey me, and very wrong to involve you.’

  He spoke into the dusk and she was glad he couldn’t see the moment of surprise on her face. Didn’t he know Nora would have told her about his attack on her? Kate had thought he’d be too ashamed to mention his discovery of their visit. But he obviously felt secure.

  She waited for his rage to be directed at her, the way it had with Nora. Instead, when he turned around, his face was sad.

  ‘I’m sorry you had to see me so… agitated before. I don’t want you to think badly of your old dad, Katy.’ His wide-eyed look of remorse might have instantly gained him most women’s forgiveness, more so when he was youthful, when it might even have seemed charming.

  ‘No, I’m the one should be saying sorry, Dad. I feel like I’ve come in with me two big feet and started messing up your life. Stirring up the past with all my questions…’

  He chuckled. ‘You could put it that way. You’re headstrong and full of curiosity… but I can understand that.’

  He walked to the centre of the room, still smoking his cigar.

  ‘It’s just hard, when there are so many blanks in your life, you just want to fill them up with… something.’ She sighed, as pathetically as she could manage, and he gave her a look of sympathy.

  ‘Tragedies will often do that to a person’s mind, Kate – there’s so much I can’t remember about the war, yet I know it happened. I have the wounds to prove it!’

  She began clearing away her tools. ‘Do you mind if I ask you one more question that’s been bothering me? I promise it’ll be the last!’

  He inhaled so that the cigar tip glowed. ‘Not at all. Here, let me help.’ He began gathering up her tools. ‘What is it you want to know?’

  ‘Were you there, the night Mum died?’

  He paused, his pale, freckled hand hovering over the hammer she’d been using to shape the lid of the inkpot, and then he picked it up.

  ‘What on earth makes you think that?’

  ‘Because a memory came back to me – of seeing you there.’

  ‘No, Kate, that’s just your imagination. You were upstairs in the garret, fast asleep, when your mother fell!’

  ‘I wasn’t asleep. Someone was there and I’ve just got a feeling it was you. I don’t know why. Was it you?’ she persisted, feeling as if she was inching out onto a precarious ledge. ‘All I want to know is what happened to her. Why did Mum have to die? If you know, just tell me, Dad!’

  ‘She fell down the stairs in that hellhole we lived in. She died because we were too poor to own a decent house! And if she’d let me have what was rightfully mine as her husband, I’d have made a go of the business when I was a young man and made us rich! But no, she held on to the last of that cursed gypsy gold of hers. She was keeping it for you. That’s what she always said. For you.’

  His voice had grown quieter, hushed to a whisper, and he was looking through her. ‘I told Bessie it’d do neither of us any good, sitting there doing nothing. I do believe it was cursed.’

  Her heartbeat quickened and blood thudded in her ears. ‘Did you need it for the business, or to pay off Mr Smith? Is that why you took the earrings after she’d died?’

  He snapped his attention back into the room, his eyes sharp as tinplate. Without warning, he swung the hammer in an arc, the head brushing her hair as he brought it down, shattering the torch of learning ornament with the force of its impact.

  ‘You will shut your mouth now!’ He swung the hammer a second time, knocking the inkwell clean off its stand. ‘And you’ll say no more of earrings or Mr Smith! And if you do, you’ll see that I only miss if I want to!’

  He flung the hammer at her, and she was forced to duck for fear it would take an eye out. He began walking slowly towards her. She backed away to the end of the bench, till she felt the sharp edge of a metal-forming stake pressing into her back. He put his face close to hers.

  ‘Are you trying to ruin my life, Katy? Trying to punish me, is that what it is? First you stir up Nora about Paul, now you’re accusing me of having something to do with your mother’s death! I know what you’re up to, but even if it was true, you’ve got no proof. You’re not clever enough. You’ve got the intellect of a tinker. Look at you!’ he sneered. ‘All the things you could have chosen to do with the means I’ve provided and you descend to the lowest level, back to the filth I pulled your mother from!’

  He was inching closer and the spike of the forming stake was piercing her skin.

  ‘Be very, very careful what you accuse me of, Katy.’

  ‘No, Dad, I wasn’t accusing you! You’ve got it all wrong.’ She adopted Nora’s musical tone. ‘I was only asking if you knew any more than you’ve let on, because it’s been worrying me all these years… in case it was my fault!’ This had enough of the ring of truth about it and she could see it immediately have its effect.

  ‘Your fault?’ He took a step back.

  Kate swallowed hard and nodded. ‘When I was little, sometimes I used to wake up thirsty in the night. I’d moan and moan till Mum went downstairs and got me some water. I couldn’t remember anything about that night, so I just thought that’s what must have happened. Years and years I’ve blamed meself, if I hadn’t moaned so much… if I’d just stayed asleep, she’d never have slipped on the garret stairs, she’d still be alive…’

  He stretched out his neck and shoulders, which had been taut with fury. He relaxed like an unstrung bow. ‘I’ve always wondered myself why she’d left you alone up there… perhaps it happened the way you said, but you can’t blame yourself, Katy.’ He nodded, taking a deep breath now. ‘But that other thing – that you thought you saw – me, or someone else, taking her earrings, no.’ He fixed her with steel-sharp eyes. ‘That never happened. Do you understand?’

  ‘I understand, Dad. It was just imagination – a story I made up.’

  ‘Like one of those fairy tales your mother was always filling your head with?’

  ‘Just like them,’ she agreed. She slowly collected up hammers and pincers, and he helped, hanging them with care back on their hooks till all was in order.

  ‘Well, Katy. I’m glad we’ve cleared the air. I’m sorry I lost my temper, and I’d prefer if you didn’t say anything about this to Nora.’

  When he was gone she grabbed the forming stake to keep herself from falling to the floor in a heap. Her legs felt as weak as her poor brother Paul’s. The door of the studio opened again and she jumped.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you. I spoke with Mrs North at her sister’s charity concert the other evening and she tells me Mrs Cliffe gives elocution lessons at the bookshop. I suggested you’d like to join her classes. With Nora’s help you’ve begun to dress like a daughter I can be proud of. I’m sure you’ll agree it’s time to get rid of that Bermondsey accent of yours. It spoils any good impression you might make. Goodnight, Katy.’

  Her remaining strength ebbed away and she slumped to the floor, leaning her back against the bench, remembering Nora’s words: where will I go? how will I live?

  The same place and the same way I have since I was six, she answered.

  *


  She could have gone to Martin there and then; he would have taken her in with no worries about propriety. But then his mother would have given him hell. No, she would stay where she was, let her father think she was cowed and dutiful and stupid. The next morning a small but heavy parcel was delivered to her by hand. She signed for it, puzzled, and took it to her workshop. When she opened it, she gasped. It contained several square, solid silver plates, the sort she could use for raising into bowls or making cigarette cases. There was a card.

  My dear daughter, Katy, I hope you can excuse my behaviour of last night. I said things in temper which I regret. Believe that I am proud of you. Please accept this token and forgive me?

  That evening Kate found out that her father had left for a sales trip in Manchester, and the following day, she went to Bermondsey. When she arrived at East Lane, she found her Aunt Sarah was still at work. She walked the short distance along the river to Southwell’s jam factory and waited till the afternoon shift was over and a mass of women poured through the gates. She soon spotted Aunt Sarah. Wearing heavy clogs to protect her feet from floors covered in scalding jam, they gave her, and the other jam girls, a distinctive, shuffling walk. Seeing her grey hair tied in a bun and her large, stooped frame encased in a jam-splashed apron, Kate felt pity for her. The jam factories weren’t for the fragile or the elderly. It was a punishing routine – stirring cauldrons of boiling jam, tipping the contents into heavy stone jars, hauling them onto a cart for transporting to the warehouse. But Aunt Sarah couldn’t give up working; if she did, she’d starve. Her head was down, intent on getting home to her tea and then her feet up. She walked right past Kate, who called out to her.

  ‘Kate! I didn’t recognize you in your finery.’ Aunt Sarah looked her up and down.

  Not feeling much warmth in her aunt’s greeting, Kate knew at least she could always appeal to her appetite. ‘I thought I’d take you for pie and mash.’

  ‘What, dressed like that?’

  Kate wore a navy jersey jacket and low-belted white dress. It was simple, but expensive.