by Mary Gibson
‘Milly, love, are you sure you should stay for the week? He only said yes ’cause you pushed him. But you know how he stews, there’ll be hell to pay when you get back. Why don’t you go home with Pat on the lorry today, eh?’
‘No, Mum! I’m not creeping back. I’m not scared of him.’
Her mother’s face creased into lines of worry and she drew Milly in closer.
‘No, darlin’, but I am.’
‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt you, Mum.’
Her mother gave her a sad smile and shook her head. ‘Brave words, love, brave words.’ There was a melancholy resignation in her tone that seemed to surface when she was down here. At home, Mrs Colman held herself taut, ready for a blow, ready to stand between the old man and one of her children. But once away from him, she seemed to allow herself the luxury of regret and Milly’s instinct was to resist it. But she hated to be at odds with her mother; instead she preferred to brighten her mood with a distraction, and she pointed across the field.
‘Look, there’s Hughes’ stall, let’s see if he’s got any paraffin oil for the lamp, that hut’s black as Newgate’s knocker at night.’
‘Mrs Colman, Milly!’ It was Hughes’ nephew Bertie, manning the stall. He gave them a friendly smile as they walked over to look at the oil cans. ‘Nice to see some familiar faces. You and half of Dockhead seem to be down here.’
‘Nice to have a friendly face serving us too,’ her mother said warmly. ‘Some of the shops down here only let us in one at a time, in case we ’alf-inch the stuff! Snooty buggers, as if our money’s not good enough.’
Milly thought that Bertie looked a little uncomfortable at that; perhaps he was thinking about his uncle’s not dissimilar treatment of Dockhead customers.
‘Your uncle not down?’ she asked Bertie.
‘No, he’s handed over the Dockhead shop to me. You won’t be seeing so much of him.’
‘Good... I mean, that’s good... for you!’ she stuttered, covering her blushes by pretending to inspect the tinned goods piled up on the stall. When she looked up, he’d raised one of those winged eyebrows and a smile was playing on his lips. She thought he’d got her meaning exactly.
They quickly bought their oil and moved on to the old clothes stall, where Mrs Colman found a replacement for Amy’s everyday dress. Amy had ripped it to shreds on some barbed wire the previous week.
‘That child’s getting like a little savage down here,’ she confided to Milly. ‘Still, the fresh air’s good for her, and at least she can let off steam without upsetting everyone the way she does at home.’
Milly privately thought Amy capable of upsetting everyone whatever her surroundings. She was the most wilful child she’d ever met. ‘Yeah, shame she can’t stay here.’
‘Milly! Don’t talk like that about your sister, one day you might be glad you’ve got her... and Elsie.’ Her mother nodded sagely as if she knew something Milly didn’t.
‘Sorry, Mum, but I reckon that day’ll be a long time coming.’
Seeing her mother’s hurt expression, Milly softened. ‘I am trying to be friends, Mum, but I wish you’d talk to them. They provoke me on purpose, you know!’
‘Mary, Mother of God, give me strength,’ Mrs Colman said, raising her eyes to heaven. ‘And another thing I was thinking,’ she went off at a tangent, barely pausing for breath, ‘I heard from Sid you was on the back of that lorry on the way down, knocking ’em back like a good ’un.’
‘It was only a bit of fun, we had a good old sing-song and I never got drunk at all!’
‘Don’t make no difference! Now you’re getting older, Milly, you’ve got to be careful. You can’t be drinking with men on your own, specially not on the back of a bleedin’ lorry... you’ll get a bad reputation, love, d’you know what I mean?’
Milly knew what she meant. But the accepted rules of behaviour of her mother’s generation sometimes mystified her. To be seen drinking with men was one of the things that set the women talking, but a group of women her mother’s age, sitting in the corner of the snug, singing the old songs and getting slowly sozzled, was perfectly acceptable.
‘And don’t let that Pat get too familiar either.’
Milly was startled, wanting nothing more than to wriggle out of her mother’s grasp. ‘Why not, he’s a nice feller, I thought you liked him.’ She blushed.
‘Nice enough as a friend of your brother’s, but he’s had a girl in the family way before now, and I don’t want you bringing no trouble home to my door!’
Her mother had never given her such a pointed warning before and as well as feeling deeply embarrassed, Milly resented the tone, which made her feel guilty without knowing why.
‘Mum! He offered me a lift in the lorry – he was being kind, that’s all!’
Her mother tucked in her chin and pursed her lips in such a way that Milly blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘I’m just warning you, that’s all,’ her mother went on. ‘Once the boys get down here, they think all the girls are easy, that’s why you get so many babies born in June – we don’t want no hopping babies! So if he asks you to walk up the field with him, you just say no!’
Milly sighed. ‘All right, Mum, I’ll say no,’ she said obediently, and then desperate to change the subject she pulled her mother off in the direction of the baker’s stall. But as bad luck would have it, the stall was pitched near the Gun Inn, outside which Pat and a group of men stood drinking.
‘Milly!’ Pat called and then the others joined in. ‘Here comes our drinking pal, come on, Mill, give us a song!’
Her mother’s grip tightened on her elbow. ‘See what I mean!’ she hissed, pulling Milly away, so that she barely had time to wave before being dragged to the other end of the green.
‘What d’you do that for!’ She felt hot with embarrassment. There was Pat telling her she looked grown-up and here was her mother, dragging her off like a naughty child. All her life she’d felt an unquestioning loyalty to her mother. But now that practised hard resistance she’d used to deal with the old man seemed to take over. She shook off her mother’s restraining hand.
‘Don’t tell me you’re turning into the old man, telling me what I can and can’t do! I’ll spend my time with whoever I want!’
Mrs Colman stood in shocked silence, and Milly felt her mother’s gaze on her back as she hurried over towards the Gun Inn, yet she hadn’t reached the end of the field before she regretted her harshness. Perhaps she’d spent too many weeks alone with the old man, and that had hardened her heart. Now she felt a tinge of fear, that she might have forgotten entirely how to soften it.
Most of the hoppers preferred to drink outside the pub. There were a few women drinking there, with their husbands and children, who had been treated to bottles of ginger beer.
‘Here, Milly, hold on to your glass, that cost me an extra shilling!’ Pat said as he handed her a pint of bitter. In spite of the good business the hoppers brought in, they were still charged a ‘shilling on the glass’ against breakages. It rankled, but not enough to interfere with their Sunday drink. She took the glass and went to sit with him on the green.
‘Your mum didn’t look too happy to see me.’
‘Take no notice, Pat, someone told her I had a few drinks on the lorry. Says it’ll ruin me reputation.’
He raised his eyes. ‘She forgets you’re grown up now, not one of her little set of jugs no more!’
Milly felt a pang of regret. A few years ago her mother had saved up the money to have that photograph taken of Milly and her sisters. They’d gone to the studio in Sunday best, brightly polished shoes, carefully brushed hair with bows tied neatly, Amy scrubbed clean of all the urchin dirt she so loved. And the photographer had positioned them, in height order. Milly first on the left, willowy and emerging from childhood, Elsie in the middle, skinny and gazing into the distance with a faraway look, and finally Amy, defiantly staring at the camera as though she were calculating what mischief she could get up to next. Her mother had loved
it, exclaiming, ‘Oh! Will you look at me set of three jugs, you’re all so lovely!’ Now she felt mean, to have turned on her mother as if she were an enemy, instead of her greatest ally.
She drained her glass. ‘Better be getting back up the field. Mum’ll want help with the dinner.’
Pat looked disappointed. ‘I’ll be down again next weekend, will you want a lift back home in the lorry?’
‘You’re a diamond, Pat. I can’t afford the train, I’ll need to save all me earnings to give the old man when I get back.’
‘Right you are, I’ll see you next week then.’ He seemed to hesitate. ‘Do you want me to walk up the field with you?’
She paused. ‘All right, if you like.’
Halfway up the lane, he put his arm round her waist. She didn’t look at him, but she could feel his slightly beery breath on her cheek as he bent to kiss her.
‘I always liked you, Milly, even when I used to hang about with your brother, but now you’re the prettiest girl down here, do you know that?’
Milly looked up at him, startled by her own power. She’d had childish boyfriends before, but Pat was older, a man. Now, with him standing so close, wanting something from her, she felt an echo of the power she’d had when standing her ground against the old man. But as he held her shoulders, pushing her up against the high hedge, panic caught in her throat and she remembered her mother’s warning. Before he could steal another kiss, she had started away, sprinting up the lane, long legs flashing, shouting.
‘See you next week!’
Without looking back, she flew along the hedgerow until she got to the five-bar gate. Stepping up on to the lower rail, she vaulted over without pause and ran full pelt across the field, arriving at the hut out of breath, with her hat in her hand. Her mother and the other women were in the centre of the field, tending a rudimentary brick oven, where a communal joint had been roasting all morning. Mrs Colman was forking baked potatoes out of the embers and now Milly kneeled to help her.
‘Sorry, Mum.’ She gave her mother a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘It’s just all that time on me own with the old man must have turned me grumpy as him.’
Her mother put a hand to Milly’s face. ‘I’m only thinking of you, love. Just don’t want you to end up with a wrong ’un... like I did.’
Early next morning they made their way to the hop field and gathered round the empty hop bin. It was constructed like a huge manger, with crossed poles at each end and sacking suspended from two side poles. Elsie perched on one of the side poles and Amy stood on an upended bushel basket, while Milly and her mother placed themselves at each end. The pole-pullers were walking around on stilts, with their long-handled bill hooks, cutting down the strung bines, so that they fell with great green swooshes into the bins. Milly took up the first bine, pulling her fingers down its prickly length, stripping off her first hops. She waited for the sharp, acidic smell to be released and when it came, a bright green essence of the countryside, she inhaled deeply.
‘Oh, Mum, the smell of them hops! It’s like perfume!’
Her mother laughed, quickly stripping the flowers from her own bine. ‘You couldn’t bottle it, though, could you?’
Elsie and Amy were happy to pick a bushel or two, but soon grew restless. When the drone of an aeroplane caught their attention, they dropped the bines and stood looking up as it passed low over the fields. Milly could even see the pilot perched between the double silver wings; she waved. Soon Elsie and Amy were off down the high green tunnels of hop plants, running between the bins, their arms spread like aeroplanes as they headed for the wood at the edge of the field.
‘That’s their picking over for the day, we won’t see them till they’re hungry,’ said Mrs Colman.
‘It’s up to us now then, better get cracking.’ Milly wasn’t sorry to see them leave. Most of the time they complained about the prickly bines or their legs aching. The truth was, she and her mother could get on much quicker without them. Soon their hands synchronized into a blur of speed, plucking hops so quickly from the bine that their individual movements were undetectable. Rosie Rockle, their neighbour from Arnold’s Place, stood at the next bin and started up a song. All down the hop field women and children joined in, till the sound of their voices rang through the bines.
‘They say that ’oppin’s lousy, I don’t believe it’s true, we only go down ’oppin to earn a bob or two, with an eeay oh, eeay oh, eeay eeay ooohhh!’
The late September sun grew strong and Milly’s pale skin had turned pink by the end of the morning. Already she felt as though her lungs had expanded to accommodate the richer, cleaner country air, and she knew that the struggle with the old man to get here had all been worth it.
At dinner time some of the women came back from the huts with buckets full of tea and they all sat together on the grass, eating large hunks of bread cut from the loaf, with hands already stained black from the hops.
‘Should I call the girls?’ Milly asked. She’d seen nothing of her sisters since they disappeared into the wood.
‘No.’ Her mother shook her head. ‘They know where we are if they get hungry. Let ’em run free.’
They both leaned back against the bin, enjoying the brief respite from the morning’s work.
‘How’s your back?’ her mother asked, rubbing her own.
‘Fine, this is nothing compared to Southwell’s picking room!’ Milly said with a grin.
After a couple of hours more picking, Ned, the measurer, came round. He was a man not much liked. His job was to scoop the hops out of the bins with a bushel basket, and then to weigh them. He could weigh them light or he could weigh them heavy. But Ned was notorious for tamping the hops down tight, so every last bit of air was expelled and the farmer got many more hops in a bushel for his tuppence. The pickers were always at his mercy.
Milly scooped up a handful of hops from the bin, they were good hops, fat and aromatic. ‘I reckon we’ve done over twenty bushel,’ she said to her mother.
But Mrs Colman shook her head, nodding in Ned’s direction as he approached their bin.
‘Not once he’s finished pushing ’em down. I wish those girls would get back here, we need them to go round and pick ’em up.’ Gleaning stray hops from the floor was child’s work, but in their absence Milly did it, then waited in anticipation as Ned measured out their hops into the poke. Only seventeen bushels! They would have to speed up, or get the girls to help a bit more.
They settled down for an afternoon’s work. The singing had stopped and people were picking in quiet earnestness, conscious of making up their day’s pay, when suddenly a shrill scream pierced the serenity of the hop garden. Milly stiffened and shot her mother a fearful look. They dropped the bines and dashed in the direction of the scream.
‘Where did it come from?’ asked Rosie, puffing along beside them.
‘From over there, in the trees!’ Milly answered, beginning to outstrip the other women who’d followed them. Soon she was at the margin of the wood. A little way in, standing frozen under the green shade, was Amy. She was staring down at her hands, which were covered in a red sticky substance. At first Milly took it for the dark stain of blackberries, but as she caught hold of her sister by the arms, she saw the stain was not black but red. It was blood.
‘What’s happened, have you cut yourself?’
The young girl opened her mouth, but no sound emerged. She shook her head, seemingly mesmerized by the gory coating on her palms. Milly’s mother kneeled down, frantically examining the child for a wound.
‘Are you all right, love? Where’ve you hurt yourself?’
Amy’s white face suddenly puckered. Then pointing back into the wood, she gasped, ‘It’s Elsie!’
Milly shot off, down the shadowed path that led into the heart of the small wood, tripping over roots and fallen branches. She sped on until she came to a small clearing and there, beneath a tree, was Elsie. Deathly pale, unconscious and very still, she lay on her side with one leg bent beneath her.
As Milly drew closer, she saw blood pooled around her sister’s skinny leg. It had been caught in the sharp jaws of a trap. For an instant Milly froze, then she screamed. ‘Mum! She’s over here!’
Her mother entered the clearing, with Rosie and a gaggle of white-faced children tumbling after. Milly was suddenly galvanized. She picked up a small branch and commandeered Ronnie, Rosie’s grandson.
‘All right, Ron, I’ll open up the trap as far as I can, and when I tell you, wedge this stick in the jaws so it stays open, got me?’
Ronnie nodded and dropped to his knees beside Elsie, holding the branch at the ready. Milly grasped the jaws of the trap and heaved. Straining till her head felt it might burst with the pressure, she pulled with all her strength, but the jaws held fast.
‘It’s useless!’ Then spotting Rosie’s other grandson, a beefy boy nicknamed Barrel, she called out to him. ‘Come and hold that side for me!’
Barrel held one half of the trap in his solid grasp while Milly strained on the other half, till it gradually opened a few inches. It would have to be now, before her strength ran out.
‘Now, Ron! Shove in the stick!’
Ronnie rammed the stick between the two jaws, quickly removing his hands from danger, as Milly let the jaws ease off on to the stick and swiftly pulled Elsie’s leg out of the trap.
‘Oh, me poor baby!’ Her mother was wailing and useless at Milly’s side. The deep gash in her sister’s leg ran the length of her shin, the flesh folding open like a meaty book, to reveal a pearl-white bone. Milly felt faint, but caught hold of the two halves of flesh and squeezed them tightly together. Vaguely aware of her mother’s weeping, she looked up.
‘Don’t let go, Milly!’ her mother said. ‘Don’t let go of your sister!’
‘I won’t let go, don’t worry!’
