by Mary Gibson
Milly held tight to Elsie’s leg while Ned and another man carried her across the field to the lane, where the farmer already had a lorry waiting. They laid the insensible Elsie on a blanket in the back of the lorry, then set off on a rackety, nightmarish ride through the narrow winding lanes of Kent, heading for the hoppers’ hospital at Five Oak Green. Milly’s hands were firmly clasped round her sister’s leg the whole time, while her mother sat gripping the side of the lorry, moaning her low pleadings to Our Lady all the way.
The hoppers’ hospital was no more than a large cottage, but the doctor there was efficient and gave his services free to the hop-pickers. Only when he assured her that she could release her vice-like grip did Milly let go of Elsie’s leg. In an anteroom she washed her sister’s blood from her hands. There was so much of it! What if she had lost too much? What if she never woke up? Milly’s legs buckled and she held herself steady against the china basin. Suddenly a life without Elsie’s odd presence seemed impossible; her thwarted grottos and derided dreams seemed brave now and sad, rather than stupid. Milly went back to the waiting room, and gripping her mother’s hand, for once matched all her fervour and faith in praying for her sister’s life to be spared.
6
The Hop Princess
September 1923
Amy stood defiantly at the hopping-hut door, still in the clothes she’d slept in, straw from the palliasse sticking out of her tangled nest of hair.
‘I ain’t having a wash today,’ she said. She bore evidence of yesterday’s drama, with streaks of mud and even some of Elsie’s blood on her face.
Milly had been left to pick hops and watch Amy, while her mother was at the hospital. She’d spent an anxious night tossing and turning on the straw mattress, wondering what the next day would bring. Shaken at the prospect of losing one sister, she’d been unusually gentle with Amy, holding her during the night when she heard the young girl sobbing.
‘Is Elsie going to die?’ she’d whispered, her wet face close to Milly’s in the darkness.
‘No, ’course not, love. She’ll be fine,’ Milly soothed, hardly believing it herself.
But when the farm hand arrived early that morning to give Mrs Colman a lift, their mother hadn’t been gone five minutes before Amy staged an outright rebellion. Milly was attempting to get her down to the hop field. She would need to pick like the wind, if she was to match her own wages and make up her mother’s quota
‘Amy, I’ve got no time for this. You look like a savage. Now go and wash some of that muck off, or else you’re coming nowhere with me,’ Milly ordered, desperate to get on.
‘Don’t care, I ain’t coming picking with you today anyway! So you can stick your hops up your—’
Milly clamped her hand over the younger girl’s mouth, and though Amy tried to bite her, Milly was too quick. She whipped Amy’s arms behind her back and marched her to the bucket of cold water, which stood ready in front of the hut.
‘I’ll give you a bloody good wash, see if you like this!’
Milly flipped her sister upside down, and held her a few feet above the bucket before dunking her head in the water. Amy’s scream came out in a gurgling choke as she kicked her legs in the air, squirming like an eel. Bringing her up for air, Milly shook her as effortlessly as if she were a wet mop.
‘You listen to me, you selfish little mare.’ She set the nine-year-old back on her feet, still holding fast to her arms. ‘Mum’s got enough on her plate without you making trouble, so do as you’re bleedin’ told for once. She’s put me in charge and I say you’re coming picking!’
But Amy’s wet skin saved her and she managed to slip out of Milly’s strong grasp, sprinting across the field, calling back to her sister, ‘You can’t boss me about!’
‘Don’t expect any dinner when you get back then!’ Milly shouted after her.
Sometimes appealing to Amy’s stomach did the trick, but not today, and Milly knew she would be wasting her time on a useless fight. She let her sister go and made her own way to the hop field, secretly glad to be rid of Amy. Rosie Rockle and the other hoppers had already left and she would have to hurry now to catch up. As she jogged down the lane, Milly began to feel guilty for letting her mother down. All she’d asked of Milly was to keep an eye on her sister. But, she reflected, with Amy it had been a battle of wills from the day she was born. Her mother had been so ill after her birth, and Elsie still so clingy, that it was left to eight-year-old Milly to care for the new baby. She’d been ill-prepared, but very willing to love her new sister. Perhaps she might have succeeded with a more docile child, but Amy turned out a red-faced, discontented infant, and Milly’s burgeoning love had quickly changed to resentment. Whenever Milly wanted to run free or play with other children, Amy would have to be on her hip. And as she grew, so did her strong will. Awkward Amy they called her, and if Milly should ever suggest something was black, Amy would insist it was white. Milly reflected ruefully that she hadn’t changed one bit.
With her mind far away from the hop garden, her hands were less swift than yesterday, but she noticed that the women around her had toned down their rough banter, and sent their children over to help pick up the hops that had fallen far from her bin. She spent the day in an agony of worry about Elsie. The doctor had said she’d lost far too much blood to be moved and when they’d left her the night before, she lay deathly pale and unwaking. When not worrying about Elsie, Milly scanned the field for Amy, who stayed out of sight all day. How could she be so selfish? But just as she’d convinced herself Amy had met a similar fate to Elsie, and was about to set off in search of her, the cry came to ‘pull no more bines’ and there Amy was, dead on cue, sauntering back from the wood with Barrel and Ronnie. Torn between relief and rage, Milly chose to ignore her. At least Milly wouldn’t have to explain her absence when Mrs Colman came back from the hospital.
It was dark by the time the lorry pulled up in the lane. Milly rushed to the gate as the farm hand helped her mother down. She looked tired and pale.
‘How is she?’ Milly asked anxiously, helping her mother off with her coat and sitting her down outside the hut with a mug of tea.
‘The doctor said she’ll be fine!’ Her mother smiled wearily.
‘Oh, thank God, is she awake, did you speak to her?’
‘She was sitting up, but she’s got to stay in. The farmer’s going to send the lorry every day to take me to the hospital. He’s a good feller. The only thing is, love, you’ll have to pick for me.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that!’ Milly smiled. She was so relieved, she felt she could pick for a hundred.
So, for the rest of the week, she was left in charge of Amy, but Milly decided to take the path of least resistance and let her run wild. Her priority now was to pick for two and make up for their lost earnings. And besides, she knew that Amy was far more capable of looking after herself than Elsie. She would never wander off deep into the wood, as it emerged Elsie had done, following a baby rabbit. Amy was more likely to be setting the trap than walking into one.
Milly didn’t see her from dawn till dusk, but the slices of bread and jam she left wrapped in newspaper at the hut were always gone by the evening. At least she knew her sister was alive and fed, and she was always back by evening, just before their mother returned from visiting Elsie. Milly preferred to be free of Amy. Her deft fingers flew along the bines, all the day long, and now she began to enjoy herself as she joined in the hop songs and banter. By Friday evening she had high hopes of having out-picked the entire field of hoppers. It seemed that her hopping holiday might turn out to be a success after all.
On their last evening at the hop field, the September sun sat low over the field while Milly waited at her bin for Ned to measure out the last bushel into the poke. The poke, a long sack, stuffed with the hops she’d picked, tamped down hard, was so heavy it took two men to carry it to the waiting cart. After all the bins had been emptied, Ned added up the tallies for each family. He nodded approvingly at Milly. ‘Yo
u done better’n all of ’em, girl!’
She smiled proudly, relieved that she had almost doubled her normal week’s wage. The old man would have nothing to complain of.
Saturday dawned; only one brief morning left to pick and breathe in the country air, one last chance to look up at open skies, etched with bines instead of ugly chimneys and rooftops. She didn’t want to go back to Arnold’s Place. As the morning drew to a close, she slowed her picking, as did everyone else. They all wanted to be the one who picked the last hop. Tradition said it meant good luck all year. If it was her, perhaps the old man would get sober and her sisters turn sweet. But her swift fingers undid her, she could not hold back, and it was Rosie Rockle who picked the very last hop of the harvest.
There was one final ritual to be observed, though: the choosing of the hop princess, an honour reserved for the prettiest girl in the hop field. Before they left the hop gardens for the last time, a bushel went round and each picker cast their vote into the basket. Children jostled round one of the pole-pullers as he tipped out and painstakingly counted each vote. He stood up, calling for quiet, and as the hush descended, all the younger women looked eagerly towards him.
‘Milly Colman, hop princess for nineteen-twenty-three!’ came the shout, and as ‘Hoorah for the hop princess’ rang out, Milly felt she was floating on air.
Just then, she saw Elsie, seated on an old wooden chair, being carried on to the field by two pole-pullers. She ran, with the crown of hops wreathing her dark curls, straight to Elsie’s side, and carefully avoiding her bandaged leg, hugged her tightly.
‘Oh, I’m so glad you’re better, love,’ she said, pulling back to observe Elsie’s pale, sharp features.
The young girl gave her a slow smile. ‘I knew you’d be hop princess this year,’ she said.
‘Don’t tell me, you had a dream!’
At lunchtime Pat arrived in his lorry, bringing the men for one last visit. There was a cheer when the lorry rolled up to the field and the men leaped down from the back board. Tonight, after the farmer had paid them all, there would be a party round the fire.
Pat came straight over to her.
‘I see you’re the hop princess!’ He smiled, plucking at her hop crown. ‘Didn’t I say you were the best-looking girl here?’
She dipped her head, dark hair falling across her forehead, examining her blackened hands and muddy boots. ‘I don’t look much like a princess today!’
Pat laughed. ‘Well, you’re going in the bin all the same!’
He went to grab her, just as a group of men swooped down like a hoard of marauding Vikings. She had to make a show of running away – it was expected of her, an age-old demonstration of the hop princess’s virtue. Her two sisters cheered the loudest as Milly sped along the strung lines, now empty of hops. Dodging between bins, leaping over the last pulled bines strewn across the field, her clumsy boots tripped her up; without them, she knew she could have outrun the whole pack of them. But finally, heart thudding, breath burning her chest, she shot down a row, only to be ambushed by a couple of boys blocking one end. Attempting to scramble away, she was finally captured when Pat came up from behind, bringing her down with a flying tackle. A loud cry went up among the pickers, as though she were a fox taken in the hunt. Then they were on her, four young men grabbing her arms and legs, running with her up to the hop bin. The children were jumping up and down, the men whistling and the women cheering.
‘Be careful of my Milly, don’t you break her back in that bin!’ she heard her mother shout above the din.
But now they were tossing her up, once, twice, three times. They let go, she felt a rush in her stomach, then rising almost to the tops of the bines, she seemed to fly into the dizzying sky; suspended momentarily above the bins, it seemed that time stood still. All too soon, she came crashing down into an enveloping bath of green hops. She was drowning in them, swallowing them as they caught her hair and clothes. Struggling to surface, she was hoisted out and up into Pat’s strong arms. Women came crowding round, draping her with hop garlands, till she had turned into a hop bine herself; tall, willowy, dripping in bitter-sweet hops.
She allowed herself to be carried on the men’s shoulders down the lane, back to the hopping huts. Her mother followed, with Elsie still being carried, like a princess herself, in a sedan chair, looking for all the world like lesser royalty as she waved to the crowds. Milly waved back at her from her perch, grateful that her fanciful sister had come through her ordeal. Although the doctor had said Elsie would soon be well enough to walk, she would bear the lightning-like scar along her shin for the rest of her life, a constant reminder of the snares of paradise.
Amy scampered along in front, trying to deflect as much attention as possible from her sisters to herself. But today was Milly’s day, and as the fields began to lose their warmth and dusk came on, she determined to savour the last moments of her brief country idyll, for who knew what realities she would have to face once it was over?
That evening a huge bonfire was set in front of the huts. The hop-pickers pooled the last of their food and the women stewed corned beef, potatoes and whatever leftovers could be put into the hopping pots. Everyone gathered round the fire to eat, and afterwards there was singing as Harry from the Swan and Sugarloaf started up on the piano, which had made its journey from Dockhead, lashed to the back of the lorry.
‘Oh me lousy ’ops, oh me lousy ’ops,
When the measurer comes around,
Pick ’em up, pick ’em up off the ground,
When he starts a-measurin’ he never knows when to stop.
Aye, aye get in the bin and take the bleedin’ lot!’
The tea kettle went round and then the beer bottles. Milly’s mother, who could now allow herself the luxury of indulging her sentimental side, struck up a song about wishing she was in Carrickfergus, a place Milly felt sure she’d never been to and never would. Lost in song and a few pints of stout, Mrs Colman was oblivious as Pat took her eldest daughter’s hand and whispered, ‘Come up the field with me.’
Milly shot one look over at her mother. Harry had progressed to ‘When Irish Eyes are Smiling’ and her mother was in full throat. Amy and Elsie had dozed off, curled up on the grass, warmed by the crackling fire.
‘Come on, Milly,’ Pat urged and, dreamily, Milly allowed herself to slip away with him. After all, what was a hop princess without her prince?
They found a place between a high hedge and the curving wall of an oast house. Warmth from the drying oven penetrated the brick, but she was still grateful for Pat’s encircling arms to keep out the night chill. As his arms tightened round her, she let herself lean against him, and gazed up at the dizzying stars, spread like white smoke across a tar-black sky. But the night was so dark, moon and stars barely pierced its inkiness. This was the one thing that could frighten her; the utter darkness of the countryside. At home there was always light, from street lamps or pubs and houses, but now she held on tight to Pat, feeling small and vulnerable in all that vast blackness.
When he kissed her, he called her beautiful, and she thought of the old man, who only ever called her useless. His hands, when they had finished unbuttoning her dress, were unusually gentle, working man’s hands but with a softness to them that she found irresistible. So different from the old man’s hands, which were usually balled into a fist. And suddenly she didn’t want to fight any more. So she let herself believe his choked, whispered words of love. She was his girl forever, he would never leave her, he needed her; it was all true and she melted into the fantasy of tenderness that he spun for her.
Next morning, the embers from last night’s fire glowed feebly as pickers emerged from their huts, men coughing, bleary-eyed, and women bustling, conscious of so much still to do before leaving.
When her mother roused them, they were all grumpy.
‘No use sweatin’ in the bed, get up and pull out the mattresses!’ she ordered, all the dewy-eyed sentimentality of the night before vanished, as the pro
spect of home loomed.
‘Another five minutes!’ pleaded Milly.
‘Should have come to bed a bit sooner then!’ Her mother hadn’t missed as much as she’d hoped.
Milly rolled off the sleeping platform, dragging her straw pillow and pulling the mattress out from under her two sisters.
‘Leave off!’ snapped Elsie. ‘I’ve got a bad leg.’
‘Oh, we won’t hear the last of this,’ Milly said, lifting the injured leg to pull the mattress off the shelf. ‘Come on, you!’ She dug Amy in the ribs and was rewarded with a ‘Sod off’.
‘Get out the bed, you foul-mouthed little cow!’ Milly pulled her youngest sister up, and together they dragged out mattresses, pillows, straw and old lino, dumping them on the fire, which spluttered to life, as other families began to burn all the evidence of their five weeks in the country. Even their hopping clothes were considered too verminous to be taken home and were added to the fire.
Milly stared at the conflagration, while flames flicked and sparks flew. How could she have let that happen, last night with Pat? Had becoming the hop princess stripped her of all her defences? She had entirely forgotten the girl from Rotherhithe, she had ignored all the warnings, she had suppressed her carefully practised instinct for survival. She was appalled at her own weakness. Now, in the grey mist of the morning, as she stared into the crumbling embers, she found him, unexpectedly, at her side.
‘How’s my hop princess?’ He grabbed her, spinning her round to face him. He looked pleased with himself.
She looked at him uncertainly. He looked so different this morning, bleary-eyed and dishevelled. Her hop prince had changed back into plain old Pat Donovan.
‘Ready to go home?’ he asked, smiling broadly.
She turned back towards the fire, wondering if last night she could have confused deviousness with tenderness. If she had, she feared she might live to regret it.
‘Yes, I’m ready to go home,’ she said, letting her hop garlands fall into the fire.
