by Mary Gibson
7
A Bloody Good Hiding
Autumn 1923
Rosie Rockle was standing at her open front door. Even on this chilly, autumnal Saturday afternoon, many of the neighbours still stood outside their doors, gossiping and catching up on the life of the Place. But today Rosie was alone and as Milly returned from her Saturday morning shift, the woman beckoned to her.
‘There’s been murders this afternoon, Milly,’ Rosie said in a hushed voice, though there was no one within earshot. She folded her arms across her faded pinafore, nodding towards the Colman house.
‘Why, what’s happened?’ Milly followed Rosie’s look and noticed, with alarm, that her own front door was ajar.
‘I just wanted to warn you, love, before you go in. I did my best, but... well, you’d better go and see to your mother—’
Before Rosie could finish, Milly turned and shot across the alley into her own house. Inside it was too quiet. Normally at this time on a Saturday, with the old man’s wages already handed over, there would be the bustle of preparing Saturday tea, groceries for the week dumped on the table, waiting to be packed away, the younger girls picking at the new bread, dipping fingers into the jam and generally getting in the way. The silence didn’t seem that of an empty house. She made her way from the passage, cautiously now, into the kitchen.
Her mother was sitting by the cold grate, head bowed in her hands, crying softly. The two younger Colman girls sat at her feet, white-faced and subdued. If Amy and Elsie had nothing to say, then Milly dreaded to think what they had witnessed.
She ran to her mother, as her sisters shuffled aside to make room.
‘What’s he done to you?’ Milly asked, her voice sounding distant to her own ears, drowned out by the drumbeat of her heart.
Her mother raised a puffy face. Milly let out a cry. Blood oozed through broken skin on her mother’s cheek, an angry bruise already blooming. Ellen Colman held her hand to the side of her head, and as Milly gently removed it, making her mother wince, she uncovered a bloody patch of pink scalp just above the temple. Elsie tugged at Milly’s skirt, silently holding up a handful of long pale hair. It was her mother’s.
‘I asked him for his wages, same as always, and he just turned on me,’ her mother said, almost as though this had never happened before. ‘Then he’s done no more than dragged me round the kitchen by me hair. Calling me all sorts. I thought he was going to kill me.’ Her mother’s voice cracked as she tried to control the trembling that ran through her body. ‘I must’ve screamed,’ she went on, gripping her hands tightly together, ‘’cause all the neighbours come running.’ She sank back, looking despairingly at Milly. ‘I’m so ashamed, what must they think of me?’
‘Oh, Mum, why should you be ashamed? It’s him!’ she said, as rage began to burn like ice, detached and slow. It was not the normal hot-tempered flare-up she usually felt with Elsie or Amy. It was an anger born of many similar incidents, conceived on those nights when Milly and her sisters would lie awake listening to the thuds and crashes as the old man kicked their mother round the kitchen like a football. It had been nurtured every time he’d lashed out with a careless blow, when something annoyed him. But now the feeling was coming of age.
She disentangled herself from her mother. Turning to her sisters, she said, ‘Amy, can you get a clean cloth and wash Mum’s cuts? Elsie, make up a fire, will you?’
The sisters jumped to their tasks, with no arguments, while Milly went to the corner cupboard where her father kept his brandy.
‘No, Milly, don’t take that!’ Her mother’s face was suddenly alert with fear. ‘He’ll miss it.’
‘Sod him, here, you have a drop.’ She poured a little into a cup and put it carefully into her mother’s shaking hands.
‘Where’s he gone?’ she asked, watching while her mother sipped slowly.
‘Down the pub, I expect, I don’t suppose we’ll see him till late.’
‘Maybe you won’t, Mum, but I will.’
‘No, Milly!’ She grasped Milly’s arm. ‘Don’t cross him! You’ll only make it worse for all of us. Just let him have his bellyful and we’ll forget it.’
But Milly shook her hand off and walked out of the kitchen, aware of Elsie’s fear-filled eyes following her. She hadn’t taken her coat off and she was glad of it, once out in the misty chill of the late afternoon. She stepped over some children sprawled across the paving, playing alley gobs, and set off up Arnold’s Place, towards Dockhead, vaguely aware of Ronnie Rockle and Barrel falling in behind her. She registered Rosie and Mrs Knight poking their heads out from their doors as she passed, and thought she heard them call a warning, but nothing could distract her from the slow burning rage which had begun to rise from the pit of her stomach and was now grabbing at her chest. Her breath came in shorter gasps and by the time she passed Holy Trinity Church, the rage had reached her throat. She glanced at people going in for confession; she would not be joining them today. A couple of nuns from the convent came towards her, habits flapping in the sharp breeze, like two black-winged crows. They smiled at her. They’d once been her teachers, the ones she’d made nightgowns for in sewing lessons. But she looked through them without acknowledgement, darting suddenly across the road, narrowly missing a tram, then turning right towards the Swan and Sugarloaf.
There was a pub on every corner at Dockhead; the old man had plenty of choice, but the Swan was his favourite. The pub was now heavily cloaked in river mist. Milly blinked, but her eyes wouldn’t clear. It was as if the mist had seeped behind her eyes and, almost unseeing, she gripped the brass handle, flinging open the pub door.
It was a smoke-filled, beery cavern, packed with men in flat caps, who were already well into the Saturday ritual of drinking away their week’s wages. None of them interrupted their drinking to turn round. She stood in the doorway, letting the freezing wind that whipped up from the river blast its way into the warm fug.
‘Put some wood in the bloody ’ole!’ a young man barked, glaring at her.
When she continued to hold the door open, more and more faces turned towards her. She recognized some of the men she’d travelled to Kent with, on Pat’s lorry. There was Sid, and Harry, reaching up for the pint on top of his piano. Then she spotted the old man, his back towards her, holding a pint of bitter. He was loudly recounting some joke, surrounded by mates from the tannery. She was struck by how jovial and carefree he seemed. None of her mother’s pain had touched him. His features, though bloodshot and drink-befuddled, lacked their domestic scowl; he could almost be taken for an amiable man. It was his laughter, the laughter she never heard at home, that finally caused her building rage to burst free.
‘You bastard, get out here!’ she roared at him. Now every head snapped round. Pints halted mid-sip, conversations stopped and mouths opened. He was almost the last to turn. A look of bewilderment changed, chameleon-like, to embarrassment, as a purple blush suffused his face.
‘What the fuck d’you want?’ he slurred, turning unsteadily to face her.
She didn’t answer. Instead, using his drunken surprise to her advantage, she charged, barrelling through the crowd. Men jumped out of her path, beer spilled over her, as, head down, she launched herself straight for his midriff. She had grown taller than he was in the last year and was much quicker on her feet. His glass crashed to the floor as he doubled over, winded, gasping for breath. She bent her knees, bringing up her fist as she did so, to connect with his jaw in a satisfying crack that sent him spinning.
‘You ever...’ she grabbed his jacket, spun herself round like a discus thrower and using muscles built up hauling seven-pound jam jars, flung him towards the door, ‘hit my mother...’ and he sprawled flat on the beery sawdust as she aimed a kick at his backside, ‘again...’ His head cracked the edge of the door. ‘An’ I’ll kill you!’
She brought her booted foot up under his midriff, sending him clean through the door and out into the street. Her breath came like a serrated blade, in jagged bursts, as
she bent forward, hands on thighs. Almost spent, she became aware of the crowd surrounding her on the pavement, some cheering her on, others jeering and laughing at the old man.
‘Go on, Mill,’ she heard a friend of her mother’s shouting, ‘give the bastard some of his own treatment!’
She heard a piano, playing incongruously, and realized that Harry was still pounding away, almost as though he was providing musical accompaniment to the drama. She straightened up. Her father was still lying on the pavement, seemingly unable to get up. Remembering all the times her mother had been his football, she ran forward, aiming one last punishing kick into the old man’s kidneys as he struggled to rise. He slumped back, curled into a ball and covered his head. She leaned over him, whispering hoarsely into his ear, ‘Don’t you ever touch my mother again.’
Spent now, panting and trembling, she felt the world around her coming back into focus. She recognized individual faces in the crowd, saw Ronnie and Barrel among the hooting children attracted by the brawl. She even noticed the passengers on the top deck of a passing tram, staring down curiously at father and daughter trapped like two prizefighters, in a ring of bodies outside the Swan.
Pushing her way through the crush, it struck her like the blow that he hadn’t landed: her father was a coward. It seemed so obvious now, but how had it taken her a lifetime to discover it? All those years they’d suffered under his tyranny and she had left him back there, a cowering bundle on the pavement. But coward or not, she knew there would be consequences and, realizing what she’d done, a tremor of fear, not for herself but for her mother, seized her. She ran towards home.
The day Milly Colman called her old man out of the Swan and Sugarloaf was talked of for many years in Arnold’s Place. It was embellished so much that one version even had her ending up killing him and swinging for it. But for Milly, it was the day her life changed forever. The word had quickly got back to Arnold’s Place, and she was confronted by a huddle of neighbours outside her front door.
‘Good on yer, Milly,’ Rosie Rockle nodded approvingly, ‘he won’t hit her no more, not after that pasting. Our Ronnie said you give him a bloody good hiding!’
‘I did, Rosie,’ said Milly, as the other women moved aside, murmuring their admiration. ‘I’d better tell me mum.’
‘I think she already knows, love,’ said Mrs Knight, but her look was pitying rather than admiring, perhaps not so convinced that Milly had helped her mother at all.
Elsie and Amy had been part of the welcoming committee on the doorstep and now followed her inside. The kitchen looked just as it normally did, the furniture had been straightened, the fire lit and the groceries put away. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, hands flat on the white scrubbed boards. Other than the bloody patch, which she had tried to hide by combing over her hair, she looked her normal tidy self, face washed, and a clean pinafore wrapped around her skinny body. She raised hopeless eyes as Milly entered.
‘It won’t do no good, Mill. You’ve only made it worse.’ She shook her head. ‘He’ll end up killing you. I know him. You’ve shown him up in front of his mates and he won’t let it be.’
‘I had to, Mum—’
‘We’ve still got to live with him!’ her mother interrupted. ‘I need his wages for their sakes.’ She nodded towards the girls. ‘But I’m scared what he’ll do now. He’ll kill you in your bed and I’ll never be able to sleep quiet again. I think you’ll have to go, love, keep out of his way for a bit.’
Milly sat down heavily on the chair opposite her mother. She was right. There would be no peace in the house for her mother or sisters, not while Milly was there. Even if she’d scared the old man enough not to beat her mother, there were other ways he could make all their lives miserable.
‘It’s all right, Mum,’ she said, moving round the table to grasp her mother’s hand. ‘I’d made up me mind to go, but now he knows what I can do, he’ll leave you alone... at least for a while.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ her mother sobbed. ‘Me poor girl, you’ve got nowhere to go. But you can’t be here when he gets home—’
Just then they heard the front door banging open and the old man stumbled into the kitchen. He had lost his cap and his choker was askew. Milly’s mother jumped up to stand in front of Milly. Her father staggered, holding one hand to his ribs. He didn’t look at Milly; his eyes slid past her to Mrs Colman.
‘Get me the liniment, she’s broke me fuckin’ ribs.’ He slumped down into his chair by the fire, wincing. Her mother went to the sideboard and the old man stared at the fire, speaking almost to himself. ‘Keep her out of my sight. I don’t want to see her.’
‘Go on...’ Her mother was pushing Milly out into the passage. ‘Make yourself scarce.’ She lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Come back when he’s in bed!’
Milly stepped out into the street, where by now the excitement had already died down. Domestic disputes came and went with great regularity in Arnold’s Place and they were always conducted in public. The houses faced each other with only nine or ten feet of paving between them and the front windows were positioned opposite each other, so that any degree of privacy was minimal. But the neighbours had retreated inside for Saturday tea and Milly found herself contemplating a long evening alone. She looked for regret in her heart, but couldn’t find any. The remembered sensation of her fist connecting with his jaw was so sweet it was worth a lifetime’s exile, and she had the deeper satisfaction of knowing she’d saved her mother from any more abuse, at the very least until his ribs healed. She absent-mindedly rubbed her grazed knuckles, then made up her mind.
Saturday night was dance night at Bermondsey Baths and she’d arranged to meet some of the other jam girls there. Why should she change her plans? If her own home was denied her, she would find another, on the streets of Bermondsey.
She headed for the two-up two-down in Hickman’s Folly, where Kitty Bunclerk lived with her parents, five sisters and little brother Percy. After six girls, Mr Bunclerk had wanted to name him Perseverance, but Mrs Bunclerk, being more merciful, had suggested they compromise with Percy.
When she arrived they were sitting down to Saturday tea. As one of the older Bunclerk girls ushered her through the narrow passage, Milly smiled at the three youngest children, who were seated on the stairs, plates balanced on their laps. The tiny kitchen wasn’t big enough for them all to sit round the table at once and Milly could barely fit herself into the room. Mrs Bunclerk welcomed her in, just as Kitty came out of the scullery.
‘You’re early! We heard you give your old man a good hiding! Has he chucked you out?’ Kitty asked, wide-eyed.
‘Not yet, but I’m steering clear of him for a bit.’
‘You’d better keep your head down, love,’ a toothless Mrs Bunclerk smiled cheerily, ‘and lock the bedroom door an’all, he’s the sort’d kill you in your bed!’
‘Mum! Stop it, you’ll frighten the life out of her. Come in the scullery, Mill.’
The others looked disappointed as Milly squeezed round the table and out into the back scullery.
‘What are you going to do now?’ Kitty turned her bright, concerned eyes on Milly.
‘I’m going to the dance, what else?’
Kitty burst into giggles. ‘Milly Colman, only you could pay your dad in front of the whole world and then go dancing as if nothing had happened.’
‘Well, I’ll need to tidy myself up a bit first, look at the state of me.’
She peered into the small mirror hanging on a nail above the sink and pulled at her hair. Looking down at her coat, she noticed it had lost a couple of buttons in the scuffle. ‘And look at me dancing shoes!’ Milly lifted her foot, to show her friend the old work boots she was still wearing.
‘Come upstairs with me, there ought to be something we can find for you to wear, with six girls in the house!’
Squeezing back through the kitchen and stepping over the children still seated on the stairs, they made their way up to the bedroom where each night Kitty
and her five sisters squeezed into the one bed, while Percy still slept in their parents’ room. After a little rummaging around in a narrow wardrobe, Kitty emerged with a pair of strapped shoes and a blue shift dress.
‘This is our Ada’s best dress, she’s more your size, and try these shoes on, her plates are bigger than mine.’
Milly took the shoes. ‘Shouldn’t you ask her first?’
‘She’s not going to need them. She’s doing overtime tonight. You try ’em on, I’ll go and talk her round!’
Kitty disappeared downstairs while Milly slipped into the dress and shoes. Soon Kitty reappeared with Ada, who was younger than Milly and not quite as tall. She worked at Southwell’s too, but in the candied-peel department. Ada always held her large hands under her armpits, as though she were nursing them. They were permanently red and swollen with inflamed cuts, from peeling citrus fruit.
‘Ohhh, you cow,’ she said enviously, as Milly turned round, ‘you look better in that dress than I do!’
‘D’you mind, Ada, just this once?’
‘No, you go out and enjoy yourself, Milly. You deserve it after the show you give us all today!’
Ada told her that the crowd outside the pub had included many of the jam girls, and they’d all enjoyed themselves afterwards, retelling the fight blow by blow. Milly felt like one of the celebrated boxers from the Thomas A Becket. Conscious of the irony of moving from hop princess to prizefighter in a few short weeks, she gave Ada a wry smile. ‘Well, I’m glad I brightened up someone’s day!’
When they arrived at the Bermondsey Baths, there was already a crowd of young men and girls in their Saturday night finery queuing outside. There had been no time for Milly to give her mother her pay packet, so she still had it with her, and when their turn came to pay the entrance, she dug around in the envelope for a sixpence.
‘Are you meeting Pat?’ Kitty asked her.
Milly turned up her nose. ‘I don’t know, Kit, he’s getting a bit of a handful. I might fancy a change!’ She sounded more unconcerned than she felt, for that one night when she’d given in to Pat, down hopping, had never been repeated, much to his frustration, and she was getting tired of fending him off.
