Jam and Roses

by Mary Gibson

  But Elsie might not be in her right mind, not if the terror of returning to Stonefield had taken hold of her. Reassured that Elsie wasn’t here, Milly set herself to search all through the night, determined not to return home without her sister.

  When she came up from the slimy steps, she was shivering and Kitty linked arms with her. ‘Come on, Mill, this place puts the wind up me. Let’s keep moving, for gawd’s sake!’

  Milly felt she was in the sort of nightmare where every step forward brought her two steps back. With fog hindering their search, they sometimes found they’d gone in a complete circle, covering the same streets twice. Shouts punctuated the opaque night as groups of searchers called to other groups, checking on their progress. Once Milly’s hopes were raised by a shout of ‘Here she is!’ only to find some boy scouts had been chasing a girl who’d turned out to be one of their own searchers.

  After almost two hours, Milly said, ‘I don’t think she’s up this end, Kit. Let’s go back down to Dockhead and start again.’

  Kitty, who was much less robust than Milly, nodded, but Milly could see her friend was flagging, struggling to match her long stride. In the end Kitty was half running in order to keep up, but Milly couldn’t slow her pace. Back at Arnold’s Place they walked past the old tin can, which hadn’t been moved.

  ‘Looks like Barrel didn’t find her either,’ Kitty said, looking anxiously up and down Arnold’s Place.

  Almost every street door was open despite the cold weather, and her mother was surrounded by women in coats and hats. A quick conversation revealed that all their searches had been in vain.

  ‘But Bertie’s still out there. Perhaps he’s heard something?’ her mother said hopefully.

  ‘I’ll see if I can meet him coming back,’ Milly offered, not wishing to stand around with the worrying neighbours. ‘Kit, you go home, you’re dead on your feet.’ And when Kitty protested, she insisted. ‘Go on, home! You’ll never keep up with me!’

  Kitty admitted defeat, giving Milly a hug. ‘You be careful out there on your own in this pea-souper, it’s getting worse!’

  Milly picked her way towards the end of Arnold’s Place and set off for Shad Thames. A few dockers, changing shifts, were walking her way and she gratefully followed the ringing of their boots on the cobbles. When she reached Butler’s Wharf she heard the stamping of hooves, then passed the dark, hulking shape of a carthorse, waiting to for its driver to return. Steam plumed from the horse’s nostrils and as she skirted round him, he tossed his heavy neck into her path, unbalancing her. Faltering forward across the cobbles, she found herself suddenly surrounded by a crowd of nightmarish creatures. Bright yellow figures advanced towards her through the dingy fog. A cry escaped from her mouth as the first lunged at her. The smell was overpowering – was it sulphur?

  She recoiled as a steel-like hand gripped her, then a rough voice came out of the yellow creature’s mouth. ‘Steady on, gel, y’all right?’

  Milly’s shaking subsided, and her legs straightened.

  ‘Y-yes, I’m all right, just the horse knocked me for six!’ she said, feeling foolish that the fog should have spooked her so badly. The man patted her arm, wafts of strong, eye-watering powder emanating from his skin and clothes. She should have recognized them; they were only the ‘yellow men’, demons of her childhood. She’d joined in the games, running along behind them, baiting them, till the ‘yellow men’ obliged by turning round with a roar, raising clawlike hands, sending the children into squeals of delightful terror.

  The yellow men’s undeserved sense of menace was added to by the many ghost stories woven around their demonic-looking presence. But for all that, they were only working men from the spice grinders, skin and clothes stained yellow with turmeric, billowing up from grindstones night and day. Even as she hurried past the spice grinder’s yard, the deep rumble of massive grindstones turning upon each other reached her in the street. However foolish her fear, she was desperate now for lamplight and crowds. She turned off from Shad Thames into Tooley Street, still busy with late-night traffic, crawling along in the fog. Scurrying from one milky pool of gaslight to the next, she collided with an unseen figure hastening in the opposite direction. Rebounding, she found herself staring up into a familiar face.

  ‘Blimey, that’s a bit of luck, I was just coming to find you!’ he said.

  ‘Jesus, you frightened the life out of me!’ She had no time to wonder how Pat Donovan came to be here; she just knew she wished him a million miles away. She interrupted him as he was about to speak. ‘I’m sorry, Pat, I can’t stop. I’m looking for our Elsie.’

  ‘I know,’ he said to her surprise. ‘I’ve just seen that Hughes bloke. He told me to keep an eye out for her.’

  ‘He’s not found her then?’ she said, her last hope fading.

  ‘Don’t look like it. Listen, Milly, that letter you sent me—’

  ‘Pat, I can’t talk about that now!’ she cut him off. ‘I’m so worried about our Elsie. I’m going back to Arnold’s Place.’

  ‘I’m going that way.’ He fell in beside her and made her tell the whole story on the way.

  ‘Stonefield! Think I’d rather be in Brixton. At least you’ve got the chance of getting out, but once they bang you up in the nuthouse...’ He gave a low whistle. ‘No wonder she run away.’

  ‘Pat, I’m sorry about the letter. But it was for the best.’

  ‘Don’t be a dozy mare, Milly. I told you I’d give the boy a name and I meant it!’

  Prison hadn’t appeared to squash Pat’s natural confidence.

  ‘I know and I’m grateful, Pat, but I really can’t marry you.’

  ‘Why not?’ he demanded, shocked that there might be any other choice for a woman in her position.

  ‘Because I’m going to marry someone else,’ she blurted out, believing with all her heart that while it wasn’t strictly true today, it would be – one day.

  Her mother’s kitchen was crammed so full that she and Pat had to elbow their way in. Milly scanned the faces: her mother looking hopeful for an instant; Amy, glancing up briefly from Jimmy who was cradled in her arms. Mercifully, the old man was absent. No doubt he was the only person in Dockhead who hadn’t joined the hunt. Mrs Knight and even Barrel and Ronnie were still there. Her mother sat in one of the two chairs she possessed and, to Milly’s surprise, in the other sat old Ma Donovan in a dirty wrap-over apron and what looked like her dead husband’s boots. Elsie wasn’t there.

  Milly slumped down on the floor next to the range, while the hubbub of Pat’s surprise arrival went on around her. She seemed to sink into a silent vortex, while mother and son were reunited and everyone exclaimed over his early release. She was the only one who heard the front door opening. She jumped up, but before she could get out of the crowded kitchen, Bertie was standing there. His eyes locked on to hers and then he shook his head sorrowfully. One by one, people stopped talking. Bertie, swallowing hard, announced, ‘The police picked her up this afternoon in Tooley Street. They’ve taken her back to Stonefield.’

  24

  The Joy Slide

  December 1924–February 1925

  On the night of Elsie’s recapture, the neighbours had drifted away, leaving Milly, Bertie and Pat in an awkward triad as they faced each other across Mrs Colman’s small kitchen. Looking from one man to the other, and with her father due home from the pub any minute, Milly felt like a trapped animal. But she had to know how Elsie had been recaptured. She made Bertie sit down in the chair that Ma Donovan had vacated. The woman had gone home to get a bed ready for her son, but Pat hadn’t left with her and now he seemed to be waiting for Bertie to go, before he said goodnight. Of course, Pat still didn’t know where she was living. But she couldn’t worry about him at the moment.

  ‘Do you know where they found her?’ she asked wearily.

  ‘Apparently she was walking past Tower Bridge police station; just walking up and down. A constable had her description and that was that, almost as if she wanted to be
picked up!’

  There was nothing she could do for her mother, who sat staring into the fire, in quiet grief.

  ‘We’ve got to go, Mum,’ Milly said after a while, looking towards Bertie.

  Confusion passed over Pat’s face as he asked, ‘Oh, are you in lodgings?’ He put on his cap. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  She should have told him before, and now his ignorance only added to the awkwardness.

  As Bertie reached for his hat, he put a proprietary hand on Milly’s elbow. ‘No need for that. Milly’s lodging at my house.’

  Pat’s face flushed and she knew he’d guessed the identity of her fiancé. She quickly took Jimmy from Amy’s arms. ‘Look after Mum,’ she told the young girl, who’d been largely ignored, though she’d cared for Jimmy half the night without complaint.

  Pat followed them out and as she was putting Jimmy into his pram, he came up close to her. ‘Is he your fancy man?’ His lips were trembling with emotion. ‘All that time in nick I thought you was waiting for me and you’ve been shacked up with him?’

  ‘It’s not like that, Pat. He took me in. I had nowhere to go!’

  ‘What, and now it’s playing happy families with my boy, is it?’ He jabbed his finger towards the pram.

  ‘Now, listen here,’ she said, ire quickly replacing exhaustion. ‘If it was up to you, “your boy” wouldn’t even be here! I had to do what I thought best for my child, and if it hadn’t been for Bertie, we would’ve been on the street. So don’t you start laying down the law about what I should and shouldn’t have done!’

  Bertie stepped to her side. ‘Perhaps you two should talk about this another time. We’re all tired, don’t want to say things we’ll regret.’

  She hated his reasonableness, and even more she hated his ‘you two’ as though he were coupling her off with Pat already. Why wasn’t he fighting to keep her?

  ‘What’s it to you?’ she said under her breath. ‘As far as you’re concerned, the wedding’s off!’

  Then leaving the two men behind her, she shoved the pram into motion.

  Christmas passed largely uncelebrated in Arnold’s Place that year, and if it hadn’t been for Milly’s desire to mark Jimmy’s first Christmas, Storks Road would also have lacked any festive cheer. She, her mother and Amy made the dismal pilgrimage to Stonefield and found Elsie withdrawn and sullen, rather than desperate. Milly thought she’d simply given up hope of ever coming home. Surrounded by women who’d spent half a lifetime at Stonefield, some for no other reason than having an illegitimate child, Milly thought that Elsie had good reason to despair.

  Her own planned wedding day passed without comment as she and Bertie fell into an awkward stalemate. She had exhausted all her arguments in trying to persuade him out of his stubborn refusal to marry her while he was without a job. He’d insisted that they were still engaged, but it didn’t feel like it to Milly. She felt a check on all their intimacy; she knew he was holding back, even limiting his endearments, and she noticed with a pang every time he failed to call her ‘love’, or ‘his beautiful girl’, or any of the other affectionate terms that had been woven into the fabric of their romance. Words of love, which once had come tumbling forth in precious detail – praise for her hair, her eyes, her figure, her spirit – were now rationed to generalities. She tried to explain to him that his sense of decency was turning their love into an unwatered garden; he wouldn’t starve his roses as he had her heart. Perhaps he was cutting himself off in preparation for her final abandonment of him, but something in her believed the springs hadn’t failed forever. So, like a desert flower waiting to bloom, she curled in on herself, preserving her resources, knowing that all she needed was one glorious day of rain.

  Meanwhile the confusion of her relationship with Pat Donovan only added to her anxiety. Pat no longer owned a lorry, but Freddie Clark now had two, and was giving him work as a driver. She’d often see him driving slowly past Southwell’s gates, just at the times when she was going in or coming out. But he never acknowledged her and she gave him no encouragement, so it was unsettling that he should keep up the pointless vigil.

  Then one Saturday afternoon, he turned up at Storks Road. He took off his cap and began rolling it so nervously into a tight wad that she began to pity him, until she caught the beery stink of his breath. Perhaps he’d missed his pint while in prison, but he’d certainly started early today.

  ‘Pat, I’ve told you—’ she began.

  ‘It’s not about you,’ he interrupted her. ‘Whatever’s going on with you and Hughes... well, I couldn’t give a monkey’s. But my boy’s getting older and he don’t know me. Now that’s not fair and I want to see him.’

  She agreed. It wasn’t fair; none of it was fair. She had made a mistake and it had been compounded by inexperience and ignorance. Perhaps it was time, once and for all, for her to be honest with Pat.

  ‘I should have a say in how he’s brought up. I’ve come to take him round me mum’s. She’s his nan after all.’

  ‘No!’ she said, a little too vehemently. She would never let him go off alone with Jimmy in this state, let alone trust her son to Ma Donovan, or ‘sooky’ as she was sometimes called behind her back, for the grime covering her windows and her front step, not to mention her own person. Milly’s mother’s house might lack furniture, but it was a palace compared to the Donovans’. Slovenliness wasn’t Ma Donovan’s cardinal sin, though. She had called Jimmy a bastard, and Milly would rather die than let him anywhere near her. It was impossible to think of asking Pat into Bertie’s house, so to placate him, she suggested they go for a walk with Jimmy. Better by far to be in an open public space as far away from the Donovan house as possible.

  While Pat waited outside she dressed Jimmy warmly in the new coat she’d made him. At seven months he was filling out, though she thought he would always be a small boy. With his ready smile and placid ways, he was an easy baby to love. His neat little head was now covered in silky blond hair that curled at his neck, and his ever curious almond-shaped eyes seemed to radiate a contented calm. Now he was older it was easier for her to see that Jimmy had nothing of Pat in him, and she was glad of it.

  It was an icy January day of clear, pale skies and she suggested they walk the short distance to St James’s Churchyard. She was dressed for winter in her woollen wrap-around coat and close-fitting hat, while Pat, warmed, no doubt, by the amount of alcohol he’d consumed at the pub, wore just a jacket and white cotton scarf over a collarless shirt.

  In St James’s Churchyard stood an incongruously rustic structure known as ‘the joy slide’. In the shadow of the impressive ‘Waterloo’ church, it looked a little like a country cottage on stilts, with its black-and-white wooden tower over the stairs and a sweeping gabled roof covering the slide. Swarms of children were lining up for a go on the slide, bunching up together, some shivering in shirtsleeves or thin frocks, shuffling forward eagerly to the deep wooden bin, where they could pick up a horsehair mat before clambering up the stairs. Some were so tiny they had to hoist themselves almost into the bin to hook out a mat, and Milly smiled as one almost disappeared inside it. But their wait in the cold was obviously worth it, for their faces shone with excitement as they were rewarded with an exhilarating few seconds, swirling down the polished wooden slide, and as each child tumbled off the end, their joyful smiles lit up the grey day.

  The slide certainly deserved its name, Milly thought. She remembered when it had been built, donated by Peek Frean’s philanthropist owner. It felt as if a fairground had landed on their doorstep. Previously, their only slide had been the wide sloping stones either side of the church steps, worn smooth by the backsides of generations of children. She’d been too old by the time the new slide was built, but had taken Amy and Elsie there often, waiting patiently as they rode the slide again and again, screaming with joy. One day, when he was old enough, she would take Jimmy too. But for now, he would have to be content just to watch. She parked the pram where he could see the children flying off the sl
ide, and he laughed, excitedly jiggling about as each one bumped to the ground.

  ‘Reckon he wants to join in!’ Pat said, rubbing his hands together against the cold. ‘It’s a bit uncle willy for sitting outdoors! Why don’t you let me take him to Mum’s, don’t you trust me?’

  ‘Of course I trust you,’ she lied, ‘but... Jimmy needs a bit of fresh air.’

  He shrugged and sat down beside her on the bench.

  ‘So,’ he leaned forward, letting Jimmy grip his finger, ‘tell me about my son. He looks bright as a button, handsome chap like his dad!’ He grinned and tussled against Jimmy’s hold and Milly’s throat went dry; she coughed and stuttered.

  ‘Yes, he’s a lovely-looking boy, everyone says so, but to be honest I can’t see you in him at all, Pat. The thing is, sooner or later, me and Bertie are getting married and you’ve had nothing to do with Jimmy... and I want him to grow up as Bertie’s son.’

  He withdrew his hand from the pram and turned to her.

  ‘What are you talking about, nothing of me in him? Are you trying to tell me he’s not mine?’ His voice was rising and he was leaning in closer, so that she could see the fine lines that prison had etched around his eyes. Up close, the change in him was more obvious. He was leaner, his skin tauter on his face, his eyes harder. Perhaps his superficial cheeriness was still there, but there was a new harshness to his features that she hadn’t registered before. ‘Or was my old mum right, and you’re just a fucking slut who’s been stringing me along!’ His raised voice drew the attention of some of the youngsters at the slide.

  ‘Shhh, Pat, you’ll frighten Jimmy!’ she said, all the while thinking how easy it would be to tell him what he wanted to hear. If she once said ‘He’s not yours,’ Pat would walk away; she knew that.

  ‘Who’s the father if not me? Is it that Hughes?’

  ‘No!’ she said, steel in her voice. ‘Believe me or not, you can please yourself, and now you can stop your hollering around my son and sod off!’