by Mary Gibson
‘It’s worse than club night at the Settlement!’ Kitty said.
Florence pulled a face. ‘Oh no, club night is much worse, especially when Milly Colman and Kitty Bunclerk turn up drunk!’
The three of them giggled as the exasperated chairwoman bellowed, ‘Order, ladies, please, it’s not Saturday night at the Dockhead Tavern!’
In spite of the apparent chaos, by the end of the meeting rotas had been organized for soup kitchens, and volunteers signed up for supplying tea and sandwiches to men on the picket lines. Women who were on strike, like Kitty, would join the picket lines themselves.
‘I wish you were still at Southwell’s,’ Kitty said. ‘We might need someone who can land a wallop on that picket line!’
‘If I didn’t have the kids, I’d be there!’
As it was, she signed up for a daily stint at the Labour Institute, preparing food parcels for strikers’ families. She was surprised at how quickly she’d been caught up in the excitement of all the preparations. There were plenty of wives who complained and made their husbands’ lives a misery, failing to see any benefit to themselves in an enterprise that might leave them for weeks without a wage coming in. But she found it easy to believe in the rightness of the cause, and talking to Bertie just confirmed that this was the only decent, unselfish course of action, for both of them.
But Milly had her first glimpse of the earnestness of the government’s resistance to their cause when she went to Arnold’s Place, a few days after the strike began. Her mother was against the strike – the Archbishop had after all pronounced it a sin against God – but nevertheless, she juggled her conscience as she always did, and agreed to look after Jimmy and Marie while Milly went with Florence Green to deliver sandwiches to the pickets at Butler’s Wharf. Florence hadn’t been the only middle-class volunteer at the Settlement to surprise her with their support. Many of them, like Francis Beaumont, were Oxbridge graduates, who’d come to Bermondsey on short-term missions. Having lived among the poor streets of the riverside, they now found it impossible to cross the line and join the students volunteering at Hay’s Wharf to unload vessels in an attempt to break the strike. When Milly had expressed her surprise, Florence told her that ‘her Francis’ had been helping Bertie deliver the strike bulletins.
‘We both agreed which side we’d be on, when we heard about Blaina.’
Milly hadn’t heard of the place, but Florence told her it was a small village in Wales, where children were near to starving. ‘If we call this a Christian country, then I don’t see how our government can countenance cutting those men’s wages even further. Francis and I believe it’s our Christian duty to stand with them, Milly!’
So there it was, Milly thought, God, as usual, was on both sides, and in the end, the only thing to do was to make up your own mind.
Her mother’s front door was wide open when they arrived. Florence waited patiently, while Milly persuaded Jimmy it would be more fun to stay with his grandmother than to come with her. With the front door still open, it wasn’t hard to hear the familiar bellowing of Barrel as he came hallooing along the street.
‘That boy’s got a gate on him like the Blackwall Tunnel!’ her mother said as he, Amy and all the usual crew of urchins clustered breathless round the front door.
‘They’ve sent in the big guns, the navy’s arrived!’ Barrel leaned on the doorpost, chest heaving.
As no newspapers were being printed, it was useful to have a little band of spies roaming the docks, and the children had proved very effective at slipping through the lines of policemen and soldiers and ferreting out information. People started to come out of their houses, curious to hear the latest development. Many were strikers, home for dinner or a break from the picket lines, and Milly could see looks of alarm passing from one to the other. Fear seemed to ripple along the street as women ran to gather up children and men headed off towards the river.
Milly handed Jimmy to her mother and then broke into a trot, with Florence at her side, the two of them following the crowd down to the riverside. They arrived at Horsleydown Stairs just in time to see two huge ships steaming into the pool of London. They dwarfed the tiny tugs and lighters ranged along the dockside, and as the arms of Tower Bridge rose to greet them, their combined grey bulk blotted out the Tower of London on the far shore. Lines of sailors, in smart whites, lined the decks, and just as Barrel had said, the big guns seemed to be aimed directly at the riverside streets and docks of Bermondsey. It felt like wartime all over again.
‘Destroyers!’ one man explained to her. ‘I was in the navy during the war. They could blow us all to smithereens if they wanted to.’
It made Milly wonder how many of the strikers who surrounded her were ex-servicemen, how many had risked their lives in the trenches, fighting for the very country which was now turning its navy upon them. If anything could make you bitter, it must be that. Yet there was no eruption of violence; there was no call to arms. Instead the men seemed to accept the navy’s presence, as though it were simply the opposing side in a football match turning up on to the playing field.
The effect, though terrifying to Milly, seemed to steel the strikers, and that evening, when Bertie came home from distributing the strike bulletin, she asked him if he believed they had any chance of winning.
She was surprised when he said, ‘Not a chance in hell, love. They’ve got volunteers driving trains and buses; they’ve got the army delivering petrol and breaking the picket lines at the docks. Now they’ve even got the navy, so if they can’t reach the docks by land, they’ll go in by river. No, our mistake was thinking that once the country knew what the miners were being asked to agree to, they’d see it wasn’t fair. But unless you’ve tried to live on that wage, well... I suppose I might have been the same once, but I’ve seen the other side, haven’t I?’
‘Well then, what’s the point in going on with it?’
‘Because it’s still the right thing to do.’ His voice was firm, but she detected that the glow of his initial excitement had begun to fade. Then, on the following evening, hers vanished altogether.
She was upstairs, putting Marie into her cot, when she heard him come home. His usual call of ‘Where’s my beautiful girl?’ didn’t come. Running downstairs to greet him, Milly found the front door already wide open. She looked into the rather dirty face of Francis Beaumont, Elsie’s one-time lawyer and Florence Green’s fiancé. She stopped at the foot of the stairs, suddenly cold.
‘Bertie?’
‘He’s fine,’ Francis said, then turned quickly to help another man get Bertie into the house. The two men got beneath Bertie’s arms, taking his weight as he hobbled into the passage. His head was lowered, and he held a handkerchief tight to his forehead, trying to staunch blood which was already turning the white cotton into a red pulpy ball. The man nodded at Milly. ‘He’s been in a scrape, missus. He’s all right, though, ain’t you, Bert?’
‘Thanks, Sid, I’ll be fine.’
‘Don’t ’spect we’ll see you tomorrow. Have a blow,’ Sid said, tipping his hat to Milly.
Francis hovered, concerned. ‘I think it looks worse than it is, Mrs Hughes,’ he said uncertainly, ‘but if you’d like me to get a doctor...’
‘No, no...’ Bertie, pulling himself up straight, replied. ‘No need for that. Thanks for driving me home, Francis, g’night.’
As soon as Francis had left, Bertie lurched heavily against the passage wall and Milly rushed to help him.
‘Bertie! What’s happened to you? Oh, love, look at the state of you! Here, let me see.’
‘I daren’t move,’ he said, lifting the handkerchief. ‘I’ll get blood all over the show.’
She examined his forehead. A deep gash oozed blood, and he quickly stuffed the handkerchief back over the wound.
‘Come on, let me get you to the sink.’
She helped him through to the scullery, where she turned the tap full on. Soon the stone sink ran full of pink swirling water, as ruby lozenges cont
inued to pool and drip heavily from his forehead. Lifting his chin to examine the wound, she grabbed a clean tea towel from the dresser drawer. ‘Keep this pressed hard on it, while I fetch the medicine tin.’
Fumbling through the small tin she kept in the dresser for emergencies, she found a few rolled-up bandages and some antiseptic cream, and placed them on the draining board. Then she gently began cleaning the wound.
‘Looks like you’ve got a load of grit in it. How the bloody hell did it happen?’ She tried to steady her hand, but the sight of so much blood scared her. It wasn’t just a surface graze – that much was obvious.
He tried to give his usual wry smile, but the gash cut right through his raised eyebrow, and he winced.
‘Ouch, it really does hurt to laugh!’ he said.
‘Well then, don’t laugh!’
While she removed bits of grit and made a padded bandage, he told her how he’d come by the wound.
‘It was our lot! Those stupid sods up by the barricade in Old Kent Road. Sid and his mates tried to turn Dr Salter’s car over and I went and got in the way!’
‘Sid? What, the one who brought you home?’
Bertie grimaced as she attempted to fasten the bandage. ‘Yes, the chump, I think he felt guilty.’
‘But why would they do that? Surely they’re not turning on their own now?’
‘Idiots didn’t recognize him, thought he was police, trying to break through the barricade. Mind you, the doctor should have had the Council for Action sticker on the windscreen and he didn’t, but you’d think they’d recognize the most famous strike supporter in Bermondsey!’
‘So how did you get the worst of it?’ She leaned down to see what damage he’d done to his leg. The ankle was swollen and turning a deep shade of plum. ‘This’ll need a compress, looks sprained.’
She helped him back to the kitchen, stopping as he swayed and almost toppled over. Then, easing him into his chair, she kneeled to gently wrap his ankle in a wet cloth.
‘I’d just finished delivering the bulletin along the Old Kent Road, and I hear this almighty row going on up by the Thomas A Becket. There’s about a dozen men at the barricade, surrounding some poor chap in a car. All I can hear is “Turn ’em over, turn ’em over!” And they start rocking it backwards and forwards. The chap’s still in there and I’m thinking, they’ll have it over with him inside, they could kill the poor feller. So I jump out of the van, grab one of them and try to talk sense, and of course it’s too late. Some bright spark picks up a bit of broken kerbing and lobs it at the windscreen. That’s when I recognized him. I mean, you can’t miss him, Milly, great bald head, round specs, always got the same mac on. I starts shouting at them, “It’s Dr Salter!” I’m hollering, but they’re so fired up they can’t hear, so the only thing I could think to do was jump up on the bonnet!’
Milly groaned. ‘Oh, Bertie, you soppy sod.’ She felt a mixture of anger and pride, but she only let him see the anger. ‘You could’ve got yourself killed, and not a thought for your family!’
‘Sorry, duck, but you’re always telling me I should be more impulsive,’ he said, shamefaced.
She got up to kiss him. ‘Not like that! Anyway, what happened next?’
‘Well, I got between Dr Salter and another lump of kerbstone that Sid tossed over. That one got me straight between the eyes and I tumbled off the bonnet, that’s when I did my ankle. But it gave the doctor a chance to get out and show the idiots who he was. He gave them a bit of a telling off, said we weren’t to resort to violence, but really, he took it in his stride. Thanked me and looked at the wound, said I should watch out for concussion and that he would drive me home himself, but he had to get to Westminster, find out what was going on. He writes the bulletins himself, you know.’
Milly was less interested in Dr Salter’s journalistic skills than in the concussion. ‘Well, you can’t go to bed yet, we’ll have to wait and see if you get sleepy.’
He reached for her. ‘Why can’t I go to bed? I think that would be a very good idea.’ He drew her on to his lap. ‘And I’m not at all sleepy!’
She smiled into his kiss and said, ‘No! You’re a wounded soldier and I’m the matron!’
‘Well, I quite like the sound of that!’
Beneath the bandage, she could imagine the raised eyebrow and she thumped him gently on the chest, laughing now with relief that he seemed fine and not, as she’d feared, about to collapse from loss of blood. Still, they sat up for a long time, with Milly unwilling to let Bertie sleep too soon. Eventually, with both their eyelids drooping, she helped him upstairs to bed.
She lay listening to his breathing, which seemed even and normal. But to his deep irritation, she insisted on waking him every other hour. The sight of him covered in blood had shocked her into the realization of how precious Bertie had become to her, and she would willingly suffer his barks of, ‘Strike me dumb, leave me alone, woman, I’m all right!’ if it meant keeping him safe.
But in spite of all her vigilance, by next morning his symptoms had worsened. She took him a cup of tea and his hand grasped her wrist instead.
‘Looks like there are two cups to me, just a bit of double vision from the knock.’
‘We’ll have to get you to Guy’s!’ was her immediate response, but he refused. ‘Don’t fuss, it’ll go away on its own.’
‘Don’t worry about the money, we’ll find it.’
‘Did I say anything about money?’
But he didn’t have to. Unforeseen medical bills were not in their budget, and usually anything that couldn’t be cured with home remedies had the ‘wait and see if it gets better’ treatment applied to it.
‘If only we hadn’t gone to Ramsgate...’
His face seemed to crumple and she wished she hadn’t voiced her regret. He’d been so proud to be able to take them on a proper holiday.
‘But anyway,’ she added quickly, ‘I’ve got a bit put by from the clothes.’ That wasn’t entirely true, but she hoped to God she would be earning a bit at the next market.
She only realized how ill he was feeling when he tried to get up to do the bulletin run. Trying to ease himself out of bed, he swayed and fell back on to the bolster. Splayed out, he could barely raise himself.
‘All right, love, I give in. I’m staying here today.’
She did not dare leave him, and spent a frantically anxious day, running upstairs to check on him every five minutes, while still trying to keep Jimmy occupied. As his second birthday approached, her lovely boy had been transformed into a biting, spitting little monkey. She was at a loss to know how her angel had been replaced by this demon changeling. She found herself longing for a knock on the door. Now she understood the value of Arnold’s Place. If she’d been living there, she could have popped next door, knowing her neighbour would watch the children while she went for a doctor. But Storks Road wasn’t like that. It was a respectable street and people were polite enough, but nothing like Arnold’s Place where the neighbours were like family.
When long hours passed and Bertie’s vision and balance still hadn’t improved, she began to seriously consider leaving him to call a doctor, and was about to put on her coat when the longed-for knock on the door came. Perhaps it was Florence Green, come to see why she hadn’t turned up for her stint at the Labour Institute today. She flew down the passage and flung open the door to be confronted by a large man wearing a long mac. He was striking to look at, with his domed bald head and round spectacles.
‘How’s the patient?’ he asked, holding up his medical bag.
‘Dr Salter! Oh I’m so glad you’re here! How did you know where we lived?’
The doctor smiled and said, ‘How could I not? I’m your neighbour!’
She couldn’t imagine how he’d managed to find time to come – according to Florence, he was spending hours canvassing support at Westminster, dashing back to give speeches at crowded town hall meetings, then often repeating his speeches late into the night, on the town hall steps, ad
dressing the thousands who hadn’t been able to find a seat inside. Milly knew he’d been at the surgery less since he’d become an MP, but now he explained that he always had his medical bag in the boot of his car or strapped to his bicycle.
‘I couldn’t sleep easily in my bed till I’d checked on my gallant protector! I suppose he told you that the men were a little overzealous at the barricades yesterday evening?’
She nodded. ‘He said he thought you could’ve been injured!’ The doctor waved away her concern as he followed her into the front parlour.
‘Well, it must have been a near thing. It’s not like my Bertie to get involved in a fight... To be honest, Doctor, I’m more likely to get in a scrap than he is!’
The doctor threw back his head and gave a surprisingly loud laugh. ‘Well, I have a similarly fierce wife, though her scraps normally happen during the council meetings!’ He looked at Milly for a long moment. ‘But how are you, my dear? The strike is harder on the wives than on the men.’
‘Oh, I’m fine, Doctor. I’m doing what I can to help at the Labour Institute.’ He seemed pleased, then suddenly looked up. ‘And how’s the little chap?’
Milly paused, comprehending why the man had the reputation of a saint. He’d remembered! Out of all the thousands of mothers and babies who must have passed through his care in the past two years, he remembered that brief visit to her mother’s, and her own situation.
‘Oh, Jimmy is an angel... well, he was, until he started to use his teeth on everything but his food!’
Again came the hearty laugh, and picking up his bag, he said, ‘Ah, I’m afraid there’s only one remedy for that, let him know what it feels like, just a nip. You’ll cry longer than he does, but he’ll never do it again!’
Her own mother’s advice exactly, though she hadn’t had the heart to carry it out.
‘Now, let’s see the patient. How has he been?’
The doctor followed Milly upstairs as she recited the symptoms. She saw him into the bedroom and waited as he stood at the bedside, gently rousing Bertie. But after a while the doctor turned to her, his face suddenly serious. Bertie could not be wakened.
