Jam and Roses

by Mary Gibson

  26

  Absent Husbands

  May 1926

  The hours following Dr Salter’s arrival sped by in a gut-wrenching series of shocks. The doctor’s diagnosis was speedy and terrifying.

  ‘He has severe concussion. We must get him to hospital immediately.’

  Milly’s strength seemed to melt away. She put out her hand, grasping empty air to keep her upright, and the doctor moved swiftly to her side. ‘Listen to me, Mrs Hughes, I am going home to telephone to Guy’s. Don’t leave Bertie for a minute. Talk to him – he may be able to hear you. I’ll be back shortly.’ He patted her hand. ‘Speed is of the essence, but be strong and try not to worry. These cases often right themselves.’

  And he was gone, ramming his trilby on to his head, clattering down the stairs two at a time. He’d said he wouldn’t be long, but each silence between the ticks of the bedside clock stretched for an eternity. She pulled up a chair to Bertie’s bedside and took his hand. His face was pasty-grey, a film of sweat coating his forehead, his breathing so faint it barely moved the sheet covering him.

  She lifted his hand to her lips and kissed it. ‘Bertie, love, can you hear me? You’ve got to wake up, darlin’. Dr Salter’s here, he says you’ve got to wake up.’

  Milly felt that somehow the mention of the great doctor’s name would galvanize Bertie. He would want to get up, for pride’s sake. But he never stirred. She tried to swallow, but her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She had seen her mother unconscious like this once, after a kick in the head from the old man, and though they hadn’t been able to rouse her at first, after a while she’d come round. But it had been almost two days since Bertie’s injury and now she blamed herself for not doing something earlier.

  ‘Oh, I should have made you go to Guy’s. You always say I can wrap you round my little finger, but it’s not true, is it, love? You’re so stubborn and now look at you... Bertie, wake up... please...’

  She squeezed his hand tighter. But the only thing stirring in the room was the second hand on the clock, tick, ticking. Now she began to panic. What if Bertie should die? The doctor had told her to be strong, but she would never be able to bear it.

  ‘Bertie,’ she whispered, her voice hoarse with tears, ‘don’t leave me now, don’t die, my love.’ Her tears fell on his hand and, kissing the salt away, she pleaded, desperate for some sign he could hear her. ‘You always say I’m a tough old boot, don’t you? But the secret is, I’m not tough, Bertie, not really, so you’ve got to come back... hear me?’

  She didn’t know if Bertie had heard her or not, but at that moment the doctor returned. When the ambulance arrived to take him away to Guy’s Hospital, she took the doctor aside.

  ‘Doctor, I’m sorry, but we haven’t got... What I mean is, with the strike and I’m not working, I don’t think we can pay for the hospital...’

  But the doctor simply patted her hand and said, ‘You’re not to worry about that, Mrs Hughes. There will be no charge.’

  Normally she would baulk at such obvious charity, but this time there wasn’t a choice. She wouldn’t put pride before Bertie’s life and she accepted with a grateful resignation.

  There was no question of sleep. Although she couldn’t be there at his bedside, she sat in vigil at home, staring into the fire’s fading embers all through the night, until, in the dawn light, came a gentle knocking on her front door. She opened it to find a middle-aged lady, dressed in wellington boots and mackintosh, with a fisherman’s rain hat pulled low over her forehead. She stood in the drizzle-filled, half-light, holding a covered basin.

  ‘Hello, my dear, my name is Ada Salter, Dr Salter’s wife. I’ve brought you some soup.’

  Milly was dumbfounded. ‘Oh, that’s very kind of you, Mrs Salter.’ She stepped aside so the woman could come in out of the rain. She’d seen the MP’s wife at strike meetings and knew of her council work, but she never imagined having a conversation with her, let alone receiving a dawn visit.

  ‘It’s the least I could do. Your husband may well have saved my Alfred’s life.’ Ada Salter had an earnest air about her, but there was a warmth there too. She wiped her feet vigorously on the doormat, before following Milly into the kitchen and putting the soup on the kitchen table.

  ‘Is the doctor back from the hospital?’ Milly asked, holding her breath.

  ‘Yes, he is, my dear, but I’ve insisted he get at least a few hours’ sleep.’ She paused. ‘I know you’ll be desperate for news, but I’m afraid Alfred says there is nothing to report, other than that your husband is much the same.’

  The disappointment was like a punch to the stomach, knocking all the breath from her. The hope that, once in hospital, Bertie would recover, was all that had got her through the previous night. Now, with that hope snatched away, she slumped against the table, while Mrs Salter hurried to bring her a chair.’

  ‘You must get some sleep yourself, Milly. May I call you Milly? Else you’ll be no good to your husband. Now, let me warm this soup for you.’

  Too exhausted to resist, Milly hardly registered the presence of this rather cultured, eccentric-looking lady, bustling about her kitchen as though she owned it. Mrs Salter sat opposite her while Milly reluctantly spooned in the hot soup.

  When she’d finished, the woman got briskly to her feet, as though, realizing she could do no more here, she must be up and on to the next task. Milly noticed she had the same fizzing energy as her husband, which quietened down as they gave you their full attention but once satisfied they could do no more, instantly roused them to action, as though a thousand pressing tasks were spurring them on. She knew couples often grew to resemble each other, and though she’d only been with Bertie such a short time, she hoped she had grown more like him, that she had taken on some of his slow, kind ways and his thoughtfulness. Poor Bertie, she doubted there was any trait of hers that could have improved him. But thinking of him only brought back tears to her eyes and seeing them roll down her cheek Mrs Salter gripped her shoulder with surprising firmness.

  ‘There’s some soup left for the little boy,’ the woman said kindly, and then almost shyly reached into the depths of the mackintosh pocket. ‘I brought him a present.’ It was a knitted rabbit, with long floppy ears and a scarlet waistcoat. ‘I make them for all my young friends,’ she said almost sadly, and before Milly could thank her she went on hastily, ‘Now, my husband says you mustn’t give up hope, though things look bleak. Sometimes all that’s required is rest. And the same could be said of you, try to get some sleep!’ She squeezed Milly’s hand. ‘No need to see me out, my dear.’

  Milly’s despair and fear had been subtly shifted by Mrs Salter’s visit, and she was sure that her returning strength was not just the effect of the warming soup. She knew that the doctor and his wife had experienced their own share of tragedy, losing their only daughter to one of the frequent outbreaks of scarlet fever in Bermondsey. That had been many years before, but whatever individual fire the woman had passed through, it had given her a steel-like strength which this morning she’d passed on to Milly. Going to the front-parlour window, Milly’s gaze followed Ada Salter as she strode down Storks Road, hat dipped against the falling rain, looking the very embodiment of grit and determination, and Milly suddenly felt strong enough to face the coming day, whatever it might bring.

  There was no sign that he knew she was there. The strike had been over for almost a week, ending in bitter defeat for the strikers, many of whom felt they had been betrayed by their own leaders. The miners were now battling on alone, slowly being starved into submission. Milly felt the defeat keenly. Had her Bertie sacrificed himself for nothing? Looking at his sunken, grey face, from which all trace of his whimsical spirit seemed to have been erased, it certainly felt like it.

  Her mother and Amy had stepped in to look after Jimmy and Marie, while she made the daily journey to Guy’s Hospital. Dr Salter had told her she must be patient, that Bertie could wake up at any time. But patience wasn’t her strong point and she c
ouldn’t sit by, doing nothing, while he faded away before her eyes. She pushed back the chair, and, heedless of Matron’s rules, lay down beside him on the hospital bed. To be so near him and feel so far away was unbearable. Pale green screens had been drawn round his bed, to give him the peace and rest the doctors said he needed, though how he could be guaranteed either in this packed ward, she didn’t know. Besides, she dreaded him having so much peace that he simply drifted away. Determined to keep him firmly in this world, she put her arm across his chest and lay with her lips next to his ear. She began to remind him of all the reasons it was worth staying alive.

  ‘Bertie, it’s time to come back to me, love. You can’t save a person and then just leave them high and dry, do you hear me? It’s not fair and I’ll be so bloody angry with you if you do, I’ll knock yer bleedin’ block off...’

  She waited hopelessly for his laugh. It was something she often said, when she wanted to make him smile. Milly kissed his unresponsive mouth, not gently. She knew he loved her fierceness, he loved her fire; she would remind him of all the things he loved about her, and force him back.

  ‘The doctors say you need peace and quiet, but you don’t want that really, do you?’ Sometimes in the midst of their domestic cacophony, Bertie would reminisce in mock despair about his single days, when he could get a bit of peace and quiet, but it was just another one of his teasing jokes. ‘I know you’d miss my noisy ways, you’d miss our Jimmy’s tantrums and you’d miss Madam Marie’s cakehole at two o’clock in the morning, I know you would... You don’t want no peace and quiet... Bertie, you don’t.’

  She gripped the sheet that covered him, clutching at its shallow movement, a drowning woman grasping at a piece of flotsam. Then there was a stillness, whether outside herself or in her heart, she couldn’t tell, but it was the stillness at the centre of a storm and she felt the strength drain from her. She sobbed noisily into his neck, repeating over and over, ‘Don’t go, Bertie, don’t go,’ till she was hoarse and the tight white sheet was stained with her tears. But there was only silence. He hadn’t heard her.

  She knew she must leave. Drawing away from him, she wiped away tears with the back of her hand. She had her children to think about, and though her mother was looking after them for as many hours as she could, Mrs Colman had her own troubles at the moment. Shortly after Bertie’s accident, the old man had gone missing. It wasn’t the first time. Her mother suspected he was with ‘his fancy woman’, a pub landlady in Whitechapel, but his absence had never lasted longer than three days before.

  ‘Then when she’s had enough of him, she chucks him out and he turns up here like a bad penny,’ her mother had said. But it had been over a week and now she was living on tick and what the pawnshop brought in.

  Milly pushed herself up from the bed, searching Bertie’s face once more.

  ‘I’ll give the kids a kiss from you,’ she whispered. ‘See you tomorrow, love.’ Pulling aside the screen, she looked back over her shoulder, dreading another anxious night, wondering if the next day would take him from her. But there was nothing there to give her hope, and she turned away, praying, ‘Please God he’ll be better tomorrow.’

  As she left the hospital, she resolved to ease at least one worry in the family. She knew she should have done it before now, but with all her energies focused on Bertie, she’d had no interest in the old man. But if Bertie could speak, he would tell her to do it, for her mother’s sake. It wasn’t so much that Mrs Colman was worried about the old man’s welfare; it was the uncertainty of when and in what state he would eventually turn up. How her mother would survive if he never came back, she couldn’t imagine. She’d have to apply to the Guardians of the Poor, in Tooley Street, and what they doled out would be pitiful.

  It was late in the afternoon when she turned into the Neckinger and made her way to Bevington’s. Over the tannery wall, she could see a vast grid of square stone pits, full of various stinking liquors, where hides were soaked, limed and tanned. Bermondsey had more than its fair share of smelly industries, but this had to be the vilest, giving off a pungent aroma of rotting flesh, stinging lime, rendered fat, noxious urine and faeces, all topped off with the earthy mouldering bark of the tanning liquid. Yet, as a child, Milly and her sisters had played along this wall, totally unaware of the stench, curious only to peek through at their father and the other men lifting and dipping the heavy soaking hides. The lime pits ran right along the wall, so their game was a dangerous one, for if they should slip, they would fall into one of the deep pits and never get out again.

  She waited at the tannery gates. In a few minutes the shift would change and she’d be sure to catch the old man then, either coming on or going off. When the whistle blew, she stood aside, letting the crowd of leather workers jostle out of the gateway. They were mainly men, but in the sea of flat caps four or five deep were little groups of women, employed in the lighter dressing and finishing processes. Milly stood on tiptoe, searching for her father’s familiar red complexion and dark moustache. When the crowd had dwindled to a few stragglers, she waited for the oncoming shift, again the same tide of workers, but going in the opposite direction. Still there was no sign of the old man. But she did spot Arthur Cook, a drinking friend of the old man.

  ‘Arthur?’ she called out to him as he went through the gateway.

  He spun round. ‘Oh hello, Milly, love, what are you doing here?’ He had a red complexion and a blue bulbous nose that had fascinated Milly as a child. She’d been convinced Arthur was a born liar, for she believed the tales that God punished liars by adding all those extraneous, blue-tinged bumps to a nose. Now she knew that Arthur was probably as honest as the next man and had merely acquired the extra blooms after twenty years frequenting the Swan and Sugarloaf.

  ‘I’ve come to see the old man,’ she said simply.

  Arthur drew her to one side. ‘Well, love, you’ve come to the wrong place ’cause he ain’t turned in all week and the manager’s talking of sacking him. Don’t yer mother know where he is?’ Arthur said with a knowing look.

  So the old man hadn’t had the decency to spare her mother his boasting.

  ‘Does everyone know about his fancy woman over in Whitechapel then?’ Milly asked.

  Arthur ducked his head, the rosy hue of his face deepening. ‘No disrespect to your poor mother, Milly, but wouldn’t it be a blessing to her if he did sling his hook?’

  Milly shook her head. ‘If I was her, I’d put my hands together if he went, but Arthur, you know Mum, she made her vows before God and that’s that. But didn’t he say anything to you?’

  ‘I was with him in the Swan last week and he never said a word about pissing off and he never give no notice here, neither. But he’s a secretive git your old man, always has been.’ And with that, Arthur tipped his hat and went in for his shift.

  Milly sighed. If he hadn’t been at work all week, then she suspected the old man had finally abandoned her mother, at least until the Whitechapel landlady ran out of money or drink to keep him.

  The little house in Arnold’s Place was in disarray when she arrived. Her mother was literally pulling at her hair with frustration, as Amy kneeled with Jimmy locked in an embrace that had nothing to do with affection.

  ‘He’s been a little cow-son,’ was her mother’s greeting. ‘Biting and scratching. I know his dad’s poorly but, Mill, you’ve got to discipline that child!’

  Jimmy was howling, legs drumming, as he kicked back at Amy.

  ‘Jimmy! Why’re you being so naughty for your nan?’ But as soon as the little boy saw her, he stopped flailing and put out his arms. On his chubby hand she saw two tiny puncture marks. ‘Oh, Mum, you didn’t!’ She gathered Jimmy up and rubbed at his hand. Perhaps she did spoil him, but only she knew how near she’d come to losing him – twice over, and her dealings with Jimmy would always be tinged with guilty memories of that night she’d held him above the Thames.

  ‘He’s bit Amy and drawn blood too! Anyway it’s only what you should’ve
done weeks ago, and sure as I stand here, he won’t do it n’more!’

  She couldn’t be too angry with her mother. She’d had enough heartache bringing up her own children, without the burden of another lot.

  ‘I’m sorry he’s been such a sod, Mum, but he’ll grow out of it. He’s a good boy really.’ And she was rewarded by an angelic smile from Jimmy and a pat on her cheek from his soft, clammy little hand.

  Amy rubbed her arm absent-mindedly.

  ‘I’m sorry he bit you,’ Milly said. ‘Show me.’

  ‘Didn’t hurt. Anyway, it’s not his fault.’ Amy pulled her arm away as she turned to pick up Marie.

  ‘How did you leave poor Bertie?’ her mother said, sitting down at the table, ready to relax, now Milly was there to control her child.

  Milly shook her head.

  ‘Oh, darlin’, I’m sorry. I’ve been saying me prayers.’

  ‘Me too.’ And if her mother only knew just how fervently, she would have been proud of her. ‘But listen, Mum, I’ve been to the Neckinger on the way here.’

  Amy had stopped rocking Marie, her sharp eyes fixed on Milly, like a cornered cat calculating which way to leap. Milly sometimes wondered what went on in her sister’s head; she was always so elusive, so mistrusting, yet sometimes a spark of fierce devotion would burst from her, leaving Milly certain that half their conflicts growing up had been down to the old man. Amy had protected herself by building a wall that excluded even her sisters. Now, when the girl needed shielding from him most, it was almost impossible for Milly to offer help. She wondered if the wall between them was too well built and too long-standing to ever come down. She turned back to her mother.

  ‘He’s not been at work all week.’

  ‘How d’you know that?’

  ‘Arthur Cook told me, said the manager might sack him too.’