by Mary Gibson
Elsie’s brows knitted together as she plucked at a loose thread in the romper. ‘Well, it’s just another mouth to feed, and if we can’t feed ourselves, how will we find the money for a baby?’
‘It don’t cost nothing to feed a baby, well, not at first, and I’ve kept all Marie’s baby things, so that’ll help out.’ She paused, feeling sad that such joyful news should only be the cause of another worry. ‘Oh, Elsie, be glad about it. You’ve got Bob now, and me. You’re not on your own. Besides, you can’t stop living, just because you ain’t got two ha’pennies to rub together. Wasn’t Bob pleased?’
Elsie shook her head sadly. ‘He seems more ashamed than anything.’
‘Ashamed! But why?’
‘He says we’ve got no business bringing a child into the world. He says it’ll have no future, not the way things are, with no jobs and no money. And the thing is, Millie, I think he’s right. We should be able to give our kids a better life than we had... but we can’t,’ she finished flatly.
Milly felt herself getting angry. Stonefield had knocked so much of the fight out of Elsie, it had tamed her beyond recognition.
‘Well, God knows we were poor enough as kids and we had the old man bashing us about, but you think back to that cherry tree – would you rather Bob hadn’t come along? Would it be better if you didn’t have your life? I know when I think back to the Fountain Stairs, I bless my Bertie every time. Life’s sweet, darlin’, no matter how poor you are, so you just think of that little baby inside you, and give it a chance to live, will you? It’s all any of us get.’
Milly picked up her sewing again, the clock ticked, Elsie was silent and Milly wondered if she’d been too stern. But then her sister dropped her sewing, and sinking to the floor beside Milly’s chair, she laid her head on Milly’s lap.
‘Oh, Milly, I want to be glad. I know it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to me.’
Milly stroked Elsie’s hair. ‘It will be, love, I promise.’
Elsie’s news was just what they needed to brighten their lives during an autumn bleached by mists and thick fog. Day after day, yellow pea-soupers rolled off the Thames and collected like grimy cotton wool in all the courts and alleys of Dockhead. The air was perpetually full of the mournful foghorns of passing vessels and the sharp, shrill warnings from the tugs. It was on such a foggy evening in October that, as Milly made her way to Arnold’s Place to collect the children from her mother’s, she sensed a figure shadowing her. All the way down Hickman’s Folly, she had felt a darker shape, brown against the jaundiced mist surrounding her, moving as she moved, pausing when she paused. Yet each time she stopped to listen for the footsteps she was sure she’d heard, she was met only by silence. Dockhead was her home and behind each shabby, peeling door, in every crumbling alley or court, were friends and neighbours; the place held no terror for her. Yet she knew there were sometimes strangers passing through, casuals off the docks, who came from outside Bermondsey, looking for work at Butler’s Wharf, or sailors, Yankees and Chinamen, from the moored vessels along the quaysides, searching out the nearest pub. Sometimes they would see a rare, dusky-skinned, turbanned street vendor, but the only terror she’d ever experienced in these streets had come from inside the walls of her own home: the old man.
Crossing Parker’s Row, she again had the sense of being watched, and whirling round, caught sight of a dark figure disappearing into the momentary glow of the Swan and Sugarloaf. The door banged shut, but putting her jitteriness down to tiredness, she pulled her coat tightly around her for warmth against the chill damp. She was grateful for the mist-shrouded halo of light around the gas lamp on Mrs Knight’s wall, spreading out to greet her.
But over the next week, try as she might, Milly could not rid herself of the feeling that she was being followed. It was only ever when she was walking home from work, once she was alone, and had said goodnight to Kitty and the other girls. One evening after she’d arrived home and was hanging up her coat, still damp from the fog, a sound behind her startled her, so that she cried out and jumped back.
‘Good gawd, Milly, it’s only me!’ said Elsie. ‘What’s put the jitters into you?’
‘Oh, you made me jump! It’s probably just the fog, but I keep feeling there’s someone behind me.’
She expected her sister to laugh at her, but instead Elsie’s face grew serious and once they were in the kitchen she turned to Milly with a worried expression.
‘Funny thing is, Milly, I’ve been feeling that too. When I’ve been shopping, or going round to see Mum.’ The two sisters looked at each other for a long moment, not wanting to voice their suspicions. Milly was the first to speak. ‘You don’t think he’s back, do you?’
Elsie sat down at the kitchen table and began to rock ever so slightly back and forth. ‘If he is, he’ll come after me. Oh, Mill, what if he finds out I got married and forged his signature? He’ll shop me and I’ll be put away again!’
Milly rushed to soothe her sister. ‘We’re probably getting ourselves into a state over nothing. Even if he’s back, love, he can’t know when you got married, can he?’
But Elsie’s brow was still furrowed and she shook her head. ‘But what if someone tells him?’
‘I’m telling you, he’s not come back. He’s got it too cushy over in Whitechapel, all the beer he can drink. Why would he give that up?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ve got a bad feeling about it. I haven’t said anything, but I’ve even been dreaming about him lately. I dream over and over that he’s back at the leather mills and I see him floating in one of the lime pits, all bloated, and when I wake up, I feel so guilty.’
‘Why should you feel guilty?’ Milly whispered, chilled by the image.
‘Because I feel so happy... happy that he’s dead.’
‘Well, we’ve all felt that one time or another, and you’ve got more reason than all of us.’
‘I don’t think I could stand to go back to Stonefield, though.’
‘You won’t have to,’ she patted Elsie’s hand, ‘because he’s not back.’
But it was Kitty who proved her wrong. They met up as they were both walking along Jacob Street the next morning, and after they’d clocked in at Southwell’s Kitty linked arms with her. ‘I’ve got some bad news, love. My Freddie says your old man’s been seen at the Swan.’
Milly froze. It had been him, then, all along, silently shadowing her and Elsie. It felt far more frightening than the prospect of an open assault.
‘I thought as much. I don’t know what he’s planning, but he’s been following me and Elsie, and she’s scared he’ll get her put away again.’
‘How can he do that? They let her out when she got married.’
Milly reminded her of the circumstances of Elsie’s marriage, which Bob had confessed to his brother.
‘Oh no, I didn’t think of that!’
‘Does Freddie have any idea what the old man’s doing back? He must want something.’
‘From what he heard, the old cash cow in Whitechapel chucked him out. Fed up with him pissing all the profits up the wall.’
‘Well, if he turns up at Mum’s, he’ll find the cupboard’s bare.’
Kitty nodded sympathetically. She knew that it was Milly and Amy keeping the two families afloat. ‘When he gets no joy there, he’ll sling his hook soon enough, I reckon.’
‘I hope so,’ Milly said uncertainly.
32
Sweet Thames Flow Softly
October 1928
It was as if summer had suddenly returned. One day the world was shrouded in fog and gloom; the next, unclouded blue skies arched over Dockhead and set the river sparkling again, in mild October days reminiscent of high summer, when Elsie’s and Milly’s bond had first deepened. The dark shadow stalking them disappeared from the riverside streets along with the mist, and they relaxed into an Indian summer, when Milly dug out her cotton frocks and took the warm flannel liberty bodices off the children.
On a bright Sunday m
orning towards the end of October, Milly and Elsie left Storks Road early, to walk with the children to Arnold’s Place. They were going to Mass at Dockhead Church as they usually did, with their mother and Amy. On this particular morning their talk was all of the plans for Elsie’s baby, which was due in two months’ time. Elsie’s pregnancy had been straightforward and, in spite of her fragile constitution, she had kept going with daily chores, shopping and sewing, as well as helping out with the children. Milly had been impressed but not surprised by her hidden resilience, forged, she had no doubt, in those dark days at Stonefield.
‘Have you thought of a name yet?’ Milly asked her sister.
‘If it’s a boy, I think we’ll name him Charles George, after our Charlie, and Bob’s dad George.’
‘Ah, that’ll please Mum,’ Milly said, remembering their eldest brother, killed at the Battle of Loos. ‘I was only nine when our Charlie died, and you must have been about six?’
‘Five.’
‘I still think of him. It’s only now I realize how young he was when he died, twenty-two, same age as me!’ Milly sighed. ‘He was a good brother. It was different when he was at home, do you remember?’
Elsie nodded. ‘I remember him always bringing home an orange or something from the docks for us, and he used to swing me about like a sack of potatoes, till I got dizzy.’
‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the old man seemed different then. He was still always at the pub, but it just felt more like a home when the boys were around, and then when Jim died too, that’s when everything seemed to go to pot.’
They had never really talked of their soldier brothers’ deaths. Two years apart, they had come like dull hammer blows into their young lives. Milly knew now that their mother had protected them from the consequences as much as she could. But thinking back, she could see it had been those two events that had shattered whatever fragile home life they’d had. After that, it had been the start of another war – in the Colman household, when they’d all begun pulling in opposite directions, with only their mother trying to capture each unravelling skein as the fabric of their lives pulled apart. Now Milly hoped that as the wounds between her and Elsie healed, there was a chance of another common thread to bind them all, the tie of sisterly love. Even Amy had begun to circle their newfound closeness with a wistfulness that gave Milly hope.
When they arrived at Arnold’s Place, Milly was surprised not to find Mrs Colman and Amy ready and waiting at the doorstep, for her mother was a stickler for being punctual at Mass.
‘Someone’s overdone it!’ She pushed at the front door. ‘Better bring the kids in,’ she said to Elsie, lifting Marie out of the pushchair. ‘Looks like we’ll be waiting for them to get ready!’
‘You all still sweating in the beds?’ she called. ‘Come on, you lazy—’ She stopped short at the kitchen door, silenced by the scene that greeted them. Her mother sat white-faced and rigid. Behind her, holding the curved blade of his double-handled tanner’s fleshing knife to her throat, stood the old man. Amy leaned like a frozen, toppled statue against the mantelpiece, her lip cut, blood oozing from a gash in her forehead. She shot Milly an unnecessary warning look. She had fought him.
He looked a wreck. Two years of unlimited booze had coarsened his features, so that nose, mouth and eyes had swollen into a bulbous, undifferentiated mass, the colour of raw meat. He was unkempt, long greasy hair falling to the collar of his stained, worn jacket. Whatever he was, he’d always been meticulously clean, but now the unwashed smell coming off him was obvious even to Milly, standing across the room. His lip curled in a snarling smile when he saw her.
‘So, Lady Muck’s arrived, still looking like a slut. How does your drip of a grocer like the leftovers?’ He licked dry cracked lips and Milly felt revulsion replace the initial fear that had stopped her. Only her mother’s obvious terror prevented her from taking two steps across the room and flattening his swollen features.
‘And you look like a filthy tramp. I can smell you from here.’
The old man yanked her mother’s hair, pulling her head back to expose her throat. The curved blade nicked loose flesh and a thread of crimson appeared. All three sisters started forward, but their mother called out, ‘No! He’ll kill me, he will!’
‘What do you want?’ Milly asked carefully, standing her ground, for she’d edged a little nearer to her mother.
‘I only come for what’s mine. I left money here and a full bottle of drink, but she’s a fucking wicked liar, says she’s got nothing in the place.’ He tugged her mother’s hair. She whimpered.
‘We didn’t think you’d be back for your brandy after all this time, and I swear I haven’t got a penny!’
‘She’s telling the truth! If you must know, I drank your soddin’ brandy!’ Milly hoped to draw him off, anything to get him to let her mother go.
He looked at her with contempt. ‘Still leeching off me, houseful of women, fuckin’ useless the lot of you, when I’ve got two sons in the grave worth ten of you!’
‘And another son who’d rather go out to get killed at sixteen, than stay home with a bully like you!’
‘Shut yer trap! You’re a fuckin’ liar, just like your mother!’
‘He told me himself, and that’s why he stayed in the army too. It’s you drove him away!’
‘He went to war out of respect for his brothers, something a whore like you wouldn’t understand. And when he come back, there was nothing for him ’cause the women had took all the jobs!’
Milly gave a bitter laugh. ‘I can just see our Wilf peeling oranges all day. He wouldn’t work for the pittance we get anyway.’
‘Looks to me you’re set up all right. I’ll have some of it off you. Gis yer bag over.’
He stuck a hand out and she saw the knife wobble in his other trembling hand. His strength must be sadly diminished, if he could barely hold the fleshing knife that he used to wield with such skill and speed. Her father had boasted of dehairing a hide in under a minute. She took her chance and lunged forward, swinging her bag to knock the knife from his hand, but stumbled to her knees as she did so. The scimitar-like blade skittered across the floor, landing at Jimmy’s feet. Instinctively he picked it up and handed it to his grandfather. Before she could scramble up, the old man had bundled Jimmy under his arm. He swung the knife in a wild arc around him, edging towards the door.
‘You want to see what it’s like to lose a son? Do ya?’ he screamed at her, veins standing out in his neck, as if they might burst.
Barging Elsie out of the way, he charged up the passage and out of the front door. The sound of Jimmy’s long wail galvanized Milly into action and she shot up from the floor, like a sprinter from the blocks. She ran like the wind, pounding along Arnold’s Place, long legs pumping, following the old man’s lumbering flight, till she lost sight of him at Dockhead. She slammed to a halt. Which way? Then she heard Jimmy’s cries; they were coming from the direction of Hickman’s Folly. As she entered the narrow alley she caught a glimpse of the old man disappearing into George Row. He was heading for the river. She cut through a gap in the houses, skirted the Ship Aground and ducked down Farthing Alley, trying to cut him off. But by the time she reached Bermondsey Wall he was already on Southwell’s jetty. Now he stopped. Turning on her like a cornered wild beast, he held Jimmy above the water like a kitten in a sack.
‘Leave him be, Dad! He’s done nothing to you!’ she pleaded. But she had little hope, for by now she was certain that whatever sanity or humanity the old man ever possessed had been obliterated by his years of drinking, all decency pickled and stripped from him, like a hide in the lime pits.
As Jimmy’s little legs flailed, the old man’s grip tightened. High tide was turning and the thick, oily water was dappled with huge flat pools of current slapping lazily into the jetty, before crashing into the foot of the river stairs. The old man backed to the end and suddenly leaped on to the nearest barge, one of six moored parallel to each other.
‘You don’t deserve a son!’ he called from the barge, which bobbed and dipped in the fast-running tide. ‘Why should you have one and mine all dead!’
‘You’ve got Wilf, you’ve got Wilf, please, Dad!’ Her voice, high-pitched and taut, sounded like a stranger’s.
‘Dead to me.’ He shook Jimmy, looked from him to Milly, then, almost as an afterthought, tossed her son high into the air. Milly screamed.
But instead of hearing the splash of Jimmy’s body hitting the water, there was a dull thud. He had landed on the barge furthest out into the stream. The old man began scrambling across the barge towards Jimmy, who looked as if he was trying to hide himself beneath the tarpaulin covering the hold. Milly leaped from the jetty to the first barge, springing over each vessel as, with feet barely touching the gunwales, she threw herself headlong at the old man, who by now had almost reached her son. The knife fell to the deck, and she caught it mid-air, swinging it up without pause in a slicing arc, catching the old man behind the knees. Toppling forward, he lunged for Jimmy, but the little boy had found a netting bundle in the hold and was heaving it up on to the gunwale. Hugging it tightly to him, he used all his remaining strength to roll with it over the side, and into the fathomless, soupy waters. The old man howled, for Jimmy was floating away from his grasp, buoyed up on a raft of coconuts, imitating the forbidden game he’d witnessed earlier that summer.
Milly didn’t hesitate for an instant. Thought no longer existed; nor fear. Her precious child was being washed away and where he went, she would go too. Stepping over the old man, lying hobbled in a pool of blood, she picked up another net of coconuts and launched it, and herself, on to the mercy of the great river.
The shock of ice-cold water winded her and she swallowed a mouthful of scummy foam. Jimmy was still within sight, but being carried further off by the minute. She struck out. With one arm draped over the coconut raft, she used the other like an oar, paddling furiously and kicking her legs in a doggy paddle. She was astonished at how fast the tide took her downstream. She began gaining on Jimmy, but even if she caught up, with the river running almost at the top of the wall, she could see no exposed foreshore where they could land. When it came to it, she would just have to grab for a piling or the next group of barges. With a surge of strength, she ploughed the water as though it were air, and calling to Jimmy, saw him turn his head. The bright morning sun bounced light around him and his dark eyes, surreally calm, locked on to hers. He held out his hand in a gesture as trusting and commonplace as if they were about to cross the road together. She gave an almighty kick, which propelled her forward on the running tide, so that she was within touching distance of him. Straining forward, her extended fingers caught his hand, gripped it tight, held him fast.
