Lizzie of Langley Street

by Carol Rivers

  Lil chuckled. ‘There ain’t no flies on you, Lizzie Allen.’

  ‘Nor on the stock!’ Lizzie laughed.

  ‘Lizzie, I was thinking of sponges. They’d go off quicker with cream. But jam ones would be all right, wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Make one and we’ll try it out.’

  ‘How big?’’

  ‘The same size as the fruit cakes. I’ll get twelve good slices out of it.’

  ‘Done,’ said Lil as she closed her bag. ‘Business good?’

  ‘Got nothing to complain about, Lil.’ Lizzie set the cakes on big white china plates. She cut each one into triangles of twelve. As the fruit fell out, they scooped up the left overs with the tips of their fingers and ate them.

  ‘You’d better put the price up, gel,’ Lil said, smacking her lips. ‘Though I say it meself, tuppence is too cheap.’

  Lizzie placed the cakes on the shelves. ‘I want the customers coming in regular first. Then I’ll add a bit on. Now, how much do I owe you?’

  Lil’s eyes grew wide in mock horror. ‘You ain’t gonna chisel me down again, are you?’

  They both laughed until Lizzie wiped her eyes on the corner of her apron. ‘Lil, would I do that?’

  Lil’s husky laughter crackled in her throat. ‘You probably will one day. But I don’t blame you. You’ve got a business head, I’ll give you that. No one can beat your prices. Lil glanced around the shop, at the shining windows and decorated boxes of fruit. ‘You’ve turned this place round, gel, there’s no denying it.’

  Lizzie took three silver coins from the till. Lil grabbed them with a wink and tipped them in her purse. ‘Ta, love.’

  ‘I’d like to sell more lines,’ Lizzie murmured as she removed her apron, hanging it on the hook behind the door. ‘More confectionery. Sweets are popular. They don’t go off like the fruit and veg. But I can’t do it all, not unless I find another shop.’

  ‘Blimey, that’s a bit ambitious, ain’t it?’ Lil looked impressed.

  ‘Maybe. But not impossible.’

  ‘I said to Doug you’d go far.’

  Now it was Lizzie’s turn to laugh. ‘As far as Ebondale Street!’

  ‘Gertie still running the barra?’ Lil asked curiously.

  Lizzie nodded. ‘Bill drops off the chestnuts and lights up the brazier on his way back from Spitalfields. Gertie loves it.’

  ‘Well, I hope me cakes go as well. It’s a real little earner for me,’ Lil confessed. She seemed hesitant to leave. ‘You coming over to Langley Street tomorrow?’

  Lizzie frowned. ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘Oh, nothing.’ Lil sighed, her shoulders drooping. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve seen your Vinnie lately?’

  Lizzie wondered how many more times Vinnie’s name was going to be mentioned this morning. ‘No. But Flo has.’ Reluctantly she added, ‘She went up the house in Poplar.’

  ‘What? Without telling you?’

  ‘Lil, what were you going to say?’ Lizzie didn’t want to talk about the brothel. Lil would only make her feel worse.

  Lil paused. ‘Vinnie’s been at your house—’

  ‘At number eighty-two?’ Lizzie yelped.

  ‘Calm down, now, love. I knew you’d be upset.’

  ‘What did he want?’ Lizzie felt her stomach churn.

  ‘Ain’t Bert said nothing?’

  ‘No. Not a word lately. I’ve been worried about him. He’s, well, not shaving or washing. I don’t know why.’ Lizzie glanced at Bert outside the shop, looking the worse for wear.

  ‘Well it ain’t my place to say, really—’

  ‘What, Lil?’

  Lil lifted her hands to the scarf that was loosely folded round her neck. ‘For the last couple of weeks your Pa has been in with us. A couple of Vinnie’s, er, friends has been staying at the house.’

  ‘What?’ Lizzie screamed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Keep yer hair on,’ Lil said, glancing at the queue. ‘We don’t want half the neighbourhood knowing do we?’

  ‘Oh, Lil, why didn’t you say about the blokes before?’ Lizzie had begged her father to move to Ebondale Street, but he had stubbornly refused. Bert said he didn’t want to come either. She knew something would happen to them if she left them on their own. Now it had.

  Lil’s brown eyes travelled up slowly. ‘They ain’t blokes, love, they’re women.’

  ‘Women?’ Lizzie stared at Lil.

  ‘One of them is that Lena person, the tart that caused trouble at your wedding. She’s bedded in your room at the back. The other bit of skirt’s livin’ in Bert and Vinnie’s room by the looks of it. Gawd knows where Bert’s disappeared to. I ain’t seen him there at all. I think this cow must have kicked him out, because she hangs out of his window all day smoking fags. And she’s . . . she’s . . . well, she ain’t dressed in nothing proper, that’s for sure.’

  Lizzie’s hand went over her mouth. ‘How can this have happened, Lil? What’s going on? I should never have left. I knew something awful would happen if I did.’

  ‘’Ere, don’t let me hear you talking like that. You had the chance of getting married and you took it.’

  Lizzie saw that Lil was watching her. ‘I just meant I was feeling bad about leaving Pa and Bert.’

  ‘Well, Bert is twenty-four, love.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’s like a big kid.’

  ‘You never know, it might be all right. The house might be empty tomorrow. Doug said you would never have to know if I didn’t open me gob. But I was afraid someone like Vi would come in the shop and blab it all out. And you’d think why ain’t Lil told me? And it would be an even bigger shock for you then. And we might fall out, ’cos you know how these things happen . . .’ Lil took a deep breath, her lips twitching as she sighed. ‘At least you know I ain’t kept you in the dark. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

  ‘You haven’t, Lil. But me temper is a bit short today.’

  ‘See you tomorrow then?’

  Lizzie nodded.

  ‘Your dad will be in with us, don’t forget,’ Lil told her as she gathered her bags together. ‘We’ve got him on the mattress in the front room.’

  ‘Oh, Lil, what a mess this all is!’

  ‘It ain’t no trouble for us, love. But there’s none more sorry than me – for you.’ Lil sighed again as she tucked the handles of her big bag over her arm and left.

  ‘I thought marrying Frank was for the best,’ Lizzie whispered to herself as she watched Lil’s thin figure hurry down the road. She looked about her, at the once dilapidated shop that she had built up into a thriving business. Success had come at a high price. A price she had been willing to pay.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Benji plodded towards the kerb and Bert drew in the reigns. Number eighty-two looked much the same. The front door was shut and the windows were closed, the lace curtains drawn across them.

  The street was deserted. The men were in the pubs and their women busy cooking Sunday dinner. Lizzie had a plan: if she couldn’t gain entrance, she would call the police. Bert had objected to this during their quarrel last night. It was their first real quarrel in years and neither of them had recovered from it. They sat stiffly beside one another on the cart. Was Bert right in suggesting they wait, Lizzie wondered?

  Wiping his forehead with a grubby cloth, Bert eased the rim of his cap from his head. ‘Probably down the boozer,’ he muttered.

  ‘All the more reason to go in.’

  ‘The front door’s shut. There ain’t no key on the string now. I tried it the other night. Someone must’ve took it off’

  ‘I’ve got me spare key,’ Lizzie said determinedly. ‘You’d better move the cart up a bit, Bert, because you’ll be seeing that top window open shortly and whatever I find in our house that don’t belong there, it’s shooting right out of it.’

  ‘Aw, Lizzie, you’ll only cause more trouble.’

  ‘It’s them that’s caused the trouble, not me.’ She lowered her legs and slid to the pavement, firmly brushing dow
n her coat.

  Bert jumped down beside her. ‘I reckon you should see Vin first.’

  ‘What good would that do?’ She looked at her brother and sighed. ‘Vin moved them in here. And I’m moving them out.’

  Bert lowered his eyes. ‘I wish you’d wait a bit, gel, that’s all.’

  ‘For how long? It’s our house, Bert. Whatever were you thinking of, to be driven out of it by strangers.’

  He looked at her sadly, his great head drooping. ‘They . . . they said things about me. So I went down Island Gardens and slept on a bench. Me mind was all confused. Then they took away the string and wouldn’t let me in.’

  ‘And you came into the shop each day, not saying a word?’ Lizzie stared up at her brother.

  ‘I didn’t want no trouble.’

  ‘So you keep telling me. Well, we’ve got trouble whether we want it or not.’ She squared her shoulders. ‘Now, are you coming?’

  Bert nodded gloomily.

  Lizzie nodded at Lil’s house. ‘We’d better tell Lil we’ve arrived.’

  Lil’s door was on the latch. They walked into the passage. An aspidistra filled the space under the stairs. In number eighty-two there was a cupboard in the same place. A narrow carpet with a triangular design of mustard and black ran down the hallway, and shiny brown linoleum covered the boards. By comparison to their house it was a palace.

  ‘Lil?’ Lizzie shouted.

  In the front room a striped mattress was rolled up and pushed behind the gateleg table. Light shone through Lil’s white Nottingham lace curtains and reflected on the couch. It was a surprise not to see Doug there. He always read his newspaper on Sunday morning as the dinner was cooking.

  ‘No one’s in,’ Bert grunted.

  ‘Lil knew I was coming over.’

  ‘I ain’t looked outside,’ said Bert. ‘P’raps Doug’s having a jimmy riddle. Maybe Pa’s in the yard too.’ He turned and walked down the hallway and out through the kitchen.

  Lizzie heard the back door open and, a few moments later, close. Bert walked back into the room and shook his head. ‘Not a soul.’

  In the quiet hallway the summer breeze floated gently around them from the open door. Lizzie shivered. Lil had been expecting her. Only something important would have caused her to be absent. And where was Pa? He couldn’t go far in his wheelchair.

  ‘Look who’s coming over.’ Bert nodded across the street. ‘She must have seen the cart.’

  Vi Catcher was running across the road. Her great bosoms bounced up and down under her pinny. A mountain of fat propelled itself over the threshold, shaking and shuddering. ‘Oh my God, gel, oh dear, oh dear! I bin in such a state,’ wheezed Vi, red in the face. ‘I should never have thought I would live to see this happen. First them tarts driving out your poor Pa and Bert and then making themselves at home like they have! That house was sacred to your mother. Like a brothel it’s been! Yes, that’s the word for it – I can’t say less – like a brothel’ – she took a breath, her head nodding and twitching – ‘and with all this – I never thought I’d hear the like. Never!’

  They watched as she stumbled breathlessly into the front room. Her eyes went from side to side as she took out a handkerchief and gave her big nose a blow.

  ‘What’s happened, Vi? Where is everyone?’

  ‘Oh, love, I don’t know how to tell you.’ Vi collapsed on a chair. ‘Lil. . . told me to say . . . she said “Tell Lizzie we don’t know nothing for sure. Tell her we’re down at Barrel Wharf, tell her that’s where the chair was found.”’

  Lizzie’s stomach churned. ‘Chair? What chair?’

  ‘Your father’s, love. It was early this morning. He never slept on the mattress, never bedded down in the sheets, from what Lil could tell. He’d got out somehow – just gone – gone! And then someone came knocking at the door and said they’d found a chair down by Barrel Wharf. But there weren’t no one in it, gel. No one.’

  Vi took in a breath that whistled down the tunnel of her throat. She looked up at them. ‘They think he’s gone off the side, love. They think he went down in the water.’

  Each day for five days a Port of London police boat was tied alongside the jetty of Barrel Wharf. A small crew prepared a diver for his search on the river bed.

  For each of those days Lizzie watched and waited. The diver sank below the water in his rubber suit and weighted boots, his large brass helmet disappearing into the blackness. A stream of bubbles gurgled upwards as the air line trailed in his wake. The search was slow. The diver’s task was hindered by the rotting timber that fouled the thin tubing of the air line, his only means of survival.

  On the last day, Saturday, the market traders joined her. By now, the police said, a body would have washed away with the current. Unless it was snagged deep down on the river bed.

  Lizzie stared into its depths. She had loved the river all her life. The sun was setting, the surface spangled gently in its light. Here, on the mossy steps, many summers ago, she had sat with Babs and Flo, their toes dangling in the water.

  She couldn’t believe Pa was down there. She couldn’t accept it, that he’d thrown himself in. No one knew what to say to her. What other answer was there than that Tom Allen had ended his life?

  The diver was hauled up for the last time. When the helmet came off he shook his head. A policeman came over to Lizzie. ‘I’m sorry,’ he told her. ‘We’ve found nothing.’

  ‘Ain’t you gonna search tomorrow?’ Lizzie begged.

  ‘We’ll search by boat along the river.’ He spoke quietly, as though it was all over. ‘Go home now. We’ll send a constable to your house if we find anything.’

  Darkness began to fall. The river turned into a lake of ink. Lizzie shivered. It was May, but the nights were still cold. The coming of spring deepened her grief. Spring was when life blossomed, not died.

  ‘Looking back,’ said Dickie, trying to be of comfort as he stood beside her, ‘we didn’t realize what a bad way he was in.’

  ‘If only he’d come to live at Ebondale Street.’

  ‘And leave his little patch?’

  ‘So I left him.’ The thought had been tormenting her night and day.

  ‘Don’t talk daft,’ Dickie told her sharply. ‘He could’ve moved in with you and Frank if he wanted. But he was a stubborn old sod. Langley Street was his home.’

  She leaned forward, gazing into the dark water. Nothing anyone could say would make her feel better.

  ‘Listen,’ Dickie told her sternly. ‘Your Pa pushed himself all the way down here. He let himself out the house in the dead of night. He knew Lil and Doug wouldn’t discover him gone for hours. He planned it, gel, for whatever reason. This is what he wanted. His choice. And to tell you the truth, that’s the way I’d want it too, only I dunno if I’d have the courage. Your father was a brave man. You’ll always have that to remember him by.’

  The police launch chugged by in the darkness. Dickie put his arm round her shoulders. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

  They turned away from the river. It felt as though all its coldness had seeped into her bones. What must it be like down there, under the surface? What if the police never found a body? If Pa was alive somewhere, why had he abandoned his chair? He couldn’t go far without it. How long would it be before she would know what had happened to him?

  At Lil’s house, Dickie said goodbye and hurried away, a small, bent figure in a tatty old mac. Even Dickie, her father’s oldest friend, couldn’t believe that Tom was still alive.

  Lil, Doug and Bert were waiting in the front room.

  Lizzie shook her head. ‘No news.’

  ‘Take off yer coat, gel. Sit down and warm yerself up.’

  ‘I won’t stay long. Flo’s at home.’

  ‘How’s she taken it?’

  Lizzie shrugged. ‘I don’t think it’s dawned on her yet.’

  ‘I’ll make a quick cuppa.’ Lil patted her arm and hurried out to the kitchen.

  ‘What did the police say?’ Doug asked as s
he sat down on a chair, warming herself in front of the fire.

  ‘The boat is still searching, but the diver’s stopped.’ Tears filled her eyes and ran down her cheeks.

  Doug pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and gave it to her. She mopped her eyes and blew her nose. In silence Bert stood up and put his big arm round her.

  ‘I know he wasn’t happy, Bert,’ she sobbed. ‘But to do this!’

  ‘Yeah,’ mumbled Bert. ‘I know.’

  ‘He wasn’t the old Tom Allen,’ Doug reminded them gently.

  ‘If I hadn’t have moved to Ebondale Street, he might be alive today.’

  ‘You can put that idea out of yer mind,’ Lil interrupted as she came back from the kitchen with a tray of tea. ‘Your father wasn’t himself long before you left that house. I know what yer going through. Doug and me both felt responsible when that kid came knocking to tell us they found his chair down the wharf. All sorts of things go through yer mind. But in the end it boils down to one thing, and that is it was yer dad’s choice to do what he did.’

  Lizzie knew what Lil was saying was true. She hadn’t thought much about how Lil and Doug felt. What it must have been like for them on that awful morning. Her only thought had been to turf out those women next door; she hadn’t dreamed something much worse was about to happen. After Vi’s appearance she had been in a kind of stupor. Then she’d seen Lil and Doug in the middle of a crowd with white, anguished faces. The disbelief she had felt when she’d looked at the empty chair – it all seemed like a bad dream that she couldn’t wake up from.

  ‘Drink yer tea, gel.’ Lil sighed. ‘No one’s to blame. It’s just one of them terrible things that happen in life.’

  They drank in silence. Even Lil had run out of conversation. Lizzie noticed that Doug didn’t bother to light his pipe, just held it limply in his hand. They were all still in shock.

  There was a knock, and with a sigh Lil got up to answer it. A few minutes later she was back. Dr Tapper removed his black hat as he walked into the room.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Lizzie sprang to her feet. She thought the police might have found her father.

  ‘There’s nothing to be alarmed about.’

  Bert and Doug looked up anxiously. The doctor went over to the hard wooden dining chair by the window. ‘Is there any news from the wharf today?’ he asked as he sat down rather breathlessly.