Tilly True

by Dilly Court

  Unable to speak, Tilly managed to nod her head. Clem stroked her hair, holding her so tightly that she could feel his heart pumping away inside his chest.

  ‘I’m here now, Tilly. You was brave but foolish to try and take them ruffians on. Promise me you’ll never do that again.’

  ‘Oh, Clem.’ Tilly leaned against him, resting her head on his shoulder. While she was trying to fight them off she had not been afraid, but now she was shaking all over.

  ‘If they’ve harmed you I swear I’ll kill them,’ Clem said, his voice breaking with emotion. ‘If that ever happens again just give them what they want, Tilly. Don’t ever risk your life for a bag of money.’

  The world was beginning to right itself and Tilly remembered Bert. Pulling away from Clem, she threw herself down on her knees beside his prostrate figure. ‘Bert, are you all right? Oh, my God. I think he’s dead.’

  Kneeling beside her, Clem turned Bert over onto his back and felt for a pulse in his neck. He bent his head and listened to Bert’s chest. ‘He’s breathing, but only just. I’ll go and fetch the doctor. Lock the door behind me, Tilly, and don’t let no one in but me.’

  Left alone with Bert, Tilly rolled up her shawl and laid it behind his head. Patting his hand, she talked to him softly, saying anything that came into her head. It seemed like hours before Clem and the doctor arrived.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ the doctor said, getting to his feet and putting his stethoscope back in his Gladstone bag. ‘There’s nothing I can do. It was either another massive stroke or else his heart, I can’t tell which, but I’m afraid Mr Tuffin is dead.’

  ‘He tried to save me,’ Tilly said, clutching Clem’s hand. ‘He died trying to protect me. Oh, Clem, what will we tell poor Emmie? She really loved your dad and she’ll be heartbroken.’

  The doctor cleared his throat. ‘I can’t do any more tonight and you won’t get an undertaker to turn out in this fog.’

  ‘Thanks, doctor,’ Clem said, opening the door. ‘I’ll see that my dad is laid out respectful like.’

  Nodding his head, the doctor went out into the foggy night.

  ‘I hope his horse knows the way home,’ Clem said grimly.

  ‘What shall we do with – with Bert? We can’t take him home.’ Tilly stared nervously down at Bert’s dead body. She had hated this man once, hated him with all her heart, but now that was all in the past, like so much of her life, and all she felt was sorrow; sorrow and gratitude for what he had tried to do for her.

  ‘Wait here, love,’ Clem said gently. ‘I’ll look after my old man. I’ll lay him out peaceful and quiet in the shop next door.’

  Taking off her shawl Tilly laid it over Bert, covering his face.

  She waited, pacing the floor until Clem returned. As she let him in, Tilly realised that there were tears running down his cheeks and she wrapped her arms round him. ‘Oh, Clem, I’m sorry about your dad. Come and sit down, my dear.’ Leading him through to the small room at the back of the shop, she sat down beside him on the narrow truckle bed where he had slept since his return from India. Clem said nothing and his quietness disturbed Tilly more than an outpouring of grief.

  ‘He never loved me, you know,’ Clem said wearily. ‘But I loved him, in spite of everything.’

  ‘I know you did, Clem, and I’m sure Bert loved you in his way. You’re worth ten of Abel.’ Fumbling in her pocket for her handkerchief, Tilly pulled it out and the letter from Harriet fell onto the bed between them. She went to retrieve it, but Clem had it first.

  He read it slowly, and when he had finished, he raised his eyes to Tilly’s face. ‘Are you still in love with him?’

  His eyes held hers in a fierce gaze that stripped her naked to her soul. His mouth was so close to her face that she could feel his breath hot and sweet against her cheek. Tilly shook her head.

  ‘Say it, Tilly. Do you still love Barney?’

  ‘I don’t love him.’ As the words tumbled out of her lips Tilly realised that it was true.

  Clem released her, turning his head away. ‘But you’re still married to him. I have to keep reminding myself of that every single day.’

  It was on the tip of her tongue to blurt out the truth, but Tilly knew instinctively that this was not the time or place. When the leader of the Old Stairs gang had his hands round Clem’s throat and she thought he might kill him, it had come to her in a blinding flash that it was Clem she really loved. The feeling had crept up on her almost unnoticed, beginning even as far back as the time he had found her on the roadside in Rawalpindi, or maybe it had been the horrific moment when she thought he had died in the train crash. Her blind obsession with Barney had caused her to mistake physical attraction and passion for something deeper and she had paid the price.

  Slowly, Tilly got to her feet, and she patted Clem on the shoulder. ‘Come home with me tonight, Clem. We’ll break the news to Emmie together.’

  Clem nodded. ‘I’ll see you home but I won’t stay. I can’t leave the old man alone in that cold shop. I’ll sit with him until morning.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A bitter east wind whipped across Hackney Marshes, soughing round the tombstones and slapping the mourners’ faces with sleety rain. Tilly watched nervously as Emmie tossed a single bronze chrysanthemum onto the coffin; she had been worried that Emmie might not make it through the ceremony but she had held up surprisingly well. Leaning on Clem’s arm, heavily veiled and dressed entirely in black, Emily had somehow managed to stay calm. Perhaps she had simply worn herself out with the storm of grief that had overtaken her since Tilly and Clem had broken the news of Bert’s untimely death. Tilly did not want to think back over those few days when the house was plunged into deepest mourning. Lizzie had taken the two little girls home to Red Dragon Passage and they were still there now. Ma and Pops had come to the church with Winnie but they had left the boys behind to help amuse Diamond and Rose Matilda.

  Standing on the far side of the open grave, Abel dropped the first clod of earth onto the coffin and the rattling sound echoed around the silent graveyard. Slowly, the small congregation added their handfuls of soil and then it was over. They stood silently for a moment and Tilly couldn’t tell if it was the rain or tears that trickled down Clem’s cheeks as he supported Emily.

  Ned cleared his throat. ‘Come along, Emmie love. Let’s get you home.’

  ‘Yes,’ Tilly said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders and shivering. ‘Let’s go back to the house. We need something to keep out the cold.’

  ‘Not so fast,’ Abel said, raising his voice against the wind. ‘There’s a matter of property we got to settle first.’

  ‘Whatever you’ve got to say, this ain’t the time,’ Clem said, shaking his head and frowning. ‘We need to get Emily home to her little ones.’

  ‘The house is mine.’ Tucking his thumbs in his wide leather belt, Abel thrust his jaw out glaring round as if daring someone to challenge him. ‘I’ve got the old man’s will here in my pocket if you don’t believe me. She don’t get a penny – it’s all willed to me.’

  Uttering a soft moan, Emily would have fallen to the ground if Clem had not caught her.

  Tilly stared at Abel in disbelief. ‘You can’t mean to turn Emily and her babies out of the house, Abel. You wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘Ho! Wouldn’t I? Not half I wouldn’t.’ Abel let out a harsh laugh.

  ‘Have a heart, Abe,’ Clem said, lifting Emily up in his arms. ‘You’ve got a comfy billet on the Isle of Dogs, why do this to poor Emmie, who never did you no harm?’

  ‘Never did me harm?’ Abel strode round the grave to face Clem. ‘She come between me and the old man. She had the old goat wrapped around her little finger and it was me what was pushed out. Well, now I owns the house in Duck’s Foot Lane and I’m taking up me inheritance. I give you a week to move her and her little bastards out of me house and that’s final.’

  ‘Here, fellow,’ Ned said, taking a step towards Abel. ‘You can’t throw my girl and her babes ou
t onto the street.’

  ‘Why not? Who’s going to stop me, old man? She’s your problem now. I’m giving her back to you.’ Abel stomped off, the hobnails on his boots striking sparks off the stone path.

  ‘My poor little Emmie.’ Nellie burst into tears.

  Winnie cuddled up to her. ‘Don’t cry, Ma.’

  ‘Get Emmie to the cart,’ Tilly said, taking control. ‘We’ll sort this out later.’

  At first, Tilly thought that Abel would change his mind, and that he had spoken in the heat of the moment, but Abel did not relent, and he made it clear that if they did not move out in the specified time, then he would send in the bailiffs.

  Without telling anyone, not even Clem, Tilly went to see the landlord who owned the shop premises. The upper floors had been disused for many years and Tilly knew that they were in a poor state of repair, but she was desperate and they had to find somewhere to live. The landlord was more than willing to bargain, and they came to an agreement about the amount of rent he expected with surprising ease. When Tilly actually saw the state of the rooms, she knew why he had given in so easily. Above each shop there were two more floors with two rooms on each. The paintwork was peeling and the walls were a patchwork of damp stains where the rain had seeped through the roof. There was neither gas nor water laid on to the apartments and the pervading smell was a combination of damp and dry rot; there was fungus growing on the back walls and most of the small windowpanes were cracked, if not missing altogether.

  It was no use consulting Emily, who had sunk into a dreamlike state and sat all day nursing Rose Matilda while Lizzie took care of Diamond. Having already made the decision and paid the first month’s rent, Tilly took Clem upstairs to view the accommodation.

  ‘What do you think, Clem?’

  Scratching his head, Clem looked doubtful. ‘It’s a bit of a mess.’

  ‘There’s four good rooms above each shop. Two living rooms and up above them two bedrooms.’

  ‘I’d think twice about stabling old Neptune up here.’

  ‘He wouldn’t be able to get up the stairs.’ Chuckling, Tilly squeezed his arm. ‘Come on, Clem, it looks worse than it is.’

  ‘It’s possible, I suppose. We’ve got plenty of scrubbing brushes and brooms in stock.

  ‘And furniture too.’

  ‘I never told you, did I?’

  ‘Tell me what?’

  ‘On the night of the attack, the night when the old man died . . .’ Clem paused to clear his throat.

  Tilly squeezed his hand, sensing his pain at the memory. ‘Go on, Clem.’

  ‘I’d come back from a sale of bankrupt stock. Well, it was that bloke Stanley Blessed’s shop in Wharf Road. He’s gone bust and I bought a load of good stuff cheap. I never got the chance to tell you, not with all that went on that night. We could furnish a mansion with what I bought. You got the last laugh after all, Tilly.’

  Somehow it didn’t seem to matter. Tilly could not feel anything for the Blesseds; they were part of the past. She managed a smile. ‘I don’t care about them any more. We’ve got the future ahead of us.’

  Clem’s eyes darkened. ‘A business partnership ain’t what I want, Tilly. What I want most in the world, I can’t have. Not with you married to him.’

  ‘He won’t come back now and he won’t send for me.’ Tilly still couldn’t bring herself to tell him the truth: the humiliating, painful truth that she had never been legally wed to Barney, that she had known about it for some time but had kept it from everyone, including Clem. Why was it so easy to tell a lie, and so hard to tell the truth? The thought of losing Clem’s good opinion and love was harder to bear than Barney’s callous indifference to her feelings and her fate. She clutched Clem’s hand to her heart, willing him to understand. ‘It’s all over between me and Barney. It’s you I love, Clem.’

  ‘Then you’ll ask him for a divorce. He’s a toff and he could afford it, I’m sure.’

  ‘He – he won’t do it.’ Tilly swallowed hard, blinking away tears. A small voice in her head told her to tell him now, but somehow the words would not come.

  ‘You don’t want him to, more like.’ Shaking off her hand, Clem moved away to inspect the fireplace, kicking at a mouldy bird’s nest that had fallen down the chimney. ‘I suppose we might be able to knock a door through so that you and Emmie have plenty of room. We could always take Jim and Dan in too, they’re getting big enough to help in the yard or the stable.’

  ‘I don’t want to share with Emmie and the children,’ Tilly said, with a catch in her voice. ‘I want us to live together, Clem. I want to share these rooms with you. Emmie and the girls will have their own place next door.’

  Turning slowly, Clem stared at her with disbelief written all over his face. ‘You mean live together? Like man and wife?’

  ‘You’ve always said you love me.’

  ‘I do, you know I do.’

  ‘Then what’s wrong with us living together? I don’t want you to sleep in the storeroom any more. I want you to sleep with me.’

  Anger flashed across Clem’s even features. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. You don’t know what you’re asking of me. I want you; yes I want you more than anything else in the world. But I want you proper, Tilly. I want you to wear my wedding ring and I want our nippers to be legal, not little bastards with no stake in the future. Can’t you see that?’

  ‘But Clem . . .’

  ‘No. I’ll work alongside you and I’ll take care of you, but I won’t lay a finger on you until that bastard sets you free.’ Turning on his heel, Clem strode out of the room. Too shocked to follow him, Tilly listened to his footsteps growing fainter. She heard the door to the stable yard open, and then close with a resounding bang.

  Enlisting the help of her mother, Tilly set about cleaning the two apartments, beginning with the rooms that Emily would use. Winnie and Lizzie were eager to help, and when Emily saw where she was to live, she showed a spark of interest in what was going on around her for the first time since Bert’s death. Everyone pitched in, even Jim and Dan, who filled buckets with water from the pump in the stable yard, heated it in the copper and carted the hot water up two flights of stairs to the rooms above. Tilly worked so hard that she had no time to worry about Clem’s polite but distant treatment; her mind was set on getting the rooms ready for Emily and the children before Abel’s given deadline.

  She had done it. Tilly stood back and wiped the beads of perspiration from her brow as Jim and Dan hefted the last chair up the stairs. Her own rooms were clean but not yet furnished, but that did not matter. Emily was thrilled with her new home and Ma and Lizzie had made up the beds and were taking a well-earned rest, enjoying a cup of tea. Although there was no water laid on as yet, Tilly had invested some of her profits in having gas installed in Emily’s apartment. Now the rooms were lit by gaslight and Tilly had hired one of the new Parkinson gas stoves from the Gas Office, so that one of the living rooms could be used as a kitchen. Ma had been terrified of this innovation, refusing to stay in the room when the stove was lit with a loud pop and the sour smell of coal gas filled the room. But Emily had loved it, and had been studying the cookery book that came with the instructions on how to work this marvellous invention.

  Leaving them to enjoy their new surroundings, Tilly went to her own set of rooms. She had had gas installed but as yet there was no cooker; that must come later when she could afford it. She had given the furniture from Stanley Blessed’s bankruptcy sale to Emily, not wanting to have anything in her own apartment that would bring back memories of that terrible night at Blossom Court. From her own stock, she had taken a deal table, two wooden chairs and a horsehair sofa. In her bedroom upstairs there was a brass bed and a washstand, quite enough to be going on with. In spite of the coal fire that burned in the grate, the room felt cold and Tilly shivered. If only Clem would see sense, Tilly thought, sighing. If only she had the courage to tell him that her marriage to Barney had been a sham. All the lies she had told, the stories
that she had fabricated with such ease, had caught up with her now. Either way she was damned: if she told Clem the truth he would despise her for living a lie; if she kept up the pretence that she was married he would keep her at arm’s length.

  Suddenly, she had to get away from the shops, away from her family and away from Clem. She needed time to think. She put on her bonnet, peering into the cracked mirror above the mantelshelf as she tied the ribbons in a bow. Satisfied with the result, she wrapped her shawl around her shoulders and went down the stairs, making as little noise as possible. She wanted to slip out unnoticed to avoid explanations. But she need not have worried; Clem and Ernie were nowhere to be seen and she could hear the sounds of laughter and voices emanating from Emily’s new kitchen. The smell of hot bread wafted from the open window and Tilly smiled to herself, imagining Emily’s pride when she took her first loaf out of her spanking new oven. At least her family were taken care of and would always be, as long as she was able to run the two shops at a profit. Tilly had been considering the possibility of renting a third premises, which she had heard was going to become vacant early in the New Year. With a third shop, she could expand the business into drapery, and possibly work clothes such as overalls and the type of smocks worn by watermen and lightermen; maybe even boots.

  With all this going through her mind, Tilly walked briskly to keep out the raw cold of mid-December. In a week it would be Christmas and she was determined to make it a good one for the family, even if Clem was not speaking to her. Quickening her pace, she walked to the Commercial Road and caught a blue Blackwall omnibus, paying the twopence fare to Aldgate, where she alighted and walked the rest of the way to Petticoat Lane. Losing herself in shopping, Tilly browsed amongst the stalls, buying Christmas presents for all her family. For Clem . . . well, it had to be something special, something to show him how much she cared about him. But there was nothing on the stalls that caught her eye and, as the short December day darkened and the naphtha flares burned brightly to illuminate the costermongers’ barrows, Tilly had bought something for everyone, except Clem. By now she was so laden with brown paper packages and strings of oranges, tangerines and lemons that she decided to lash out and spend money on a cab. As she was passing a pawnbroker’s shop on the corner of Middlesex Street, she spotted a silver pocket watch and knew that this was just the right gift for Clem.