by Annie Murray
‘Mr Pepper could fix that soon as winking,’ Mercy kept saying. ‘I’m fed up with nearly falling through it all the time.’
‘We don’t need the likes of ’im coming in ’ere,’ Mabel would snarl. ‘We’ll live with it, that’s what we’ll do.’
‘You’d cut off your own nose to spite yer face, wouldn’t you?’ Mercy snapped, exasperated. She could never get to grips with Mabel’s odd combination of self-indulgence and self-punishment.
Now she’d gone, Mercy had had Bummy Pepper in straight away and they had a nice new tread. And bit by bit she was picking up a few bits of furniture: an old settle which Mercy polished until it was a smooth, rich colour, a little cupboard for their few crocks, a comfortable chair for Susan to rest by the fire, and Susan had botched two peg rugs, using old pieces of hessian and scraps of material. They were bright and colourful and covered some of the worst wear on the bricks. Now she was working on some curtains.
The job at Wrigley’s Bakery was straightforward enough. Every morning Mercy helped Susan get up. They’d long perfected the art of getting her downstairs. She took Susan in the wheelchair to Elsie’s house where she did most of her work.
‘I’ll bring yer a doughnut!’ Mercy sometimes called cheerfully as she set off and Elsie would reply, ‘Make it a bagful!’
She walked into town with Tom and Johnny. No longer did she have to hobble along in poorly fitting boots that cramped her feet and chafed her chilblains. Friends of Dorothy’s mistress seemed to have a dazzling surplus of clothes discarded by their daughters, and while Mercy didn’t wear the prettiest dresses to work, even her plain, serviceable clothes looked quite smart and respectable.
‘You’re turning into a right toff,’ Elsie teased her.
‘Well, Rosalie’ll be able to have all this lot when she’s bigger,’ Mercy said.
Yes, life was much better. Elsie noticed Mercy’s new softness, a lack of the aggression that had always flared so easily in her before. She was gentle with Susan, tried to comfort her, though knowing there was no true comfort for this kind of loss.
One oppressively grey morning Mercy set off as usual with Johnny and Tom. It was threatening snow and the clouds had already squeezed out a few fat flakes which were drifting down through the biting air. They walked fast to keep warm, Johnny, slightly ahead, impatient as a spring, and Tom beside her, both with their caps pulled down hard and hands pushed into their jacket pockets. Mercy’s coat – another offering from Dorothy – was blue with a smooth velvet collar, and she wore a little, old-fashioned bonnet the colour of pigeons’ wings. She was beginning to feel small now beside the twins, Johnny especially, who was more than a head taller than her. They walked watching their feet. The pavement was icy.
‘’Ow’s Susan bearing up?’ Tom asked ‘She don’t say much.’
‘She misses ’er mom. Cries quite a bit for ’er – nights, you know, when there’s time to think about it. But like you say, she don’t keep on about it much. She’s that busy in the day she’s no time to dwell on it.’
‘It’s rotten when yer come to think of it though,’ Tom said, pale face wincing at the cold. ‘First ’er dad goes off and leaves ’er, then ’er mom. And that’s on top of ’er legs, like.’
Mercy didn’t say anything, just walked on, eyes stung by the cold air which seemed to blast up from the hub of the waking city as if from a freezing cauldron. Tom looked round at her with his dark eyes. If Mercy had been looking, she’d have seen the unguarded expression of affection in them.
‘I s’pose it weren’t any better for you neither,’ he said apologetically. They didn’t talk like this normally. As a rule it was pranks and gossip on the way to work, the lads sometimes sparring and cuffing each other.
Mercy sighed. ‘Never knew my mom and dad in the first place to lose ’em, did I?’
‘How d’you get to that home then?’ Johnny blurted out.
‘Dunno. They never told me. They found me somewhere – in the street. That’s my mom, the streets of Brum!’ She tried to make a joke of it. ‘Any’ow, that’s way back now, and your mom’s been so good to us . . .’
Tom peeled off to work at Stern’s in Bull Street, and once they’d got to Wrigley’s in Digbeth Johnny was off on his rounds with the delivery cycle, red-eyed from the cold and warm breath streaming white from his mouth.
Mercy served in the shop. She loved the clean white tiles, the smells of dough, jam, burnt currants and steamy warmth. It was cosy, and sometimes she hugged herself behind the counter relishing the place, its neat rows of tarts and buns in the glass-fronted cabinets, the aroma of crusty bread, speckled gold of cinnamon and nutmeg on custard tarts, rich dabs of chocolate, coconut snow . . .
‘I wouldn’t swap my job,’ she told Susan. ‘It’s clean and warm, and all the people coming in – it’s friendly like.’
Mr Wrigley was a small, anxious man with an almost completely bald head and a pert moustache on his top lip, who toiled, perspiring constantly, in the bakehouse behind the shop. His wife, red-cheeked and stolid, carried in fresh trays of bread or cakes, dressed in a white apron dusted with flour.
‘’Ere yer go, bab,’ she’d say to Mercy. ‘’Ere’s more for yer!’ as if it were Mercy’s personal task to eat every cake in the shop.
Mercy served the customers, wrapped warm loaves in layers of tissue paper, pushed sticky buns into bags and rang up the purchases on the huge steel till. She also worked to keep the place looking attractive and orderly, sweeping the black and white tiled floor and rearranging the bread and cakes to fill the gaps.
‘It’s nice for us to ’ave such a pretty lass serving,’ Mrs Wrigley told her. ‘’Specially one who’s as presentable as you. Good for business like, ain’t it?’
‘Well I’m happy in my work, Mrs Wrigley,’ Mercy laughed. ‘And if it’s good for business, all the better.’
At closing time she and Johnny often set off together again, laughing and joking. She always enjoyed Johnny’s cheek. Unlike Tom he seemed energized by his day’s work, ready for anything, his freckled face pink and weather-beaten. Tom though, usually looked pale and tired after a day at Stern’s. His nails were always black with tarnish and silver polish. Mr Stern, a kindly, prematurely aged man with tiny wire spectacles, a grey beard and a large wife, was teaching Tom the art of engraving and burnishing silver. Later he was to learn electroplating. The shop’s windows were crammed with candlesticks, cups, medals and jewellery, and it was very dark inside, lit only by a single gas mantle.
‘You look like a mouse crawling out of a hole,’ Mercy had teased him one day when he appeared squinting into the afternoon.
Sometimes she felt like slipping her arms through Tom’s and Johnny’s. They were like brothers to her: family. But she knew they’d say, ‘Oi, gerroff, will yer! What’re yer playing at!’
That snowy day when she reached Elsie’s with a bag of day-old Chelsea buns, she found Susan still toiling away on her sewing machine. Cathleen was sitting close to the fire, lips tinged with blue despite the warmth. Jack was at the table with Frank in his uniform, and Josephine, whose usual expression of discontent had quite vanished (she’d found A Man at last). Dorothy, who’d turned down Elsie’s offer of tea, was also there waiting for her.
‘You’re soon back!’ Mercy cried, beaming. ‘Less than a week, ain’t it?’ She opened the bag of buns and they were shared out, Dorothy shaking her head when offered a piece of one.
‘She giving you some extra time off?’ Mercy asked her, chewing.
Dorothy stood up, her face solemn. ‘I’d like a word with you, Mercy. In private like.’
Mercy looked uncertainly at Elsie. So far as she was concerned nothing was so private that the Peppers and Susan couldn’t hear it.
‘Go round to yours,’ Elsie said with chilly tact. ‘Then you and Miss Finch can talk without all the commotion.’ She wasn’t sure that ‘Miss Finch’ didn’t think she was a cut above them all, but Mercy seemed to think a lot of her so she wasn’t going to
make an issue of anything.
‘You come to tell me you’re getting married?’ Mercy joked as they walked into number two.
Dorothy looked astonished. ‘No. What in heaven’s name made you think that?’
‘You look a bit sort of excited. I wondered—’
‘Would that be summat to get excited about?’ Dorothy retorted, with such venom in her voice that Mercy was taken aback. Dorothy sat, removed her hat and arranged the powder blue folds of her dress carefully on her knees.
‘I have got news for you though, and I think you’ll find it exciting when I tell you.’
Mercy stood by the table, clearing the plates from their rushed breakfast that morning. She raised one eyebrow curiously at Dorothy.
‘We’ve – I’ve found you a position, Mercy. A very good one with a respectable family – well off too. They need a maid of all work. It’s a great chance for you, Mercy. You’ll live in a lovely house – quite different from here. Good conditions, and I know they’ll treat you right. You can start as soon as you like.’
She spoke with complete confidence that Mercy would be overjoyed at the offer.
Mercy stared at her, forehead creased as if she hadn’t understood.
‘It’s a job in service, Mercy.’ Dorothy stood up again and leant across the table speaking quietly but insistently. ‘A good start in life for you now you’re old enough. Grab it and take it quick.’
Mercy’s sudden burst of laughter took her completely aback.
‘But I don’t need a job, Dorothy! I’ve already got one and I’m happy with that. It’s nice of you to think of me and go to all this trouble but I don’t want another job just now.’
‘But you’d be in a beautiful house – carpets on the floor. It’s a job many a young girl’d jump at. And it wouldn’t end there. You could work your way up – p’raps even get to be cook there one day if you prove yourself.’
Mercy had no idea just how much she exasperated Dorothy by laughing again. ‘Oh, I’ve been cook here for quite a long while already.’ She’d begun bustling around, clattering plates, carrying in vegetables. ‘No need for me to go anywhere to do that.’
‘She won’t take it.’
Dorothy stood in front of Grace, her face red. She had felt helpless when she left Mercy, but now she was furious, and ashamed at the failure of her powers of persuasion.
They were in the comfortable parlour, door closed against the rest of the house, a young fire burning smokily in the grate. Grace moved up and down the hearth, agitated, her dress rustling. Her usually smooth voice took on an edge of shrillness.
‘You mean . . .?’
‘She said she’s happy where she is.’
‘Those were her words?’
‘She seemed to find the offer all rather amusing,’ Dorothy confessed bitterly. ‘The silly girl.’
‘But she can’t want to stay there!’ Grace burst out. ‘Doesn’t she know an opportunity when she’s presented with it? There she is, living in that terrible . . . slum of a place, and she turns down a position in one of the most prestigious houses in the city! Dorothy—’ Grace’s eyes filled with tears. ‘This is too terrible. It’s just her ignorance that’s making her react like this. After all, what does my poor child know of fine houses or anything except an orphanage and a workman’s house? You’ve got to go and make her see how much better it would be for her. Go back tomorrow. You’ve got to make her take that position!’
‘Blimey,’ Mercy joked when she found Dorothy in Angel Street again the next day. ‘You out of a job or summat?’
‘Come in here—’
Mercy had been in the yard with Elsie, and Dorothy more or less ordered her into her own house.
‘What’s the matter?’ She wasn’t used to Dorothy behaving so sternly. And she saw a hard expression in the woman’s eyes which worried her.
‘We need to have words, miss.’ Dorothy confronted her once more across the table. ‘I come here yesterday and brought you an offer of a good job. A flaming good one, the like of which you’ll be lucky ever to see again.’
‘Oh Dorothy!’ Mercy was relieved. ‘It’s that again, is it? I told you, I don’t need a job. It was kind of you, but—’
‘Take the position.’ It was an order, almost spat out. The two women stood staring into each other’s eyes. A muscle twitched in Mercy’s thin face and she clenched her teeth.
‘Dorothy, I don’t want it. I told you.’
‘Take it!’ Dorothy slapped her hand hard on the table, nostrils flaring. ‘Who d’you think you are, eh? Turning down summat like that as if you could pick and choose? You’re an orphan, you’ve come from the workhouse or near enough, and life ain’t about picking and choosing when you’re poor – you take what you’re given and you’re grateful!’
The look that came over Mercy’s face as she spoke filled Dorothy with a sudden chill. She had assumed all this time that this child who so resembled Grace, was in fact a minute replica of her mother, would grow into the same woman with the angelic hair, grey eyes, the soft, yielding personality. But there was other blood in Mercy. It was only now, seeing the glint in Mercy’s eyes and her jutting chin, Dorothy recognized she was dealing with a far more flint-like character. She experienced a moment of panic, faced with the strength of this temperament.
‘I don’t know what all this is to you,’ Mercy said, her voice polite but steely. ‘I’m grateful for the offer but the answer’s no and could never be anything else.’
‘But why?’
‘Because this is my place here.’
‘It doesn’t have to be!’ Dorothy was growing quite distressed. If only she could tell the girl she was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist’s wife, have her see that she didn’t truly belong here!
‘These’re my people,’ Mercy said. ‘They’re the only people who’ve ever been anything to me – apart from you. Mrs Pepper’s been like a mom to me and I’ll never, ever leave Susan. She’s all I’ve got and I’ve promised ’er. So don’t ask me. Everyone else’s left ’er and I’m not going to do it as well.’
‘But she could go to Mrs Pepper,’ Dorothy argued desperately. How could she go and face Grace, having failed again?
‘No,’ Mercy said simply.
‘Yer a stupid little fool.’ Dorothy’s voice was harsh with bitterness.
‘Well maybe I am. I’m grateful, more than, for all you’ve done for us,’ Mercy said, turning away. ‘But if you think it’s bought you the right to come ’ere telling me what to do you can have back every stitch you’ve brought. I don’t want anything from you if that’s the arrangement.’
Chapter Twelve
The summer of 1914 was a very hot one. Smoke from factory chimneys hung in the air. It was a struggle to keep food fresh, the yards in Angel Street were full of dust and the dry-pan privies stank and attracted swarms of flies. Dogs panted in patches of shade under carts or beside steps.
Wrigley’s Bakery felt like a furnace by day. They propped the door open to the street despite the dust and grime and Mrs Wrigley kept going to stand by the door in her apron, watching trams on the Stratford Road, fanning herself with a newspaper.
‘Phew – this is too much, this is!’ she’d say, cheeks a burning red. ‘We could do with a drop of rain!’
When at the end of June an Austrian Archduke was shot in Sarajevo, most people had their minds on holiday time. Some would get away to the coast or at least the country. In the Angel Street neighbourhood a few visits were planned for the August Bank Holiday, as far as the Lickeys or Clent Hills. As for Mercy and Susan, they were going as far as Highgate Park where they could lie on the sloping grass with straw hats, eat, laugh, and above all, do absolutely nothing for the day except watch white wisps of cloud edge across a Wedgwood blue sky.
‘I wonder what Mom’s doing,’ Susan said sadly as they lay side by side on the freshly cut grass. She always insisted on having her legs covered.
Mercy reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I s’pect she’s
all right.’ It was the one despondent moment of the day and Mercy felt helpless, and guilty too, as she so preferred life without Mabel. They were managing. She was determined not to be beaten.
Within days of this sunny respite the air was full of war. Shrill newspaper headlines: War Against the Hun! Flags and bunting, excited queues outside the hastily established recruiting offices taking the King’s shilling, young men in khaki with tightly bound puttees, and suddenly the city emptied of horses. They were needed more for the War than they were at home! The talk was aggressive and defiant. Old soldiers of the Boer War gathered in pubs and chewed over events. Men were thin on the ground in Nine Court and Bummy went down the pub with Mr White who was streets more amiable nowadays. A picture of the King and Queen went up in the window of the local huckster’s shop. In the name of Honour and of Justice, the Hun were going to be taught a lesson they wouldn’t forget!
‘It’s all very well,’ Mercy said, arriving back at Elsie’s with the twins one afternoon in mid-September. ‘But when’s summat going to happen?’ She pulled off her straw hat and fanned herself with it. ‘We tried to get a paper on the way ’ome but they was all gone again.’
‘Summat has happened,’ Elsie said, tight-lipped. ‘Our Frank’s only gone and joined up hasn’t ’e?’
There were gasps from the twins, of envy from Johnny, more of awe from Tom.
Frank had stood in front of Lord Kitchener’s recruitment poster, saw the authority of that pointing finger and the handlebar moustache and speedily decided his country needed him. This being a minor incentive compared with getting away from his missis, he’d hurried to the recruiting station in Great Charles Street.
‘’E’s in the First City Battalion – that’s the Fourteenth Warwicks, I think ’e said.’ Elsie’s face was pale under the freckles. ‘I don’t know whether to be proud of ’im or put ’im across my knee. ’E’s off tomorrow, for training in Sutton Park.’
