Keeping My Sister's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  Frankie was making everyone laugh doing such a funny dance that Eva couldn’t help joining in. Only one person didn’t seem to be sharing the joke. Eva saw a woman’s face at the window of one of the houses. She was crying as she pulled the curtains shut. Her kids weren’t out in the street larking about like the others. Someone chucked an old pram on the fire, making it belch black smoke. Soon all the children were covered with smuts and soot.

  Peggy appeared on the street corner and signalled for Eva and Frankie to come home, now.

  ‘Spoilsport!’ said Eva, as her big sister clasped her hand and dragged her around the corner. Frankie was at the door first, to be greeted by their mother, who had a face like thunder.

  ‘Get inside, now!’ she shouted. Eva nearly jumped out of her skin. Mum was rarely angry and Eva couldn’t remember the last time she had raised her voice like that.

  She took them into the back yard and made them stand there in the darkness while she brought a bucket to the tap and filled it to the brim with cold water. She stalked off into the scullery and returned with the dreaded dishcloth. She dunked it into the freezing water and began to scrub away at the soot on their faces. ‘No child of mine will ever be involved in shaming someone like that, do you hear?’ she cried.

  Eva started to sob and Frankie was blubbing. They hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. It was only a bit of fun, but they knew better than to answer their mother back when she was like this. They were just grateful she hadn’t pulled the tin bath down from its peg on the wall in the back yard and dunked them in that for good measure. They were sent to bed without any tea.

  It was only the next day, as Eva was talking with her friend Gladys that she got an idea of why the woman had been crying. Eva didn’t know for sure what Gladys meant when she said that the woman had been ‘having it’ with a fella from Howley Terrace whose wife was very poorly, but she knew it had made the grown-ups very angry. She had done a moonlight flit last night – taken her few belongings and her children and fled to her mother’s house in Bermondsey, so they said. No one breathed a word of it again and, strangely, Eva thought, no one said anything to the fella in Howley Terrace. He still whistled as he came and went, on his way to work at the jam factory, as if nothing had happened at all.

  5

  Peggy, October 1932

  There was more of a crowd outside the corner shop these days. Peggy noticed that men milled about, chatting, early on a Monday morning. They were waiting for news of casual work, any work. Their clothes grew shabbier with every passing week, their faces more gaunt and their eyes downcast. She hurried past, clutching her father’s best blue serge suit. Mother sent her off before school to pawn it on Mondays and she went back on Friday, which was payday, to buy it back before her father noticed it was missing. It was just another way of supplementing their meagre income.

  Mum warned her not to dawdle or listen to any of the silly chit-chat that went on in the pawnbroker’s. Peggy had tried not to, of course, but she couldn’t help but overhear some of the smutty jokes that the women told to the young male assistant. As they unwrapped their bundles, they would josh around with him and tease him about his good looks, or what he had got up to at the weekend, in the hope of making him blush. ‘Ooh, he’s blushing, see!’ they would cackle to each other. It was all done to befuddle him into giving them the price they wanted for their goods. Usually it worked and he gave them their asking price without too much bother, just so he could be rid of them.

  Peggy simply handed over the suit, mutely, looking at the floor because the assistant was quite handsome and that gave her a feeling like butterflies in her stomach. She mumbled her thanks as he gave her some coins and was turning to go when she bumped into her teacher, Miss Price. Peggy was dumbstruck. There was no shame in pawning things but she hadn’t expected to see Miss Price in there. The teacher was holding a gold locket in her hand, which Peggy knew must be a treasured heirloom of some sort. Miss Price blushed beetroot.

  ‘Good morning, Peggy,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect to find you here.’

  ‘No, miss,’ was all she could manage.

  ‘Well, I would be most grateful if we could forget all about our little encounter.’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  And Peggy ran off home. It was a bitterly cold day, her fingers were freezing, but she now noticed that her hands were shaking too. She realized that it had nothing to do with the icy wind which was whipping through her thin coat. It was as if one of the main pillars supporting her whole world had collapsed. Miss Price was her teacher, she lived in a nice house, she wasn’t poor and she couldn’t have money troubles, could she? She was clever and she worked hard, so she couldn’t be hard up.

  Miss Price had been the person Peggy wanted to be most like when she grew up, ever since she put Peggy forward to try for a scholarship so she could go to the grammar school. It had come to nothing because Dad had refused, saying they would need her to start earning when she was fifteen, and so she stayed put, along with the other girls from the neighbourhood, whose only dreams seemed to be to work in the Hartley’s jam factory. The plan was for Peggy to get a good job, as a trainee clerk perhaps, in the Post Office.

  ‘That will mean more to this family than staying on at school till sixteen,’ her dad told Miss Price. ‘And it will be a proper career, not factory work.’ Peggy understood her father’s thinking but she still put Miss Price on a pedestal for believing that she was clever enough to try for a scholarship in the first place.

  When Dad got home from work that evening, Peggy brought him his paper as usual and then struck up a conversation with him about wage cuts. She remembered reading about that.

  ‘Yes, Peg,’ he said, chewing on a bit of bread. ‘Ten per cent across the board for all those in public services.’

  That would include teachers. So, perhaps Miss Price was struggling, after all.

  He shook open his newspaper. The main story was Hunger Marches coming to London from the most deprived areas of the North, with people protesting against the Means Test. That was a phrase Peggy had overheard up at the corner shop, usually followed by a stream of profanities, including some words she didn’t know the meaning of. From what she understood, it was the job of the Poor Law authorities to go and check out whether the people on unemployment benefits were claiming too much money, according a new set of rules which were much hated by everyone in the street.

  ‘A hundred thousand people went to welcome the marchers at Hyde Park yesterday, Peg,’ said Dad. ‘And the police made them pay for it. And don’t believe the nonsense the politicians spout about the marchers being sent by Moscow. It’s not all about Communism; people are starving.’

  ‘Shush, James,’ Mum said, snatching the paper away from him. ‘She’s too young to hear about all that.’

  Peggy was about to protest that she wasn’t too young, at fourteen, but there was a loud knock on the door. She went to answer it and found the dishevelled man from over the road who spoke with a funny accent. She knew his name was Joe and he had come up from the West Country a few months ago. He was one of the lucky few who still had work down at the docks.

  ‘It’s my wife,’ he said, wringing his hands. ‘The baby’s coming. Please get your mother. I need her help. We don’t know what to do.’

  Help was organized almost before he had finished his sentence. Mrs Avens, who had been standing on her doorstep, ran inside to get hot water and some towels; Mum rolled her sleeves up and walked briskly across the road with Joe and Peggy trailing in her wake.

  Mrs Davies was doing a great job of trumpeting the impending arrival to anyone who would listen and had drawn quite a crowd at the other end of the street. Eva was sent to get Nanny Day, who was the neighbourhood’s unofficial midwife. Peggy entered the house with her mother and was almost overcome by the stench. A pile of rabbit skins and tails lay in a basket in the corner of the front room and there was fluff all over the floor.

  ‘Haven’t had time to clean up,’ said Jo
e, shrugging his shoulders by way of apology. ‘The wife’s been doing some fur-pulling to help us make ends meet.’ Peggy had seen the work before, as so many women did it to earn a little something, but it was back-breaking and soul-destroying, rubbing the down off the skins of those little beasts with a blunt knife until your fingers bled and the fluff getting up your nose and in your mouth. And then the furriers only paid pennies. Peggy’s mum had tried it when she was younger but said she preferred to have her hands red raw from cleaning than deal with the awful smell and the fluff of those rabbits.

  A loud scream came from upstairs.

  ‘What is your wife’s name, Joe?’

  ‘It’s Mary,’ he said, the colour draining from his face.

  Mary was lying on an old mattress on the floor of the upstairs bedroom. There were no curtains at the windows, just an old sheet pinned up to give some privacy. There were no bedclothes either. She just lay on top of her husband’s coat. A crate in the corner served as a chair for Joe, who sat, helplessly, wringing his hands as his wife’s face contorted with the pain.

  ‘Hello, Mary,’ said Peggy’s mum. ‘I’m Margaret, from across the road.’

  ‘Help me!’ she said. ‘I’m dying.’

  Margaret knelt down beside her and stroked her hair, which was matted with sweat. Peggy moved to take her hand. Mary didn’t look much older than her, and Peggy sent up a silent, selfish prayer that she wouldn’t end up giving birth in such penury.

  ‘Oh, Mary, you silly girl, you aren’t dying. You are going to have a beautiful baby,’ Mum said.

  Without waiting to be invited in, Mrs Avens charged upstairs and plonked a basin of hot water and some towels down on the floor.

  ‘Oh, you poor dear,’ she said, looking around the room, ‘You have barely anything to your name.’ Tact was never her strong point. Mum shot her a glance.

  ‘I’m so ashamed,’ wailed Mary. ‘I have no linen!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum, ‘We will all spare you something.’ And she sent Mrs Avens off, with a flea in her ear, to collect something from all the other women in the street.

  Nanny Day arrived to take charge of the situation, just as the baby’s head was appearing.

  ‘The pain!’ screamed Mary. ‘Make it stop!’

  ‘Now,’ said Nanny Day, as Peggy held on to the girl’s hand. ‘When I tell you to push, push down, hard.’

  Peggy tried not to look, honest she did, but she couldn’t help but notice that something small, bloody and slippery was emerging from between Mary’s legs.

  Joe turned his face away, unable to watch. He shouldn’t be here. This was women’s work, something he knew nothing about and, frankly, you could see he didn’t want to know, in any case. A split second later, there was a loud cry and he turned around to see the face of his first child. It was scrunched up and covered in blood. Mary lay back, exhausted, smiling at last. Nanny Day held the baby up, still attached by the cord to his mother. ‘It’s a boy!’ she cooed. ‘A beautiful baby boy!’

  Joe knelt down beside Mary and kissed her forehead.

  Mum whispered in his ear, ‘There is a bit more work to do, Joe. Maybe you should wait outside.’

  He didn’t need to be asked twice. He’d seen enough blood and guts for one day. Word had spread like wildfire and as he stepped outside for some fresh air, a loud cheer went up from the men and women, his neighbours. He was slapped on the back, offered a smoke and whisked away to the pub for a celebratory pint before he knew what was happening.

  Mrs Avens returned with a pile of sheets, a pillow, some towels and muslin cloths, as well as a drawer for the baby to sleep in. ‘That is from my best sideboard,’ she told Mary, who was feeding the baby and stroking his little face. ‘I will need it back eventually, but you take your time, love.’

  Over the coming weeks, the whole street kept an eye out for Mary and the baby. Eva was a frequent visitor, taking a few buns from her early-morning expeditions up to the bakery in Covent Garden, and everyone was amazed by the generosity of the greengrocer up at the Cut, who – Eva said – regularly donated an apple or an orange for the new mother.

  ‘Funny that, because he never spares me as much as an extra pip from one of his apples, even with my bad legs,’ grumbled Mrs Avens.

  Peggy noticed that the atmosphere around the corner shop on pay-day, which was Friday, had become tense, with men airing their grievances about the Means Test and Mr Pemberton from the Poor Law Authority in particular. It was the Poor Law’s job to work out whether people qualified for any financial help under the new rules laid down by the Government, using the Means Test. Put simply, most people found they couldn’t get as much help as they used to, even if they were on the breadline already. Meanwhile, the Poor Law also encouraged men who were out of work to make good use of their time. The latest outrage centred on some work schemes for the unemployed on the local allotments, as well as boot-mending and rag-rug making. ‘It’s little more than slave labour because they ain’t going to pay us a penny. It’s just keeping us busy,’ said one man, spitting on the ground to signal his disgust.

  Another added, ‘In Bermondsey, the Poor Law are trying to work out how to give people an extra shilling, not take it away. That Pemberton wants to be taught a lesson.’ According to Peggy’s father, the authorities in Bermondsey were a radical lot who refused to axe people’s benefits and were trying to find ways of bending the rules to give the needy an extra bit of help.

  The next evening, Peggy spotted a notice in the shop window about a forthcoming meeting in the pub down the road, with speakers from the National Unemployed Workers’ Movement, to discuss the Means Test. She made a mental note to tell her father about it. As she walked home along Howley Terrace in the failing light of dusk and smog, she spotted Mary coming out of her little terraced house, with her baby in her arms. Drawing near, she saw that Mary was wearing a hessian sack as a dress. Peggy waved at her but Mary just put her head down and scurried off.

  When Peggy asked her mum why Mary was dressed like that, she sighed. ‘She’s pawned her clothes to make ends meet and now she feels she can’t go out in the daylight because of the shame of it. There’s a lot of folks worse off than we are.’

  James put his newspaper down and announced that he was going to the pub for a quick pint, which was not like him because he rarely drank. It wasn’t that Margaret begrudged him anything but they could barely afford it. Besides, she didn’t want him coming home full of beer because, well, they already had five kids and she didn’t want any more. She knew only too well how easily a little accident could happen in drink and nine months later there would be the patter of tiny feet and another mouth to feed. Like so many women in the street, her endless round of mending late into the evening seemed to have put paid to any further children but once the man of the house was three sheets to the wind . . .

  ‘Don’t be too late,’ she said, to his departing back.

  When James returned from the pub, she had pulled the blankets right up to her neck and was feigning sleep. ‘It’s all right, Margaret,’ he breathed in her ear as he clambered in beside her. ‘I’ve only had a pint. We were talking business, me and some of the other fellas from Tenison Street. Pemberton is coming to see that young couple from the West Country tomorrow and I’m going to be there to put their case.’

  Some of the men jokingly called Joe ‘the country bumpkin’ because he was so naive and trusting. The whole street knew they didn’t have two brass farthings to rub together but the worry was that the Poor Law would run rings around them both, even though they were a deserving case.

  ‘Don’t you go getting into any bother,’ said Margaret, turning to face him. ‘I know you are trying to help but we can’t be fighting other people’s battles. We’re all trying to do what we can to support them.’

  ‘They just need someone to speak up for them,’ said James. ‘There’s a meeting tomorrow night about how they are doing things in Bermondsey with the Poor Law. It doesn’t make sense that the likes
of Pemberton are penny-pinching when there are ways to help those who really need it.’

  Margaret sighed. There was no point arguing with him. Everyone in the street looked up to him and she knew he wouldn’t get involved unless he really felt it was necessary. He put his arms around her waist and hugged her and she felt safe in his arms, lying together there in the dark.

  Mrs Davies from number 16 was loitering on her doorstep when James came home early from the cricket bat factory the next day.

  ‘Clocked off early?’ she ventured. When he didn’t reply, she shouted after him, barely disguising the note of triumph in her voice. ‘Mr Pemberton is already in there. You’re probably too late because he turned up a full half-hour early!’

  James scowled and quickened his pace.

  When he got to Joe’s door, it was already open and Mr Pemberton was about to leave. James could hear Mary sobbing in the scullery.

  ‘Wait,’ said James, blocking his path. ‘I need to talk to you.’

  ‘Nothing more to be said,’ said Mr Pemberton, flicking imaginary dust off his bowler hat as he crossed the threshold. His little moustache twitched with pleasure as he spoke. ‘The matter is settled.’

  ‘I have come to speak for them,’ said James, catching sight of Joe sitting at the foot of the stairs, with his head in his hands. ‘They need someone to help put their case.’

  ‘Rules are rules,’ said Mr Pemberton, popping his hat onto his head and buttoning his coat right up to the collar with deft little fingers. ‘The Poor Law cannot make exceptions.’

  ‘But they can and they do in Bermondsey, and well you know it,’ said James.

  Mr Pemberton, who wasn’t used to people arguing with his decisions, for fear of losing an extra penny from their benefits, raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Ah, yes, Red Bermondsey, the borough of comrades,’ he spat. ‘Well, it’s a pity our country friends here don’t live in Bermondsey, isn’t it? They live in Lambeth.’