Keeping My Sister's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

James moved alarmingly close to Mr Pemberton. ‘How, in the name of God, are these people not deserving?’ he said, seizing him by the collar and knocking his hat to the floor in the process.

  ‘Take your hands off me!’ cried Mr Pemberton. ‘Or it will be the worse for you! I have witnesses, see?’ He pointed to the women and children standing open-mouthed in their doorways. James Fraser had his hands around the throat of the Poor Law! Mr Pemberton had barely finished his sentence before the women pulled their children inside, slamming their front doors and leaving the street deserted.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said James, moving his face closer to that of Mr Pemberton, which had now gone puce with rage.

  ‘You will regret this, you will all regret this,’ shouted Mr Pemberton, stooping to retrieve his hat from the gutter. ‘I shall be informing the constables about the behaviour of this street!’ And, with that, he plonked his bowler hat back on top of his balding head and stalked off, to do more good.

  James Fraser’s besting of the Poor Law was the chief topic of conversation that night in the Waterman’s Arms. Quite a crowd had gathered there for the meeting about the Means Test and the Poor Law, which the landlord was delighted about because wage cuts meant he wasn’t pulling as many pints as he would like these days. Peggy had waited for her father to go to the meeting and her mother to pop out to Nanny Day’s to collect some ironing before sneaking downstairs and out of the house, to go and take a look for herself. She pressed a ha’penny – her most precious gift from Old Uncle Dennis – into Eva’s palm before she left the bedroom, warning her: ‘Don’t you dare tell!’

  A thick fog hung in the night air. As she scurried along the greasy cobbles to her destination, she felt it creep down her throat and into her lungs. She knew she would get into terrible trouble if she was found out but the desire to hear the union leaders talk was overwhelming. She couldn’t actually go into the pub, of course, but she planned to sneak a peek at what was going on through the doors or press her ear to the frosted glass.

  A ruddy-faced man stood on a chair and shouted at the crowd, to call the meeting to order. There were a few cheers as he identified himself as a union leader from Bermondsey. Men stopped chattering and listened intently as he outlined the outrageous cuts imposed on the poor by the hated Means Test: ‘Twenty-five shillings cut to six shillings, sixteen shillings reduced to ten shillings and sixpence. The worst case I know of was up North, where they cut it from twenty-six shillings to nothing.’

  ‘Someone should lynch that bastard Pemberton!’ came a voice from the darkest recesses of the pub.

  ‘Brothers,’ said the union leader, ‘that is not the way. We will negotiate. We will protest. But it will be lawful.’

  Peggy didn’t hear the responses to that because she was distracted by someone pulling at her sleeve. She turned and saw that little pipsqueak Georgie Harwood from Kathleen’s class.

  ‘Get off me!’ she said, brushing his arm aside.

  ‘What are they saying?’ he said, craning his neck to peer above the frosted glass.

  ‘Get down!’ said Peggy, reddening with annoyance. ‘You are going to spoil everything. I am serious about this.’

  ‘So am I,’ said George, pushing himself so far forward that he threatened to tumble through the pub door. ‘My dad is in there, you know. He will be speaking next.’

  Peggy didn’t reply but afforded him a bit more elbow room. It was only fair, as his dad was a trade union man. They listened to the list of areas where the Poor Law authorities were bending the rules to try to help those in need, much to the annoyance of the Government. Their eavesdropping was brought to an abrupt end by a voice booming in their ears: ‘Well, well, what do we have here, then?’

  They spun around and came face-to-face with a burly policeman. ‘This is no place for children,’ he said. ‘Run along home.’

  ‘But my dad is in there,’ said George, earning himself a clip around the ear.

  ‘Listen, sonny, I don’t care if the King himself is in there, I am telling you to hop it, so I suggest you do just that. Now, hop it!’

  Peggy grabbed George by the hand and started to pull him away. As she did so, she noticed more policemen, walking briskly, in pairs, coming down Belvedere Road. George was still protesting as she dragged him around the corner into Tenison Street, where they stopped under the dim glow of the street gas-lamp and kept watch on the pub.

  Ten policemen gathered outside and then rushed through the doors, with their truncheons raised. There were shouts and the sound of breaking glass. Men spilt out into the street, fists flying, as the policemen battered them. In seconds, the crowd had surrounded Peggy and George at the top of Tenison Street.

  ‘There’s kids here!’ one of the men shouted to a policeman. ‘Back off!’

  He was silenced by a blow to the side of his head from a passing officer: ‘Take that back to Moscow, you red scum!’

  Instinctively, Peggy grabbed George by the hand and started to run down Tenison Street but she hadn’t gone more than ten yards before she heard the clatter of horses’ hooves. She froze as the huge shapes loomed out of the darkness towards her. Policemen came cantering up the road on horses as big as anything she had seen pulling the brewer’s cart. They rode straight into the retreating crowd of men, who were being beaten back by a line of policemen from the other end of the street.

  ‘We’re trapped!’ said George breathlessly, as he flung himself out of the way and landed against a front door. Peggy didn’t have time to react. She screamed as the flank of a passing horse struck her shoulder and knocked her to the floor. She tasted blood in her mouth as she lay on the cobbles and could now only see a tangle of legs and hear the shouts, as men brawled with each other in the dim gaslight. As she started to cry, she felt a pair of arms around her, pulling her to the safety of the doorstep. It was George.

  He hammered on the front door, shouting, ‘Please, let us in!’ and it swung open.

  A woman pulled them both inside and then barred the door with a chair, before shooing them into the scullery.

  ‘What in God’s name were you two doing out there?’ she cried. ‘Your mother will be livid!’

  Peggy started to sob.

  ‘It’s all right, love,’ said the woman, realizing that Peggy was hurt. ‘I will get that cut cleaned up for you and we will get you home when this is all over. Aren’t you Margaret’s girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, as her eyes darted about the room, taking in the clothes drying on an airer above the range, the half-eaten loaf on the table and little dog curled up on the floor, snoozing. It was a home much like her own. She put her fingers to her mouth. Her lip had swelled so much she felt like a circus clown. George held her hand as she rinsed her mouth out with salty water. It stung like hell.

  It was a good hour before the street lay silent. Peggy was bundled up in a shawl and George and the woman walked her home.

  Margaret screamed when she opened the door and saw Peggy’s face. She hadn’t even noticed she was missing because Eva had carefully stuffed pillows down the bed next to her and kept her promise not to tell. That would earn her little sister a belting, Peggy knew. Her father sat, ashen-faced, at the kitchen table. He was too angry and too shocked to speak. He nursed a cut on his forehead and a bruise was already blackening on his cheek.

  ‘Get to bed, Peggy. We will deal with this in the morning,’ he said.

  He could have punished her there and then and she wouldn’t have fought him. But her father hadn’t laid a finger on her for over a year. It was as if he felt she was too old for that now. Instead, he would refuse to speak to her for a week or ban her from reading the paper, which she found worse than being strapped, to be honest.

  Only one person seemed to be in good spirits as the night drew to a close. George Harwood whistled his way back to Roupell Street in the dark. In his hand he carried a blue ribbon which had fallen from Peggy’s hair as he rescued her from the battle of Tenison Street. He felt its softness between his fingers
and vowed never to give it back until she kissed him.

  6

  Kathleen, March 1933

  ‘Well, if she can’t have a new dress for her first Holy Communion, it will bring shame on the entire family!’

  As she rubbed sleep out of her eyes, Kathleen heard her mother’s raised voice coming from the front room downstairs. She’d hated being away from her family when she was in hospital but at times like this, she wished she was back there. The rows between her parents were something she hadn’t missed at all and, as she listened in the half-light of the dawn, she realized, with a stab of guilt, that she was the cause of it.

  Her mother had promised her a brand-new special dress for her first Communion. The thought of that had kept her going while she was sick. She’d put up with the doctors endlessly listening to her chest and the treatments; there was a really embarrassing one where she had to stand in just her knickers in a room with the other children, wearing funny goggles, while the nurses turned on a big machine which made them all feel warm, like sunshine, because she didn’t have enough vitamin D and the doctors said she needed more.

  ‘Goddamn you, woman! Is there to be no end to the cost of it all?’ Dad’s voice boomed through the rickety floorboards of their bedroom. There was the sound of a slap, followed by a thud, and then crying. A few seconds later, the front door slammed.

  Kathleen held her breath, unable to move. She glanced over at Eva, who was lying awake beside her. She must have heard it too. Peggy was still sleeping soundly in a single bed on the other side of the room. She got a bed all to herself because she was the eldest – which rankled with Kathleen, to be honest – and Mum always joked that she could sleep through an earthquake. Peg had been awake until late reading books by candlelight because after the fracas in Tenison Street, she’d been banned from looking at the paper, in case it put more ideas in her head about going on marches or to protest meetings.

  Eva’s hand found its way into hers. After what seemed like an eternity, Kathleen said: ‘Shall we go and see?’

  They crept downstairs and found their mother sitting at the little table in the scullery, with her head in her hands. She looked up when she heard them enter the room, and wiped her eyes on her nightdress. A mark was reddening on her cheek. ‘Get back to bed, you two! It’s still very early,’ she said.

  The girls didn’t speak but went to her and she hugged them, crying as she did so. Eventually, she spoke. ‘It was an accident. I tripped and fell. No point making a fuss. It is a just a silly thing; me being clumsy. It annoyed him, he’s tired from working, that’s all.’

  Kathleen nodded and put her hand on her mum’s shoulder.

  ‘I don’t need a new dress for Communion,’ she said. ‘I can use Peggy’s old one.’

  ‘That is not the point,’ said Mum, with a note of harshness. ‘You shall have a new dress. I shall see to it. Now, go upstairs and get some sleep and stop listening in to grown-up conversations!’

  Kathleen climbed the stairs with a heavy heart. She had been so looking forward to the whole day; taking part in the Italian procession in Clerkenwell after the Communion at St Peter’s, along with some of the other girls in her class, including her friend Nancy. Her real name was Annunziata, but their teacher couldn’t pronounce that, so she was just known as Nancy. She had the most beautiful, thick, shiny hair which hung in ringlets without even needing rags and was getting a new dress specially made for her. Kathleen wouldn’t look as pretty as Nancy now but she knew that asking for a new dress would only cause more trouble. She hadn’t given a second thought to where the money for it was going to come from, let alone for the veil and gloves that she was supposed to wear. They always seemed to get by, to find the money somehow when it was needed and she had never questioned that.

  Eva had gone very quiet. She went to the corner of the bedroom and pulled up a loose floorboard. The first light of dawn was just visible through the thin curtains at the window behind her. Eva eyed Kathleen for a moment as she spoke. ‘If you tell about my secret hiding place, you will go to Hell and the Devil will get you and demons will stick red-hot pokers in your eyes.’

  ‘I won’t tell, I promise,’ said Kathleen, crossing her fingers under the bedclothes, just in case, because it was always handy to have something to tell on Eva for.

  ‘Swear on the life of our Lord Jesus.’

  ‘I swear,’ said Kathleen.

  ‘Swear on Mary, Holy Mother of God,’ said Eva.

  ‘I swear on the Blessed Virgin Mary,’ said Kathleen, still keeping her fingers crossed.

  Eva pulled out one of Grandad’s rusty old tobacco tins from her secret hiding place and opened it. It had a few coins in it – a shilling here, a thrupenny bit, a sixpence and some ha’pennies – but there was something else, folded up. Some paper. Eva took it out and unfolded it, to reveal not one but two red-brown ten-shilling notes. She lay them on the bedspread with great ceremony. Kathleen gasped. That was more money than she had ever seen in her life!

  ‘Where did you get it, Eve?’

  ‘Found it in the street near the Cut, didn’t I?’ she said, playing with the ends of her hair. ‘I was saving up everything I find, to help buy you a piano.’

  ‘But, Eve, that’s just so . . . kind,’ said Kathleen, who was looking at her sister in a new light. ‘Let’s show Mum, shall we?’

  The girls stampeded back down the staircase.

  ‘Mum, look, I found a quid!’ said Eva, thrusting the notes towards her mother, who was finishing up a cup of tea. She had taken off her wedding ring and it lay on the table in front of her.

  Their mother looked at the money, wide-eyed, and then back at Eva.

  ‘Where on earth did you get this?’

  The question hung in the air. Eva looked straight at her mother, without even blinking, and said: ‘I found it in the street and picked it up and brought it home. I was keeping it for a piano for Kathleen.’

  Mum stared at the wedding ring on the table in front of her. Then she crossed herself and raised her eyes to heaven. ‘Dear Lord, thank you for giving me such a lucky, lucky child!’

  She took the notes and clasped them, with tears in her eyes. ‘Eva, you are the luckiest girl to find this for me now, when we need it most. Kathleen shall have her dress for church and Jim can have a new shirt too. I was going to pawn my ring and ask Nanny if she could help but I won’t need to any more.’

  She covered Eva with kisses and Kathleen hugged her sister so tightly, she thought she might break her. No one said anything else about Eva’s miraculous find, least of all Kathleen, who was just delighted that she wouldn’t have to wear Peggy’s hand-me-downs on her big day.

  Mum added, ‘We won’t mention this good fortune to your father. He might not understand. Let it just be our little secret.’

  She was in a good mood for the rest of the day and hummed as she went about her work in the scullery and scrubbed at the front step with renewed vigour, so that it was gleaming by the time their father came home from work.

  It was a beautiful April morning when Kathleen skipped up to the dressmaker’s in the Cut, holding her mother’s hand. Today was her final fitting before the Italian procession and her first Communion; the seamstress had been working on her dress for a whole month. It was waiting for her in the shop, hanging up in the little changing room at the back – which was basically just a cupboard full of rolls of material, with a curtain over the front. She felt butterflies in her stomach. There it was. The dress was white silk with a round neck and lace panels overlaid on the front, and a lace trim at the bottom. The sleeves were short and slightly puffed.

  ‘Let me see your hands,’ said the seamstress, before she handed the dress over to Kathleen to try it on. ‘We don’t want any mucky marks on it, do we?’

  Kathleen pulled off her pinafore and took the dress off its hanger. She held it against herself and peered at her reflection in the changing-room mirror. She slipped the dress over her head, admiring the glide of the silk against her skin. S
he felt like a princess. Glancing down at her feet, she realized she still had her grubby socks on, so she pulled them off and chucked them on the floor. On the big day, she would be wearing a perfect little white pair of socks, with a lace trim to match her dress, her mother had said so.

  The seamstress poked her head around the curtain, ‘Shall I button you up?’

  That made Kathleen feel really grown up. She turned around while the seamstress did up a row of little buttons which ran from the waist of the dress to the nape of her neck. The seamstress bent down and with a rustle, she produced a pair of white satin shoes from a nest of tissue paper in a cardboard box in the corner.

  ‘I think they should fit you,’ she said, with a smile. Kathleen slipped her feet into them, like Cinderella. The seamstress popped out of the changing room for a couple of seconds and returned with a lace veil and a headdress of silk flowers in white. Kathleen gasped. It was prettier and longer than the one her sister Peggy had worn for her Communion. She’d be spitting feathers when she saw it! With expert fingers, the seamstress arranged the veil on her head and topped it off with the headdress. It pinched a bit, but Kathleen didn’t mind.

  ‘Now, shall we show your mum?’

  The curtain was pulled back and Mum stood there, with tears in her eyes. ‘You look just beautiful,’ she said. ‘Nanny will be so proud of you. You really are just like a princess!’

  Kathleen twirled about in front of the mirror and even gave a curtsey to an imaginary Prince Charming. The seamstress was already over at the till, writing up the bill. She glanced up at Mum. ‘I put all that extra lace detail on the dress, just as you asked,’ she said. ‘It was a lot of work but I think you’ll agree, she is going to outshine everybody.’

  Mum nodded and opened her purse. She carefully took out the folded ten-shilling notes, smoothed them and placed them on the counter. ‘It’s all there,’ she said.

  ‘But you haven’t paid for the shoes yet,’ said the seamstress, tucking her pencil behind her ear.

  ‘Of course, we’ll have those too,’ said Mum, forcing a tight little smile. ‘But can you let me have them on tick?’