by Beezy Marsh
‘He was fine, really happy all afternoon,’ Kathleen lied. She didn’t dare tell the truth. What if it was all her fault?
‘Oh, Billy, Billy,’ Mary sobbed, taking him indoors and laying him on the table. Kathleen watched as she stripped off his clothes and he lay there, not moving at all. Mary turned to her. ‘Run and get your mother.’
Mum came running, still wearing the striped overall which she used on laundry days. She put her hand to the baby’s forehead and listened to his chest.
‘You need to get the doctor,’ she said, sponging him down with a damp cloth from the sink on the side.
‘No, Margaret. I can’t afford a doctor,’ wailed Mary. ‘I have nothing to pay him with.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Mum. ‘I’ll settle it for you. Kathleen, run and get help.’
Kathleen ran harder and faster than she had ever run, never mind that it hurt her chest and her legs felt leaden with the guilt of it all. She knew the way to the doctor’s house, with its grand front door and brass knocker.
Kathleen hammered on that for all she was worth and his wife answered curtly, ‘Yes? The doctor is having his afternoon tea and cannot be disturbed.’
‘Please, miss, please, there’s a very sick baby in my street and my mother, Mrs Fraser, has sent me . . .’
In a split second, the doctor had grabbed his coat, plonked his hat on his head and picked up his big black leather bag. He marched round to Howley Terrace so quickly that Kathleen had to trot just to keep up with him.
‘How long has he been unresponsive?’ asked the doctor, looking back at her.
‘I’m not sure,’ said Kathleen, not really understanding what that word meant. Would she get in trouble if she told him the truth about Billy being out of sorts all afternoon? ‘He was kind of whining a bit this afternoon but then he went quiet around teatime.’
The doctor must have spotted a look of fear in her eyes, because he stopped and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘Kathleen, whatever has happened is not your fault, even if you were looking after him. Babies get ill. They are not as strong as big children like you or grown-ups. They get lots of illnesses, but we will try to get him better, you’ll see.’
Mary was cradling Billy in her lap by the time the doctor arrived. He was making a horrible choking noise and struggling for breath and had gone blue around his lips. Mum was saying Hail Marys quietly, so quietly that there was barely any sound, but Kathleen knew from the way her lips were moving that this is what she was doing. She understood then that Billy was getting worse. The doctor lifted Billy from Mary’s arms and lay him back on the table. He took a wooden spatula from his bag and poked it into Billy’s mouth, pushing down his tongue and peering inside. Then he listened to his chest with his stethoscope. The horrible rasping sound got louder.
‘Mary, have you or anyone in your family had a sore throat these past few days?’
Her eyes were glazing over; she could barely reply. ‘Yes. I’ve had a bit of a tickle but it wasn’t anything serious.’
‘And has Billy been off his food?’
‘He’s only wanted condensed milk since yesterday,’ she whispered.
‘It’s diphtheria, Mary, I’m so sorry,’ said the doctor, picking the baby back up and placing him, with great care, in his mother’s lap. He was fighting back tears as he spoke. ‘There is a swelling and a coating at the back of his throat, which is making it impossible for him to breathe. Once the process starts, we can’t stop it.’
They were frozen in time, Mum, Kathleen and the doctor, while Mary rocked her baby and hummed to him, stroking his forehead.
The rasping of Billy’s breath got louder until a strangled sound came from the baby, his blue eyes flickered open and then closed, forever.
Kathleen watched as her mother started to cry. ‘Dear God, no, no.’
The doctor spoke. ‘It’s too late, there’s nothing to be done now. But he is at peace. I’m so sorry for your loss.’
Mary let out the most piercing and terrifying scream. Kathleen thought she might faint from the shock of it. She couldn’t move, she was rooted to the spot. The bloodcurdling noise brought all the women of the street running. It wasn’t a case of knocking or asking to come in: Mrs Davies and Mrs Avens burst through the door.
‘Not the baby!’ cried Mrs Avens.
‘Oh, Lord, you poor angel,’ said Mrs Davies, kneeling beside Mary. ‘Poor little Billy, never hurt nobody.’
‘Why couldn’t you have saved him?’ said Mrs Avens, her face red with fury. ‘We’d have clubbed together to pay for it!’
The doctor shook his head. ‘It’s diphtheria. With the best will in the world, I could have done very little.’
The women turned to each other. ‘It’s the Strangler. Dear God, will our children be safe?’
Margaret realized that Kathleen was in great danger, having been exposed to the illness which had last swept the borough ten years previously. She whispered in her ear, ‘Go home, Kathleen, go upstairs and don’t let the others near you.’
The doctor started to ask questions about how many of the children had been in close contact with Billy since his sore throat. In the end it was decided that Kathleen and Nancy from round the corner should be kept off school for a week and apart from their siblings, to prevent the spread of the illness. Frankie and Eva and Peggy had to go and stay at Nanny Day’s.
The doctor turned to Margaret. ‘This may seem harsh, at a time of mourning for Billy, but we must do what we can now for the living and prevent any other children getting sick. Diphtheria, or the Strangler as you call it, is a terrible and deadly disease and it can kill very quickly.’
Kathleen wasn’t allowed out of her bedroom for five full days, which meant she had to use the jerry they kept under the bed and she hated doing that. Only her mother was allowed in to give her meals and take the dirty dishes away. Mum scrubbed her hands red raw with carbolic to try to stop the spread of any germs. The doctor called every day to peer down her throat and check her temperature. The priest visited and stood in the doorway to the bedroom, saying prayers for her and the departed baby. To everyone’s relief, there was no sign of any temperature or the dreaded grey coating in the back of the throat which was the proof that diphtheria, the Strangler, had taken hold.
Frankie and Eva had been allowed to join the procession of mourners who called in to the house to see Mary and her husband Joe, to pay their respects and view the baby’s body. People came from all the surrounding streets and as far away as Nanny Day’s road.
‘He looked like a waxwork,’ Frankie told her, through the bedroom door, which made her cry even more.
On the day of the funeral, a bleak November morning, Kathleen watched from the bedroom window as Billy was taken in a tiny wooden coffin covered with flowers to be buried. His father carried it in his arms while Mary, dressed all in black, walked behind him, sobbing, supported by the women from Howley Terrace and Tenison Street. Behind that the children walked in a solemn row. At the top of the street, the brewer stopped his dray, took off his cap and stood with eyes downcast as the funeral procession made its way past.
Kathleen looked on from afar, unable to mourn with everybody else, alone in her grief and isolated by her guilt. The trip to the country with Nanny Day, with the raspberries, the stream and the bonfire, seemed like a distant dream to her now. She couldn’t imagine ever feeling happy like that again.
10
Eva, February 1934
The cigarette machine was a big prize. Eva had taken to creeping into the hotel in York Road in the afternoon on the way back from school to look at it, just when the receptionist had gone through half a bottle of gin and was snoring in the back room. Lumps had told her this would be the case, but getting that ciggy machine out of the hotel was going to be too much for her to manage on her own so she’d recruited her little brother Frankie onto her scheme. He was a willing accomplice and was happy to take a small share of the profits – enough to buy a few marbles from the kids in Teni
son Street. He was planning to use them as ammo for his catapult.
Mum was still running short every week and Eva had made a promise to get Kathleen a piano. What if she got sick again and died, never having played a note of it? The way little Billy was taken so quickly had scared the living daylights out of her. The last of her dad’s compensation money had been spent paying for a headstone for little Billy. The whole neighbourhood had a whip-round to avoid the shame of the baby being buried on the parish. Nobody wanted Mary and Joe to go through that, having lost their only child, but the cost of the headstone on top of the ten pounds for the funeral was too much to ask. Her parents had stepped in because they were the only ones with any savings. Billy got his headstone and was properly remembered but it had left the family in dire straits again.
And then there was Lumps, who had taken to appearing on the street corner near their home, giving Eva a little wave when she was playing outside with Gladys, just to let her know that she knew where she lived. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain to her parents why the local drunk seemed to be her new best mate.
Eva was beginning to regret getting into this game but if she could just get the ciggies for Lumps this once, that would be the end of it and she would go back to nicking a bit of cash from the till when she needed to. She had planned the raid on the hotel as best as she could, agreeing to meet Lumps around the back of Waterloo Station with the loot later that evening. She’d picked up a couple of old sacks lying in the gutter outside the wastepaper factory around the corner to carry it all.
With the receptionist snoring soundly in the back room, Eva and Frankie moved quickly. The machine was situated in the little hallway by the rear, which led up to the bedrooms. Eva knew this because her mother had cleaned here in the past. With Frankie standing guard, she threw a sack over the machine and then signalled for him to come and lift it with her.
She tilted it backwards and he took the bottom end of it. ‘It’s bleeding heavy, Eve,’ he hissed through gritted teeth. There were indents on the claggy old carpet, where it had stood.
‘Come on, Frankie, we can do it,’ she said, as they lugged it up the hallway. There was no going back now. It was already getting dark outside, which was a mercy because they did look a very odd sight – two kids struggling to carry something very heavy in an old sack. It would be just the sort of thing to attract the attention of the cozzers. They managed to take it a good fifty yards before they had to stop for a rest.
‘I can’t take this into Waterloo Station,’ said Eva. She really hadn’t thought this through.
‘You’ll have to find a way to get the fags out,’ said Frankie. ‘I’ve got an idea.’
They half dragged, half carried it back along York Road and up a side street, to a little health clinic, which was in a mobile hut, on stilts.
‘Me and the boys like to hide out under here,’ said Frankie conspiratorially. ‘But don’t tell Jim or he’ll want to use it for his mates.’
‘I won’t,’ said Eva, rolling her eyes. As if she was ever likely to want to come here again or tell her big brother! They shuffled themselves underneath the building, pulling the heavy sack with them. Once they were underneath, they pulled the machine out of its sack and Frankie picked up a half brick and started to bash away at it, breaking the glass. Eva followed suit and soon they were able to put their fingers in and grab packet after packet of cigarettes.
‘You go home,’ Eva ordered. ‘I’m going to meet Lumps.’ She gathered her haul into the sack, slung it over her shoulder and marched off towards Waterloo Station.
Lumps was hanging around the steps at the back of the station, with her grimy shawl pulled tightly around her shoulders. She smiled when Eva approached, flashing a row of blackened stumps where her teeth should be.
‘Looks like quite a haul,’ she said, fishing some coins out of her pocket to give to Eva.
Eva tightened her grip on her loot. ‘The price is two quid, there’s hundreds of fags in here. I ain’t taking a penny less.’
Lumps laughed. ‘Show me what you’ve got first.’
Eva opened the bag and Lumps peered inside. She smelt so bad, Eva wondered if she had ever had a bath in her life. She probably never used the Manor Place Baths like decent folk.
‘All right,’ she said. ‘I reckon I can get the Daleys to take them and sell them on at their stall in the station. Meet me here tomorrow and I will pay you.’
‘But . . .’ Eva began.
‘That’s how it works with Old Liz,’ said Lumps, as her dirty fingers closed around the bag and took it from Eva’s grasp. ‘I ain’t got that much cash about me but I give you my word that I will get it for you. And as a thank you, come after school tomorrow; there’s someone I know who will want to meet you.’
Eva was so nervous she could barely sleep that night and woke up too late to go up to the bakery in Covent Garden before school. She felt such a fool for letting Liz English, the old soak, take away the cigarettes without giving her any money. That was a mistake she wouldn’t repeat. She managed to get through the day but got told off twice for napping in class, as her eyelids closed while the teacher droned on. When the other kids ran out of school and home to play, she trudged around to Waterloo Station to meet Lumps and to try to get at least some money for her effort.
Lumps gave her a smile and a wave and produced a ten-shilling note from beneath her shawl and wafted it at her.
‘I asked for two quid,’ said Eva, with a steely glare.
‘Well, this is all you’re getting,’ said Old Liz, snatching the note away from Eva’s grasp. ‘But there’s half a crown in it if you’ll come with me down the Borough and I think you will thank me for it.’
‘But that’ll take ages and I don’t want to go anywhere with you!’ cried Eva, who had no intention of going to the Borough with this old drunkard. She probably wanted her to nick a bottle of gin for her.
Lumps looked at her. ‘Nah,’ she said. ‘Maybe you are right. You ain’t much of a tea leaf.’
‘I’m the best thief around here!’ Eva said, before she could stop herself.
‘In which case,’ said Lumps, ‘you will want to meet the Queen of the Forty Thieves, won’t you?’
Eva gasped. She’d heard talk of the Forty Thieves, of course she had, with their raids on the big shops over the water up in Oxford Street and their fights with policemen, but she’d only half believed it all. Was Lumps serious or was this just another one of her drunken antics? Eva wanted the rest of her money; she had a piano to pay for. She set out, walking a few paces behind Lumps, in case anyone she knew spotted her and thought they were friends.
They caught the bus down the Waterloo Road and on to Webber Street, before hopping off and walking down Scovell Road, a side street filled with looming tenement blocks. If Eva’s family was poor, the people living here were poorer, with their tiny flats and their laundry hung across from one balcony to another to dry. The screams and shouts of children playing echoed up the walls and bounced back, creating such a din that Eva wanted to stop up her ears.
‘In here,’ said Lumps, pulling her into a doorway. She clambered up three flights of stairs, her heart beating nineteen to the dozen as her footsteps echoed up the tiled walls of the dark, dank stairwell.
‘I’m not afraid,’ Eva kept saying under her breath. In truth, she was terrified. Greying, holey woollen stockings peeked out through the split leather of Lumps’s boots as she climbed the stairs in front of Eva, huffing and puffing all the while. At times Lumps grasped the wrought-iron stair-rail for dear life and Eva wondered whether the old drunk had the strength to make it up those stairs. They stopped at a door painted sludge green; it swung open and they were greeted by a tall woman with a broad face and piercing green eyes, with her thick hair piled up on top of her head.
Eva instinctively stuck out her hand and said, ‘How do you do?’ as her mother had told her to do, when she needed to be polite.
The woman smiled at her. ‘Lovely manners!’
She didn’t look in the least bit scary. ‘So, you must be Eva. I’m Alice. Come on in, love. Cup of tea?’
Eva and Lumps entered the tiny flat, peering into the living room, which was stuffed with bags and had a clothes rail full of coats and expensive-looking dresses.
‘I bet you’d like to have a good poke around in there, wouldn’t you?’ said Alice with a laugh. ‘Later, maybe, but let’s have a chat first.’ She took a knitted cosy off the most enormous teapot that Eva had ever seen and poured the brew into a dainty bone-china teacup covered with flowers, with a saucer underneath. Eva’s eyes went wide. ‘Nice, isn’t it? I do have my standards; I like a nice bit of china,’ said Alice. ‘Why don’t you wait outside, Liz? The girls will be back in a minute and I need you to keep look-out.’
It was more of an order than a question and Lumps grumbled under her breath but did as she was told and ambled back down the corridor and out into the draughty stairwell.
‘Now,’ said Alice, pulling out a chair for Eva and one for herself. ‘Sit down, that’s right. Old Liz tells me you are making yourself quite handy on the rob, down in Waterloo.’
‘S’pose so,’ said Eva, with a defiant look in her eye. ‘I’m just doing what I can to help my mum make ends meet.’
‘That’s admirable,’ said Alice. ‘But you’re already attracting attention from the cozzers, from what I hear, which ain’t so great.’
‘Yes,’ said Eva, bowing her head.
‘And the thing is, I don’t know whether our friend Liz has put you right on this or not, but I am in charge of all the girl thieves this side of the water.’
‘Oh,’ said Eva. ‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Well, you do now. You need my protection or the cozzers will come for you and that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?’
‘No,’ said Eva, her heart thumping in her chest. ‘So do you mean I have to give you some of what I steal?’
‘That’s how it works,’ said Alice. ‘It’s like a business. You can’t just set up on your own, even if you are only – how old?
