An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  Langley once told her how the name had come about: a farmer having lost his best fighting cock said whoever found it would have the hand of his daughter in marriage. A toast was drunk to a soldier who had found it, but the girl confused by his good looks mixed up the drinks producing a concoction as motley as the cock’s tail, hence cocktail.

  Remembering the story she suddenly saw Langley in her mind and the life that could never be hers again. Sick at heart, she turned and ran down the Metro and all the way home, mostly to try to eradicate his face from her mind, or because of it, kept thinking how crucial it had become that she must either get her own shop or else live the rest of her life as nothing more than a shop assistant.

  Reaching home, neatly sidestepping an enquiring Daisy as to why she was late, Daisy already giving Noelle her supper, she made for her room to think her thoughts out more clearly before returning to eat her own supper, Daisy by then too occupied with Theodore to ask where she had been.

  Her thoughts didn’t take long to analyse. With every month that went by, the money was being eaten into – clothes for Noelle, growing so fast, and clothes for herself. The 1929 fashion had come in this summer with hems below the knee again, flowing lines, busts making a gentle reappearance, waists returning, hats with ever larger brims. The shapeless Charleston dress of the last couple of years was gone for good, making last year’s clothes already out of date. Still fashion-conscious despite her reduced circumstances, Cissy felt it acutely. She’d have to look chic managing her own shop. But a complete new wardrobe cost money. There must be no more delay or there’d be nothing left to start a shop with. And she was so sick of working for a carping, ungrateful employer.

  ‘I’ve made up my mind,’ she told a concerned Theodore and Daisy when she came to the table. ‘If I don’t do it now, I never will. So I’ve decided. I can’t see it working here, though. I’d have to compete with Parisians and they’ve got a head start over me. So I think it might be better for me to go back and start up business in London.’

  Theodore regarded her anxiously. ‘If you should need advice, you cannot reach us quickly from London. Is it not impractical?’

  ‘And what about Noelle?’ Daisy put in, her voice tinged with panic. ‘She’s used to being here. To uproot her. You’ll have your work cut out finding premises and looking after her. You’ve nowhere to live for a start. And we won’t be there to help out.’

  This dampened her immediate enthusiasm. ‘I suppose I could go on my own for a week or so to look for something suitable, and then send for her. Would it be asking too much of you, giving eye to her without me being here?’ The moment she said it, she regretted it as relief lit Daisy’s face like a bright beam.

  ‘Of course it wouldn’t. I’d be only too glad. But you are sure you know what you’re doing?’

  ‘I’ve no option. I have to try before all my money disappears.’

  There was a little under six hundred pounds left from what Langley had given her. Working these last nine months had kept it from eroding even further, but down payment on shop accommodation and a couple of rooms to live in would take a great chunk out of it. And there’d still be stock to get. It could leave her stony broke if money didn’t come in straight away.

  Theodore must have read her thoughts, his handsome sallow face concerned. ‘And should you fail? It is so easy – far easier than you would think – for a business to fail, over little things, unforeseen things. And you can so quickly have no money left. But to remember one thing, my dear. If this should happen, which God forbid, we are always here. Money I can find to help you – not to start another business, of course. For if one business fails, another will also, a small proof of unsound business mind. But help there will always be from myself and Daisy should you be in need. No obligation to you at all.’

  Tears formed in Cissy’s eyes, touched by the warmth and generosity. She swallowed them back before making a fool of herself and smiled bravely. ‘Thank you, Theodore. I intend to make a go of this. But I really do want to thank you…thank you both, for everything.’

  ‘Ach!’ He shrugged self-consciously, perhaps the only time she had ever seen him do so, as Daisy got up and came around the table to hug her.

  ‘Don’t worry, Cissy. Noelle will be fine with me, and before you know it, you’ll be on your feet, up and running, and you can come and get her. We might even come over ourselves and see how you are getting on. Oh, Cissy, good luck. Lots and lots of luck.’

  She left for England at the beginning of September, her heart full of strange discomfort, a mingling of fear of the future, of sadness at leaving Daisy who had become more like a sister than a friend and an even deeper sadness at having to leave her daughter behind, if only for a few weeks. There was also a pent-up sense of excitement at going back to London, coupled with a certain amount of trepidation knowing her family would be not far away and the likelihood of bumping into them. What would she do if that happened? What would she say? But worse, what if they turned away from her, crossed to the other side of the road to avoid her? She didn’t know if they had ever forgiven her, couldn’t blame them for not doing so. She saw now the wrong she had done – had seen it for a long time but it had been too late to make amends. And if they had been ready to forgive, would they now, seeing the baby? Evidence of her bad life, as they would see it.

  That last night, Theodore opened a bottle of champagne to give a toast to her future success. When Noelle had been put to bed, Cissy had sat telling her a bedtime story until her eyelids closed; for a long while afterwards had stayed just looking at her. The weeks before she would see her again loomed like a lifetime, a gulf, but she had to bear it.

  She kissed her, sleeping, the dark eyelashes lying gently on the soft cheeks, the mouth a rosebud, relaxed in sleep. Her child. If hearts break, it felt then that hers was being torn to pieces. It was harder wrenching herself away in the quiet stillness of her daughter’s room than ever it was the following morning with everyone talking at once. Daisy kissing her, Theodore warmly shaking her hand and that one last cuddle for Noelle before handing her back to Daisy.

  Going up the gangway of the cross-Channel steamer, turning again and again to wave, careless of getting in other passengers’ way, her eyes trained on the small figure of Noelle, her heart breaking anew, it felt more as though she were going to Australia for ever and ever than merely to England, twenty miles across a strip of water.

  The steamer pulled away, she waved until the three figures merged with all the other figures. She watched, straining her eyes at the diminishing docks of Calais becoming a bluish blur indistinguishable from the rest of the French coastline, the coast itself finally lost from view in the faint midday mist over the sea. Finally, with nothing more to see, she turned to seek somewhere to sit.

  She thought of that other trip across the Channel, going to France, then an adventure, a bubbling of excitement, so sure of herself, of her life with Langley, surrounded by his friends – yes, his friends, not hers. Now she was going back, alone. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so alone. Huddled in a chair she watched the sea, the midday haze lying grey upon it so that there seemed no horizon, the sun having to struggle to get through, an orbless light, nothing more, and for all the air was warm, Cissy shivered.

  Eddie had three tugs now, business going well these last three years, so well it sometimes took his breath away.

  Sitting in his office during a rare quieter moment, Eddie smiled grimly thinking how much he could have offered Cissy had she stayed with him. He still thought of her from time to time and it still hurt when he did, but as with most things the edges had blunted a little, worn by the passing of time.

  He and Alf, his father, seldom went on the tugs now. Their work was in their office, over a Millwall warehouse: one cluttered room, a reception area, a gents toilet, a ladies one for a typist-cum-receptionist and a filing clerk. Alf was happy enough, feeling the need to sit back at his age, but Eddie sometimes pined for the estuary breeze on his face, the sa
lty tang of the sea flowing up past Southend, that morning cuppa in the wheelhouse, the bump of a tug’s bow nudging against a big ship’s hull, the feel of a hawser on his palms. He had others to manage the tugs while he sat here dictating letters to a typist not long out of high school and still hesitant with her shorthand, or negotiated with clients on the phone until his ear felt like a ripe tomato. But sometimes he could make his escape, go up along the river for a few miles, savouring memories of the old days on the Thames. It always struck him as odd that where he’d once dreamed of owning a business, doing nothing but sit in a warm office on wet days, now that he had all that, it felt that something had been lost along the way; a feeling of indifference to what he’d achieved that seemed all wrong when he recalled those dreams.

  There had been little time just lately to go dreaming up along the river. Work was pouring in, charter work, his tugs towing the big lighters containing the spoil from the Tilbury Docks for the Dutch reclamation scheme on the marshes, an ongoing job bringing in substantial fees; helping to manoeuvre the big boats through dock entrances, salvage accounting for a good income too, he was even toying with the idea of a fourth tug – a real fleet – in time a business every bit as big as Watkins Ltd.

  Bobby Farmer worked for him now, a godsend, worked flat out, doing all the overtime he could get. From what he said, he and Ethel lived a precarious married life. She hadn’t consented to a divorce and still clung to him like the proverbial shit to a blanket. Not only did he have to keep her and his daughter, but he also felt obliged to send some of his earnings to support his bastard across the river; to keep the mother quiet, Eddie assumed, sending the money through the post hoping she might one day get married to someone and release him from his debt. It was plain that Bobby had no love for the boy; had never seen him and called him a little bloodsucker. Yet his own daughter Jean whom he could hardly provide for after supporting a love child, he doted on, Eddie thought, probably compensating for a nagging, unloving wife.

  He stopped doodling on his blotting pad as the phone jangled. It was his marine insurance company about the present cover on the Cicely, now that she’d had a refit. The phone replaced, another ring, this time an agent – a firm wishing to charter a tug to assist in several days submarine cable-laying off Lowestoft. Another call, a tug to take up scrap from an obsolete warship being broken up: £60 a day here. OK, fine. Meantime, the salvage money was coming in, Eddie could see his business leaping from strength to strength; the purchase of another tug was a distinct possibility. He already had his eye on one, a good vessel, practically new. He’d see about it next week. It was October 1929, in two months, 1930, a new era. Nothing could stop him now.

  Something could, though he and thousands like him that October didn’t realise it. Three weeks into October, a drama began unfolding in New York’s financial market, a bull market, which had speculators rushing to make quick profits from industrial stocks which were more than doubling in value. Banks were lending out billions of dollars to brokers trading on the New York Stock Market. Then suddenly the bottom dropped out, rocking financiers with a quake destined to send tremors around the world. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle bore headlines: ‘Wall St in Panic as Stocks Crash.’

  In London, Eddie, who didn’t take the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, read it in the London papers only after he’d put a down payment on his fourth tug. Even then he and his father didn’t realise the repercussions the rush to sell shares would have on his business.

  Cissy gazed around the empty shop. It probably wasn’t as bad as it looked. Clear away all the debris, the splintered wooden boxes, the scattered and screwed-up sheets of newspaper, the old broken chair in one corner, the bundle of old rags in the other and the stack of unusable shelving. The ceiling and dirty blue walls repainted, a few renovated counters put in with the minimum of expense, she hoped, nice drapes, cheap but cheerful and before you know it…

  At first it had been hopeless finding premises. There were places, but all in the wrong areas. Her dream of a nice little boutique in the West End with Madame Fermier painted above it to add a touch of French, she perhaps lapsing into French to her customers to overawe them as they entered her bright but tasteful premises, had faded weeks ago. There was no way in which she could afford anything near the West End, and she had finally settled for this place in Bethnal Green Road – a nice wide road with lots of shoppers even if it was tatty, with paper flying about all over the place with every slight puff of wind. In a week or two she would be trading, she hoped, and then she’d be able to send for Noelle.

  There had been no hope of going back for Noelle. Last week, hot on the heels of her letter saying she had put a down payment on this place, Daisy came over to visit, bringing Noelle with her. But seeing the state of the premises, the peeling wallpaper of the two rooms and kitchen above it, the lack of decent toilet facilities, Daisy was appalled.

  ‘You can’t bring her up here! Good God, Cissy, she’ll catch all sorts of germs and things. She’s never been used to this…this…squalor. Oh, Cissy, I shall have to take her back with me for a few weeks more. You have to get sorted out before she can come here, you must know that.’

  Of course she knew it. But she did so want Noelle with her and her heart plummeted even as she acknowledged that she knew it was true.

  ‘You’ll come over again, though, won’t you.’ she questioned urgently as Daisy made ready to leave the next morning after a miserable night spent trying to fit her and Noelle into her one bedroom, the two of them sharing her single bed while she slept in the sagging armchair that went with the rented accommodation.

  Daisy had given the box-like living room a dubious look. ‘It’s not the most savoury place to bring a child. Not only that, but I daren’t ask Teddy to pay for another trip over. Things aren’t what they were. I’ve never known anything to change so drastically for us.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Cissy said, alarmed.

  ‘Since that Wall Street business,’ she explained, as together they went downstairs towards the shop for Daisy to take her leave. ‘Teddy’s finding it hard. He lost a good deal of investments over that. Thank God he had the luck to sell quite a lot of his shares just before it happened. More luck than we imagined at the time. He had some big deal or other, you see. He needed to cash in a lot of shares and things – I don’t understand it that much – but I don’t know where we’d be now if circumstances hadn’t made him do it when he did. We’re the lucky ones. The papers say some investors hanged themselves or jumped off high buildings in New York. Literally thousands have lost whole fortunes, have nothing left – not a bean. I saw a picture in one of the American papers showing someone trying to sell a Daimler for just a hundred dollars. Can you imagine? And he still apparently couldn’t get anyone to buy it. Isn’t it just terrible to come down to that?

  ‘But now, of course, Teddy’s having to work much harder and keep his head screwed on the right way. Businesses need finance but they’re having to tighten their belts. And so is he. He’s worried about taking chances, the climate being what it is now. No one’s got any money. Strange how it suddenly disappeared like that. Someone must have it all. I thought it would all blow over by now, after three months. But it just keeps getting worse. So I can’t really keep popping over.’

  Cissy glowered. After all, Noelle was her child. ‘I’d come there if I didn’t have to get this place in order.’

  ‘Will you be able to cope?’ Daisy asked, watching the two-year-old Noelle toddling around amid the rubbish on the floor. ‘There’s a lot to be done here. Have you got enough money left for it?’

  ‘I’ll manage,’ Cissy said tersely. Daisy hadn’t seen the light.

  Daisy nodded. ‘I wish we could pay for you to come over, but as I said, funds are a bit tight at present.’

  Cissy remained silent. So much for the help Theodore had offered whenever she might need it.

  ‘And anyway,’ Daisy prattled on, ‘you’ve got your work cut out here for a while, haven’t you? Perhaps la
ter on when you’re settled and the money starts coming in.’

  ‘And Noelle?’

  ‘I don’t mind looking after her for as long as you want. She’s no trouble. I’m sure things will settle themselves, and then when you’ve got this place nice and shipshape and you’re up and running, she’ll be able to settle down here. She goes to kindergarten a couple of times a week now, you know. Didn’t I tell you in my last letter? She started at the local école which has a sort of créche attached for little ones her age. She’s already beginning to pick up French.’

  It was like listening to a mother singing the praises of her daughter and Cissy wanted suddenly to scream at her that she was the mother, not Daisy. But Daisy seemed so blithe about it all, and she had been a great help in times of need, so how could she jump down her throat now? She was tired, that was all, worn out by searching for somewhere to live, to trade; most of the time thoroughly despondent, unable to think straight. And now she’d found something it was like some sort of reaction had set in, making her more downhearted than exhilarated. It wasn’t Daisy’s fault.

  ‘I’ll see her soon then.’ She smiled, leaned forward and kissed Noelle. ‘I’ll see you in a little while, my love,’ and was startled by Noelle leaning away from her as if a stranger had kissed her.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘Miss Farmer, isn’t it?’

  On her way along Bethnal Green Road in search of a brief lunchtime snack, Cissy turned sharply, instantly on the alert at the sound of her name called. Her eyes grew guarded as the full figure bore down upon her through the spring sunshine like a ship in full sail, except that it was attired in rusty black despite the fine weather.