An East End Girl

by Maggie Ford

  ‘And my best ain’t good enough for you, is that it?’

  He almost added, if that’s the case go back to your fancy boyfriend – the one what gave you a baby. But he caught himself in time, instead he got up, dropping his paper on the chair behind him. ‘I’m tired. I need an early night. I think I’ll ’ave a wash and go to bed.’

  Cissy sat down again. ‘I’ll follow in a minute,’ she said limply, but he didn’t reply as he went out to the tiny kitchen to wash.

  Christmas was spent quietly, with his mother. The first anniversary of his father’s death, how could they not be with her? But Cissy hated every minute, having to endure the renewed grieving, though she understood.

  ‘This time last year,’ Mrs Bennett sighed, as she dished up a small chicken, all she could afford, though Cissy and Eddie had helped her out with some of the fare. ‘I ’ad my poor Alf with me this time last year. No one could’ve guessed within days he’d be taken.’

  As they sat themselves down at the table, Eddie went and put his arms about her.

  ‘I miss ’im too, Mum.’ His brown eyes swam with tears, managing not to let them spill over onto his cheeks.

  Mrs Bennett wiped her eyes and stoically motioned her son back to his place. ‘We mustn’t let it spoil our Christmas dinner. But I think it’d be nice to say a little prayer for ’im, don’t you?’

  ‘That would be nice, Mum,’ Eddie said, sitting down.

  Together the three bent their heads over their plates, their hands loosely clasped.

  ‘Dear God,’ intoned Mrs Bennett, taking the initiative as the wife of the deceased. ‘Let us be truly thankful for what we’re about to receive, and bless my dear Alf, Eddie’s father, in ’eaven.’ She looked up quickly. ‘He will be in ’eaven – ’e was a good man. Never did no one any wrong.’

  Eddie ran a hand across his nose, sniffing. Cissy watched them both from under her brows, feeling for her husband in his loss.

  ‘A good businessman, was your father,’ Mrs Bennett continued. ‘If things ’ad been different, and if that money we got from my poor sister ’ad been at the start of his life, he’d’ve done really well. But that’s ’ow it goes for the likes of us – always too late. Not that I wish my poor sister gone earlier than she did. A dear friend to me, she was, and I miss ’er too. Dear God, bless ’er too. We miss ’er as well as my poor Alf.’

  Cissy assumed she was determined to put a downer on the whole of their Christmas, remembering her Alf and her sister, the dear departeds, but Mrs Bennett finally came to herself with a deep brave sigh. ‘Well, we mustn’t let our dinners get cold. My Alf wouldn’t’ve wanted that.’

  ‘No,’ Eddie enjoined and after another brief sniff to rid himself of grief and memories of better times, fell to eating what had been put before him.

  Even so, it was a dismal day, inside and out. Cissy longed for the summer and warm sunny weather, longed for March and for her baby to be born, longed for tomorrow, Boxing Day with her family, Mrs Bennett having been persuaded to come with them to help alleviate her sense of loss at this her saddest time of the year and for many years to come.

  Compared to her gloomy home with just one piece of holly over the mantel mirror, Mum’s was an Aladdin’s cave – decorations from a dozen past Christmases regularly brought down from the attic. This year, put up by May, who had a boyfriend now who had helped her. Usually a small new garland would be added each year, perhaps an old and tatty one discarded, the collection growing steadily in its box. But not this year. No money to squander on inessential bits and pieces.

  Little money or not, unemployment or not, this was Christmas – misery and festivity had no part with each other. Conversation was batted back and forth. Cheap, but nicely made food – Mum had always been good at making something out of nothing when feeding her own. Cissy knew full well that in her condition she would end up with heartburn, eating so much pastry, cheap and cheerful but light, with the meagrest filling of mincemeat or sausage, the leftovers of cold pork with pickles and Christmas pudding afterwards – no money for rich Christmas cakes, pudding did well enough cold, cut into slices.

  The main meal around midday was usually eaten in a rush so as to get to the London Palladium. It was a tradition with her family as far back as Cissy could remember, they would pack themselves off as soon after dinner as possible for the afternoon matinee of whatever pantomime was showing. It didn’t matter that everyone had seen most of them several times before, they were always different, always exciting, a different well-known actress playing principal boy, a popular male comedian playing the dame in outrageously coloured dress and striped stockings. There were always new songs taught to the audience so they could join in. With spectacular flying ballets and fairies galore, who cared if the thread of the original tale was completely lost? It was tremendous fun and afterwards they’d come home to settle down by the fireside and finish up whatever was left over from the Boxing Day dinner, rejuvenated by two and a half hours of sheer silliness.

  This year it was different. They were not going to a pantomime. Partly because there were no children except for Bobby and Ethel’s and anyway, Ethel, not feeling disposed to carting off up West after a big meal, had decided to go home, dragging her protesting husband with her. And partly because no one felt like paying hard-saved Boxing Day money just to act the fool. They went instead to Drury Lane for a bit of culture, entertained in the meantime by endless buskers as they stood in line for the gods – the cheapest top balcony seats – for the new musical Cavalcade that had been raved about since October.

  Cissy enjoyed it immensely, the first time she’d been anywhere nice since her marriage. Eddie seemed to like it, though he said little about it, while his mother said she couldn’t understand it.

  ‘It wasn’t a proper musical, was it?’ she said as they came out. ‘Not like the musicals I’ve bin used to. Bit too ’ighbrow for me.’

  Cissy’s parents had loved it. The sheer magnificent pageantry of it, filling everyone with hope of better times around the corner if the whole country pulled together, had made them come over all patriotic. After all Britain had survived wars and far worse times; the last war had been the worst anyone could ever have gone through. Things must get better soon – the menfolk back in full employment, money in the purse, more food on the table. Her parents wouldn’t stop talking about it.

  May had loved it purely because she was in love with Noel Coward as well as her current boyfriend Lenny, and anything Noel Coward produced or played in was meat and drink to her. She had all his songs, buying sixpenny copies of sheet music, painfully picking out the notes on a friend’s piano, not having one herself.

  Harry at fourteen had been bored, except when what seemed to him like hundreds of scarlet or khaki-clad soldiers were seen marching past along the back of the stage. Otherwise he complained endlessly about not being taken to see a pantomime which wasn’t fair.

  Sidney, now sixteen, hadn’t gone. More interested in a girl he had his eye on he’d been rewarded by her interest in him and had taken her out instead.

  ‘I thought it was very enjoyable,’ Cissy’s mother said when they got back home. Immediately setting about making a cup of tea for everyone, she looked refreshed, her rounded face, of late fraught with anxiety and drawn with care, tonight more brisk and younger-looking, more optimistic. Even her father, sitting chatting to Eddie and herself as if she had never left home, bore an air of optimism, and though it probably wouldn’t last long, Cissy suspected, to her it had been the best Boxing Day ever, and she was looking forward to 1932 and her new baby.

  Her mind was made up. She wrote to Daisy to explain how well she and Eddie had settled down together, that he still knew nothing about Noelle and was thrilled to bits about becoming a father.

  ‘So there’s really no need to go rocking the boat, if you see what I mean,’ she wrote blithely. ‘I know how much you love Noelle. On the other hand, I seem to be seeing less and less of her. And what with the baby coming, I was wonderi
ng, if you agree, Daisy, wouldn’t it be best to let things stand as they are? To be honest, I often don’t feel at all like her mother. I’m sure you are more a mother to her than I’ll ever be. If you were to continue raising her, she’ll never have to suffer any confusion should she be told when she is older that I’m really her mother. That is if you need to tell her at all. What’s the point of upsetting her – and Eddie? I’ll wait to hear what you think, Daisy. I know you love her dearly and it would be a wrench for you to part with her. And I know Theodore loves her too.’

  She wrote a lot more besides: about her life and money worries; how she hoped that between them, she and Eddie would eventually make a go of things; said she was wonderfully happy, though she was careful to make no mention of Eddie’s strange new moods. After all, why give Daisy, who never failed to laud her Theodore’s attributes, the chance to crow sympathy for her?

  Mrs Bennett stood pouring the tea for her son and daughter-in-law on their regular Sunday afternoon visit, her gaze riveted purposefully on what she was doing though she was addressing Cissy.

  ‘I’ve bin thinking, dear, ain’t it time you packed up in that shop of yours? I was wond’ring – save paying someone to look after it for you, I could give eye to it. Just until the little one’s born and you’re on yer feet again.’

  Cissy and Eddie exchanged glances of amazement. This woman, still sighing after her Alf and conveying the impression of total inability to ever cope alone, was now offering to run a shop. Unbelievable.

  ‘After all,’ she continued as she handed Cissy a brimming cup of extremely weak brew, ‘you’re two months off ’aving the baby. You can’t go on working. Look at the size of you.’

  Eddie, still startled, studied his mother’s pinched face as she handed him his tea. ‘But when you had a chance to manage Aunt Lottie’s café, you wouldn’t do it. You shied away – said you’d no idea how to.’

  ‘That was then,’ she said as she sat down with her own cup, pushing a round paper packet towards the two of them. ‘Biscuit?’

  Both shook their heads, trying to probe the reasoning.

  ‘Yes, that was then,’ she picked up, ‘when I didn’t need to. Your poor father was bringing in good wages and it all seemed such an extra ’eadache then. This is different. It won’t be for ever an’ I could ’elp you both out. Like I said, just till you’re on your feet again, Cissy. I mean, you’ve got ter be sensible. You don’t want ter give up a nice little goldmine like that. One day when things get better, you’ll be glad of it. It could make you a mint, that place – when things get better.’

  Everywhere people were saying: when things get better and that it can’t go on for ever. Optimism, a small seed fighting to take root, to push upwards towards some dimly imagined light despite all the signs pointing to dark days for a long time yet. The problem was that should the tiny seed of hope fail to germinate quickly enough, it would wither and die, all the old despair, the pessimism, returning worse than before. At this moment, however, Mrs Bennett was full of optimism for the future, which was so unlike her since her bereavement.

  ‘And when…’ she didn’t say if, ‘Eddie’s business picks up again with better times, you two could be rolling in it.’ Her eyes shone with an unconcealed cunning light. ‘And if I can ’elp you two through your bad times, you can ’elp me when I’m old and you’re rich.’

  Eddie burst out laughing. ‘Rich! Oh, Mum, I can’t see that ever ’appening.’

  Cissy wasn’t laughing. ‘I can. Your mum’s right, Eddie. She’d be a wonderful help. I could do with it right now. And who knows what the future might hold.’ She turned to her mother-in-law. ‘Thank you, Mum, I’ll be so very grateful to take up your offer.’

  ‘It’d give me something to do,’ her mother-in-law returned briskly, her expression so set that it bordered on comical. ‘It’s about time I stopped grievin’ over my poor Alf. Though I do miss ’im so.’

  There was a proviso to the offer that Cissy hadn’t reckoned on. At Mrs Bennett’s suggestion that it would be more convenient, she moved herself in with them – for the time being as she said – she and Cissy sharing the double bed and Eddie consigned to the couch. ‘Only until the baby’s born,’ she explained, but Cissy had begun to wonder.

  Not only that, but Mrs Bennett wasn’t Cissy. Cissy knew without questioning that it was her own business sense and natural charm that had been her selling point. Mrs Bennett as an elderly woman and, despite her previous resolve, exuding sadness, repelled rather than attracted the customers. Nor was she always sure what she was doing, often requiring Cissy with her stomach grossly out in front to waddle down the narrow, wooden and rickety outside stairs to the yard in all weathers and in through the shop’s back door to give advice.

  Of course the woman’s heart had been in the right place when she had offered her help, but anyone could see that she had taken on more than she was capable of and that she did not enjoy it, perhaps even regretted having been so generous. Having offered, she braved the ordeal as best she could, but it did reflect on her service to her customers.

  In the background Cissy, unable to show herself, seethed as Mrs Bennett gave wrong change, kept customers waiting and infuriated them as she searched frantically through odd piles of knitting patterns for the one they had selected, finally having to hurry up the outside stairs to ask, pleading and panicking, if there was some other pile she couldn’t find. She often left customers alone in the shop, at liberty to help themselves without paying, the temptation in this day and age of need too great for even the most honest to resist.

  The shop grew emptier. Mrs Bennett grew more tired as the last two months dragged on by and would flop into a chair at the end of the day while Cissy, guilty and anxious to make amends, constantly willed the day forward when her baby would be born.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Eddie!’

  She had got out of bed as quietly as she could, so as not to disturb her mother-in-law, and crept into the front room where Eddie was in a deep sleep, curled up in a most uncomfortable manner, the eiderdown that had belonged to his parents, half on the floor, the pillow askew.

  She gave his shoulder a small shake. ‘Eddie. Get up, darling – I think I’ve started.’

  ‘Yeah, started,’ he mumbled, his sleep disturbed, then came fully awake, sitting up staring at her. ‘You’ve started? Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m very sure.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you would be,’ he said, but stopped sharp as though he had caught himself saying something he shouldn’t. Leaping out of bed, he took her by the shoulders, his tone moderating to one of concern. ‘Stay here. I’ll go and tell the doctor. What time is it?’

  ‘Two o’clock,’ she whispered. ‘Or thereabouts.’

  ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘Asleep. I tried not to disturb her.’

  He was struggling out of pyjamas and into his clothes. ‘Go and wake her up. You’ll need her with you while I’m gone. Though I’ll only be a couple of ticks.’

  Doctor Fisher, tall, lean and balding, resided and practised over a shop several doors down. She knew Eddie would be back as quickly as he had predicted, their doctor telephoning from there for an ambulance, Cissy having been booked in at the London Hospital.

  Out into the chilly March morning half an hour later, Cissy dressed and guided downstairs to the waiting ambulance by her mother-in-law, Eddie was the picture of concern.

  All three sitting together as the vehicle made its way through the deserted, rain-flecked streets, he fretted at the vehicle’s almost leisurely pace as Cissy’s pains came and went at least four times in his estimation.

  The ambulance man with them grinned at his chafing. ‘Plenty of time, mate. Her first, is it?’

  ‘No…er, yes.’ He caught himself in time, shot Cissy a look but she was occupied by another spasm. But what if she had caught some small significance in that slip of the tongue?

  He was still squirming when the vehicle drew to a stop and Cissy was ass
isted down by two nurses who had come out to receive her. He watched her being conducted through the hospital doors, a nurse on either side helping her shuffling gait, the trio already laughing at a quip from one of the nurses about her cup of cocoa having had to be left and that some people do pick their times! He felt reprieved. Cissy couldn’t have heard.

  ‘No need to wait, Mr Bennett,’ a nurse – he thought a staff nurse, though he wasn’t familiar with uniforms – came back to tell him after Cissy had been taken off to be examined somewhere in the depths of the hospital. She smiled encouragement at him and his mother. ‘Nothing will happen for hours. Your wife is in good hands, Mr Bennett. Come back around midday and wait in reception. You will most likely find yourself a father by then. The second usually comes into the world a lot faster than the first.’

  ‘The second?’ He was aware of his mother gazing at the woman as though she were an imbecile. ‘No, dear, this is ’er first. They ain’t been married ’ardly a year.’

  The staff nurse gave her a smile that said truth will out but she was loath to be the bearer of it. ‘According to our examination, this isn’t…’

  Eddie was pulling his mother away. ‘It’s all right, nurse. We do understand. We’ll come back in the morning.’ He all but dragged his confused and protesting mother to the entrance.

  It was a tight-lipped woman who saw him off to the hospital next morning, her excuse that Thursday with half-day closing necessitated her being in the shop to deal with morning customers – true, though not imperative. So he went alone. He went late. By that time Cissy was asleep after the birth of a son three hours before. The staff nurse had been right. It had come quickly. After all, it was her second child.

  He sat beside her in the long twenty-bedded ward, watching her sleeping. Other mothers sat in their beds cuddling their newborn and chatting, the ward was filled with a buzz of conversation. Bedpans clattered distantly, trolleys soughed softly on the ward’s grey linoleum, the air rustled to the starched progress of a passing nurse, but he felt apart from it all, sitting there torn between contrasting sensations: tenderness, hurt, sorrow for the lie she’d been living; anger against it; pride in his new son and her achievement; and a profound sense of disillusionment that someone before him had put his seed into her. Did she still love that person? All the time he had made love to her, had she been thinking of that other one, comparing them, sighing for him even as he, Eddie, thrilled to those sighs?