by Maggie Ford
‘Something went through my mind,’ she excused, more easy in herself than she’d been for days.
They were broke – all of them. Had barely enough for a taxi to get Daisy and her husband to her house in Plaistow. One pound four shillings and sixpence ha’penny, by Eddie’s last count. When money grew scarce it was amazing how well an exact record can be kept to the very last ha’penny. The rich had no need of such exact counting. Even when Cissy had been going careful with the money Langley had thrown at her, she hadn’t counted so miserly.
But she had no intention of dwelling on those humiliating days now. Broke – she had never been so broke – she felt far more her own worth than at any time with Langley and all his money. No matter how broke she and Eddie became, they would pull themselves up out of the mire. With him she would hold up her head and face whatever came.
‘We’re going to be all right, Eddie,’ she said confidently and had a sudden desire to laugh out loud.
She looked across at him, expecting him to laugh with her, instead met his unsmiling face and instantly the laughter inside her died, leaving a strange uncertainty and bewilderment, though she wasn’t sure why.
Putting down his case, Eddie fished in his pocket for his door key – such a small domestic action after all they’d been through, that tears came to Cissy’s eyes and she forgot the small hurt his unsmiling face had caused. She stood close to him as the key turned.
‘We’re home, Eddie, love,’ she whispered. ‘Whatever’s wrong between us, it’ll be better now.’ She saw him nod, but he said nothing.
The door opened, not by him pushing it, but by Mrs Bennett on the other side, having heard their arrival. Her square face was wreathed in smiles of relief. In her arms, little Edward was giving an immense yawn, his fresh little face stretched about his wide open mouth.
Cissy felt a surge of love go through her – almost like a pain.
‘Oh, Edward! My lovely pet! I’ve missed you so!’
Letting go Noelle’s hand, which she had been clutching for so long, she reached out and hugged him to her, kissing the sleepy face. Tears of relief at being home, seeing her baby again, trickling down her cheeks, she pressed her face against his warm soft chubby one. Even that didn’t seem enough as she kissed and kissed him.
She heard Eddie laugh. An odd relieved sort of laugh. The first laugh she’d heard from him in months it seemed. So unexpected.
‘Don’t eat him!’ His light quip came close to her ear – Eddie who for so long had never resorted to quips.
Cissy was laughing again now, everyone else forgotten but him and Edward.
‘I could eat him! I could eat him all up!’ she cried, and she felt Eddie’s arm come around her waist, guiding her as she took their son into the tiny front room, the others following them.
After Daisy and Theodore had been put into a taxi, leaving Noelle behind, too tired to cry for her auntie, Noelle put to bed in Edward’s cramped cot, Edward was to share his grandmother’s bed that night – an early night for everyone – Cissy and Eddie lay side by side staring up at the narrow ceiling, still lit by the fading sunset through the drawn curtains.
Cissy’s voice came softly. ‘There’s something the matter, Eddie. I can feel it. I’ve felt it for years and I don’t know what it is.’
‘It’s nothing.’ His voice sounded hollow. ‘Nothing at all now.’
‘But there was – something,’ she persisted.
‘Pressures, I suppose.’
‘We’ll always have pressures.’
‘I know.’
Their voices softly droning.
‘We’ve got no money.’
‘We’ll ’ave to start concentrating on getting some business. We’ll be paying back the bank loan for years yet.’
Cissy lay very still beside him, ‘We,’ he had said, not ‘I’ – I have to. Something inside her leapt in joy. But she continued to lie still. ‘But I’m worried – about you and Edward…’ She paused. ‘And Noelle,’ she ventured, making it sound like an afterthought. She knew now what had been nagging at him. She didn’t want to raise that particular bugbear again, but Eddie’s voice came evenly and softly.
‘You love her.’
‘I hardly know her. She’s my child, but I don’t know her…not the way I know Edward. He’s mine. Somehow she doesn’t yet seem mine. I’m going to have to work hard to make it feel so…’
She broke off and turned to him. ‘Oh, Eddie, I’m so sorry about not telling you. I was so wrong, and….’
He laid a hand over her mouth. ‘It don’t matter no more, Cissy. We’ll be a family, the four of us. We’ll find the money again to live decently. One day it’ll be all right, you see.’
Gently he kissed her, then less gently, more in urgency, and as she melted into his arms, he made love to her with a passion that took her wholly by surprise.
‘We’ve come full circle,’ he mumbled once against her lips.
Yes, she thought, rags to riches and back to rags, right to where I started. But she didn’t tell him that as she gave herself up to his love.
Acknowledgements
My grateful thanks to:
Ron Sewell, retired lighterman, Freeman of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames, who gave me the idea for this book and for all his ready advice and information on Thames lightermen.
I should also like to thank Mrs Beryl Meadows for the loan of the book concerning an old family connection, a hundred years of towage, 1833–1933,fn1 which has provided me with invaluable information on the towage business for part of this fictional book.
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Epub ISBN: 9781473501034
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Ebury Press, an imprint of Ebury Publishing
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London SW1V 2SA
Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com
Copyright © Maggie Ford 1996
Cover photographs: woman © Head Design; background © Getty Images
Maggie Ford has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
First published in 1996 as A Better Life by Judy Piatkus (Publishers) Ltd
First published by Ebury Press in 2017
www.penguin.co.uk
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780091956271
Acknowledgements
fn1 The history of Messrs. Wm. Watkins Ltd., by Frank C. Bowen, 1933.
