All My Mother's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  All My

  Mother’s

  Secrets

  BEEZY MARSH

  PAN BOOKS

  For the women who worked

  tirelessly to keep their families together

  through two world wars.

  We are the laundry girls,

  The laundry girls are we.

  Washing powder on our faces,

  That’s how it should be.

  Some say we’re common,

  Common we may be,

  If it wasn’t for us laundry girls

  Where would the rich men be?

  Song, Anon., early twentieth century

  Contents

  Prologue: Acton, May 1934

  1: Soapsud Island, November 1918

  2: November 1918

  3: November 1918

  4: November 1918

  5: May 1919

  6: July 1919

  7: August 1919

  8: November 1925

  9: December 1925

  10: December 1925

  11: May 1926

  12: May 1926

  13: March 1934

  14: Notting Hill, January 1900

  15: May 1900

  16: May 1900

  17: August 1901

  18: January 1904

  19: Acton, May 1934

  20: May 1934

  21: May 1934

  22: May 1934

  23: September 1934

  24: December 1934

  25: December 1934

  26: February 1935

  27: August 1914

  28: January 1915

  29: May 1915

  30: July 1916

  31: February 1935

  32: August 1936

  33: May 1938

  Epilogue: September 1939

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets

  Prologue

  Acton, May 1934

  Her tears had dried, but Annie’s throat was still hoarse from crying as the tram clattered down the High Street, taking her away from her family and the run-down streets she called home.

  They’d never had much, struggling to get by, just like everyone else round their way, but they’d stuck together through everything life could throw at them. That had always been enough, until now.

  Annie clasped the worn leather handles of her carpet bag. Everything she owned had been hurriedly stuffed in there and she’d gone without even writing a note. Even after the countless quarrels that families have, she could never have imagined she’d leave home like this, lifting the latch and sneaking away up the front path. But that was before her whole world had turned upside down.

  Secrets, half-truths – her head was spinning just trying to make sense of it all. Only one thing was certain: finding out had changed everything.

  As the tram arrived at the bustling terminus in Shepherd’s Bush, she wiped her eyes and stood up, smoothing the creases from her skirt and straightening her green felt cloche hat.

  Annie stepped down, joining the crowd of people who had places to go, catching a bus up to the West End of London.

  Her heart was pounding but she lifted her chin and forced a smile as the bus conductor took her penny fare.

  Whatever the future held, there was no going back.

  1

  Soapsud Island, November 1918

  Monday was washday.

  Annie watched the women struggling up Acton Lane, towards the communal laundry at the baths, with bundles of clothing tied up in sheets and slung over their shoulders.

  For sixpence you could get a nice hot bath, if you could afford it, but the women’s task was to get their clothes clean, bashing their laundry against the washboards at the sinks. Some were bow-legged under the weight of the week’s dirty washing, which would be boiled, scrubbed, washed, rinsed, put through the wringer, starched and pegged out to dry before the day was done; not just hung up any old how on the washing line, either. There was an order to things; it had to be neatly done, on lines in the back yard, or the neighbours would talk.

  A lucky few housewives had a handcart to wheel the laundry up the narrow winding lane, bordered on either side by rows of glum, sooty little terraced houses. The less fortunate bore their burden, followed by a gaggle of runny-nosed children who should really have been in school, shouldn’t they?

  Outside the grocer’s shop up on the High Street, a couple of women tutted as they raised their handbags at the passing spectacle, as if to shield themselves from the disorder of the lower classes. They’d come from the big houses, over the other side of the town, in West Acton, but the war meant people weren’t so choosy about where they were seen these days. Word got around about any shop that did a half-decent loaf and didn’t try to short-change you or give you a little under what you’d paid for.

  The smell of freshly baked bread wafted out of the bakery down the road, making Annie’s stomach rumble; she hadn’t had time to have anything more than a quick cuppa for breakfast once she’d filled the copper in the scullery – that had taken six buckets of water. Then she’d put the whites in to soak while she popped up the road to the shop.

  She caught sight of the ladies’ gloved hands and felt her rough, cracked knuckles. It made her want to cry, having her hands in such a terrible state, but her mother had told her time and time again there was no shame in bearing the marks of a hard day’s work. It was just that she dreaded the arrival of winter when the keens would crack and bleed and she’d spend every night with her swollen fingers coated in lanolin to try to soothe them, or dunking them in warm, salty water to stop them getting infected.

  The two ladies stopped twittering away to each other like a pair of linnets and looked her up and down. The toes of their polished boots were just peeking out of their long skirts and the pure white lace collars of their blouses sat perfectly against their slender throats. One had a watch on a long gold chain around her neck and the other had a beautiful amethyst brooch pinned to the lapel of her fur-tipped coat. Annie met their gaze, just as her mother had taught her.

  She fumbled to do up the buttons on her cardigan, to make herself look as smart as she could. Her long chestnut hair hung in loose bunches secured by ribbons and her blunt fringe was the work of her mum’s scissors. They’d probably notice that her black woollen pinafore had seen better days and the collar of her blouse was fraying, but at least it was bleached and starched nicely. She had come here to do some shopping, just like them, and her money was as good as anybody else’s.

  Annie made a great show of undoing the clasp on her purse; there was no handbag, she couldn’t afford one of those. But she had worked hard for her purse, which was getting a little worn now.

  The women watched her intently as she chose two apples, and the greengrocer slipped them into a little brown paper bag for her: ‘Nice morning, Annie. But you’re running a bit late today, aren’t you?’

  She shuffled her feet a bit, trying to hide her impatience as he weighed out a small brown loaf and popped a couple of tiny little rolls on the scales too. The makeweights were the best bit, because she liked to munch on one of those on the way back home, even though they were half stale, like the bread; that was how the shops had to sell it, with the war on. It was supposed to stop people eating too much. Her stepdad, Bill, hated the bread these days anyway, because it was made of brown flour, which played havoc with his insides. That meant there was more left for everyone else, which was a blessing.

  She needed to get up to the butcher’s to get some liver for his tea or she’d never hear the end of it, but it was already gone eight o’clock. She’d try to nip back up the road in her lunch break and pray to God that Bill didn’t give her a thick ear for good measure
. There was just so much more to do these days, with Mum expecting again.

  It made Annie’s stomach lurch to see Mum heaving that great bump around in front of her as she made her way down the steep staircase to head out to work. There was no banister for her to cling on to: the bedroom doors on either side opened straight on to the stairs, which led down to a thin, dark passageway into the scullery. This baby was going to be bigger than the last one, you mark my words, that’s what Nanny Chick said. There would be six of them in the house once the baby came. At least they didn’t have to share with another family, like so many of her friends did, because that only led to fights over who was going to use the copper on washdays and who was spending too long in the lavvy in the yard.

  Clutching her shopping tightly in its brown paper bag, Annie ran, as fast as she could, back down Acton Lane, under the railway arch and down her street, Fletcher Road, to deliver the shopping back home to Nanny Chick. Then she was off again, scampering along Beaumont Road, past the carts which were already delivering their loads from the big houses up in Holland Park, with laundry hands heaving wicker hampers off the back, while the blinkered horses stood idle. There were shouts of ‘Morning!’ as she darted past, while a couple of housewives stood on their steps, arms folded, watching her. It would give them something to gossip about later.

  It seemed the whole terrace had been enveloped in some strange fog which had seeped through the letterboxes and steamed up the windows. Annie knew the temperature inside those houses would be rising, forcing sweat from the brows of the washerwomen, but the rule was to keep the windows tightly closed to make drying easier, especially in the colder weather. The laundries all had such wonderful names gaily painted on the arched wooden gates to their yards: Sweet Lavender, Honeysuckle Villa, the Cambrian Hand Laundry and even the Blanchisserie Royale (which no one could even pronounce without getting their knickers in a twist, so they just called it ‘Blanche’s’); they all sounded so charming that the posh folk probably thought their drawers were being dunked in a babbling brook and dried in a field full of wild flowers. That thought always made Annie hoot with laughter.

  The old washerwomen still nattered about the days when it was Acton-in-the-Fields, not so long ago, but that was a world away from what Annie and the other laundrymaids knew. This was London’s Washtub, where row upon row of sooty terraces were stuffed to the gunnels with women and girls scrubbing with all their might to lift the dirt from the collars and cuffs of the well-to-do for shillings; where grimy back yards were criss-crossed with washing lines and the Laundry Missus prayed nightly that no stray smuts would land on the clean sheets before they were pressed and packed.

  This grubby little network of streets, where every family worked alongside each other from dawn to dusk in the searing heat and the damp of the hand laundry, was Annie’s world.

  She turned into Antrobus Road. The green wooden gates of the Hope Cottage Laundry were flung open, and the yard was already a hive of activity, with hampers being carted into the sorting room at the back.

  Every day was washday for Annie in Soapsud Island.

  ‘You’re late!’

  Mrs Blythe, the Laundry Missus, was an absolute harridan, especially with the younger laundrymaids.

  Annie had barely set foot over the threshold of the little terraced house before the old dragon was peering at her through her thick glasses, tapping her wristwatch and scolding her poor time-keeping. She knew that Annie had extra chores, what with her mother being in the family way again, but she wasn’t prepared to make any allowances.

  No. Mrs Blythe felt it was her duty, plain and simple, to boss the likes of Annie about from morning till night, and she’d probably dock her a few pennies’ pay at the end of the week too. Some of the girls from the laundry around the corner in Fairlawn Road said their Missus wasn’t always a proper cow, so it didn’t have to be that way. Annie had said as much at tea break once and Bill had raised his hand to her for that, so she kept those thoughts to herself these days.

  The Missus thought Bill walked on water, which was a true miracle, given that he spent most of his days sneaking a tot from the laundrymen’s beer from the barrel under the stairs, when he should have been lugging laundry hampers around the place or heaving the wet sheets out of the washtubs with the other laundry hands. Before the war, she’d employed four fellas to help with the heavy lifting and would bark orders at them all day but now she’d only got Bill – who’d got signed out of the Army with lumbago – and Chas, who was too old to fire a gun, the recruiting office had said so when he volunteered.

  The Missus knew decent men were hard to come by, so she was prepared to turn a blind eye to Bill’s malingering. And Bill knew how to butter her up, bringing her a nice pig’s trotter from the butcher’s now and again. ‘Ooh, William, you are so kind to an old widder like me, you spoil me!’ she’d cry and clap her hands together, tucking the brown paper parcel under her rocking chair, next to her tea caddy. Then she’d turn to the youngest laundrymaids, who were supposed to be busy learning how to mark the customers’ clothes with tiny, perfect letters and numbers in red cotton on a white hankie. ‘What are you gawping at? Get on with it!’ she’d yell, and half a dozen heads would stop peering around the door from the packing room and go back to their work until the Missus was satisfied they’d done it neatly enough, otherwise they’d have to unpick every letter and number and do it all over again. Annie remembered those days and how she’d seemed to be endlessly pricking her thumb with the needle. Some of the girls were only just turning twelve and should really have been at school but their dads were away fighting and so Mrs Blythe said they could come along to the laundry with their mums to earn a few shillings extra. It had been the same for her, when her family needed her to start earning, so Annie had to admit, begrudgingly, perhaps Mrs Blythe wasn’t all bad.

  No one was sure exactly how long the Missus had been in the laundry business, but she’d come out of Notting Hill with her husband and their four daughters when there were still cows and lambs at the end of the road rather than rows of grimy houses and a pub. Her grey hair reminded Annie of a wire-wool pot-scrubber. All her children were grown up and married now and had moved out to run their own laundries in Kensal Town. Mr Blythe had upped and died before the war and left her to it in Acton, but apart from taking the morning off to bury him, she still ran that laundry like clockwork. Every minute her girls worked was noted down in a ledger on her knee and every piece they ironed was checked by her beady eyes and sent back if it didn’t come up to scratch. Some of the washerwomen swore she had another set of eyes in the back of her head because not so much as a handkerchief left Hope Cottage in the wrong hamper.

  Only Annie’s gran, her mum’s mum, Nanny Chick, called her by her first name, Eliza, because she had worked in Notting Hill too, back in the nineties, but you could see by the way Mrs Blythe’s lantern jaw set tight that she didn’t like that one bit, especially in front of the younger girls.

  ‘The others are already hard at it. You’d best go and join ’em,’ she barked at Annie’s back, as she made her way down the dank corridor with its peeling flowered wallpaper and into the dingy wash house, which had a solitary window overlooking the yard.

  The wash house was once just a scullery, but it had been extended so that it now took up most of the patch of earth out at the back which the laundry rather proudly claimed as its ‘drying grounds’. On warm days, Bill sometimes clambered up the ladder to put a clothes horse on the flat roof because the tiny yard was filled with sheets flapping about like a ship in full sail. Annie had prayed, on more than one occasion, that he might miss his footing on the way back down that rickety old ladder, but to no avail.

  Three sinks with cold taps ran the length of the wall under the window, and on tables next to them half a dozen women were busy with scrubbing boards set across zinc baths. On the other side of the room were two huge galvanized iron pans with little stoves under them. These were the ‘coppers’ that were used to heat th
e water for the washing. The steam was rising steadily, meaning the coals were well alight. The coppers were four times as big as the one Annie had at home and took the laundrymen a good ten minutes to fill to the brim, making them hawk up spit from the effort of lugging the buckets. Next to the coppers were wooden tubs which came almost up to Annie’s waist, for soaking the colours in.

  The tiled floor was already awash with water – it slopped out of buckets and sploshed over the sides of sinks. Cold, wet feet were probably one of the worst bits of the job, especially in the winter. By the end of the day, Annie’s feet would be wet through again and she’d have to stuff newspaper down the toes of her boots and sit them by the fire to try to dry, which made the leather all hard and crusty when she put them back on in the morning. And while the laundresses’ feet were freezing, their faces would be sweating from the rising steam which hit the cold whitewashed walls, ran down in rivulets and formed puddles everywhere. It couldn’t have been much worse to be aboard a ship in the middle of a stormy sea, with waves crashing up the sides of the boat and water sluicing about all over the deck.

  The laundrymen were supposed to mop it up, but it was like fighting a losing battle, Bill said, and so he usually gave up before he’d even started and the water lapped over the top of Annie’s toecaps by lunchtime and they all had to be careful not to slip.

  ‘Well, look what the cat’s dragged in. Nice of you to turn up,’ said Bill, sticking his head around the door of the sorting room, where Annie’s friend Vera and a new girl were busy yanking dirty linen from the hampers: whites for boiling in the copper and colours for soaking in the wooden tubs. Bill wasn’t a tall bloke but he was stocky, with huge muscles on his forearms from all the heavy lifting. His pudgy face reminded Annie of dough and there was more than a bit of a paunch over the top of his trousers because Bill liked his food, as she knew only too well. His hair was cut short, right up over his ears, just as it had been when he was a reservist in the Army, but the top bit was longer, greasy and black with flecks of grey around the ears, and he was forever brushing it out of his face. Annie had never asked how old he was – she wouldn’t have dared – but she’d guess he was a bit older than her mum, so he must be the wrong side of forty. He gave a gap-toothed grin as he spoke, as if he was just ribbing her, but his eyes weren’t smiling.