All My Mother's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  TB, the White Death – there was no cure for it, Annie knew that only too well. She’d learned in the laundry to avoid the washers and the packers who were always coughing, because Mum said they might spread germs. They were the ones who looked like ghosts and were thin as rakes, no matter what they ate for elevenses.

  But it had never crossed anyone’s mind that George could have it, although the doctors said just playing out with the other kids in the street would be enough to catch it, and he had spent some time in the day nursery at Bollo Bridge Road too, which Mum felt sure was to blame.

  The doctors said George was a strong little boy because he must have been infected with TB for over a year, judging by the state of his lung. Every Saturday afternoon, when Annie went up to visit him, there seemed to be a little bit more to him, which gave her hope. Mum went twice in the week, leaving work early, but she was pregnant again and was starting to get so tired. She’d been nearly thirty-five when she popped Ivy out and had been surprised to find herself pregnant again so quickly. It seemed she was destined never to get a moment’s peace in the house, what with Nanny’s legs not being what they were, so she couldn’t do as much, and then there was Bill to be waited on hand and foot.

  George didn’t seem to mind that he was on his own a lot at the hospital. He sat tucked up in bed with sheets starched so stiff he could barely move and he smiled in a way that Annie hadn’t seen in ages.

  ‘It was beef stew again today, Annie,’ he said, as she smoothed his hair back from his forehead. His eyes still seemed to be eating up his face but there was a plumpness to his cheeks now. ‘And I get cocoa and biscuits too.’ She couldn’t hug or kiss him, in case of catching the infection, which seemed silly to her because she’d shared a bed for long enough and not picked it up, but rules were rules. The nurses were absolute sticklers, with a ‘don’t sit there’ and a ‘don’t touch that’, but George didn’t seem to mind being bossed about.

  The ward had a huge balcony so that the nurses could wheel the children outside to get fresh air in their beds and they usually spent the mornings out there. George had got chatting to a scrawny little boy in the next bed who came from Hanwell and they talked about all the games they were going to play in the street when they got out, but the boy disappeared after a week or so and didn’t come back.

  ‘Has Charlie gone home?’ Annie asked a nurse, but she didn’t answer and looked away, busying herself arranging the flowers which stood on the table in the centre of the room. Annie didn’t ask again. She had guessed the truth and it was too awful to speak out loud.

  Doctors said the best hope for George was that his lung would heal and then the TB would just be sleeping inside his body, but George would always have a weak chest. It could spread to his bones and cause him pain, or it could develop in his lungs again – but nobody could be certain. Nobody talked about the worst happening, but that thought hovered, like some ghostly faceless figure, in Annie’s dreams every night. Annie knew she’d have to take extra care to give him whatever food she could and make sure he was warm at home, no matter that she’d go hungry herself. She just wanted her little brother to come back, and the run-up to him leaving hospital was like counting down to Christmas – except for the fact that Bill kept moaning about how the payments for their health insurances would go up now that George needed to see the doctor more often. It was already five shillings and fivepence quarterly for the family, but that was going to go up to six shillings and sixpence to cover the extra check-ups and care that George would need.

  Annie was going to say she’d do extra hours to cover it and she’d been planning to mention it at teatime, but Bill was busy complaining that the corned beef they’d had was giving him terrible indigestion.

  The pretty pink geranium pot plant that Annie had been tending on the window ledge, so that George would have something nice to look at when he came home, seemed to have wilted under the weight of Bill’s misery. Either that or he’d been chucking the dregs of his tea into it when Annie wasn’t watching, which was the most likely explanation.

  Annie was washing up in the scullery and Mum was darning socks at the kitchen table when Bill turned to her and said: ‘We’d best keep him away from our Ivy, and with you being in the family way, I can’t have the baby or you catching it.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Mum, plonking her work down in front of her.

  Bill lowered his voice and Annie had to strain to listen in, but she caught enough of it to hear the words ‘Suffolk’ and ‘fresh air’.

  ‘I won’t do it, Bill, I won’t!’ Mum cried. ‘You promised me he would always be with us, no matter what, and I won’t send him away. Not now, not when he might not . . .’

  ‘I suppose I will have to put another penny on the burial insurances, if he’s staying,’ Bill cut in, matter-of-factly.

  Mum collapsed onto the table and started to cry, huge great sobs. ‘Don’t say that, Bill! No, I can’t bear it!’

  Annie rushed to comfort her, but Bill blocked her path: ‘You stay out of it!’ His hands were calloused from years of hard graft in the laundry and Annie knew all too well how it felt when they clattered against the side of her head, but she stood her ground.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to stay out of it. He is my brother.’

  ‘You need to learn some manners,’ spat Bill, his eyes flashing with a look approaching malice. ‘This is grown-up talk.’

  Mum looked up, imploringly. ‘Please, Annie, don’t . . .’

  Annie felt the rush of air and then searing pain as the flat of his palm struck her ear, making it throb, but she willed herself not to move an inch.

  ‘Oh, you want more, do you?’ He raised his other hand and made to strike her, but Mum screamed, ‘No!’ and grabbed his arm. He shook her off, like she was nothing more than a little sheet blowing in the breeze, and she sat back down at the table.

  Upstairs, Ivy started crying for her mother.

  Nanny Chick hobbled into the room to see what all the fuss was about. She had a shawl drawn around her shoulders and wore the same high-necked black blouse she always did, with a heavy gold locket fastened at the neck. Her silver hair was parted straight down the middle and pulled back into a low bun and her cheeks were a mass of lines and creases, but there was a kind of fire behind her piercing blue eyes which defied her years. She had her knitting with her; she was always clicking away with her needles, working on a new dress for Ivy.

  ‘You can stay out of it an’ all,’ said Bill, his mouth twisting into a leer. It was as if all the unpleasantness, which Annie knew was cooped up inside him all day long as he toiled in the wash house, was there on his face for all to see. ‘This is about what’s best for the family.’

  ‘Don’t you dare lecture me about family, not until you’ve lived as long as I have,’ said Nanny Chick, ambling towards him, to his utter astonishment. She brandished her knitting needle. ‘Don’t think I won’t use it!’ she said poking it towards Bill’s pudgy face. ‘Who do you think you are, getting handy with my girls?’

  He recoiled as the pointy end of the needle skimmed past his cheek.

  ‘Oh, you’d better believe it,’ said Nanny. ‘I’ve fought worse than you.’

  ‘You’re stark raving mad, woman!’ he said, throwing his hands up and turning his back on her. ‘Can’t a man speak his mind in his own house?’

  But Nanny Chick was just getting into her stride: ‘I’m paying half the rent here and don’t you forget it.’ She prodded him in the paunch over the top of his trousers. ‘I won’t be told what to do by a bleeding dollyman. This is my house just as much as yours.’

  Bill scowled at her. He was just a laundry hand and he hated to be reminded of it because the ironers out-earned him two to one and they were all women. Without Nanny Chick’s savings to top up their income they’d be squished into two rooms down one of those rough-and-tumble streets, like Stirling Road, because he only earned about a pound a week. The fact that he didn’t bring in enough to keep
his wife rankled with him something chronic. He slunk off towards the sink and they all knew he was defeated.

  ‘My grandson is coming home, and he can have my bed,’ said Nanny Chick, turning on her heel. ‘I can sleep in the rocking chair and shame on you for saying otherwise.’

  Tears seemed to come from nowhere and Annie heard herself crying. Her ear suddenly felt huge on the side of her head where Bill had thwacked it. But she knew she wasn’t crying about that. She was crying for George, poor George, who had consumption and who wasn’t even wanted in his own home. And for her mother, who just seemed frozen at the kitchen table, unable to speak up to protect him.

  Nanny turned around and barked at them: ‘Annie, stop snivelling, girl, and don’t cheek your elders or you will come a cropper. Emma, that baby of yours needs seeing to, there’s no use sitting there crying. I have never seen anything like it in all my born days . . .’ And she shuffled back off into her room, chuntering to herself as she went.

  Ivy was wailing her head off upstairs and Mum sighed as she went to see to her. Annie heard her mother humming ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’ to get her back to sleep.

  Bill glowered at Annie across the scullery. She grabbed her cardigan and bolted for the front door before he could take another swipe at her.

  The net curtains in the other houses were twitching as she made her way up the street. You could tell which families worked in the laundry because their curtains were starched and blued to look pristine, but the fingers clasping them were every bit as desperate for gossip as those in houses where the windows were just covered in newspaper or a tatty old blanket. The walls were thin enough that the neighbours on both sides must have heard the raised voices, and Annie probably hadn’t helped by banging the door shut on its hinges as she left.

  It was a warm evening and several people had brought chairs out from their sculleries to sit in the street while the kids played hopscotch and kick the can. A couple of women in their aprons, with arms folded, put their heads together as she walked briskly past, realizing that her family had just provided the evening’s entertainment.

  She wandered aimlessly up Acton Lane and on to the High Street, past the carts which the costermongers had parked up for the night. The shops were all shut now, their blinds down. Annie turned into Churchfield Road, past Ravilious, the draper’s, where she sometimes liked to look at all the beautiful ribbons displayed in the windows and dream about putting some fancy trimmings on her blouse. She walked along to where Esther’s family’s shoe shop used to be. It was a penny bazaar now. A painted sign on the front said, ‘All items 1d, inspection invited, step inside’. Nanny Chick would call it a ‘diddle ’em’ shop because it sold a lot of tat and when it all fell apart, the person running the shop had usually moved on, like some fly-by-night, so you might as well throw your penny down the drain.

  There was a front door to the side of the shop, with brown paint peeling off it. Annie had been meaning to try to find out how Esther was, after losing her job, and then with George being so sick and her working all hours at the laundry, she just hadn’t had the time. Before she knew what she was doing, she had rapped at the door.

  It creaked open a little way and a small, grey-haired man, wearing half-moon glasses, peered out at her: ‘What do you want?’ He almost sighed as he said it, as if he were used to people hammering at his door in the evenings for no good reason, and he spoke with a heavy accent, so it sounded as if he was saying ‘Vot do you vont?’ Annie realized she must be speaking to Esther’s grandad.

  ‘I’m a friend of Esther’s,’ said Annie, buttoning her cardigan to make herself a bit more presentable. ‘Does she live here?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the man. He stepped forwards and glanced nervously along the street. There was a sudden footfall on the stairs and Esther’s eager little face appeared behind him in the hallway: ‘Annie!’ she cried, pushing past him. ‘Come in!’

  The smell of cooking filled Annie’s nostrils as she made her way up the narrow staircase to Esther’s home.

  The walls were damp to the touch when she put out her hands to steady herself, but once she was through the door into the living room, the warmth of their home seemed to seep into her pores. There was a cracked blue and white china jug on the table filled with flowers and a pot was bubbling away on the stove, which sent the scent of cooking wafting across the room. The table was laid for dinner but there were only two places set. There was no carpet, just bare boards, but there were homely touches: old photographs and some paintings of horses, two brass candlesticks and an engraved brass goblet on the mantelpiece – a bit like the one Annie had seen in church.

  ‘Where’s your mum?’ asked Annie.

  ‘She’s cleaning up at the hospital in the evenings now,’ said Esther. ‘It’s bringing in a bit extra, which is good.’

  Annie swallowed hard. It didn’t seem fair that Esther’s mother should have to go out and work evenings, just because of something that Vera had done.

  Esther’s grandad motioned for Annie to sit down and she pulled out a chair, which squeaked on the boards. Esther sat opposite her and he perched on a sofa which was covered in a beautiful patchwork quilt. Some of the squares were embroidered with woodland animals and flowers in reds, greens and gold thread.

  ‘You like it?’ he asked. ‘From my home country, my grandmother made it a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s very pretty,’ said Annie. ‘It must have taken her ages.’

  ‘So, I have got myself another job,’ said Esther, brightly. ‘It’s up at Eastman’s, the dyeing place. I start next week.’

  ‘Oh, that is wonderful news!’ said Annie, who knew that working for Eastman’s was a bit of a comedown for any girl from Soapsud Island. If there was a laundry tradition in the family, that was where you were supposed to stay, not work in the dyeing factory. It was a bit different for Esther, of course, and she was looking for a fresh start.

  ‘And the best thing is I have time enough to go to some night classes that the council are laying on for us factory girls,’ added Esther.

  ‘Like extra learning?’ said Annie, who was fiddling with the hole in her left shoe, to stop her stocking from poking through where the leather had worn out.

  ‘Yes, it’s learning about how to be a manager, how to keep books and that,’ said Esther.

  Esther’s grandad was watching Annie’s feet with interest. She felt herself blushing as she realized that he too had spotted the hole in her shoe.

  ‘Take it off, I fix this,’ he said, motioning to her foot.

  ‘No, honestly, it’s nothing,’ she said, wanting the ground to swallow her up. Annie tucked the offending shoe behind her right calf, to hide it from view. She barely knew him, and it was just not right that he should be repairing her shoes for her. Besides, she didn’t have any money to pay for it – which was why the hole was there in the first place.

  ‘Come, come.’ He waved his hands around. ‘Give it.’

  Esther laughed: ‘It’s no good, Annie, you’ll have to let him mend your shoe or he will keep going on about it.’ She stood up and took another bowl from the draining board by the tiny sink as Annie took her shoe off and handed it to him. He examined it carefully and then picked up a leather apron from a little wooden crate by the side of the sofa. The crate had all sorts of bits and pieces in it – leather, hammers, tools that Annie had never seen the like of before.

  ‘Come on, you can stay and have some chicken soup,’ said Esther.

  ‘But I’ve already eaten! I couldn’t take food from you, it wouldn’t be right,’ said Annie, who realized that money was even shorter for Esther than it was for her family.

  Esther’s grandad was working away on the repair, tap-tapping softly. He picked up what looked like a little horseshoe and some nails and fitted it to the front of the sole and then motioned for Annie to give him the shoe from her right foot, so he could do the same on that one.

  ‘Please eat,’ he said, pointing to the soup.

  It seemed rude
not to, so Annie tried the soup. It was the most delicious thing she had ever tasted, but then again, that was compared to Nanny Chick’s pies, which were a bit hit and miss, to say the least.

  Annie gave her friend all her news, which was mostly about George’s illness, and promised to keep in touch more. ‘I’ll come and see you too,’ said Esther. ‘I don’t want to lose our friendship, Annie.’

  ‘Me neither,’ replied Annie. She’d known Vera since she started work, so they were friends, but there was something kind about Esther. It was as if she had chosen to be Annie’s friend, which made it special.

  Night had fallen by the time Annie got home to Fletcher Road, tapping her shoes along the pavement as she went, to amuse herself. But she got that horrible twisty feeling of butterflies in her stomach as she lifted the latch, in case Bill was still up, squatting in the kitchen like some toad waiting to catch a fly.

  Thankfully, the kitchen was silent, save for the scratching of the mice skittering over the red and black linoleum in their nightly dance. They were making the most of being able to scavenge without Mum’s broom chasing them out of the place.

  As Annie climbed the stairs, the only noise she heard was the creaking of bedsprings and the familiar, animal grunts that she knew came from her stepfather. Once he was snoring, a different sound carried through the thin walls that separated their bedrooms; it was her mother, sobbing.

  Annie promised herself then, that if she ever got married it would bring happiness; if it couldn’t, then she’d be better off alone.

  7

  August 1919

  It was raining cats and dogs one evening when there was a hammering on the front door.

  Mum was at the top of the stairs, grumbling about who’d be calling this late and didn’t they know they’d woken the baby up? Annie went to answer it.