All My Mother's Secrets

by Beezy Marsh

  ‘She ain’t going anywhere, I need her here,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I suppose the customers won’t mind too much if one of their hampers goes missing, will they?’ said Ed, his eyes narrowing as he drew on his ciggie. The story was that the Cambrian had lost an entire hamper the other week when some light-fingered urchins from Notting Hill made off with it.

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said the Missus, folding her arms. ‘But you will have to scrub the wash house floor when you get back, Annie. I’m not paying you to sit up there like Lady Godiva on my wages.’

  ‘Annie as Lady Godiva,’ said Ed, with a wink, as Annie turned away so he couldn’t see her turning beetroot, ‘now that would be a sight for sore eyes.’

  Moses the horse was chomping away at his nosebag as Ed smartened himself up for the laundry run; the Missus wouldn’t have her driver looking like a scruffbag – she’d told him as much on several occasions. Annie watched transfixed as he did up his top button and tied his tie before pulling on his jacket and putting on his cap to complete his uniform.

  As he settled himself in the driver’s seat, he glanced down at her and caught her staring, so she busied herself taking the nosebag off the horse, bringing it over to the footwell. It was a cold day and she let the horse’s breath warm her frozen fingers for a moment before patting his soft muzzle. Moses nodded appreciatively, looking for more food. ‘I’m sorry, boy,’ said Annie. ‘I haven’t got anything for you today, we’ve got work to do.’

  ‘Come on, Annie,’ said Ed, offering her his hand. ‘We haven’t got all day for you to be petting the horse.’ He pulled her up to sit beside him. Annie felt a little fluttering in her stomach at the thought of spending so much time with Ed – they’d only had snatched conversations in the past, but if the truth be told, she’d always wanted the chance to get to know him a bit better. There’d been a few evenings down the pub at Christmas time and on bank holidays, but the men tended to drink in one bar and the women stayed in the other with a glass of sherry, and that was the way it was.

  Ed picked up the reins and geed Moses into a walk. It was a bit bumpy up there on the driver’s seat and Annie found herself being shuffled closer to Ed with every step the horse took. Their thighs were almost touching. Ed didn’t seem to mind but Annie clasped the seat edge to try to steady herself.

  ‘It takes a bit of getting used to, don’t it?’ Ed said. ‘Everyone feels like that the first time.’

  She nodded.

  ‘We’ll wet the wagon’s wheels a bit,’ he said, flashing her one of his smiles. ‘Moses can have a drink too.’

  They plodded up Bollo Lane towards Baronsmede Pond on Gunnersbury Lane, where Annie had seen lots of carts driving through the shallows before. Some schoolboys were chucking sticks into the murky water and gawping at the horse and cart as they clip-clopped through. As they drew nearer, Annie realized that one of them was her brother, George. ‘Get yourself back to school, George Austin, or I’ll tell Mum!’ Annie shouted, reddening with anger. He wasn’t usually one to play hooky, in fact all the teachers said he was one of the brightest, but lately he’d made friends with Vera’s brother Alf, from Stirling Road, and seemed to be getting up to all sorts. Annie didn’t like that, not least because it wasn’t good for George’s chest for him to be gadding about all over the town instead of sitting calmly in class. Annie would never be rude to Vera, but Mum always muttered about those ‘rough types from Stirling Road’ and she didn’t want George falling in with the wrong crowd. He’d made a good recovery from the TB, the doctors said, but he got wheezy whenever he ran about, and winters were always a worry. At the first sign of a cold, it went right onto his chest.

  Anyway, he’d come home with a bicycle the other week and couldn’t say where he’d got it. Bill threatened to beat it out of him until George finally admitted he’d won it in a game of marbles from Alf. ‘A likely story,’ said Bill, and he marched right round to Vera’s house to have words with her parents, but Vera’s mum backed George up, while Alf stood there smirking in the background, so that was that. Vera’s dad, of course, was three sheets to the wind down the boozer and couldn’t have cared less where the bike came from, so there was no point in asking him.

  George scarpered off with Alf, who turned and poked his tongue out. Ed turned to Annie: ‘You’re like a little mother hen with that brother of yours, aren’t you?’ She couldn’t help noticing that his eyelashes were dark and long and they fluttered against his cheeks when he looked down at the reins.

  ‘Well, I’m his big sister, so that is my job, I suppose.’

  ‘I’d like to have someone looking after me like that,’ said Ed, turning to her so that she was looking straight into his eyes, which were dark grey, like charcoal. ‘I think that is a nice thing, for a girl to care about her bloke.’

  Annie fumbled with the edge of her apron. Was he talking about her being his girlfriend? She couldn’t answer him.

  They clip-clopped along Acton High Street, past the Globe Cinema, which Annie liked to visit on Saturday afternoons sometimes, especially if it was a Charlie Chaplin film showing. They even had an orchestra playing in the interval.

  ‘Do you ever go to the cinema?’ he asked, casually, tucking a strand of his fringe back under his cap, so that all Annie could think about was how very good-looking he was. Moses swished his tail as they went along.

  ‘Sometimes,’ Annie murmured. ‘I come up with my mate Esther, who works at Eastman’s, the dyeing place.’ Esther was doing well at work and was taking some exams soon in book-keeping. She kept trying to persuade Annie to come along to evening classes at the library, but Bill wasn’t having any of it: ‘What do you need to do that for? Waste of time and money! Your mother needs help with the girls at home and Nanny can’t be left in the evenings, you know that.’

  ‘I prefer going to the Crown,’ said Ed, watching her closely. ‘You know, the one with the double seats in the back row. Much more fun.’

  Annie knew exactly what he meant. The girls at work all called it the ‘fleapit’ and there was a lot of gossip about what went on in those double seats, although the usherette was well known for coming around with her flashlight to make sure people didn’t get too carried away.

  ‘Perhaps we could go and see a show there sometime,’ he ventured.

  ‘Well, I’m not sure what my mum would say,’ said Annie. Then she felt foolish for having said that. She wasn’t of age yet, but she was twenty and she’d never been out with anyone. There just didn’t seem to be time and the only person she was interested in was Ed and now he was asking her out and it made her hands go all clammy and her insides felt all messed up. The words had come out all wrong.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said, with a laugh. ‘You’re missing out on a nice evening, that’s all.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that I wasn’t interested,’ said Annie, back-pedalling. ‘It’s just with my nan not being so well lately and my little sisters needing looking after, I just have to find the time, that’s all.’

  ‘I’m only teasing,’ said Ed, geeing Moses into a little trot with a flick of his wrist. ‘You let me know when you might like to walk out with me. I promise to behave myself like a proper gent.’

  Annie let herself move a little with the rhythm of the horse and found it almost made her quite giddy, what with the trotting and the thoughts of sitting with Ed in the back row of the Crown.

  They passed a tram with a huge advert for Eastman’s plastered all over the side of it. The company seemed to be going from strength to strength, which the Missus wasn’t too happy about, because Eastman’s had a booming laundry business as well as dyeing clothes, and its vans were always coming and going around town. Esther really had landed on her feet with a job there, Annie was sure of that.

  Heading down the Vale, Annie couldn’t help noticing there were a lot of men in their late forties, like Bill, just hanging around outside pubs or loitering on street corners. She’d heard Mum and Bill talking about unemployment in hushed tones. There w
ere lots of fellas down their street who were taking on odd jobs to make ends meet because they couldn’t get work; they were washing windows, minding carts for people, just for pennies. Their neighbour was paid by the hour painting lorries down in Brentford and when the work dried up, he was laid off, just like that. And some of the families in Fletcher Road were going to the Poor Law to get help too because they couldn’t get by on their fifteen shillings a week dole money – but no one liked to talk about that, because of the shame of it.

  Uncle Arthur had a War Pension, but even he had started doing some odd jobs, in the hope that he would be able to find full-time work when he felt well enough. Annie wasn’t so scared of him any more; she understood he had been a nervous wreck when he came home from the war and it wasn’t his fault that he’d acted so strangely. It had taken him about a year to want to go outside the house, but once he did, he smartened himself up. He couldn’t be described as exactly sociable, though.

  He liked mending things, sitting for hours working on a chair or varnishing a cabinet. He rarely spoke, but he had smiled at Annie once, when she came round with a fruitcake for her aunt. She could see then that he had once been handsome because his eyes lit up. He’d joined them in the scullery for a cup of tea and a slice of cake, but when the chatter got too much, he simply got up and left, without saying goodbye. Aunt Clara shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Think we were a bit loud, Annie.’ And that was that. At least he wasn’t shouty and mean like Vera’s dad.

  As the horse made its way towards Shepherd’s Bush, Ed nodded towards a crowd of men playing cards outside a pub, using an upturned crate as a table. ‘Makes me glad to be in a regular job,’ he said. ‘People are always going to need their washing done, aren’t they?’

  Annie agreed. Some of the big employers in the Vale, Wilkinson’s Sword, Napier’s the engine factory, Du Cros cars and the battery makers Charles A. Vandervell, were laying people off and thousands had lost their jobs in the munitions factories since the end of the war.

  ‘My dad works on the railways,’ said Ed. ‘He’s always on at me to go and join him, but it’s all union politics and I can’t be doing with it.’

  Annie didn’t really understand politics but Bill liked to have a paper in the evening and she’d read a few of the headlines about unemployment on her way back from the shop to get it for him. The other laundry hands had seemed happy when Ramsay MacDonald and the Labour Party came to power last year but Bill wasn’t into any of that union stuff. The miners were agitating about wage cuts, for a start. ‘The next thing we know, it will be Communists everywhere,’ he’d say, banging his fist on the table. ‘Fair’s fair for working men but let’s not end up like bloody Russia with a revolution.’

  ‘I don’t know too much about it all, really,’ said Annie. ‘I think people just want food on the table and shoes on their feet, don’t they? And if they get a living wage then that is fair.’ But she knew lots of people around Soapsud Island were working all hours and still couldn’t make ends meet, so something probably needed to change. She wasn’t sure what that was or how it could happen, and she didn’t feel confident talking about it with Ed because Bill had told her that opinions on politics were for the men and not for women to worry their heads about.

  ‘Well, I would rather be out here taking the air with you, Annie, than stuck on a train or in some back room at Paddington Station discussing wages,’ said Ed.

  He pulled the reins and Moses came to a halt. They were parked up before the most enormous house that Annie had ever seen. It was four storeys tall and white, with fancy brickwork and a wrought-iron and glass canopy over the front path, which had black and white tiles. There was a flight of steps leading up to the front door, which was painted black and was as shiny as Moses’ coat, with a polished brass door knocker. ‘Wait here,’ said Ed, disappearing through a side gate.

  Annie clambered down and went around to the back of the cart and opened the little wooden double doors at the back, just to give herself something to do. She felt a hand on her shoulder and spun around to find herself face to face with a policeman. ‘What are you up to, miss?’

  ‘I’m just waiting for my carman,’ she stammered. ‘He’s in there.’ She pointed to the big house.

  ‘I see,’ said the policeman. ‘It’s just we’ve had a few thefts lately, so we’re keeping an eye out. And Mr Felstone doesn’t generally like people loitering outside his property . . .’

  ‘Mr Felstone?’

  ‘The gentleman who owns the house,’ said the policeman, just as Ed reappeared, lugging a heavy hamper full of dirty linen.

  ‘Well,’ said the policeman. ‘Mind how you go, then.’ And he walked off, whistling to himself.

  ‘That’s the first lot, Annie,’ said Ed, shutting the cab doors. ‘One down, only about another dozen to go. I see you’ve met the local constabulary. They’re always looking after the rich folks, and the Felstones are the richest of the lot, from what I can see.’

  ‘Really?’ said Annie, who remembered the name from the laundry. She’d washed Verity Felstone’s dresses often enough.

  ‘House-builders, I think,’ said Ed. ‘Made a fortune from it. Chance would be a fine thing, wouldn’t it?’

  They stopped at other big houses all the way along Holland Park before turning down Campden Hill Road and wending their way around the streets there. Sometimes a servant would be ready and waiting with the laundry hamper but, more often than not, Ed would go round to a side entrance to collect it. One nice butler brought them a glass of water each to drink, on a silver tray. But by lunchtime, Annie’s feet were frozen solid and she was beginning to wish she was wearing more than just a cardigan around her shoulders. Her stomach started to rumble but she didn’t say anything about stopping for lunch because she’d forgotten to bring her purse.

  Eventually, Ed stopped the cart at a little coffee stall. ‘Come on,’ he said, jumping down and offering her his hand. ‘Let me treat you to something. Your stomach’s growling like a blooming bear. But you have to promise not to tell the Missus, or she’ll swing me, for skiving.’

  He bought her a steaming mug of milky coffee and the most enormous slice of cheesecake, which was warm and had lashings of grated coconut on the top. She bit into it and it squidged over the sides of the paper it was wrapped in. She’d never tasted anything like it in her life. ‘Nice to see a girl with a healthy appetite,’ he said, giving her waist a little squeeze. ‘I always thought you were a bit on the skinny side, Annie, but I reckon I could feed you up nicely, a bit like you feeding Moses.’

  Annie giggled. ‘So now you are comparing me to your horse?’ She’d found her sense of humour again and it was fun to laugh with him.

  ‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I think the horse is better looking.’

  ‘Well, that is charming! No wonder I don’t want to go

  courting with you!’ And she poked him in the ribs, so that he almost spat his coffee out.

  Later that evening, as she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the wash house floor, she didn’t mind that it was freezing cold and her hands were stinging as the soap found its way into the little keens on her fingers. Annie kept reliving the day she’d spent with Ed and each time she felt lighter inside, as if a weight of loneliness was lifting. She started humming to herself as she scrubbed.

  The Missus appeared at the wash house door.

  ‘Someone’s cheerful,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie, looking up. ‘I am.’

  And for once, she really meant it.

  9

  December 1925

  The laundry was buzzing with excitement about the works’ Christmas outing to the Chiswick Empire.

  The variety shows there were legendary, with music-hall stars from the big theatres up in town doing a turn sometimes, as well as fun acts like performing dogs and acrobats and escapologists. It was the highlight of Annie’s year, but the Missus was threatening to keep people back if the laundrymaids didn’t stop gossiping about who was going
to walk out together after work this evening.

  Annie was hoping that Ed would ask her to go along with him, but she’d barely seen him all week because she’d been upstairs in the ironing room. It had been over a fortnight since their trip up to Kensington and he hadn’t asked her to go out to the cinema, even though she’d been expecting him to. Now she felt foolish for thinking he would, and she was glad she hadn’t told a soul, especially Vera, who probably would have blabbed about it to the other girls behind her back. She’d been a bit funny about the trip out with Ed, to be honest. Anyone would think she was jealous.

  The light outside was fading and Annie could think of nothing else but seeing him tonight, when she heard the familiar clip-clop of Moses’ hooves in the street outside and her heart skipped a beat. She put her hot iron down on the board and picked up the tub of beeswax from the window ledge and gave it a cursory rub over; Mum was always on at them to wax the irons to prevent them from rusting. Then she peered out of the window to see Ed jumping down from the cart and doing up his top button before coming in to bring the day’s takings to the Missus.

  Mum had her back turned or she would surely have told Annie off for idling; she was teaching one of the younger laundrymaids how to iron pillowcases properly. Annie couldn’t help but marvel at how patient her mother was: the poor girl had already been told how to do it yesterday, but it still hadn’t sunk in.

  ‘Now, Ada,’ Mum said. ‘You must iron the pillowcases very smooth, especially on the hems. You fold into thirds, so you only get two creases. That’s right.’

  Just then, two little faces appeared at the ironing room door. Ivy and Elsie were back from school, happily munching on a crust of bread that the Missus had given them. They were as bright as buttons, and Ivy, at seven, was the leader with all the gumption, while Elsie, just a year younger, was quieter but still had a bit of a cheeky side to her. The Missus doted on those girls almost as much as Bill did, and they were allowed to come into the laundry after lessons because Nanny Chick couldn’t do with them getting under her feet at home. Poor old Nanny spent much of the day in her rocking chair because she was getting frail now. Annie and Aunt Clara took it in turns to make sure she ate something at lunch, usually just a bit of bread and cheese, but she found that difficult to manage at times, so Annie had started making soup for her, which meant that there was no time for her to eat anything herself.