by Beezy Marsh
Clara lived with her and their mum in Fletcher Road, and Kiziah and her husband Arthur were only a few streets away – not that anyone saw too much of him, mind you. He was often away working, decorating houses up in Hertfordshire and North London, and he’d stay away during the week if it was too far to travel home. Lately, he’d even been away for months, working up in Leeds. Kizzy said she didn’t mind too much but Emma was worried about her sister, who’d just announced she was expecting again. Kizzy had lost three babies over the years and one quite late on in the pregnancy. It was a terrible heartache; she was desperate to have a little one of her own.
Nobody liked to talk about it, but they’d got to the stage when they all dreaded Kizzy getting pregnant again, in case she lost another baby. They lived in fear of seeing her doubled over with the cramps and the bleeding, when all they could do was tell her it would all be over soon. Mum would always say, ‘There’s time for you to try again, don’t worry.’ But everyone did, of course.
So, Emma was praying hard that this time everything would be just fine. Mum had told Kizzy to try to put her feet up a bit in those early weeks, but what woman could do that? Not a busy seamstress running the home and working all the hours God sent, that was for sure. Emma and Clara took it in turns to cook, to build her up a bit, and tonight Clara had gone round there, taking liver and onions for her tea.
‘I don’t know,’ said their mum, her knitting needles clicking away furiously. ‘It just doesn’t seem right when there’s so many children not wanted and they come into this world just fine and Kizzy can’t carry one to term and she’d be the most wonderful mother.’
Emma nodded silently. Her mother never mentioned the fact that life had been cruel to Emma too, by taking Henry away when Annie was just a baby. Emma wasn’t allowed to dwell on her own sorrow, not even for a minute. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it. ‘It’s no good you wallowing, my girl, you’ve got to make the best of it!’ she’d say.
Clara came running in then, her face white as a sheet.
Mum and Emma leaped up: ‘Is it the baby?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Clara, hopping from one foot to the other, as if she was jumping on hot coals. ‘Something’s wrong with Kizzy. She’s got a terrible fever and she’s crying in pain, her head is killing her and I can’t get any sense out of her.’
There was a flurry of woollen shawls being pulled around shoulders in haste, as the three women rushed out of the house, but not before Mum had tucked her medicine bible, Consult Me for All You Want to Know, under her arm.
Kizzy was lying in a darkened room in her nightdress and groaning in pain.
Emma opened the curtains a bit, allowing a shaft of light to enter, so she could get a better look at her, but that only made her sister scream and clutch her head in agony.
‘Have you had any bleeding?’ asked Mum, sitting down at Kizzy’s bedside. ‘Is it the baby?’
‘No,’ she cried. ‘The pain in my head, please make it go away!’
Emma went to fetch a cloth, running it under the cold water of the scullery sink, before returning to lay it carefully over her sister’s forehead. Kizzy was scorching hot, as if she’d been lying among the embers, and a rash, like a bunch of little purplish pinpricks, had started to creep its way up her neck. Emma pulled the bedsheets back and saw another crop of the same little spots forming on her sister’s arms.
‘Clara,’ she said, her heart pounding with fear, ‘I think you’d better go and fetch the doctor.’
The doctor took one look at Kizzy; he announced she’d have to go to hospital straight away and Emma knew she’d been right to trust her instincts. He sent for the ambulance, a horse-drawn affair, and Kizzy was carted off out of the house on a stretcher with the whole street peering out of front doors and through curtains. Kizzy barely seemed aware of her surroundings any more and was mumbling and groaning the whole time.
Emma went with her to the Poor Law Hospital, the Union infirmary in Isleworth. Clara was sent off to see if she could find one of Arthur’s building pals in the local pub who would get up to North London, sharpish, and tell him that he was needed at home.
‘Sepsis’
The word was short, but Emma understood, from the glances the nurses gave each other as they tried to make Kizzy comfortable in white sheets stiff with starch, that it was very serious indeed.
Kizzy was suffering from meningitis and, from what the doctors said, the infection had got into her blood. Now her body was covered in purple welts, where the rash had joined together. She was feverish, her breath coming in short gasps, and she moaned in agony until the nurses injected her with morphia to ease the pain.
‘She’ll sleep now,’ said the ward sister. ‘Why don’t you go home and get some rest. We’ll take good care of her, I promise.’
‘But will she get better?’ said Emma, clutching at the nurse’s arm before she had a chance to leave the bedside. ‘And what about the baby?’
‘I can’t honestly say, dear.’ She sighed. ‘She’s young and strong but the baby will be taking her energy at a time when she needs it the most. The best thing you can do is go and pray for her recovery.’
Emma did pray, at the laundry church on Acton Green, but God didn’t hear her, because Kizzy took a turn for the worse a few days later and slipped into unconsciousness, with Arthur at her side. ‘Come back to me, Kizzy, my love,’ he whispered in her ear, with a look of such desperation that Emma almost fell to her knees. She’d been trying to be strong, for everyone’s sake, but her resolve deserted her as her sister lay gravely ill.
Mum refused to leave Kizzy’s side, despite the hospital’s pleas for her to go home and rest. Instead, she clasped her home remedies book, poring over the pages in the hope of finding some tincture or herbal helper that the doctors hadn’t thought of, to bring her daughter back round to the land of the living. Arthur sat mutely, stroking Kizzy’s hair, which now coiled around her neck, dark and matted with sweat.
Kizzy clung to life for ten full days, and Emma and Clara held her hands and talked to her about the old days, back in Notting Hill, watching helplessly.
On the eleventh day, as birds heralded the arrival of the dawn, she died.
Several mourners almost fainted in the heat of a sweltering August afternoon at Kizzy’s funeral. It all seemed so out of kilter, her dying in the prime of her life and the sun shining down relentlessly as her coffin was lowered into the grave; the flowers wilting, almost an insult to her memory.
Arthur sobbed uncontrollably as they turned to leave. Emma remembered him at his brother Henry’s funeral, standing with a stiff upper lip, offering her his arm to lean on. Now, as he broke down, she went to his side, to be his support, and they walked together out of the cemetery. There was a wake to get through at the Railway Tavern and it would be a matter of pride for him to pull himself together for that.
After the last toast had been drunk in Kizzy’s name, Mum and Clara dried their eyes and headed back to Fletcher Road to face up to life without her. Arthur finished up his drink and made his way over to Emma, who was sitting quietly in the corner, accepting the condolences of all the laundry girls, who were too shy to speak to the handsome widower.
‘Might you come home with me?’ he said. ‘It’s just I can’t face being alone, not today. Not yet.’
‘Of course,’ she said. If the truth be told, she was glad of his company too, as Mum and Clara would intrude on her sadness, shake her out of it, perhaps, and she wanted to just be with the memories of Kizzy a while longer. As they strolled home through the streets of Soapsud Island, the years rolled away from them.
Sitting for hours together, in the dark depths of their grief, they found that the bond they had made in their younger years was like a thread, connecting them to their lost loves, Kizzy and Henry. Simply being together seemed to bring something to life, something that could pull them closer to the past. In the fading light, when there were no more words left to say, Arthur held Emma’s face in his hands and ki
ssed her.
‘Forgive me,’ he said, stammering and looking ashamed. ‘I shouldn’t have done that.’
She reached out, tracing her fingers over his features, so different to Henry’s, but yet there were similarities: the curve of his cheek, the line of his brow. She placed her hands around his neck, losing herself in the strength of his embrace, as he pulled her to him.
28
January 1915
Emma had never been good at keeping secrets but the dread when she didn’t bleed every month became a deep, dark worry she could share with no one.
At first, she tried to pretend to herself that it was just the upset of losing her sister, but by the third month, she’d guessed the truth of it. There was no sickness, not like when she was carrying Annie, but by the fifth month her stomach started to swell and no amount of lacing her corset could disguise it.
She was a regular visitor to Arthur’s house, cleaning for him when he was away and doing his laundry, and he always popped around to them for his tea when he was home, but there was nothing for the neighbourhood gossips to talk about in that – she was just helping her late sister’s husband out, in the way that good families did in times of need. Neither of them discussed what had happened between them the night of Kizzy’s funeral. He hadn’t made any attempt to do it again, and Emma was so guilt-ridden by it that she couldn’t have, anyway. There had been such a comfort in it, being together, but she knew it was wrong and it would bring such a terrible shame on the family. With every passing day, she knew her pregnancy risked being unmasked – and then she’d have some explaining to do.
It was Bessie who noticed at first, sidling up to her at their break time in the laundry and whispering: ‘Have you got a little secret to tell?’
Emma was horrified that she’d noticed and almost dropped her basket of ironing.
‘Come on, then,’ said Bessie, ‘spill the beans – who’s the lucky fella? Are we going to be hearing wedding bells soon?’
Emma shook her head and looked at the floor: ‘It was a soldier I met down Chiswick High Road and we got a bit carried away, because he was going off to France the next day. It was just the once. He’s over there now, in the trenches . . . fighting for King and Country.’ The lies just spilled out, before she even had time to think about it.
‘Oh, I see,’ said Bessie. ‘What regiment is it? The same as my Tom?’
‘I’m not sure,’ she replied. ‘I’m terrible at remembering things like that. Could have been the London Regiment . . .’ She was digging herself in deep, desperate to get out of this conversation.
‘But you must write to him, tell him the good news,’ said Bessie. ‘He might get special leave to come home for a few days and you can get wed. Your mum will be delighted.’
‘I don’t think she’ll see it that way,’ said Emma. ‘She’s a real stickler for tradition. No putting the cart before the horse and all that. So, do me a favour and keep this between us?’
‘Fine,’ said Bessie, giving her a hug. ‘I understand. Anything I can do, just say the word. But you are going to have to tell the old girl sometime, Em. That bump ain’t getting any smaller!’
The following weekend, Arthur popped around as usual, for his tea, and they all struggled through one of Mum’s meat pies; time had changed many things, but sadly Susan Chick’s cooking wasn’t one of them.
Emma got up to clear the plates and as her belly was just at eye-level with Mum’s face, the penny finally dropped.
‘Emma, my girl, what in the name of God . . .’ said Mum, her mouth falling open. ‘I thought you were looking a bit broad around the beam lately. But you’re in the family way, aren’t you? You’ve gone and got yourself pregnant, without a ring on your finger . . .’
Emma sat back down. Clara got up and scurried upstairs – she couldn’t bear arguments – and Arthur looked as if he had just been shot, his arms and legs splaying as he reeled backwards in his chair.
‘Well, there’s no need to ask what you’ve been getting up to while my back was turned!’ cried her mother. ‘You’d better not have been doing it under my roof, you filthy slut! Where’s the father?’
Emma took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak. She’d been planning for this moment and had been getting her story straight, about the soldier, but now the time had come, her words had deserted her.
But before she could say anything, Arthur spoke: ‘Don’t be hard on her, Susan, please. It’s my fault . . .’
‘Oh, this is the living end!’ she cried. ‘My Kizzy barely cold in her grave and you two at it like rabbits!’ She leaped to her feet and picked up her pie dish. She brandished it for a split second before hurling it towards Arthur, who dodged as it went flying past his ear and landed, with a crash, against the scullery wall. ‘Oh, I can’t bear it!’ She sat back down and threw her head into her hands, wailing like an injured animal.
‘Please,’ said Arthur, ‘give us a chance to explain. It only happened once . . .’
‘It only happened once,’ she mimicked him, with a horrible scowl on her face. ‘You filthy whoremonger! To think I welcomed you into my home. You betrayed my Kizzy. And you!’ She pointed a finger at Emma, who had frozen where she sat. ‘I will not have his bastard child under my roof, do you hear me?’ Mum snatched the picture of Henry, which was presiding over the whole terrible scene, from its special place on the mantelpiece. ‘Well, you don’t care about him any more, Emma! He’d be spinning in his grave to see this day.’ And before Emma could stop her, her mother had cast it into the grate.
‘Get out of my house, the both of you, and don’t come back!’
Clara was sitting on the bed, rocking herself back and forth and sobbing, as Emma packed up her few belongings in a sheet and tied them into a bundle, before making her way downstairs.
Arthur was waiting for her in the street and he put his arms around her for a moment as they made their way through the freezing night air, before pulling away from each other. Even under the cloak of darkness, with the faint hiss of the gas lamps the only sound, they knew that neighbours could be watching, especially given the fracas they’d doubtless heard.
‘Come to my house?’ he said, taking the bundle from her.
‘No,’ she said. ‘People will talk, Arthur, and it wouldn’t be right. We can’t see each other no more, you know that, don’t you? I have to think about what is best for the baby now . . .’
He shifted from one foot to the other, but he didn’t argue with her. He knew the women of Soapsud Island could be vicious if they felt someone had crossed the line. Cheaters were driven out, shunned, and whole streets could turn against each other. He didn’t want that for Emma, or his child.
‘We could leave, together?’
‘And go where?’ She almost laughed at the suggestion. ‘This is my home. I’ve no money to start flitting off with you, Arthur. I have to think about Annie, keeping her safe, and this baby too. It’s not about what I want, I’ve been selfish enough already – look where that’s got me.’
‘Don’t say that . . .’ He tried to put his arm around her again, to comfort her in some way, but she brushed it away. ‘Where will you go, then?’ he said, helplessly.
He walked her to the corner of Stirling Road and she turned, giving him a brief kiss on the cheek and a little wave goodbye before she knocked on Bessie’s door.
She didn’t hear him say, under his breath: ‘I’ll miss you, Emma.’
The weeks that followed, with both Mum and Emma working together at Hope Cottage, were awkward, to say the least. It wasn’t long before the Missus clocked that something was up.
‘Now, I’m not one to pry, Emma, but I can’t help noticing you’re not on speaking terms with your ma at the moment,’ she said, whispering to her in the ironing room one morning, before the packers and sorters had come in. Emma was spending all the hours she could working, to save up for the baby. ‘They ain’t my business, family feuds, but I expect it’s got something to do with her having the hump abou
t you expecting the patter of tiny feet? When is it due?’ She patted Emma’s tummy.
Emma sighed. The whole laundry would probably be talking about her behind her back before long.
‘A few months, around May, I think,’ she said.
‘And the father’s not around?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘He’s in France, fighting the Hun. I barely knew him, just got a bit carried away one night.’ She smiled to herself, ruefully, at the ease with which she now peddled her lie.
‘Well, you’re not the first woman who’s got herself knocked up like this and you won’t be the last. I just want you to keep working as long as you can and get back here sharpish after the birth. Where are you staying?’
‘Bessie’s putting me up,’ said Emma. ‘She’s been a real pal.’ They’d been great company for each other on the long winter nights, knitting socks for Thomas in France and little hats and shawls for the baby. Bessie loved reading Tom’s letters out loud to Emma; he always sounded so chipper about life in the trenches, apart from the food, which was not a patch on his mum’s cooking. That always made Bessie smile.
The Missus nodded. ‘Seems like a good arrangement. I’ve got a woman I know can help you get the baby out when the time comes. If your mum wants to be a silly old fool about it, let her – you are always welcome here, Emma, and if any of my girls says a word out of line, they will be getting a boot up the backside from me.’
‘Thanks, Missus Blythe,’ said Emma. ‘I won’t forget it, I promise you.’ She thanked her lucky stars for the rest of the day, because she knew there were women at other laundries who’d lost their jobs because they’d got themselves into trouble out of wedlock and that had been the road to ruin, with only the Poor Law to help them. She worked extra hard after that, even though her feet were killing her and her back ached from standing at the ironing board all day.
Every little kick of the baby inside her was a reminder of Arthur, but she saved those thoughts for the dead of night, when she was unable to sleep, because she knew she could tell no one, not even Bessie. Arthur had let her know that he’d had gone away on a job up in Leeds and would be there for the foreseeable. He’d dropped a note through Bessie’s door, with a ten-bob note to help ‘when the baby comes’. He’d apologized ‘for everything’, signing himself off with a kiss. Emma tried not to think about that, and how it had felt to be in his arms, being loved by him.
