by Maggie Ford
Grime wasn’t the only thing that clung to this place. Mum’s kitchen smelled of Sunlight soap and Flit. The Flit was used on the walls and all corners and cracks – against the bugs. They came through the walls from the flats on either side of this one, even though the Solomons who had the corn chandler’s next door kept their place spotless and Mr Jackman, a dapper little man who had the pet store on the other side, was just as particular. But nothing stopped the evil little insects.
It was always worse in summer after they’d been breeding in cracked brickwork. They came out in droves then. It was part of life in slum places and Mum swore they dated from when Arnold Circus had been the Nichol.
Running alive there they had been. In the maze of alleyways, the people hadn’t even noticed them, let alone tried to get rid of them. Vice and lice, Letty remembered Mum saying. You don’t get rid of things like that just by using a bit of Flit.
She could remember venturing into the place when she’d been about seven or eight. Some blousy women with straggly hair and scarlet lips had snarled at her to sling her bleedin’ hook, but one had leered at her and beckoned. That one had frightened her more than the others.
When she got home she had asked Mum about the women and had got a smack instead of an answer. ‘What were yer doin’ down there?’ Mum had railed. ‘Ain’t yer got no sense, goin’ near ladies of the night?’ She had never used the word ‘prostitute’. It was a rude word. Letty aged eight would not have known what it meant anyway. She hadn’t even understood what ladies of the night were except ever after to link the phrase to ugly and threatening women with scarlet lips and straggly hair.
The Nichol was gone now. Arnold Circus with its streets radiating like the spokes of a wheel from a central hub where now stood a raised bandstand where a band played each Sunday was clean even if the barrack-like blocks of flats shaded everything from the sunshine. Hordes of children played there now, and any passerby could go through it without fear of being robbed, kidnapped or corrupted.
If the original slum had been swept away, its bugs remained, and in summer marched down the walls in black fetid clusters. The flat would smell faintly but not pleasantly of almonds as Mum Flitted every nook and cranny against the invaders that might be breeding behind the wallpaper. To her the almond smell was one of shame and she waged constant war. Thanks to her they never had a full-scale infestation, but some people did.
With Mum ill now, it was Letty who wielded the Flit can as regularly as she used big square bars of Sunlight soap on the lino and the linen.
Mum and Dad had done their best to see their girls decently brought up, but it hadn’t been enough, or at least seemed that way, seeing David’s face after he’d fought his way through the screeching Sunday morning market to Dad’s shop door.
‘You know I love you,’ she wanted to cry. ‘Show me how much you love me, David.’ Instead she said sullenly, ‘I s’pose if I lived somewhere better than what I do, you’d have taken me to see your parents by now!’ diction letting her down, proclaiming her for what she was.
David was glaring at her. ‘To hell with where you live! You’ll not have to live here forever. It’s what you are that matters. It’s me you will marry, not my parents!’
‘But it’s a different matter when it comes to meeting them!’ She shot at him, then stopped. ‘Marry?’ she echoed faintly. ‘Me? You … want to marry me?’ But pride drew her up. ‘You’re only saying that.’
She saw him frown. ‘What is wrong with you, Letitia? Of course I am saying that. How else can I say it?’
Knowing what she wanted from him but unable to put it into words, she shrugged, defeated. ‘It don’t … doesn’t matter.’
‘It does matter, Letitia.’ He was pulling her to face him. ‘Tell me what’s wrong? You’re not … not getting tired of me, are you?’
Tired of him? God help her! Her whole being trembled in case he was tiring of her. Was this how he was wriggling out of it, telling her she was getting tired of him? Oh, it was unfair!
‘I don’t know how to tell you,’ she burst out, saw real fear come into his eyes at her outburst. ‘I know I ain’t … I’m not much ter run after. I know you could do better than me where you live. I haven’t even seen where you live, but I bet it’s posh and nice and you see all nice girls. But I …’ She stopped, wanting to say, ‘I love you.’ ‘I … well, I’ve tried, David. I have tried. I try to be ever so careful what I say, what I do – in case I say the wrong things, do the wrong things, and you’ll see what I’m really like. I …’
She tailed off with another helpless shrug. He had let go of her shoulder, had gone quiet. She sank weakly back on the seat, staring at the cabby’s back. The man was grinning, damn him! Facing front, his features unseen, she knew by the stiffness of his neck that he was grinning, amused by the lovers’ tiff. She wanted to poke him in the back, ask what he thought he was laughing at, but that would have made her look more common than she was. And she had her pride. Why was David not saying anything?
When he did speak, his voice was low and hesitant. The driver wouldn’t hear it above the rattle of the taxi. She could hardly hear it.
‘Letitia, you shouldn’t have to be careful – wary – with me. It’s I who have been – am – wary of you. No, Letitia,’ as she let out a small exclamation of surprise, ‘I have been terrified you’ll find me … stuck up, I think it is. I am constantly weighing what I say, how I say it, in case you see me as uppish, patronising, I don’t know … I know it sounds ridiculous to you, Letitia. For one so young, so fresh, you are full of confidence. So worldly.’
‘Me?’ Inside her laughter bubbled, full of bitter disbelief. ‘I’ve never been further than Southend, when you took me.’
‘You are wrong, Letitia.’ He was speaking unusually fast. ‘All my life I have been protected by my parents, my mother especially. Even when I married …’ He hesitated as though the word might offend. ‘I’ll not say it was arranged exactly, we were in love of course, but it had been rather expected by both our families that we would eventually wed. Then, when Ann and the baby …’ Again he paused, this time the words catching in his throat.
‘It took me a couple of years to pull myself together. Mother was a tower of strength to me. By the time I was able to face the world, her tower had become a prison, you might say. I felt I had to justify my every movement. The smallest show of merriment and she’d hark back to my loss, as though I was being disloyal. She couldn’t believe I could still cherish my wife’s memory and yet carve out a new life of my own. Letitia …’
She sat looking down at her hands in her lap, felt him turn to face her. ‘I have never been able to tell her about us. Not because I am in any way ashamed of you. I admire you, wish I were as certain of myself as you are. But I dread my mother’s inevitable reproach that I am casting aside my wife’s memory. I’ve no wish to put you through that.’
He fell silent, gazing at Letty, but she couldn’t meet his look although she felt its intensity. For some while she could find nothing to say. Though so much she wanted to say surged through her head, all of it would sound nonsensical if she did put it into words.
‘I wonder what she’d think if she knew where I lived?’
‘For God’s sake, Letitia!’ The sharpness of David’s tone made her jump. ‘Why do you put yourself down so? You’re as fine as anyone I’ve ever met, and I love you! I love you, Letitia.’
In the dimness of the taxicab, he leaned forward and kissed her. It was long and lingering, full of passion. Almost stifled, Letty felt herself melt into it, closing her eyes at the delicious feel of it. David’s breath was sweet and warm, and who cared what the driver thought of them?
Beyond the cab, Bethnal Green Road in full spate at ten o’clock at night reminded her that this wonder must end very soon.
‘We’re nearly home, David!’ she just about managed.
His response was to call to the cabby to stop. ‘We’ll walk from here,’ he said, paid the man his fare, then holding her arm through h
is walked with her the short distance to her road, passing the Knave of Clubs on the corner. In the glow from the pub windows, the frosted glass etched by advertisements for Nicholson’s Matchless Dry Gin and Walker’s Whisky, he slowed. Nearby, the hot chestnut stand wafted nutty smoke, the bearded vendor turning the roasting nuts on a blackened metal sheet, hands protected by scorched woollen gloves, his cheeks a fiery red from the heat of the brazier.
All around Letty, people surged by, the door to the Public pushed open time after time, emitting laughter, rushes of warm air into the chilly night, the potent smell of beer and tobacco and sawdust.
‘I want you to come with me next Sunday to meet my parents,’ David said abruptly. And now, after weeks of clamouring for that honour, Letty was caught by fear, by foreboding, wishing she’d kept quiet.
‘I should have waited a bit longer,’ she told Lucy, who could hardly wait to hear how she had got on. ‘I should never have gone.’
‘Was she horrible to you?’ Lucy asked avidly over the teacups.
It was teatime, the table laid halfway across. There were only the two girls to have tea. Dad was downstairs, would be up as soon as he closed the shop, and Mum had gone to bed. She tired quickly these days. Lucy would take her a cup and a bit of cake later. She ate very little, as if the act itself tired her. At night Letty lay awake listening to Mum coughing, Dad getting up regularly to get her medicine for her. It was all so worrying.
‘Horrible ain’t the word,’ she said acidly, putting the last of the Sunday fruitcake on the table next to the cheese dish. ‘I’ve never felt so uncomfortable in all my life, and I was so sorry for David, he was so worried. And he behaved so different there than when he’s with me – all stiff and starched, as though he was watching every word he said and everything he did – just like I was! And all the time I sat there I didn’t know where to put me face or what to do with me hands, I was so nervous.’
As Lucy cut bread and buttered it, Letty told of the imposing double bay-windowed house with its large high-ceilinged rooms and its heavy Victorian furniture. ‘They did have some lovely things,’ she said. The way David’s mother had received her. ‘Her face all stiff, it was like looking at a white ship all posh, standing off from East India Docks – me being East India Docks. Come to think of it, she was in white – a sort of tea gown thing – all frills and froth and drapes, as if she was going to a royal ball or something instead of just meeting me. All I hope is I don’t have to go there again, that’s all.’
‘What was his dad like?’ Lucy said, spreading jam for herself on a piece of buttered bread.
‘Oh, he wasn’t so bad,’ Letty said as she bit into her slice. She took a sip of tea to wash it down, Mum’s thick sturdy everyday cups and saucers, painted with fern leaves, and thought of the fine china at the Baron home. Sunday luncheon it had been termed – set more like a banquet with so many knives and forks and things, she hadn’t known which to use first, having to watch David before she dared to pick one up – all designed to intimidate her, she was sure. And a good job it had done too.
‘I think he was a bit sorry for me. But he didn’t approve of me either for all that. He kept looking at me as if he had a real low opinion of me. And all the time she kept referring to her poor David’s sad loss. Made me feel proper awkward, it did. And how do they get their o’s and a’s to sound like they’ve got a plum in their mouth? Ours always sound flat, have you noticed, Lucy? I tried to make them rounder but it made it look like I was trying to show off. I wasn’t half glad when me and David left. I ain’t never going to go to meet them again, not if David goes on his bended knee to me.’
Outside in the early dark of the winter evening, a hand bell was ringing, a voice calling some undistinguishable word, but its message was understood well enough. Lucy jumped up and hurried to the mantelshelf where some coins were always kept in an ornate jar.
‘Shall we get some for tea?’ she asked, but didn’t wait for an answer, was out of the parlour door and yelling down the stairs: ‘Dad – I’m getting some muffins for tea!’
Letty had the parlour window open, the cold December air hitting her face like an icy hand as she called to the man immediately below, his face hidden by the large flat tray balanced on his head. All she could see was a foreshortened view of legs, one hand swinging the bell, the other hand gripping the tray’s rim, and on the tray a cloth covering the delicious muffins, some of which she would soon be toasting by the fire.
Lucy had come out. The tray was put down on the pavement, showing the man’s cloth cap white with flour. Six muffins were put in a paper bag from a bundle on a string around the man’s waist, Lucy’s coins received and dropped into the pocket of his apron. The tray hoisted adeptly back on to his head, the muffin man went on his way, energetically swinging his bell as Lucy came in and up the stairs, yelling to Dad: ‘Tea’s getting cold!’
Lovely to eat the muffins, dripping with butter, around the fire, Letty’s face hot from the flames, then to go back to the table to pour another cup of tea for herself just as she fancied. No sitting on ceremony around a posh laid table, watching every word she said, every mouthful as if she was eating cotton wool.
Afterwards, David had taken her to see the house he still owned, the one he had bought for himself and his wife to live in. It had given her the creeps. Loss had seeped into the very walls, not because the poor woman and her baby had died there but because the house itself had died. For all his furniture there it felt so empty, desolate, a shudder had run through her and she knew nothing would induce her ever to enter the place again, much less go and live there when David proposed marriage to her – if he did.
‘Most of the time,’ he’d explained, ‘I stay with my parents. I pay a woman to clean and dust it, open the windows to air the place. But I can’t bring myself to live here on my own, if you see what I mean.’
She did see what he meant, that even now his sense of loss had not gone away, that she wasn’t certain that it would ever go away, for all he said he loved her.
After the silent house, and the silent street where he lived, the busy thoroughfare of Bethnal Green Road had been a tonic. The people were vibrant, noisy, not afraid of life. Everywhere was full of bustle and urgency; groups meandering, talking, sharing jokes on street corners; girls in long lines, arms linked, swinging along, home sewn skirts brushing their ankles, second hand blouses and jackets concealing blossoming bosoms, straw hats embellished with wax cherries or a linen flower, boots clumping in unison on the pavement. The quips thrown by boys strolling in groups were readily flung back: ‘Does yer muvver know yer out?’ ‘Does yours?’ ‘Wanna drink?’ ‘Not wivart me friend.’ ‘Oo’s yer friend?’ ‘She’s Alice, I’m Ethel!’ Life was vital, death seldom thought of.
Dad gone to see how Mum was, Letty told her sister about the house David cherished like a mausoleum, its desolate atmosphere. Even as she spoke of it, she couldn’t help a shudder.
‘It’s always the same when men live on their own,’ Lucy said with the slow deliberation of someone who imagines they possess a world of wisdom. ‘Look at old Mr Ford – he lived alone.’
What she meant was the two-roomed pigsty in which Mr Ford, for whom they’d run errands as children before he’d died, had lived alone. The place had stunk from neglect.
‘I understand what you mean,’ she said sagaciously. ‘All that house needs is a woman’s touch to make it all nice and cosy again. You’re ever so lucky having a ready made home to go into and everything.’
But Lucy didn’t understand at all.
Chapter Four
‘I only hope I haven’t caught it,’ Vinny said.
She sat with her sisters in the parlour as Dad let the doctor out after he’d seen Mum. The doctor came to see her quite a lot now, his bills beginning to mount up.
‘I hope none of us have.’ Letty gave Vinny a look. Just like her to think of herself first! Though that was a bit unjust, Vinny had her condition to think of. Six months, and she was filling out
well around the middle. ‘Mum’s always made sure she didn’t give it to any of us. So long as Dad ain’t got it, that’s all.’
‘It would have showed up by now if he had,’ Lucy said, her pretty face puckered thoughtfully. ‘Since you’ve shared with me, he’s slept up in your old room so’s he won’t catch anything. Mum was always very insistent on that, and …’
She stopped on seeing her father standing in the door, his narrow face dark at her reference to Mum in the past tense. His tone as he reprimanded her was heavy with the fear that lurked inside them all.
‘Was?’ he queried. ‘What d’yer mean, was? Yer mum looks a lot perkier than she’s been fer a long time. Don’t yer ever say “was” when yer talk about ’er.’
‘No, of course not, Dad. I didn’t mean …’
Crestfallen, Lucy watched her father move away from the door, going into Mum’s room, closing the door softly behind him.
‘I didn’t mean it that way!’ she burst out, her eyes brimming with sudden tears. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Of course you didn’t mean it,’ Letty hurried to soothe her. ‘Dad’s full of worry, that’s all. He knows you didn’t mean it that way.’
Lucy’s face was buried in Letty’s shoulder, her body shaking with sobs. ‘I don’t want Mum to die … I don’t want her to die.’
‘She ain’t going to. Mum’s strong inside. Inside she’s got a lot of willpower.’
‘And people do get cured these days,’ Vinny said, her voice steady and unemotional. Vinny who visited Mum as rarely as she decently could, saying one in her present condition couldn’t be too careful, as brazen as you like, had the solution. ‘You can go for a year or so somewhere like Switzerland, to a sanitorium. They say the clear air and the high altitude can cure.’
‘If we’d got the money for it,’ Letty said over her shoulder, still hugging Lucy whose tears were slowly abating. She almost yielded to an impulse to ask if Vinny, so ready with her solutions, might be as ready to help towards paying. Her Albert wasn’t short of a bob or two by all accounts. Vinny boasted enough about how she could afford this, afford that. But she knew that even if Vinny were to offer, Dad would be too proud to start borrowing from anyone, though it would be nice to have had the opportunity of refusing.
