by Betty Annand
After she left, Tonnie said, “You know, Bert luv, she wouldn’t a sassed you if you didn’t ’it ’er.”
Surprisingly, Bert didn’t argue. “Damn me, anyways, Tonnie! I know it ain’t ’er fault; it’s all that garbage she’s being told by that crazy Sally woman. I don’t know what right she ’as meddling with our little girl. God, I ’opes she comes back soon; I don’t ’alf need a drink.”
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Proper diction was another thing Sally tried to teach Gladys, by making up sayings. Gladys enjoyed practicing them and would go about in the daytime singing, “Take the haitch from your ear and put it over here,” or “An haitch on ’ers and one on ’is—is the proper way to say hers and his.” Then, one day, without thinking, she made the mistake of correcting her mother, “It’s not ‘’ere,’ Ma, it’s, ‘here.’”
Bert slapped her across the face and added a warning, “Don’t you ever, ever, tell me ’ow to talk. It’s that stuck-up cow that’s putting these fancy idears in your ’ead. Well, Miss Knows-it-all, you can talks anyways you likes, but that ain’t going to make you any better than your da or me.”
The next day Gladys was helping her father unload the cart when her mother called out, “Gladdy, I wants you ’ere for a minute.”
Gladys, wondering what she had done wrong, approached her mother with trepidation. “What do you want, Ma?”
“Gladdy, I don’t mind if you learns ’ow to talk proper, but I ’opes you don’t get your ’eart broke with any fancy ideas. Fancy talkin’s not going to do you any good where you lives, and it’s ’ere you’ll be living for the rest of your days.”
Gladys was so stunned by Bert’s atypical concern that she didn’t know how to respond. Bert saved her the trouble, “Well, don’t just stand there with your gob ’angin’ open; get on back, and ’elp your da.”
Chapter Four
Bert and Tonnie spent most of their days collecting and sorting junk and their nights drinking in the pubs. Except for the mornings when they ate their porridge together, Gladys hardly saw them, but Toughie and Sally kept her from being lonely.
She was a pretty child with large hazel eyes, a sunny disposition, and a generous mouth that showed off a perfectly even set of white teeth when she smiled, an unusual feature in the slum. Her mother could claim credit for that since she taught Gladys how to use wood ash to clean them. She would have had a lovely full head of curly, chestnut-coloured hair if her mother didn’t hack away at it every few months with the excuse that now her head wasn’t such an attractive home for nits.
As she grew older, Gladys became more acquainted with many of her neighbours, people of all races and occupations. The streets were crowded and noisy with countless shops, stalls, and even barns that housed all types of fowl and animals. This would have made a cheery and colourful combination if it wasn’t for the fusion of vermin-infested rubbish, open sewers, and the unwashed and half-starved residents who lived there. The odours that emanated from all the rot and decay that lay about were so disgusting that only a person born in the Rookery could ignore them.
Gladys was especially fond of the O’Brian family—the same family that allowed Toughie to live in their barn. The O’Brians lived in a two-storied building that was so in need of repairs that Mr O, as Gladys called him, used the ground floor as a stable where he kept his cart and animals. He removed enough bricks from the back and front of the building so that he could drive his horse and wagon right through from the street to the alley.
The stable doors were fashioned out of odd pieces of scrap wood. An open stairway supplied an entrance from the barn to the second floor where the O’Brians slept and ate, and the heat from the animals added much needed warmth in the winter.
The pig pen was divided into two parts: one half housed the old boar, and the other a very large and skinny sow whose litters usually numbered ten to fifteen. Sometimes Mr O would pick up one of the piglets and allow Gladys to cuddle it, but he didn’t allow any of the children inside either pen.
“That old boar’s so blind he’d mistake you for a bucket o’ slops an’ there’d be nothing left of you but your noses. And you know why he wouldn’t eat them?” he would habitually ask.
They all knew the answer, but were polite enough to ask, “No, Da, why?”
“Cause they’s full o’ snot, that’s why!” And then he would laugh even harder and louder than the little ones.
Knickers, the O’Brian’s horse, was old and sway-backed, but Mr O still used him to haul manure. There were nine O’Brian children with ages ranging one to twenty. Gladys heard that there was an O’Brian born every year for the last twenty-one years and that only nine had survived, which, according to most families living in Old Nichol, was very good odds. Mrs O was a plump lady and showed no difference in her profile when she was with child or without. She was unique amongst her compatriots in that her cheeks were always rosy. She often wore a baby tied around her middle while she went about her daily chores.
Mr O’s features, from his head to his toes, were long and bony, and his temperament as complacent as that of his patient old horse. All the O’Brian children had to work as soon as they were old enough to follow orders, and Gladys often lent a hand. She loved brushing old Knickers and putting her face to his neck to inhale his unique and pleasant odour. There were times when Mr O would lift her and one or two of his smallest children up on top of the animal’s back and let them have a short ride when he was hauling manure nearby. Three little ones could fit very snugly in the sway of Knickers’s back, and the gentle old nag didn’t seem to mind.
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Never having known any other kind of life, Gladys was accustomed to the scourges of bug bites, head lice, and hunger, but she was far more fortunate than the rest of the children in Old Nichol since she slept by herself, albeit on a worn out divan. Most families were forced to live in a crowded, one-room flat and had to sleep side by side on the floor with nothing but pallets made out of straw for mattresses. Having once spent a night with a friend, Gladys was privy to more sex education than she desired, and even though she often received a slap or two from her mother when Bert came home drunk, she didn’t want to ever spend another night away from home.
Bert and Tonnie were not the best parents, but to their credit, Gladys wasn’t put to work as young as most slum children. She was nine when she began pulling the cart alongside her father while her mother looked after the yard. It was hard work, but she enjoyed it, except when they went up and down the streets on the outskirts of their neighbourhood. It wasn’t the ladies with their fur-trimmed cloaks and their fancy bonnets who crossed over to the other side whenever they saw the cart approaching that she minded; it was the look of pity on the faces of those who didn’t. “Someday I’m going to be a proper lady, Da, and when I am, I’ll always be kind to those who aren’t. Not like those snotty cows out there with their noses stuck up in the air.”
“Right you are, Gladdy; you are a good girl, you are!”
“Would you like to get out of Old Nichol, Da?”
“Can’t say I would, Gladdy. We don’t ’ave to answer to nobody ’ere. If I ’ad to live out there, I’d be spending ’af my time saying ‘No, sir. Yes, sir. Can I kiss your arse, sir?’ An’ I’ve ’eard that there’s just as many what’s starving out there as there is in ’ere.”
There were a few times when her father was sober that Gladys had a glimpse of the decent man he once was. They would laugh and joke as they pulled the cart along. One of their standing jokes was, “What are we going to do, Dad?”
Tonnie would grin, and answer, “Don’t call me a Doo-dad.”
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After Gladys began working, she didn’t have as much time to visit with Sally as she would have liked, but when she did, she continued with her lessons. Toughie had begun helping Bob push his cart to Warehouse Corner and back, which meant competing against Gladys and her f
ather for the most advantageous parking spot. However, Gladys was having more and more trouble waking her father in the mornings, so they seldom arrived at the corner until most of the junk was gone. Toughie felt bad that he wasn’t helping them, but he felt obligated to Bob for supplying him with food that he often shared with Gladys.
Now that Toughie was helping him, Bob made enough profit to give the lad a selection of second hand clothes after convincing the boy it was time to change his attire. The change came none too soon since the lad had grown so tall that his overcoat no longer came down past his knees. Sally had a harder time talking him into bathing and allowing her to cut his hair in order to comb out the knots and tangles.
The change in Toughie’s appearance was so amazing that at first Gladys didn’t recognize him. His black, curly hair was cut so short that Gladys was surprised to see that he actually had ears—and very nice ones too. He wore a shirt tucked into a patched, but clean, pair of woollen britches and a man’s suit coat with the sleeves turned up. He wore a pair of boots that, although well-worn, fit him well. His skin had been scrubbed clean and had the warm hue of polished mahogany. Gladys had never seen such a handsome creature before and mentally pledged him her troth.
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By the time Gladys was eleven, she was adept at reading and writing, and her grammar had improved to such an extent that she sounded as out of place in Old Nichol as Sally. One afternoon when she came to visit, she was shocked to find both Sally and Bob packing up their belongings. When they told her they were moving out of Old Nichol, she was devastated.
Sally explained that her aunt’s husband had passed away, and now, finally able to make amends, her aunt had offered to share her house with them. During the last ten months Sally’s health had been on the decline, and Bob had warned Gladys that they might lose her before long. Even though Gladys understood that the move was for the best, she couldn’t help but cry. Sally couldn’t hold back her tears either. She loved Gladys as though she were her own, but she knew she didn’t have long to live if she remained in Old Nichol.
They held each other until they stopped crying; then Sally pinned a little cameo onto Gladys’s bodice, and said, “Gladys darling, I want you to always remember that I love you, even if we are apart. My father gave me this little shell cameo when I was eleven, the same age you are now, and it is the only piece of jewellery that I refused to sell. I want you to have it as a keepsake.”
Gladys was overwhelmed. She had never owned anything so lovely. And what made the gift even more memorable was the resemblance of the lady in the cameo to Sally. “I will treasure it forever,” she promised and hugged her dearest friend so tightly that Sally had to push her away in order to get her breath. Gladys was overwhelmed with grief, and their tearful goodbye counted as one of the most heart-wrenching acts of her life.
When Gladys arrived home, she was afraid to wear the broach, knowing that her mother would take it and sell it for booze money. So she wrapped it in a rag, climbed up on a ladder, and hid it on top of a timber in the junk yard. Toughie was also very sad to see Bob and Sally leave, but his sorrow was alleviated by Bob’s generosity. Bob, knowing that he would gain little by selling his junk yard, had seen the only legal official in Old Nichol, and signed it over to Toughie.
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As a rule, puberty was late in coming to the children in the slums due to undernourishment, but by the time Gladys was twelve, she could no longer hide her femininity. Men began making lewd remarks when she walked by, and one of the store owners she knew groped her one day, offering her some food if she would come into the back of the shop with him. She refused and was so upset over the incident that she longed to talk to someone about it. Her parents had become so reliant on liquor that she hardly saw them, and now that Sally was gone, she decided to confide in Toughie. Reading fairy tales had enhanced Gladys’s imagination, so when she told Toughie about the incident, she thought he would react like a brave, bold knight, and smite the blighter to defend her honour.
However, the brave knight merely shrugged his shoulders, and remarked, “I can hardly blame him.”
It wasn’t what she expected, or wanted, to hear. She couldn’t have felt more betrayed if he had slapped her face. Stammering, she asked, “How can you be so mean? I thought you liked me!”
“I do like you, Gladdy; you know that. In fact, I love you.”
“Then how could you not be angry at anyone who did that to me?”
“Gladdy, don’t you know how beautiful you are? All the men want to kiss you—and do it to you.”
She knew what he meant, and it gave her an unusual feeling of power. “Do you want to do it to me too, Toughie?”
Toughie’s face turned red, and he hung his head and confessed. “Every bloody time I see you!”
There were times when she had noticed him looking at her in a funny way, and now she realized that it was the same look her father often gave her mother before they became so addicted. She smiled, and said, “I’ll let you, Toughie, but no one else.”
Toughie, being four years older than Gladys, was beginning to have manly needs, but he knew that when one bedded a girl, she would indubitably have a baby. Therefore, he did his best to ignore his desires, and replied, “Maybe in a year or two, Gladdy, if you still want me. By then I’ll have finished the shed I’m building for me and My Dog in the junk yard, and we’ll have a place to live. I shan’t take a wife to live in O’Brian’s barn.”
The thought of having a house of their own was more than Gladys could wish for. She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the mouth. It was their first kiss and, although Toughie would have liked more, he pushed her away, before giving her a stern lecture about the dangers of being too friendly with men.
After Toughie had inherited Bob’s junk yard, he had been kept so busy collecting junk that he had little time to find material to build his shed and even less time to spend with Gladys. In the meantime, Bert and Tonnie’s addiction had progressed to the point where they could barely look after their business. Every penny they earned went to buy booze. They would have gone without eating if it wasn’t for Gladys’s begging and stealing in order to put food on the table. Gladys could hardly wait until Toughie had their shed built. When she turned twelve, and he still hadn’t been able to find enough material to put a roof over their head, despondency overtook her.
For the first time since she was a little girl, her mother began to take note of Gladys’s whereabouts, not out of affection, but to serve her own self-interest. Years of alcoholism had taken its toll on both Bert’s beauty and her voice, and she could no longer earn money singing in the pubs. Subsequently, she began to scheme how best to use Gladys’s beauty to her own advantage. She insisted Gladys take occasional baths in an old, battered galvanized tub they seldom used, and she encouraged her to keep her hair clean and lice-free. Sally had also taught Gladys on the importance of cleanliness, so Bert met with little resistance.
One day, when Gladys was still twelve, Bert surprised Gladys with a shocking proposition. “There’s this ’ere gentleman what wants to ’ave ’is way with you, Gladdy luv, and ’e’ll give us thirty quid for just a few minutes of your time. If we was to give our business to Toughie, and then take the money you gets to build another room on ’is shed, we’d ’ave no rent to pay and Toughie’d ’ave twice the business.”
Gladys was growing tired of waiting for Toughie to build a place for them to live, and although she looked sceptical, she didn’t turn away, so Bert continued, “It’s just one time, luv, an’ it only takes a few minutes. Then we’ll be set for life. Just think how ’appy Toughie’d be to ’ave our junk alongside is. An’ after the gentleman leaves, we can go and gets those pork pies you and your da loves.”
“But what would Toughie say?”
“’E never needs to know.”
Gladys knew he wouldn’t agree, but how many more years would she
have to wait before he could afford to build their home? How was she going to continue to look after her parents if she couldn’t keep the junk yard going? Perhaps this would solve all their problems. She convinced herself that it wouldn’t hurt if she were to make up a small fib to tell Toughie about how she got the money. She made up her mind to do it, but told her mother how terribly afraid she was.
Bert assured her, “It won’t ’urt more than a mosquito bite—and if you closes your eyes, it’ll be over before you knows it.”
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Late the next evening, Bert came home with a tall man wearing a long, black cloak with a large collar pulled up to hide his identity. Anxious to get back to the pub and spend some of the money the man had given her, Bert wasted no time with introductions. She gave Gladys a smile and a wink then quickly left. As soon as they were alone, the man removed his cloak and hat then turned to face Gladys before sitting down. Gladys had begun shaking as soon as her mother brought the man into the room, but when she saw the stranger’s face, she gasped with fear.
It was Mr Gaylord, their landlord. He was the most repulsive-looking creature she had ever met. He had sagging jowls, large wet lips that allowed slobber to dribble down his chin, and a fat belly that hung down almost to his knees. She had always been sickened with the way he ogled her whenever he came to collect the rent, and she knew she would rather die than let him touch her. Her eyes began scanning the room for a way out.
Gaylord could sense his prey was ready to bolt, and he positioned his chair so that his back was to the bedroom door in order to block her path to both exits. “Now, now, my little mouse, don’t be frightened. If you are a good little girlie, I shall be very gentle with you, and we shall spend a pleasant night together, but if you are naughty—well, I shan’t go into that, my dear. Suffice to say that I paid well for a night with you, and I intend to make good use of it, so I would recommend that you treat me with respect.”
