Nell put her hand to her mouth. Had she heard him right? ‘Do you mean engaged, like engaged to be married?’ she asked through her fingers.
‘Sort of, yeah.’ Stephen sniffed, considering his words. ‘But there can’t be no marriage, of course, because even though she might have run out on me and her own children, I’m still married to my Violet, remember. So you won’t be able to go setting your heart on no wedding day or anything like that. But how about it? Me and you?’
Nell was astonished; this man actually wanted her. It would be just like having a family of her own, and she’d have her very own place to live and everything. And it wasn’t as if he had any choice about getting married properly – not for now, at least. But who knew what might happen in the future?
She didn’t know what to say, so she just nodded and took a sip of her lemonade.
Chapter 11
A week later, Sylvia stood grim-faced behind the bar of the Hope and Anchor, while Bernie made sure that everyone had a drink in their hand to celebrate Stephen and Nell’s engagement – their ‘happy day’, as everyone except Sylvia seemed to be calling it. There was no denying it, Nell looked beautiful. She was wearing a simple ivory satin sheath dress and matching coat, adorned with the pearl and gold brooch, Sylvia’s fox-fur stole that she’d loaned her for the day, and a little veiled hat that was just right – unlike this sham of an engagement that couldn’t even lead to a marriage, and most definitely wasn’t right in any way at all.
Since Nell had come bursting into the pub last Sunday with her supposedly good news, Sylvia had done everything she could think of to make her see sense, to persuade her that it was ridiculous even to contemplate getting engaged to Stephen rotten Flanagan. But in her usual sweet way Nell had told Sylvia not to worry about her, and that moving in with Stephen would be just like being given a ready-made family – perfect. Even God would forgive her, Nell went on, as he would understand that Stephen couldn’t help it that his wife had run away from him and his poor children.
Sylvia thought, but didn’t have the heart to say, that it wasn’t God she was bloody worried about, and having two kids who were at least four years older than you – if not more – was hardly having a ready-made family.
‘Come on, Sylv,’ Bernie said, nudging his wife, as he pulled yet another pint. ‘At least it’ll give her a bit of security, and Stephen’s right taken with her, anyone can see that. And, be fair, you couldn’t expect the kid to stay here with us for the rest of her natural.’
‘You said it, Bern – she’s a kid. Just a kid. And he’s a dirty old man. Our Nelly deserves better than him. Much better.’
‘Well, I think she should be thanking her lucky stars. For a start he’s got that place in Turnbury Buildings. Little palaces everyone says they are. Even got their own lavs and a communal wash house.’
Sylvia looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. ‘You’ve never even washed a rotten handkerchief, so what do you know about wash houses? Communal or bloody otherwise.’
He shrugged. ‘I hear people talking. Cos people do talk in boozers, you know. And she won’t have to go carting stuff down the public baths like she does for us no more.’
‘No, but guess who’ll be using the communal wash house morning, noon and night? My little Nelly, that’s who. She’ll be nothing more than a skivvy for the three of them, you just wait and see.’
‘She’s not much more than that here really, is she Sylv?’ Bernie handed the foaming glass across the counter to a customer keen to get his share of this unexpected Sunday lunchtime bounty. ‘The girl don’t stop.’
‘She’s paid for what she does here. Full board and a fair wage, and I know you treat her well – and don’t look at me like that, she told me, in case I expected her to pay it back out of what I give her. And I’ve bought her all them new clothes and got her hair cut all nice for her. You watch, she’ll be ground down by him in no time. And them two lousy kids of his’ll find a way to take advantage of her good nature, you can guarantee it. It’s not right, Bernie, you’ve got to put a stop to it. He’s not even bought her a bloody ring. Nell told me the tight sod hadn’t had time.’
He looked across the crowded saloon bar – word had soon been passed around that there were free drinks to be had in the Hope and Anchor – and all he could see was a pink-cheeked, smiling beauty of a girl, who looked as if her every dream had come true.
Bernie turned to his wife. ‘If you want her heart broken, Sylv, well then you do it. Cos me, I’m saying nothing.’
They all stood on the pavement outside the pub, while Bernie captured the moment on his box Brownie – with Nell smiling as if she’d never stop and Stephen becoming agitated by all the attention.
‘How much longer is this gonna take, Bern?’ he complained, grinding out his cigarette butt with his heel.
Bernie grinned. ‘If I’m getting it in the neck from Sylvie about all this, then you can have some of it and all. So just one more for luck, eh?’ He beckoned to his wife. ‘Come on Sylv, let’s have one of you and Nell. The two most beautiful girls in the world in one picture. Who could resist ’em?’
Sylvia softened, if only for the moment, and she found herself smiling warmly. She linked arms with Nell and they beamed into Bernie’s camera lens.
Stephen lit another cigarette. ‘Hurry it up, can’t you? I’m bloody freezing standing here.’
The shutter clicked and Nell’s smile slowly dissolved, like the slush melting in the gutter.
With a single glance back at Sylvia, Nell trotted along beside Stephen as he strode away from the pub in the direction of his ‘little palace’ in Turnbury Buildings, Wapping.
‘You know you’re both welcome over here with us for Christmas dinner,’ Sylvia called after them, grudging the offer to Stephen but wanting – desperately – Nell to see what Christmas could be like.
‘I don’t think so, thanks all the same,’ Stephen replied for both of them, flagging down a taxicab. ‘We’ll be fine indoors.’
It seemed that Nell wasn’t going to spend Christmas with Sylvia after all. But the excitement of riding in a taxi for the very first time made it not matter – well, not quite as much.
Nell wasn’t sure why she did it, but as Stephen leaned forward to speak to the driver she covered her brooch with her fingers, surreptitiously unclasped it from her collar and slipped it into her bag.
When the taxi drove through a curved archway and drew up at Turnbury Buildings, it wasn’t exactly what Nell had been expecting. Rather than the collection of ‘little palaces’ that everyone had talked about, it looked more like a forbidding fortress with high brick blocks enclosing three sides of a tarmacked courtyard. Standing in a wasteland of demolished slums, bordered on the waterside by the wharves and warehouses, the Buildings resembled a giant tooth left in an otherwise gummy mouth.
Nell saw curtains twitch as curious residents craned their necks to see who would be making such an entrance, and a crowd of wild-looking children playing in the yard despite the cold rushed over to the cab. Unlike the older inhabitants of the Buildings, who stared anonymously from behind the shelter of their windows, the youngsters weren’t nearly as shy. They stared openly at Nell as she stepped out of the cab and stood there shivering in her ivory satin outfit and smart hat, while Stephen paid the driver. She was glad she’d taken off the brooch earlier – any one of the children looked capable of snatching it from her.
‘Chuck out your mouldies, Mr Flanagan,’ said one of them hopefully, as Stephen counted out his change.
‘Bugger off,’ snapped Stephen, taking Nell by the arm and steering her towards the entrance to one of the blocks.
Chapter 12
Nell stood at the kitchen sink of Number 55 Turnbury Buildings, washing the dishes from Stephen’s breakfast, now a familiar part of her daily routine. Apart from having to work out how to cook a capon on Christmas day, nothing else had proved too challenging, and the routine had soon become clear. Nell was responsible for everything indoors, a
nd every day Stephen went to set up his stall – Monday to Saturday on the Mile End Waste and on Sundays ‘down the Lane’ – always working until mid-afternoon. Twice a week he would leave home in the early hours to go to the wholesale market. Each day he would have a few drinks before coming home for his tea, and most evenings, after he’d eaten, he would go out again.
Stephen had explained to Nell that she had to get up fifteen minutes before him, so she could light a small fire in the front room – just big enough to last him until he was ready to leave – and boil some water on the stove for him to wash and shave in the kitchen. He never went down to the communal wash house in the basement where the baths and laundry were – she wasn’t even sure if he realised they were down there under the ground-floor flats. He always had a ‘wash down’, as he called it, at the sink, but she wished he would go and use the baths occasionally. She’d been used to having a weekly bath when she’d been in the home, and when she’d lived with Sylvia and Bernie she and Sylvia had loved their weekly trip to the Gaulston Street Baths, Sylvia paying the extra so they could have a nice hot soak instead of a quick lukewarm dip. Nell couldn’t understand why Stephen didn’t take more pride in his appearance; he was a good-looking man for his age. Even the twins, George and Lily, managed a bath most weeks. Maybe he was just tired from all the work he was doing; not that the money he put on the table on a Friday night reflected all the hours he was supposed to be working.
Nell scrubbed the remains of scrambled egg from the pan and rinsed it under the tap, ashamed that she was even thinking such things. She had a home now, and a man and his children to take care of, something that a lot of women would have been only too happy with, especially if they had come from a foundlings’ home and had nothing but a brooch to call their own. This was the real world and she should be grateful to be part of it – especially as Stephen worked so hard. That was why she couldn’t blame him for going off to one of the market pubs to have a few pints so he could relax a bit before he was ready to come home for his dinner. The trouble was, he must have been drinking gallons of the stuff to use up so much of the money he was making, unless the stalls weren’t working out as well as he’d hoped. But, whatever was happening, Nell was struggling to manage on the money he was giving her. She had tried – once – asking Stephen for a little more, but he wouldn’t even discuss it with her. In fact, it had soon become obvious that the only time he wanted to have anything to do with her was at night. Then he couldn’t have been more attentive, although whether Nell welcomed that attention didn’t seem to come into question.
The first night when he had taken her into his bed she had been little short of terrified, despite the talk that Sylvia had given her, and it proved to be just as bad as she had feared. Nell really didn’t enjoy what Stephen did to her as she lay there waiting for him to finish, but she understood that it was her duty – she was living under his roof. He was as good as her husband.
Although it was far less harrowing than Stephen touching her in that way, Nell also hated being expected to eat early with the twins. She dreaded sitting at the table with them. But that was what Stephen wanted her to do, so she did it. Stephen always ate later, on his own. It wasn’t that he was being unkind to her, she reassured herself, it was just that he was tired after work and didn’t like to talk while he had his meal. He preferred to study the sports pages of the evening paper that he would spread out on the kitchen table in front of him. Nell understood that, of course she did. This was her life now, and even though Lily and George treated her with open contempt, behaving as if she were little more than their unpaid servant, and flatly ignoring any effort on her part to be agreeable, at least she had the neighbours from the Buildings. If it hadn’t been for them, for Sarah Meckel in the corner shop, and the weekly visit she had from Sylvia, life for her in 55 Turnbury Buildings would have been very lonely.
She tipped the dirty washing-up water down the sink and started drying, still amazed, regardless of her reservations about some aspects of life in Turnbury Buildings, that she was actually in her own little kitchen. After spending so much time in the home, she did her best to remind herself each day that she should count her blessings. And there were lots of good things about living in the Buildings, including those neighbours.
There was one family she really liked – the Lovells, Mary and Joe and their son Martin, who lived just across the landing in Number 57. Despite times being hard for them since Joe had lost his job, Mary remained a kind, motherly woman. Nell thought that Martin seemed a nice boy, he was always smiling whenever she saw him on his way to work, but he was too shy to speak, blushing and never saying much more than a mumbled good morning. For Nell, though, that was charming, especially compared to the boisterous behaviour of some of the young men that she’d experienced when she’d been working in the Hope.
Martin’s mum, Mary Lovell, was far more outgoing, and had taken Nell under her wing. She’d only been there a couple of days before Mary had made sure she knew how to wrap the rubbish in newspaper before launching it down the chute that ran from each floor to the massive bins in the rubbish sheds. On the first Monday, Mary had taken her down to the basement laundry and had shown her how to use the water heaters and drying racks. She’d seen to it that Nell met the other women from the Buildings as they busied themselves with their weekly wash, and she made a particular point of warning Nell about one or two of them whom she should be careful of, as they could be what she called ‘a bit tricky’. One particular individual that she singled out was Ada Tanner, a sour-faced elderly woman from Number 56, the third and final flat on the top landing, where she lived with her equally difficult husband, Albert.
Mary had then introduced Nell to Sarah in the corner shop, where Mary worked part-time. But, friendly as she was, Mary didn’t impose, and when Sylvia paid Nell her weekly morning visit she would never accept the invitation to come in and join them for a cup of tea – although Nell wondered if that was as much to do with Mary worrying that the twins might get up out of their beds and start their complaining, as it was about her not wanting to intrude.
Apart from Mary Lovell, Sarah Meckel was definitely Nell’s favourite from the neighbourhood, and she would have liked to have popped into the corner shop for a chat every day, as Sarah could always make her smile. Like Mary, she was a good woman, always willing to help anyone, despite the hardships she herself had to endure.
Nell didn’t know the full story, Sarah was reluctant to talk about it, but what she gathered was that Sarah’s parents had come to London from somewhere in Russia where there was a lot of trouble, and had started the shop. Then they had died in the great flu epidemic, leaving Sarah to run the shop alone. But she had had something to look forward to – her fiancé, David, was coming home from where he’d been fighting in Europe in the Great War. They would get married right away and he would help her and they’d have children and live happily ever after. David did return, and they did get married, but he was never able to help her as she’d dreamed. Now, as well as running the shop, Sarah looked after David, who, in Ada Tanner’s words, ‘hadn’t been right in the head’ since he’d come home. Ada had added, even more nastily, that it wasn’t as if he’d been the only one who’d been in the trenches. But Sarah Meckel treasured the man, and never gave even the slightest hint that life might sometimes get her down.
Sarah said how much she enjoyed having Mary Lovell working in the shop with her, but according to Ada Tanner it was an act of ‘stupid waste’ – Nell thought of it as kindness – rather than a necessity. Sarah really didn’t need more than a few hours’ help here and there, especially with money being so short for everyone, but she knew that Mary Lovell needed the work. Joe Lovell, like too many others, hadn’t been able to get a job no matter how hard he tried, and Martin, his son, was only bringing in a boy’s wage. But Mary spoke proudly of the fact that he gave what he earned gladly to his family every Friday evening when he came home from his shift in the brewery.
Nell stacked th
e dry pans on the rack above the stove and turned her attention to drying the crockery.
She felt her cheeks begin to colour as she thought about how Sarah Meckel even allowed Florrie Talbot to lodge upstairs above the shop, despite her being what Ada Tanner described as a ‘dockside tom’. Nell had been shocked when Sylvia explained to her what that meant, but then not a little torn when she thought of how she herself was living with Stephen without being married. She remembered the horrible moment when she had stood in the shop and flushed as red as a tomato when Ada had started leading off about Florrie again, and what she thought about the sort of person who would do such things without the benefit of having marriage lines tucked safely in her handbag.
Nell opened the glass door of the fitted dresser that ran the length of one wall and put away the crockery on top of the neat piles she had taken such pleasure in arranging during the first week she had moved in. Bringing order to the chaos that had reigned in the kitchen made her feel so much better, as did her recalling how Sarah had stood up for Florrie Talbot. Sarah had made it quite clear that Florrie’s business was her own, and had asked Ada what right she had to slander the reputation of a woman who had made the ultimate sacrifice when she had lost her beloved fiancé in the war.
There was always something like that going on in the corner shop – things to learn and things to make Nell think. She only wished she could spend more time with Sarah, but Stephen didn’t like Nell going there too often, he said she’d only go wasting money. Instead, he brought in most of what he thought they needed when he came home from the market – usually the overblown remains of his stock and some cheap cut of meat from one of the side-street butcher’s shops.
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