Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  She leaned down and took the Gladstone bag from Mildred’s hand and walked past her into the bedroom to drop the bag on the bed. ‘I’ll light a fire for you in a minute,’ she said. ‘The coal’s down the back – you can fill a scuttle any time you like.’ She looked at her then and her face was smooth and expressionless. ‘About fellas – my brother – I thought you’d given him his marching orders? That night at the hospital you didn’t seem best disposed towards him. And now he’s brought you here.’

  Mildred followed her into the room. ‘I did try to stop seeing him,’ she said, and she sat down on the bed and Jessie sat down beside her. ‘I tried very hard. But it was impossible –’ She contemplated her hands on her lap. ‘It might have been easier if I’d had other things to do. But as it was –’ She looked up at Jessie. ‘As it was I could think of no one else. So –’ She shrugged. ‘It’s a long tale with which I won’t worry you, but here I am –’

  She wanted, very much, to tell her everything. Of the way it had been in the Park and how she had felt about what Lizah had done with and to her. She felt the need to pour it all out in words and also felt sure it would be safe to do so. This woman in the red dress – a different style gown to the one she had been wearing when they first met, but still in the same jolly colour – was so warm and friendly and inviting that telling her everything would be very easy and comforting. And she looked at her again, opening her mouth to speak, and then closed her lips. Friendly and amusing though she looked she was, after all, Lizah’s sister. It would not be right to gossip to her of his doings.

  ‘Well,’ Jessie said after a moment, clearly aware that she had meant to say more but had had second thoughts, but choosing to be diplomatic about it. ‘Well, then, here you are! And welcome too. Now, come on down, and I’ll make you a bite of something and then we can talk –’

  ‘You must be tired,’ Mildred objected. ‘I mean, you have to go to work in the morning –’

  ‘I do and all!’ Jessie said and moved to the fireplace. ‘But I can work on as little sleep as you’d never believe. Famous for it, I am. And I want to sort all this out before I go to my bed. Now, I’ll set a match to the fire to warm the room for you –’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Mildred said. ‘I don’t want to put you to any trouble making fires –’

  ‘I shan’t after tonight!’ Jessie said as the paper caught at the touch of the vesta she had set to it, and then the sticks began to crackle gaily. ‘I won’t run after you like you’ve been used to, and never think it. No servants here, is there? So you clean your own room and set your own fire and clear the grate and that. Do you know how?’

  ‘I’ve seen it done often enough,’ Mildred said.

  ‘’T’isn’t the same as doing it,’ Jessie said sapiently. ‘But you’ll find out. Trial and error, it’s the only way. Come on then. Leave this to burn up nice and we’ll go and see Lizah off the premises.’

  Mildred followed her down the narrow stairway, hearing her heels clatter on the bright linoleum that covered the centre of the treads, and found herself yawning. It must be late, she thought a little fuzzily. I didn’t meet Lizah till nine o’clock. Must be nearly midnight –

  But neither Lizah nor Jessie seemed at all sleepy. Lizah was sitting at the table in the middle of the small kitchen when they reached it, and he looked up anxiously as they came in. ‘All right, is it?’ he said to Mildred. ‘You and her going to get on all right?’

  ‘Of course!’ she said and smiled at Jessie. ‘I told you, it was Jessie’s idea I come here. That was why –’

  ‘And we ain’t like you lot,’ Jessie said. ‘Men, always fighting and arguing among themselves. Women’ve got more sense. We’ll shake along nice, we will. Eh, Millie?’ And she grinned at Mildred over her shoulder as she busied herself with the kettle on the range.

  There was no point in trying to stop people using the diminutive of her name, Mildred decided, and looked around the room instead of protesting. It was as red as her bedroom, with curtains and cushions and tablecloth all in what was clearly Jessie’s favourite tint and it made the whole room feel warm and a little stuffy and infinitely safe and comfortable. She sat down on the chair that was on the other side of the table to Lizah and managed to stifle another yawn. ‘Yes, I’m sure we shall,’ she said.

  ‘Only one thing to settle,’ Jessie said and came and plonked a large brown tea pot in the middle of the table. ‘Money. I got to have my rent, see. Make it all shipshape and right, eh?’

  ‘Of course –’ Mildred began but Lizah overrode her. ‘How much d’you want for the room, Jessie?’

  ‘Five shillings,’ Jessie said, and slid her eyes sideways at Lizah, and then grinned as she saw the expression on his face. ‘Oh, all right. I thought it was worth a try, eh? Three bob I had in mind. Sound fair enough to you, Mildred?’

  ‘It sounds –’ Mildred began but again Lizah broke in.

  ‘One and six,’ he said.

  ‘Two and nine, and I’m doing myself down,’ Jessie said promptly.

  ‘One and nine and that’s robbery.’

  ‘What do you take me for? A charity queen? I’ll settle at two and six and that’s my last shout.’

  ‘Make it two bob and you’ve got yourself a deal.’

  ‘You’re on,’ she said cheerfully and stood up and went to the scullery to fetch a plate. ‘There you are, Mildred. As nice a room as you’ll find anywhere in these parts, for a very fair rent, coals thrown in, except if it gets real cold and you burns a lot. Then it’ll be a penny a scuttle, for every one you have over six in a week. Fair enough?’

  ‘Er, yes –’ Mildred was dazed and it showed. ‘I have no idea what sort of costs there are and –’

  ‘How much you got, Mildred?’ Jessie sat down with a little thump and looked at her, her face glowing pink in the light from the gas mantle which hissed and plopped cosily overhead. ‘I ain’t being nosy, mind, but you’ve got to think ahead. I always say that. That’s why I’ve got this place, even though my old man, rest his wicked old soul, left me with so many debts. I count every penny and make ’em all work. And unless you got a lot of pennies, you’re going to have to get some work to do.’

  ‘She’s not working for Rae and Joe Vinosky,’ Lizah said. ‘I’ll tell you that flat for a start. Can you see her in those bleedin’ workshops? I ask you, can you?’

  Jessie looked at her judiciously. ‘Mmm – well, no,’ she said at length. ‘No, I can’t say as I can.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to think of something else –’

  ‘I could fetch her home some work to do here. Joe uses outside finishers a lot. If I tell him I want more work at home he’ll let me have it. And I’ll get the best rates from him. Let him know someone else is going to do it and he’ll screw the rate down to nothing. But – yeah, that’ll do nicely. She could sit here, cosy as you like, and do felling and a few buttonholes – can you buttonhole, Millie? No? It don’t matter. As long as you don’t have thumbs where you ought to have fingers, I’ll teach you. You look nimble enough – what do you say, Lizah? Let her work here and then there’s no trouble with Joe and Rae and no one to tell Momma nothing until we choose to talk to her and –’

  ‘Will you both stop talking about me as though I weren’t here!’ Mildred managed to shout her down at last. ‘I would like to make some decisions on the matter for myself, you know! I left my father’s house because I had no chance to think or do for myself and now I have you two doing the same thing to me! Now, I will decide for myself the rent I should pay –’ And she looked very firmly at Jessie. ‘And the sum you first mentioned sounds fair to me, more than fair. I will gladly pay you five shillings for that room and for the heating and –’

  Jessie stared at her and then slowly grinned. ‘Bless you, girl, you’re a right plucked ’un! Don’t be daft! Two bob’s a very fair rent for a room like that. There’re people letting ’em out down this street for half that, so I’ve no complaints at two bob. But you never say right out what you w
ant, do you? You’ve got to bait a bit – bargain, see?’ Mildred looked puzzled. ‘There’s right and wrong ways of doing things and baiting is the right way to settle prices. Believe me, you’re paying a fair amount –’

  ‘Anyway, you won’t be paying it,’ Lizah said loudly, ‘I shall.’

  Mildred’s face flamed as red as the tablecloth. ‘You are doing nothing of the sort!’ she snapped. ‘I have sufficient funds of my own to pay my way until I find an occupation that will earn me sufficient for my later needs. There is no need for you –’

  ‘Need don’t come into it,’ Lizah said. ‘It’s what I want to do.’

  ‘It is not.’ Mildred’s voice was low now. ‘It is what I want to do that matters.’

  ‘But I say as I want to pay!’ He sounded bewildered now. ‘Why are you so difficult, Millie? All I want to do is what’s right and –’

  She closed her eyes. ‘Do not call me Millie,’ she said very quietly. ‘And I shall pay my own way. I wish to hear no more about it.’

  ‘Shut up, Lizah.’ Jessie’s voice made Mildred snap her eyes open. ‘Leave her be. She wants to pay her own way? Good luck to her. You spend your whack taking her out and about a bit. It’s going to be damn dull sitting here on her own, day after day, working. Let her earn for herself if she wants, and keep herself. If that plan suits you, Millie – Mildred?’

  Mildred looked across the table at her and the smile on Jessie’s face widened and she closed one dancing dark eye in a cheerful wink, and Mildred’s spirits, which had begun to spiral downwards, took an upwards turn.

  ‘It’s hard to say,’ she said as honestly as she could, feeling she could be as honest as she liked with this woman. For the first time since this whole confusing business with Lizah had started she began to feel less frightened, less aware of struggling on her own in a hostile and complicated world. This woman could be the real friend she had always so much wanted. ‘I’ve never worked for money, you see. I’m approaching thirty and never had to think about such matters. I still hope to persuade my father – or his lawyers if need be – that I have a right to the money my mother left me, but otherwise I have never had any dealings with money. If you say I will be able to earn enough at such work to keep myself, why, I will happily do it. I can sew, heaven knows. All the sewing at Leinster Terrace had been done by me for many years –’ Her face split in a sudden happy smile. ‘I cannot imagine how they will go on now I am no longer there. Nanny Chewson will have to do it all, sheets and table linen and all as well as the children’s clothes, for it is certain Mama will not!’

  Jessie nodded. ‘Then you can do the work. I’ll help you, so don’t you fret. And when we’ve sent Lizah on his way, we can settle down to a real cosy prose and see what’s what. On your way, Lizah. Your room’ll be more welcome than your company – you can come back to see her tomorrow –’

  She got to her feet. ‘I’ll go upstairs and make sure it’s all to rights for you, Mildred,’ she said diplomatically. ‘Then Lizah can say his goodnights and be on his way –’ And she went out of the room and they heard her go clumping up the stairs and could hear her whistling loudly as she moved about in the little room overhead.

  There was a silence between them and then Lizah said stiffly, ‘You didn’t have to take me up so sharp about the rent. I only wanted to help.’

  ‘I’m sure you did. But you have to understand that help is only acceptable if – if it is necessary. I am not so useless that I have to be petted like a child. I am able to pay my own way, and I insist that I shall do so. You have no responsibility for me –’

  ‘I reckon I have,’ he said softly. ‘After last night.’

  She was silent for a long time, and all that could be heard in the small room was the plopping of the gas and, above stairs, Jessie’s whistling. ‘I – what happened last night was something quite – it has nothing to do with anything that is happening now,’ she said carefully. ‘Do you understand me? I do not wish you to think that because you did what you did that you have any need to feel responsible for me.’ She went a little pink. ‘I believe there are names for women who regard a man as indebted to them if they share such activities.’

  He laughed then, a soft amused little sound that made her feel better, for it sounded much more like the old Lizah, the one with whom she had spent so many amusing, outrageous evenings. ‘You, a brass? Don’t make me laugh! As if anyone would ever think such a thing!’

  ‘Yet you offered to pay my rent,’ she flared at him and then looked away.

  ‘That was out of friendship,’ he said stiffly and got to his feet. ‘Nothing more. And if you suggests otherwise then you do me a downright insult.’

  She looked up at him and tried to see the expression on his face, but it was not easy for, now he was out of the pool of light thrown by the gas mantle, he was in the shadows. ‘As long as it was not meant that way –’ she said, knowing there was doubt in her voice.

  ‘It wasn’t.’

  ‘Then I accept that. I just wanted it understood that I am independent,’ she said and also stood up.

  ‘Bloody independent,’ she heard him mutter in a half whisper and then he said more loudly, ‘Yes. Independent. I get the message. Listen, I got to go now. You’ll be all right?’

  ‘I think I shall be very much all right,’ she said and lifted her head as Jessie’s moving footsteps came out on to the upstairs landing and down the staircase. ‘Your sister will be an excellent companion, I am sure.’

  ‘She’s all right,’ he said and turned for the door as Jessie came in. ‘I’m going, Jess. You know where I am if you want me. Ruby’ll always find me for you.’

  ‘Why should I want you?’ she cried jovially and winked again at Mildred. ‘Me and Mildred here, we’ll get on fine without you. On your way, then,’ and she leaned across and gave him a hearty hug and beat him across the back and urged him towards the front door.

  He looked back at Mildred as he reached the kitchen door. ‘I’ll see you then,’ he said and she nodded, but said nothing and then he was gone, Jessie shooing him along for all the world as though he were a recalcitrant child.

  ‘Well!’ she said when at length she came back into the room and sat herself down firmly at the table. ‘Now we can drink our tea. It’s a bit stewed, I dare say, but none the worse for that. Sit you down, then, Mildred, and we’ll talk easy about things. We’ll do nicely, you and me. And sooner or later, you’ll sort out how you want it to be with Lizah.’

  She cocked a sharp little glance at Mildred as she passed her a large cup of very dark tea. ‘I know how it is – you don’t know what you want with him, do you? Now you want him, now you don’t –’

  Mildred positively gaped at her. ‘How do you know that? I mean, I didn’t say anything about –’

  ‘Oh, men!’ said Jessie and set her elbows firmly on the table, holding her cup between her capable hands in front of her mouth and watching Mildred, bright-eyed, over the rim. ‘They has that effect on all of us. One minute we wants them and only them, can’t so much as breathe without ’em, the next it’s to buggery with the lot, and leave me alone, who needs ’em? We’ve all been through it.’

  ‘Oh!’ Mildred said blankly, not knowing what else to say. She had indeed been feeling precisely that, even if she would not herself have couched it in quite such terms, and as she thought now about Jessie’s words she felt a warm glow begin to develop inside her, and welcomed it. It was a good feeling to have a friend like Jessie Mendel. A real friend, at last.

  ‘Listen, now. You tell me how much money you got and then we’ll plan accordingly, all right? I’ll work out how much work you need to do to keep yourself and we’ll sort that all out tomorrow. But right now, a nice cuppa and away to bed. Here you are, then, Mildred. Welcome to Jubilee Street! It’s a pleasure to see you here!’ And she raised her cup at Mildred who lifted her own in response.

  A toast drunk in tea at a kitchen table, she found herself thinking absurdly. How much more suitable could it be? An
d she nodded and repeated, ‘Jubilee Street – Welcome to Jubilee Street,’ as she took her new home into her life.

  18

  It was amazing how rapidly she settled to that new life. Within a week she felt as though she had been living there for years, and Leinster Terrace and all its doings seemed remote and unreal.

  But not so unreal that she did not think about how to deal with what she had left behind there. She wrote a letter on her first day in Jessie’s house, addressing it, after much thought, to her stepmother. It would be easier to express her contrition for any distress she might be causing; to offer anything which smacked in the least of an apology to her father was out of the question.

  So she told her stepmother that she had felt she could no longer continue to live in a house where her presence was, she knew, unwanted. ‘My father,’ she wrote, ‘has made it abundantly clear that I am a burden upon him, and I feel this to be an insupportable position in which to find myself. I shall, therefore, earn my own living in the future. I do, of course, wish to you and my stepbrothers every future happiness, and trust that you will continue in good health. I would be grateful if you could convey to my brothers my regret that I was unable to bid them farewell. I suspected that any attempt to leave in a more ceremonious manner would have caused considerable recriminations, which I was anxious to avoid. I would also be grateful if you would inform my father that it is my intention to seek through the law the full use of my mother’s legacy to me. I do not append my address, preferring to avoid any confrontations in future. Letters sent to the General Post Office in Old Street will reach me. Yrs in affection, Mildred Coulter Amberly.’ And she signed it so even though she knew that including her dead mother’s surname in her own was in effect an insult, a reminder to her stepmother that she was but a second wife.

  After careful thought, she then wrote another letter, this time to her father’s solicitor in Finsbury Pavement. She had never used the services of a man of law in her own right, and knew no other way to seek access to her legacy. Hitherto she had not worried unduly about it. It was just something that existed somewhere in a shadowy background and would no doubt come to her when the time was ripe. She had never before had any real need of money and so had never concerned herself about it.