Jubilee (Book 1 of The Poppy Chronicles)

by Claire Rayner

  And then, at last, Mildred found herself back in her own mind again, and no longer crowded out by her own body. For so long, it seemed, she had been unable to think or do for herself at all. She had been driven entirely by physical forces she had never known existed in her and now she stared up at the ceiling, amazed to find herself lying flat on the hearth rug. She had no memory of getting down there, and now she blinked and shook her head as Jessie bent to tuck one of the cushions behind her head.

  ‘Let her lie there a while,’ the old woman commanded. ‘I got to get the afterbirth. It’ll be a few minutes yet – we got time. Here, the cord’s cut, you can have her –’

  ‘Her?’ Mildred said, amazed. Her voice sounded cracked in her own ears. ‘Did you say her?’

  ‘A dolly of a little boobalah,’ the old woman said and came back once again to drag her nightgown up – Jessie had carefully pulled it down – and start to meddle with her. But Mildred hardly noticed that. She was trying to absorb what the old woman had said.

  ‘A girl,’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘Yup. We got all women in here – an’ very nice too,’ the old woman said and cackled loudly. ‘Here, already, give a push – like before. The afterbirth is almost ready – come on – a push – that’s it – here we are –’ And again a rush of warmth and wetness, but a sense of relief as well.

  ‘A girl –’ Mildred repeated and closed her eyes, not wanting to look at the fact.

  ‘She’s lovely,’ Jessie crooned. ‘Little boobalah, what a beautiful baby! Look at your baby, Millie! Here she is – all beautiful for you –’ And she thrust the child, wrapped in a towel, into her arms and now Mildred had to look.

  The baby was smaller than she had expected, and far from beautiful. She had a face so crumpled and so red with fury that she looked rather like a crimson walnut, Mildred thought, and her head was covered with tufts of matted blood-streaked dark hair that made her look very old. But then she opened her eyes and stared upwards and opened her mouth and bawled loudly and Jessie laughed delightedly.

  ‘Hark at her!’ she cried. ‘Such a pair of lungs on her – she’s wonderful! And the colour of her! She’s as red as one of the poppies on the shawl I got her – Ain’t she, Mother Charnik? Ain’t she just like a poppy? A lovely baby, Millie. She’s lovely! Mazeltov. May God bless you both –’ And she bent and kissed Mildred and looked at her and then at her red-faced baby and began to cry.

  And the baby lay on her mother’s belly and stared upwards with her red crumpled face and her dark eyes wide and considering, as though she could actually see the world into which she had been born.

  BOOK TWO

  21

  ‘Joobee – joobee, joobee, joobee,’ Poppy said obediently and Jessie crowed and clapped her hands and crowed again.

  ‘She said it, she said it, Mildred – listen – say it again, Poppy, boobalah, say jubilee –’

  This time Poppy said nothing, chewing the head of the Dutch doll that was at present her most favourite object and letting the spit dribble down her chin. Poppy liked the feeling and made it happen more, blowing round the doll’s wooden head to make more bubbles which plopped softly on her skin. Jessie dug into her pocket for a handkerchief and dried her face as Poppy screwed up her eyes and mouth and tried to escape the huge and determined hand that was so much bigger than her face.

  ‘Leave her alone, Jessie, please!’ Mildred said and leaned forwards and took Poppy from her arms, though Jessie tried to hold on, unwilling to relinquish her grip. ‘It’s bad enough we’re out here at all without getting her all worked up by fussing her –’

  ‘Who’s fussing?’ Jessie demanded and pushed her face close to Poppy again. ‘Mmm, boobalah? ’Oo’s fussin’, den? Auntie Jessie isn’t fussing, is she, den? No, not a bit. Just wants her little Poppy to see the fun and remember it all – jubilee – say jubilee, baby –’

  ‘Oh, Jessie, do stop,’ Mildred snapped irritably and hoisted the baby on to her other hip. She was getting heavier by the day now, a bonny sturdy child with well-muscled legs and bottom and, as she leaned sideways and tried to see her aunt’s face round her mother’s body, Mildred again felt the stab of anger that so often sharpened her tongue these days, and tugged the baby round so that she couldn’t see Jessie. And Poppy’s face puckered and she began to wail, at which Jessie began to cluck even more loudly and ran round Mildred to her other side, pushing without a qualm past the other people standing at the pavement’s edge, so that she could coo the baby back into a good temper again.

  ‘Poor little object, out here in crowds like this –’ one of the old women standing beside Mildred muttered, loud enough for Mildred to hear. ‘Bleedin’ ridicluss, bringin’ a kid aht ’ere the way things is –’

  ‘She has as much right to be here as anyone else,’ Mildred said at once, enunciating every word with freezing good breeding; speaking well had become something of an obsession with her now that the baby was beginning to imitate all she heard. The sloppiness of the local speech hadn’t worried her at all in her early days here, but now – ‘Historic events affect people of all ages,’ she added and turned her back on the old woman who made a heavy grimace and said, ‘Hoity toity, Madam Muck ’n’ I don’t think –’ and jostled her so that she could get in front and stand there triumphantly blocking the view.

  ‘Oh, come on, Mildred. We’ll do better further on,’ Jessie said loudly. ‘By the corner o’ Watney Street. The stalls are all out still and we might pick up a coupla bits an’ pieces while we’re down there.’ Jessie was never averse to a little shopping. ‘Got all the rag, tag an’ bobtail here –’ And she began to push her way through the crowd and Mildred perforce had to follow her.

  Poppy, sitting on her mother’s hip, watched over Mildred’s shoulder as faces and shapes bobbed past her, her dark eyes wide and watchful and glinting with intelligence and some of the people who caught that wide stare smiled back in spite of themselves, for her face was so round and rosy and her dark hair so curly and bouncy that it was difficult not to find the child agreeable to look at; and at once Poppy smiled back, opening wide her little cavern of a mouth with its few rice grains of teeth and gurgling with pleasure, for she was a friendly child, not yet showing any signs of shyness or fear of strangers.

  Around her the sunlight reflected on the shop windows, shimmering and bouncing in bright sparkles and the bunting, great red, white and blue swathes of it, fluttered and swung in the light June breeze as the crowds shouted and sang and shimmered too, as brightly dressed as the flags over their heads, with many people wearing cheeky patriotic cockades in their hats, so that even more brave red, white and blue gilded the bright day. In years to come the memory of all she saw that day would sometimes come to Poppy in vivid little flashes; the sight of coloured flags or little whirling paper windmills on sticks or the sound of brass bands pounding could bring before her older eyes sudden visions of the Commercial Road on the day when Queen Victoria celebrated her Diamond Jubilee. Her mother and her aunt would laugh and deny that she could possibly remember, for she was still some months short of her third birthday when the old lady had travelled through London in her great open coach, hunched and globular, with her head covered in a white cap so that she looked for all the world like an ebony egg with its top removed, so how could she remember? But that day when Poppy sat on her mother’s hip and was bounced along the road amid the shouting cheerful crowds and past the great brewery horses jingling and glittering with brass and the stallholders adorned with their pearl-buttoned best suits she watched and listened and soaked it all up to store it deep in her infant memory. Young as she was, those dark eyes and sharp ears missed little of what went on around her. And what she absorbed she retained. For always.

  But she fell asleep after a while, soon after Mildred had at last relinquished her hold and given her to Jessie to hold. Jessie had the strength to carry the child for long hours, showing no weariness at all; Mildred, thin as she was, simply did not have the reserves of energy that
the rounder Jessie enjoyed; so it was on Jessie’s ample front that Poppy fell asleep in the middle of the afternoon, and went on sleeping until the two women had escaped the crowds and come wearily home again to Jubilee Street.

  ‘Funny to think of it, really,’ Jessie said as she waited for Mildred to unlock the front door. ‘This street was named after the last King’s jubilee, you know – ages ago it was. Well, it must have been, seein’ the old Queen’s older’n God. Can’t imagine ever having a king, can you? Have to soon, mind you, I dare say. She can’t go on for ever, can she? Lawks, but my feet hurt!’

  ‘If you wore better boots they wouldn’t,’ Mildred said tartly, and turned to take Poppy, now starting to wake up, from Jessie’s arms. ‘I’ll put her down. Give her to me –’

  But Poppy was fully awake now and was not interested in being tucked into her crib in the quiet room upstairs. She wanted company and shouted loudly enough about that desire to make sure she got it, and Mildred gave in wearily, as she usually did, and took her through to the stuffy kitchen and tied her into her high chair before pulling off her hat and starting to make some tea.

  ‘That’s why I’ve got to do it, you know, Jessie. She’s getting too clever by half,’ she said abruptly as Poppy sat and banged the flap in front of her with the wooden spoon that was tied to it by a ribbon. ‘It’s not good for her.’

  ‘How can it not be good for her to have two of us to take good care of her?’ Jessie said, and her voice was high and passionate, and somewhere deep inside Poppy fear stirred and she banged the wooden flap of her high chair even harder, kicking her legs too, to make it all feel better inside. ‘You can’t do it all on your own –’

  ‘Why not? She’s my baby, isn’t she?’ Mildred had been bending over the range, riddling the clinker to bring the flames leaping again to make the kettle sing, and now she straightened and turned a flushed face to look at Jessie. ‘Are you trying to say I’m not fit to take care of my own child?’

  ‘Of course I’m not,’ Jessie said, uneasily, and now her voice was low and placatory. ‘’Course not. How can I say that? I’ve never had no kids o’ my own. So what do I know? Only ever looked after my brothers and sister when they was little. Much like you, o’ course. I mean, we’re neither of us great experts, are we? So why not help each other? I can help you, take some of the load off you –’

  ‘She’s no load,’ Mildred said shortly. ‘I can manage her perfectly well. And I’m sick of sewing. I never want to see another coat and lining as long as I live.’

  ‘But you know you can earn a living with ’em,’ Jessie said swiftly. ‘Eh? You knows where you are with the rag trade. Been in it all my life, I have, and can tell you, it won’t ever let you down. This idea you’ve got – it’s mad. How can you expect people to come and buy that sort of stuff from you when times are hard, eh? When there isn’t much gelt around, you spend it on what you got to have, not on what you’d like to have –’

  ‘Rubbish,’ Mildred said and plonked down on the table the freshly filled brown tea pot and went to the kitchen to fetch cups and saucers. ‘When times are hard people spend more on what they want, not less. Look at you. As soon as the slack time comes you go and buy another red dress –’

  ‘But I’m not everyone, I’m different. I’m me,’ Jessie said. ‘Just because I’m a meshuggeneh it doesn’t mean other people are too –’

  ‘They’re the same as you are,’ Mildred said and sat down and began to pour the thick dark tea in the cups, and some milk and hot water and sugar in a separate cup for Poppy. ‘They’ll buy my cakes. You say yourself you like them – that they’re good –’

  ‘Of course they’re good. You’ve learned a lot about cooking this last year or so. I’d never have thought you could learn out of books, but there it is. But can you cook,’ Jessie said, ‘good enough to keep yourself and this little dolly here? That’s what I’m not sure of – here, boobalah, let Auntie Jessie give you your milk and –’

  ‘No!’ Mildred said sharply and took the cup from her hand. ‘I’ll give it to her when I’m ready. Leave her alone, Jessie, for heaven’s sake –’

  ‘What did I do?’ Jessie cried and threw herself furiously back in her chair. ‘All I want to do is help, all I want is to be nice and all I get from you is bad mouthing and a load of complaints. What did I do, already?’

  There was a silence and Poppy reached her hands out towards her cup and Mildred busied herself with it, holding it as Poppy tried to feed herself, and the milk ran down her chin and she laughed, and held her hands out to her aunt and laughed again, her head tilted to one side like a bird. And Mildred, seeing that, reddened.

  ‘I’m trying to bring her up my way,’ she burst out. ‘My way, not yours. I don’t want her to be like these – these people round here. She’s my daughter, not – not anyone else’s and I want to bring her up the right way. Already she’s got the name you gave her – I tried, remember how I tried to use the name I wanted her to have? But no, you wanted her to be called Poppy and the way things were when she was born, what chance had I to stand up for myself? So Poppy it is, and I hate it. You know that? It’s a name I hate! And now other things – you trying to teach her to talk and –’

  Jessie sat with her head bent, staring down at her hands on her lap, not looking at Mildred and most of all not looking at the baby.

  ‘I see,’ she said at length. ‘I see. I’m not good enough, is that it? I’m common and ordinary and cheap and you –’

  ‘Oh!’ Mildred cried and got to her feet to run round the table and lean over her. ‘Oh, Jessie, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to make it sound so – really I didn’t. It – it’s just that – I don’t explain it well, but I know what I want so much. I want the best for her – the very best. And I thought you did too, and I don’t think the best is here in Jubilee Street –’

  ‘You’re damned right it isn’t,’ Jessie said. ‘It’s a lousy place to live. But I’ve done the best I can with this house to make it cosy and nice and warm and clean, and I keep away from some of the neighbours who aren’t any better than they have to be, as well I know, and I do try – I care as much about Poppy as you do. And I’m sorry if – about her name – but she looked so much like – and she suited it so well that I – well, I’m sorry. And she doesn’t look like an Emily, does she? Look at her – those cheeks, that hair, how could you call such a dolly Emily? Bright as a poppy she is by looks, by nature, so by name. Oh, Mildred, don’t take her away from me! Don’t go away and leave me! I’ve been so happy this past three years having you here – it’s not my fault Lizah behaved so bad and never come back like he promised –’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Mildred said abruptly and went back to her chair on the other side of the table. ‘You agreed. Not another word about him, not ever.’

  ‘I know I did. But time changes things. And it’s been a long time since I promised. And he’s entitled to see his own child, Mildred, even if he didn’t do the decent thing by you –’

  ‘He’s known where we are this past two years,’ Mildred said and leaned back in her chair. ‘I’m not going looking for him if he can’t be bothered to come looking for me.’

  ‘He’s ashamed, Mildred. Ain’t you got no feelin’s for what a man goes through? You knew him when he was doing good things, up in the butter he was. But this past coupla years –’ She shook her head. ‘I’ve heard. I don’t miss much, I don’t. He’s been on a right losing streak, he has, poor lobbus! No wonder he keeps away. My mother he sees sometimes, this I do know, though she don’t tell me. As long as you live here with me she won’t tell me a thing about Lizah, or about anything else come to that.’ She looked bleak for a moment and then shrugged. ‘Well, that’s the way of it. Can’t do nothing about that. One of these days things’ll change, and Lizah’ll get back in the pink again and come and see her and then you’ll get married and Momma’ll come round to the idea and everything’ll be lovely – only stay here till then, do me a favour, Mildred –’<
br />
  Mildred shook her head. ‘It’s no use sitting waiting for things to happen, Jessie. Life doesn’t work that way. You ought to know that. You have to go out, and make it do what you want –’ And she leaned forwards suddenly and touched Poppy’s hand. She had stopped banging her wooden spoon and instead was pulling to pieces a scrap of paper she had found on the table. ‘That’s one of the things I have to teach her, don’t you see? That she has to go out and make things happen for herself. And I can’t teach her that if I don’t do it myself, can I? So, I’m going to make things happen for me – and for her – even if I do have to leave you. But I’m not going far, Jessie. It’s a bus ride, really, that’s all. You’ll be able to visit. And I want you to visit, as often as you can. It’s just living together that –’ Her voice trailed away. ‘It just won’t work any more. If I don’t go soon, we’ll start having disagreements and may even quarrel, and I couldn’t bear that. Let’s part friends – and stay friends –’

  Jessie ignored that. She was sitting extremely upright and staring at Mildred, her cheeks very red, almost the same colour as her shirtwaist, which was a particularly clamorous scarlet. ‘A bus ride? Not far? You mean you’ve already found somewhere?’

  ‘Yes,’ Mildred said, but didn’t look at her. ‘Yes, I have. It’s the other side of the City – in Holborn. I thought – I wanted to get away from the East End, you see. It’s not that – I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it round here – well, not a lot. Not here, in Jubilee Street with you, anyway. But I wanted to get away –’