by Mary Gibson
‘Don’t you come the old acid, Ted Bosher. You may call us the custard tarts but that don’t mean you can take advantage!’
Nellie shoved another parcel into a woman’s hands and beckoned to Sarah. Her bruised ribs ached, her legs were trembling with tiredness, and her heart was thudding with what felt like fear. She felt caged behind the table, cornered by Ted and suddenly overwhelmed. Like a hunted animal, her instinct told her to head for home, and yet she had no home, not now.
‘Can I take a break now, Sarah? Is there anyone to fill in?’
The young woman smiled over at her. ‘I can do that, Nellie. You go off and have a bite to eat. You look tired out. There’s a little canteen set up in the basement.’
Nellie hugged Sarah gratefully and swept past the young man, feeling a fool as she remembered her father’s warnings. Ted followed her, with the loaf of bread still clutched in his hand.
‘I didn’t mean anything by it, Nell. Listen—’
But she let the double doors swing back in his face and was already clattering down the stone steps to the basement kitchen.
‘What a stupid, stupid fool! He’s only interested in what he can get,’ she berated herself.
It was mortifying to her to think her father had been right, probably knowing a young chap like Ted could get his pick of the girls. She sat at a round wooden table, with a mug of tea and a bowl of soup. Eliza James and her helpers had thought of everything, even down to feeding their own workers. She’d heard Eliza had written to all the newspapers, asking for handouts and funds to support the strike. The woman must have worked round the clock to get so much organized; Nellie doubted Eliza would ever find time to solve her personal predicament.
She was beginning to wonder if the estrangement from her family hadn’t been a huge mistake, even for such a good cause. She’d faced the rift with her father because she wanted to show herself, more than anyone else, that she wasn’t just a wage slave. But now the memory of Bobby’s tears and her sister’s anguish made her realize what was really important to her. Who would be a mother to the family, if not her? She was no Madam Mecklenburgh, she knew that much – a woman with seemingly no other life, or family, or purpose, but the struggle. Nellie had taken on the mothering of Bobby, Freddie and Alice without complaint, and whatever her father had done to her, she couldn’t desert them. Now she wondered how they would be coping without her. Still, she told herself, Alice was a good girl; she would manage for the time being.
She dipped some bread into the soup, but a lump of it stuck in her throat and the tears welled up, like an unstoppable spring. Eliza James might be able to find her a room, but the thought of another night away from her family was more than she could bear. She put up her hand, to shield her face and her tears. She heard chair legs scrape as someone came to sit beside her. Quickly brushing her wet cheeks, she looked up into Lily’s worried face.
‘Ted’s just told me! Oh, Nellie, why didn’t you come to me?’
Nellie fell gratefully into her friend’s arms, unable to stop her tears. ‘It was too late and your poor mum’s got no room, and then Sam came along. He was so kind, but, oh, Lil, I don’t think I can stay there again. I’ve promised his mother something stupid!’
Nellie felt entirely safe confiding in her friend, for she knew Lily would not judge her, and now all her troubles and worries came tumbling out between sobs. ‘Mrs Gilbie’s so ill, I didn’t have the heart to say no. Now I’ve gone and promised I’ll take on her kids if she dies!’ She buried her face on her friend’s shoulder, with another heaving sob. ‘Oh, Lily, what am I going to do? I’ve got enough on my hands, with looking after me own family!’ She went on, in a choking whisper, ‘And I must’ve given her the wrong idea about me and Sam… I’m sure she wouldn’t have asked, unless she thought he was my feller!’
‘Oh you soppy ’apporth, Nellie Clark, that won’t never come back on you!’ Lily said, cutting through Nellie’s confusion with her own certainty. ‘And it’s not your fault she got the wrong end of the stick. You must’ve been in a right two an’ eight, poor thing. Now, I don’t want to hear no arguments. You’re staying with me tonight!’
Nellie’s objections were stifled by another hug from her friend. There was no one she would rather stay with, even though it would mean sleeping on the floor.
‘We’ll make you up a cosy little bed next to mine, Nell, and at least you’ll be close to the kids.’ Lily herself slept in a cot bed, made up each night in the kitchen.
‘Thanks, Lily, the poor little things were heartbroken. I’ve promised them I’ll go and see them, but I’ve got to pick the right time.’
Lily nodded understandingly. ‘Don’t you worry about that. I’ll let Alice know where you are and she can bring the boys round later on.’
A wave of gratitude overwhelmed Nellie, and the two girls linked arms as they went back upstairs to dole out more food parcels to the seemingly unending line of hungry strikers’ families.
It was almost like being at Pearce Duff’s, the two of them working together as they reached for the food, wrapped it, and handed it out. And when Lily took her home at the end of the day, Nellie was glad she at least had her own strike-fund pay and a food parcel, to contribute to the Bosher household.
When they entered the kitchen, Betty and Billy Bosher were sitting down to a meagre tea of bread and dripping, but Betty took Nellie’s presence in her stride.
‘’Course you’re staying here, where else?’ was Betty’s immediate response. ‘That’s so long as you can put up with this big bugger’s snoring all night. The walls is paper thin!’
Billy Bosher’s large pug-nosed face creased into laughter as he got up from the table and grabbed his coat from the back of the kitchen chair. ‘I’m off. I’d rather be on the bloody picket line at Butler’s Wharf than in a houseful of women. I’m outnumbered good and proper now!’
As he was leaving, Nellie glimpsed through the kitchen window three familiar figures, trooping down the basement steps. She ran to the front door and immediately swung Bobby up into her arms. Even the usually undemonstrative Freddie hugged her, as Betty called from the kitchen for Nellie to bring them all in. She plonked an enormous enamel teapot on the table and an assortment of mismatched cups. ‘They’re all welcome to sleep in the kitchen too, but we’ll have to put ’em top and tail!’ she added cheerily. Once the three Clark children were seated around the Boshers’ kitchen table, drinking Betty’s dark sweet brew, Alice quickly unburdened herself. She said their father had forbidden all mention of Nellie’s name, but oddly he seemed to have lost interest in the rest of them.
‘We ain’t seen nothing of him today, didn’t come home for his dinner, and I’ve been so worried about you, Nell!’
‘Don’t worry, Al,’ Nellie said, squeezing her little sister’s hand, ‘we’ll be together again soon, I know we will.’
‘We can’t stop long, I’m scared in case he comes home and finds us gone,’ Alice said, gulping the rest of her tea.
Nellie saw them out and, at the top of the basement steps, gave Alice some hurried instructions about looking after her brothers and father. Alice left with promises to bring the boys back to see her when she could.
‘And you two boys do as Alice tells you while I’m gone!’ Nellie called after them as they turned the corner.
The following evening, after another long day at the Labour Institute, she and Lily were sitting outside on the wall at the top of the Boshers’ basement steps, trying to cool off in what passed for an evening breeze. The temperatures had reached a hundred degrees that day and the two girls barely had enough energy to chat. Nellie saw Alice first, being followed two steps behind by the boys, who both had sorrowful hangdog expressions. She was surprised to see them again so soon; she’d expected her father to monitor their comings and goings more closely. But as Alice sat herself on the wall beside them, Nellie knew immediately that all was not well.
‘What’s the matter with you two?’ Nellie asked the glum-looking
boys.
‘Dad give us a walloping!’ Freddie shouted at her, his face swollen and red with tears.
Before Nellie had a chance to blame her father, Alice jumped in. ‘He found out they’ve been swimming in the river.’
Bobby and Freddie, like all the boys who lived anywhere near the Thames, made it their playground during the summer. They would regularly sneak down the river stairs, leap across the moored barges tied up in rows that reached almost to the middle of the river, and then dive into the treacherous currents. The great wide sweep of the Thames, which wound through Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, was perilous and polluted and their father had quite rightly forbidden them from swimming in its waters. But Nellie could understand how the overwhelming heat had won out over her father’s warnings: the water might be filthy, but at least it was cool.
‘Well, don’t come looking for sympathy, it’s your own fault!’ she said, as Bobby came to lean on Nellie’s knees. She kissed the top of his head, nonetheless, belying her stern tone.
‘He don’t care about us, anyway,’ said Freddie, banging his boot against the bottom of the wall. ‘He never even speaks to us, just belts us.’
Whatever Nellie felt about her father, it hurt her to think his sons thought this way about him. ‘Well, he just doesn’t want you to end up like your friend Michael McIlvoy, does he?’
One of their neighbour’s children, nine-year-old Michael McIlvoy, had swum out to a notorious current in the centre of the Thames known as the Fountain. Boys would let themselves be dragged under and sucked along beneath the water by the undertow and, if they were lucky, they were shot clean out of the river by a water spout. It was deadly fun, but Michael McIlvoy was not lucky: he had missed the water jet and the undercurrent took him all the way down to Greenwich, where his body was found the next day.
‘But we didn’t go anywhere near the Fountain!’ Freddie protested.
‘It doesn’t matter! If you slip between the barges, you drown anyway. How many times do we have to tell you!’ Bobby’s head felt hot in her lap and she lifted him up. ‘You two have got to be good while I’m away. Just keep Dad happy, all right? Now promise me you won’t go down the foreshore tomorrow?’
When Bobby nodded and Freddie gave her a grudging promise, Nellie dug into her apron pocket. One of the more eccentric philanthropists had responded to Eliza James’s appeal for food with six jars of humbugs and a barrel of sardines. The boys’ faces lit up at the sight of the bag of humbugs that Nellie now dangled in front of them.
‘You only get ’em if you’re good for Alice!’ she said as Freddie whipped them out of her hand and immediately stuffed a black-and-white striped sweet into his mouth.
‘’Course we’ll be good, we’re always good, ain’t we, Bob?’
With their cheeks bulging, they looked like two grinning hamsters, and Nellie was glad she’d at least managed to send them home happier than when they’d arrived.
Nellie worked for the next few days at the Labour Institute, leaving the Boshers’ house early, with Lily, to start assembling food parcels and then doling them out all day. Sometimes she found it more exhausting than working in the factory; the constant press of people, with their worried faces and their hungry children, was draining her. She was grateful for a ten-minute break in the little basement canteen and was just enjoying her first cup of tea of the day when she saw Eliza James approaching.
‘Nellie, dear, you’d best come with me. Someone wants to talk to you.’
‘Who?’
But Eliza simply took her by the arm, leading her out to another small basement room. Nellie asked again, ‘Who wants me?’
Eliza pushed open the door and stood back to reveal Sam Gilbie, standing with his cap in his hand. Nellie was confused and looked at each of them in turn, wondering what on earth was going on. For a moment, she thought it was something to do with finding a room for her. But Eliza didn’t look as though she was about to impart good news and Sam’s face was grim.
‘What is it, Sam?’ Nellie felt fear ripple through her. Had his mother died?
‘Nellie, your father sent me to fetch you…’
There was a moment’s relief, first that it wasn’t Lizzie and then at the thought that her father had relented. She could go home again! But then she saw Sam shake his head.
‘It’s Bobby, it looks like he’s got the dysentery…’
Nellie’s hand covered her mouth as she tried to stifle the cry, remembering the two little coffins she’d seen pass along Vauban Street only a few days ago.
‘Oh, no, Sam, not Bobby. Is it bad? Oh, no.’ Her knees buckled and he sprang to catch her. Eliza had her under the other arm and the two of them half carried her up the stairs out to the back yard and the waiting cart.
‘Get me there quick, Sam. Bobby needs me, get me there quick.’ Panic had fallen over her like a chill, icy covering, which no summer heat could penetrate. Her mouth was dry, but a cold sheen of sweat enveloped her. Her breath came in shallow, harsh rasps. They helped her up on to the front seat and, as though from a great distance, she heard Eliza say, ‘I’m so sorry, Nellie. I would come with you, but I can’t leave things as they are here…’
‘No, of course you can’t,’ Sam replied, and his tone was steel.
‘Thank you, madam, thank you. Could someone let Lily know?’ Nellie asked, just as Sam slapped the reins and manoeuvred the cart out of the yard. The streets were a blur as the horse clipped along, and Nellie found herself gripping the side board till her knuckles were white. She thought of all the times Sam Gilbie had asked her to ride in this cart, feeling she would give anything if only it could be one of those times now. And then she found herself making a stupid bargain with God. If you spare Bobby, I’ll be kinder to Sam. I promise I’ll ride in the bloody cart whenever he wants me to. Spare Bobby, she prayed silently and fervently, and I’ll keep the promise I made his mum, I will, just let Bobby be all right…
Sam pulled up the cart in Vauban Street and helped her down. ‘He’s a strong little ’un, Nellie. Try not to worry too much, he’ll get through it,’ he said quietly.
She wished she could believe him. If the other two children in the street had been carried off by dysentery, what was there to save Bobby? People were blaming the dock strike for the lack of fresh food and milk. Hungry children had to be fed and, like other families, they’d been forced to buy the ‘specks’ of rotting fruit and whatever ends of meat were left over at the market. She knew too well how hungry boys would eat whatever was to hand; she’d never forgive herself if Bobby had eaten bad food, just because she wasn’t there to supervise.
Alice must have heard the cart draw up and in seconds she was at the front door, flinging her arms round Nellie. ‘Oh, Nell, he’s bad. Come quick, he’s been asking for you.’
Her father was slumped in his chair, staring at the empty grate. She didn’t think he saw her as they passed through the kitchen and up the stairs to the bedroom, where Bobby was lying alone in the bed he normally shared with Freddie. A white-faced Freddie, all the bravado knocked out of him, now knelt beside the bed and she rushed over to join him.
‘Bobby,’ she said, gently stroking the little boy’s damp hair, ‘it’s Nellie come back to see you.’
His eyes flickered open and he gave her a weak smile. ‘Dad let you come home! I kept asking him. I didn’t give up, even when he got angry.’
Nellie swallowed the tears. ‘’Course I’m home, I wouldn’t leave you, would I?’ She held the little boy’s hand and it was icy cold. She felt down to his feet and, though the room was stifling, they were frozen too. Her sister’s fearful look told her everything.
‘Stay with me now, Nellie, don’t go away again,’ the boy pleaded weakly.
She looked at Alice, who nodded. ‘Dad’s taking it bad, Nell. I don’t think he even noticed you come in.’
‘I’m here, Bobby. I’m staying here.’
And she kept her word, kneeling at the little boy’s side, hour after hour, as the window dark
ened and the stars came out. Periodically she got up and tried to make him drink. Alice had been dozing in the other bed, comforting Freddie, but now she got up and asked anxiously, ‘Can’t we call the doctor out, Nell?’
She shook her head. ‘There’s no money for the doctor, Al, but everyone says the best thing is to keep putting the fluid back in them.’
She got up to fetch Bobby another drink, but Alice caught her arm. ‘Come on, Nell, let me take a turn watching.’
But Nellie would not leave him. With the dawn came a change. His shivering increased and his breathing became shallow. And then she felt all the strength leave her and she fell sobbing on to the bed. ‘What good’s a promise to you,’ she shouted at God, ‘if you’re going to take him anyway!’
She must have been screaming, for her father came running up the stairs and, kneeling down beside her, gathered her into his arms.
‘It’s my fault, Dad, I’m so sorry. It’s the strike did it, it’s the bad milk and food. We caused it, it should be me there.’
Her stern father’s face melted with tears. ‘You can’t blame yourself, Nell. He could have caught anything, swimming in that filthy river, and I found out they’ve been eating food from the wharf side. It’s been rotting there for days. That could’ve caused it.’
She was stunned. She had expected blame, abuse, rage, but not this vulnerable, weeping old man. She had never seen him like it, not even when her mother died.
‘If anyone’s to blame it’s me,’ he went on. ‘Oh, God, Nellie, my poor little boy. The last thing I did to him was beat him, till he begged me to stop.’
They stayed locked in each other’s arms for a long time, united, for once, in a common bond of guilt and grief.
8
And Roses
Nellie woke with a start, then realized she was in her own bed, though how she got there she couldn’t for the moment recall. The bright morning sun was already piercing the thin curtains and then she remembered. Bobby! How could she have left him? She instinctively turned over to shake Alice, but found she was alone in the bed. A cold panic rose like a paralysis and she was held fast by the fear of what she would find if she left the bed. If she stayed where she was, she needn’t find out. If she stayed still, here and now Bobby could still be alive. Now a memory surfaced of waking in the early morning light in the arms of her father as he carried her to her own bed. She must have fallen asleep at Bobby’s bedside.
