Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts

by Mary Gibson

  She practically skipped back to their table. Ted sat morosely staring into his beer and Lily was looking fixedly into her glass. ‘What’s the matter with you two? It’s meant to be a celebration, not a wake!’

  ‘What you kissing that drip for?’ asked Ted.

  ‘If you must know, his poor mother was at death’s door and she’s a bit better. I was just being kind.’

  ‘Well, you should save your kindness for me.’ His petulant, full lips reminded her of Freddie’s when he couldn’t get his own way.

  ‘You’ve got no claim on my kindness, Ted Bosher. We’re not even walking out.’

  ‘Well, then, perhaps we should be.’

  Lily’s head snapped up. ‘Oh, look, there’s Ethel Brown and the girls, I’ll just go and have a word.’ And she darted off, leaving them alone.

  ‘What do you say, Nellie? Will you be my girl?’

  Nellie smiled nervously at first, then excitement began to wind about her heart like an ever-tightening spring. She felt triumphant. If life was a war, she had won the first battle. She had fought the most powerful people in her life: her bosses and her father. She had looked down the barrel of a rifle and stared out death, she had willed Bobby back to life, and now she had won her prize, her fiery hero: the future opened before her in a vision of unending golden days.

  9

  ‘Over the Other Side’

  Eliza James smelled like a field of strawberries. It came of spending most of the day in the boiling heat of the jam factory. At times she had felt just like one of those soft fruits, boiled to a pink pulp and sealed into the airtight jar that was the factory owner’s office. Bending her head to the sleeve of her grey jacket, she inhaled deeply as she stood in the black-and-white tiled hallway of the house in Mecklenburgh Square, enjoying the cool, light space, the marble floor and pale stone staircase. So triumph felt like this? She smiled to herself at the irony of the phrase that came to mind. For once, just for once, it actually wasn’t a case of ‘jam tomorrow’. They had wrested binding agreements from the management; had won the women their eleven shillings a week and improved conditions; and she had come home smelling of sweet summer fruit. She looked up the stairs to the first floor. The oak door of Ernest’s office was shut. All was quiet in the house and Eliza found herself hoping that Ernest wasn’t at home. She wanted a small space in the day to enjoy what she’d achieved. God knows, the sacrifices had been great enough, and not just over the past weeks of the strike. From the day she’d left her home in Rotherhithe, almost fifteen years ago, it seemed she’d had to forgo everything that was precious in her past, in order to forge a new, better future, not just for herself but for others like her. That sweet little Nellie Clark for one, who knew no more of life outside Bermondsey than she had herself when she’d come to work for Ernest as his housemaid. Eliza pulled a face. What a sight she’d been then, a gawky fifteen-year-old, with auburn hair that refused to be tamed under that hideous white pleated cap. Yet Ernest had seen something in her and sometimes Eliza fervently wished he had not.

  She wondered what her life would have been if she’d stayed as that anonymous little housemaid. She had not been to see her mother again since that last painful, unannounced visit after the planning meeting. What had made her turn the car round and why had she allowed herself to face young Sam’s stony disapproval? Perhaps some bonds just couldn’t be broken, not by class or station or temperament, and in the end she had simply wanted to see her mother before she died. Lizzie Gilbie’s weakness had shocked her, but Eliza was not surprised to find her mother still had that same old touch of fire sparking through her. It was clear from the start she would not let Eliza get away with years of neglect, without saying something. Her mother’s emotions had always been very near the surface, and ill health had done nothing to diminish that.

  That night had taken more courage for Eliza than addressing a fifteen-thousand-strong crowd from her soapbox in Southwark Park. She could face a boardroom full of hard-nosed industrialists or politicians with relish, but to look into her mother’s eyes, after almost nine years’ absence, took all her courage. Her legs had trembled when Sam left them alone. He’d taken the wide-eyed Matty and his younger brother Charlie up to their beds. She’d heard Matty’s inquisitive ‘Who is she?’, and Sam replying, ‘That’s your sister Eliza.’ Did they never speak of her then? Suddenly Eliza’s limbs had turned to water and she knew she would have to sit down, or risk falling down. Her mother’s weak blue eyes had followed her as she walked towards the chair by the fire. Only her eyes had moved, everything else about her was very still and she’d uttered no word. Finally, Eliza broke the silence.

  ‘Hello, Mum... I’ve come to see you.’

  ‘You took your time,’ Lizzie replied, in an oddly familiar way, just as if Eliza were a child sent on an errand who had loitered on the way home, not a woman who hadn’t been home for nine years. ‘You’d better sit down.’

  Lizzie didn’t smile. She closed her eyes, shifting in her chair, and, as she did so, Eliza spotted her swollen legs beneath the blankets that swaddled her. The rest of her was stick thin, her skin clammy and pale. Sam had not exaggerated; she should be glad at least that she’d come in time. ‘Sam wrote and told me you’ve not been well, Mum. I didn’t know.’

  Lizzie opened her eyes. ‘No, well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ Again, so matter-of-factly no one could argue with the truth of that.

  How could Eliza know the state of her mother, or that of any other member of her family, when she had been as cut off from them as if she’d lived in Timbuktu and not just ‘over the other side’, as Lizzie called Mecklenburgh Square?

  ‘Over the other side’ of the Thames was a whole world away from Rotherhithe and, after she’d gone there, she’d left behind family, friends, social acceptance, everything that had made her who she was. If she had lost her place in her own world, then she was determined she would carve out a new one.

  What could she say now? Sorry? That would never erase the last nine years. And anyway, she wasn’t sorry for the work she’d done since meeting Ernest. He was the one who’d made her the woman she was; given her an education and a purpose in life. The girl Eliza Gilbie had simply disappeared when she’d gone to work for him ‘over the other side’. Ernest had remade her. Eliza James was her name now, though there never had been and never would be a marriage between them. Still, he had asked her to take the name and she’d done it for love and gratitude. But that night, sitting beside her failing mother, had brought home fiercely to her all that she had lost, abandoned, allowed to flow down and away from her on the stream of time.

  ‘There was nothing stopping you visiting, Eliza.’ Lizzie spoke with effort and took a laboured breath after each utterance.

  ‘You know Dad never approved of… Ernest.’ Eliza felt awkward saying his name in this house, where so many rows had erupted around it in the past.

  ‘He was only so angry because he thought you’d chucked away your chance of a happy life, but he wanted to make his peace with you… before the end. You could have come, if not for him then to see… the little ones.’

  Eliza bent her head then and the tears fell in fat drops into the lap of her skirt. ‘No, Mum, I couldn’t, it would have been too painful. I had to make a new life. I thought it would be for the best, for… for everyone, if I was out of the picture.’

  Lizzie pushed herself to sit up in the chair, trembling with the effort, and looked her daughter in the eyes. ‘Well, it wasn’t for the best, Eliza. It’s never for the best when a child doesn’t see their parents.’ She was gasping for breath now, but resisted Eliza’s attempt to quieten her. ‘And I’m not saying it was all your fault, no… don’t stop me.’ She paused for a moment, struggling, but found her strength again. ‘I want to tell you that I’m truly sorry if I made you feel you couldn’t come home.’ Lizzie paused again for breath. ‘I want you to know that I never stopped being your mother, never, and whatever might be the opinion in Mecklenburgh Square, you never stopped
being my daughter.’

  Now, as Eliza trailed wearily up the stone staircase to her room, she wondered if there was really any way she could be Lizzie’s daughter again. Madam Mecklenburgh they called her behind her back – her own people, women she might have been at school with, played with in the streets and around the wharves. She shook her head. If only they knew that she was as trapped in her life as they were in theirs. She walked softly past Ernest’s office door, but had not reached the end of the landing before she heard his voice.

  ‘Eliza? Is that you, my dear?’

  The door opened and he poked his head out, like an alert spider on the margins of his web. He was middle-aged, with thick dark brown hair and a rather drooping moustache, and wore round spectacles. His frame, beneath the tight-fitting brown tweed suit, was surprisingly muscular for an academic and politician who spent his days behind a desk, or in meetings. He’d been a great rower at Cambridge and still liked to keep fit.

  ‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she called back. ‘Did you finish writing your speech?’

  ‘Yes, almost. But what about you? Are your Bermondsey gels ’appy?’

  She hated it when he spoke mock cockney; she knew it wasn’t as affectionate as he liked her to think. Sadly, she had learned too late that at heart Ernest James, prominent Fabian and member of the Independent Labour Party, was a hopeless snob and the tragedy was that he didn’t even know it. Self-knowledge was not his strong point, but in all other respects he was far cleverer than she could ever hope to be, and that was her tragedy. His clever words and fanciful phrases were what had seduced her, far more of an attraction than his athletic physique, although that had certainly played its part in the early days of their relationship.

  She blushed to think of her naivety, falling into the clichéd trap of an innocent housemaid being seduced by her employer. But as time went on, he’d begun to take her more seriously, listened to her opinions, had real conversations with her and for the first time in her life she’d felt ‘attended to’. That was the nearest she could come to explaining her feelings. She had felt the world opening out before her, but later Ernest had made it clear she would always be a mistress and never a wife. He made his free-thinking, progressive attitudes his excuse, but now she knew better. She could be mistress in his bedroom and mistress of his house, and no more. She had become his housekeeper, a screen for the sensibilities of the more conventional members of his family. She had even joined him in his trade union work, but as for being his social equal, well, even nine years’ separation from her family couldn’t quite erase the Bermondsey girl in his eyes. She knew all this, and yet she stayed – trapped by her own choices and by Ernest’s indomitable will.

  ‘Come and tell me all about your triumphs. Did you have old Duff shaking like one of his own pink blancmanges?’

  She had to laugh at the image. It so perfectly summed up the rotund owner of Pearce Duff’s, who had grown more and more agitated as the negotiations progressed. ‘Let me change first. You wouldn’t like me, I smell of the factory.’

  He sniffed the air. ‘Ah, that’s what I can smell! I’m sure I shouldn’t mind a spoonful of that particular confection!’ He raised an eyebrow, but she knew his penchant for cleanliness.

  She was already halfway up the next flight of stairs. ‘I’ll come down and talk later, before dinner!’ she called, anxious to be away. It wasn’t just the stickiness of the jam factory and the heat she wanted to wash off. Too many memories and associations overwhelmed her. Being so near to her old home had brought her weeks of uneasiness and anxiety and guilt, and now all she wanted was to shut herself away alone. The only place she truly felt at home these days was in her own company. The two worlds she had been inhabiting over the past weeks felt as though they were tearing her apart; she’d been overcome by a sense of her own rootlessness and now there was nowhere she could settle. But whatever her personal feelings, she knew she had done some good today, and if Ernest himself had proved a personal disappointment to her, the work had not. It had been worth the sacrifices… or so she had thought, until now.

  After washing off the scent of strawberries and changing her clothes, she felt herself settling once again into her own life. She found Cook and arranged for a simple supper to be laid out for them in the dining room. When she came down, Ernest already had drinks poured. He handed her a glass of wine and they began to talk about the wage settlement while they drank. He freely praised her efforts.

  ‘You’ve done more for them, Eliza, than you ever could if you’d stayed one of them,’ he said finally. ‘You do realize that?’

  She blushed, realizing he’d seen through her false cheeriness and hit at the very heart of her sombre unease. ‘Perhaps, Ernest, but you can’t know what it’s like to be an exile.’

  He snorted at that. ‘For God’s sake, Eliza, you of all people should know I’m the family black sheep!’

  ‘Yes.’ She bit her lip, so that he shouldn’t see it trembling. ‘But at least you still see your family.’

  That he could not argue with. But he paused, as though weighing up what he was about to tell her. Ernest never said anything without thinking it through ten steps ahead.

  ‘Perhaps not for long, though. In fact, I may well be launching into a new world myself, far from the clutches of my dear relations.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Suddenly alert, a wave of fear pulsed through her body. Whatever she might think of her life with Ernest, he gave her a certain protection in society, and without him she would be vulnerable. She moved to the sideboard and selected cheese and fruit, pouring them each another glass of wine.

  ‘Well, my dear, a wonderful opportunity has arisen… I’ve been invited to work with the Australian Labour Party!’

  ‘In Australia?’

  ‘Even my organizational skills couldn’t achieve the job from here, my dear,’ he said dryly. ‘Yes, in Australia.’

  A million questions presented themselves.

  ‘Don’t look so worried, me little cockney sparrer, you’re coming with me!’

  She flushed, caught between the sideboard and the table with the plates of food in her hand. Turning back to get the glasses, she spilled wine on the walnut veneer, and dabbed at it with a napkin. Frantic for time to think, she could feel Ernest’s impatience.

  ‘Leave it, you’re not really my housekeeper, for God’s sake. Just sit down and tell me what you think!’

  An hour before she had wanted nothing more than another chance to choose the course of her own life, and now, presented with it on a plate, she felt unable to act. She cast about in her mind for something both reasonable and delaying to say.

  ‘What I think is that you might have asked me first before deciding to drag me halfway round the world!’ she said quickly.

  He reached out his hand, the back of which was covered in thick dark hair, and placed it over her own. ‘But where else would you go, my dear?’

  She felt herself struggling for a way to demand her freedom, hopelessly ensnared by her own fear and Ernest’s paralysing logic. And then she gave in, suddenly feeling the relief of the idea of flight, of leaving the two worlds warring inside her far behind. Australia would be new to both of them; perhaps there he would forget her origins and the scales of their relationship could even out into a kind of balance? A brave adventure, that’s what their friends in the movement would call it. She tried to hold on to the exhilarating rush of imagining her new life in Australia, but at the back of her mind was her own voice, calling herself a coward. She smothered it and focused on what might await her so many thousands of miles away from Bermondsey and Mecklenburgh Square.

  ‘Australia?’ she mused. ‘Then I really would be “over the other side”, wouldn’t I?’

  10

  Shifting Sands

  The custard tarts went back to Pearce Duff’s in jubilant mood after the strike was settled, and to show that their newfound strength was no passing thing, they orchestrated a mass return. It was every bit as carnival-
like as the day they had walked out, and though they didn’t wear Sunday best, since they had a day’s work to do, they were happy to at least be returning triumphant. The extra shillings in their pocket each week meant life was changing for all of them. But Nellie felt their mood had far less bravado in it. Every woman now knew the cost of striking. For herself it had been the loss of her home, for a while, and nearly the loss of her brother; for others, the faces of their hungry children had been almost too much to bear. Nellie suspected that a few weeks more of privation might have seen even the strongest of them cave in for the want of a loaf of bread or a week’s rent. Still, Nellie joined the buoyant women as they trooped through the factory gates four abreast, with her own happiness boosted by the thought that she was now Ted Bosher’s girl. As she smiled at Lily and the other women, she felt an unexpected surge of love, and somewhere inside she knew it was connected to her own sense of being singled out by Ted. Now she knew for certain that he liked her too, it felt safe to let all those feelings of warmth and attraction bubble to the surface, and like an unstoppable spring they seemed to be spreading out to include whoever crossed her path.

  Lily grabbed her round the waist. ‘Look at you! You’re like the cat that got the cream! Smile any more and you’ll split yer face!’

  Nellie giggled. She didn’t mind the teasing; she knew she would get more when the other custard tarts heard her news. Anyway, it was news she was proud of. Who wouldn’t be proud to have Ted as their chap? The hero of the hour, he was now known by every factory girl in Bermondsey and there were quite a few in Duff’s would be envious of her handsome firebrand.

  ‘What d’yer mean, got the cream – what cream?’

  Maggie Tyrell had overheard; there wasn’t a secret she couldn’t worm out of anyone and she could be relied on not to keep it once she’d found out.

  ‘Well, you might as well know,’ Nellie admitted, trying desperately to make her smile a little smaller. ‘At least you’ll save me the trouble of telling all the others. Ted asked me to walk out with him and I said yes.’