Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts

by Mary Gibson

  ‘Dad’s a little bit poorly, boys, and he had to go to the hospital, but he says we must have our Christmas all the same. He was very particular about that.’ She smiled encouragingly.

  ‘Have another sausage each.’ If she could feed their ignorance with food all day she would be happy to, and they accepted her explanation readily – perhaps, she thought, a little too readily. It saddened her to think how her broken father had robbed himself of their love over the years. It could have been so different, if only he’d let them in a bit earlier. She knew they could have formed the closest of bonds, all of them, after her mother died. They could have huddled, like bereft ducklings, around him; instead he had retreated and blamed the world for his loss.

  But while her father was in the hospital, she was head of the house, and she would try to do things differently. She would need all the children’s help and was determined that they would be her allies, never her enemies.

  ‘Listen, boys, you’re going to have to be the men of the house while Dad’s not here.’ She hesitated. ‘He might not be able to come home straight away. Do you think you can help me and Al with the coal and the firewood?’

  Bobby nodded eagerly, biting a chunk out of his sausage. ‘An’ I’ll help you with the laundry, Nell. I can turn the mangle.’

  ‘An’ I can fill the copper!’ Freddie piped up, not willing to be outdone.

  Smiling, she went to each of them, gathering them into her arms and pulling Alice close too.

  ‘We’ll be all right, us lot, won’t we? We just have to stick together.’

  She hoped her sister and brothers did not catch the quiver in her voice, or the trembling of her body, as the comforting lie rose from her lips and hung above them in the steam-filled room.

  It was a long day, but Nellie waited until the boys had thoroughly tired themselves out before putting them to bed. She didn’t want them giving her sister any trouble. She pulled on her good woollen coat and twined her scarf around her neck. She would walk to the hospital. She had already started to do sums in her head; whatever money her dad had squirrelled away for Christmas was all they had to live on till her next pay day. She would try to see old man Wicks tomorrow; he might see her, even though it was Boxing Day. She would milk as much Christmas kindness from him as she could, though there was no guarantee he would be forthcoming with injury money. Knowing him, he’d be docking money for damage to the cart from her father’s wages. She was just thankful that old Thumper had emerged unscathed, otherwise Wicks would be docking the vet bill as well. No, she would be taking no more trams.

  ‘You be all right here with the boys?’ Nell asked her sister, who nodded. ‘You’re a good girl.’ She hugged Alice goodbye. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you. Please God he’ll be all right and we’ll just have to get through it till he’s home again. Now don’t forget to wrap the rest of the goose and put it out in the safe, and we can have bubble and squeak with it tomorrow. We’ll have to make do and mend for a while.’

  Alice, though still only twelve, knew as well as Nellie did what it meant for her father to be off work. Nellie’s wages alone wouldn’t be enough to feed them and pay the rent.

  ‘Don’t look so worried. I’m going to see Wicks tomorrow, we might get a sub.’

  Nellie gave her another squeeze and went out, catching her breath as the biting cold invaded her lungs. She put her head down and started off down the Neckinger till she got to Druid Street arch. She had always hated the arches beneath the railway viaduct; as a child she had run through them to escape their darkness and the thunderous rumbling of the trains overhead that filled them. This particular arch brought back memories of Ted Bosher: it was around here that he’d spent his days making bombs, while pretending to her he was working at the docks. She shook her head; she’d heard nothing from him and neither had Lily. The weeks had gradually drained her of any longing she might have felt for his voice or his touch, but loyalty ran through her like a strong vein of precious metal and it wasn’t easy for her to abandon his memory. Now this latest trouble brought into clear focus that he simply wasn’t there. His choices had robbed her of her girlish romantic notions and whatever troubles she had to face, Ted Bosher would certainly not be around to support her. She inhaled the freezing air and let its scarifying sharpness scrub all those tender dreams she had for Ted clean away. It felt as if she were cleaning her heart, clearing the decks, getting ready for God knew what almighty battle. She walked quickly through the arch and hurried on down Druid Street, which ran parallel to the viaduct, almost all the way to Guy’s. After twenty minutes’ fast walking she arrived panting and pink-cheeked. Visiting hours had been relaxed for Christmas Day and so she walked freely on to the ward, passing the rows of patients, some with family members who had obviously brought in Christmas treats. The carbolic smell was overlaid with tints of orange and spice and some effort had been made to decorate the ward. She looked nervously around for Matron, but she made it to the end of the ward unchallenged. Her father’s bed was still screened off and she pulled aside one of the screens. The freshly made bed, with its tight-as-a-drum sheets and blankets, was quite empty. She looked over her shoulder in panic, to see Matron approaching. The look of sympathy on her face told Nellie everything.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ was all she said. And she put her arm round Nellie, who, in spite of her resolve to be strong, broke down, sobbing. Matron guided her out of the ward past the rows of patients and visitors, each of whose eyes were lit by a common relief that this time the tragedy was not theirs to weep over.

  16

  Six Bob Short

  No matter how many times she did the sums, the result was always the same: six shillings short. For the want of six shillings a week they might all end up in the workhouse, or if she chose to pay the rent, instead of buying food, they might simply starve. Her choices were becoming terrifyingly simple and every mathematical effort brought her back to the same dead end: she could find no way to make the figures add up to more. Nellie turned over the piece of paper and began again. Sitting at the kitchen table by the light of a candle end she fought her lonely battle with shillings and pence. She worked out their outlays to the last farthing. Eight shillings for rent; twelve and six for a very little meat, potatoes, bread, jam, sugar, tea and milk; two and six for coals, wood and soap: twenty-three shillings was the very least it would take to keep the four of them. This was six shillings more than their income and even so it didn’t include a penny for new clothes, or boots for the boys, who seemed to be growing like bean plants. God forbid she ever got ill and couldn’t work; in that event any choices would be taken completely out of her hands. Dad’s penny policy had buried him and had given them the breathing space they needed, while the remainder had paid January’s rent. At least 1913 had brought one good thing with it – Alice had turned thirteen and could start work at Pearce Duff’s, for the girl’s wage of six shillings a week. Nellie’s wage was now eleven shillings and she blessed the memory of Eliza James every day for that. But she banged the table in frustration; seventeen shillings a week was still not enough.

  Something had to be done and done quickly, or they’d all end up on the streets; she would not even contemplate the workhouse, which loomed like an ogre at the edges of her imagination and filled her dreams with nightmare visions of the boys being torn from her arms. So, for the moment, her only choice was to pay the rent next week and if she had to live on bread and tea, so be it, at least the others would be fed. A knock on the door interrupted her brooding. It was past ten o’clock and late-night callers were not usual. Alice and the boys were in bed, so she crept to the front door and called softly through the letterbox.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘It’s me, Lily!’ came the unexpected reply.

  Nellie opened the door quickly. ‘What you doing here this time of night? I thought you were going out with Jock.’

  Lily bustled in, bringing the cold night air, which hung damply to her coat. She was buzzing with an a
lmost tangible excitement. ‘I was – but I had to come and tell you first, love, he wants us to get married!’

  Her friend did a little pirouette in the passage and Nellie dragged her into the kitchen.

  ‘Gawd, Nell, it’s like the black hole o’Calcutta in here. Why are you sitting in the dark?’

  Nellie quickly went to light the gas lamp. She didn’t want to dampen Lily’s excitement with tales of her own troubles, but her friend was quick enough to register the paper covered in sums on the kitchen table.

  ‘Oh, Nellie, don’t tell me things are so tight you can only afford candlelight? Didn’t Wicks help you out?’

  Nellie shook her head. ‘Not a penny from him, but Dad’s workmates had a whip-round, and then there was the penny policy come out, but that’s gone now. But listen...’ she scooped her workings off the table and scrunched it into a ball ‘...we’re not talking about my troubles now. Tell me all about it, start to finish!’

  ‘He only asked me tonight, but to be honest it wasn’t a surprise. Well, I knew he was keen, Nell, right from that first night we met, it was on the Christmas Eve . . .’ Lily hesitated, as if unsure whether to go on or not.

  ‘Is that why you’ve said nothing?’ Nellie reached out and hugged Lily across the table. ‘Life has to go on, Lil.’

  ‘I know, but it didn’t seem right to be talking about my happiness when you’ve been going through it like this.’

  Nellie was secretly grateful for her friend’s delicacy, not because she wouldn’t have been pleased for her but because she might not have been able to show it. Now, as the details emerged of Jock and Lily’s whirlwind courtship, Nellie remembered her own dreams. Suddenly she felt a resurgence of the young girl she’d been only the year before. The flush of romance Lily had brought in with her and the excitement in her bright eyes took Nellie out of her dire situation, and with that relief came the inner assurance that everything would be all right – she would find a way.

  ‘Now I must go and tell me mum,’ said Lily, getting up and throwing on her coat.

  ‘Give her my love,’ Nellie said as she saw her friend to the door.

  ‘Who knows, Nell, might be you next, eh?’

  But as she looked into her friend’s eyes Nellie saw a shadow dim their brightness and without being told knew Lily was thinking of Ted and what might have been. But she felt impervious to his memory; whatever power he had to dazzle her had been largely driven by her own long-vanished naivety. Ted might have robbed her of trust, but he certainly hadn’t dented her hope, her strength or her resolve. She felt bold enough to ask, ‘Have you heard from him?’

  Lily nodded and then concentrated on buttoning her coat. ‘We did get a letter.’

  ‘You don’t have to pussyfoot around me, Lil. I’m not under any illusions where Ted’s concerned, not any more.’

  ‘He told Mum not to worry, then went into one of his rants, says there’s work to be done out there, and I don’t think he was talking about the sort that brings in any money. He’s staying with friends, Bolshies by the sound of it, and...’ She paused, then went on. ‘Well, you might as well hear it from me, he’s taken up with some Russian tart called Tatyana or something, so I don’t think he’ll be coming home soon, love.’

  Nellie shrugged. ‘I feel sorry for your mum,’ was all she said, but in her mind she heard the click of a door quietly shutting. When Lily was gone she turned off the gas lamp and wearily climbed the stairs to bed. Her sums could wait till morning; all she wanted now was a night of dreamless sleep.

  Old Wicks was a wiry, weasel-faced man in his late sixties. He had a receding chin and a protruding forehead, and squashed between the two was a face permanently screwed into suspicious defensiveness. Her father had always said Wicks feared being cheated more than anything in the world. ‘And that’s only because he’s such a bloody cheat himself!’ Her father complained how Wicks would dock them half a day’s pay if they were even a few minutes late in the morning.

  ‘By his watch, though!’ Her father would tap his own watch vigorously to illustrate the point. ‘Mine is always on time, but he keeps his running five minutes fast, just to trip us up, thinks we’re all bloody idiots.’

  The run-ins between her father and Wicks were explosive, but George was his most experienced carter and there was no one, apart from Sam, who was half so good with the horses. Wicks was a man of means and property: he owned not only the stable yard but the houses either side, one of which had always been Nellie’s home. She knew Wicks would like nothing more than for her to fall into rent arrears, now her father was gone: he could get more if he rented the place out to two families. They’d been lucky to have the whole house to themselves – it wasn’t uncommon to have a family of four occupy one bedroom, sharing the kitchen or scullery with another family living in the other bedroom. Wicks could almost double his rent at a stroke.

  There he stood, as he did each Monday evening, hand held out. Nellie carefully counted out the eight shillings and then he counted it again, keeping her waiting on the doorstep, a bitter wind catching at her skirt and leeching all the precious heat out of the house. The few sparse strands of sandy hair on his balding head lifted and flicked like little whips and she hated the sight of his cherry-red lips, moving silently as he counted the last farthing. He nodded and she loathed his nodding head with its liver spots and scabs.

  He had offered not a word of sympathy since the death of her father and had only alluded to it once. That was on the day of the funeral, when George’s fellow drivers lined up at the yard gate to see him off. Sam Gilbie and the other men had stood with caps in hands, while the neighbours came to their doors in respectful silence. Nellie saw Wicks pushing his way through them to where she and the children were standing in their mourning black. They were about to set off, walking behind the hearse, but she stopped and turned, meaning to thank Wicks for coming. She had been hoping he would turn up with her father’s last pay packet, for he was owed a week’s money.

  Instead Wicks nodded curtly and launched into a complaint. ‘Your father had no right using that cart on his own time. Do you know how much it’s costing to put the thing back on the road? I’m docking his last pay for it, so don’t expect anything from me.’

  With that he turned abruptly away, ignoring the looks of disgust from his drivers and the disapproving mutterings of the neighbours. Nellie was too shocked to reply, but Sam was at her side.

  ‘Don’t worry about that heartless bastard, Nellie.’ She had never heard him swear before, but she could see now his face was red with suppressed rage, his knuckles white, as he clenched his fists. He was holding an envelope, which he handed to her. ‘Here, take this, me and the boys had a whip-round.’

  The tears, which she’d held back successfully so far, now brimmed over, staining the black silk dress with round damp splotches.

  ‘Thanks, Sam, I’m so grateful. Thank the other men for me, will you?’

  He nodded and put a hand on her arm. ‘If you need anything, let me know. Don’t try doing it all on your own, will you?’

  She covered his hand with her own and swallowed her tears. How well he knew her.

  ‘Come on, Dolly Daydream, you’re holding up the line. You’ve filled one packet in ten minutes!’

  Nellie, startled out of her musings, dropped the packet, spilling custard powder all over her shoes. ‘Bugger!’ She hopped back. It was bad enough trying to get the yellow dust out of her hair each evening, without filling her boots with it. Lily, who’d been waiting patiently for the packet for pasting, gave Nellie a sympathetic look. None of them liked attracting the attention of the foreman. A martinet who rarely gave the girls an inch, Albert was proud of the custard tarts’ output and if they were behind quota would often refuse them toilet breaks with a smirking instruction to ‘Cross your legs!’. How long he’d been standing behind her, she hadn’t a clue. She wanted to yell into his round, stupid face that it was his fault, but she must do nothing to jeopardize this job, and, anyway, today she
had to ask him a favour, so instead she speeded up and tried hard to focus on the monotonous task before her.

  As Albert walked away, Maggie Tyrell caught Nellie’s eye and mouthed, ‘Tin soldier! Take no notice.’

  Nellie smiled. Her friends at Duff’s had helped get her through the awful Christmas and New Year. Maggie had organized a collection and those that had no money to spare turned up at her door with rice puddings and egg custards, or a loaf of bread. Some sent bits of clothing for the boys, anything to let her know she was not alone. But what they could not do was to take the worry away – it ate at her night and day. The penny policy money was gone and next week the rent and food would be coming out of her and Alice’s wages. She had to find extra money from somewhere.

  When the time came for their team’s ten-minute morning break she told Lily to go on without her and nervously approached Albert, who was inspecting a machine that had clogged up. He was lying on his back with his nose virtually stuck up a delivery chute.

  ‘Get us a spanner!’ For a moment she thought he’d addressed her. She looked around for the spanner, at a loss, but just then one of the young boys who ran errands jumped up from behind the machine and ran off in search of the spanner.

  Nellie coughed. ‘Albert, could I have a word, please?’ she asked, hating the fact that he’d ignored her presence. He might be under the machine, but he could bloody well see her legs. She resisted the urge to put the toe of her boot into the paunch poking out from his waistcoat and instead waited patiently for a response.

  ‘Not the best time.’ Albert wriggled further under.