by Mary Gibson
‘It’s me break.’ She hunkered down and looked under the machine. He was red-faced and trying to pry off a plate. ‘I was just wondering, Albert, if I could have a couple of hours’ overtime?’
Just then the boy returned with the spanner.
‘No, you dozy little sod, this is a socket wrench. I want an open spanner!’ Albert flung the wrench at the little boy’s ankles, Leaping out of the way, he dashed off again without a word.
‘I could really do with a couple of hours’ evening shift, if there’s any, Albert,’ Nellie persisted.
Now he deigned to pull himself out from under the machine.
‘You’ve got the kids now, haven’t you?’ he asked, wiping off his greasy hands with a cloth.
She nodded.
‘You women with kids are always letting us down on the evening shifts,’ he mumbled, almost to himself. ‘Any rate, I’ve got no overtime, Nell. All the shifts are full. Where’s that lazy little sod with the spanner?’ He could barely look at her. She knew very well that there were spaces on the evening shift, but Albert was notorious for giving any spare overtime to his favourites.
‘Well, I’d be very grateful if anything did come up.’ Still she had to be polite, deferential, pretend not to know the way the system worked, but she would get nowhere with Albert.
Nellie returned disconsolately to her bench just as the girls were coming back from their break. Before she started up the machine again she leaned over to Maggie. ‘I’ve got to get some more money coming in, Mag.’
‘Is that what you’ve been worrying about all morning?’
Nellie nodded. ‘Albert says I can’t have any more hours.’
Maggie raised her eyes. ‘Make you beg, did he?’
Nellie pulled a face, trying to replace the humiliation she felt with an appearance of defiance.
‘What about home work?’ Maggie asked. ‘Me and the kids get a bit extra making matchboxes – your boys could help you.’
It was a possibility that had occurred to her, but she’d dismissed it, mainly because her father had always looked down on families that took in home work. But could she afford to carry the burden of her dead father’s pride? She could also hear the echo of Madam Mecklenburgh’s voice, attacking those who took advantage of women and children forced to do ‘sweated work’. ‘White slavers’, she’d called them. She had worked with the Anti Sweated Labour League and had even urged the factory women to boycott any home work they were doing on the side. But to Nellie all that seemed a long time ago and the temptation to find at least some of those missing six shillings in a pile of matchboxes was too great.
‘How much do they pay?’ she asked Maggie.
‘Tuppence ’apenny the gross.’
‘Is that all! What’s that? Twelve dozen matchboxes? And how long does that take you?’
‘Well, you might do six dozen an hour, but if the kids are working with you, you could treble that. I’ll take you down the depot, if you want.’
Nellie said she would think about it. Eliza James had been right, though, they would certainly be slaving away. As she stood packing the custard powder, she did the sums in her head. If the four of them worked every evening for three hours, they might make three shillings a week. Still three bob short of what she needed, but it would be better than nothing. As they left the factory that evening, she ran to catch up with Maggie, who had her arms full of screaming baby. Maggie’s youngest daughter, Amy, had brought little Lenny to the factory gates, glad to hand over her burden.
Maggie looked up apologetically, indicating the infant. ‘This one’s teething. Poor Amy’s had a day of it, haven’t you, love?’
Nellie spared a smile for Amy. The ten-year-old’s dirty face was framed with a tangle of fair hair and her short pinafore hung well above what looked like a pair of her brother’s cast-off boots. Nellie remembered how, at that age, she’d been in charge of the babies. School wasn’t considered a priority when there was childminding to be done.
‘You’re a good helper for your mum, aren’t you?’ The child nodded vigorously.
‘Maggie, I’ve decided to do the home work. When are you going to the Bryant & May depot?’
‘Tonight, after this one’s fed. I’ll come and knock you up, all right, love?’ And she was off at a near run, rushing home to get the tea and settle the youngest of her six children before work started for the evening.
Now all Nellie had to do was convince the boys to join in this new game, what Eliza James would certainly call the ‘child slave’ game.
But it wasn’t easy. Alice was doubtful. ‘Dad wouldn’t have liked it.’ She looked exhausted; an eleven-hour day at Duff’s had come as a shock to her. She was much frailer than Nellie, who had inherited George Clark’s strong bones, and since their father’s death she and Nellie had tacitly agreed to eat less, so the boys would not go hungry. Nellie hated to put more work on her young shoulders. She handed Alice another plate to wash up.
‘Listen, Al, I don’t want to frighten you, love, but it’s either this or the streets, and it’s still not enough.’ The tremor in her voice seemed to steel Alice. Carefully sliding the last of the plates into the rack above the wooden draining board, she pulled the plug from the stone sink and turned a determined face to Nellie.
‘Well, it won’t be too bad. What else we going to do with our time, eh?’
‘Good girl!’
Together the sisters finished drying the blue and white crockery, Alice stacked it away in the scullery cupboard, while Nellie explained her plan. ‘I’m going with Maggie tonight, to get the stuff. Will you be all right with the boys till I get back?’
Alice nodded, a smile lighting her pale face as she turned towards the broom cupboard. ‘’Course I will, you go and get yourself ready.’ Nellie looked on doubtfully as her sister began vigorously sweeping the red-tiled scullery floor, all traces of her earlier weariness banished in her eagerness to support the new venture. ‘Go on!’ Alice urged. ‘Maggie’ll be here soon. I’ll be fine!’
When Maggie knocked, Nellie was surprised that she had four of her six children with her.
‘These are me little donkeys!’ Maggie explained. ‘They help me lug all the sides and the glue back.’ They were soon ready and set off like a small tribe on a foraging trip, up to the matchbox depot at London Bridge to collect the raw materials for the boxes. Nellie almost threw the glue pot at the warehouseman when he told her she had to purchase it herself. She was given the rudimentary instructions to assemble the matchbox and paste on the label, and then hefted the material in a hessian sack on to her back. There was a strap of leather designed to go over her head and she supported the weight of it by cupping her hands behind her back.
It was a long, neck-wrenching, back-aching walk back to Spa Road. She ignored the looks of passers-by. Maggie’s bravado enrobed them all in a brash cloak of protection. ‘Had your penn’orth?’ she would fling at anyone who stared too hard.
‘Only trying to make a living, so what’s it to you?’
Her little ones joined in, capering and laughing, shouting: ‘Made yer look, made yer stare, made the barber cut yer ’air!’ at the gawpers, till they were forced to retreat. By the time Nellie arrived home, exhausted, Alice had put the boys to bed. Nellie dumped the sack in the kitchen.
‘We’ll have to work out a better way of getting the boxes back up to London Bridge, once we’ve made them. Maggie’s got a little army of her kids to help her, but I don’t want to drag you and the boys up there every week, if I can help it.’
Alice put a cup of tea in front of her and as Nellie sipped thoughtfully, she had the beginnings of an idea as to where she might find the help she needed.
17
A Matter of Trust
‘Please come, Nellie!’ Lily pleaded. ‘It’s only a drink and a few sandwiches, and Jock’s paying.’ Nellie and Alice were walking home after work with Lily, who’d been waging a campaign all day. She was determined that they’d both be there at the Green Ginger
that night, to celebrate her engagement.
‘Lil, I can’t just leave the boys on their own at night, and anyway, we’ve got to get our quota of boxes done for next week,’ Nellie reasoned wearily.
‘Well, the boys can come too. We’ll send them out some ginger beer and a pint of winkles. Surely they deserve a little bit of a treat. They’ve been so good.’
Lily had hit just the right note. Nellie felt guilty every time she looked at her brothers’ eager, bright faces and nimble fingers as they played the ‘game’ of assembling the matchboxes. Bobby was a painfully careful worker, holding up every box for inspection with a ‘Will this do, Nell?’ She’d had to tell him that the boxes weren’t intended for the queen and no one was going to send them back because of a crooked label, so he could afford to go a little faster.
Every evening, for weeks, they had gathered round the kitchen table, with the glue pot and brush in the middle, Nellie pasting the label and putting on the sides, Bobby and Freddy forming them into boxes. Alice made the drawers and stuck on the striking edge. Nellie was glad of the boys’ enthusiasm – for them it was fun to feel grown up and of use. For the first couple of hours each night they chattered and laughed, producing astonishing amounts of boxes between them, but later in the evening their heads began to droop and their eyes to close. They worked till they dropped and then Alice would take them upstairs while Nellie carried on.
Soon they couldn’t move for matchboxes: there were piles under the stairs, then in the coal hole, and finally they were tripping over them in the bedrooms. But worse than the nightly toil, had been the weekly trip up to the depot. Walking to London Bridge and back with their burdens of matchboxes was proving so exhausting for the boys that they were falling asleep at school. Poor Alice felt the shame of it keenly, and had pleaded with Nellie to be let off the trek, but the stark fact was that the more boxes they could carry to the depot, the more they were paid. There was no doubt that, at the end of the week, they could all do with a rest.
‘Oh, all right, Lil, I’m so sick of matchboxes I’m likely to strike a lucifer and send the lot of us up in flames! We’ll all come then, but just for an hour!’
Lily jumped up and down excitedly. ‘Sam will be there too,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be Jock’s best man, did I tell you?’
Nellie nodded in approval. ‘I’m not surprised and he couldn’t have picked a better one.’
‘He’s still holding a torch for you, I think,’ Lily said, a mischievous light playing in her eyes.
Nellie sighed impatiently. ‘Do you think I’ve got time for that sort of thing these days?’ But she had her own reasons for being pleased that Sam would be there, which she didn’t divulge to Lily.
‘There’s always time for that sort of thing, Nellie Clark!’ Her friend winked at her and Nellie found herself caught up by Lily’s infectious humour. By the time Lily left them, they were all giggling.
And as Lily walked on towards her house with a jaunty step, she called back. ‘Be there at seven. I’ll save a place for you… next to Sam!’
Nellie and Alice hurried on towards Vauban Street. Nellie had noticed her sister’s eyes light up the minute she’d agreed to the outing and now she was eager to get home and tell the boys. But as soon as they heard the news they became so over-excited they were hardly able to eat their tea. Nellie was adamant – not a scrap was going into the dustbin in this house. ‘If you don’t finish your bread and jam, we ain’t going and that’s that!’
That settled it and they were as quiet as lambs as they went off to wipe their faces and damp down unruly hair.
Now they were wrapped up in warm jackets and scarves, sitting on a wall outside the Green Ginger with the other children. Nellie handed them a pin and the pewter pot of black winkles.
‘Sit here and don’t move, Alice will be out to check in a minute.’
They nodded obediently. At the pub door she looked back and saw, by the light of the gas lamp, that Bobby had already planted a black beauty spot from the top of the shellfish on to one little girl’s cheek. She smiled, relieved. They didn’t look like child slaves; they were having fun, just as children should.
Lily had been as good as her word and Nellie sat in the place saved for her next to Sam. They talked for a while about his mother. And there it was again – Nellie could feel that invisible thread of a promise tugging anxiously at her heart. She listened quietly as he told Nellie that Lizzie’s liver disease, brought on, so the doctors had said, by years of hard toil and poverty, couldn’t be cured. But in spite of her slow decline, she was still managing to rule the house from her truckle bed. Nellie noticed that talking about his mother seemed to drain the joy from Sam’s face. Suddenly she came to a decision. She pulled out from her bag a drawing she had made on the back of an old envelope and spread it out on the table in front of them. Making herself heard above the din and laughter surrounding them, she leaned forward to explain her plan to him.
‘I know it’s a big favour to ask, Sam, it being a family heirloom, but I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. I can’t go on dragging the kids up to London Bridge every week.’
‘Of course you can use it, Nell. Me dad would be only too pleased to think of it being put to good use, but…’
She held her breath as he silently appraised her plan.
‘Please say it will work!’ she burst out, and startled Sam, who could only laugh at Nellie’s resolve. He seemed to relax.
‘Well, I’d say it all depends on the quality of the workmanship, which of course will be of the very finest; and…’ he went on before she could interrupt him, ‘the skill of the driver, which is the risky bit!’
‘Are you saying I can’t do it?’ Nellie bristled at the suggestion, even though she had her own doubts. Sam held his hands up in mock defence.
‘I’m not saying that, I’m just thinking you’ll need a bit more practice, you’ve only done it once!’
The plan had come to her, while thinking about her brothers’ truncated childhoods. One of their favourite street games, before matchbox-making took over their lives, had been to trundle around the cobbled streets on a box cart, made from an orange crate mounted on to old pram wheels. One would push and the other would sit in the crate, steering the thing with a piece of rope attached to the front wheels. It had struck her as an ideal sort of conveyance for the completed matchboxes, but she needed something bigger and faster. The butcher’s boy, making deliveries with a basket attached to his bicycle, had furnished the other part of the design she’d presented to Sam.
‘The trailer’s got to attach to the back of the penny-farthing, so that when you go round a corner, the box goes round too, something like this…’ he said, sketching in a curved bar, designed to attach the proposed trailer to the penny-farthing frame. ‘See, if we put in greased pins at each end of this bar, the crate should follow the bike wherever it turns!’
Nellie nodded. ‘That looks just the ticket. I’m not keen on coming a cropper with twelve gross of matchboxes on the back! I could practise this Sunday… that’s if you think you can make the cart by then?’
‘I’ll go down the docks tomorrow and sort out a nice deep crate, but it’s got to be light enough for you too.’
By this time, Jock had wandered over and was peering at the sketch on the table. He moved Sam’s pint out of the way, intrigued. ‘I reckon we’ve got an old crate just the right size at the shop,’ he offered. Jock worked at his father’s ship chandlers in Rotherhithe Street. ‘There’s all sorts of odd bits of iron in the back yard that might come in handy. Bring the bike in tomorrow, and I’ll help you if you like.’
Sam grinned at his friend. ‘Another pair of hands won’t come amiss, even a south paw’s like yours! The only problem is getting hold of two pram wheels… unless we could borrow some…’ Sam glanced towards the pub door, where sounds of Bobby and Freddie’s laughter drifted in from outside.
Nellie got his meaning straight away. ‘Well, I’ll have to promise we’ll give the
m back… one day! Besides, I’ve got the two of them so busy making boxes, they don’t have time to play carting any more.’ Her voice trailed off and her sadness made its impression on Sam.
‘Nell, they’re good boys,’ he said gently. ‘They understand everything’s changed now, playtime’s over.’
She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You must have felt the same when your dad died, Sam. Was it all down to you?’
He nodded. ‘Well, there was no one else could take on the kids and Mum’s been so ill since, so I just got on with it.’
She felt strangely strengthened, knowing that here was someone who knew exactly what she was going through. Sam had become the family breadwinner at an even earlier age; he had managed and, with his help, so would she.
That night as she fell wearily into bed, she found herself feeling more hopeful than she had for a long time. And her dreams were full of penny-farthing bicycles with wheels made from shiny shillings and silver sixpences.
The next day was Saturday. Sam and Nellie both worked in the morning and had agreed to meet at Wicks’s stables that afternoon. Nellie stood watch behind the lace curtain of her kitchen, waiting till she saw Wicks leave the stable yard. She made a face at him from her hiding place: it was childish but satisfying, and made her grin to herself. The old man often left Sam in the stables to finish feeding the horses; but it wouldn’t do to draw Wicks’s attention to the penny-farthing, still hidden there. Knowing him, he’d want to charge Sam rent on it!
Once Wicks was out of sight, she left her house and ran to the yard gates, a sack over her shoulder, containing the two pram wheels liberated from the boy’s box cart. Sam was waiting for her at the gates with the old penny-farthing.
‘How did you get on?’ He cast a conspiratorial glance towards Nellie’s house.
‘They weren’t too happy about it. Freddie says he wants a treat out of the home-work money, as he’s providing the wheels, cheeky little git!’
Sam laughed. ‘I don’t reckon he’s destined to stay poor all his life, do you, Nell?’
