by Mary Gibson
They even talked of the new direction their work could take once, in Ernest’s words, they were ‘unencumbered’. Her position with the Australian trades unions had a stipend attached, which she began to squirrel away soon after she learned of her pregnancy. Ernest was open-handed when it came to her financial needs, she had a clothing allowance and the run of the household expenses. She silently built up the means of securing her passage to England and enough capital to establish them in a small house in a suburb of Hull. The only person she confided in was Sarah, her trusted friend in the NFWW. Sarah had found Eliza a small, affordable house in Hull and had also drummed up some paid work for her with the NFWW Hull branch: it would supplement the interest on her savings and in any case poverty didn’t frighten her.
She bided her time and, bit by bit, eased herself out of the material shackles in which Ernest held her. The emotional shackles, however, proved more difficult to shed. The early years with him had been full of excitement and promise; he’d given her much. It was only as she grew older that she realized the value of what she had given up in return: home, family and in the end her child. She had thought becoming Ernest’s mistress was a radical choice; instead she’d found it was a trap. Without her knowing it, she’d entered into a contract. In Bermondsey she would be known as his ‘fancy woman’. She was certainly a ‘kept woman’ and only now that she was breaking away did she realize how much she depended on him. For the last decade, her every decision had been vetted by him, even down to the clothes she wore, the books she read. Shortly after William’s birth, as she’d sat nursing her newborn, isolated in the bush country outside Melbourne, she’d reassembled memories of her childhood: the rough and tumble of Bermondsey streets and pubs; the steely determination inherited from her mother; the bookish curiosity passed on from her father. She tried to reconstruct herself. She remembered her poor brother William and asked herself, Who would Eliza Gilbie be today, if she had never been transplanted to Mecklenburgh Square?
Little William, her demanding, angry, bawling child, gave her the answer. She would never find strength in a vanished past, or an imaginary version of herself. She would only find it in the present. Who she would have been, she couldn’t say; what she was today was a mother determined to keep her child. That had become her guiding light, powerful enough to get her down to the dock office, to purchase her steamer ticket in secret. It gave her the armour to fight off guilt about deceiving Ernest; it steeled her to pack up her few things and carry her six-week-old baby to the waiting cab. Only when the ship steamed out of the harbour and she held her child up to see the disappearing coast of Australia did she finally allow herself to feel anything. The emotion took her by surprise – she’d imagined she would feel relief, but she laughed when she recognized that what she felt was pure joy.
Almost two years she’d had now, of holding that joy like a secret pearl in her heart, almost two years since she’d docked in Southampton. She could scarcely believe it, but she only had to look down at her sleeping toddler to prove to herself the passing of time; his first words and his first steps were already behind him. Now, in this quiet upstairs room in a suburb of Hull, with the northern light settling over his cot, she remembered him as a babe in arms, how she’d carried him off the boat on to the waiting train. Going to Mecklenburgh Square had been unthinkable; Ernest would have wired the steward looking after the place and she’d needed to remain undetected for as long as possible. But it hadn’t been so much the need to remain anonymous as the need to be known that had driven her on that day as she’d made her way like a homing pigeon straight to Bermondsey. Bundling herself and her son into the motor taxi at London Bridge Station, driving through the close clustered streets of Bermondsey, she’d had only one thought: to see her mother.
She couldn’t have known it would be the last time, for now Lizzie was gone. With Sam’s crumpled letter still tightly balled in her fist, the tears came again. Letting herself sink down beside William’s cot, pushing aside the grief that threatened to overwhelm her, she allowed the memories of that last meeting with her mother to wash over her.
She’d attracted the street urchins’ taunts as she’d emerged from the taxi in her expensively cut travelling suit and feather-trimmed hat – ‘I got an ’at, just like that old rotten ’at …’ had come the sing-song insult she remembered from her own childhood. They’d crowded curiously round her, asking, ‘That’s Matty’s house, d’ye know her?’ But when she’d opened the front door, Matty hadn’t seemed to know her at all. ‘Mum, there’s a lady come to see you!’ she’d called. Then came her mother’s voice, tremulous, weaker than she’d remembered it. ‘Well, ask her in, Matty, love.’ Finally, in the kitchen, there was her mother, eyes widening. Eliza had felt so awkward, filling the little room with her height and her hat and her long absence, but most of all with her child. Her mother gazed for a telling moment at the baby, then suddenly held out her arms for him.
‘His name is William,’ Eliza said.
Then Lizzie gave her the warmest of smiles. ‘I’m glad we’ve got another William.’ Turning to Matty, her mother asked, ‘Don’t you remember your sister Eliza?’
Eliza recalled now, with satisfaction, the thrust of Matty’s chin and her ready response. ‘If she’d come more often, I might’ve.’ And the young girl turned sulkily away. ‘I’ll make some tea.’
Lizzie excused her. ‘She’s not normally so rude, it’s the shock of seeing you, I expect. I’m a bit shocked meself, to tell you the truth.’
Eliza remembered her energy draining away once she was seated opposite her mother. ‘I’ve left him, Mum,’ she said, too weak for more explanation.
Lizzie nodded. ‘Good, you should have done it years ago, if you ask me. Your poor dad was right about him. He always said you’d have no life of your own while you were under his roof. Is it his child?’
Muscles held taut for all the long weeks of her voyage finally relaxing, she let her tears fall then. ‘Yes, but he doesn’t want to keep him… and I couldn’t lose another one, Mum.’ Kneeling beside her mother, she let herself be soothed.
‘Shhhh, shhh, Liza, what’s done is done. She’s been as happy as any child could be and you know she’s been loved, but it would be a cruelty now to take her from her family, you understand?’
Eliza had understood only too well: like William, her long-dead brother, Matty was a flower that would not bear transplanting.
Now she bitterly regretted not staying longer with her mother, but when Sam came home, though he made much of the baby, he barely acknowledged Eliza. He’d obviously cast her in the role of heartless daughter and feeling awkward in his disapproving presence she soon made to leave. She promised her mother she would write once she was settled and had already impressed upon her the need to keep her whereabouts a secret, even from Sam. Ernest would undoubtedly come looking for her and the fewer people he could question, the better.
Sam took her back to London Bridge Station in a taxi and their leave-taking was particularly painful. They walked together to the station entrance and, standing beneath the glow of a gas lamp, he turned a stony face to her. ‘I’m not letting you take our Matty away, you know.’
Eliza was dumbfounded. ‘Have you always known?’
‘I didn’t, for a long time,’ he said. ‘I came home from school one day and there was a baby laying in the bottom drawer, I just accepted she was my new sister. I loved her right off.’ Sam’s voice trembled.
‘When did you find out?’
‘Not until you turned up, during the strike. Mum had to tell me then. She was terrified you’d come to take her back. You can’t come walking back into people’s lives, turning everything upside down…’
‘Sam—’ Eliza tried to explain, but he grew angry.
‘You’ll ruin that little girl’s life if you take her away from everything she knows—’
‘Sam! I’m trying to tell you, I’m not taking her away!’ Eliza shouted over him.
‘You’re not?’
The truth was, she’d known as soon as she’d arrived at Beatson Street that it was too late for her to be anything other than Matty’s sister, but she wanted to reassure him. ‘Sam, I haven’t come to upset Matty’s life. I know you’ve blamed me for staying away all these years, but I hope now you understand why. It was just too hard to see her and to know…’
‘You missed out on a lot, Eliza.’ He didn’t make it easy for her. ‘She’s special, our Matty.’
As he dipped his head to kiss the baby goodbye, she was overcome by sadness. ‘I know, Sam. Letting her go was the biggest mistake of my life.’
Now William, stirring in his cot, reclaimed her attention. She didn’t know how long she’d sat there, replaying those painful scenes, but she pulled herself up, stiff now with cold and shock. William’s eyes were open – Lizzie’s eyes. It was true, she’d certainly made her share of mistakes, but there were two she could never regret. William was one of them and bringing Matty into the world was the other.
Since hearing the news of her mother’s death, Eliza had become paralysed by unaccustomed indecision. Should she go to Sam and explain why she hadn’t replied, or gone to the funeral? He must despise her even more than before. She was tempted to just let it all go, all her ties to the past, to her family, and perhaps she would have if it hadn’t been for the war. True, she’d promised her mother to leave Matty with the only family she’d ever known, but didn’t the war void all promises? What would happen to her daughter if Sam was called up?
She went through the motions of her life for a whole week, mulling over the best course of action. She was proud of the life she’d made for herself here in Hull. Her house, in this respectable suburb, was worlds away from Mecklenburgh Square, but at least it was hers rather than Ernest’s. She’d kept her activities with the NFWW deliberately low-key and the Hull branch had offered her a small amount of paid administrative work; that, with the interest from her own investments, gave her enough to keep herself and William comfortably. Though she still gave speeches locally and helped arrange meetings, the balance of her life had changed dramatically. Now William was the priority in her life, not her work and certainly not Ernest.
And that was the other complication she had to consider. Ernest was back in England. Her contact with him had been filtered through the NFWW offices in London: apparently his initial rage at what he called her betrayal and ingratitude had dwindled, after he found that the sisterhood at the NFWW would not break silence over her whereabouts. But the last letter had informed her that he was coming home to offer his services to the war effort. Ernest wasn’t the only radical to put his beliefs on hold, to do what he saw as his patriotic duty, though her own opinions differed, and if conscription were ever introduced she would be on the side of the conscientious objector. She decided the best thing was to write to Sam. When, after several days, the letter had been returned to her with unknown at this address on the envelope, she panicked. She arranged for a friend to look after William, then took a train to London the next day.
It was a bitter January day when she found herself in Beatson Street once again. An icy wind whipped off the river, bringing with it the long-remembered musky, muddy smell. But the house was not as she remembered. It looked shabbier; one of the front sash windows had several broken panes stuffed up with newspaper, the front step, which Eliza knew her mother had insisted on keeping spotless, was filthy and a pile of windblown rubbish had collected around the front door, the paint of which was peeling. Eliza knocked, with a sense of foreboding. A ragged child of about four answered the door, wearing nothing but a shirt. His legs and feet were bare and his face, Eliza judged, hadn’t seen soap and water in weeks.
‘Is Sam Gilbie home?’ she asked hopelessly, knowing he wouldn’t be. He would never have allowed the place to go to ruin like this.
‘If you’re the tallyman, then Mum ain’t in!’ The little boy’s voice piped out in a rehearsed sing-song voice.
‘Tell your mother it’s not the tallyman and that a lady’s here to see her.’
The child trotted off, a none-too-clean behind visible beneath the short shirt. Eliza waited and eventually a careworn woman, holding a tiny, pale infant, came to the door. She was full of apologies. ‘I’m ever so sorry, madam...’ she did what looked like a curtsey ‘...but I’ve been sick and bad since the baby come and I can’t get to the door quick. Reggie’s always there before me!’
She drew the scantily clad boy to her skirt. Eliza guessed Reggie was always the one to open the door, the gatekeeper who kept out the tallyman.
‘I’m so sorry to bother you,’ said Eliza, ‘but I’m looking for Sam Gilbie, he used to live here.’
‘Oh, Sam! Yes, he’s a lovely boy. Did you know the Gilbies? Sad about his poor mother. He took it very bad.’
‘Yes, I’ve only just heard. I wanted to see Sam… to pay my respects.’
‘Well, he’s gone, madam,’ the woman went on.
‘Do you know where?’
The woman looked as though Eliza were an imbecile.
‘Well, to France, I should think, madam,’ she replied.
For a moment Eliza stood in uncomprehending silence and then the sickening realization dawned: she had come too late, for if Sam was in France, where were Charlie and Matty?
26
Cuckoo’s Nest
By January of 1915, Pearce Duff’s male workforce had been so depleted by the war that Ethel Brown was able to give Nellie all the overtime she could cope with. Today she’d worked the day shift, and now, after popping home for half an hour to have a bite to eat, she was back for another three hours’ overtime on the night shift. She pulled off her coat and lifted the mob cap and smock from the peg; she was sick of the sight of them. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a clean job, one where you could do your work in nice clothes that still looked decent at the end of the day. As she passed the boiler room, she looked with sympathy at the girl stokers. Stoking! Nellie was glad she hadn’t been commandeered to do it. Since most men in the boiler room had enlisted, the stronger girls in the factory had taken on the job. Peeking through the open doors, plumes of steam rolled towards her and the furnaces hissed like fire-breathing dragons. One girl was tottering along under a sack of coal, which she tipped on to a great pile in front of a furnace. Looking up at Nellie, eyes white in her blackened face, she asked, ‘Fancy a go?’. And grinned.
‘No fear!’
The place looked like hell. As soon as the piles of coal were replenished, there were other women waiting to start shovelling coal into the fiery maws. The coal dust was even worse than custard powder and Nellie hurried upstairs, counting her blessings.
She walked on to the factory floor and blinked. It was aglow. Light, from gas lamps suspended from high ceilings bounced off cold, darkened windows, forming a golden cocoon around the packers. Nellie settled into the slightly slower, more subdued rhythm of the night shift.
She spent much of it worrying about Freddie and Charlie. Now he was thirteen, Freddie had big ideas. He was itching to leave the board school and start working full time, and he wasn’t the only bird in Nellie’s cuckoo’s nest anxious to try their wings. Fourteen-year-old Charlie had just left school. He’d brought home a surprisingly good report, with a recommendation he try the college exam; apparently the boy was clever. Nellie had never considered him brighter than the rest of the children. Always so silent and stolid, he just seemed to move steadily through the world, towards some private destination.
When she asked him about his report, he said firmly, ‘Even if there was money for college, I wouldn’t go. I’m better off out earning, Nellie.’
She was relieved, grateful she wouldn’t have to be the one to squash his dreams with practicalities, and he’d gone straight to Wicks as a carter’s boy. Sam had already taught him everything he knew about horses and, after losing half his drivers
to the war, Old Wicks was only too grateful that Charlie could take Sam’s place. Wicks also promised Freddie a full-time job at the end of this school year. But, not the sort of boy to let the grass grow under his feet, Freddie had other ideas.
The overtime was certainly helping them out, but the drawback was that the family was now behind with this week’s home-work delivery. After her three-hour night shift, the last thing she wanted was a late session of matchbox pasting, but she came home to find Alice still working. With a sigh, she sat down dutifully and started pasting on labels. Freddie couldn’t have picked a better time to put his proposal. Before going to bed he casually announced, ‘I want to expand me roses business, Nell. Thing is, what with all the parks being turned into allotments, there’s people crying out for manure and they can’t get hold of it!’ Not realizing that she hadn’t an iota of resistance in her, he pushed his case. ‘An’ I reckon I can make enough extra money so we can give up these matchboxes!’
This got her full attention. He didn’t have to explain the economics of it. Every square inch of public space in London was being dug up for vegetable growing; people feared being starved out by the German convoys before the war was over. He stood by the kitchen mantelshelf, waiting for her answer, and as she saw him glance in the mirror above it, she noticed how tall he was getting. He was a good-looking boy, with fair hair and bright blue eyes. His growing limbs looked a little gangly now, but she knew that as he filled out he would have the imposing physique of his father. Just now, though, she was painfully aware of his wrists poking out from the too-short arms of his jacket and the trousers flapping an inch above his boots. At least she had a few months before he started work, but then he really would need new clothes.
‘I can’t see anything wrong in that,’ she said. ‘It’s good honest work, ain’t it?’ she added, as sternly as she could manage. Freddie’s blue eyes widened in surprise and he simply laughed at her.
