Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts

by Mary Gibson

  They both looked up, and Freddie smiled inanely at her. ‘Hullo, Nell, fancy a stout?’

  It took a while to get the story out of them, but between periods of prolonged giggling she was able to piece together their evening, which had been almost as eventful as her own.

  ‘We wash over b’river an’ a bloody great bomb ’it Courage’s! Beer ev’where, streets runnin’ wiv it, sloshin about in it, wasn’t we, Chas?’

  Charlie nodded, eyes unfocused, a smile fixed to his face. ‘Sloshin’,’ he repeated.

  ‘Barrels flyin’, floatin’ in river, we reshcued ’em, didn’t we, Chas?’

  Charlie nodded.

  ‘From the stink of you, I reckon you must’ve been swimming in it. Sounds like you sampled a barrel on the way home too!’ Nellie said.

  The giggling resumed. ‘We brung y’ome some, Nell.’ He pointed to the name stamped on the barrel: Imperial Russian Stout. ‘’S’yer favrit, pre-war strengf, innit, Chas?’ Charlie had collapsed across the barrel while Freddie staggered across the yard. He clung to the back gate and slipped down it slowly. ‘Gonna get ’nuvver one, c’mon, Chas…’ he said, before collapsing on to the cobbles.

  ‘You’re not going nowhere,’ Nellie said. ‘Come on, Bobby, help me get ’em up to bed, they’re pissed as puddins.’

  By the time they’d dragged the two insensible figures up the stairs and tipped them into bed, Nellie was exhausted.

  ‘I’m not going back in that shed. I don’t care if a hundred Zeppelins come over, don’t wake me up till the morning!’ she said to Alice, and collapsed fully clothed into bed.

  The next morning’s newspapers contained more about the raid on the brewery than the one on the Arsenal. The report condemned the behaviour of those who’d ‘profited in an unpatriotic way’, by making off with barrels of beer shot into the Thames by the explosion. The real target was thought to have been Butler’s Wharf next to the brewery. There was only a small paragraph about a ‘failed’ Zeppelin raid on Woolwich, which mentioned that two men had been apprehended, trying to get into the Arsenal during the raid. There was no suggestion of anarchists, or bombs, but Nellie took the paper home to show Matty.

  ‘They got them,’ Nellie whispered, ‘thanks to you, Matty.’ She hugged her. ‘Now all I want is to see Ted put away.’

  That was when she’d decided to go to Bermondsey Square, to make sure for herself. Now, after witnessing his arrest, she walked home, feeling safer than she had since Ted’s return. She realized she would have to tell Lily, before anyone else did. She went home first, to pick up a present she hoped might make the news easier for Lily to take, and then took the tram to Rotherhithe Street, making her way carefully up the wooden stairs behind the chandler’s. Lily was surprised to see her.

  ‘This couldn’t wait till Thursday!’ was all Nellie would say, and then produced a stoppered earthenware jar from her bag. ‘Get the glasses out, Lil,’ she said grimly, ‘you’re going to need this.’

  Lily was looking alarmed now; the perennial question on everyone’s mind hardly needed articulating. ‘No telegram, love, but I’ve got some bad news and some good news.’

  ‘You’d better give me the bad news, then.’ Lily went white as Nellie quickly told her everything that had gone on the night before and about Ted’s arrest.

  ‘Oh, God, no! He may be my brother, but he’s a wicked bastard. What am I going to say to me mother?’

  ‘You don’t tell her nothing, except he’s a conscientious objector! There’s only the four of us know about the Arsenal now, and that’s the way we’ll keep it, all right?’

  Lily nodded meekly. ‘And you saw him put away, with your own eyes? Did he see you?’

  ‘Oh, yes, he saw me all right.’

  ‘I’m shaking, Nell, look at me.’

  ‘All right, love, you need some of the good news…’ She uncorked the jar and poured two creamy-topped glasses of Russian Stout.

  Lily sat down and took a long draught of the thick black stout and looked up in amazement. ‘Full strength!’ she exclaimed.

  Nellie nodded. ‘I give those boys merry hell when they woke up this morning, but I reckon you’ll be coming to my house of a Thursday now!’ she said with a smile.

  The barrel of Russian Stout lasted them well into Christmas and on into the New Year of 1917. They used some of it to celebrate little Johnny’s second birthday in January and Nellie fervently hoped there would be some left for Sam’s next leave. When the anniversary of their engagement came round in April, they drank the last of the stout and toasted Sam, but she began to despair of seeing him now before the war’s end. His letters were continually hopeful, however, talking of all the things they would do together when the longed-for leave arrived.

  When, that summer, she wrote, Surely you’re entitled to a few days’ leave now?, he replied that everyone was in the same boat; they simply couldn’t be spared from the front, not now there was a big push on. Charlie told her that the ‘big push’ was taking place at Ypres, in Belgium. She asked him to point it out on the map, so she could imagine Sam there in Flanders. It looked tantalizingly close; she knew it would only take him a few days to get home, and yet the distance between them seemed infinite. One morning, in July, the hundred odd miles between them suddenly disappeared, when, on her dinner break, making the short walk along Spa Road from Pearce Duff’s to Vauban Street, a great booming thunder rolled in from the east. Nellie knew, though, that it couldn’t be thunder, for by the time she’d turned the key in the lock of her house the booming hadn’t stopped for an instant. Bobby was at home, standing in their little kitchen, keeping very still, as they tried to make out the cause of the rumbling.

  ‘Could it be a Zeppelin raid?’ she asked

  Bobby shook his head. ‘What, in broad daylight? That’d be suicide!’

  Boom, boom – another round reverberated through the house, as suddenly Charlie came rushing in.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ he asked, his eyes on fire with excitement.

  ‘’Course we can hear it, it’s everywhere,’ she answered. ‘But what is it?’

  ‘It’s Sam!’ he cried exultantly. ‘It’s the guns at Ypres, the battle’s starting!’

  Sam? How could Sam, her beloved gentle Sam, be in any way connected to that awful, hellish sound? If she could hear it here, hundreds of miles away in her cosy Bermondsey kitchen, how must it be for him? It must sound like the end of the world, she thought.

  ‘Oh, Sam, my poor Sam,’ she said, horrified.

  ‘Poor Sam?’ Charlie said scathingly. ‘He’s driving the gun teams, right in the thick of it! I wish I was out there!’

  Nellie couldn’t believe her ears. ‘You stupid little sod,’ she said.

  But the sound of the guns thundered on all through that July of 1917. Nellie grew to hate their ominous rumbling, though for Charlie they exercised a pull, like a drumming tattoo. For her they were a nightmare, but she could see that for him they were a call to arms. It didn’t help that he was now out of a job. The army had come calling and requisitioned every last one of Wicks’s horses; even poor old Thumper had not escaped.

  ‘It’s not fair,’ Charlie had objected. ‘Thumper’s too old to be any use to the army, he’ll end up in some French git’s stew!’

  But the army had not been impressed by his argument and in the end Old Wicks had been forced to close.

  ‘I’m going to enlist, Nell,’ Charlie announced bluntly, one evening towards the end of July.

  At first she laughed at him. ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Charlie, you’re too young, you’re only sixteen!’ Looking at him, Nellie had to admit he looked much older, but they would only have to look at his birth certificate to see otherwise.

  ‘They don’t ask your age, Nell.’

  ‘Oh, please don’t do it, Charlie,’ she begged. ‘I promised your poor mother I’d look after you!’

  She could hear herself moaning, for the young boy who wanted to follow in his brother’s footsteps, and for Sam, who, she was co
nvinced, would come home in a heartbeat now if he could. Charlie rushed round the table to where she stood and threw his arms round her.

  ‘And you have looked after me,’ he said. To her astonishment, the normally impassive Charlie was almost sobbing now. ‘You’ve kept your promise, Nell, but I’m old enough to look after meself now, and I want to go and help Sam.’

  Perhaps it shouldn’t have surprised her. Of all the children, he’d been the least reliant on her. Of course he’d be able to look after himself; perhaps he always had. And certainly, ever since the war had started, he’d single-mindedly followed every campaign. He always knew what he was going to do; she just hadn’t wanted to see it. So Charlie joined the seemingly inexhaustible line of recruits snaking its way down Spa Road to the town hall. He signed up for the Royal Field Artillery and was overjoyed to be posted to Sam’s brigade, though in a different battery. Unlike Sam, who’d waited three months to be posted, Charlie was out in Belgium within weeks. His first letter home was that of an excited schoolboy:

  I’ve even seen Sam! He was coming down the line to a little town called Poperinghe, as I was going up the line! We didn’t have long, Nellie, but I nearly fell behind my battery, trying to give him all the home news. He was well and sends his love and a special message just for you, ‘Keep Smiling!’

  That was the last they heard from Charlie, or Sam, for many weeks. Lily hadn’t heard from Jock either. They tried to reassure each other that the boys must be on the move, with no opportunity for letter writing. Nellie stopped going to the town hall. The casualty lists were simply too long to get through in her dinner hour and, besides, when she looked at the endless names, her imagination quailed at the broken humanity they represented. Then one early morning, in November, a sharp knock on the door caught her by surprise. She was dashing to get ready for work, the boys were getting in her way and Alice was nagging at her to hurry.

  ‘Who the bloody hell’s that at this time o’ the morning?’ She dashed to the front door to be confronted by a boy in a blue uniform; he had a bicycle with him and a piece of paper in his hand.

  Nellie took the piece of paper, the world went silent and a cold sweat enveloped her. A darkness closed in around her; she was aware of a loud booming, coming from somewhere inside her own head, throbbing with the pulse of her own blood. She placed her hand flat on to the distempered wall of the passage, seeking for purchase, for a solid grasp on something, but there was nothing she could physically do to keep upright. Her sweating hand slipped down the wall and she sank slowly to the cold linoleum floor. And that was where Alice found her, crumpled like some wilted flower, crushing in her hand the still unopened telegram.

  ‘Come on, Nellie, come and sit in the kitchen,’ Alice coaxed.

  Nellie was rigid, shaking her head, refusing to move. If she didn’t move, if she didn’t open the telegram, everything would be all right, she knew that. What was Alice fussing about, trying to get her up for? Couldn’t she see that she had to stay put?

  ‘No!’ she said through clenched teeth. ‘No! I’m all right here, I’ll just stay here a bit.’

  But then Freddie and Bobby gathered round and gently, as though Nellie were the tiniest child, lifted her between them and half carried her to her father’s old chair. Alice got brandy and forced it through her lips, which were as grey as her face. Then she prised open Nellie’s fist and gave the telegram to Freddie.

  ‘You read it, Fred… to yourself.’

  Tears were pooling in the boy’s eyes, and he swallowed hard before opening the telegram. He nodded, then mouthed to Alice: ‘Missing in Action.’

  Alice mouthed back, ‘Who?’

  Nellie looked up just as Freddie whispered, ‘Sam.’

  Then came the days when Nellie’s world turned to dust and ashes. No matter how much Alice and the boys explained the difference between ‘Missing in Action’ and ‘Dead’, she could not see it. How could anyone have survived that horrendous clamour of guns, or the drowning mud that was the battlefield? The news had come back from Ypres, tales of men fighting up to their armpits in ooze, and even the heavy howitzers that Sam’s team pulled had sunk in the quagmire. Still they told her she must ‘keep her pecker up’, but such injunctions were as meaningless as Sam’s last message to her. What did she have to do with smiles now? Her face would simply not remember how to form one and, in any case, her breaking heart would not want it to.

  The boys moved gently and quietly through the house; at times Nellie had a remembrance of their clamour and wondered where it had gone. Then she would get unaccountably angry and shout at them, ‘For God sake, don’t creep around me like ghosts, I’m not an invalid!’ But in reality her anger was all for herself, that she was not stronger, braver, that she did not have enough faith to believe that ‘Missing’ did not mean ‘Dead’.

  Freddie’s response was to bring her even more contraband. Piles of vegetables appeared in the kitchen, gifts from the allotments he visited; a whole pound of butter turned up in the safe one day, from God knew where; a crate of condensed milk was suddenly spirited into the brick shed. It felt as though he were trying to feed her back to happiness. Lily was the only one who knew how to comfort her, for shortly after the telegram arrived at Vauban Street, an identical one had been handed to Lily. Jock was missing too.

  Eliza had stepped in to help, writing letters to Sam’s brigade commanders, seeking out any surviving Tommies from his battery. She had even pressed Ernest James into using his family connections to make enquiries, but the story was always the same. Both men had last been seen in the dying stages of the disastrous battle for the Passchendaele Ridge. None of the field-dressing stations or base hospitals could shed any light on their whereabouts. Then finally, after weeks of searching for his brother, Charlie had written to her in that schoolboy copperplate he’d once been so proud of:

  My dear Nellie, I am sad to say that all my searches have turned up nothing and I’m afraid we must accept the loss of our Sam and Lily’s Jock. I wish there was better news I could write, but I wouldn’t want to give you false hope, Nellie. The losses have been beyond belief, Sam’s battery lost so many men, it’s been merged with another. My battery was down the line at the final push and that’s the only reason I’m still here, I reckon. Nellie, you’ve been like a mother to me and I just wish I could be there to help you now. Pray God, we’ll get this job done quickly and I will be home with you soon.

  Your loving Charlie.

  It seemed Nellie must accept that Sam was almost certainly one of the many thousands of men engulfed by that vast swamp of mud surrounding Ypres. But, in her darkest hour, she learned the strength of the cuckoo’s-nest family she had raised. They allowed her to pretend to be carrying on as normal, all the while knowing that she was far away in spirit. Though custard powder was still packed, laundry still done, meals still made, they might have been the actions of an automaton. Her thoughts were ensnared in the life-sapping exercise of denying Sam’s death and the only time she could be honest was on a Thursday evening when she met with Lily, who was doing exactly the same thing. On those nights, the two friends mostly sipped their stouts in silence.

  Into the miasma of her grief sometimes came bright spots of light, which she did not question. Matty would drag her along to the Star and she would sit in the womb-like darkness of the old theatre, staring at the stage where Matty sang brightly on, then she would suddenly finding her foot tapping. Or Alice would lead her to the Old Clo’ market and she would come home, miraculously, with a ‘new’ red coat to keep out the winter chill, for suddenly there was deep snow on the ground and it was Christmas. She had begun to measure her life in two periods, before the telegram and after.

  Then there was Bobby, who never seemed to leave her side. At fourteen, he was still the same old loving Bobby and now he became her shadow. He’d been taken on full time at the vicarage, as a handy boy, but he offered to take over her Co-op round, which she’d insisted on keeping up. But she refused. Strangely, it was only when flyin
g through the Bermondsey streets on the old contraption that she felt anything remotely like hope. The wheels would sing to her of a promise, the promise of her sixteen-year-old self to a dying woman, the promise of Sam to return to her, but the thrumming of the spokes in the wind spoke to her of another promise, the promise of hope.

  Shortly after Sam’s disappearance, the house in Reverdy Road became Eliza’s permanent residence. She now rented the top floor of Mrs Morgan’s house for herself and William. Her speaking engagements and union work were mostly carried on in London, and Ernest, with his new softly, softly approach, had suggested a London day school might be better for William. She knew, too, that he wished to see more of the boy, to say nothing of herself. But mostly she had come to Bermondsey for Nellie. After Sam’s ‘disappearance’ – she insisted on not calling it death – Nellie’s spirit seemed to have dispersed to the four winds, her solid, bold, cheerful self stretched as thin as a veil of mist, and Eliza was worried, as were all her family. Eliza could truly say that now she felt like one of Nellie’s family. She had, after all, helped raise her own daughter and been engaged to her brother, but more than that, her mother had trusted Nellie Clark with all that was precious to her. Now it was Eliza’s turn to help Nellie, and she judged the best thing she could do was to continue trying to find out what had happened to Sam. That search was best conducted from London and with the help of Ernest James. Ernest had disappointed his largely military family by going into politics, but he still had the necessary clout to contact a colonel-in-chief or a general.

  An unexpected bonus for Eliza was that Matty became a regular visitor to Reverdy Road. She was able to share with her some of the leads Ernest was feeding back to her; even if they were ultimately dead ends, Matty was still keen to hear them. But Eliza would pass nothing on to Nellie unless she knew it had been verified.

  Shortly before Christmas, Matty arrived at Reverdy Road looking flushed and excited. She was wrapped in a turquoise woollen coat with a huge shawl collar, and had a fur hat like a Cossack’s pulled over her auburn hair. Mrs Morgan showed her upstairs and she carried in with her the fresh smell of snow. She shivered, drawing near the fire, which was blazing in the grate. It was nice to see the girl with a spark in her eyes again – for months they’d been like dull pools. Nellie wasn’t the only one Eliza worried about; she knew how grief-stricken Matty was, but she also knew the lengths to which she went to hide that from Nellie.