‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, surprised at her own boldness in intruding.
‘I doubt it.’
‘You’re thinking you ought never to have introduced them.’
He looked at her in amazement. ‘How did you know that?’
She shrugged. ‘Dunno. Just did. But you’re wrong, you know. At least she had those times with him, and they were happy times. She wouldn’t have not wanted them, even if she lost him in the end. You know what they say, “Better to have loved and lost . . .”’
‘Yeah.’ Harry’s eyes sought his aunt Alma, who was bowed between her two sons. ‘But is that true?’
‘It is, it is,’ Ellen insisted.
‘I hope you’re right.’
‘I know I am.’
She thought fleetingly of a magical evening dancing on the rough cobbles of Trinidad Street to Tim O’Keefe’s fiddle. Harry had probably forgotten it. He’d forgotten her soon enough on the very night. The moment her back was turned, there he was dancing with that Siobhan. Not that it had done Siobhan much good. This at least gave Ellen a sour feeling of satisfaction. Rumour had it that Siobhan would like to go out with him, but he was not interested. Harry did not stay on the Island like the others. He went off to places all over London for his evenings out. Rumour also had it that he had girls all up and down the river. Ellen closed her ears to this one, rumours being what they were.
‘Who’d have thought it, that we’d all be in the same boat?’ Harry said.
Ellen’s heart leapt. She thought he was still talking about love.
‘What?’ she asked stupidly.
‘Four years ago, when you first heard about going to the Central, d’you remember?’
She remembered all right. It was like some distant faded dream, a time when she had hoped for a very different future from the one she was now living.
‘Yeah.’ She sighed.
‘I’d always knew I’d have to support my family, of course. But now look at Gerry, with his stall. And you. I never thought you’d be the family breadwinner.’
‘No.’ For a moment she was silent, then it all came out before she could stop it. ‘Poor Dad. He hates it, hates not being able to support us properly. It makes him feel – small, I suppose. And he’s really angry that I had to leave the Central. He was proud of me being there. I tell him it don’t matter, that I don’t care.’
‘But are you still studying? You said you would. I had my doubts.’
‘You were wrong, then,’ she retorted. ‘I can’t do work like what we done at school, but I do go and get books from up the Settlement. The ladies there are really nice, they help me choose. I read a book nearly every week, and when I take it back sometimes they say, “What did you think of it?” and I tell them and sometimes we have quite a long talk about it, like the people in the book were real, and why they did things and what they thought and whether it was right or not. I don’t tell my dad about it, though. He thinks the Settlement’s just a sop to keep the workers in their place.’
Harry looked down at her. There was an odd expression on his face, but at least he wasn’t as grim-looking as he had been all through the service. He gave her elbow a brief squeeze.
‘You’re a brave girl, Ellen,’ he said, and walked on to catch up with his mother. She was pregnant again and beginning to droop.
Ellen was left feeling limp with disappointment. Brave little girl. Yes, that was her. Someone to be nice to, hardly different from the schoolgirl whose hat he had once rescued. The sensible part of her knew they had a lot to be grateful to Harry for. If it had not been for his prompt action, her dad would now be dead. And there were the smaller things, too. Often he would turn up on their doorstep with a tin or two of food that just happened to have fallen into his pockets, ham, sometimes, or pineapple – delicious, exotic things that made a wonderful change from the weary round of bread or porridge.
But she did not want to listen to the sensible voice. She wanted Harry to do things for her because she was pretty and fascinating – the qualities Siobhan had that sent the boys wild after her. She did not want to be good old Ellen, the dependable. It was boring, boring, as plain and uninteresting as eating bread and marge every day. She wanted to be ham or pineapple, like Siobhan.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the distorting glass of a shop window: thin, haunted, an alley cat’s face beneath a cheap old hat; dress ten years out of date – her mother’s, lumpy and loose from hasty refitting and carefully patched, its colour, once navy, now almost completely faded to a variety of washed-out greys; horrible, ugly patched boots, coming apart at the toes yet again. No wonder Harry did not look at her the way she wanted. Tears stung her eyes.
She blinked them away. She would make him notice her as more than just a neighbour. She did not know how, but she would do it. She knew she was cleverer than all those others he was supposed to have. She knew she was a sticker, too. She had kept up her studying, against all the odds. But right at this moment, that was not what she wanted him to see. She wanted him to look at her as a woman, to realize that she had something to give beyond a friendly word.
Looking at Harry’s back, straight and strong as he helped his mother along, she knew that she wanted him for her own. One way or another, she had to make him feel the same way.
6
‘THINGS’LL BE A lot better when I start work,’ Jack boasted. ‘Four more weeks and I’ll be fourteen! No more rotten school. When I leave, I shall never pick up a pen again, not in my whole life.’
‘That shows just what a dunce you are, then,’ Ellen told him.
‘It’s not fair. I wish I could leave now. I’ve got to wait another whole year,’ Daisy complained. ‘I hate Miss Peebles. She’s always on at me, she blames me for everything. It’s not my fault that other people keep talking to me, but I always get the blame.’
‘Miss Peebles is all right if she thinks you try. She knows you don’t,’ Ellen said.
‘Oh well, it was all right for you. You were teacher’s pet.’
‘Stop it, the lot of you. Your father’ll be in in a minute,’ Martha ordered. ‘Ellen, get this table clear. Daisy, fetch the plates and spoons, and Jack, move that washing over.’
It was Monday, washing day, but the May weather had failed to oblige. Outside, it was raining, and half-dried sheets and shirts and blouses hung on strings across the ceiling and over the fender by the range. Steam and the smell of vegetable soup thickened the air in the tiny room. Moving from table to sink was an elaborate dance of sidestepping. Once Tom arrived, there was hardly room to move at all.
Looking at her family all squashed round the table, Ellen wondered for the umpteenth time how they would have fitted another one in. People did, of course. They were a very small family compared to most. The O’Donaghues ate in shifts. But a little one toddling around, as he would have been by now, pulling the washing off the fender and banging spoons on the table, though he would have made it much more crowded, would have brightened things up no end. Her mother acted as cheerfully as ever, but it did not quite ring true. It was as if she was just putting on a show. Ellen had occasionally caught her looking at other people’s babies with an unguarded expression of grief filling her face.
Sometimes it seemed to her as if they were all in a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. The past was a bright, sun-filled place, in which there was always something nice to eat, her mother laughed and joked and was never tired, and her father was strong and healthy and worked every day. If they had stayed in that place, she would now be thinking about starting to look for an office job, not looking back on a year and a half of fruit-bottling. In that other life, there had always been something nice to look forward to.
‘I was talking to a mate today,’ Tom said, when they had finished their meagre meal of watery vegetable soup and hunks of bread. ‘He says he might be able to get Jack a job at the ropeworks. They need a willing youngster.’
Jack looked mutinous but knew better than to
say anything. The ropeworks was not a popular place.
‘Mrs Croft told me her cousin said they were looking for boys at Edmonson’s,’ Martha said.
‘I’d like that,’ Jack piped up. ‘Foundries are good.’
‘You know nothing about it. Foundries are very dangerous places, especially for young boys who think they know the lot,’ his father told him.
‘Jimmy Croft works there and he thinks it’s good,’ Jack muttered.
‘Jimmy Croft’d say anything to impress you, and you’re fool enough to believe him. He don’t tell you about the injuries they have there. Worst record on the Island.’
Ellen remembered something she had heard. ‘Someone at work was saying that her brother got work at that new place near the school – you know, where they make compasses and things for ships. She said they pay well, too. Her brother’s getting seven and six a week and he’s only fifteen.’
‘Coo.’ Jack brightened. ‘Seven and six! Sounds good. What d’you think, eh, Mum? Dad? I could try there. I could ask.’
‘It ain’t fair,’ Daisy moaned. ‘I wish I could leave school.’
They were interrupted by a knock at the door, and Harry clumped into the kitchen. He brought the distinctive smell of boats with him, a curious mixture of salt, hemp and bilgewater. Ellen’s heart missed a beat. She stared very hard at the empty soup bowl.
‘’Lo, all. Am I intruding?’
‘No, no, of course not. You’re always welcome,’ Martha said. ‘Come in, sit down. Cup of tea?’
It was a luxury for her to be able to offer tea. Being washday, the range was alight.
‘Thanks.’
Ellen studied him covertly from beneath her lashes. As he sat and chatted to the others about work and the weather, she took in his broad shoulders and capable hands, the wiry hair on his chest just visible where his top shirt button was undone. He was growing more handsome as he got older, his wide cheekbones and the firm set to his chin becoming more pronounced, a contrast to his fair curls. A sudden need gripped her, an urge to reach out and touch him, so strong that she had to clasp her hands together in her lap, her nails digging into her palms.
‘You’ll be fourteen soon, won’t you?’ he said to Jack. ‘Any idea what you’re going to do when you leave school?’
The discussion of Jack’s future began all over again, without really getting anywhere.
‘So you ain’t decided yet?’
‘No, not really,’ Jack admitted.
‘How about being a lighterman?’
Longing lit Jack’s eyes, only to be suppressed. He sighed.
‘You got to be apprenticed to someone for that, ain’t you? It was all right for you, your uncle took you on. No lightermen in our family.’
‘I’d take you on.’
Jack looked at him warily, afraid to believe in case it was only a joke.
‘Really?’
His mother and father were both staring at Harry with hope plain in their faces. The whole family seemed to hold its breath. If it could just be true, if Harry was serious, it would be a turning point in their fortunes.
‘Really.’
‘Honest? No kidding?’
‘Honest. That’s what I come to ask. I’m a freeman now, I can take on an apprentice. I thought you might be just the lad for the job.’
Tom leaned across the table and wrung Harry’s hand.
‘You’re a good neighbour, Harry Turner. A good neighbour and a good friend. It’d be the best start the boy could hope to have.’
Tears were standing in Martha’s eyes. ‘You don’t know what this’ll mean to us. It’s wonderful, just wonderful. I can’t hardly believe it.’ She gave her son a push on the shoulder. ‘Go on, Jack, say thank you. You’re a very lucky boy, you are.’
Jack swallowed. He was bright red with excitement. ‘’You,’ he gulped.
‘It’ll be hard work, mind,’ Harry warned him. ‘It’s not all fun and games. You’ll be out in all weathers, you’ll sometimes have to work nights or start at five in the morning, and there’s so much to learn you’ll never know it all.’
‘I don’t mind. I’ll like it, honest,’ Jack assured him.
Harry stayed for a while longer, answering questions, telling Jack about what he could expect. When he rose to go, Tom stood up too and gripped his shoulder.
‘Thanks again, mate. It’s the best thing that’s happened to us for a long time. I’m beholden to you for this.’
Harry brushed aside any suggestion of an obligation. ‘It’s nothing, Mr Johnson. Your Jack’s a bright boy and there’s a lot I’d do for your family. A lot.’
For a moment his eyes rested on Ellen, only to flick away as hers met them. He was ushered out with the gratitude of the whole family ringing in his ears.
A few days after his fourteenth birthday, Jack was scrubbed and brushed, dressed in clothes acquired by much scrimping and sent off with Harry to Watermen’s Hall to be apprenticed. The day after, he started work. He survived the inevitable teasing and practical jokes and took to life on the water like the proverbial duck. Being apprenticed to Harry did not necessarily mean that he always worked under him. Sometimes he was set to rowing the freemen out to their barges or taking the foreman from one wharf to another; sometimes he was mate to whoever needed an extra hand. But Harry often figured in his animated accounts of each day’s work. Harry’s sayings were repeated as holy writ, his odd words of praise treasured. Ellen listened, taking it all in and trying not to let on that the mention of his name made her stomach tie itself in knots.
Summer crept over the city, and as usual the water supply became unreliable and the river stank. The soft-fruit season meant hours of overtime in temperatures of over a hundred as the currants and berries were jammed and bottled. Ellen came home exhausted each evening, with only a shilling or two extra money at the end of the week as compensation for the twelve- or thirteen-hour days. She had no energy for going out with the other girls, but sat on the front step reading while the children played in the street and the mothers gossiped. She was sitting there one Friday when Gerry came by with a handcart.
‘’Evening, Ellen.’
She looked up, still living inside the story.
‘Mm?’
A group of boys were gathering round the cart, begging to be allowed to play with it. Gerry chased them off.
‘I got a favour to ask you,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
Reluctantly, Ellen put a finger on the page to keep her place and gave him her attention. She had been wary of Gerry ever since the time he had asked her out. She liked him as a friend but had no interest in being anything closer.
Around her, she could feel the sharpening of interest up and down the street. The two women nearest to her stopped even pretending to talk to each other and unashamedly listened.
‘Yeah. You see, I got a bit of a problem. There’s this place closing down over Newham way and they’re selling stuff off, real good stuff, just what I want, but I got to get there tomorrow before it all goes. So I got to have someone to mind the stall for me. I thought of you. You’re good with numbers, ain’t you? And I know you wouldn’t cheat me.’
The prospect of working in the open air, of feeling the sun, talking to people, not being under the eye of the forewoman, was unbearably tempting.
‘I got to go and do overtime tomorrow. It’s the fruit. We’re doing the blackcurrants.’
‘I’ll pay you better than what Maconochie’s do. Three bob for the day. How does that sound to you?’
Ellen gulped. ‘Three shillings!’ It was a fortune.
Gerry misunderstood her. ‘Well, all right, seeing as it’s you and I know I can rely on you, three-and-six.’
That clinched it. As long as he understood that this was strictly business.
‘You’re on,’ she said. ‘What time do I start?’
The market was wonderful. They set out at the crack of dawn to haul the stock down three flights of stairs from the tiny room Gerry rente
d off Chrisp Street, and went back and forth with the handcart to his stall. Then it all had to be set out artistically. She enjoyed doing that, and Gerry seemed more than pleased with her efforts. He ran through the prices with her, gave her a money apron, told her all the dodges she was to look out for, then left her in charge.
‘Not sure when I’ll be back, but it’ll be in time to help you pack up. Best of luck!’
‘Thanks, and to you.’
She loved the noise and the backchat, the smell of fruit and foreign sausages from the neighbouring stalls, the colour and the ever changing flow of humanity. She developed a line of patter, enjoying persuading people that they really did want the things that they had only stopped to look at. Most of all she liked the responsibility. She was in charge, and it was up to her to sell as much as she could. And if she wanted to sit down and have a cup of tea or chat to someone she knew, then it was entirely up to her. No sergeant major of a forewoman came bearing down on her, demanding to know what she thought she was doing.
By late afternoon the money apron was getting satisfyingly heavy. Mostly it was coppers, but there were odd shillings and half-crowns in there as well. Ellen was tired, but it was not the draining exhaustion of a day doing the same thing over and over again in soaring temperatures. She pottered around replacing things that had been sold, trying to remember just how many of each she had got rid of.
‘So it is true, then?’
Ellen started and whirled round. There was Harry, standing staring at her with undisguised anger.
‘What’s true?’ she countered, immediately on the defensive.
‘That you’re working for Gerry. I didn’t believe them when they told me.’
‘Why ever not? What’s wrong with me working for Gerry? It’s a whole lot better than slaving in that factory, I can tell you.’
‘So you’ve given up Maconochie’s, have you? Gerry’s your boss now?’
‘No, of course not. It’s just for today.’ She could not understand why he was being so aggressive. ‘And anyway,’ she said, straightening up and thrusting her fists on to her hips, ‘what business is it of yours? I can work for who I like. I don’t have to ask your permission, thank you very much.’
Trinidad Street Page 17
