Trinidad Street

by Patricia Burns

  ‘What is it, dearie? Has the baby started?’

  Ellen nodded.

  ‘Best get Mrs O’Donaghue.’

  ‘No!’ The last person she wanted was Mrs O’Donaghue. She strained to see between the bobbing heads. Siobhan had gone into the house. Tears of frustration stung her eyes. She looked desperately at the people around her. They were happily craning their necks to see what else might be coming out of the wonderful van. There was a buzz of comment all around her. They had not had such a good free show for months.

  ‘Do you want her back here in the street? Siobhan O’Donaghue. Do you?’ she asked.

  The women shrugged.

  Ellen gave a yelp. She was shaking with anger. It might have been a long time ago, but she had not forgotten Florrie’s wedding being ruined, or Will being led astray and Maisie being made unhappy. But most of all she had not forgotten that dreadful afternoon when she found Siobhan with Harry. The very thought of it brought on another contraction. She ignored the warning twinge.

  ‘She’s nothing but trouble. You all know that!’ There was something of a reaction to that. ‘What’s she want to come back here for, anyway?’ Ellen pressed on.

  Someone turned round. It was one of the O’Donaghues.

  ‘She’s family. Families should be together.’ It was said with such finality that heads started nodding all round. It was true. Families should be together. Everyone knew that.

  Ellen refused to be beaten and tried to make her way through the crowd. But there were too many people. She was too big and clumsy. They were all firmly planted, watching the men as they closed the van doors, peering unashamedly in at the windows.

  ‘Let me through, let me through!’

  An arm went round her shoulders. It was her mother.

  ‘Ellen, Ellen, love. Leave it be.’

  ‘Oh, Mum!’

  Something inside her gave. She felt it. And then there was a warm trickle of water down her legs. She just stood there, aghast. It had not happened like this before, not in the street. Martha pulled gently at her.

  ‘Come away, lovey.’

  All the fight went out of her. There were more important things to do now. Obediently she turned and stumbled back to Alma’s house, while Harry’s baby made its first tentative movements towards the world outside.

  He never realized it would affect him so deeply, his son, gazing back at him with a fierce unfocused stare. Harry reached out and put a work-hardened finger into the baby’s soft palm. The tight grip surprised him. He pulled gently, and the baby hung on. His son, refusing to let him go. He was choked with an overwhelming mix of tenderness, anger and loss.

  ‘Little cracker, ain’t he?’ Gerry said. He was bubbling with pride. ‘Bigger’n our other two by far. Right little bruiser. Poor old Ellen. He come out so fast, I didn’t know he was on his way till he arrived. Went out in the morning and he was inside, come back teatime and he was already an hour old. Really caught us on the hop.’

  ‘It was easy,’ Ellen said. She did not look at either man. Her eyes were only for her new son.

  Harry swallowed. He desperately needed to know what they were calling the baby. If he was named for Gerry he could not bear it. He tried to speak, but the question seemed to stick in his throat.

  ‘She’s a brave girl, ain’t she?’ Gerry chattered on, unheeding. ‘Never one to complain, my Ellen. That’s how we came to agree on the name, weren’t it, love? She wanted him to be Thomas, for her dad. My mum, she said it ought to be Gerald. But I said, if Ellen wants Thomas, then that’s it. What my Ellen wants, she gets. And like I said to my mum, we named Teddy for my dad, it’s only right Ellen’s family should get a look in.’

  Some of the tension inside him gave way. Thomas was all right. He could just about live with that. And Tom Johnson was a good bloke.

  ‘Takes after Ellen’s side. Don’t look like me. My mum said, he ain’t no Billingham . . .’

  At last, Ellen looked up. For a brief moment, their eyes met. A hot tide of blood reddened her cheeks and she looked away again, but in that moment they silently acknowledged the truth. The baby was neither Johnson nor Billingham. He looked just like his father.

  Gerry had stopped talking. Harry realized he had to say something.

  ‘He – er – he’s a strapping little chap. Credit to his mum.’ He stopped, gripped with an urge to hold the little scrap of life in his arms. He had seen new-born babies many a time before but had always shied away from any contact with them. They frightened him; he didn’t know what to do with them. But this was different. This was his own flesh and blood. He wanted somehow to make contact with him, let the boy know that he cared. Instead, he thrust his fists into his pockets.

  ‘Florrie said she’s coming over later, to see how you are,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks,’ Ellen responded.

  There was so much he wanted to say to her, but there was no chance.

  ‘I’m off, then,’ he said, biting back the urge to lecture Gerry on taking good care of Ellen and the baby. He had no right, no right at all beyond that of a friend and neighbour.

  He hardly knew where he was going until he reached the Rum Puncheon, and did not hear Alma’s cheery greeting. He ordered a pint and drank half of it at one pull. It settled comfortingly in his stomach. The other half rapidly followed. He ordered another, ignoring Alma’s comments, and drank that more slowly, hoping for the beginning of a pleasant dulling of the senses. No such luck. By the end of a third pint, his mind was still functioning with full clarity and the hopelessness of his situation was unchanged. Not for the first time, he wondered if it would be better if he went away. There were always jobs going on the deep-sea ships. He could travel to foreign parts, see the world, be away for months at a time. His family could cope without him now that Florrie was married and she and Jimmy could keep an eye on the younger ones, and he would not have to see Gerry bringing up his son.

  ‘. . . Not with us at all.’

  ‘No, he’s in a world of his own.’

  He became aware that he was being talked about. A group of men from the street, Crofts and O’Donaghues, were gathered round Tom and Will Johnson. They were looking at him and grinning.

  ‘What’s up, Harry boy? Look as if you lost a bob and found a tanner.’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing, eh? Then come and join us and stop looking like a dying duck in a thunderstorm.’ This was from Jimmy Croft.

  ‘Yeah, come on, Harry. We need men like you,’ Tom Johnson said.

  Harry sighed and shifted over to join them.

  The subject under discussion, as always when Tom was around, was the situation in the docks. Tom laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder.

  ‘Now, you’re in the Lightermen’s Union, ain’t you? So you’re one of us now. We’re all in the Federation. And that includes the sailors.’

  ‘And the sailors are on strike,’ Harry said, trying hard to appear to be on the ball.

  ‘Too true they are, Harry. And in Hull and Manchester and Liverpool the dockers are out in sympathy. The question is, do we come out an’ all?’

  ‘What I want to know is, why should we come out for the sailors? When did they ever do anything for us?’ Brian O’Donaghue asked.

  ‘That’s the whole point of the Federation,’ Tom explained patiently. ‘We all look after each other. We come out for them. When the gov’nors throw out our claim for eightpence and a shilling, which they surely will, the rest of the unions in the Federation stick by us. Like your lot.’ Tom turned to Harry. ‘Your lot are putting in a claim for better working conditions, ain’t you? We stick by you in that. That way, we got ’em where we want ’em.’

  ‘You’ll never get the gov’nors where you want ’em,’ one of the Crofts said.

  ‘We will this time,’ Tom insisted. ‘This time, if we strike, they can’t get blacklegs in. You noticed how it is at the call-on stands these days? No fighting for jobs, is there? It’s only us regulars there, the proper dockers. You can work a
s much as you like. They need us. Same as they need Harry’s lot. You can’t replace a freeman waterman. Ain’t a job you can just pick up. Without us, they’re stuck. They can’t function.’ He put his hands in front of him and closed his fists in a grasping motion. ‘We got real power in our own hands. We just got to have the courage to use it.’

  Harry was listening with growing interest. He had heard Tom speaking on and off for most of his life and he never took a great deal of notice. Tom’s dreams of a better life for the working man seemed to him to be just that – dreams. But now it looked as if they really could get somewhere.

  ‘So what can we do about it?’ Harry asked.

  ‘Get as many joined to the union as you can,’ Tom told him. ‘Will and me, we got everyone we know, and we go and talk to men on other quays. The more we got, the better we can act when the time comes. You can do the same amongst the lightermen. They’ll listen to you, Harry. They respect you, and you got a tongue in your head; you can persuade people. If enough of us band together, they’ll know they got to listen to us when we put in for our rightful claims.’

  The more Tom said, the more it appealed to Harry. It was a clear-cut issue with the spice of risk and a good deal to win. What was more, it was a fight with a well-defined enemy – the employers – and he needed a fight, an outlet for all the anger and frustration within him.

  ‘What d’you say, eh, Harry boy?’ Tom asked. ‘You with us?’

  ‘I’m with you,’ Harry agreed.

  The women viewed the progress of the dispute apprehensively. They knew what happened when strikes really took hold: hunger far beyond the usual run set in, household goods were sold or pawned until there was nothing left, credit at the corner shop grew so long that it took years to pay it off, and children became ill and the weakest died. They did not want to go through all that again. It was bad enough having to cope with the heatwave, with food going off almost before they carried it home, and all the consequent sickness and diarrhoea.

  An ultimatum was sent to the employers, and some of the men at the Surrey docks and some of the grain trimmers walked out. The Port of London Authority promised a conference of employers to consider all the outstanding claims. The men accepted this and carried on working, while the unions ran an increasingly successful recruiting campaign. Men like Tom Johnson found that at last they were speaking to receptive ears, while the rival Stevedores Society decided to abandon its old skilled craft status and let in anyone involved in the handling of port cargo. Throughout July, while the leaders and the employers were locked in negotiations over recognition and a port rate for all men employed in the London docks, the men who did the work began to see the sense in uniting.

  Late on the twenty-seventh of July an agreement was at last arrived at. Tom Johnson, who had been waiting together with Will and some others to hear the result, came home to find Martha, Maisie and Ellen all sitting round the kitchen table waiting for him. He and Will clumped into the little house, and the women could tell from the first glance that all was not well.

  Martha took the simmering kettle off the hob and made tea. Ellen looked at her father’s grim face.

  ‘What happened, Dad? They throw it out?’

  Tom sat down with a deep sigh. He rested his elbows on the table and ran both hands over his head.

  ‘Worse,’ he said. ‘Worse than that, girl. They give in to ’em. Accepted sevenpence and ninepence, with the possibility of eightpence and a shilling for those who are already getting the seven and nine. That and an hour off the working day. We’re to start at seven in the morning now, not six. Bloody useless! No port rate, and not a word about union recognition. Just taken the scraps what the gov’nors threw at ’em and touched their caps and said “Thank you kindly, sirs”. Makes me sick.’

  Martha plumped cups of steaming tea in front of the men. She and Maisie exchanged glances. Sevenpence and ninepence didn’t sound too bad to her. Taken over a good week’s work, that would make another four or five shillings. It was a whole lot more than nothing. But she knew better than to say so to her husband.

  ‘Going to be a mass meeting tomorrow to ratify it,’ Will said.

  ‘I’ll tell you something, I’m not voting for it,’ Tom said. ‘I been a supporter of Ben Tillett these twenty years, but I’m not behind him now. He can tell me to accept these terms till he’s blue in the face but I’m having none of it. And I tell you something else, the men ain’t going to take it, neither. Will and me’ve been working away getting new members in, ain’t we, Will? We been telling ’em the leaders are going to get eightpence and a shilling for ’em, we been taking their shilling entrance fees off of them and promising ’em it’s going to be worth their while. What are they going to say to this?’

  ‘Going to tell ’em where to put it,’ Will said succinctly.

  ‘Right. Too true they are. You know what I think, Will? I think we got to get everyone up that meeting tomorrow – everyone we know what’s in dock work, all the street, all the blokes what we work with, everyone. And we got to tell Tillett and Gosling what we think of their agreement. They can take it right back to Lord bloody Davenport and start talking fast, or we’re all coming out. We waited long enough.’

  ‘But it’s Friday tomorrow,’ Maisie said, her first contribution to the discussion.

  Will groaned dramatically. ‘We know it’s Friday tomorrow. You don’t think we’re going to run along to work like good little children, do you? What’d the gov’nors think then? We got to show ’em we mean business. I’m with Dad. I think we ought to get the whole street up there. Them union leaders got to see we ain’t going to take it lying down this time. No point in being in a union it they can’t get a good deal for us.’

  Maisie looked crushed.

  ‘If you do come out on strike, how long is it going to last?’ Ellen asked, speaking for all three women.

  ‘As long as it takes,’ Tom told her.

  Martha’s mouth tightened. ‘It ain’t so bad for us, we ain’t got no little ’uns at home no more. But it’s hard for them with young families. I remember last time, when the union had to set up food stations – cup of cocoa and a doorstep of bread for the kids before they went to school. Had to see them right through till the next day, that did.’

  ‘But we won in the end, didn’t we?’ Tom pointed out. ‘We got the docker’s tanner. This time we’re going to get eightpence and a bob. God knows, it ain’t a blooming fortune. You’d think we was asking for life’s blood. Eightpence for a hour’s hard labour! They’re lucky we’re only asking that. We deserve more.’

  ‘Of course you do,’ Ellen said. She turned to her mother and Maisie. ‘One thing, at least it’s summer. I always think the worse part of being really on your uppers is being cold. It eats into your bones.’

  ‘It’s all right for you to talk. Your Gerry’s not in dock work,’ Maisie pointed out.

  ‘Let’s hope it don’t last till winter, then,’ Martha said.

  ‘It won’t,’ Tom told her.

  The mood was the same throughout the docks. The men had had enough. They had waited twenty years for a pay rise and they had been persuaded to join one union or another on the promise of twopence an hour more. The mass meeting threw the provisional agreement out and sent the Federation leaders back to try again. The men from Trinidad Street came home in fighting mood, and went up to the Rum Puncheon for a rowdy celebration of their daring in challenging both the employers and their own leaders. The next day the coal porters, who had not been covered by the agreement, started to come out on strike, while the lightermen, who had been trying to negotiate a ten-hour day, threw out the compromise that their leaders had come to.

  All through a hot and sultry Sunday, Trinidad Street was buzzing with rumour. The men gathered in little knots, exchanging what they knew of how friends and relations were acting in different sections of the docks and reaffirming their determination to see it through this time. The women stayed on the doorsteps, their arms folded over their stomachs
, and muttered amongst themselves. They could feel the tide of battle rising. Even the grandmothers, matriarchs of the clans, did not try to speak out against the coming action. They knew when to bow to the inevitable. The children, picking up the excitement and aggression in the air, marched up and down the street, chanting and waving makeshift flags.

  Alma, coming back in the early evening from the long weary journey over to visit Charlie at the Scrubs, could not face them all. She just wanted to hide herself away. But the place was full of Gerry and Ellen and the children, and, anyway, to get there she had to pass all the people out in the street. What she had learnt today was so shaming she felt she could never hold her head up in front of her neighbours again. She hesitated on the corner, looking at the Rum Puncheon. Percy was expecting her in. Teatime was already past and the men were gathering for the evening. He would be needing her behind the bar. Weary and sick at heart, she went round the back way.

  As luck would have it, Percy was out there fetching some glasses.

  ‘Ah, there y’are, Alma. Going to be busy tonight, I reckon. Get that hat off and –’ Then he noticed the expression on her face and stopped short. He put down the glasses and came over to her. ‘Here, what’s up, girl? What’s happened? Didn’t they let you see him?’

  Alma shook her head. ‘No, it’s not that. It’s –’ A great sob gathered in her throat. She tried to stop it, but it kept coming up. ‘Oh, Percy . . .’ And then Percy’s big arms were round her and she was crying her heart out on his shoulder. He patted her back and begged her not to cry. When at last she did subside into hiccups, he brought her a whisky and sat her down, ignoring the demands for service coming from the bar.

  ‘Now then, girl, what’s the matter, eh? Tell old Perce about it.’

  Alma shook her head. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Not in solitary, is he? Not been got at?’

  ‘No – no.’

  ‘Been given extra time?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sick, then? Is he ill?’