Authors: Mary Gibson
‘What were you smiling at?’ He shot her a look as he caught the baby.
‘Ohhh, I was just thinking, you’ll make a good dad.’
As he held the little boy in the crook of his arm, Milly saw his face grow serious. He handed Jimmy back to her. ‘There’s something I need to talk to you about, Milly.’
‘Gawd, don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind. I’ve made me dress!’ she said, laughing. But when he didn’t laugh back a tightness caught at her chest and she steeled herself, immediately thinking the worst. What an idiot she’d been to believe that such an impossibly good man could ever be hers.
She was about to ask him to explain, when they heard a loud banging on the front door.
‘I bet you a pound to a penny that’s Amy back already! I told her to come to me if the old man started on her!’ She marched back down the passage and flung open the door.
‘Who is it?’ called Bertie from the kitchen.
There was a long pause before she called back.
‘It’s Elsie!’
November
–December 1924
‘Get in here!’
Milly yanked her sister into the passage and slammed the door shut behind them. Her breath came in shallow gasps, and she felt trapped in the narrow confines of the passage.
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
‘You didn’t come for me,’ said Elsie.
‘
Jesus
, Mary and Joseph! What have you done?’
Elsie’s emaciated face was streaked with dirt and sweat, and beneath the shapeless asylum dress, her concave chest was heaving. Surely she couldn’t have run all the way from Kent? At that moment Bertie came out of the kitchen, paused for a beat and then whistled. ‘Strike me dumb, that’s crowned it,’ he said. ‘You’d better bring her in.’
As Elsie staggered forward, Bertie ran to catch her. He carried her into the kitchen, sitting her carefully in his chair, closest to the fire. She was trembling uncontrollably, little jerks visible as she tried to steady herself. He took off his cardigan and draped it round her bony shoulders.
Milly’s impulse to fire questions at the girl was held in check by Bertie’s small shake of the head. ‘All in good time. Let’s get her a drink, eh?’
Milly went silently to the kitchen, too shocked to even imagine how her sister had managed the twenty-mile journey from Stonefield on her own, when she’d only ever travelled outside of Bermondsey on the hoppers’ special. All the while she made tea, she could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock, punctuated by a low sobbing from Elsie and Bertie’s mumbled reassurances.
‘It’s all right, Elsie, you’re home now,’ he said, but Milly wanted to shout from the scullery that it was not all right, it was all wrong, and Elsie had a world of pain coming to her when they came to cart her back to the asylum again.
When she came in with the tea, Bertie was sitting opposite Elsie, her birdlike hand in his. ‘Drink your tea, duck, and tell us what happened,’ he coaxed as Elsie gripped his hand.
‘She didn’t come for me!’ She looked accusingly at Milly. ‘So I run away!’
Milly held her tongue and let Bertie prompt her sister.
‘But how did you get out in the first place?’
She gulped the tea and then held the cup out to Milly for more.
‘I was working in the garden with Bob. All day we was planting tulips and he was telling me about all the colours you can get: yellow and red, striped and even black. So we finished all the beds and I was hungry, ’cause I can’t eat their grub and I didn’t want to go back in there because there’s a woman sleeps near me, keeps waking me up and saying I’m her baby and it upsets me. And I just sat down on the garden bench and I said to Bob, I think I’ll just sleep here tonight, and he looks at me funny. But Bob’s lovely, he never tells me off if I can’t do the gardening. Sometimes I just sit and watch him and he tells me all about collecting the seeds, so you have something for next year.’
Milly was about to jump in and hurry Elsie along, her nerves stretched to breaking point. She didn’t know how long they’d have before the police came knocking for her sister. But Bertie read her fidgets and gave her a look she’d come to understand. She sat back obediently, letting Elsie’s story tumble out. The clock ticked as Elsie slurped more tea, and Milly noticed her lips were cracked. She got up and went to the scullery, coming back with yet more tea, a plate of sliced bread and a bowl of dripping.
Elsie looked on hungrily while Milly spooned out the yellow fat and dark jelly, spreading it over the bread. She fell upon it as though she hadn’t eaten since she’d walked into Stonefield. After she’d wolfed it all down, she licked her fingers and stared into the fire.
‘If you’d come for me, I wouldn’t have had to run away,’ she said to the fire as it flickered and crackled. ‘Bob says to me,
You don’t have to go back inside, Elsie
. And then he gives me a shilling and says,
You can get a forty-seven all the way to Tower Bridge, and you know your way home from there, don’t you? Just follow the river
. And I said I did. Then he says,
I’m going home now, Elsie, but I’m going out by the side garden gate and you can come and see me off
. So I followed him to the little door in the wall, and he says goodnight and he goes... but he leaves the door open a crack. And after a bit I walked through it. I went to the first bus stop I could find and I asked the conductor if he was going to Tower Bridge and he said yes, so I give him the shilling, but he said it was too much and he didn’t have no change, so to keep the shilling.’ She dug into her apron pocket to produce the shilling. ‘So I sat on the bus for hours and hours, and when I see Tower Bridge and the river, I knew I was home.’
Elsie yawned. Calmer now that she had told her story, her eyes began to droop. Bertie lifted her up as though she were no lighter than Jimmy, and Milly followed him upstairs, where she tucked Elsie into bed as though she were a child. As she fell into an immediate sleep, Bertie looked on while Milly undid her hair from its severe tie, letting it fall loose on the pillow. Then going to her chest of drawers, she brought out the prettiest bow she could find and fastened it in Elsie’s hair.
‘She loves a pretty ribbon,’ she explained, looking up at Bertie with tears streaming down her face.
Bertie put his arms round her and they crept downstairs together. He quietly closed the kitchen door behind them, so that Elsie wouldn’t be disturbed, and held Milly close.
‘Don’t cry, Milly. It’s not your fault, you know,’ he said, holding her away from him and looking intently into her eyes.
‘I know, but it breaks my heart I couldn’t keep her out of that place and sometimes I think, if only I’d given her the money for that bloody dress!’
‘But you didn’t
have
the money.’
It was the plain truth, and for an instant gave her relief from the punishing cycle of guilt she’d got herself into, since her first visit to Stonefield.
‘But what are we going to do with her? How can we let them take her back there? It would kill her.’
Bertie sat down, pulling her into his lap. ‘We’ll think of something. She’s safe here for a while.’
‘But she can’t stay here. What sort of a life can she live? She’ll be forever looking over her shoulder, waiting for someone to report her. And besides, Bertie, you want to be a councillor one day. How’s it going to look if you’ve been hiding a criminal?’
He shook his head dismissively. ‘They’ll go to Arnold’s Place first. They might not even think to come here. How would they know that you live in my house?’
She hadn’t thought of that. She jumped up. ‘I’d better get round me mum’s and warn her!’
But he caught her before she could dash out. ‘Hold up, you’re best to stay with Elsie and Jimmy. I’ll go.’
He put on his jacket and trilby hat and she smoothed his collar, then let her hand rest gently on his cheek.
‘You look tired, love,’ she said, noticing the dark circles under his eyes, and suddenly remembering how serious he’d looked earlier when he’d arrived home.
‘You never told me what we needed to talk about.’
He kissed her on the cheek. ‘That can wait, duck, best get a move on!’
While he was gone, she sat beside the fire, making a little winter coat for Jimmy. Sewing usually calmed and distracted her, but tonight she was getting little done, and, more often than not, the material fell to her lap as she imagined how her mother would take the news. She would probably want to rush round to see Elsie, but Milly only hoped Bertie would be firm with her. Nothing went unnoticed in Arnold’s Place and once the news of Elsie’s return was common knowledge, it would soon filter down Tooley Street to Tower Bridge nick. And she should have told Bertie not to say a word if the old man was there... but he wasn’t stupid. She sewed a button on to the wrong side of the coat and gave up in exasperation. Eventually she heard him open the front door.
‘She wouldn’t take no for an answer!’ he said as she gave him a withering look.
‘My child needs me!’ Her mother began unbuttoning her coat. ‘And may I not move from this spot till I’ve seen her! Now you take me to her.’
She’d come out dressed still in her old apron and slippers. Poor Bertie, Milly should have known he’d be no match for her mother, when it came to one of her set of jugs.
Milly led her upstairs and watched as her mother sat gently on the side of the bed, taking Elsie’s hand and kissing it over and over. ‘Oh, me poor baby,’ was all she said. ‘I swear, Milly, sometimes I’ve felt like murdering that old bastard for what he’s done to her, and if he dropped down dead tomorrow, I wouldn’t be sorry. No, as God’s my judge, I wouldn’t.’
Milly joined her mother at the bedside. Stroking her daughter’s hair back from her head, Mrs Colman smiled. ‘Did you put the bow in her hair?’
‘Yes, it makes her look more herself.’
‘You’re a good sister, and don’t let her tell you any different. She’ll want to be blaming you for everything, but don’t you listen to her.’
Their mother knew them all so well, knew them and loved them in spite of their faults. Milly only hoped that she would be as understanding to Jimmy as he grew up. Right now, he was perfect, but she had no illusions he would stay that way.
Elsie stirred, her eyes fluttered open and she saw her mother. For a moment, confusion clouded her face. Then realizing she was home, she sat up, threw her arms round her mother’s neck and sobbed.
Ellen Colman couldn’t be coaxed from Elsie’s side, so she slept in the bed with her and next morning, very early, she left, so as to be home before Amy woke. Milly still wasn’t sure what would happen to her, but Elsie seemed to have been restored by their mother’s visit. It was an almost visible change, as if suddenly there was more flesh on her bones. There was certainly a brightness in her eyes that had been absent yesterday.
‘I’m going to Mass, and Bertie’s going to chapel. Will you be all right on your own?’ she asked. ‘Don’t, whatever you do, go out and don’t answer the door to no one, hear me?’
Elsie nodded, but asked if she could go into the garden. Milly doubted anyone would see her there. Bertie had planted so many climbing roses, which even when bare of blooms still formed a rambling screen round the narrow backyard.
‘All right, love, but wrap up in one of my coats if you do. It’s chilly this morning.’ And when Milly came back from Mass, Elsie was still outside. Peeking through the scullery window, she saw her sister passing up and down the garden beds, collecting seed heads in her apron.
Milly made a point of leaving early for the factory the next day, so that she had time to talk to her mother. She felt like a convict on the run herself as she ran the gauntlet of Arnold’s Place. Women were already up and about, banging carpets, coughing and flinching as dust rose, or standing at front doors gossiping, arms wrapped round themselves against the cold. Some were turning children out of the house, getting them from under their feet, and a few men emerged, slamming doors, ringing hobnailed boots on the paving as they went off to docks and factories.
Mrs Knight was scrubbing her front doorstep and wanted to talk, but Milly waved and hurried on, keen to avoid any of the normal questions about ‘your poor sister’. Mrs Carney was already making her rounds, picking up bundles for the pawnshop, and she was just emerging from her mother’s house. She was a small woman to be burdened with so many bundles.
‘Hello, ducks, I’ve just been telling your poor mother, there’s so many want me services these days, I have to start early, otherwise I’d never get it all done!’ She clucked like a scratching hen. ‘I’m thinking of getting meself a pram to carry it all!’
Milly didn’t doubt the pawnshop was doing a trade. Southwell’s had already started laying off women, and the crowds of unemployed casuals at the docks, hanging around on the off chance of half a day’s work, were growing by the day. She dodged past the old woman.
‘Can’t stop, Mrs Carney, I’ll be late myself!’
She went in, handing Jimmy over to her mother, before going to the front window. She checked up and down the street, but there was still nothing unusual going on. ‘I reckon you’ll have a copper knocking on your door today, Mum. So remember what I said, not a word about me or Bertie or Storks Road!’
‘I know, I know! I’ll just say I’ve not seen hide nor hair of her.’
‘Yes, but can you act surprised?’
‘’Course I can act surprised. Don’t think I’ve survived all these years with the old man without being able to swear black’s blue and keep a straight face, gawd forgive me.’ She crossed herself.
‘Does Amy know?’
Mrs Colman raised her eyes. ‘She spotted me coming in this morning, eventually got it out of me, didn’t she?’
Milly groaned. ‘That’s it then. It’ll be all over Dockhead by tonight, once she’s told Barrel.’
‘Well, I’ve give her the gypsy’s warning.’
‘And we know how much notice she takes of that!’ said Milly, thinking of the times Amy had laughed in the face of her mother’s threats. Perhaps she would have to administer her own brand of warning, which Amy usually took more notice of.