Authors: Mary Gibson
‘Sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I thought you were Hughes.’
He chuckled. ‘He has that effect on me as well, sometimes,’ he half whispered. ‘But I am a Hughes too, Bertie Hughes. I’m his nephew.’
‘Ohh,’ Milly said, taken aback by his friendliness. ‘I didn’t know he had any family. He doesn’t live round here.’
Bertie Hughes carefully weighed Milly’s jug and then spooned the mustard pickle out of a seven-pound jar on the counter.
‘No, we come from Dulwich way. I’ve been working in the Camberwell shop, but he’s moved me here for a few weeks, says he needs a holiday.’
‘A holiday? Lucky sod. Probably just wants to get away from the Bermondsey rough,’ she said bluntly.
He grinned. ‘Probably.’
Then she had to laugh with him. For some reason the encounter with Bertie Hughes had lightened her mood, and she left with the beginnings of a plan to ensure she would still have that ‘holiday’ of her own.
But for her plan to work, she would need her mother’s help. And so, that evening after the old man had gone to the Swan and Sugarloaf and her sisters were in bed, she sat opposite her mother in the quiet kitchen. Without the tension of her father’s presence or the conflict with her sisters, this was always Milly’s favourite time of the day. Ellen Colman had been struggling to darn one of the old man’s jackets; her weak eyes meant she wasn’t a good needlewoman.
‘Here, Mum, I’ll do it,’ Milly offered. Taking the needle carefully from her mother’s hand, she decided to broach her plan. ‘What if I just go hopping for a week?’
Her mother began shaking her head.
‘Mum, just listen a minute. Southwell’s will let me have a week off unpaid, and what if I promise Dad I can make more picking than I’ll get in wages?’
‘Twelve bob? You’ll have to pick ten hours a day to do that!’
‘No, I won’t, don’t forget what I do all day! My fingers are twice as quick as yours. I’ll do it easily!’ Her mother must know it was true; everything Milly did was swift and deft. Often when they sat sewing in the evening she would catch Mrs Colman watching her. ‘It’s a wonder you don’t stab yourself, the speed you go at!’ her mother would say.
‘So, Mum, will
you
ask him?’
Mrs Colman shifted in her seat and Milly felt a blush rising to her cheeks, feeling cowardly for asking her mother to do it. But if she suggested it herself, he would never listen.
Her mother considered for a long moment, while Milly’s blush deepened. She was praying silently her mother would agree.
‘I’m not promising nothing, so don’t get your hopes up. But all right, I’ll ask him.’
Milly dropped the darning, and flung her arms round her mother, squeezing her tightly. ‘Thanks, Mum,’ she said, kissing her on the cheek.
‘That’s all right, darlin’, I know how you love it down hopping.’
Sitting her rangy body on her mother’s lap, she hooked her long legs over the arm of the chair. Milly rested her head against her mother’s as she had when she was small.
‘Get off me now, you’re squashing me half to death, yer great lump.’ Her mother shoved her off, but not before planting a kiss on her cheek.
Milly suffered a whole week of gnawing anxiety, while her mother waited to pick her moment. It wasn’t until the hopping box was full to bursting and the day for the family’s departure to Kent had arrived that Mrs Colman found the courage to speak to the old man. It was Saturday afternoon, pay day, when her father felt rich, with his suit out of the pawnshop and a pocket full of change for his bet and beer. They were all sitting round the kitchen table after their dinner of mutton stew, one of the old man’s favourites. Milly gave her mother a meaningful look and a small nod towards her father. The old man didn’t approve of talking at the dinner table and propped a little bamboo cane by his plate, to keep his children in order. She and Amy had long ago learned to keep their thoughts to themselves at family meals. Elsie’s knuckles, however, were permanently bruised, as a sharp rap from the cane regularly failed to halt her unruly thoughts from tumbling out. Milly’s mother took a deep breath, and her cough broke the silence.
‘Me and the kids’ll be going tonight then.’
The old man grunted, ‘Well, make sure you’re quiet, I don’t want you waking me up at two in the morning.’
Milly thought it highly unlikely that anything would wake him after his Saturday night pot full, and anyway, the family knew the drill so well, it was like a military operation. They’d be out of bed just after midnight, last-minute items packed into the hopping box and the girls bundled up in layers of clothing. They would creep out of the house, in time to catch the four o’clock ‘hopping special’ train from London Bridge. The old man never usually stirred.
‘I was thinking it’d be good if Milly could come for a week, though, it would do me a turn, helping with the kids,’ her mother said lightly.
Clever Mum
, Milly thought,
don’t for an instant let him know how much I want to go.
Her father said nothing. His thick, leather-tanned fingers rolled the cane back and forth across the table.
‘I’ve already told you, woman,’ he barked, ‘she can’t go, we need her wages!’
Milly jumped. ‘But I’m the best picker down there. I can earn more than twelve bob, easy!’ she blurted out.
The old man’s coal-dark eyes lit with a slow burning ember, then suddenly the cane flashed in the air, whipping down across her hand. Stifling her cry as pain shot up her arm, she stuffed her hand under her armpit. The two younger girls sat stock-still and her mother shook her head imperceptibly. The fight was over as far as her mother was concerned, but for Milly it was only just beginning.
That night she didn’t sleep. As her sisters’ breathed and snored beside her in untroubled slumber, Milly lay awake, watching the moon move slowly across the sky. At two o’clock the door to their bedroom creaked open and her mother crept over to the bed.
‘I’m sorry, love, once he’s made up his mind...’
‘Don’t worry, Mum, you did your best.’ Her mother had taken hold of the damaged hand, and Milly winced. She hoped he hadn’t cracked any finger bones, for her work depended on her nimble fingers. She eased herself out of bed, nipping across the freezing lino, to pull on her stockings and clothes. She’d promised her mother she’d help get the box and her sisters to London Bridge. If she couldn’t go herself, she’d still have the thrill of the excited crowds as they jostled along the platform, jamming themselves and all their chattels into the too few carriages. She helped Amy get her things together, but the child was sleepy and truculant, and as Milly brushed her hair the younger girl squealed. ‘You’re hurting me.’
Milly tapped her on the head with the brush. ‘Shhh! You’ll wake him up, then you’ll be staying behind with me! Do you want that?’
Amy shook her head and followed meekly as Milly led her sisters gingerly down the creaking staircase to the kitchen, where their mother had a single candle burning. Bundled into their coats, they left quietly, Milly carefully closing the front door behind them. Their mother took Amy’s hand and Elsie followed with a bundle of clothes under her arm, while Milly trundled the hopping box through the silent, moon-streaked streets, past Dockhead to London Bridge.
Once in Tooley Street, they joined scores of other families making the same pilgrimage. It seemed as if all the women and children of Bermondsey were being spirited away by some pied piper of the hop fields. The station was boiling with families milling about, trying to keep together, desperate not to lose either children or luggage.
‘Elsie, where’s Elsie gone?’ Their mother’s eyes searched the jostling crowd. Milly, tall enough to see above the surrounding heads, spotted her sister standing before a poster advertising a seaside holiday in Ramsgate. Three beautiful young women in flowing summer dresses, with wide-brimmed hats and parasols, were perched frivolously on the promenade railing. Elsie was staring intently. Milly elbowed her way through the crush and caught her by the arm. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to get left behind?’
‘Milly, look, perhaps they’re sisters, don’t they look like us a bit? Wouldn’t it be lovely to go to the seaside, instead of down hopping?’ Her unfathomable, almond-shaped grey eyes stared up at the poster. Milly couldn’t tell if she was being deliberately provocative. The beautiful girls in their expensive dresses didn’t look anything like the ‘set of jugs’ from Arnold’s Place.
‘Don’t be so ungrateful, you’re lucky to be going at all! Just think of me staying home with him.’
Elsie grimaced and shuddered, as Milly hauled her back to her mother. Soon the smell of the stoking boiler and the shrill hoot of the train whistle pierced their goodbyes. Milly hoisted the hopping box up into the carriage, kissed her mother and waved as the train moved out with a final, mournful hoot. She stood on the smoke-wreathed platform till the last of the train’s trail of steam had completely disappeared. Then, heavy with a sudden loneliness, she turned her feet towards the house in Arnold’s Place, which, without her mother or her sisters, could never be called home.
September 1923
‘Where’s the soap?’ The old man’s growled question wasn’t entirely unexpected, but still it made Milly jump. She was in the kitchen, frying sausages on the range, and pretended not to hear him.
‘Where’s the soddin’ soap?’ he bellowed again from the scullery.
Her father had come home from work and gone straight to the sink to scrub himself clean, as he usually did. She’d carried in the required kettle of water, making sure it was tepid rather than boiling hot as he normally liked it. Then she left him to it, while she cooked his tea. She’d hidden the soap earlier.
‘Comes to something a man can’t get a wash in his own house!’ She heard him banging around in the cupboard beneath the sink. She could imagine him, braces hanging down, long-john sleeves rolled up.
‘What have you done with the soap? For chrissake, gel, can’t you even make sure we’ve got a bit o’ soap?’ His voice was getting louder; she wasn’t sure how long to leave it.
She poked her head into the scullery.
‘No soap? Oh, Mrs Knight come to borrow some. I’ll run and get it back. Tea’s on the table.’
She lifted her coat from the peg in the passage and slipped out. She intended to be gone a while. Let him stew. She knew he would never eat until he’d scrubbed his hands. Let his dinner get cold. She couldn’t be held to blame for his fastidiousness.
She’d been waging her own little war for almost three weeks now, ever since her mother and sisters had gone to Kent. It had occurred to her that she might as well make him regret his decision to keep her at home, and if she was persistent and brave enough, she might make his life so uncomfortable that he’d be forced to change his mind. She cooked him inedible meals, let the fire die down and hid the poker, made sure his long johns were left damp and his shirts unironed. One evening when he was late for the pub he’d grabbed the flat iron from the fire himself, brandishing the red-hot metal in her face. For a moment she feared he might brain her, but instead he’d spat on it and started smoothing his best shirt himself.
‘What’s that mother of yours thinking of, not teaching you how to use a flat iron! You’re worse than useless, yer dozy mare.’
And this evening, she hoped the disappearing soap might tip him over the edge, perhaps even force him to concede that life would be much more pleasant without her around. With a small surge of satisfaction, she felt the bar of soap nestling inside her coat pocket. She decided to walk to Bermondsey Wall and back. By then he should have left for the pub and the inevitable consequences of her defiance would at least be postponed. Strolling to the end of Arnold’s Place, she turned back past the Swan and Sugarloaf and down the stiflingly narrow Hickman’s Folly, towards the river.
It had been one of those balmy September days that could have been high summer; pure hopping weather, she’d thought wistfully, every time she’d looked out of the high factory windows. Now, as she approached Bermondsey Wall, the narrow streets threading their way towards the river ended, here and there, in breaches between high-walled warehouses. Suddenly she saw the Thames. At least here was some space and a view of the sky.
By the time she reached the river wall, it felt as though she were struggling for breath. These last weeks with the old man had felt like a prison sentence and she longed to break out, to find some air. She went to the small wooden jetty, protruding between the wharves. Walking to the end of it, she leaned against the sturdy wooden railing, silvered with age. She had felt its sharp edge pressing into her back as Pat pinned her there, with the moonlit river behind her. Why, she wondered, did she submit to those kisses, which so often left her unmoved? Perhaps it had to do with that hollow pit of loneliness inside her, which had deepened since her mother and sisters had left. She didn’t want to hurt Pat, but there was something she was meant to be feeling, which she was not. If she ever managed to join them down hopping, perhaps she would try to forget about Pat and let him drift away as softly as the tide now running beneath her feet. She scanned the green sweep of river, all the while taking great gulping breaths of sharp air. Downstream, towards Greenwich, she watched as huge, billowy white clouds sailed like floating ships above the water. Upstream was the long V-shaped inlet of St Saviour’s Dock, after which Dockhead was named. Milly had learned in her history class that once, long ago, this whole stretch of riverside had been home to the Folly Gardens, a pleasant place on the banks of the Thames where fashionable city dwellers from across the water could exchange the stink of the city for sweet air and cooling river breezes. But that distant past was not in evidence now. The Folly had seen too much wretched life for that, and Milly thought it was unlikely ever to be a garden again.
The tooting of a lorry horn jolted her back to the present.
‘Does your mother know you’re out?’
‘Pat!’ She jerked round to see him, with that familiar cheeky smile, half leaning out of the cab window, and hoped he hadn’t noticed her blushing at this interruption of her secret disloyal musings about him.