Authors: Mary Gibson
‘I never wanted to swim in it. It always looked to me like it was waiting to swallow me up,’ Elsie said.
‘Probably because of that boy in your class, you know, the one who got sucked under the barge.’
‘The nuns put the fear of God in us about it. I didn’t even want to paddle after that.’ Elsie looked dreamily down into the deceptively sluggish, eddying ripples, as the incoming tide rose rapidly up the wooden pilings.
‘I always loved the river. It’s the only place round here you can breathe.’ Milly put her head back, enjoying the breeze lifting her hair. She squinted over the water, sunlight crinkling in watery whorls, revealing the hidden currents, and she remembered the time when she would have let the river take her into its cold embrace.
‘There was a time I almost did what you tried to do,’ she said suddenly. ‘You went to the cherry tree, and me... I went to the river. Funny we both went to the place we loved best.’
Elsie stared at her with a look of disbelief. ‘You?’
Milly nodded. ‘It was soon after I brought Jimmy home and I didn’t know how I was going to live. I just gave up, but my Bertie saved me, same as Bob saved you.’
Milly wasn’t sure why she had wanted to tell her secret to Elsie now, perhaps because it was the only thing they had in common, and she was tired of the great gulf between them. But now she saw that her sister’s lip trembled and tears had begun to trickle down her cheeks. Milly leaned over and put her arms round Elsie. This time the sharp-edged body gave in to her embrace and the two sisters clung to each other.
‘Oh, Elsie, I’m sorry I let you down.’ She could feel the front of her dress wet with Elsie’s tears, but her sister shook her head.
‘You couldn’t have done nothing about it, Mill.’ Elsie looked up and their eyes met. ‘I know that now. I did blame you for a long time, but Bob made me see sense. It was like they locked up my whole family when they sent me in there, and there’s only the old man to blame for that.’
Milly cupped Elsie’s face with her hands. ‘Well, the old bastard’s gone for good and you’re safe home now.’
Jimmy had silently squirmed between them and patting Elsie’s cheek said, ‘Don’t cry, Auntie Elsie, old bastard’s gone.’
They laughed as they wiped away their tears, and Elsie gathered up Jimmy in a tight embrace.
After sharing her secret, Milly noticed a change in her sister. For the first time in her life, she’d allowed Elsie to see her as weak, and the revelation, far from calling forth her scorn, had resulted in a common bond. Both sisters now knew that they had visited the same dark depths of hopelessness, and both knew that it had taken the love of another to bring each of them back from the brink. Neither could claim to be stronger than the other, and the sense of isolation they’d felt growing up, islands cut off from each other in the sea of fear generated by the old man, began to dissipate, receding just as the floodwaters had earlier that year. For Milly, it felt as if the dove had finally returned with the olive branch in its beak, and that at last Elsie was her sister again.
And in the long, dark nights of autumn, as they sewed together, they began to share confidences. One evening while making some baby romper suits that had been particularly popular, Elsie put down her needle, with a worried look.
‘Milly, don’t jaw me, but I think I’m expecting.’
‘Oh, love, I’m so happy for you!’ Milly’s response was unfeigned. ‘But why would I jaw you? The way you are with my kids, I know you’ll make a lovely mum.’
Elsie’s brows knitted together as she plucked at a loose thread in the romper. ‘Well, it’s just another mouth to feed, and if we can’t feed ourselves, how will we find the money for a baby?’
‘It don’t cost nothing to feed a baby, well, not at first, and I’ve kept all Marie’s baby things, so that’ll help out.’ She paused, feeling sad that such joyful news should only be the cause of another worry. ‘Oh, Elsie, be glad about it. You’ve got Bob now, and me. You’re not on your own. Besides, you can’t stop living, just because you ain’t got two ha’pennies to rub together. Wasn’t Bob pleased?’
Elsie shook her head sadly. ‘He seems more ashamed than anything.’
‘Ashamed! But why?’
‘He says we’ve got no business bringing a child into the world. He says it’ll have no future, not the way things are, with no jobs and no money. And the thing is, Millie, I think he’s right. We should be able to give our kids a better life than we had... but we can’t,’ she finished flatly.
Milly felt herself getting angry. Stonefield had knocked so much of the fight out of Elsie, it had tamed her beyond recognition.
‘Well, God knows we were poor enough as kids
and
we had the old man bashing us about, but you think back to that cherry tree – would you rather Bob hadn’t come along? Would it be better if you didn’t have your life? I know when I think back to the Fountain Stairs, I bless my Bertie every time. Life’s sweet, darlin’, no matter how poor you are, so you just think of that little baby inside you, and give it a chance to live, will you? It’s all any of us get.’
Milly picked up her sewing again, the clock ticked, Elsie was silent and Milly wondered if she’d been too stern. But then her sister dropped her sewing, and sinking to the floor beside Milly’s chair, she laid her head on Milly’s lap.
‘Oh, Milly, I want to be glad. I know it’ll be the best thing that ever happened to me.’
Milly stroked Elsie’s hair. ‘It will be, love, I promise.’
Elsie’s news was just what they needed to brighten their lives during an autumn bleached by mists and thick fog. Day after day, yellow pea-soupers rolled off the Thames and collected like grimy cotton wool in all the courts and alleys of Dockhead. The air was perpetually full of the mournful foghorns of passing vessels and the sharp, shrill warnings from the tugs. It was on such a foggy evening in October that, as Milly made her way to Arnold’s Place to collect the children from her mother’s, she sensed a figure shadowing her. All the way down Hickman’s Folly, she had felt a darker shape, brown against the jaundiced mist surrounding her, moving as she moved, pausing when she paused. Yet each time she stopped to listen for the footsteps she was sure she’d heard, she was met only by silence. Dockhead was her home and behind each shabby, peeling door, in every crumbling alley or court, were friends and neighbours; the place held no terror for her. Yet she knew there were sometimes strangers passing through, casuals off the docks, who came from outside Bermondsey, looking for work at Butler’s Wharf, or sailors, Yankees and Chinamen, from the moored vessels along the quaysides, searching out the nearest pub. Sometimes they would see a rare, dusky-skinned, turbanned street vendor, but the only terror she’d ever experienced in these streets had come from inside the walls of her own home: the old man.
Crossing Parker’s Row, she again had the sense of being watched, and whirling round, caught sight of a dark figure disappearing into the momentary glow of the Swan and Sugarloaf. The door banged shut, but putting her jitteriness down to tiredness, she pulled her coat tightly around her for warmth against the chill damp. She was grateful for the mist-shrouded halo of light around the gas lamp on Mrs Knight’s wall, spreading out to greet her.
But over the next week, try as she might, Milly could not rid herself of the feeling that she was being followed. It was only ever when she was walking home from work, once she was alone, and had said goodnight to Kitty and the other girls. One evening after she’d arrived home and was hanging up her coat, still damp from the fog, a sound behind her startled her, so that she cried out and jumped back.
‘Good gawd, Milly, it’s only me!’ said Elsie. ‘What’s put the jitters into you?’
‘Oh, you made me jump! It’s probably just the fog, but I keep feeling there’s someone behind me.’
She expected her sister to laugh at her, but instead Elsie’s face grew serious and once they were in the kitchen she turned to Milly with a worried expression.
‘Funny thing is, Milly, I’ve been feeling that too. When I’ve been shopping, or going round to see Mum.’ The two sisters looked at each other for a long moment, not wanting to voice their suspicions. Milly was the first to speak. ‘You don’t think he’s back, do you?’
Elsie sat down at the kitchen table and began to rock ever so slightly back and forth. ‘If he is, he’ll come after me. Oh, Mill, what if he finds out I got married and forged his signature? He’ll shop me and I’ll be put away again!’
Milly rushed to soothe her sister. ‘We’re probably getting ourselves into a state over nothing. Even if he’s back, love, he can’t know when you got married, can he?’
But Elsie’s brow was still furrowed and she shook her head. ‘But what if someone tells him?’
‘I’m telling you, he’s not come back. He’s got it too cushy over in Whitechapel, all the beer he can drink. Why would he give that up?’
‘I don’t know. But I’ve got a bad feeling about it. I haven’t said anything, but I’ve even been dreaming about him lately. I dream over and over that he’s back at the leather mills and I see him floating in one of the lime pits, all bloated, and when I wake up, I feel so guilty.’
‘Why should you feel guilty?’ Milly whispered, chilled by the image.
‘Because I feel so happy... happy that he’s dead.’
‘Well, we’ve all felt that one time or another, and you’ve got more reason than all of us.’
‘I don’t think I could stand to go back to Stonefield, though.’
‘You won’t have to,’ she patted Elsie’s hand, ‘because he’s
not
back.’
But it was Kitty who proved her wrong. They met up as they were both walking along Jacob Street the next morning, and after they’d clocked in at Southwell’s Kitty linked arms with her. ‘I’ve got some bad news, love. My Freddie says your old man’s been seen at the Swan.’
Milly froze. It
had
been him, then, all along, silently shadowing her and Elsie. It felt far more frightening than the prospect of an open assault.
‘I thought as much. I don’t know what he’s planning, but he’s been following me and Elsie, and she’s scared he’ll get her put away again.’
‘How can he do that? They let her out when she got married.’
Milly reminded her of the circumstances of Elsie’s marriage, which Bob had confessed to his brother.
‘Oh no, I didn’t think of that!’
‘Does Freddie have any idea what the old man’s doing back? He must want something.’
‘From what he heard, the old cash cow in Whitechapel chucked him out. Fed up with him pissing all the profits up the wall.’
‘Well, if he turns up at Mum’s, he’ll find the cupboard’s bare.’
Kitty nodded sympathetically. She knew that it was Milly and Amy keeping the two families afloat. ‘When he gets no joy there, he’ll sling his hook soon enough, I reckon.’
‘I hope so,’ Milly said uncertainly.
October 1928
It was as if summer had suddenly returned. One day the world was shrouded in fog and gloom; the next, unclouded blue skies arched over Dockhead and set the river sparkling again, in mild October days reminiscent of high summer, when Elsie’s and Milly’s bond had first deepened. The dark shadow stalking them disappeared from the riverside streets along with the mist, and they relaxed into an Indian summer, when Milly dug out her cotton frocks and took the warm flannel liberty bodices off the children.
On a bright Sunday morning towards the end of October, Milly and Elsie left Storks Road early, to walk with the children to Arnold’s Place. They were going to Mass at Dockhead Church as they usually did, with their mother and Amy. On this particular morning their talk was all of the plans for Elsie’s baby, which was due in two months’ time. Elsie’s pregnancy had been straightforward and, in spite of her fragile constitution, she had kept going with daily chores, shopping and sewing, as well as helping out with the children. Milly had been impressed but not surprised by her hidden resilience, forged, she had no doubt, in those dark days at Stonefield.
‘Have you thought of a name yet?’ Milly asked her sister.
‘If it’s a boy, I think we’ll name him Charles George, after our Charlie, and Bob’s dad George.’
‘Ah, that’ll please Mum,’ Milly said, remembering their eldest brother, killed at the Battle of Loos. ‘I was only nine when our Charlie died, and you must have been about six?’
‘Five.’
‘I still think of him. It’s only now I realize how young he was when he died, twenty-two, same age as me!’ Milly sighed. ‘He was a good brother. It was different when he was at home, do you remember?’
Elsie nodded. ‘I remember him always bringing home an orange or something from the docks for us, and he used to swing me about like a sack of potatoes, till I got dizzy.’
‘I don’t know if I’m imagining it, but the old man seemed different then. He was still always at the pub, but it just felt more like a home when the boys were around, and then when Jim died too, that’s when everything seemed to go to pot.’
They had never really talked of their soldier brothers’ deaths. Two years apart, they had come like dull hammer blows into their young lives. Milly knew now that their mother had protected them from the consequences as much as she could. But thinking back, she could see it had been those two events that had shattered whatever fragile home life they’d had. After that, it had been the start of another war – in the Colman household, when they’d all begun pulling in opposite directions, with only their mother trying to capture each unravelling skein as the fabric of their lives pulled apart. Now Milly hoped that as the wounds between her and Elsie healed, there was a chance of another common thread to bind them all, the tie of sisterly love. Even Amy had begun to circle their newfound closeness with a wistfulness that gave Milly hope.
When they arrived at Arnold’s Place, Milly was surprised not to find Mrs Colman and Amy ready and waiting at the doorstep, for her mother was a stickler for being punctual at Mass.
‘Someone’s overdone it!’ She pushed at the front door. ‘Better bring the kids in,’ she said to Elsie, lifting Marie out of the pushchair. ‘Looks like we’ll be waiting for them to get ready!’