Authors: Irene Carr
A voice squeaked,
‘Heidi!’ It was the girl of fourteen who worked as a scullery-maid. She admired Liza.
Liza opened the door to the girl, who smiled and held out an envelope.
‘From your mama?’ Liza had told her about Kitty and Susan.
She took it.
‘Thank you, Heidi.’ The girl’s smile wavered; she could see Liza had been crying. ‘Yes, it’s from Mama. I’ll see you later.’
Heidi went away and Liza closed the door. It was only then that she wondered at the letter. Kitty wrote regularly, once a week, carefully in copperplate, the back of the sheet covered in Susan
’s scrawls. But there had been a letter only two days before. Why another now? Was Susan ill? Liza tore it open and read: ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you we had a burglar in and he found the money and took it all ... ’
Liza read the rest but the words were only regrets and apologies. The essence of the letter was in those few words. She did not blame her mother, had never had a bank account herself. Like many others she had never had enough money to merit one. When the poor saved a little money there was
always some emergency to claim it, like time out of work or shoes for a child.
Liza realised now that she was not only out of work but nearly penniless, and without a reference she would be lucky to obtain anything but the most menial job. She could not carry her box nor afford to ship it because she had to watch every penny. She left it with Heidi and packed an old, cheap suitcase she had bought second-hand some years earlier when she worked in Leeds. Then she set off in despair to go home.
* * *
In London, a similar scene was being enacted, though this time a man was the victim. Una Cooper opened the door of her hotel room and called,
‘Why, Mr Biggins! You’ll help a lady in a difficulty.’ She pouted and held a partly full champagne glass.
Henry Biggins smirked at her. He had just turned fifty, and was expensively, if badly, dressed in a check suit he believed gave him a sporty look. He had met Mr and Mrs Armstrong, as he knew them, a few days earlier, when they were all sitting in the foyer of the hotel and the lady had struck up a conversation with him. She had explained that she and her husband were in London in connection with Mr Armstrong
’s business. She had sighed, ‘Business, it’s always business.’ Mr Armstrong, in reality Piggy Cooper, had remained hidden behind his newspaper, giving only bored grunts when addressed. Henry had told her how he was there to see the sights, a holiday from his own business. He had left his wife at home.
They had met several times since then and he had found Una charming, attentive and interested in whatever he had to say. She had a habit, surely unconscious, of leaning towards him so that he would find himself peering down into her
décolletage
. Now he answered gallantly, ‘Of course, my dear. How may I be of assistance?’
Una seized his arm, pulled him into the room and shut the door behind them.
‘I’m glad I met you, Henry. You’ll understand. It’s my birthday. Sit down.’ She pushed him on to the edge of the bed. ‘I ordered a bottle because Freddie was supposed to come home early. Here, have a glass.’ Champagne stood in an ice-bucket on a small table and she splashed some into a glass, more into her own, handed him his and sat beside him. ‘Now he’s sent a message to say he won’t be back till midnight.’ She flapped a sheet of paper in front of Henry’s eyes and said miserably, ‘So I’m all alone. On my birthday.’ She sniffed.
‘
Eh, lass, that’s a shame,’ Henry commiserated.
Una leaned towards him and laid a hand on his thigh. The room seemed warm and he gulped champagne.
‘Business, always business,’ Una said, ‘and I’m left on my own. He never ...’ She paused, then finished delicately, ‘He never demonstrates any affection. That’s not natural for a woman like me.’ Her fingers dug into Henry’s thigh. Then she glanced at the little watch on her wrist. ‘But I forgot, I asked for your help.’ She stood and turned her back to him. ‘I can’t get out of this dress on my own. Will you, please?’
Henry began to undo the row of small buttons with fingers all thumbs. As he did so the dress slipped off her shoulders and he saw an expanding area of creamy skin.
Then Piggy Cooper burst in at the door. ‘What are you doing with my wife, sir? Adulterer!’
‘
No! I was only helping her!’ Henry squeaked. ‘She asked me in.’
Piggy glared at Una.
‘I cannot believe it. Is this true?’ Una clutched her dress about her. ‘I opened the door to his knock and he attacked me.’
‘
Liar as well as adulterer!’ Piggy bawled. ‘I’ll drag you through the highest courts in the land but I will have justice —and vengeance!’ He whipped out the knife, long and deadly.
Henry saw that Mrs Armstrong had lied to save her own skin. He also knew what justice he would get if the case went to court. A judge might believe him but Henry
’s wife would not. And there was the knife. ‘It’s all a mistake, but we don’t want to go to court and pay the lawyers,’ he wheedled, sweating. ‘Can’t we agree to settle the matter between ourselves? I’ll gladly compensate Mrs Armstrong for any embarrassment she may have felt.’
Piggy grumbled about it being a
‘matter of honour’, but was persuaded to accept almost the entire contents of Henry’s wallet. He stuffed the wad of notes into his pocket, read Henry a lecture on taking advantage of other men’s wives when they were only seeking companionship, and sent him off, chastened, to his own room. Then he asked Una, ‘Are you ready?’
She turned her back to him.
‘Button me up. You took your bloody time. He nearly had me in my bare buff.’
‘
I was only a minute late,’ Piggy replied. They had synchronised their watches so that he could come in at the crucial moment. ‘This chap came out into the passage and I had to wait for him to go downstairs. We didn’t want anybody near when I charged in.’ He fastened the last button. ‘Get your coat and come on.’ He lifted their suitcases, packed and ready, out of the wardrobe, put in his suit jacket and pulled on a porter’s waistcoat. Una led the way to the service stairs, and he followed her, carrying the cases, down and out of the back entrance of the hotel into an alley. At the end he hailed a cab for King’s Cross station. From there they took another cab to another hotel. Within the hour they were settled in, with a fresh bottle of champagne half empty and Piggy unbuttoning Una’s dress again.
*
* *
Jasper Barbour sat on one side of the scrubbed wooden table, Flora on the other. The warder kept a wary eye on him. Early in his sentence he had established himself as dangerous when other prisoners had tried to put him down. One he had crippled and now the rest were glad to leave him alone.
‘Have you got it all organised?’ he muttered to Flora.
‘
Aye. In a week’s time if your man will do it.’ Flora copied his murmur but she was frightened.
‘
He’ll do it.’ Jasper had waited all through his sentence for this moment. Now there was a warder whose daughter had consumption and needed sanatorium care. Jasper had the money to pay for it. Now: ‘I want her found. Her that put me in here,’ he muttered.
Flora had stayed true to him through the years, looked after his money, visited him on the rare occasions she was allowed to. This was partly out of fear, but there was also affection and gratitude. He had lifted her out of the gutter and she had never starved, never had to sell herself. Now she protested,
‘How can I do that? I told you that her ma and pa had died and she was taken off somewhere. God knows where she is.’
‘
There’s a feller called Galloway. He’s an ex-copper with a little office in Finch Street down Wapping way. He’ll find her, but don’t tell him who wants to know.’
‘
What do you want to find this Spencer lass for?’ Flora asked nervously.
His hands, spread on the tabletop, clenched into fists, the scarred knuckles white.
‘She took away my life. I’m going to make her pay.’
*
* *
The
Wear
Lass
sailed from Bremen at four in the morning with William Morgan looking forward grimly to the responsibility of guardianship awaiting him.
*
* *
The cargo liner
Florence
Grey
left Hamburg four hours later, carrying Cecily, with her thoughts of freedom and her lover, and Liza, fearful of what the future held. She could remember only too well the hardships of poverty she had lived with, could see them looming again. She could never have foreseen that her ill-fortune would plunge her into the cold grey water of the North Sea.
SUNDAY, 20 JANUARY 1907, NORTH SEA
A hand hooked into Liza’s collar, bruising and strangling but dragging her to the surface. She took a great, whooping breath, blinked salt water from her eyes and spat it from her mouth. She heard the deafening blare of the ship’s siren. Cecily’s face hung over hers and one of her carefully manicured hands was holding Liza up. The other was braced against the steel side of the ship so that the boat would not ride over the girl gasping in the sea. Now one of the seamen clambered over the thwarts to take over. He held off the boat while Cecily gripped Liza and hauled her inboard. She came over the side with a rush and Cecily fell back into the bottom of the boat with Liza on top of her.
‘
Good lass!’ the sailor panted. ‘Well done, the pair o’ you.’ And then, ‘Oh, Jesus!’ He clambered back to his post in the bow while the girls picked themselves up to sit on one of the thwarts amidships. Now they saw the reason for his exclamation. The sinking ship had listed still further, tilting away from them and towards the hole, on the other side and out of their sight, ripped open in the collision.
A head showed above the rail now, an officer by his cap.
‘Cast off and pull clear!’ he yelled. ‘The rest of us are in the other boats.’
‘
Aye, aye!’ the sailors chorused in reply. They unhooked the boat and used the oars to shove it away from the ship. Then the one in the stern said, ‘You lasses sit back here.’
They obeyed and moved into the sternsheets while the sailors sat on the thwarts amidships to row, pulling the boat away from the ship. They stared back at her and saw that she did not have long. She was almost on an even keel again now but low in the water. A few minutes later the men rested on their oars and one said hoarsely,
‘She’s going.’ The
Florence
Grey
rolled slowly on to her side and there was a roaring of steam instead of the banshee wail of the siren, which had not stopped until now. They heard a crash: ‘That’s her engines breaking loose and falling out of her.’ Then the roaring stopped and the ship sank. There was a swirl and spreading waves that set the boat plunging. Then the sea was quiet again. Liza thought bleakly that it had been like an interment.
She was soaked to the skin and bitterly cold: this was a winter night. Cecily saw her shudder, found the rug and wrapped it round her.
‘Thank you,’ Liza said, through chattering teeth.
‘
I suppose it will help a little.’
‘
I didn’t mean just the rug. You pulled me out of the sea. I thought—’ Liza stopped. She could still picture herself in that valley of death between boat and ship with the sea closing over her. She could swim passably well but would not have had the chance: she would have been crushed first. She had lost both suitcase and handbag but was just glad to be alive.
The men were tugging on the oars again, heading to join the other two boats, now just visible beyond where the ship had gone down. The fog drifted between them. They lived in a grey world only some two hundred yards across and littered with flotsam: a lifebuoy, a cushion, all manner of rubbish. But there was no sign of Liza
’s suitcase. Another siren blared, long, loud and close. The girls clapped their hands over their ears. When it stopped they could see that the other two boats were crowded with men. One used a whistle to answer the siren. The piping seemed feeble after that bull bellow but it brought a reply.
She came creeping out of the fog, at first just a huge, hulking shadow, which then took shape as a ship. She moved at walking pace so there was only a gentle ripple at her blunt bow where a man stood. As the girls saw him, he spotted the boats, turned and waved wildly, signalling to the officers on the bridge. The siren sounded again and the ripple at the bow faded to nothing as the ship stopped. In the boats the sailors bent to the oars and pulled towards the ship.
‘That’s a relief,’ Cecily said. ‘I wasn’t looking forward to spending hours in this boat. It’s most uncomfortable.’
‘
I’m just glad to be alive,’ Liza said simply.
Cecily gave her a calculating glance. She lowered her voice so the men could not hear.
‘Remember I asked you to take my place? Can’t you do a little thing like that for me? You would be well paid — and I did save your life.’
Despite the rug, Liza was still shaking with cold and chilled to the bone, tired and afraid of what lay ahead. She was being offered money that would solve her problem in the short-term.
‘I could land up in prison.’