Island Gardens, at the very end of the great bend in the Thames that formed the Isle of Dogs, was crowded with people out to enjoy the Sunday afternoon sunshine. The grass was yellowing and worn from hundreds of feet and the trees had a tired, late-summer look to them, but after the drab grey of the factories and the terraced houses, it was a little oasis of green in a leafless brick desert.
Ellen and Harry sat on a bench facing the river and the Greenwich shore opposite. The glorious panorama of the Royal Naval College lay before them, with its classical symmetry of colonnades and twin-domed towers, between which could be seen the white perfection of the Queen’s House. Rising up behind the buildings in great steps of grassland and avenues of trees was Greenwich Park, topped by the Royal Observatory.
‘Some chap back in history called it “Bella Vista”,’ Harry said. ‘That means beautiful view.’
‘He was right there,’ Ellen said.
She listened as Harry pointed out the various buildings, sometimes adding comments of her own. They watched the river traffic going by, the pleasure steamers coming and going from Greenwich Pier, the other visitors to the Gardens as they strolled past, everyone done up in their Sunday best. They ate ice cream from the hokey-pokey man. But most of all they talked – of their shared past, of the present, but avoiding the future – until the sun began to dip and the shadows grew long. Harry stood and held out a hand to pull Ellen up, tucking her hand under his arm to keep her close by his side.
‘We’ll come back next week,’ he decided. ‘If your mum agrees, we could go over to Greenwich and have a picnic in the park. What do you think of that?’
Ellen thought it was the most wonderful idea in the world.
‘Oh . . .’ For a moment she was almost lost for words.
‘Don’t you think you’ll be able to?’
‘Yeah – no – I mean, I’m sure my mum’ll let me.’ She looked across to the park once more. ‘Do you know, when I was a little girl, I used to think that Heaven must be like Greenwich Park.’
And it truly would be like Heaven on earth to go there with him.
He smiled down at her. ‘I hope it won’t be a disappointment, then.’
‘Oh no, I’m sure it won’t. It will be wonderful. A picnic! I ain’t had a picnic for – well, I can’t remember. Must’ve been when I was ten or eleven. Yeah, eleven, when we went to Epping with the Sunday school. That was lovely, but going to Greenwich will be –’ She broke off, not wanting him to think she was being forward, like Siobhan or Vi Cade.
‘Just you and me, eh? For the day. That’s my idea of Heaven.’ He touched her cheek with his fingers.
She stood gazing up at him, drowning in his words. ‘Me too.’
They caught the Penny Puffer back to North Millwall, sitting jammed together on the dusty bench seat. The carriage was crowded with screaming children, harassed mothers, other courting couples. The air that blew in was hot and laden with smoke. Ellen was intensely aware of Harry there beside her, his arm and his thigh pressed against hers. There was an excitement building between them that grew with the clatter and vibration of the train, quickening Ellen’s breath and pulsing through her body. Harry’s foot brushed against hers, sending the nerves quivering all the way up her leg. Of one accord, their hands moved to clasp together and his thumb caressed her palm, slowly, sensuously. All the while they spoke together, making stilted remarks about the drab landscape through which they were passing, another conversation altogether was taking place between them, an unspoken need and anticipation. By the time they got to their station, the tension was almost unbearable.
They walked along the dirty streets, silent now, not needing to talk, Ellen’s arm tucked securely under Harry’s arm, his long stride shortened to match hers.
They took a short cut through an alleyway. The dank darkness between the tall warehouses was friendly and welcoming after the brassy glare of the street. Harry stopped and folded Ellen into his arms. She sighed with overwhelming pleasure. It felt so right, her body close to his, as if her whole life had been leading up to this moment. She raised her face. Her eyes closed as his lips met hers, tender and gentle, kissing her slowly and with infinite skill until she hardly knew who or
where she was. Their mouths parted briefly to look with dazed wonder into each other’s eyes, before meeting once more with growing strength and urgency, probing and tasting, straining ever closer. Ellen was melting, spinning into a dizzying void where time and place had no meaning and there was only the two of them and this shining newfound joy in each other.
Harry held her head between his hands, tracing along her cheekbones with his thumbs. He smiled down into her eyes.
‘Ellen Johnson, you are a most surprising girl,’ he said.
‘I am?’
‘You are too. I always knew you had warmth. What I didn’t know was you had – fire.’
Of their own accord, her lips curved into a knowing smile, but she said nothing, just reached up to kiss him again.
For she had not known it herself, until that hour.
It did not take long for the news to get to Gerry. It was up and down the street that very afternoon. Harry Turner and Ellen Johnson had gone off down the Island Gardens together.
He felt sick.
He had always thought that working together would bring them closer. Despite what Ellen had said about it being strictly business, he nursed the belief that one day she would come to see him in a different light. All that he did, all his ambitions, were now centred on her. Where once he had worked to get away from the spectre of poverty, now it was for a neat house, nice furniture, a bunch of kids – and Ellen.
Charlie came slouching into the kitchen to eat before going out for the evening.
‘Saw Ellen Johnson and Harry Turner coming along,’ he said, leering at Gerry. ‘You been well and truly cut out there, bruv. Couldn’t get a knife between ’em.’
Gerry said nothing.
‘Yeah, you should’ve got in while you had the chance,’ Charlie went on, watching to see the effect his words were having. ‘All this time you’ve had her there working for you. You should’ve made a move. Easy, no Mum there watching what you ‘n’ her’s getting up to, nice lock-up to take her to. Couldn’t be better. You could’ve had her any time you wanted. Too late now, though. Old Harry’s got in there first.’
Gerry tried to shrug it off. ‘Wasn’t interested. I just pay her to mind my stall. Anyway, she’s not that sort of girl.’
Charlie gave his suggestive laugh. ‘Go on! They’re all that sort of girl
once they get going. Quiet ones are the best. You take my word for it, bruv. Best of all are the religious ones. Phew! Get a religious girl and you’re made.’
‘You best be careful her mum don’t find out, then,’ Gerry said.
But Charlie was enjoying himself. ‘You ever had a virgin? You’re not a proper man till you have. Now Ellen Johnson, she’s a virgin. Nice girl, brought up proper, too busy minding her family to play around with the boys. Mind you, bet she won’t be by the time Harry Turner’s had a try at her.’
Gerry stood up. There was a pounding in his ears, a sick jealousy and hatred boiling in his guts. If he did not go out right now, he was going to throw up or hit his brother.
‘I’m going down the Puncheon for a drink,’ he said.
Charlie’s crude laughter pursued him through the door.
At the O’Donaghues’, in a back bedroom drenched with the exotic heady scent of florist’s roses, Siobhan was holding court.
‘. . . So then I sang my new song and they went wild. Clapping and stamping, they were, and calling out for more. And I curtseyed and I kissed my hands to them – like this – and then the curtain came down, but still they were shouting. They wouldn’t stop. I was coming off, but the stage manager, he came rushing out from the wings.
‘“Go back,” he hisses at me, “go back and give ’em an encore, or they’ll tear the place apart.”
‘So back I go, and the band strikes up the introduction, and there’s a great roar from the audience, and when the curtain went up again they were shouting so loud I couldn’t start . . .’
Theresa choked back a scream and pulled her pillow over her head. She was lying with her back to her cousin, pretending to ignore her, but there was no escaping Siobhan. She was sitting up in bed, bright and bursting with life despite a late night, waving her arms about as she talked. Sixteen-year-old Mary sprawled across the foot of the bed, drinking it all in, while little Bridget bounced up and down, caught up in the excitement of the tale. Theresa could not bear it. It was nothing but Siobhan, Siobhan, Siobhan. If she wasn’t there herself, they were all talking about her. If Theresa went out anywhere, people did not ask how she was doing, they wanted to hear about Siobhan. She wasn’t anything herself, she was just Siobhan’s cousin.
‘. . . When I got back to the dressing room, there was this great big basket of roses . . .’
‘Ooh, wonderful.’ Mary groaned in vicarious pleasure. ‘Who was it from? Who sent it?’
Siobhan grinned. ‘Look at the card,’ she said.
‘Get the card,’ Mary told Bridget. The little girl frisked across the room and fetched it. Mary groaned again. ‘
From a devoted admirer
,’ she read aloud.
Theresa could take it no longer. She flung away the pillow and sat up.
‘For crying out loud!’ she screamed. ‘Can’t you shut your face? Don’t you never talk about no one but yourself? Me, me, me – that’s all you ever say.’
Siobhan merely sat looking superior. She did not have to say anything; her loyal followers said it all for her.
‘Shut your face y’self,’ Mary retorted. ‘You’re just jealous, that’s your trouble.’
‘Yeah, you haven’t got a basket of roses,’ Bridget jeered. ‘You’re just an old sourpuss.’
‘Oh, let her be,’ Siobhan said, lazily magnanimous from her pinnacle of beauty and popularity. ‘Poor thing. Twenty-two and not wed. Sure and ’tis hard when you’re left on the shelf.’
‘So who’s left on the shelf?’ Theresa exploded. ‘You’re only a few months younger than me and I don’t hear no wedding bells ringing.’
Siobhan lay back against the rickety bedhead, a patronizing smile on her beautiful face.
‘Ah, but I’m not busting me knickers to catch someone, am I? I’m biding me time. If I wanted to get wed, I could do it tomorrow. That’s the difference.’
It was true. That was what twisted Theresa in an agony of jealousy. Siobhan could have anyone she liked, whereas
she
had only a secret on-and-off relationship with Charlie Billingham, and she would not even have that if she did not agree soon to do what he wanted.
Then with a spurt of malicious pleasure, she remembered that Siobhan did not have quite everyone she wanted.
‘You can bide your time as much as you like, but you won’t get Will Johnson unless Maisie dies. I can just see you taking on all his screaming brats,’ she spat. Oh, the satisfaction of it.
‘That’s a wicked lie, so it is,’ Mary said. ‘Our Siobhan would never go with a married man.’
‘That’s right,’ Bridget chimed in.
Siobhan merely shrugged. ‘’Tis all she can think of to say.’
Theresa was consumed with the desire to grab handfuls of that
curling black hair and yank it out. She wanted to hear Siobhan cry out in pain and beg for mercy. She wanted to trample on her. But she had one more verbal weapon.
‘And you haven’t got Harry Turner, neither. He sees you for what you are. He’s not interested.’
For just a second or two, Siobhan’s face showed a shadow of the frustration and longing that possessed Theresa. She seized on it.
‘Everyone knows you’d like to have Harry Turner. But he hasn’t never asked you out. Not once. He’d rather have Ellen Johnson. Just fancy, you being cut out by Ellen Johnson!’
‘What do I want with Harry Turner?’ Siobhan sniffed.
But Theresa knew that she was putting it on. ‘I seen you looking at him. I saw the way you made up to him at the Coronation party.’
‘Coronation party! That was years ago. I was only a kid then.’
‘Yeah, years ago,’ Theresa agreed. ‘You wanted him all this time.’
It was the truth and they both knew it. But Siobhan was never going to admit to it.
‘You’re talking through your hat, so you are. Harry Turner! I’m not looking to live here all me life, you know. There’s more to London than Dog Island, believe it or not.’
‘Yeah, you never been anywhere. Siobhan has,’ Mary said.
Her brief victory swept away, she could not help but rise to the taunt.
‘That’s a lie and all. My young man takes me all over. He takes me to music halls. And he buys me suppers.’
‘Oh yeah? And who is this young man of yours, then?’ Mary asked. ‘We don’t never see him. I don’t think there is anyone. You’re just making it up.’
‘I am not! I just don’t want all the old women in Trinidad Street eyeing him up, that’s all. You don’t keep nothing to yourself round here. You only got to cough and they’re all talking about it. That’s why I don’t bring him back here.’
Mary gave a rude snort. ‘I never heard nothing like it. What a load of old cods.’
‘It’s not! I have got someone!’ Theresa screamed, rigid with rage. She hated all of them, hated her sisters for ganging up on her, hated Siobhan for everything. Nobody cared about her.
Siobhan was sitting looking at her with that infuriating superior smile. She waited till the row died down. Then she spoke.
‘Prove it.’
There was a brief silence as all three sisters took this in.
‘Yeah.’ Mary took her up. ‘Prove it. Go on. Bet you can’t.’
‘’Course I can,’ Theresa retaliated.
It was at that moment that she knew she would have to give in to Charlie. To hold out would be to lose not only him but the only rag of pride she had to clothe herself with. Without a man to boast about, she would be completely swamped by Siobhan.
Theresa managed to hang on to Charlie through the autumn, but she could never be sure of him from one week to the next. Because of the difference in their religions, it all had to be kept a deadly secret. She could never ask him to call for her, and when she went to meet him, he was always late.
That’s how it was again one bleak November evening. She stood in the shelter of the shop doorway, trying to shrink right out of sight. She hated the way people stared at her as they walked by, summing her up. It made her feel like a prostitute.