Alma was left amongst the older women. Milly was still asleep. Maisie was distracted by keeping tags on where all her children had gone, and Martha was playing with Jessica. A restless dissatisfaction crept over her. Never mind Gerry and Ellen, she didn’t want to stay here with the old ’uns either. Why, Maisie was older in spirit than she was. She wanted to be out there where it was all going on, having a rare old time, not sitting in a deckchair. She wanted a man to stroll arm in arm with and to have a drink at one of the pubs. It was all right when you were young, you always had a pal or two to go off with and eye up the boys. At her age, it was different. You couldn’t just go out and pick up strangers.
‘Them boys, they never listen to a word I say. I wish their dad was here. He’d give ’em what for. But he’s gone and sloped off and left me,’ Maisie complained.
‘Oh, leave ’em be, they’re doing no harm. They’re having a lovely time,’ Alma told her. ‘Nothing like a nice game of mud pies.’
‘But they got their best clothes on! They’ll ruin ’em.’
‘It’ll wash. Comes off easy, Southend mud. Not like the stuff at home.’
Then inspiration hit her. The two grannies were happy to sit there, and Maisie needed a break every bit as much as Ellen.
‘Here, Martha,’ she said. ‘You can keep an eye on Maisie’s bunch, can’t you? Here’s your Will gone off and left her all on her tod. I reckon her and me ought to walk about a bit, see some of the sights.’
‘Oh – I dunno – I didn’t ought to . . .’ Maisie looked almost frightened of having her maternal duties so suddenly lifted from her shoulders.
Martha took it all in her stride. ‘That’s right, dearie. You and Alma
go and have a look round. Shame to come all this way and not see anything.’
‘But Will –’
‘If he comes back, I’ll hold on to him till you arrive,’ his mother promised.
It took a little more persuasion, but in the end Maisie gave in. She wasn’t the companion Alma would have chosen, but she was a whole lot better than nothing.
‘Oo, it does seem funny not having no kids. Do you think they’re all right?’ she kept saying.
Alma reassured her, pointed things out to her and bought her a candy floss. Gradually Maisie relaxed and Alma could enjoy herself. She gave herself up to the noise, the colours, the crowds. The boisterous good nature of it all exactly chimed with her personality. She was happy just to be part of it.
‘Oh, a steam organ,’ she cried, catching Maisie by the elbow. ‘I love them. Come and have a look.’
It was a magnificent machine, carved and painted and glittering with a mosaic of mirrors, its pipes glowing red and gold. On a little platform at the front a group of carved figures as large as children tootled trumpets and banged drums in time with the music. Alma watched, entranced, as a rousing version of ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Van’ rolled around them.
She was not sure what distracted her and made her look amongst the crowd gathered round the organ, but when she did, she at once caught sight of her son. He was a little along from her, at the far edge. She was about to shout his name, to push her way through to him, when a shifting of people brought not just his head but his whole body into view. It was then that she saw it happen. His hand came out of his pocket, slid into the pocket of the man in front of him and then back into his own, all in one smooth movement.
Alma stood transfixed, his name dying in her throat. She could not believe what she had seen. Not her Charlie. He hadn’t really done that. He was still standing there, staring up at the organ like all the others, a picture of innocence. No, she hadn’t seen it. What was more, she was going to make sure she hadn’t. She was going to confront him, right now, and put her mind at rest. She nudged Maisie with her elbow.
‘There’s Charlie! Look, I’m just going to say hullo.’
‘Where?’ Maisie asked, shouting above the racket of the organ. But by that time he was gone.
‘I dunno.’ Alma was confused. ‘He was there a minute ago, I know he was.’ Her head was spinning and she felt slightly sick.
‘You all right, Aunty Alma? You look a bit queer.’
That was it. She wasn’t feeling herself. She was seeing things.
‘P’raps you got a touch of the sun. Why don’t we have a nice cup of tea?’
Alma felt she needed a brandy more than tea, but for once in her life she let Maisie take charge.
‘Yeah. P’raps you’re right. Yeah, a nice cup of tea,’ she said, and staggered to the nearest tea stall.
And a little way behind her in the swirling crowd, the woman in the pink boa saw it all, and smiled malevolently at her confusion.
Gerry and Ellen had also strolled under the pier and along the promenade by the amusements. Ellen would have preferred to go the other way, by the cliff gardens, but Gerry was so eager, so full of it all, that she had not the heart to object. The souvenir stands drew him like a magnet.
‘Here, look at this,’ he kept saying. ‘Ain’t that pretty? What a corker! They must make a mint here.’
Ellen found herself admiring plaster donkeys, ashtrays, combs, ringholders, eggtimers, plates with pictures of the pier on them . . . all with
a present from Southend
written somewhere. Gerry was like a child in a sweet shop.
‘Must find out where they get these from. I could sell these. What d’you think? Go down a bomb.’
Ellen was sceptical. ‘What would you have on them, then?
A present from Poplar
? Don’t quite sound the same, somehow.’
‘No,’ Gerry had to admit, ‘maybe not. But them eggtimers are nice. People’d go for them.’
Gerry found the owner of a shop and got into a long conversation about suppliers and customers and the problems of the retail trade. Ellen wandered round fingering the stock. Then she saw something that made her heart stand still. There in a display cabinet were black velvet trays of rings and brooches, and in amongst them was a little butterfly of silvery metal with coloured sparkling stones set in the wings. Ellen stood and stared at it. It was exactly like the one Harry had given her, his peacemaking gift. She never wore hers now, but she had it still, hidden away at the bottom of a drawer. Suddenly she could not stand all this poking around any more.
‘I’m going outside for a breath of air,’ she said to Gerry, and plunged out of the door without waiting for his reply.
All the world was enjoying itself, eating, drinking, going on rides, parading up and down. It was all too noisy, too crowded. Children were screaming, men shouting, trams and buses blowing their horns. A hurdy-gurdy man was playing nearby, whilst on the other side of the promenade the steam organ was blasting out its tunes. The two lots of music produced a discord that was hard to bear. Without stopping to think, Ellen started to walk back towards the pier. She had to get away from all this. She needed some peace and quiet.
She had just reached the place where the pier passed over the promenade when she noticed her bootlace had come undone. She moved to one side to do it up, and as she straightened up again, someone seemed to step back into the deep shadows, guiltily, as if avoiding her. She peered, her heart beating with sudden suspicion, then realized it was a woman and relaxed. She was a prostitute, by the look of her, and keeping stony still in the protecting shade of the broad structure above them. Then as Ellen’s eyes adjusted, recognition dawned and her mouth dropped open. The woman, seeing she was cornered, tried to make a run for it, but Ellen was too quick for her.
‘Theresa! Oh, Theresa, it is you, ain’t it? You gave me such a shock!’
And before she could escape, Ellen put both arms round her and kissed her cheek.
‘Blimey, you’re the last person I thought I’d meet here. What . . .’ Then the words dried up, for it was all too obvious what Theresa was doing here in Southend. She was earning her living.
‘I just came down for the day,’ Theresa lied breathlessly.
‘So have we,’ Ellen said, swallowing the untruth in an effort to hang on to her. There were so many things she wanted to ask, yet she did not know how to start. She fell back on the trite and tested. ‘How – how are you, Theresa? You – er – you look well.’
‘I’m all right. And you? I can see you’re all hunky-dory. Married, are you?’
‘Yeah – I got a little girl now. Jessica. She’s lovely.’
Theresa’s painted face took on an expression of deep and bitter jealousy. ‘Well, it’s all right for some, ain’t it? Good girls like you can keep their babies. They got men to look after them. Me, I had a little girl and all, but I had to leave her at the workhouse.’
‘Oh, Theresa –’ Ellen’s arms dropped to her sides at the sheer horror of it. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ But even as she said it, she could not imagine how anyone, even in Theresa’s circumstances, could bring herself to do such a thing.
Theresa backed away.
‘Keep your pity – I don’t want it,’ she spat. But then her hand shot out and she gripped Ellen’s arm so tight that she gasped with pain. ‘But promise me one thing, Ellen Johnson . . .’
‘Anything!’ Ellen assured her.
‘Don’t you breathe a word, not a word, about seeing me here today. You hear me?’
Ellen nodded.
Theresa gave her a shake. ‘How do I know you’ll stick to it?’
Ellen looked at her, at the thick make-up, the revealing dress. Only the truth was going to convince her.
‘I wouldn’t upset them all by letting them know what you came to,’ she said.
Theresa glared at her, considering this, then she let go. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would. Always were too bloody sugar-sweet.’
And she made off into the brassy sunshine, disappearing almost instantly amongst the promenading trippers.
Ellen was left shaking, hardly able to take it all in. Poor Theresa, to have come to that – it did not bear thinking about. It was only a few steps to the beach where her family was, but at the rails she hesitated. She ought to join them. But that meant explanations, and she could not explain how she felt. She was tight and keyed up, her nerves still jumping from the scene she had been through. She certainly could not tell them about Theresa, and neither could she easily explain why she had run out on Gerry. She hadn’t even got enough self-possession at the moment to lie. She walked on. The cliffs were just over the road, a green haven. Perhaps there she could sit by herself and sort her thoughts out a bit.
‘Hullo, Ellen.’
She started; a hand flew to her face.
‘Harry! You made me jump.’
Like her, he was on his own. Also like her, there was an air of isolation about him. She knew that he did not feel part of all this jollity either.
‘Looking for Gerry?’
‘Well, not really. That is, he’s back there somewhere, looking at things. It all just got a bit noisy, that’s all.’
‘Ah.’
He was standing looking down at her, his expression unreadable. She found her eyes drawn irresistibly to his.
‘I thought, perhaps I’d go and climb up to the gardens. It’s nice there. At least, it looks nice. Quiet, like. I thought so when we was
coming down the pier, I thought . . .’ She was gabbling, talking rubbish. Under his steady gaze, she found the words running out. ‘So that’s where I’m going,’ she ended lamely.
All thought of Theresa had gone right out of her head, as if the brief meeting had never been. There was just her and Harry, reaching out blindly across the great gap that divided them.
‘Mind if I come too?’
At first, she was not sure whether she had really heard him say that. But he was standing waiting for a reply. It was true: he
had
said it. For an endless moment she felt as if she were balanced on a knife edge. She knew that this was a turning point, that whatever she decided would have momentous consequences. All the reasons why she should refuse him rushed into her head. She brushed them aside and smiled up at him. She felt lightheaded with excitement.
‘Why not?’
They crossed over the busy road and started to climb a gravelled pathway up the steep cliffs. The grass was yellowing and the bushes and trees were dusty from the long summer, but still it was green and restful. The gardens were still in the process of being laid out, but there were green painted benches already placed here and there. They wandered along, not touching, not speaking, gradually getting higher. The noise of the promenade had faded now. Sparrows could be heard chirping in the trees. They arrived at a bench surrounded by young laurels and a mock orange blossom bush.
‘Would you like to sit down?’ Harry asked.
Ellen nodded. ‘I am a bit tired.’
They sat well apart, Ellen with her hands in her lap, Harry with his elbows hooked over the back of the bench and his legs stretched out in front of him. They both gazed at the view. There below them lay the beach and the pier, the cloud shadows chasing over the shining mudflats, the brightly coloured crowds of people. Down there were their families, real life, complications, but up here they were out of it all.
‘Nice, ain’t it?’ Ellen said. ‘Peaceful. Don’t often get a chance to just sit and look, at home. Not a lot to look at, really. Not like here.’
‘There’s Island Gardens,’ Harry said.
‘Yeah, there’s that.’
They were both silent. The happy hours spent at Island Gardens or across the river in Greenwich Park shimmered between them. A time of innocence, gone for ever.
‘I saw you talking to Siobhan on the boat,’ Ellen blurted out, and immediately regretted it.
‘Her – she’s poison, that one.’
‘I . . .’ Ellen opened her mouth and shut it again. ‘That’s what I think, too. So do most people in the street. The women, anyway.’
‘They’re right.’
Ellen could feel the vibration of his fingers tapping on the bench. She wanted to say something but was afraid it might come out wrong. The rules were all changed between them now. She was married to Gerry.
‘She’s greedy,’ Harry said. ‘Greedy for whatever she can get – men, money, admiration. Doesn’t care how she gets things.’
‘I know.’
A silence grew, and into it came a realization. She should have known that, when she found them together that dreadful day. She should have made allowances.
‘I –’ she began.