A Mother's Promise (8 page)

Although Hetty had not previously known much about Nat’s past, she now learned from Tom that Nat had been abandoned as a baby and raised in an orphanage. He had no known relatives and few friends. Tom made the
funeral arrangements, but Hetty decided that Jane was in no fit state to be told, and on the day of the interment in the City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetery, she gave Jane just enough laudanum to make her sleep. They had used Nat’s meagre savings to pay the funeral expenses, but Hetty had insisted that this was only right and proper. At first, Tom said that the money ought, by rights, to go to Jane, but Hetty knew that when Jane came to herself she would agree that her beloved Nat should have had a decent Christian burial. She would not want his poor remains to have been flung in a pauper’s grave where they might be taken by body snatchers, and sold to a teaching hospital for the benefit of medical students. If Nat was to go to heaven he needed to be whole, or he would not be admitted through the pearly gates, of that Hetty was certain. She was not an ardent churchgoer; for one thing she had no Sunday best clothes, and she knew that the upper-class worthies would look down on her shabby, threadbare garments, as if she were not fit to walk into God’s house. Ma had always insisted that they attend Sunday school, and Hetty tried to live up to her mother’s strict moral code. She had no doubt that Ma had gone straight to heaven. She had been a good and kind woman, who did not deserve her agonising disease and premature death, but
Hetty comforted herself with the belief that Ma was up there now, amongst the angels.

The funeral was the simplest and cheapest to be had. Nat was buried in a communal grave with only Tom, Hetty, Sammy and Eddie as mourners, and nothing to mark his grave, not even a simple wooden cross. Except for the child that was growing in Jane’s womb, Nathanial Smith might never have existed at all, Hetty thought sadly as the vicar dropped a handful of earth onto the cheap pine coffin. She made him a silent promise that she would do everything in her power to look after his son or daughter, and to make certain that he or she had a better life than their poor, dead father.

Tom touched her on the arm. ‘Are you all right, Hetty?’

She swallowed hard and just managed a weak smile. ‘I was thinking of Jane and her baby.’

He slipped his arm around her waist. ‘I know, girl. Best get on home then.’

She nodded her head, unable to speak for fear of bursting into tears. Sammy took her hand in silent sympathy. Eddie was also unusually quiet as they left the cemetery and walked slowly back towards Autumn Road, but, after a while, he began to snivel and that made his nose run as if he had a cold. He
tugged at Hetty’s arm, pointing mutely to his runny nose.

‘Wipe it on your sleeve, Eddie,’ Hetty said gently. ‘One day, we’ll be rich enough to have pocket handkerchiefs, just like the toffs. But until then, ducks, I’m afraid your sleeve will have to do.’

This made both Eddie and Sammy giggle, and Tom gave her an encouraging smile. ‘Chin up, boys,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I reckon I got enough money to buy you a hot tater if we can find a bloke selling them this early in the season.’

Hetty’s curiosity was instantly aroused. ‘Is there a season to selling murphies?’

‘There certainly is. I had a mate whose patch was outside Old Ford Station. Unfortunately he croaked last year from consumption, but he said he could make twelve to fifteen bob a week if he was lucky.’

‘Did he now?’ Hetty stored this bit of information in her head. With the strike still ongoing and no money coming in, she was going to have to do something drastic in the very near future, or they would end up in the workhouse. The mere thought of it sent a shudder down her spine. She was only too aware that the threat of that particular institution was a dark phantom which haunted the lives of the poor, filling their hearts with dread. To enter its grim
portals was to abandon hope and endure a living hell.

‘What are you thinking, Hetty,’ Tom demanded. ‘I seen that faraway look on your face before. What’s going through your mind?’

‘I’ve got to get money from somewhere, Tom, or else we’ll end up on the streets. As it is I ain’t got the rent for this week, or the sixpence for that old bloodsucker, Clench. I suppose I could borrow some more off him, but he’d shove the interest rate up sky high, and I’d never manage to pay him off.’

‘Perhaps I can help.’ Tom pushed his cap to the back of his head as he always did when he was thinking. That was one of the little habits that Hetty had noticed about him. Sometimes, if he was really stumped, he would take it right off, scratch his head and then put his cap back in place, as if he had gained inspiration by that simple act.

She squeezed his arm. ‘Ta, but I know how you’re placed at home. With your poor mum crippled and having lost her little bit of extra income from the match factory, you can’t afford to give us money, and I wouldn’t take it anyway. I got some pride left.’

‘You could take it if we was married, Hetty. Just say the word and I’ll marry you tomorrow. You could all move into our place in Dye House Lane. It ain’t a palace, God
knows, but we got two rooms. We’d manage somehow.’

‘Marry him, Hetty,’ Sammy urged. ‘Then us can have hot baked taters every day, and trips to the park every Sunday.’

‘And ham sandwiches,’ Eddie chipped in, wiping his nose on his sleeve yet again. ‘I could eat a ham sandwich right now, as well as a tater.’

Hetty laughed in spite of herself. ‘Now see what you’ve done, Tom.’

‘Is that a yes or a no?’ Tom chuckled, but there was a serious question in his eyes. ‘Will you, Hetty? Will you marry me?’

‘No, Tom. Don’t think I ain’t grateful for the offer, and I am very fond of you, so don’t feel bad about it, but it wouldn’t do, it really wouldn’t.’ Hetty quickened her pace. ‘Come on, I must get back to Jane and see if she’s all right. What with the baby and everything, I fear for her, I really do.’

‘Why won’t you marry me, Hetty? I know you like me, and I love you.’

They had reached the end of Dye House Lane and Hetty stopped. She caressed Tom’s cheek with her fingertips. ‘I know you do. And, like I said, I’m very fond of you, but for one thing we got no money, and another thing, I couldn’t lumber you with me family. There’s Jane with a baby on the way, and these scamps,
who need proper schooling to say nothing of food and clothes. It just wouldn’t be fair on you.’

He grasped her hands in his, looking deeply into her eyes. ‘Let me be the judge of that, girl. I just want to take care of you, and if that means taking on your family, then that’s what I will do.’

Sammy and Eddie shuffled their feet and Tom put his hand in his pocket and brought out two halfpennies. He pressed the coins into their hands. ‘Here, go and buy yourself a murphy from the baked potato man outside the station.’ He took out another halfpenny. ‘And get one for Hetty too. If she gets any thinner, she’ll fade away.’ He watched them running off with a smile on his lips. ‘I’d be proud to bring them two up as me own, Hetty. And that’s a fact.’

‘Don’t say no more, Tom. It might be fine for a while, but soon you’d be worn down with hard work and the problems of looking after a family that weren’t your own. It would come between us in the end. It can’t be. I’m sorry, but that’s how it is at present. I’ve got to sort this out for meself.’

She was about to walk away, but he caught her by the hand. ‘I ain’t quite sure, but I think somewhere in there you might have meant that you care for me just a tiny bit.’

‘I do, of course I do. And if I was to marry, I can’t think of a better bloke to hitch meself to, but not at this present time. I’m sorry.’ She turned away from him and broke into a run towards Autumn Road.

To her relief, Hetty found that Jane was still fast asleep. The laudanum had done the trick and rest was what Jane needed most, but Hetty knew she must look to the future. There would be none unless she acted very quickly indeed. She took the tin from the mantelshelf and tipped the coins out onto the tabletop. She had used one of the pennies to purchase a small bottle of laudanum, and that left fourpence three farthings, which would not go very far at all. Up above her, she could hear the Brinkmans moving round their cramped living space, but they seemed less lively than usual. She knew that the strike at the match factory must have affected the family badly. Sonia had worked there for some time and young Anna had started at Bryant and May just days before the strike began. Without their wages the family would have to survive on their father’s meagre income. Hetty sighed. The strike might be justified, but there were many who would go under for supporting it. She was not going to be one of them.

Jane stirred and Hetty went over to her. ‘I’m here, Jane.’

‘I had such a lovely dream. I was walking up the aisle with Nat and I had on a new dress and a bonnet with pink ribbons. I had new shoes too and they didn’t pinch one bit.’ Jane’s face contorted with pain. ‘But it was just a dream. He’s gone, hasn’t he, Hetty? My Nat will never marry me, because he’s . . .’

Hetty grasped her hand, holding it to her cheek. ‘You must be brave, love. For the baby’s sake, you got to go on.’

‘I can’t,’ Jane whispered. ‘We was to be married. I was going to have a nice house over-looking the park with a bit of a garden for the nipper to play in. But, Hetty, I can’t raise a baby on me own. And now there’s no work, we can’t even feed ourselves. We’re all going to die, just like my Nat.’

‘Now you just listen to me, Jane Huggins. I don’t want to hear none of that talk. You’re going to get up from that bed, and you’re going to have something to eat. You’re weak with hunger, that’s part of your trouble. We’re going to be all right. I’m going to see to that.’

Jane raised herself on her elbow. ‘But how? If we can’t work, we can’t earn any money.’

‘That’s true, and I ain’t pretending things is going to be easy, Jane. But you and me is the eldest and we’ve got to keep our spirits up for Sammy, Eddie and your nipper when it comes. As I see it, there’s only one thing we can do.
We got to pack up and leave here, afore the landlord has us thrown out on the streets for not paying the rent, or old Clench has me for his breakfast when I can’t pay him his tanner on Friday.’

Jane sat up and the wooden pallet creaked with her movement. ‘Where shall we go?’

‘We’ll have to beard the lion in his den, or should I say lioness?’ In spite of everything, Hetty managed a wobbly smile.

‘No, not Granny Huggins!’

‘Can you think of anything better?’

Jane shook her head. ‘Maybe the workhouse would be easier to take than asking Granny Huggins for help. She hates us, you know she does.’

‘Hate us or not, she’s our father’s mother and she’s family. She won’t turn us away in our hour of need, not if I’ve got anything to do with it.’

Jane’s eyes widened with horror. ‘But you know what she’s like, Hetty. What will she say when she knows I’m in the family way and unmarried?’

Hetty rose to her feet. ‘We won’t tell her. We’ll buy a brass ring from the pawnshop and I’ll tell her that you and Nat were married last Christmas. From now on, Jane Smith, you are a respectable widow.’

‘My Nat will be turning in his grave,’ Jane
said sadly. ‘And your Tom won’t think much to our moving away neither.’

Hetty sighed. She would have to go round to Dye House Lane and make things right with Tom. She just hoped that he would understand.

Granny Huggins’ house in Totty Street was in the better part of Bethnal Green, as close to Victoria Park as the late Grandpa Huggins could afford on a bank clerk’s wages. Situated in the middle of a row of terraced, red-brick houses, the two-storey dwelling boasted sash windows and a fanlight above the front door. There was no front garden, but Hetty could remember a back yard with a stunted, purple-flowering tree growing out of the wall, and a wooden gate which led into the busy thorough-fare of Grove Road. It was not a large house, although it had seemed enormous to Hetty on the odd occasions when Pa had taken her there as a child, but it was a miniature palace compared to their home in Autumn Road. She dropped the burden she had been carrying onto the pavement. Their few possessions had gone into two sacks with room to spare. Jane put hers down with a sigh of relief. ‘Me back’s breaking, Hetty. Thank the Lord it weren’t no further. I can’t go another step.’

Sammy and Eddie had their bedding rolled
up and strapped to their backs so that they looked like a couple of small snails. They shrugged off their loads, looking about them wide-eyed with curiosity. ‘Is this it, then, Hetty?’ Sammy asked breathlessly. ‘Does our granny really live here all alone?’

Hetty ruffled his dark curls, smiling. ‘She does, Sammy. At least she did. I hope the old girl hasn’t moved house or gone and kicked the bucket.’

‘Don’t say that,’ Jane said tiredly. ‘Not even as a joke. She was sprightly enough at Pa’s funeral.’

Hetty lifted the iron doorknocker, and then hesitated, clutching it in her fingers. ‘That was six years ago, just before Eddie was born. Surely someone would have let us know if she had died?’

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ Jane said, hopping up and down. ‘Knock on the door, Hetty. I don’t care who answers it, but I need to relieve meself something shocking. I’ll wet me knickers if they don’t come quick.’

Hetty knocked on the door. They waited, listening for the sound of footsteps. The narrow street was empty of people and traffic, although a few net curtains had been fluttered by unseen hands as they had walked past. The inhabitants might be invisible, but Hetty could hear sounds of activity coming from the Great
Eastern Railway depot on the other side of the Regent’s Canal, which was just a street away. Shouts from men working on the canal banks floated over the chimney tops, and the rumble of cartwheels and the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves came from the heavy traffic in Grove Road. Hetty crossed her fingers, praying that they had at least one relation still living, that is, if you could call Granny Huggins a relation. After all, hadn’t she virtually disowned her one and only son for marrying beneath him? What sort of person would do a thing like that? The door opened and a tall, gaunt woman stood on the threshold, staring at them with a hostile scowl. ‘What d’you want?’ she demanded. ‘No hawkers or beggars.’ She was about to slam the door in their faces when Hetty put her foot over the doorsill.