Jam and Roses (22 page)

‘God in heaven, strike me dumb.’

‘What does that mean?’ She glared at him, still trying to push past him, out of the booth.

The smile faded and he became serious. ‘You’re right, you’ve not been given much reason to trust any feller, but the fact is I’ve got a spare room and you need somewhere to stay. I’m not after anything else.’

He moved aside, allowing her to leave if she wished. Weariness and some instinct made her pause. Could she trust him? His actions at the river had revealed a kind man, surely not one who would take advantage of her weakness? She nodded her head and he stood up to pay the bill, then she followed him out into the chilly summer’s night.

They didn’t have far to walk. Bertie lived only ten minutes away, in a small terraced house in Storks Road, one of the better streets in Bermondsey. Milly was surprised, but relieved, to find that he no longer lived over his uncle’s grocery shop in Dockhead. It would be hard enough convincing her mother that going home with a man she hardly knew was a good idea, without the neighbours running to tell her first. They turned into Storks Road, on the corner of which stood the Stork Picture Palace, silent now, unlit and shuttered. His house was a little further down the street; it had a round-arched front door, and arched windows to match. As they stepped inside the dark entrance hall, Milly immediately calculated that Bertie had twice the living space of all the Bunclerks put together. He led her past the downstairs front parlour, and pointed out the back kitchen and scullery. After lighting the gas mantles on the stairs, he showed her up to one of the spare bedrooms. It was by now almost midnight and her legs could barely carry her any further. She staggered into the room. Though Bertie was thoughtfully pointing out the empty wardrobe for her things, she only had eyes for the comfortable-looking double bed.

Seeing her stumble as she went to place Jimmy on the counterpane, Bertie said, ‘You look done in. I’ll let you get some sleep.’

She nodded, and with mumbled thanks closed the door behind him, falling back against it in relief that, soon, she could lie down. She waited till he closed the door of his own bedroom, then turned the lock firmly in her own. She trusted him, but she no longer trusted herself, her instincts having failed her so miserably before. Moving Jimmy to one side, she undressed and slipped into the deliciously clean sheets. It was a feather mattress! She let herself sink into the soft yielding pile; it was like nestling into a warm cloud. Banishing all thoughts of the future, Milly gave herself up to the balm of sleep.

She woke only once in the night, sitting bolt upright at Jimmy’s cry. Eyes closed and still half asleep, she fed him, then fell again into an untroubled sleep. At five o’clock, she woke to a soft knocking on her door. She jumped up and opened it a crack, peering out at Bertie, already dressed in shirtsleeves and waistcoat.

‘I’ve brought you some hot water,’ he said, passing her a china jug and basin. ‘Let me know if you need anything for the baby.’ She thanked him and as he walked away, he said, without looking back, ‘Bacon’s on for breakfast. I leave at six.’

He didn’t sound as jovial or relaxed as he had the previous night. She wondered if he might be regretting his offer of a room. After all, he was a middle-class respectable tradesman, friend of council men, friend of Florence Green. His reputation could only suffer by association with the likes of her, a factory girl with a bastard child. It wasn’t something the local parish council would approve of. Still, she remembered his genuine concern last night, the way he had thought of Jimmy first, carrying him in the crook of his arm away from the river, away from the danger she had put him in. She decided that this morning he was just trying to strike the right note, neither too familiar nor too formal. The awkwardness of having her staying in his house must be as acute for him as it was for her. She would take her cue from him. She came down to the kitchen, and was touched that he’d laid her a place. He put a steaming cup of tea in front of her and a bacon sandwich. She imagined what her mother would have to say about the doorsteps he’d cut, but she wasn’t complaining. She was ravenous and any attempt to be ladylike was confounded by the wedges of bread stuffed full of bacon.

‘What time do you have to be at Hay’s Wharf?’ he asked, for she’d told him about her temporary employment.

‘Eight o’clock,’ she answered, with her mouth half full, ‘but I’m taking Jimmy to Mum’s first.’

‘Do you want to walk down to Dockhead with me?’

Was he really that innocent? Didn’t he realize it would be all round Arnold’s Place before dinner time, that Milly Colman hadn’t been back five minutes and she’d got herself a fancy man to keep her? But she had a good enough excuse.

‘I can’t turn up too early at Mum’s. I don’t want the old man knowing she’s looking after my baby.’ It was the truth. ‘I don’t know what he’d do to her, if he found out, but Jimmy needs to go somewhere while I’m working.’

Bertie stirred his tea thoughtfully. ‘Doesn’t the Settlement run a crèche?’

‘I’ll have to earn a bit before I can pay for that. But anyway, I can’t go near that place with my baby – they’ll put the welfare on me. And while we’re at it, I know you’re friends, but I’d rather you didn’t talk about me to Miss Green.’

‘No, I’m not going to do that.’ His blue eyes clouded a little. ‘I’m not the type to talk about people’s business.’ He stood up and started clearing the plates, but she took them from him. ‘Here, let me do that.’

Milly hadn’t got used to the sight of a man so at home in the kitchen, or the novelty of being served breakfast by one. As she took the plates, she tried to remember if she’d ever seen the old man even make a cup of tea, let alone a bacon sandwich.

‘I do feel ungrateful, Bertie. I know it wasn’t Miss Green’s fault the matron at Edenvale was such an old cow!’ she mused as she filled the stone sink with hot water. ‘And I really shouldn’t have given Mr Dowell such a wallop at the station.’ Bertie had followed her into the scullery, and she looked round just in time to see him raising one of those flyaway eyebrows.

‘God strike me dumb, if I ever get on the wrong side of you!’ he muttered as he turned to go.

Her mother answered the knock, her face grey and pinched, dark circles beneath her eyes. She crossed herself, ‘Oh Jesus, Milly, I’ve been out of me mind with worry. Fancy running off like that. Where did you stay last night?’

Milly felt a pang of guilt. She’d barely given her mother a thought since rushing out of the house the previous night.

‘At a friend’s. I told you I’d find somewhere. You mustn’t worry about me, Mum.’

Her mother took Jimmy and laid him in the blanket-lined drawer.

‘Which friend? Not the Bunclerks, they can’t swing a cat.’ A look of suspicion crossed her mother’s face. ‘You’ve never been round Mrs Donovan’s?’

Elsie had come in from washing in the scullery and was now making faces at Jimmy, trying to coax a smile. Amy sidled up to the drawer, and with a mischievous half-smile on her face, said, ‘Old Ma Donovan wouldn’t have her anyway. I heard her telling Mrs Knight she didn’t want nothing to do with Pat’s whore or her bastard.’

Milly plucked Amy by the back of her pinafore dress and held her up like a troublesome kitten. ‘Who asked you to stick your nose in?’

But Amy was not to be intimidated. She thrust her face even closer to Milly’s and shouted, ‘It’s true, that’s what she said!’

‘I don’t care if it’s true or not. Don’t you ever talk like that in front of my Jimmy, d’you hear me?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Amy said sulkily as Milly dropped her. ‘He can’t understand.’

‘No, but one day he will, and there’ll be plenty of people saying that sort of stuff, without his family joining in.’

Elsie had scarcely seemed aware of the confrontation, but now she looked up from Jimmy and said gravely, ‘Of course babies can understand everything. I can remember Milly singing to me in my pram.’

Milly was taken aback that Elsie should have remembered the days when she had taught her adored little sister every nursery rhyme she knew. But of course, she reasoned, there were all sorts of family stories, repeated so often they seemed like real memories.

Amy was sniffling now and looking to her mother for support.

‘Don’t look at me for help. You should learn to keep your trap shut,’ her mother said in exasperation. ‘Just think before you open your mouth in future.’

Then with a look of pure adulation, she turned to gaze at her golden-haired grandchild. At least Jimmy had found another champion in the world, Milly thought. But still her mother pressed her.

‘Well then, where
did
you stay?’

‘I stayed with Bertie Hughes.’

Her mother’s face took on a puzzled expression, then hardened. ‘What, that toffee-nosed grocer? Well, that takes the cake.’

‘He’s not toffee-nosed! His uncle is, but Bertie’s different.’

‘Well, different or not, he’s still moneyed, and you know what they’ll be saying round here, don’t you?’

‘I do, and I couldn’t give a monkey’s, ’cause I’m staying at his house tonight as well.’

Before he’d left for the shop, Bertie had offered her another night’s lodging. He’d made the offer so casually, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. But though it would be a lifeline for her, she knew it could send him into a social wilderness.

‘Are you sure you want every vicious-tongued tart in Dockhead talking about you and your jam girl?’ she’d challenged him. It was no good pretending they were on an equal footing. He’d simply shrugged and insisted he took no notice of gossip. Now, remembering his casual air, she thought him a braver man than his mildness suggested. He would have to face the women’s whispering and sharp looks all day, as they came in and out of the shop.

She arranged for her mother to bring Jimmy to Hay’s Wharf mid-morning so that she could feed him, and handed her the few clean nappies she had. The rest were steeping in a bucket of soda in Bertie’s scullery. She could only imagine the bachelor’s surprise, when he got home later that night. A bucket of dirty nappies would test his genuineness like nothing else she could imagine.

As she was about to close the front door behind her, she felt Amy tugging at her coat.

‘Milly, take this.’ Her sister held out a small, engraved gold cross on a fine chain. ‘Mum says Jimmy’s crying ’cause he needs bottles and milk. Pawn this and buy him some.’

‘Amy, I can’t, not your cross!’

‘Please, Milly, take it... for Jimmy. I can’t bear it when he cries.’

Her sister was offering her most prized possession, sent by Wilf from the Gold Coast for her first Communion. Overcome with gratitude, Milly took the peace offering and wrapped Amy in her arms. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

July 1924

Milly hurried towards Hay’s Wharf along Tooley Street, which was jammed with horse-drawn carts, trams and motor cars. She’d stopped off at the pawnshop and now she was late. She jogged past boys pushing handcarts and darted in and out of the traffic. London Bridge Station disgorged an endless stream of bowler-hatted clerks, funnelling them across the bridge into the City, and to avoid the crowds, Milly nipped down an alleyway leading to the wharf.

The sky was a pearl sheen, veiling the sun, and the opaque river churned like dirty milk in the wash of a steam tug, piloting a big ship to the dockside. Another vessel was already unloading, and the stamps on the sacks revealed that these were the expected cargo of haricot beans. At least Milly knew she’d have work today.

The acne-scarred office boy led her to a vast shed on the quayside, where dockers trundled trolleys, piled high with overstuffed sacks, from ship to shed. As deafening as waves crashing into a pebbled shore, sack after sack of beans were tipped into hoppers. Conveyer belts criss-crossed the vaulted space, carrying the beans past ranks of women sorters. Handing Milly a coarse, wrap-around apron, the forelady took her to the back of the shed, before explaining the simple task of sorting out the bad beans from the good. It wasn’t long before Milly was up to speed with the women on either side, her fingers moving independently of her brain, picking and flicking bad beans into a basket, in a blur of motion. The women around her were already chatting to their neighbours and she allowed her thoughts to return to the night before.

Her memories of the riverbank were too searingly etched to linger over, and instead she thought about Bertie. He was a puzzle. Since coming to run his uncle’s shop, he’d always been friendly towards her, but she’d taken no more notice of him than of any other shopkeeper in Dockhead. But last night his actions had seemed more than those of a concerned acquaintance. He’d acted as if he were a friend, as if he knew her. Perhaps he would have extended the same help to anyone in similar trouble, but the help had felt pointed and personal. As more and more dried beans cascaded into hoppers, then clicked and bounced along chugging belts, she remembered how she’d caught him looking at her that morning at breakfast, in his quietly amused way. Their eyes had met for just an instant, but she’d seen nothing more than the kindness of a charitable man. In any case, from the way he’d spoken about Florence, Milly had a suspicion the only torch Bertie held burned chastely, for the respectable Methodist missionary with the sad eyes and warm heart. Milly was glad of it. Florence Green deserved to find happiness again with a good man.

Milly was grateful that Jimmy hadn’t cried this morning when she’d left him. Today would be their longest time apart since running away from Edenvale, and even though she trusted him with her mother she’d still felt invisible cords tugging at her all morning. At their mid-morning break, Milly found Mrs Colman waiting outside the shed with Jimmy. There were other women who’d had their babies brought to them, some by their older children, and she followed their lead in turning down a less-frequented side passage.

‘Is he all right?’ she asked, holding her arms out for Jimmy as he began to cry in anticipation.

‘A bit grizzly. He needs to get used to me, poor little love.’