Jam and Roses (31 page)

Milly was about to make an excuse, when Kitty interrupted, ‘And you could sew Jimmy a little outfit...’

It was true, she was doing no one any good, least of all herself, with her constant obsessing. For the time being, she’d done what she could for Elsie, and as for Pat, she just had to be brave and follow her instincts. Jimmy, she would have to trust to her mother and the presiding goddess of the hop gardens.

‘Oh, all right then,’ she agreed finally.

Kitty beamed. ‘We’ve all missed you, Mill. It’s been dull as ditchwater there without you.’

They met up outside the Settlement later that night, Milly following Kitty into the sewing room a little shyly. It had been almost a year, after all. The room looked the same, apart from the addition of some sewing machines, but the faces had changed. Some girls had left; Peggy Dillon had married a butcher and was now living above his shop down ‘the Blue’, one of Bermondsey’s main shopping streets. Kitty had told her about the wedding, which had taken place while she was at Edenvale. Kitty was convinced that the attraction was more for the meat than the man, adding wickedly that he resembled a pork sausage squeezed in the middle, topped with a face like a pork chop. Other faces were new and Milly didn’t recognize them, but she got the same warm welcome from Miss Green, who eagerly showed off the new Singer sewing machines that had been donated to the Settlement.

‘Can I leave you girls to practise on your own with the machines? I need to pop out for a minute.’ She smiled at the girls, who nodded, whilst others were already intent on their tasks, leaning over the wheels and setting the treadles whirring. Milly spent a half-hour getting to grips with bobbins and treadles, and had soon mastered the different stitching attachments.

‘You make me sick,’ said Kitty, who’d got her cotton entangled around the foot. ‘I practised all last week and still make a pig’s ear of it. You catch on first go!’

Milly laughed and got up to sort out Kitty’s machine.

It was at that moment that she glanced through the glass-panelled door into the corridor and saw Bertie, deep in conversation with Florence. She paused in surprise. He hadn’t told her he was coming to the Settlement this evening. His face was flushed, and excited-looking. Florence Green had her back to Milly, but when she rested her hand on Bertie’s arm and leaned closer to kiss his cheek, his face brightened even more. Milly felt a sharp stab of pain in her chest, ice cold, yet searing. She swallowed hard, unable to look away. Feeling pinned, caught in an invisible net, she marvelled at how this feeling had crept up on her. She felt an overwhelming need to know what they were talking about.

She slumped back down at her machine, all the fun draining away from the task. Even when Florence Green returned and sorted out an offcut of beautiful white lawn for Jimmy’s new outfit, Milly couldn’t rekindle her enthusiasm. She was fiercely annoyed with herself, knowing immediately what the pain in her chest meant, knowing, too, the complications she couldn’t accommodate in her life. She would be ruthless with her heart. There was no place for her in Bertie’s affections, and certainly no place in her life for a man. She was about to rid herself of one; the last thing she wanted, she told herself sternly, was another!

As the class ended, she began vigorously wrapping the half-made baby suit in tissue paper, so she could take it home to embroider by hand.

‘It hasn’t done you much good, gel, has it?’ She looked up sharply as Kitty came to her side.

‘What hasn’t?’ Milly asked in a flush of guilt. Had Kitty somehow divined her jealousy?

‘The sewing circle! You look even more miserable now than you did this morning! Want to come for a quick one at the Folly?’

‘Yeah, why not?’ She certainly wouldn’t be rushing home to make Bertie Hughes his evening cocoa. Perhaps she’d allowed herself to get too cosy at Storks Road. It wasn’t her home, not really. It was just fantasy to think that she belonged anywhere other than Arnold’s Place.

‘Come on, Kit!’ She grabbed her friend’s arm and pulled her out of the sewing room. ‘Let’s go, if we’re going. I’m gasping.’

She trotted them along the riverside streets until they arrived, Kitty puffing for breath, outside the Folly. The pub, with its peeling paint and grimy windows, was a stark contrast to the trim, well-kept Settlement building. Milly pushed her way through the corner door and into the smoke-filled bar. Its small interior meant that benches and tables had to be pushed back against the walls, leaving only a small square space in front of the wooden bar. She squeezed round a group of young men, pints in hand, huddled shoulder to shoulder in front of the bar. They were laughing loudly at some joke, jostling each other playfully, and she had to be careful to skirt them without getting beer slopped all over her. Kitty spotted Freddie, sitting with a man who looked to Milly like a sausage squeezed in the middle with a face like a pork chop.

She whispered to Kitty, ‘Is that Peggy’s butcher?’ and Kitty hissed, ‘Yes!’

‘Jesus, Kit, you were right, he looks like a grilled dinner!’

Kitty let out a raucous laugh that made heads turn, and the girls squashed round the table, desperately trying to control their giggles. The young butcher introduced himself to Milly, sticking out a meaty hand, fingers clustered like chipolatas. She bit her cheek and kicked the still giggling Kitty under the table. Fortunately, Peggy arrived just then and her unsuspecting new husband stood up to buy them all a round of drinks.

Freddie had, that same evening, taken an unofficial delivery from a meat refrigeration ship. Both he and the butcher were well pleased with the transaction they’d just concluded, so were liberally buying the girls drinks. Milly’s capacity wasn’t what it had once been and before long, she found herself standing on the table, shouting to Maisie at the piano. ‘Come on, Maise, give us “A Good Man is Hard to Find”!’

Maisie could always be relied on to know the latest jazz songs and Milly joined in with her full-throated voice, becoming especially impassioned when she got to:

‘My heart’s sad and I am all forlorn, my man’s treating me mean,

I regret the day that I was born and that man of mine I’ve ever seen.

Lord a good man is hard to find, you always get the other kind.

Just when you think that he’s your pal, you look and find him foolin’ round some other gal!’

‘Sh’true, Kit, true’s I shtand ’ere!’ She swayed precariously as she descended from the table on to the bench. She pointed her finger at Freddie Clark. ‘You hold on to ’im!’ Maisie launched into the chorus:

‘So if your man is nice, take my advice,

hug him in the morning, kiss him every night.

Give him plenty lovin’, treat your good man right.

For a good man nowadays is hard to find!’

Though Milly’s voice was still foghorn strong, her vision was weakened and her foot missed the edge of the bench, so that she found herself lying under the table. Kitty and the others ducked down, peering at Milly as she curled like a cat round the table legs.

‘Ahhh,’ said Kitty, trying to pat her friend’s head but missing her mark, comforting the butcher’s two-tone brogues instead. Milly banged her head against the edge of the table as she sat up. Looking round at all the other smiling bleary-eyed faces, Kitty explained, ‘She’s mishin’er Jimmy, turned out a good mum, ain’t she?’

Milly mumbled: ‘
Then you rave, you even crave, to see him laying in his grave
... no, thash no’ true, Kit, didn’t mean it...’

When the publican rang the brass bell, Milly’s legs, her pride and joy, failed her. She suffered the indignity of being carried between Freddie and the butcher all the way home to Storks Road. How she got upstairs to bed, she didn’t know, but from a long way off, she heard Kitty’s apologetic voice explaining, ‘Shorry, she’s just missin’ Jimmy. Sh’don’t usually get like this... She can drink anyone under the table!’ And someone replied, ‘Strike me dumb!’

October 1924

Her eyelids were stuck fast. She tried to open one eye, then closed it swiftly against the harsh light falling across the bed. She realized she was fully clothed under the covers. A wave of nausea broke over her as she rolled on to her back. Clutching the bedclothes as if they were a sinking boat in a storm, she forced her eyes open again, only to find that the room was spinning slowly round her. She let out a long groan as she remembered the night before. It had been Bertie’s voice.
Strike me dumb
he’d said, but what must he have thought of her? Her face burned at the memory. She simply couldn’t face him this morning.

Crawling to the edge of the bed, she swung her legs over the side, but just then a wave heaved and tossed the boat up into the air, launching her across the room to the washstand. Grabbing the china basin, she cuddled it, groaning into its rose-patterned bowl. She never heard the soft knocking on the door.

‘You all right in there?’ Bertie called. ‘You’ll be late for work...’

She froze. ‘I’m ready!’ she lied. ‘I’ll come and do your breakfast now.’ But at the mere thought of food, her nausea returned.

‘Soppy date,’ he muttered, as though he could see her predicament through the closed bedroom door. ‘I’ve brought you a cup of coffee. I’ll leave it outside.’

She heard his footsteps retreating down the stairs and shortly afterwards the front door closing softly, as he left for work. Very carefully, she tried her legs, and with one hand grabbing the dado rail, edged her way to the door. Bending down gingerly, she retrieved the still hot coffee, and sipped it slowly, until the room began to feel less like the merry-go-round at Blackheath funfair.

‘Oh, you silly mare, Milly Colman!’

But there was no time for self-recrimination and even the strong coffee was not enough to make her limbs work at their normal speed. Milly was so late clocking on, she knew she would be docked half a day’s pay, which was bad enough, but as she dashed across the factory yard, she heard her name being called.

‘Oi, Milly Colman! Hold up!’ It was Tom Pelton, the head foreman. She stopped in her tracks and whirled round to see him approaching from Southwell’s riverside wharf. ‘Just my luck!’ she thought. ‘I’m in for a rollicking now.’

Tom had been more than lenient with her of late, but there was a limit and she feared she’d just reached it. He didn’t look happy.

‘What time d’ye call this? I went up to the picking room first thing and you’re not there!’

‘I’m sorry, Tom! I wasn’t feeling well, but I’ve come in anyway.’ She played the sympathy card.

‘Don’t give me that old bull, Milly. I didn’t just sail up the Thames in a boat. I heard all about you – up on the table in the Folly last night, singing your lungs out,
and
I heard they had to carry you home!’

Milly dropped her eyes. There was a time she might have told him to stick his job and simply run off to Horsmonden for the rest of the season, but not now. Responsibilities constrained her, twining about her like a twisting bine. Still nauseous, she drew in a sickening breath.

‘I thought you’d changed your ways since you come back with your baby, and I’ve been more than fair, Milly.’

She looked up. ‘You’re right, Tom, I’m grateful for what you’ve done for me. It’s just that... truth is, my Jimmy’s down hopping with Mum and it’s been so long since I’ve been out with the old crowd... I just got carried away...’ she finished lamely. ‘I promise it won’t happen again.’

She held her breath, praying he wouldn’t sack her on the spot, but her remorse seemed to soften him a little.

‘I know you’re only young to have all that responsibility on your shoulders, Milly, and God knows, you don’t get any help from that old man of yours.’ He paused, as if weighing whether to tell her something. ‘Come in the office a minute.’ He led her to his cubbyhole on the ground floor of the factory building.

‘Sit down, Milly, and let me give you some advice: you’re normally a good worker, but now’s not the time to be slacking off. There’ll likely be changes round here in the next few years. New machinery’s taking over from the hand filling, and we’ll have to start laying women off sooner or later.’

He let that sink in. Milly had done her stint in the filling room, where a hundred-odd women stood for hours in pits round low tables, doing the back-breaking filling work. Their job was to scoop the still bubbling jam out of copper-bottomed trolleys into stone jars, using heavy silver-plated ladles. The pits were designed to ease the strain on their backs, but it was still gruelling work. She immediately saw the impact of a filling machine: a hundred women would be out of work at a stroke. All they’d need would be a couple of machine hands, and of course these would be men. Since the war, most of the mechanical jobs had reverted to men, in spite of the fact that the women had practically run the place during four years of war.

Tom continued her train of thought. ‘I can only keep the best workers on, so some of the filling girls will be going into the picking room or the boiling room, and I’ll be weeding out the time wasters. Up till now I’ve been impressed with you. You can do any job in the factory, you do it quick and you do it well. I’ve even thought you might make a forelady in time... but, Milly, I can’t have you being late. I’ve got to be able to rely on you.’

Her heart had leaped into her mouth. If she’d put her job in danger with one stupid drunken night, she’d never forgive herself, and a forelady’s job one day might mean she could help her mother out, get her away from the old man even.

‘I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again, Tom. I won’t let you down.’

‘All right, off you go now, and no more coming the old acid, you’re on probation!’

When she finally got to the picking room, she felt near to tears. She slotted herself next to Kitty in the line of women, washing and sorting damsons. In answer to Kitty’s enquiring look, she simply shook her head. If she spoke, the tears might fall. She felt as if she were being stretched taut as a leather hide on a frame, and one day soon she might tear clean apart. It was too much for her to hold together: Elsie; her mother; Pat; her child; Bertie, and now this. The one thing that was keeping it all from falling apart was her job, and now even that was under threat.