Jam and Roses (6 page)

‘Me mother’s down hopping, as well you know!’ she called back.

‘How’s the old man today?’

She shook her head, turning back to the river.

‘No wonder you’re looking sorry for yourself.’ He jumped down from the cab and came to join her on the jetty. He had always been a stocky young man but now, as he leaned his muscular arms next to hers on the wooden railing of the jetty, it was obvious how the lorry driving was filling out his physique. When Pat wasn’t moonlighting, his daytime job was to deliver to and from Butler’s Wharf. He had a small lorry yard nearby in Shad Thames and was a familiar sight making deliveries around Dockhead.

‘Ain’t you going down at all this year?’ he asked, offering her a cigarette.

She shook her head. ‘Not for the want of trying. I’ve been making his life a misery this week. But he’s not budging,’ she said, pulling a face.

‘I’m going down meself at the weekend,’ he said, drawing deeply. ‘Taking a few of the husbands down in the lorry. Why don’t you come with us?’

‘What, in the lorry with the men?’

‘You’ll be in the cab with me. You won’t come to no harm!’ He laughed and flicked ash into the fast-flowing tide below.

Many working husbands visited their wives in the hop fields at weekends, but the journey there usually turned into a drunken beano.

‘I’m not worried about that, I can take care of myself!’ Milly pulled herself up to her full height. At seventeen she was already a little taller than Pat, and lugging around seven-pound jam jars had given her arm muscles a docker would envy. Sometimes she found her strong frame an embarrassment and now, suddenly self-conscious, she wrapped her arms tightly around herself.

‘Thanks for the offer, Pat, but I’d have to work on the old man, and you know what he’s like.’

Pat chuckled. ‘Oh, I know! There’s a good reason why Wilf pissed off at sixteen to join the army!’ Her youngest brother had volunteered during the last year of the war, lying about his age, but Pat had no such patriotic tendencies. Instead he’d stayed home and done pretty well from his black-market dealings. He threw his cigarette end into the river. ‘I expect he’ll drive you out too, one of these days.’

He squeezed her shoulder sympathetically, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek, before jumping back up into the lorry. ‘Just let me know before the weekend. We’re leaving Saturday morning, meet outside the Swan at eight.’

‘Thanks, Pat, I’ll let you know.’

When the lorry was out of sight she turned for home and smiled. Pat’s offer of a lift had given her a glimmer of hope. She’d been wishing for wings to fly away, but if escape came in the form of Pat’s lorry instead, who was she to argue? Perhaps Pat wouldn’t be drifting away from her on the tide after all.

Back in Arnold’s Place, the old man was gone and the sausages were congealing on the plate. She inspected them gingerly. She was hungry herself, but even her normally healthy appetite couldn’t face them; she’d burned them black. They went into the dustbin and she went up to bed to wait for the old man to come home, hoping that when he did roll in, he’d be too drunk to drag her out of bed for the hiding she knew would be coming. When the front door finally opened and he stumbled upstairs, she was gratified to hear him tumble all the way back down again.

‘Good, hope you break your bloody neck!’ she muttered silently and turned over.

Next morning, she made sure she was up and out of the house before him, but he caught her that evening as she walked through the door. His fist hit the side of her head, spinning her round across the kitchen before she even had time to register his presence. He must have been waiting behind the kitchen door. Normally she was home first and if she’d had some warning at least she could have run, but now he had her.

She tumbled over one of the chairs and now lay sprawled in front of the fire, face down on the rag rug. She felt his boot in her side, lifting her over on to her back. He leaned over her, his face red with rage, poker in hand. She rubbed the side of her head. She might have taken this without complaint if her mother had been home because it was always her mother who ultimately paid the price for any rebellion on Milly’s part. But now some demon of defiance rose up.

‘I see you found the poker.’ She grimaced. She had hidden it in the scullery, knowing how addicted he was to his ritual of poking and prodding at the fire when he came in. Nothing annoyed him more than not being able to find the poker.

‘Think you’re effin’ clever, think I don’t know what you’re trying to do?’ he said, swiping the iron down towards her. But before it could smash into her ribs, she shot out a hand, twisting the poker from his grasp. Jumping to her feet, still dizzy from the blow to her head, she tried to judge which way to run. He stood facing her, his taut frame trembling with anger. She was as tall as him now and somehow that realization gave her the strength to stand her ground. She pushed him even further.

‘Southwell’s said I can have next week off—’

The back of his hand struck her cheekbone with a crack, and sent her stumbling back towards the fire. Catching at the mantelpiece with her hand, she steadied herself. She could feel the warm trickle of blood on her cheek, where his ring had broken the skin.

‘I’m sick o’ the sight of you! Go an’ eff off down hoppin’ if you want, but see how you like walking all the way because you won’t get a penny train fare from me!’

Milly wiped the blood from her cheek, smiling behind her hand. She had won the war.

Milly was the only woman there. A group of men were already clustered round the doors of the Swan and Sugarloaf when she arrived that Saturday morning. She stood, awkward and unnoticed, on the edge of the group, wishing Pat was here to meet her. His lorry was parked outside the pub, but he was nowhere to be seen. She recognized many of the men, some were drinking pals of her father’s, others from Southwell’s or neighbours. At first she hung back, clasping a battered cardboard box to her chest. As well as her clothes, it contained tins of food, filched from the supply her mother had left for the old man. She hadn’t told her father how she’d be getting to Kent; in fact she’d said no more about going. She liked the idea of him waking up to find her bed empty and no breakfast on the table – he had told her to eff off down hoppin’ after all.

She was relieved when Pat and his friend emerged from the pub, carrying crates of beer. Pat nodded at her with a smile as he slid the crate on to the back board.

‘Fuel for the journey!’ He winked and came over to take her box. ‘This can go in the back too, but you’re coming in the cab with me. This lot’ll be pissed as puddin’s before we get to Seven Mile Lane and I did say I’d look after you!’

She didn’t remember him saying that, but was grateful she wouldn’t be bouncing around on the back board all the way to Horsmonden. Soon she was settled in the cab and the back was loaded up, crammed with men, boxes of supplies and gifts for their families, which, along with the beer crates, made it a tight squeeze. But they were all in high spirits and as soon as they were on the road Milly heard them start up the hopping songs, accompanied by someone on an accordion.

‘
When you go down ’oppin, ’oppin down in Kent, you try to earn a bob or two, to pay the bloomin’ rent, with an ee ay oh, ee ay oh, eeay, eeay, oh!
’

Pat was right. By the time they’d made their slow way through heavy traffic in Old Kent Road and left the smoke behind, the songs grew bawdier. Pat grinned at her sheepishly, but Milly wasn’t shocked – she’d heard them all before. She was content to drink in the increasingly fresh air, leaning her arm on the open window of the cab, watching for the first green field to replace the suburbs.

After an hour on the road they stopped at a roadside café, and the men insisted she join them in a drink. She sat with her legs swinging over the back board, sipping from a beer bottle, beginning to relax in their company.

‘How’d you persuade old man Colman to let you come, Milly?’ Sid, one of her father’s work pals, asked, eyeing the cut still visible on her cheek. ‘He’s a stubborn old git, never changes his mind.’

‘I made his life a bloody misery, Sid, that’s what I did. Burned his dinners and hid the poker!’ Sid and the other men gathered round laughing. ‘That’s the spirit, love, you got to stand up to the mean old bully!’

She drained the beer bottle with a sense of triumph and Sid handed her another. As she sipped at her beer she reflected that Sid was right, it
was
time to stand up to the old man. His bullying had been going on far too long. He’d always been a strict disciplinarian and she’d feared him as long as she could remember, but she clearly recollected the day when the cane on the table had been replaced by his fists. It was during the war, and she could see her family now, gathered in the kitchen of Arnold’s Place. Even after all these years she could remember the sound of her father’s laugh. A staccato burst that bounced off the kitchen walls. Amy, a toddler, had said something quick and clever and he’d swiped her up from the floor with something like affection. When the knock came on the door, he’d handed Amy to her mother. Milly saw her ten-year-old self, sitting on the kitchen floor, showing Elsie how to whip a wooden top till it spun in a blur over the lino. Absorbed in keeping the spin going for the longest of times, Milly barely registered her father opening the front door, letting in the cold and dark. And when he came back with the telegram, the top was still spinning. But as the words emerged dully from his mouth, ‘Jimmy’s dead’, the top wobbled crazily, bouncing across the lino to her mother’s feet. Milly scrabbled to grab it, just as her mother let out an agonized cry and let Amy fall from her arms. Some instinct made Milly dive. She caught her sister and held her close, as she’d seen boys dive to save a goal, while her mother’s moaning filled the kitchen. ‘Not my Jimmy too, not both my boys!’ Over and over. The old man didn’t utter a word, but pulled his jacket off the peg and walked out. She remembered the feel of his steel-capped boot in her ribs as he kicked her out of the way. Milly had put her mother to bed that night, along with Elsie and Amy, and she had looked after all of them till her father staggered home drunk three days later. That day the beatings began, almost as if he blamed his wife and daughters for being alive when his two sons were dead. Not long after that, Wilf signed up too and Milly never heard the old man laugh again. But now she was old enough and strong enough, and it was time to fight back, for all their sakes.

Back on the road, hedgerows began to appear, fields of cows and sheep, stands of trees, and the gently swelling Kent hills, dipping to sweet-scented valleys. She felt heady with beer and pride in her hard-won victory over the old man. She’d done it, she was free! She let the wind take her carefully waved hair, feeling it whip about her face. Leaning back as the warm September sun splashed through the windshield, she sighed with pure happiness.

‘You look different.’

She hadn’t been aware Pat was watching her.

‘This is my happy face.’ She gave him an exaggerated smile. He laughed, but then seemed to grow serious.

‘No, I mean, you look more grown-up, you’re looking... very pretty today.’

Pretty! She didn’t think he’d ever paid her such a romantic compliment before, unless he was mocking her.

‘You taking the piss?’

He shook his head, giggling.

‘What’s so bloody funny?’ She felt uncomfortable now; perhaps the men hadn’t been laughing with her, but at her.

‘Nothing, it’s just you’re as prickly as one of those hop bines you’re off to strip...’

She gave him a sidelong glance, keeping her face straight until he winked at her and they both burst out laughing. She would give him the benefit of the doubt; she was enjoying herself far too much to pick a fight today. Nearing the top of Wrotham Hill, the lorry juddered to a halt, then slowly but surely began to roll back down again. Pat groaned, pulled hard on the handbrake and leaned out of his window.

‘Everyone off!’

The men all tumbled off the back and began pushing the lorry up the hill. By the time they’d struggled, panting, to the top, they were all thirsty and another beer stop was called. This time, when they started singing, Milly joined in with the strong, tuneful voice she’d inherited from her mother.

‘
Oh me lousy ’ops, oh me lousy ’ops! When the measurer comes around, pick ’em up, pick ’em up off the ground. When ’e starts a-measurin’ ’e never knows when to stop.Aye, aye get in the bin and take the effin lot!
’

When Pat started up the engine again, she went to jump off the back board, but Sid and the others refused to let her return to the cab.

‘Stay and have another drink, Mill, don’t get back in there with him!’ Sid pleaded.

She liked being the centre of all this good-natured banter, and banging her fist on the back of the cab, shouted, ‘Drive on, Patrick! Milady’s staying back here for more refreshments!’

She ignored Pat’s complaints and soon the lorry chugged into life, before hurtling down the other side of Wrotham Hill. Beer and joy had eroded their decorum, and she spent the rest of the journey sitting on a crate of beer on the back board, surrounded by hollering, swearing, joking men who seemed happy to accept her as one of the gang. She felt freer than she had in all her life. She scanned the countryside, looking out for the first oast house, and when she spotted a group of red-tiled conical roofs, topped with brilliant white cowls, she stood up for a better view.

‘Careful, gel!’ Sid grabbed her arm. ‘You’ve had a drop too much, don’t want you falling arse end over the side!’

Milly turned to him with a smile, bracing herself against the lorry’s back board.

‘Thanks, Sid, but I think I’m stone-cold sober.’

‘Good gawd,’ Sid called to his mates, ‘look at her, steady as rock! She can drink us lot under the table!’

As they coasted to the bottom of the valley and slowed down through the village of Horsmonden, Milly smelled the tangy aroma of wood fires. Turning into the field where the hopping huts were situated, tantalizing smells wafted over to them from hopping pots, suspended over fires.