London (161 page)

“The Palladium, Percy,” he declared. “It’s all the rage.”

What a night that had been! The huge new theatre, which had only just opened in Piccadilly Circus, was offering the biggest and most splendid music-hall entertainment in London. He had never seen Jenny so animated. She had even joined in when the audience sang along with some of the musical numbers. Flushed and happy, she had let him escort her back to Hampstead in a cab afterwards.

At the gates of the tall gabled house, she had let him kiss her on the cheek. Then he had walked all the way back through the warm night to Victoria Station where, having missed the last train, he lay contentedly on a bench and took the first train at dawn.

All this week the weather had been wonderfully fine. Each morning he had been up at dawn, and as he looked across London, where a hundred thousand roofs glistened with the dew, the faraway ridges of Hampstead were now so green and sparklingly clear that it seemed as if he could reach out and touch them. With the aid of a map, he had worked out exactly at what point on the skyline the Silversleeves house must be. He would imagine Jenny, getting up, going about her business; and from time to time as he stared across the place he would murmur: “I’m waiting for you, girl.”

One other milestone of huge significance had been passed that wonderful evening. Before he left her at Hampstead, Percy had extracted a promise that, the following Sunday, she would come to Crystal Palace.

‘We’ll go and have Sunday lunch with Herbert and Maisie,” he’d said. “I can meet you at the station.”

Jenny had only paused a moment before she said: “All right, then.”

He was sure it would all go off well.

East End. No end. Grey streets, grimy streets, streets without number, streets without meaning, streets that spread on and on under the dull, dreary eastern sky until, somewhere out past the miles and miles of docks they dissolved like an estuary, into a sea of nothingness. East End. Dead end. The East End was not a place, it was a state of mind.

The street where Jenny’s family now lived was a short, dingy terrace that had apparently been cut off just as it meant to get started by a high warehouse wall. Their three rooms, on the ground floor of one of the mean little houses, had to contain her brother and his wife, three children, and her father who, though only fifty-six, had discovered that he could no longer work.

It was always the same. Jenny would visit, give him a few shillings, and her brother rather more. And her father would say, with the heavy sentimentality of a drunk: “You see, she never forgets her family.” Her brother would say nothing, but his thought was as clear as if he had spoken it aloud. “It’s all right for some.”

Her brother worked in the docks: some days he found work and some days he did not. But he was better off than some, for the friendships he had formed with the wilder Jewish boys of which old Lucy had so disapproved had turned out to be fortunate.

The trade in second-hand clothes was a lively business. If the better-off classes had their clothes made for them, most poor people in London dressed in second-hand garments and there were plenty of East Enders, usually Jewish, in this trade. And since one of his betting friends had settled into this trade, Jenny’s brother was often able to get some extra work driving the cart or minding the store. The sturdy old coat her father wore had once belonged to a sea captain; her brother’s three children at least had boots of approximately the right size. And if her brother may have supplemented his income in other less legitimate ways from time to time, while his wife did what jobs she could, Jenny knew very well that they did what they thought they had to.

When her brother’s wife, in her solid blouse and frayed skirt, came up to her and saw the clothes Mrs Silversleeves had given her, so neatly laundered and starched, when she could smell how clean Jenny was – “She smells of lavender water,” she sadly remarked – and looked at her own roughened hands and chipped nails, when she tried to imagine what kind of house Jenny must live in and glanced at her own tiny rooms with their threadbare pieces of carpet, it was impossible for her not to feel envy. And it was impossible for her brother to keep a trace of malice out of his voice when he greeted her:

“Here’s my sister Jenny, then. Ever so respectable.”

Jenny did not blame them, but she felt awkward. She knew she could not quite disguise her own repugnance. The musty smell of long-boiled cabbage that pervaded the place; the stinking privy outside that three families shared; the general meanness of everything and, worst of all, the acceptance of these things. It was not that she had forgotten what it was to live like this. She could remember her poor grandmother Lucy with the miserable piles of matchboxes; she could remember hunger, a life far worse than this. But above all, she remembered the last words, spoken with a terrible urgency, that old Lucy had ever said to her. “Don’t come back, Jenny. Don’t you ever, ever go back to where you’ve been.”

Respectable? For someone like Jenny, respectability meant clean sheets and clothes; a man with a steady job, food on the table. Respectability was morality, and morality was order. Respectability was survival. No wonder then that it was so highly valued by so many of the working class.

The meeting that Saturday had been the same as all the others. They had sat, talked a little. She had brought little presents for her six-year-old nephew and his little sister. She had played with the youngest, a baby girl of only two. She had wondered if perhaps she should mention Percy, but although she was going to see his family at Crystal Palace the next day, there was nothing really, as yet, to say. And the visit would have ended inconsequentially enough, like all the others, if it had not been for the pale and scrawny woman who appeared at the door, just before she was due to leave.

She had red hair, which might have been striking enough, though it was stringy and unkempt; but what made an even greater impression upon Jenny were her eyes, sunken with fatigue and staring. Holding her hand was a filthy child who was bawling because he had cut himself. A quick inspection showed Jenny that the cut wasn’t serious, but the poor woman claimed she had nothing to bandage it with. They found something, quietened the child, and also two more of the woman’s children who came wandering in. They all looked undernourished. After they had gone her brother had explained.

“Her husband died two years ago. Four children. We all give her a bit of help but . . . .” He shrugged.

“What does she do?” she had asked. “Matchboxes?”

“No. You can get more stuffing mattresses at home. But it’s heavy work, you see. Wears you out.” He shook his head. “Lost her man, see?”

Soon after that she had left, kissed her father and the children goodbye, and her brother, unusually, had walked with her a little way. At first he remained silent, but after they had gone about a quarter mile he said quietly:

“You done well for yourself, Jenny. I don’t begrudge you that, you know. But it’s more than that.”

“How do you mean?”

“You did right not to marry.” He shook his head. “That one you saw. Her husband had a good job, you know. Plasterer he was. And now he’s gone . . . .”

She was silent.

“If anything ever happened to me, Jenny, you’d keep an eye on my little ones, wouldn’t you? I mean, not let them starve or anything? You not being married, that is. You could do that, couldn’t you?”

“I suppose,” she said slowly, “I’d do my best.”

It was a very jolly party the next day. Percy was looking so pleased and happy as he met her at Crystal Palace Station. She was wearing a pretty little straw hat she had bought herself, a very nice green and white dress, quite simple but very good material, that she had got from Mrs Silversleeves. She had even, though she had never done such a thing before, taken a little parasol. She could see Percy felt proud of her.

The villa where Herbert lived was a nice little house, two storeys over a half-basement, the front door being up a few stone steps. There was a little patch of lawn at the front with a privet hedge around it. There was an evergreen tree in the garden next door which perhaps made the place a little bit dark, but inside it was very nice. Indeed, Jenny’s practised eye took in at once, every square inch of the place was polished and gleaming. As soon as she met Maisie, she could see why.

For the greatest social change wrought by the Industrial Revolution in London concerned the suburbs. The vast scale of trading operations, the growing banks, insurance companies and imperial administration in Victorian and Edwardian London required an army of clerks. And because there were now trains, and the spreading suburbs were both cheaper and more salubrious, this hugely expanded class commuted into work in their thousands and their tens of thousands. Men like Herbert Fleming, whose parents or grandparents had been shopkeepers or craftsmen, put on their suits and took the train to the office. Their wives, who would formerly have lived by their workshop or helped in their shop, were left alone at home and considering themselves a cut above women who worked, took on, in whatever small ways they could afford, the mannerisms of ladies of leisure.

Maisie was rather short. The first thing Jenny noticed was that she had a small birthmark on her neck; the second that she had a red mouth and tiny, sharp-looking little teeth. She had a single housemaid, whom she worked to death, and another girl who came in to help. Her sitting room had antimacassars on every chair, a large potted plant in the window and, in pride of place on the wall, a painting of a mountain which, she explained, her father had bought in Brighton. Had Jenny ever been to Brighton? she politely asked as they sat before the meal. Jenny said she had not.

The dining room was rather small. There was a round table in the middle and Jenny found she could only just squeeze into her place.

“I always like a round table. This is the one we had when I was a child, though it went in a bigger room,” said Maisie. “Do you like a round table?” Jenny answered that she liked them well enough.

They had roast chicken, with all the trimmings, carved with a number of theatrical flourishes by Herbert.

Despite these high domestic standards, it was soon clear that Herbert and Maisie also prided themselves on being very jolly. Once a month, without fail, they went to a music hall. “And then I get the whole performance back from Herbert the next evening!” Maisie laughed.

“She’s no better with her drama society,” Herbert rejoined.

“Maisie has a lovely singing voice,” Percy added.

But their favourite activity in summer, Jenny learned, was to go for a bicycle ride on Sunday afternoons.

“Have you tried it?” Maisie asked her. “Herbert and I go for miles sometimes. I do recommend it.”

It had not escaped Jenny’s notice that Maisie’s eyes, which were sharp, had been looking thoughtfully at her clothes ever since she had arrived. When the chicken was done and a fruit pie had been served, she evidently thought it was time to make a few enquiries.

“So,” she said brightly, “Percy tells us you live at Hampstead.”

“That’s right,” said Jenny.

“It’s very nice up there.”

“Yes,” said Jenny. “I suppose it is.”

“Before we bought this house,” said Maisie, with just the tiniest extra clarity on the word “bought”, so that Jenny should understand their financial position, “we did think of living up there.” Just before she had married, Maisie had inherited the sum of five hundred pounds. It was not a fortune, but enough to buy the house and leave some over. She and Herbert were quite well set up, therefore. “Your family’s always lived up there?” she enquired.

Suddenly Jenny realized they didn’t know anything about her. Percy hadn’t told them. She looked at him for guidance, but all he did was smile. “No,” she said truthfully. “They don’t.”

Percy had never brought anyone to meet Herbert and Maisie before. He had supposed vaguely that they would all like each other. He realized of course that Jenny might not seem a great catch in Maisie’s eyes; but it had not occurred to him that she would feel it affected her. Maisie’s social aspirations were quite modest and with her house and her popular husband they were nearly satisfied. But if her husband’s brother, living nearby, went and married beneath them, what did that do to the name of Fleming in the locality? She had planned – it had been her little project – to find him a nice girl who would do credit to them all. She had to make sure this mysterious girl from Hampstead was safe.

“So what keeps you in Hampstead?” Maisie persisted, quietly.

“That’s what I keep asking her,” Percy cut in, rather cleverly he thought. “She’s so far away up there I never get to see her.” And he started to describe in detail the time he had had the week before when he had missed the last train home from Victoria. He and Herbert had a good laugh about that. Maisie was silent.

As for Jenny, she felt only a kind of sullen misery. Was Percy trying to conceal what she was from his family? What was the point?

The meal was over, and the two brothers had just gone outside together when Maisie quietly turned to her.

“I know what you do,” she said softly. “You’re in service, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” said Jenny.

“I thought so. Those clothes.” Maisie nodded. “We’ve never had anyone in service in our family, of course. Or Herbert’s.”

“No. I don’t suppose you ever will, either,” said Jenny.

“Oh.” Maisie looked her straight in the eye. “That’s all right then.”

When, an hour later, in the handsome park around Crystal Palace, Percy asked her to marry him, Jenny said: “I don’t know, Percy. I really don’t know. I need some time.”

“Of course. How long would you like?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, Percy, but I want to go home.”

Esther Silversleeves waited two weeks before she spoke to Jenny. By then she was worried.

“Jenny, you’ve been here most of your life. Now please tell me what’s the matter.” She waited patiently for her to speak.

Though Jenny had a few friends, there was no one she really felt she could confide in; so for the previous two weeks she had thought about it alone. And the more she thought, the more it seemed that everything was impossible. For a start, there was Percy to consider. Maisie and Herbert have probably talked him out of it by now, she thought. I expect he’s wishing he’d never proposed. What’s Percy want with an old thing like me with no money? she said to herself. Maisie could find him a young girl who’d do him much better. There was her brother and his children, also. I may be poor, she considered, but working as I do, if anything happened to him I could keep those children from starving. And dear old Mrs Silversleeves really needs me, Jenny thought. I’d be walking out on her, too.