Orphan of Angel Street (14 page)

‘You look like a mouse crawling out of a hole,’ Mercy had teased him one day when he appeared squinting into the afternoon.

Sometimes she felt like slipping her arms through Tom’s and Johnny’s. They were like brothers to her: family. But she knew they’d say, ‘Oi, gerroff, will yer! What’re yer playing at!’

That snowy day when she reached Elsie’s with a bag of day-old Chelsea buns, she found Susan still toiling away on her sewing machine. Cathleen was sitting close to the fire, lips tinged with blue despite the warmth. Jack was at the table with Frank in his uniform, and Josephine, whose usual expression of discontent had quite vanished (she’d found A Man at last). Dorothy, who’d turned down Elsie’s offer of tea, was also there waiting for her.

‘You’re soon back!’ Mercy cried, beaming. ‘Less than a week, ain’t it?’ She opened the bag of buns and they were shared out, Dorothy shaking her head when offered a piece of one.

‘She giving you some extra time off?’ Mercy asked her, chewing.

Dorothy stood up, her face solemn. ‘I’d like a word with you, Mercy. In private like.’

Mercy looked uncertainly at Elsie. So far as she was concerned nothing was so private that the Peppers and Susan couldn’t hear it.

‘Go round to yours,’ Elsie said with chilly tact. ‘Then you and Miss Finch can talk without all the commotion.’ She wasn’t sure that ‘Miss Finch’ didn’t think she was a cut above them all, but Mercy seemed to think a lot of her so she wasn’t going to make an issue of anything.

‘You come to tell me you’re getting married?’ Mercy joked as they walked into number two.

Dorothy looked astonished. ‘No. What in heaven’s name made you think that?’

‘You look a bit sort of excited. I wondered—’

‘Would that be summat to get excited about?’ Dorothy retorted, with such venom in her voice that Mercy was taken aback. Dorothy sat, removed her hat and arranged the powder blue folds of her dress carefully on her knees.

‘I have got news for you though, and I think you’ll find it exciting when I tell you.’

Mercy stood by the table, clearing the plates from their rushed breakfast that morning. She raised one eyebrow curiously at Dorothy.

‘We’ve – I’ve found you a position, Mercy. A very good one with a respectable family – well off too. They need a maid of all work. It’s a great chance for you, Mercy. You’ll live in a lovely house – quite different from here. Good conditions, and I know they’ll treat you right. You can start as soon as you like.’

She spoke with complete confidence that Mercy would be overjoyed at the offer.

Mercy stared at her, forehead creased as if she hadn’t understood.

‘It’s a job in service, Mercy.’ Dorothy stood up again and leant across the table speaking quietly but insistently. ‘A good start in life for you now you’re old enough. Grab it and take it quick.’

Mercy’s sudden burst of laughter took her completely aback.

‘But I don’t need a job, Dorothy! I’ve already got one and I’m happy with that. It’s nice of you to think of me and go to all this trouble but I don’t want another job just now.’

‘But you’d be in a beautiful house – carpets on the floor. It’s a job many a young girl’d jump at. And it wouldn’t end there. You could work your way up – p’raps even get to be cook there one day if you prove yourself.’

Mercy had no idea just how much she exasperated Dorothy by laughing again. ‘Oh, I’ve been cook here for quite a long while already.’ She’d begun bustling around, clattering plates, carrying in vegetables. ‘No need for me to go anywhere to do that.’

‘She won’t take it.’

Dorothy stood in front of Grace, her face red. She had felt helpless when she left Mercy, but now she was furious, and ashamed at the failure of her powers of persuasion.

They were in the comfortable parlour, door closed against the rest of the house, a young fire burning smokily in the grate. Grace moved up and down the hearth, agitated, her dress rustling. Her usually smooth voice took on an edge of shrillness.

‘You mean . . .?’

‘She said she’s happy where she is.’

‘Those were her words?’

‘She seemed to find the offer all rather amusing,’ Dorothy confessed bitterly. ‘The silly girl.’

‘But she can’t want to stay there!’ Grace burst out. ‘Doesn’t she know an opportunity when she’s presented with it? There she is, living in that terrible . . . slum of a place, and she turns down a position in one of the most prestigious houses in the city! Dorothy—’ Grace’s eyes filled with tears. ‘This is too terrible. It’s just her ignorance that’s making her react like this. After all, what does my poor child know of fine houses or anything except an orphanage and a workman’s house? You’ve got to go and make her see how much better it would be for her. Go back tomorrow. You’ve got to make her take that position!’

‘Blimey,’ Mercy joked when she found Dorothy in Angel Street again the next day. ‘You out of a job or summat?’

‘Come in here—’

Mercy had been in the yard with Elsie, and Dorothy more or less ordered her into her own house.

‘What’s the matter?’ She wasn’t used to Dorothy behaving so sternly. And she saw a hard expression in the woman’s eyes which worried her.

‘We need to have words, miss.’ Dorothy confronted her once more across the table. ‘I come here yesterday and brought you an offer of a good job. A flaming good one, the like of which you’ll be lucky ever to see again.’

‘Oh Dorothy!’ Mercy was relieved. ‘It’s that again, is it? I told you, I don’t need a job. It was kind of you, but—’

‘Take the position.’ It was an order, almost spat out. The two women stood staring into each other’s eyes. A muscle twitched in Mercy’s thin face and she clenched her teeth.

‘Dorothy, I don’t want it. I told you.’

‘Take it!’ Dorothy slapped her hand hard on the table, nostrils flaring. ‘Who d’you think you are, eh? Turning down summat like that as if you could pick and choose? You’re an orphan, you’ve come from the workhouse or near enough, and life ain’t about picking and choosing when you’re poor – you take what you’re given and you’re grateful!’

The look that came over Mercy’s face as she spoke filled Dorothy with a sudden chill. She had assumed all this time that this child who so resembled Grace, was in fact a minute replica of her mother, would grow into the same woman with the angelic hair, grey eyes, the soft, yielding personality. But there was other blood in Mercy. It was only now, seeing the glint in Mercy’s eyes and her jutting chin, Dorothy recognized she was dealing with a far more flint-like character. She experienced a moment of panic, faced with the strength of this temperament.

‘I don’t know what all this is to you,’ Mercy said, her voice polite but steely. ‘I’m grateful for the offer but the answer’s no and could never be anything else.’

‘But why?’

‘Because this is my place here.’

‘It doesn’t have to be!’ Dorothy was growing quite distressed. If only she could tell the girl she was the daughter of a wealthy industrialist’s wife, have her see that she didn’t truly belong here!

‘These’re my people,’ Mercy said. ‘They’re the only people who’ve ever been anything to me – apart from you. Mrs Pepper’s been like a mom to me and I’ll never, ever leave Susan. She’s all I’ve got and I’ve promised ’er. So don’t ask me. Everyone else’s left ’er and I’m not going to do it as well.’

‘But she could go to Mrs Pepper,’ Dorothy argued desperately. How could she go and face Grace, having failed again?

‘No,’ Mercy said simply.

‘Yer a stupid little fool.’ Dorothy’s voice was harsh with bitterness.

‘Well maybe I am. I’m grateful, more than, for all you’ve done for us,’ Mercy said, turning away. ‘But if you think it’s bought you the right to come ’ere telling me what to do you can have back every stitch you’ve brought. I don’t want anything from you if that’s the arrangement.’

The summer of 1914 was a very hot one. Smoke from factory chimneys hung in the air. It was a struggle to keep food fresh, the yards in Angel Street were full of dust and the dry-pan privies stank and attracted swarms of flies. Dogs panted in patches of shade under carts or beside steps.

Wrigley’s Bakery felt like a furnace by day. They propped the door open to the street despite the dust and grime and Mrs Wrigley kept going to stand by the door in her apron, watching trams on the Stratford Road, fanning herself with a newspaper.

‘Phew – this is too much, this is!’ she’d say, cheeks a burning red. ‘We could do with a drop of rain!’

When at the end of June an Austrian Archduke was shot in Sarajevo, most people had their minds on holiday time. Some would get away to the coast or at least the country. In the Angel Street neighbourhood a few visits were planned for the August Bank Holiday, as far as the Lickeys or Clent Hills. As for Mercy and Susan, they were going as far as Highgate Park where they could lie on the sloping grass with straw hats, eat, laugh, and above all, do absolutely nothing for the day except watch white wisps of cloud edge across a Wedgwood blue sky.

‘I wonder what Mom’s doing,’ Susan said sadly as they lay side by side on the freshly cut grass. She always insisted on having her legs covered.

Mercy reached out and squeezed her hand. ‘I s’pect she’s all right.’ It was the one despondent moment of the day and Mercy felt helpless, and guilty too, as she so preferred life without Mabel. They were managing. She was determined not to be beaten.

Within days of this sunny respite the air was full of war. Shrill newspaper headlines: War Against the Hun! Flags and bunting, excited queues outside the hastily established recruiting offices taking the King’s shilling, young men in khaki with tightly bound puttees, and suddenly the city emptied of horses. They were needed more for the War than they were at home! The talk was aggressive and defiant. Old soldiers of the Boer War gathered in pubs and chewed over events. Men were thin on the ground in Nine Court and Bummy went down the pub with Mr White who was streets more amiable nowadays. A picture of the King and Queen went up in the window of the local huckster’s shop. In the name of Honour and of Justice, the Hun were going to be taught a lesson they wouldn’t forget!

‘It’s all very well,’ Mercy said, arriving back at Elsie’s with the twins one afternoon in mid-September. ‘But when’s summat going to happen?’ She pulled off her straw hat and fanned herself with it. ‘We tried to get a paper on the way ’ome but they was all gone again.’

‘Summat
has
happened,’ Elsie said, tight-lipped. ‘Our Frank’s only gone and joined up hasn’t ’e?’

There were gasps from the twins, of envy from Johnny, more of awe from Tom.

Frank had stood in front of Lord Kitchener’s recruitment poster, saw the authority of that pointing finger and the handlebar moustache and speedily decided his country needed him. This being a minor incentive compared with getting away from his missis, he’d hurried to the recruiting station in Great Charles Street.

‘’E’s in the First City Battalion – that’s the Fourteenth Warwicks, I think ’e said.’ Elsie’s face was pale under the freckles. ‘I don’t know whether to be proud of ’im or put ’im across my knee. ’E’s off tomorrow, for training in Sutton Park.’

‘Cor!’ Johnny was ahop with excitement. ‘That’s bostin’! I wish I could go!’

‘You’re too young, and it’ll all be over before you get a chance,’ Bummy said from the sofa. But there was a wistful note in his voice and Mercy sensed he was envious of Frank too in his way. It was the thing to do nowadays, to prove your manhood.

Mary Jones said, ‘Well I hope Stan’s joining up and they finish ’im off for us.’

She was battling with financial hardship on top of the daily grind of bringing up four young kids on her own: Lisa eight, Molly seven, Percy four and Paul one. Battling, though not sunk. The Peppers were helping her out with the rent and Elsie, who had no real need to take in laundry any more, passed on her dwindling number of customers. The War was biting people in the purse already. So it was Mary toiling in the brewhouse at all hours now, with the dolly, maiding tub and mangle, little Paul round her legs.

Mary seemed to have found in herself a defiant strength, a kind of exhilaration in ‘getting by’. She moved more briskly, face tighter, more alert.

‘After all, ’e never raised a finger to do nowt when ’e was ’ere,’ she said to Elsie. ‘So it don’t make much odds ’im going. It’s thanks to you we’re surviving though. I won’t forget yer kindness, Elsie. If there’s ever anything I can do in return . . .’

She’d jumped at the chance of helping with Josephine’s wedding in May. When they’d begun to despair of ever getting her married off, Josephine had met Fred Larkin, a widower and publican with two kids. They had a white wedding along at St Joseph’s. She was now happily queening it in the Eagle in Balsall Heath and talking babies.

Food prices were shooting up. The price of sugar doubled. People were forever moaning about the cost of bread in Wrigley’s.

‘Anyone’d think it was my fault there’s a war on,’ Mercy complained to Susan some evenings. ‘They come in all in a panic and buy it all up and then everyone else is left to moan.’

Motley dressed groups of men could be seen drilling in the parks, Belgian flags rippled in the breeze outside houses in Birmingham which had become homes for refugees, and newspapers were producing the casualty lists. Yet the names of the battles – Mons, Tannenberg, the Marne, Ypres – were all strange, foreign, the War far away.

Until one morning Tom Pepper went to work as usual, to find Stern’s shop had been set on fire and was a charred, still-smoking husk, many of the silver items lying black among the ash and broken glass where they had fallen.

Tom stood there in shock, cap in his hand, as the fire brigade finished dousing the damaged adjoining buildings.

‘What happened to ’im?’ Tom asked one of them, jerking his head towards the ruined flat above the shop.

The fireman shook his head. ‘Died in their beds – the smoke, see. They’ve been brought out already.’

Tom nodded, sick at heart. He tried to imagine Mr Stern lying next to his enormous wife, the smoke furling round them.