Born to Trouble (3 page)

‘Leave that.’ Her mother’s voice was strident. ‘I’m talking to you, girl.’

Finding the hard brown-veined soap they bought from the slaughterhouse, Pearl set the bowl on the floor after brushing away some mouse droppings with her hand. ‘James needs cleaning up, Mam.’

‘I said leave it, an’ look at me when I’m talkin’ to you.’

Itching to get her brother sorted, Pearl straightened and stared at her mother.

Kitty glared at the daughter who’d irritated her from the moment she was born. She had never analysed why this was so, and if anyone had told her that Pearl’s cornflower-blue eyes with their long thick lashes and her abundance of wavy dark-brown hair were part of the problem, she would have denied it. In truth, her daughter’s prettiness was a constant thorn in Kitty’s flesh. Orphaned before she could walk, Kitty had been placed in the workhouse at ten months old and had endured a wretched childhood. At fourteen she had been sent to a big house where she had worked as a kitchenmaid, and two years of mistreatment there by the cook had further embittered her. She had met Thomas on her half-day off a month when she was sixteen, and had seen to it that she was wed within a few months. She didn’t love her husband – Kitty Croft was not capable of loving anyone – but she did enjoy the intimate side of their union, and when Thomas’s interest in that department had begun to wane, she had made sure that her needs were met elsewhere.

As Pearl fidgeted, Kitty said sharply, ‘Take that look off your face and don’t come the madam with me, girl, not unless you want to feel the back of my hand.’

Pearl turned her eyes to the floor. She’d learned that silence was the only way to placate her mother when she was like this, and she needed to be able to see to James, who was smelling something awful. ‘Sorry, Mam.’

‘Aye, I should think so. Now I’ll ask again. Where’ve you been?’

‘I told you, we were kept in. We break up for the summer holidays at the end of the week and Miss Grant wants us all to know our two times table afore we go. She’s got a bee in her bonnet about it.’

Her mother looked at her a moment longer before relaxing in the chair again. ‘Stupid dried-up old crone. What does she know about real life anyway? I could tell her a thing or two. Make her hair curl, I could.’ When Pearl continued to stand still, saying nothing, Kitty added, ‘Make me a cup of tea. I’m parched.’

‘I’ll just wash James—’

‘Are you deaf as well as stupid? I said make me a cup of tea, didn’t I?’

Pearl made the tea. Not to do so would have meant a series of stinging slaps on the backs of her legs but worse, her mother was quite capable of refusing to let her clean up James for hours.

The moment Kitty was drinking the first cup from the pot, Pearl set about washing and changing the baby. Once he was clean and dry she placed him in her desk bed before scrubbing out the drawer and putting it in front of the range to dry off. Next she cleared up the broken glass at her mother’s feet and in between all this she poured Kitty two more cups of tea.

The house still reeked of excrement but it was no use opening the door and window, not with the smell in the yard enough to cause you to retch.

When James began to grizzle, she brought him to her mother for his feed and then got on with peeling the potatoes which would be boiled and served up with the leek pudding her mother had prepared earlier and some cold mutton from the day before.

For a little while silence reigned, the only sound an occasional gulp and slurp from the baby at his mother’s breast.

She wished her mam liked James. Pearl’s bow-shaped mouth compressed at the thought. But she didn’t. When she had said the same to Seth a day or so ago, her brother had smiled and ruffled her hair and said their mam didn’t like any of them, and she wasn’t to worry. But she was worried. Pearl’s throat swelled and tears pricked at the back of her eyes. It was all right for her and the lads, but James was only a little baby and he was left with their mam all day. But when she had said this to Seth, adding that she didn’t want to go to school, he’d got cross with her. She had to go to school, he’d insisted. And then he’d said something which had puzzled her ever since. It was her ticket out of here and she mustn’t let it slip out of her fingers. But she didn’t have any ticket, so how could she lose it?

She had tried to ask him but he’d gone on, saying she was brighter than the rest of them put together and the teachers would help her if she played her cards right. But she didn’t even know how to play cards. The lads did, they played nearly every night, but they’d never shown her how. Seth said ladies didn’t play cards, not the sort they did anyway.

She finished the last of the tatties and dropped it in the pan with the others. It was too heavy for her to carry, but her mam would put it on the hob in a minute when James had had his fill.

She wished she had a grandma and granda like most of the bairns in her class. A lot of them had two sets and she didn’t even have one. Seth had said it was because their mam’s mother had died when Kitty was a baby. When she had asked where their mam’s da was, he’d said, ‘Nowhere,’ in the funny tone he used when she wasn’t to ask questions. And her da’s parents had died of the fever in Scotland when her da was a lad, and he’d been brought to an aunt Sunderland way. She didn’t know what had happened to the aunt – she was never spoken of. Perhaps she didn’t like their da? No one did.

Pearl contemplated this for a moment or two as she dried her cold red hands on her pinafore. The last time the minister had come to the school and given one of his ‘addresses’, as Miss Grant referred to the long talks, he’d said God expected you to be kind to people who were nasty. By doing that, you would win them over to a life of good deeds, the minister had explained, and God would change their hard hearts. When she’d put her hand up and said God couldn’t know her da if He thought that, she’d got ‘wrong’ from Miss Grant once the minister had gone, even though he’d just smiled and said there were exceptions to every rule.

‘Here, take him.’

James’s eyelids were drooping, and as she lifted him from her mother’s lap his tiny hands clutched frantically at the air for a moment. Softly, she said, ‘It’s all right, I won’t drop you. Don’t worry.’

When the baby was once again lying in the desk bed she stood looking down at him for a moment. His rose-flushed face and downy head reminded her of a dolly she had seen in one of the big shops in High Street West last Christmas when Seth had taken her to see the shop windows decorated with paper chains and bells and baubles. Only the dolly had been dressed in a bonny little dress and coat with bootees on its feet. She frowned to herself. It didn’t seem right that a dolly should be dressed better than a real live baby.

‘What are you standing there gawpin’ at? Take them things an’ swill ’em off in the wash-house, they’re stinkin’ the place out.’

Her mother had stood up and placed the pan of potatoes on the hob, now she pointed to the nappy bucket by the back door into which Pearl had dropped James’s dirty clothes and bedlinen. This was another regular job of Pearl’s, but it took all the little girl’s strength to lug the heavy bucket to the wash-house in the yard which, like the privy, they shared with several other families. If one of their neighbours was possing or mangling or at the big stone sink, they would invariably stop what they were doing and help her, but today the wash-house was empty. Pearl didn’t mind this. Most of the other women were kind but she knew they felt sorry for her, and when she heard them muttering under their breath about her mother it made her feel funny.

She stood catching her breath just inside the doorway. The boiler was in one corner and the big poss tub in another, and the table for scrubbing stood in the middle of the room next to the mangle. The deep stone sink was under the window, and it was to this she staggered, wringing the contents of the bucket out and dropping them into the sink before she fetched clean water and the bar of soap to scrub the worst of the stains from the nappies and linen. Some of their neighbours boiled their children’s nappies; Pearl often saw the white squares of towelling blowing on the lines across the back lanes. When she had suggested this to her mother shortly after James was born, she’d received a slap round her legs for her trouble.

She had just finished putting the washing through the mangle, the big stiff rollers straining every muscle in her arms and shoulders, when she heard footsteps in the yard and then a man’s voice calling her mother’s name, accompanied by a hammering on their back door. Startled, she ran to see what was happening and as her mother opened the door she heard the man say, ‘Mrs Croft? I think you’d better come quick. There’s been a fight outside the Boar’s Head.’

‘A fight? With Thomas, you mean?’

‘Aye, your husband among others. They’d all had one too many but when the dust settled your man didn’t get up. I think it’s bad.’

Kitty was pulling her shawl over her head and crossing it over her chest as she caught sight of Pearl. ‘Stay here an’ tell the lads your da’s in trouble if they come in afore me,’ she called. ‘Tell ’em to come to the Boar’s Head sharpish.’

Pearl nodded. She watched as her mother left with the man and then went to fetch the washing. For once the length of line in the yard was free – no doubt their neighbours had taken any washing in by now, it being a grand drying day, so she pegged the bits of towelling and linen to the string and hoisted them into the air with the line prop. Once that was done she went back into the house and sorted out James’s drawer with fresh bedding and placed the sleeping baby in it. He stirred but didn’t wake, and she knelt down by the makeshift crib and stroked his tiny hand with one finger.

It was warm and sticky in the room and she was tired, the ticking of the old wooden clock on the mantelpiece emphasising the unusual quietness. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been in the house by herself and it felt strange, but not unpleasant. She watched a couple of mice making darting forays from their hole in the skirting board for crumbs and bits of food. One sat on its hind legs washing its furry face with busy paws and she smiled to herself. Her mam had put down a mousetrap in every room and they’d caught quite a few, which she hated; she felt so sorry for them when they squeaked and squealed, but the ones in the kitchen seemed cleverer than the rest and treated the traps with disdain. She didn’t mind the mice, it was the bugs in the wallpaper that came out at night and walked across the ceiling and fell on your face she didn’t like. She always pulled her bedcover right over her head, even on the warmest summer night.

She must have fallen asleep for a few minutes because the back door opening brought her jerking up with her heart beating fast. Her mam would give her what for, if she found her slacking.

Scrambling to her feet, she said, ‘I – I was just seeing to James’s bed . . .’ Her voice trailed away. A policeman was standing behind her mother.

Like the rest of the occupants of Low Street and many of the surrounding streets, Pearl knew that the law was something to be feared and hated. Along with her mother’s milk she’d imbibed the ‘us and them’ mentality that pervaded the East End, and believed absolutely that the police existed purely for the upper classes. They were to be avoided at all costs and never, ever spoken to, not unless you wanted to be locked up and never see the light of day again. Her eyes as big as saucers, she stared at the constable, biting on her thumbnail.

‘Your mam’s not well, lass. She’s had a bit of a shock.’

To hear the dreaded figure speak in a broad Northern accent like anyone else made Pearl’s eyes open wider. She glanced at her mother who had plumped down in her father’s armchair without saying a word, and then her eyes returned to the policeman. He smiled kindly at her but spoke to her mother when he said, ‘Is there a neighbour I can fetch? Or family living near?’

Kitty shook her head. The young constable had insisted on seeing her back, but the lads would have a blue fit if they came home to the law in the house. ‘Me sons’ll be in shortly and I’m all right.’

‘I’ll wait till they come.’

‘No.’ It had been too abrupt, and Kitty moderated her tone. ‘Thanks very much, but I’d rather break it to ’em meself, calm like, an’ it’ll be less of a shock if everythin’s the same as normal.’

The policeman hesitated. He was well aware that this family, like most of the others in the area, had probably fallen foul of the law at some time or other, and he had it on good authority that the husband had never done a day’s honest work in his life, so the wife’s reluctance was understandable. Nevertheless, he couldn’t just walk out and leave her with that little mite of a lassie. His dilemma was solved in the next moment, however, when the back door opened and Seth walked in, Fred and Walter at his heels.

Kitty spoke quickly, her words running over themselves. ‘It’s your da, lads. There’s been an accident an’ the constable here brought me back after I’d gone to see him.’

‘An accident?’ Seth pulled himself together. For a second he’d almost turned tail and run – and how would that have looked?

‘Aye.’ Kitty had seen the panic and breathed a sigh of relief that he was acting normally. ‘Outside the pub. Your da got in a fight with some others an’ he must have cracked his head on the kerb. He – he’s gone.’

‘Gone?’ For a moment Seth didn’t understand. Then, as his mother stared at him, he said faintly, ‘You mean he’s dead?’

‘I’m afraid so, lad.’ The constable entered the conversation. ‘We’ve a whole bunch of them locked up in the cells, but I doubt we’ll get to the bottom of who hit whom, even if they could remember, which I doubt. Once they’re sober we’ll do our best, of course, but I don’t hold out much hope. I don’t think any real harm was meant. Your da was just unlucky, that’s all.’

Seth stared at the policeman’s ruddy face. He knew the man was expecting some show of grief, or at least shock, but the only emotion filling him was one of profound thankfulness. His da had been a vicious, vindictive bully who’d made their lives hell, and been a millstone round all their necks with the amount of money he’d frittered away with his drinking. Lowering his eyes, Seth swallowed hard. ‘He was often drunk,’ he said shortly.