Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts (17 page)

‘Sam, look, I think he needs this more than I do,’ she said, and strode over to the bench, holding out her sarsaparilla to the man.

‘Thanks, miss, you’re very kind,’ he rasped. Cupping the glass in both hands for warmth, he gulped at the steaming liquid.

‘Have you got a bed for tonight?’ she asked. The bundle of belongings on the floor beside him showed he was obviously tramping.

The man shook his head. ‘Nah, no room in the Limehouse doss house, so I’m making me way over to the Sally Army in Bermondsey, but me legs give out.’ He lifted up from the bench two misshapen limbs, one foot twisted inwards. ‘Got these in an accident at the docks ten year ago. Finished me for heavy work and I couldn’t get no other work, so it’s tramping for me now.’

Sam had joined them and was looking worriedly at Nellie. But she prided herself on being a good judge of character. ‘He’s all right,’ she whispered to Sam. ‘Will you get into the Sally Army?’ she asked the man. ‘It’s a bit late.’ She was familiar with the long queues outside the doss house in Spa Road. They’d sometimes start at lunchtime, both men and women, trying to make sure of a bed that night.

The man shrugged. ‘It’s worth a try. Better than settling down here for the night. This old bench’ll make a cold bed.’

‘We’re walking that way, you can lean on Sam, can’t he, Sam?’

Sam didn’t look too pleased to be offered as a crutch, especially as the man had obviously gone a while without a wash. When the bundle of rags extended itself to its full height, it was obvious he had once been a bull of a man, and the twisted legs gave him an odd rolling gait that made Sam’s job even harder. As they walked over the bridge, the man, whose name was Jim, pointed down to Butler’s Wharf on the south side. ‘I’ve worked bloody hard down there in my time,’ he said.

The wharf, in contrast with the idleness of this summer’s strike, was now back to business. Barges packed the dockside and dockers and stevedores were scurrying to finish unloading the vessels before the light failed.

‘All back to work now, eh?’ Jim remarked. ‘Much good striking ever did me. I was one of the first to go out in eighty-nine, a right firebrand I was, but look at me now. I read me Marx and Engels, oh, yes. Got the docker’s tanner, thought I was so clever and still ended up on the scrapheap. I tell you they always win…’ he concluded morosely.

Looking at the wreck of a man walking beside them, Nellie’s mind was filled with the memory of Ted’s fiery hair and flashing eyes that day of the women’s strike last year. His lithe, youthful figure striding up and down the podium had been a picture of passion and purpose as he gave his speech. Was it possible he could one day end up like this? Who knew how any of them would finish – a day’s work was all that kept them from a life on the streets, like this poor soul. Once they’d crossed the bridge, Nellie turned to Sam.

‘I’d best go straight to Lily’s, to let them know… Will you go on with Jim?’

Sam nodded. ‘I’m going back that way to the yard. Old Wicks’ll be wondering why I never turned up for work today.’

‘Let me know how you get on.’ Nellie squeezed his hand and watched as he made his way up Tower Bridge Road, his rolling charge leaning on his arm, swaying out and then banging into him as if they were a pair of barges on the Thames.

Nellie knocked at the Boshers’ basement door and Betty answered at the first knock. Her face bore the evidence of a few sleepless nights and her eyes were red-rimmed. She had clearly shed as many tears over Ted as Nellie had herself. ‘Come in, love, quick before nosey parker upstairs sees you.’

Betty led her past the stairs, across the dark passage into the kitchen. Noises from the family who lived above drifted down – a child crying, and the raised voices of its parents arguing. ‘The noise of it! Still, if they’re at each other’s throats at least she’s not getting her nose into my business.’

When the kitchen door was closed, Betty turned her searching eyes to Nellie. ‘Nell, tell me he’s all right. Did they let you see him?’

‘Sit down, Mrs B., and let me make you a cuppa,’ Nellie said, for the poor woman looked exhausted with worry. ‘You can stop worrying. It wasn’t him, they’d got the wrong feller!’

Betty’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh, thank God!’ She collapsed on to a chair and Nellie saw she was crying. ‘Oh, but I don’t mean that. Who was it, the poor soul?’

‘Sam Gilbie!’

Betty groaned. ‘Sam! But how?’

‘Someone spotted him near the arches… well, did Lily tell you Sam helped him?’

Betty nodded. ‘He’s his father’s son. Michael was my cousin, you know, always did a turn for anyone. Sam wouldn’t turn his back on his family.’

Nellie didn’t think it was the time to let her know Sam’s true opinion of Ted. ‘You’re right there, he’s got a heart of gold, Sam. It was lucky for him I could give him an alibi, though.’

She handed Betty the tea and sat down to drink her own. ‘Mrs B., have you heard anything from Ted?’

Just then there was a knock on the front door and Betty hurried out. She came back, holding a telegram. Putting it on the table in front of Nellie, she slumped back into her chair.

‘Read it,’ she ordered shortly, for she couldn’t.

Nellie picked up the telegram. ‘“Took ship for St Petersburg, am well.”’ Her voice faltered. ‘At least he’s safe,’ she said weakly.

Betty was not stupid enough to be taken in, however. Looking at Nellie as though she were an idiot, she shook her head sorrowfully. ‘Oh, Nellie,
safe
? On a ship sailing through
icebergs
! You have
heard
of the
Titanic
, haven’t you? And
Russia
? If I know my Ted, he won’t rest till he joins them Bolsheviks and ends up dead!’

14

Christmas Contrasts

She breathed deep. It was a warm, balmy June morning of unbelievable freshness. Even the air of Australia felt expansive, and on such days Eliza James had no doubt that her choice to come with Ernest had been the right one. Freedom! It was the reason she had come here. They had taken the white weatherboard villa shortly after arriving in Melbourne, and she loved it. On fine mornings she drank her tea on the wraparound verandah, looking over the well-tended garden. It was a world away from the huddled streets of Bermondsey where she could have spent her whole life, and every day she let herself appreciate that difference. She breathed deeply again and caught the scent of sun-warmed eucalyptus, the smell of freedom. The instinct that had driven her to this new world might have been flight, but her choices in life had always aimed at self-improvement, and this one was no exception: life in Australia was definitely an improvement.

Her greatest relief was to drop the pretence of being Ernest’s housekeeper. In a country that easily swallowed the secret pasts of those arriving on its shores, no one openly questioned her marital status. So, too, the balance of her relationship with Ernest had changed for the better. Even he had to acknowledge that her work among the women’s trade unions was proving of equal value to his own. The working women she met had the same no-nonsense earthiness of Bermondsey women and she’d thrown herself into improving their lot, making a name for herself as someone who could break the will of the most intransigent of factory owners. Ernest seemed to have found a new respect for her: no longer his token cockney sparrow, she felt herself a falcon soaring. In London she had chafed at his iron grip on her life, but here it had relaxed somewhat, perhaps because he was happier in his own work. Whatever the reason, he seemed content to allow her more freedom to come and go as she pleased and to choose her own companions.

But sometimes, on dark nights, when Ernest was working in his study, she would sit on this verandah, looking up at the unfamiliar stars, and she’d hear troubling echoes. She heard her mother’s sad voice during that last meeting, apologizing for doing anything that might have kept her daughter away. At such times, the deep flame of her own self-knowledge would spark into an unwanted life. She knew it was never her mother or father who’d kept her away. It had been her own choice, her own drive for freedom, her own desire for more in life than the lot of a domestic servant. Servitude of any kind was repulsive to her, whether it was the everyday servitude of a wife and mother, or the institutionalized servitude of the wage slave. It was the act of submission that she wished to evade, to smash and to conquer.

But on this particular June morning, something had happened that threatened all her newfound liberty. She found she was expecting Ernest’s child and now the discovery was filling her with dread. The doctor who confirmed her suspicion had seemed shocked at her reaction.

‘No, no, I can’t have a child! It will kill me!’ she’d cried out in horror.

The tall, composed woman before him had suddenly crumpled and he left his desk to come and put his arm round her heaving shoulders.

‘But there is really no danger, my dear, you are a strong healthy woman. You’re what, thirty-one now? Your age should cause no problems, and we will give you the best of care. So there is no reason why you should lose your life in childbirth!’

He was a kindly man, but she became irrationally angry that he should so misunderstand her and shouted into his concerned face, ‘I mean, it’ll kill me to lose my child. I can’t lose another!’

The doctor nodded; he thought he understood now. ‘There’s no reason why you should not deliver this child,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll take special care of your baby, Mrs James. Never fear, you will not lose this one.’

But Eliza left his office and walked in a dream through the Melbourne suburbs, unconvinced by all the doctor’s reassurances. He hadn’t understood at all and now she must speak to Ernest; he had to be told. But first she needed to think and calm herself. She took a tram to the Labour Office and cancelled her meeting for that evening, then walked to the riverside. It was a world away from the Thames, but she had always felt soothed by wide stretches of water. As she walked, she pondered. Was there any way she could be a mother to a child this time round? Her thoughts went back nine years to the other baby, the cause of so much heartache and regret.

The child had been a girl. Eliza was surprised a pregnancy hadn’t happened before, but they had been careful. She was twenty-two at the time and had believed that the baby’s arrival would be the end of her life in Mecklenburgh Square. She and Ernest had been carrying on their affair for over five years, at first in secret, but then the situation had become obvious to most of the household and also to Ernest’s friends. But, still, an illegitimate child by his housekeeper? How could that be contained within his life? Even with his radical views, Eliza had expected that she and the child would be packed off and never spoken of again. In the years since, she had sometimes wished it had happened that way, but it seemed she had become essential to Ernest.

She was never quite certain why. She doubted it was still passion. She liked to think he might value her for the work she had begun with the Anti Sweated Labour League, but in her darker moments she feared she might simply be his pet ‘cockney sparrer’, a trophy, to prove his radical credentials to his Bohemian friends and colleagues in the Labour movement. If she
had
left with the child her union work would have been over. Thousands of women, she could say for a certainty, would have been the poorer, but would she have been the richer? Instead, she had followed Ernest’s baldly stated wishes.

‘Eliza, you must give the child up,’ was all he had said and she had taken care of it. He did not wish to know the arrangements, had merely given her an allowance to be used for the child’s upbringing. It had broken her heart and it was then she’d thrown herself into union work, as distraction and a consolation: if she had lost her child, she would make it count for something. And for many years she had worked to that end, but this new baby forced her to admit that, on the scales of her heart, all that she’d achieved had never once outweighed all that she’d lost. Knowing that, how could she allow herself to make the same disastrous choice again?

By the time she got back to their villa that afternoon, her decision was made and she had prepared herself to do battle with Ernest. This one she would not give up! He was home early and after supper they walked on to the verandah. Ernest smoked while leaning on the railing and Eliza joined him there, in the cool of the evening, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders and settling into one of the cane chairs in the corner.

‘Ernest, come and sit down, I want to talk to you.’

He strolled over to her. ‘You seem rather pensive this evening, my dear. Is there something troubling you?’

She shifted in her seat, the sounds of the night seeming exaggerated; insects clicking, frogs croaking and the wind soughing in the trees, all competed with the thudding of her own heart. ‘Ernest, I’m going to have a child.’

At first he did not answer. He carefully put out his cigarette and then he sat down beside her. He reached out with his hand to cover hers. She sat rigidly, waiting for his reply.

‘Is this why you cancelled your meeting?’

She nodded, still waiting.

‘Well, my dear, I suggest you cancel all meetings for the foreseeable future. Your life will be much changed. But not forever, you must remember that.’

And he turned to her a face of inscrutable politeness.

Her heart sank; now she knew she would have to fight. ‘Ernest, I wish to keep this child.’

‘And what of your work… our work?’

‘There is no reason this time to give up the child!’

He interrupted her with a peremptory gesture. They had never spoken of their firstborn, not since the day Eliza took her away. But she would not spare his guilty heart, not now.

‘I’m sorry, Ernest, but we must speak about it. I know it wasn’t an easy choice for either of us, and we both agreed our lives would not allow for a child… not then. But this time is entirely different. We are in a new age now and a different world! Is it a scandal you’re worried about? No one here has ever questioned that we live as man and wife! They’re only too happy to have a man of your stature helping them, they don’t dare ostracize you!’ She would flatter and plead shamelessly, if it meant getting him to agree.