Custard Tarts and Broken Hearts (22 page)

‘We’ll have to work out a better way of getting the boxes back up to London Bridge, once we’ve made them. Maggie’s got a little army of her kids to help her, but I don’t want to drag you and the boys up there every week, if I can help it.’

Alice put a cup of tea in front of her and as Nellie sipped thoughtfully, she had the beginnings of an idea as to where she might find the help she needed.

17

A Matter of Trust

‘Please come, Nellie!’ Lily pleaded. ‘It’s only a drink and a few sandwiches, and Jock’s paying.’ Nellie and Alice were walking home after work with Lily, who’d been waging a campaign all day. She was determined that they’d both be there at the Green Ginger that night, to celebrate her engagement.

‘Lil, I can’t just leave the boys on their own at night, and anyway, we’ve got to get our quota of boxes done for next week,’ Nellie reasoned wearily.

‘Well, the boys can come too. We’ll send them out some ginger beer and a pint of winkles. Surely they deserve a little bit of a treat. They’ve been so good.’

Lily had hit just the right note. Nellie felt guilty every time she looked at her brothers’ eager, bright faces and nimble fingers as they played the ‘game’ of assembling the matchboxes. Bobby was a painfully careful worker, holding up every box for inspection with a ‘Will this do, Nell?’ She’d had to tell him that the boxes weren’t intended for the queen and no one was going to send them back because of a crooked label, so he could afford to go a little faster.

Every evening, for weeks, they had gathered round the kitchen table, with the glue pot and brush in the middle, Nellie pasting the label and putting on the sides, Bobby and Freddy forming them into boxes. Alice made the drawers and stuck on the striking edge. Nellie was glad of the boys’ enthusiasm – for them it was fun to feel grown up and of use. For the first couple of hours each night they chattered and laughed, producing astonishing amounts of boxes between them, but later in the evening their heads began to droop and their eyes to close. They worked till they dropped and then Alice would take them upstairs while Nellie carried on.

Soon they couldn’t move for matchboxes: there were piles under the stairs, then in the coal hole, and finally they were tripping over them in the bedrooms. But worse than the nightly toil, had been the weekly trip up to the depot. Walking to London Bridge and back with their burdens of matchboxes was proving so exhausting for the boys that they were falling asleep at school. Poor Alice felt the shame of it keenly, and had pleaded with Nellie to be let off the trek, but the stark fact was that the more boxes they could carry to the depot, the more they were paid. There was no doubt that, at the end of the week, they could all do with a rest.

‘Oh, all right, Lil, I’m so sick of matchboxes I’m likely to strike a lucifer and send the lot of us up in flames! We’ll all come then, but just for an hour!’

Lily jumped up and down excitedly. ‘Sam will be there too,’ she said. ‘He’s going to be Jock’s best man, did I tell you?’

Nellie nodded in approval. ‘I’m not surprised and he couldn’t have picked a better one.’

‘He’s still holding a torch for you, I think,’ Lily said, a mischievous light playing in her eyes.

Nellie sighed impatiently. ‘Do you think I’ve got time for that sort of thing these days?’ But she had her own reasons for being pleased that Sam would be there, which she didn’t divulge to Lily.

‘There’s always time for
that sort of thing,
Nellie Clark!’ Her friend winked at her and Nellie found herself caught up by Lily’s infectious humour. By the time Lily left them, they were all giggling.

And as Lily walked on towards her house with a jaunty step, she called back. ‘Be there at seven. I’ll save a place for you… next to Sam!’

Nellie and Alice hurried on towards Vauban Street. Nellie had noticed her sister’s eyes light up the minute she’d agreed to the outing and now she was eager to get home and tell the boys. But as soon as they heard the news they became so over-excited they were hardly able to eat their tea. Nellie was adamant – not a scrap was going into the dustbin in this house. ‘If you don’t finish your bread and jam, we ain’t going and that’s that!’

That settled it and they were as quiet as lambs as they went off to wipe their faces and damp down unruly hair.

Now they were wrapped up in warm jackets and scarves, sitting on a wall outside the Green Ginger with the other children. Nellie handed them a pin and the pewter pot of black winkles.

‘Sit here and don’t move, Alice will be out to check in a minute.’

They nodded obediently. At the pub door she looked back and saw, by the light of the gas lamp, that Bobby had already planted a black beauty spot from the top of the shellfish on to one little girl’s cheek. She smiled, relieved. They didn’t look like child slaves; they were having fun, just as children should.

Lily had been as good as her word and Nellie sat in the place saved for her next to Sam. They talked for a while about his mother. And there it was again – Nellie could feel that invisible thread of a promise tugging anxiously at her heart. She listened quietly as he told Nellie that Lizzie’s liver disease, brought on, so the doctors had said, by years of hard toil and poverty, couldn’t be cured. But in spite of her slow decline, she was still managing to rule the house from her truckle bed. Nellie noticed that talking about his mother seemed to drain the joy from Sam’s face. Suddenly she came to a decision. She pulled out from her bag a drawing she had made on the back of an old envelope and spread it out on the table in front of them. Making herself heard above the din and laughter surrounding them, she leaned forward to explain her plan to him.

‘I know it’s a big favour to ask, Sam, it being a family heirloom, but I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t desperate. I can’t go on dragging the kids up to London Bridge every week.’

‘Of course you can use it, Nell. Me dad would be only too pleased to think of it being put to good use, but…’

She held her breath as he silently appraised her plan.

‘Please say it will work!’ she burst out, and startled Sam, who could only laugh at Nellie’s resolve. He seemed to relax.

‘Well, I’d say it all depends on the quality of the workmanship, which of course will be of the very finest;
and…’
he went on before she could interrupt him, ‘the skill of the driver, which is the risky bit!’

‘Are you saying I can’t do it?’ Nellie bristled at the suggestion, even though she had her own doubts. Sam held his hands up in mock defence.

‘I’m not saying that, I’m just thinking you’ll need a bit more practice, you’ve only done it once!’

The plan had come to her, while thinking about her brothers’ truncated childhoods. One of their favourite street games, before matchbox-making took over their lives, had been to trundle around the cobbled streets on a box cart, made from an orange crate mounted on to old pram wheels. One would push and the other would sit in the crate, steering the thing with a piece of rope attached to the front wheels. It had struck her as an ideal sort of conveyance for the completed matchboxes, but she needed something bigger and faster. The butcher’s boy, making deliveries with a basket attached to his bicycle, had furnished the other part of the design she’d presented to Sam.

‘The trailer’s got to attach to the back of the penny-farthing, so that when you go round a corner, the box goes round too, something like this…’ he said, sketching in a curved bar, designed to attach the proposed trailer to the penny-farthing frame. ‘See, if we put in greased pins at each end of this bar, the crate should follow the bike wherever it turns!’

Nellie nodded. ‘That looks just the ticket. I’m not keen on coming a cropper with twelve gross of matchboxes on the back! I could practise this Sunday… that’s if you think you can make the cart by then?’

‘I’ll go down the docks tomorrow and sort out a nice deep crate, but it’s got to be light enough for you too.’

By this time, Jock had wandered over and was peering at the sketch on the table. He moved Sam’s pint out of the way, intrigued. ‘I reckon we’ve got an old crate just the right size at the shop,’ he offered. Jock worked at his father’s ship chandlers in Rotherhithe Street. ‘There’s all sorts of odd bits of iron in the back yard that might come in handy. Bring the bike in tomorrow, and I’ll help you if you like.’

Sam grinned at his friend. ‘Another pair of hands won’t come amiss, even a south paw’s like yours! The only problem is getting hold of two pram wheels… unless we could borrow some…’ Sam glanced towards the pub door, where sounds of Bobby and Freddie’s laughter drifted in from outside.

Nellie got his meaning straight away. ‘Well, I’ll have to promise we’ll give them back… one day! Besides, I’ve got the two of them so busy making boxes, they don’t have time to play carting any more.’ Her voice trailed off and her sadness made its impression on Sam.

‘Nell, they’re good boys,’ he said gently. ‘They understand everything’s changed now, playtime’s over.’

She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You must have felt the same when your dad died, Sam. Was it all down to you?’

He nodded. ‘Well, there was no one else could take on the kids and Mum’s been so ill since, so I just got on with it.’

She felt strangely strengthened, knowing that here was someone who knew exactly what she was going through. Sam had become the family breadwinner at an even earlier age; he had managed and, with his help, so would she.

That night as she fell wearily into bed, she found herself feeling more hopeful than she had for a long time. And her dreams were full of penny-farthing bicycles with wheels made from shiny shillings and silver sixpences.

The next day was Saturday. Sam and Nellie both worked in the morning and had agreed to meet at Wicks’s stables that afternoon. Nellie stood watch behind the lace curtain of her kitchen, waiting till she saw Wicks leave the stable yard. She made a face at him from her hiding place: it was childish but satisfying, and made her grin to herself. The old man often left Sam in the stables to finish feeding the horses; but it wouldn’t do to draw Wicks’s attention to the penny-farthing, still hidden there. Knowing him, he’d want to charge Sam rent on it!

Once Wicks was out of sight, she left her house and ran to the yard gates, a sack over her shoulder, containing the two pram wheels liberated from the boy’s box cart. Sam was waiting for her at the gates with the old penny-farthing.

‘How did you get on?’ He cast a conspiratorial glance towards Nellie’s house.

‘They weren’t too happy about it. Freddie says he wants a treat out of the home-work money, as he’s providing the wheels, cheeky little git!’

Sam laughed. ‘I don’t reckon he’s destined to stay poor all his life, do you, Nell?’

She smiled ruefully, handing over the sack to Sam. He tied it over his shoulder and mounted the penny-farthing.

‘I’ll bring it back tomorrow afternoon. Make sure you’re fighting fit – I’ll be putting you through your paces!’ With a wave, Sam was off, wheeling over the cobblestones with the sack bouncing on his back.

‘Good luck!’ Nellie called out to him, and hurried back to boil potatoes for dinner, before marshalling Alice and the boys for their afternoon’s work.

‘Oh, you’ve already done it, good girl!’ she said, smiling, as she walked in the front door.

In the kitchen, Alice was busy peeling potatoes and had already sliced the little bit of mutton they had been able to afford. The young girl had stepped into her role as Nellie’s helpmeet without complaint, but she seemed subdued today. ‘What’s the matter, love? You look worn out.’

Alice did not find the long hours of custard-powder packing easy, especially when it was her turn to load the trolleys – trundling the heavy carts of completed packages to the loading lifts had taken its toll on her back. Nellie had begged her to transfer over to the print shop, where all the Duff’s packaging was produced. As a bag maker, at least she’d be sitting down all day, but Alice had refused to be parted from her sister. She would stay on custard, however hard the work.

‘It’s not that I’m worn out, Nell. I don’t mind the work, it’s just I’m a bit worried.’

Nellie took the saucepan of potatoes from her sister and put it on the range to boil. ‘We’ll be all right, Al. We’re staying together and we’re stopping in this house, Wicks or no Wicks. I’m going to make bloody sure of that.’

Alice shook her head. ‘That’s you all over, Nell. I know you’ll do it, but what I’m worried about is you’ll kill yourself trying!’

Nellie was shocked. She hadn’t imagined the girl’s worries were about her. ‘What do you mean?’

Alice sat at the table, turning mournful eyes to her sister. ‘I mean that contraption! You can’t ride it up to London Bridge with all this stuff in it.’ She spread her arms to indicate the piles of matchboxes. ‘The first cart comes round the corner’ll tip you over and if the same thing happens to you as happened to Dad, what will we do then?’

Alice brushed away the tears trickling down her cheeks.

‘Oh, love, is that what you think?’ Nellie went to her side and put her arm round Alice’s shoulders. ‘Listen, I promise I’ll be careful, and Sam’s going to make me practise and practise, he says, before he’ll let me on the road.’

Alice looked up. ‘Is that what he said?’

Nellie nodded and Alice seemed satisfied. ‘That’s all right, then, you can trust Sam. He’ll look after you.’

Nellie had no doubt what her sister meant: if Ted had proved himself untrustworthy, then Sam was of a completely different breed. ‘You can trust Sam,’ she had said, and suddenly for Nellie the world turned. She looked down at her young sister, knowing she had spoken a truth that had been silently growing like a hidden wildflower between the cracks of her heart. Silently she mashed the potatoes, ladled them on to the plates and called the boys, listening to their chatter as they ate, but all the while with a litany echoing in her mind:
Sam will look after you
.

Her one concern had been to look after others for so long she had forgotten entirely that she might need looking after herself, and if she ever had admitted the possibility she’d dismissed it, in the certain knowledge that there
was
no one in her life who could look after her, not now. But Alice’s words had shown her how wrong that was. For months it had been Sam, quietly there when she needed someone the most. When Ted was putting her in utmost danger, Sam had been there to divert that danger from her path; when her father had been struck down, Sam’s steady presence by her side had made her feel she was not alone, and now here he was again, making sure she had exactly what she needed. It might only be an old bicycle and a box cart, but it was her means of keeping the family in one piece and it was as precious to her as any golden chariot. As she joined her family round their work table to begin the monotonous labour of assembling hundreds more matchboxes, finally, to her own astonishment, she believed it herself. She could trust Sam.