Seventeen
‘You awright, Jess?’
Evie peered at her in the gloomy passage at Blake’s, when the two of them were clocking off. She stood back a moment as a large woman pushed past her.
‘Blimey – mown over in the rush! Only you’re looking down in the mouth today, and I thought . . . Well what’s so funny?’
Jess leaned against the wall, laughing weakly. Down in the mouth! That was one way of putting it! The most endless, miserable day she could remember: pregnant, sick, unmarried, thrown out of home and nowhere to sleep. And worst, by far the worst, Ned’s letter. She felt as if her heart was taking up the whole of her body: she was one grieving, aching agony.
Yes, I’m down in the mouth awright! she thought. The only place left for me’s the canal! Her laughter became hysterical, tears rolling down her face.
‘What’s up with ’er?’
She felt harsh slaps, first on one cheek, then the other, and abruptly her laughter stopped. Three women, Evie and two others, gathered round her, staring.
‘Eh, Jess—’ Evie’s arm slid round her shoulders. ‘This ain’t like you.’
‘I’ll be awright.’ She kept her head down, wasn’t going to talk in front of the other two.
When she and Evie were alone outside, she said, ‘Oh
Evie – I ’ad such an argument with Auntie, and she’s turned me out. I’ve nowhere to go and I don’t know what to do!’
‘Oh my word – can’t yer go and make it up with ’er? It can’t be over much, can it?’
‘She won’t ’ave me back. She says she never wants to see me again. I . . . I . . .’ She was on the brink of telling Evie the truth, but she couldn’t. She was far too ashamed. It sounded so bad – her and a married man doing what no girl was supposed to do until she was wed! What had seemed so right when she was with Ned would look disgusting and wrong to everyone else. Evie would never speak to her again.
‘Look – come on over to ours. Our mom’ll put yer up ’til yer get yerself sorted out.’
Jess seized on this with hope for a moment. She’d visited Evie’s family a couple of times over the summer and found them warm and friendly. It’d be so nice to accept, to be able to go and rest somewhere where there would be a welcoming face or two. But she quickly dismissed the thought. Evie’s mom, Mrs Cotter, was no fool, and their place was so crowded. With her sick as a dog every morning, Evie’s mom’d soon guess what was amiss and Jess couldn’t bear Mrs Cotter to know her shame.
‘That’s nice of yer, Evie – but I’m going to look for lodgings. I’ve got to get somewhere so I might as well start now.’ Jess wiped her eyes on her stiff serge coat sleeve. ‘I’ll let yer know ’ow I get on tomorrow.’
Evie looked doubtful. ‘I’d come with yer, only I said to Mom I’d shop for ’er – look, if yer don’t ’ave any luck, yer know where we are.’ She squeezed Jess’s hand. ‘Yer shouldn’t ’ave a problem round ’ere. Lots of folk in need of a few bob, and you looking so respectable!’
Carrying her bundle, Jess walked out of the Jewellery Quarter feeling sick and exhausted. On the way she passed Albion Street, and hovered for a few moments outside the fire station. Seeing the place set her off crying uncontrollably. How could he have written to her as he did? She felt destroyed by his words.
Just two weeks ago she’d gone to watch him march with the other lads, all soldiers now. Ned was in the Second City Battalion, the 15th Service Battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment. The three City Battalions were made up primarily of the more educated young men of the city: office workers, accountants, librarians, and Ned had said he felt like one of the nobs! The lads were given a grand send-off with church services, parades, and Jess waited among the crowd along the road to watch them march from the General Hospital to Edgbaston Park, their Commanding Officer on a fine dappled grey horse. Everyone cheered and shouted, their breath white on the air. Jess had stood on tip-toe, straining to catch a glimpse of him as the body of men streamed past, still dressed in civilian clothes and singing a new song, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’. He passed quite close to her and she called out to him, saw him look round, just catching sight of her as she blew him a kiss.
She sobbed bitterly at the memory, there in the dark, head pressed against the rough side of the building. She felt as if her life was over. There was no hope in anything. Nothing but trouble, fear and shame.
Come back to me, she found herself begging. Please, Ned. She wanted rescue and shelter from being abandoned and alone. But of course he wasn’t there: he had no idea of the state she was in and now he didn’t want to know either. She was alone, and alone was how she would have to cope. Scarcely knowing where she was going, tears half blinding her, she walked on.
She had decided to look for lodgings on this side of town, because it was nearer work – and nearer, somehow, to him. His place. His area of town. Polly had slipped her ten shillings to help her out. Jess tried to argue: she knew the money was from Polly’s savings for her life with Ernie.
‘Take it – don’t be so daft. It’s now we need to worry about. The future’ll come when it comes.’ She told Jess to let her know as soon as she’d found somewhere. Polly’d be over to see her, whatever Olive thought.
She walked out along the Dudley Road. On one side there were houses, and she kept peering at their dingy windows in the poor light to see if any of them had ‘Room To Let’ signs up. Across the road were high walls, and when she came opposite the gates she saw it was the Workhouse, a huge building which seemed to loom towards her in the dark. Jess felt the hairs on her skin stand up and a shudder went through her. If she wasn’t careful she might end up in there! Fallen girls went in there and sometimes never came out! What made her different from any of them in anyone else’s eyes? And even if she wasn’t thrown into the Workhouse, what in heaven was she going to do after the babby was born? She certainly couldn’t hide it then. All the problems she faced swirled in her head like a leaf storm until she was rigid with panic.
She gripped her bundle tighter. Just think about today, she told herself.
Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof
. Sarah used to say that.
Sufficient unto the day
. . .
She turned back. I ain’t looking for lodgings facing over the Workhouse, she thought. Along a side street men were coming out into the slate-grey evening from the factories, a rolling mills, a varnish and colour works. The road crossed over the canal. Jess stopped and looked down at the sludgy line of it. It appeared solid, more like dull stone than water.
How many girls like me have ended up in there? She started to imagine it: turning off the road down that path there, under the bridge, all dark and echoing. Feeling the water first over her boots, fitting close, like freezing stockings sliding up her legs, then her waist, neck . . . Lying down in it, taking it into her and everything would be black, and there would never be anything else but black, and nothing more of her. She found she had been holding her breath and took in a gasp of air as if she really were drowning and hurried over the bridge. No – not that. Not while she had strength and Ned was somewhere in the world. She had to try and survive.
Further on were houses, close-packed little terraces. She knocked at the first one with a sign in the window, where a man appeared, snarled, ‘It’s already taken,’ and slammed the door shut again. In the window of an end terrace squeezed in beside a chapel, she could just make out a card in neat, but shaky writing. ‘Room to Let. Single Person. Female Pref.’
She waited such an age after knocking that she was about to move on, but then the door opened a crack. Peering at her was a thin face, wrinkled as an old paper bag, with long white hair straggling down either side. Jess could tell there was a candle burning in the hall behind. A frowsty smell seeped out.
‘Yes?’
‘I saw the sign,’ Jess said fearfully to this witch-like creature. ‘I’m looking for a room to rent.’
The door opened further, and Jess saw that the old lady was supporting herself on a crutch. Her left leg hung, severed off at the ankle, a useless stump with a sock on the end of it. She looked Jess up and down.
‘Well, it’s not much, I’m afraid.’ Her voice was soft, surprisingly well spoken and polite, with a trace of Black Country. ‘I can’t get about very easily, you see, to keep the place as it should be. But if you’d like to go up and see . . .’
She lurched backwards to let Jess in. ‘Have you work round here?’
‘Blake’s,’ Jess was tearful with relief at being treated at least kindly. ‘In the Jewellery Quarter.’
‘Ah yes. Not far. Well look, dear – take this candle. I shan’t come up – takes me too long. My bedroom is at the front – left at the top. If you turn right you’ll see it. It hasn’t been used for a few months since my last lodger left.’
The lady stood watching as Jess climbed the stairs. A thin runner of green carpet covered the middle of the staircase which creaked loudly at each step. The paper in the stairwell was hanging off the walls and the place smelled of damp and mildew. In the spare room, Jess saw a bare floor, uncurtained windows, an iron bedstead and a wooden chair. The walls were painted white and though it was icy cold and cheerless, it was not unpleasant.
This’d do, Jess thought. And the lady seems kind enough.
She went back down into the front room, which was also sparsely furnished with a table, two wooden chairs, and a small, glass-fronted cupboard. Apart from that was only a little blue and green rug by the unlit grate, and some faded pink curtains. But the old lady, despite her ragged grey frock which hung limp and shapeless on her, and her obvious poverty, had an air of gentility about her which made Jess feel both shy and respectful.
‘How much is the rent?’
‘Five shillings a week.’ She said this with some awkwardness, as if it pained her to talk about money. ‘With an evening meal. But not tonight, I’m afraid.’
‘I’ll take it then.’ Jess handed her a week’s rent in advance.
‘Thank you.’ The gnarled hand closed over the money with a slow dignity. ‘Now we had better know each other’s names.’
Jess hesitated. ‘Jess. Jessica Green,’ she said. ‘My husband and me we’re – well, hanging on ’til we can afford a proper place like. ’E’s joined up, you see, doing ’is bit – ’e’s away at the training camp.’
‘I see.’ The woman’s pale eyes stared back at her. Jess sensed she didn’t believe her. There was a kind, homely look to her wizened face, Jess saw. It was her hair made her look like a madwoman.
‘Pleased to make your acquaintance,’ she said grandly. ‘My name is Miss Iris Whitman.’
Once she had taken her things up and unpacked them, Jess was almost fainting with hunger. She found Iris Whitman sitting in her back room, which was as bare and chill as the front.
‘I’m going out to get some chips,’ Jess told her. Even if she hadn’t been hungry she’d have had to get out. The thought of sitting in that freezing room all evening, when she was a bag of nerves, was terrible. ‘D’you want me to bring yer anything back?’
Iris’s face brightened. ‘Yes, a penn’orth of chips would be very nice, dear.’
Iris told her the nearest place to buy chips, and when she came back, her newspaper parcels smelling of hot vinegar, Iris said, ‘Perhaps you’d like to stay down and eat them with me, dear?’
The back room was barely warmer than it had been outside. Not a spark of light or warmth came from the range. Jess was longing for a cup of tea, but it was obvious there wouldn’t be any on offer. Miss Whitman sat on her hard chair huddled in a shawl which draped her sufficiently to hide her bad leg. Jess wondered whether she was unable to get down and see to the range.
‘Would you like me to build a fire?’ she asked timidly.
‘I would,’ the woman said, in her measured way, ‘if I had anything to build it with.’
‘Oh.’ Jess had not met anyone so poor before that they didn’t even have a few handfuls of slack to burn. ‘Well maybe tomorrow . . .?’
‘Yes.’ The lady smiled suddenly. ‘Things will look up tomorrow, dear. You’ll see. They have a way of doing that.’
Jess suddenly had the oddest feeling that Miss Whitman knew all about her, could see into what she was feeling. But there was no nosiness, no sense of judgement. She asked no questions, but ate her chips, delicately from the newspaper as the smell of them filled the room and warmed both of them.
‘If you look in the bottom drawer there, you’ll find a little bedding.’ Miss Whitman pointed at a battered chest of drawers. ‘I’m afraid it’s not aired.’
How could it be, Jess thought, in this dank room?
‘Not to worry.’ She was relieved just at the thought of lying down, never mind aired sheets. But she was grateful to Miss Whitman for the company, for distracting her from her own misery.
She found two sheets and a blanket in the drawer. Turning, she dared to ask,
‘Miss Whitman, don’t you have no one to ’elp yer – get coal and food and that?’
‘Oh yes – there’s Miss Davitt from next door—’ Iris nodded in the direction of the chapel. ‘They’re very good people. But I believe she’s ill this week. I haven’t seen her. And I haven’t been any too well myself. Things aren’t usually quite so cheerless as you see today.’
Jess was relieved to hear it. ‘I was thinking – I could fetch in coal and some groceries on my way back from work tomorrow if yer like.’
