Threads of Silk (10 page)

She had dried her tears and got out her writing pad and pen, when it occurred to her that she wouldn’t be allowed to stay with Gran. The old people’s council flats were for single tenants only – if any of them needed looking after, they were transferred to the old people’s home. If only Gran were still in her little terraced house. But Gascoigne Terrace no longer existed and Ellie couldn’t even walk past the flattened ground where the new tower blocks were going up without feeling sad.

Her tears started again and she tried in vain to think of someone who would take her in – someone who could be trusted not to tell her father where she was. But there wasn’t anybody. Mum’s brother, Uncle Jack, had moved to Glasgow with his Scottish wife when he’d been demobbed after the war and they hardly heard from him these days. Where could she go? There was only Harry – the one person she knew she could rely on. Of course he’d take her in – but she couldn’t face the thought of seeing him with his wife. And it would be even worse when the baby came. She’d never be able to hide her feelings.

Still, she’d write to him. It would pass the time till her mother got back from the hospital.

She finished the letter and read it through, knowing she’d never send it. Once she’d started writing it had all come out – not just Gran’s illness, or her disillusionment with the job her father had forced her into. She also told him of her bitter disappointment at not being allowed to pursue her ambitions, and then, without really thinking, she’d poured out her true feelings, pleading with him to tell her he felt the same way, to admit that marrying Gerda was a mistake.

With a little sob, she screwed up the sheets of paper. She’d have to burn the letter. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to read it. In a strange way, though, she felt better. Spilling it all out had eased the pain – if only a little. Besides, she’d lived with hurt and disillusionment for most of her life – this was just one more thing to be buried in the recesses of her heart while she got on with her life.

As she started downstairs, she gave herself a firm telling-off for her selfishness. How could she have indulged in such a bout of self-pity when her dearly loved grandmother was lying in hospital seriously ill?

She shivered in her thin petticoat as a cold draught crept up the staircase and she wished she’d put a cardigan on. She would shove the letter into the range and make sure it was well alight, then she’d get to bed. She was exhausted and Mum had promised to wake her if there was any news.

A light showed under the kitchen door and Ellie held the letter behind her back as she pushed it open. Mum must be back from the hospital.

‘How’s Gran?’ The words were out before she realized it was her father, one hand supporting himself on the edge of the kitchen table, the other holding Mum’s note.

‘What’s this then – where’s your mother?’

‘Like it says – she’s gone to the hospital. Gran’s been taken ill,’ Ellie said. At least he hadn’t shouted at her for leaving the club early, she thought. But her relief was short-lived.

‘And what do yer think you were playin’ at – runnin’ off like that? Made me look a right Charlie.’

The words were spoken quietly and Ellie began to think he wasn’t too angry. ‘I didn’t feel well. It was so hot and I came over giddy. Didn’t the doorman tell you? I asked him to let you know,’ she said.

‘No one said a word to me. Felt a right fool, didn’t I, when Tommy asked where you were.’ He swayed and sat down abruptly in the armchair, his head nodding, his words trailing off into mumbling incoherence.

Ellie knew she should have seized the moment to leave the room, to get upstairs and put the chair under the door handle. But she still held the letter she’d written and she desperately wanted to get rid of it. What had possessed her to spill out all her thoughts like that in the first place?

She stepped quietly towards the kitchen range and Bert shifted in his chair.

‘What you up to?’ he muttered.

‘Making you a cup of tea, Dad.’

She lifted the round hotplate and poked the fire, glancing quickly at her father. He appeared to be dozing. But as she reached across to thrust the sheets of paper into the glowing embers, his hand shot out and grasped her wrist.

‘What’s this then?’ he snatched the letter from her and several of the sheets drifted to the floor. ‘Dear Harry – what yer writin’ ter ’im for? It’s a waste of time – never was any good and now he’s got himself shacked up with a bleedin’ Kraut.’

Bert’s grip on her wrist was painful and Ellie tried to pull away. She reached out for the letter. ‘I was only telling him about Gran being ill,’ she said.

‘Then why were yer puttin’ it in the fire?’

‘I made too many mistakes. I’ve written it all out again in my best writing,’ she told him, hoping desperately he’d believe her. Besides, he was too fuddled with drink to be able to read what she’d written – wasn’t he?

He pulled her closer, tightening his grip, and with the other hand held one of the pages up to the light. A short mirthless laugh escaped him. ‘So that’s the way the wind blows is it? I might’ve known. You was always moonin’ round ’im like a little puppy dog.’ He shook her roughly. ‘Yer a little tart – just like that sister of yours.’

Ellie whimpered as he threw the letter down and grasped her shoulder. His eyes raked her figure and she shivered, suddenly aware that she was dressed only in the thin satin slip.

‘Yes, you deserve everything that ’appens to yer,’ Bert said, throwing her down on the floor and straddling her body. This time she didn’t try to fight him off. She just turned her head to the side, slow tears squeezing past her closed eyelids. With each thrust into her bruised body, he muttered, ‘Bitch, tart. Bet yer wish it was ’im doin’ this, don’t yer?’

When it was over he didn’t let her go. ‘Well, now I know what you really are, there’ll be no more of this “No, please Daddy”. You’ve bin after ’im all along, aven’t yer? Darlin’ ’Arry, the blue-eyed boy.’ He stood up and fastened his trousers, then bent and picked up the sheets of writing paper that were scattered across the floor. He waved them in Ellie’s face and she flinched. ‘Wouldn’t do fer yer mother to hear about this, would it?’

And Ellie knew he wasn’t just referring to the letter.

‘Hurry up, Helen – there’s the sandwiches to do yet.’

‘Half a sec, Trevor. I can’t do everything at once,’ Ellie replied, coming through from the kitchen and wiping her hands on the front of her blue nylon overall.

‘Sorry, love. Didn’t mean to snap. But Norah’s not turned up yet and there’s three lorries parked outside waiting for us to open.’

Trevor put the tray of sizzling sausages and bacon on the hotplate to keep warm. He’d already fried a huge stack of bread and was now cutting tomatoes in half to go in the pan. The lorry drivers who plied the busy main road between Colchester and London were well-known for their love of the traditional English fried breakfast.

Ellie glanced at the tables to make sure each had its complement of cutlery, salt and pepper, tomato ketchup, brown sauce and mustard. The sugar-shakers were newly filled and there was a brightly coloured metal ashtray in the centre of each red-checked tablecloth. In the grey dawn of a chilly March morning the long room looked warm and welcoming. She went to the front door, pulled back the bolts and put up the snib on the Yale lock.

Almost before she was back behind the counter, the café seemed full of men, young and old, tall and short, fat and thin. They brought with them a blast of cold air and a feeling that life still went on in the outside world. Since starting work for Trevor, Ellie had hardly left the sanctuary of the busy transport café, except to take Rex for a walk across the fields that stretched flatly into the distance behind the long low building. She’d been nervous of the big Alsatian at first, but in the months since she’d started work at Trev’s she’d come to love the fierce-looking dog. He was more likely to lick her to death than to bite. Luckily, though, their more stroppy customers didn’t realize that, she thought with a smile.

As she dashed about, slapping plates of greasy fried food in front of the customers, she responded to their cheeky banter with a smile. Although her recent experiences had left her wary of men, she knew that most of them meant no harm by their teasing jokes. But there were one or two she instinctively mistrusted, something in the way they looked at her, and she always made sure Rex was near by when she went outside.

She was glad of the loose blue overall, which had belonged to Trevor’s buxom ex-wife and did nothing at all for Ellie’s slimmer figure. Her hair was scraped back from her face and secured with an elastic band and she never wore make-up. The shame and degradation she’d felt on that dreadful night, the conviction that she had somehow been to blame, had made her determined not to call attention to herself.

Over the months she’d started to regain her confidence but it was hard to put up with the occasional wandering hands of the customers. She was getting a bit fed up with it – not to mention the long hours on her feet. She didn’t mind being behind the counter, dispensing tea into the thick china mugs and cutting sandwiches for the men to take with them on the next leg of their journey – even the endless washing-up in the kitchen out the back. But each day it was becoming harder to handle these rough men with their sly grins and hot eyes.

Maybe she was being silly, judging them all in the light of her experiences. They couldn’t all be bad. Trevor, for instance, had been kindness itself and had never put a foot wrong. She glanced at him as she filled the mugs with the thick black brew that passed for tea. His face was redder than ever and a thin film of sweat gleamed on his bald forehead. He slapped another slice of bacon on to the plate he was holding and took it across to the table by the door.

When he came back he leaned against the edge of the counter and sighed. ‘Rush seems to be over – for the minute. Let’s have a cuppa, shall we?’

Ellie poured out two cups of the strong brew, putting a generous heap of sugar into Trevor’s. As she handed it to him, he smiled at her. ‘You’re a good little worker, Helen. Don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t come along when you did. Lady Luck must’ve been smiling on me that day.’

‘I’m the lucky one, Trevor. What would’ve happened to me if you hadn’t taken me in?’

He looked at her sternly. ‘You’d probably have gone back to your family – like I keep telling you to. They must be worried sick about you. Not that I want to lose you, mind. But I still think you should let them know you’re OK.’

‘They don’t care about me.’ By now, Ellie had almost convinced herself it was true. ‘Besides I told you – I sent a card at Christmas.’ She put her mug down and picked up a tray. ‘I’d better start clearing these tables.’

‘Hey, Scotty, let’s have another cup of tea,’ one of the men called out.

‘Here, less of your cheek – the girl’s name is Helen,’ Trevor said sharply.

‘I don’t mind, Trev,’ Ellie said quickly. She still found it hard to respond to ‘Helen’, let alone the nickname the lorry drivers had given her. But it was too late now to tell anyone her name wasn’t Helen Scott. Besides, Ellen Tyler no longer existed.

Ellie could scarcely remember the events which had led to her banging on the door of Trevor’s Transport Café or how she had ended up trudging along the busy A12. She could only recall her desperation to get away from the flat in Kendall Street – to leave everything that reminded her of her childhood – even if it meant leaving the East End she knew and loved.

She had stumbled up to her room, leaving Bert glaring after her, his face contorted with hatred. What had she ever done to make him look at her like that? What had made him call her ‘bitch’ instead of ‘Angel’? She didn’t understand but she knew she couldn’t stand it any longer.

Once in the sanctuary of her room, it would have been so easy to fall on the bed, pull the eiderdown over her head and give way to tears of despair. But with grim determination she began to stuff things into her old school gym bag – none of the posh clothes bought with Tommy Green’s money, though. Just a change of underclothes, a couple of her old school blouses, a jumper and skirt. After a brief hesitation she reached up to the top of the wardrobe for the box containing her paints, the brushes, pencils, charcoal and the remains of a sketch pad. She packed them carefully into the leather school satchel, now shapeless and battered from constant use. Silly really, but she couldn’t bring herself to leave them behind. Also in the satchel was her post office savings book – the money that had been destined to help her through college – and her purse containing the few shillings she’d earned running errands for Sid.

The crumpled photo of Harry was there too. When she’d finished packing, she’d screwed it up and thrown it into the corner of the room. She wanted no reminders of the past. But at the last moment she’d run back and snatched it up, smoothing it out and tucking it into the savings book.

With no clear idea of where she was going, she ran round the corner into Roman Road, past the deserted market stalls, shrouded in fog, through narrow streets and desolate islands of rubble or towering concrete. The grimy brick façade of the hospital loomed up out of the mist and she paused. How could she have forgotten about Gran?

They probably wouldn’t let her in. But she’d try to see her grandmother before she left London for good. She pushed through the main door and wandered along a corridor. Her footsteps echoed and she looked round nervously. But no one was there. She didn’t need to ask the way. Her mum had worked here for years and she had often called to meet her from work. She guessed which ward her grandmother was in. and hoped to sneak in and see her without anyone knowing.

She climbed a flight of stairs and, hearing footsteps, she dodged back out of sight, peering round the corner. Her mother and Auntie Vi were talking to a tall man in a white coat. Ellie couldn’t hear what he was saying but when Auntie Vi burst into noisy tears and her mother began to sob too, she knew what had happened.

Gran couldn’t be dead. But Ellie knew it was true. There was no point in staying. With tears streaming down her face, she ran out of the hospital and along the sleeping streets, coughing as the fog caught in her throat.

Almost without realizing it, she found herself at Bethnal Green station. She sat down on one of the wooden benches in the booking hall. The ticket windows were closed, the platform deserted. She took a shuddering breath and dried her eyes. Although she’d been determined to run away, she’d gone to the hospital in one last desperate bid to avoid taking such a drastic step. Surely Gran would have helped her? But now it was too late.

A train pulled in, filling the station with smoke and steam. It stayed there for a few minutes, the engine hissing softly. There was still no one about, and almost without thinking Ellie went on to the platform, opened the door nearest her and got into one of the carriages. She didn’t care where the train was going – she just had to get away.

She looked out of the window as the train picked up speed, realizing that the fog was clearing and it was starting to get light. She’d been up all night. Leaning back with a sigh, she closed her eyes and within a few minutes, the rhythm of the train had lulled her into a deep sleep.

The train stopped a couple of times, but still she didn’t stir. The piercing shriek of the whistle and the whooshing sound of another train passing jerked her out of her troubled dreams. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, gasping as she saw the green fields and trees rushing past. Where on earth was she?

The train slowed, rounded a bend and pulled into the station. Ellie peered out, looking for the station sign. Chelmsford – how did she get here? She got off the train and stood for a minute looking around her. The platform was crowded, men in suits carrying briefcases, girls in smart two-piece costumes, workmen in dungarees. They all had somewhere to go, Ellie thought, a sob catching in her throat.

She went into the ladies’ cloakroom, feeling grubby and unkempt. As she splashed her face with cold water and combed her hair, she tried to work out what to do. She didn’t know anyone here but there was no one in London who’d help her either. She couldn’t go back. She’d just have to find a place of her own. She had enough money to tide her over till she could get a job – she’d have to draw some out of the post office and then set about finding lodgings.

Outside the station she looked up and down the busy road, trying to decide which way to go. The railway station seemed to be some distance from the town centre.

After walking for what seemed to be a long time she realized she’d made the wrong decision. The houses had petered out, giving way to a group of small factories and workshops. She should have gone the other way.

She sat down at the edge of the road, shivering as the cold of the damp and misty autumn day seeped through her clothes. Her feet were hurting and she took off her shoes, massaging her toes. Last night’s blisters had burst and her stockings were stuck to her feet. She’d have to draw some money out of the post office to buy new stockings and some plasters. That was if she could find a post office.

As she turned to retrace her steps, her brain fogged with exhaustion, she almost missed the sign:
Best Breakfast this side of London – stop at Trev’s Transport Café.

It was probably too late for breakfast but at least she could get a cup of tea.

The potholed gravel in front of the long, low building was empty as Ellie stumbled towards the café. Trev’s breakfast can’t be that great if none of the lorries stop here, she thought. But at that moment she didn’t really care. It wasn’t until she reached the door that she saw the closed sign. She bit her lip in dismay – surely these places stayed open all day and most of the night?

She peered through the windows. But there was no sign of life. What should she do now – carry on walking or wait for the café to open?

The decision was made for her when her legs started to tremble and she knew that if she didn’t sit down, she’d pass out. The events of the previous night had at last caught up with her.

She sat on an empty lemonade crate and leaned her head against the wooden fence which enclosed a small yard to the side of the building. She was sheltered from the keen East Anglian wind here. At least it wasn’t raining and her feet didn’t hurt so much.

She’d almost dozed off when she felt a warm tongue on her cheek. She leapt up in alarm, backing away from the huge Alsatian.

‘Well, what do we have here?’ A big man with a shiny red face and thinning black hair was looking down at her. ‘Down, Rex.’ He pulled the dog away from her. ‘He won’t hurt you. He’s a big softie really.’ He bent to stroke the animal, giving a deep chuckle which shook his meaty frame.

Ellie reached out and tentatively ruffled the dog’s fur, smiling when he licked her hand. The man reminded her a bit of Sid – maybe that was why she decided to trust him.

When he asked what she was doing so far from town, she said, ‘I was hoping to get a cup of tea. But the café’s closed.’

‘Well, I’ll open up – just for you,’ the man said, laughing at her expression. ‘I’m Trev – Trevor Ridley at your service.’ He gave a mock bow, took a key from his trouser pocket and unlocked the gate at the side of the café.

‘Come on through,’ he said. ‘I’m not due to open for an hour or so yet. But you look dead beat. You can tell me what you’re doing out here on your own while I put the kettle on.’

She hadn’t told him the whole story of course – just a little white lie about her Gran having died and that she was on her way to stay with her sister. He’d given her a stern lecture on the dangers of hitch-hiking and, when she’d mentioned needing a job, had offered to take her on temporarily until she found something better. Norah only worked
part-time
and he was desperate for another pair of hands.

Six months later, she was still here. She picked up a tray and went to clear the tables. The door banged open, bringing in a blast of cold March wind. The men sitting near the door grumbled as usual, but their moans turned to laughter as a thin little woman in a plastic mac and brightly printed headscarf stamped in, swearing. ‘Bloody bike – got a puncture, didn’t I? Had to walk to work, didn’t I?’