Charity (2 page)

Charity hadn’t even known there was a name for it until just recently. She’d heard the rude ones in the school playground, but not the real one.

She was looking up the word ‘incessant’ in the dictionary when she stumbled upon it: ‘incest’. Sexual intercourse between persons related within prohibited degrees.

Being able to put a name to it didn’t really help. It just made her dark secret even more shameful. She was certain her mother knew, or at least suspected. If Mother let it happen, how could Charity expect anyone else to help, or even believe her?

It tainted everything, like an incurable disease. Father had come to her the first time just after baby Jacob died four years ago. It had hurt so terribly she’d cried for days, but everyone assumed she was just upset about Jacob dying. It had stopped for a while until James was born but then started again soon after. Now she was sure nothing would stop it.

She could bear the funny handmade dresses mother insisted on her and Prudence wearing. She accepted the endless prayers, church and chores and even lack of freedom, but Father made her feel so dirty inside, nothing could wash it away.

In a few weeks’ time, at Easter, she was due to leave school. To any other girl this might mean a chance to escape. But Charity was more than just the eldest child. She was nursemaid, cook, cleaner and housekeeper. She could turn her back easily on her parents, but not on Prudence, Tobias and James. If she left who would love them? Would her father turn his attentions to Prudence?

‘Come on!’ A sharp tap on the window from her mother brought her back to reality. There was no escape, not from Father, nor Mother, or the chores.

Back in the kitchen Charity sat down and took James on to her lap, smiling at his round pink and white baby face, despite her misery.

‘Me come wif you?’ he said, holding her face between his two plump starfish hands.

‘Can he, Mother?’ Charity asked, pulling on his pants and threading his legs into knitted trousers.

‘If you put his snow-suit on,’ Gwen snapped. She was stuffing towels and sheets into a pillowcase with the kind of speed which suggested she was anxious to get all the children out of the house. ‘Mind you take Father’s surplices out of the dryer when they’re still damp. And don’t go losing any socks.’

Almost the moment Charity bumped the pram down the two front steps into the street, her spirits rose slightly. For a couple of hours she was free of her mother’s carping, weak March sunshine was melting the thick frost and although there was nothing beautiful to look at on the way to the public baths down by the Blackwall tunnel, she had James to give her some comfort.

‘Me walk,’ James said in a high-pitched squeak of excitement, stretching up to hold the handle of the pram. ‘We go see boats?’

‘Not now.’ Charity smiled down at her little brother, feeling a surge of love for him. ‘Maybe after dinner, if you’re a good boy.’

For all the bad things in her life, Charity loved her brothers and sister with a consuming passion. She hadn’t been allowed to have a childhood herself. At five, when Prudence was born, she was expected to fetch and carry; when Tobias arrived a year later she was already an accomplished nursemaid.

She had never owned a doll – never needed one as these children had been living, breathing ones. Each one of them had been born in the house, put into her arms just minutes after their deliveries. It was she who tucked them into bed and told them stories; she had spoon-fed them, changed their nappies, walked them in the pram. Father had never encouraged outside friendships, so she had turned in on her family and as shame isolated her further from girls of her own age, her devotion to the children had grown.

It was a long walk to the baths, skirting through dismal back streets much like her own and and James was tired of walking long before they got there. Charity sat him between the two bags of washing, smiling as he attempted to sing baby songs for her entertainment. As they crossed the road to enter the old soot-ingrained building, Mrs Bayliss and her daughter Jenny stopped by the steps to wait for them.

‘Hullo ducks.’ Mrs Bayliss beamed a welcome. ‘Let’s take one of them pillers. ‘Ow’s yer ma?’

‘About the same.’ Charity smiled shyly. She liked Mrs Bayliss, she was fat, fifty and what her mother called ‘common’ with peroxided hair set on curlers under a headscarf, but she was kindly.

‘Your dad ought to try and move you. That Easton Street’s too near the river. Enough to make anyone’s chest bad.’ Mrs Bayliss clucked in sympathy. ‘And all you kids to look after too!’

Charity didn’t comment. There was nothing wrong with her mother’s chest, but this and ‘nerves’ were the common diagnosis of Gwen Stratton’s problems.

She put the brake on the pram, passed one pillowcase to the woman, then grabbing James under one arm, hoisted out the other bag.

‘How are you two?’

‘Fine, ducks.’ Mrs Bayliss caught the heavy door opened by her daughter with her ample rump, making room for Charity to sweep through. ‘Be better still once we’ve got this lot clean and ’eard a bit of gossip.’

The damp heat hit them like walking into a steam room.

‘Grab those three machines,’ Mrs Bayliss ordered her daughter. She turned to Charity and tickled James’s chin affectionately. ‘We’ll share one for our whites, ducks. Give us yer money and I’ll pay.’

Charity felt a flush of unaccustomed pride. It showed your status at the baths if someone offered to share a machine. Of all the things Charity could charge her parents with, lack of hygiene wasn’t one of them. Their sheets and towels might be threadbare, but they were snowy white. Father’s shirts and surplices wouldn’t have shamed an archbishop.

Twenty huge washing machines with stainless steel lids took up the central position. On the far wall were as many vast dryers, filling the air with roaring, sloshing and tumbling sounds, belching out heat and steam. To the right was a row of sinks where women scrubbed collars or washed woollens; on the left an area for ironing, with boards, and roller machines for sheets.

The steamy air was enough to flatten a ‘beehive’ or turn straight hair like Charity’s kinky in seconds. Winter-white arms bared, faces glistening with sweet from the intense heat and the rich sound of raucous laughter gave the room a party atmosphere.

A place where fifty or so women displayed their dirty washing openly was bound to make them more gregarious. Stains were discussed in detail, and the events that had led up to them. Nothing was too personal. Whether it was blood from a fight, soiled linen from an incontinent parent or child, or even the aftermath of childbirth, it was aired in public.

‘He thinks I’m bloody stupid.’ One woman waved a shirt with a bright red lipstick mark on the collar. ‘He tried to tell me I done that! I tell you next time ’e goes down that club I’ll follow ’im and if I catches ’im with that cow, I’ll split ’her ’ead right open.’

Charity had learned a great deal about the rich tapestry of women’s lives just by listening to conversations in here. She learned about unfaithful husbands, domestic violence, miscarriages, childbirth and sex. Though the conflicting items she heard about the latter often puzzled her.

Were women supposed to like it, or hate it? It was hard to tell. One moment they spoke tenderly, at other times it was with spite and anger. Stories ranged from funny to crude, but now and again were poignantly romantic.

But of all the things that caused her fright and alarm, that expression ‘up the spout’ was the one which played on her mind. She learned that the first symptom of pregnancy was ‘being late’. As Charity hadn’t even started her periods perhaps she didn’t need to be anxious about this. But it niggled at her like a sore tooth.

Her lack of breasts worried her too. Jenny Bayliss was only a year older and she’d had big ones since she was thirteen. Was she a freak? Was her thin, flat, boyish shape somehow connected to what her father did? Suppose even now she had a baby growing inside her, some hideously deformed creature that would one day pop out and prove to the world how badly she had sinned?

Once the machines were filled, the soap powder added, Charity took off James’s snow-suit and sat down with him on her lap. Muriel Jenkins was in today and she watched as the slender blonde ironed miles of net can-can petticoats.

Like most of the women Muriel had her hair in curlers, a chiffon scarf over them, but she didn’t subscribe to the common uniform of crossover pinny and down-at-heel shoes. She took part in ballroom dancing competitions and even when she came in here to wash, she was always dressed to kill. Today she wore a red wool sheath dress and matching stilettos, and her eyebrows were a thin pencilled line of astonishment. She did her ironing with a cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, yet could carry on a conversation at the same time.

Muriel fascinated Charity more than any of the other women. She was glamorous, outspoken and very funny. Although she was married to a man called Brian, she went dancing with other men. Today she was telling a tale about a partner whose zip broke as they were doing the quickstep.

‘“Hold me tighter,” he says to me,’ she mimicked the man, moving back from her ironing board to show the stance with an invisible partner. ‘He says, “Me zip’s gone Mew. Press closer or someone will see.” I says “If I press closer there’ll be more things going up than the score”.’

Charity never knew quite how to react to these adult conversations. Should she laugh knowingly as the other women did? Or pretend not to understand?

She had been coming here with the washing since she was nine. It was the only place she felt comfortable in, because she was accepted. The women admired her blonde hair and told her that one day she’d be a beauty. They teased her because she spoke ‘proper’; but they showed admiration for the way she cared for her little brothers and sister.

‘Get yourself a job in an office,’ Muriel had said once. ‘Work hard and save your money and you’ll soon be able to move into a flat of your own. Stop worrying about them kids, that’s yer ma’s job. Before you can say Jack Robinson some chap will be asking you to marry him.’

Muriel’s words were kindly meant, but Charity knew she had no skills to get an office job. Neither would she be able to save her pay, as Mother would take it all. As for the hope that a man might ask to marry her, the very thought made her feel quite sick.

It was just before one when Charity loaded up the pram to go home. James made no protest now about riding between the bags of warm, dry washing and the afternoon ahead was something to look forward to. On wet Saturdays Charity often took the children into the Maritime Museum. Prudence liked to see Nelson’s uniform, Tobias, the model boats. But as it was dry and sunny, today she might be able to take them up to Greenwich Park.

As Charity bumped the pram backwards up the steps into the hall, almost immediately she sensed something was wrong.

Tobias and Prudence were sitting glumly at the already laid table, Mother stirring the stew at the stove.

‘Mrs Bayliss shared a machine with me.’ Charity put the two shillings down on the table, looking enquiringly at the two younger children.

Her mother merely turned and scooped up the change. No look of appreciation, not even a glimmer of a smile.

‘Call Father, dinner’s ready,’ she said tartly. ‘And I hope you left his shirts damp?’

Tobias rolled his eyes fearfully at Charity as Father strode into the kitchen.

Bertram Stratton was a big man, but in the small and crowded room he looked huge, his dominant personality overshadowing them all.

A broad nose, fleshy lips and square, strong chin made him miss being handsome by a hair’s breadth, but the effect was spoilt by an overlarge forehead and small blue eyes under thick eyebrows. Darker blond hair than his children, weatherbeaten skin from hours spent out in the streets and the width of his shoulders sat uneasily with his dog collar.

Father beckoned for the children to stand for grace. He stretched out his arms, bringing his hands together slowly, fingertips just touching.

‘We thank you God for these gifts you have set at our table. Amen.’

Chairs scraped on the lino as they were pulled out again to sit. Charity noted the way Prudence and Tobias were squirming nervously and wondered what they’d done.

Mother ladled out the stew into bowls, Charity hurriedly tied a bib round James’s neck, sitting him on a cushion on the chair next to her.

Father lifted his spoon to his mouth, sipped and smiled. ‘This is excellent, Mother,’ he pronounced sanctimoniously.

Mother lifted her eyes from her own plate.

‘I suspect Prudence and Tobias have stolen from me this morning,’ she said, her tone almost malicious. ‘There has been an alteration on the shopping list.’

Charity’s heart sank. She began eating fast, guessing she would be drawn into this before long and she wanted to finish her dinner before that happened.

‘Explain!’ Father looked hard at Tobias and Prudence sitting side by side, then back to his wife.

‘Eightpence has been added to the final sum,’ she said, her mouth pursing as if sucking lemons.

Charity kept her eyes down. Sweets were forbidden in the Stratton household. It was an odd coincidence that eightpence would buy each child a quarter!

‘Prudence! Your explanation please.’ Father rapped her over the knuckles with his knife.

‘Mrs Moore must’ve made a mistake.’ Prudence’s voice shook and Charity knew immediately she was lying.

Charity glanced at Tobias through her lashes. Her brother had a very sneaky streak and she was certain this was his idea. But however wrong it was, she felt a great deal of sympathy. None of them ever had pocket money like other children.

‘Charity will go down to Mrs Moore to find out the truth.’ Father glared first at her, as if daring her to cover up for them, then at Prudence and Tobias. ‘If I find you have been dishonest, you know what will happen, don’t you?’

Charity dawdled at the chemist’s window. The display of home permanent waves attracted her attention. Some of the girls at school used Toni and she wished she could too.

Greenwhich High Street was packed with shoppers – girls of Charity’s age flocking into Woolworth’s to look at lipsticks and to listen to the top twenty pop records; boys hanging around on street corners watching the giggling girls. Women with bulging string bags gossiped in groups. The Clipper and the Nelson were both packed to capacity with men swilling down beer.