Ellie (27 page)

‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said. ‘My aunt’s in a bad way. But you don’t need to worry about me. I’ll sort something out.’

Charley looked hard at Ellie. On the face of it she seemed in control, in fact the bald statement about her aunt’s state could be construed as ‘Go away, I don’t need any help’. But Charley remembered only too well that he’d reacted just this way when he heard the news of his brother’s death in Normandy, even so far as insisting he did his shift that day. Twelve hours later he’d been sobbing in his mother’s arms like a baby.

Did Ellie have someone to comfort her?

‘Let me take you to a café and get you something to eat,’ he suggested. He didn’t want to pry, but he couldn’t just walk away and forget her without being sure she could cope. ‘There’s one just along the road.’

Ellie had thought she was beyond breaking down. Her savings, the money she’d intended to pay for the new flat, was buried in the rubble of Gray’s Mansions along with her clothes. She’d made up her mind to wait here until six, go down to her job at the Temple where she could wash in the cloakroom and collect her week’s money, then on to the Blue Moon for the evening. Maybe Jimbo would even let her sleep in the changing-room until she found somewhere else.

But this young fireman with his golden curls, his sun-tanned face and his kindness pricked through her defences, and tears welled up.

Charley saw her face crumple and he moved over to sit beside her, drawing her into his arms as if he’d known her all his life. ‘You poor kid,’ he said, holding her tightly. ‘Suppose you tell me all about it?’

‘Her back’s broken,’ Ellie sobbed. ‘She’s paralysed from the waist down and she was blinded by the glass. She’s only forty-two and if she doesn’t die now from shock she might have to lie for years in a hospital bed in total darkness, unable to do anything for herself.’

The old man continued to sleep. Nurses and doctors scurried past the door and emergency bells rang as yet more casualties were brought in from ambulances.

‘Marleen would prefer to die than live like that,’ Ellie sobbed. ‘They let me see her for a minute or two and all she said was “Forget me, Ellie, get on with your life. I’ve been too much trouble already.” We were going to leave that flat this morning. If only I’d made her go last night.’

Charley pieced the picture together as Ellie spoke of her mother’s death, her jobs, her savings buried in the rubble. There were points about Marleen he didn’t quite understand; nor could he make out quite why Ellie was so adamant about going to work tonight at this club. But he knew she’d seen just as much hell in this war as he had.

‘I’m taking you home to my house,’ he said firmly. ‘Mum will sort you out some clothes and you can have a bath and a sleep. I’ll phone your jobs and tell them what’s happened. You don’t have to go to work tonight.’

‘I have to go to the club.’ She sniffed defiantly. ‘I can’t risk losing that job.’

Annie King patted her son’s cheek affectionately. Although he was due twenty-four hours off, the flying bomb raids were so severe he’d been ordered in again. All he’d had since bringing the girl back with him was a cat nap in a chair, but his sense of duty was stronger than his need for sleep.

Both Charley and Annie stiffened as they heard the roar of a doodle-bug. The window frames began to rattle, lightly at first but growing stronger as the bomb came nearer. The cups on the dresser joined in, tinkling against one another and the kettle on the stove jumped up and down. As it grew louder and louder, Annie clutched her son’s arm fearfully.

‘It’s okay, it’s going past,’ Charley said.

The roaring continued for another minute or two, but it was less intense now and the vibration in the room gradually slowed. As the roaring cut out and they waited for the explosion, Annie’s fingernails dug into her son’s arm.

The explosion was subdued. Charley, with his trained ear, reckoned it to be in Camden Town.

‘I’ll look after Ellie,’ Annie said, instantly behaving as if nothing had happened. ‘If she insists on going to that club I can’t stop her. Just you come home in one piece.’

‘I don’t like the thought of her going to Soho,’ Charley said stubbornly. He knew he was in for a bad night and although most of these bombs seemed to be bypassing the West End, that could change at any time. ‘I know that club’s in a cellar, but we still dig people out from those.’

‘Look son, she isn’t your girl,’ Annie said. ‘From what she’s told us both I’d say she was born adult and maybe her singing is all she has left now. Remember when you were little and brought home that bird with a broken wing?’

Charley smiled. He knew exactly what his mother meant. He had mended the wing, fed the bird by hand, petted it, loved it and when it was better it just flew away. ‘That’s a warning, is it?’

Annie put his tin of sandwiches into his hand. Her plump face was soft with concern. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said. ‘I like her too, Charley, and you did right to bring her home. Just don’t get carried away.’

‘Do you think her aunt will survive?’ Charley asked.

‘I don’t know, son.’ Annie shook her head. From what she knew of spinal injuries it was a living death, lying in plaster in a home for incurables until such time as infection released her from misery. ‘I can’t help feeling it might be better if she didn’t, for both of them.’

Annie waved from the basement window as Charley went up the outside stairs, then turned back to the pile of clothes she was sorting out on the kitchen table.

She was a widow of fifty-eight. Her hair was grey and she was short and stout with bad varicose veins in her legs, but she had the sparkle and energy of a much younger woman. To her neighbours in Coburgh Street in Euston, Annie was known as a ‘brick’. She was the one they ran to with their troubles, someone who would sit them down, give them a cup of tea and sort them out. Over the years she’d acted as nurse, priest, teacher and friend to countless people. She didn’t gossip or backbite, she didn’t sit in judgement, she could turn tears to laughter. As her own doctor said on more than one occasion, ‘If he could bottle Annie King, he’d have the wonder-cure.’

Even though it was only two weeks since she heard that Eddie, her eldest of five sons, had been killed in France she could still put aside her own grief to help someone else cope with theirs. But then Annie King had huge reserves of compassion: she had experienced more than her share of hardship.

Annie was fourteen in 1900 when she came to work for the widowed Mrs King at number 33. It was a big lodging-house for gentlemen boarders with three floors and a basement. Although she was taken on as a maid, Mrs King expected her to do everything – cleaning, laundry, laying fires, preparing meals and washing up. She was given the tiny room at the back of the basement where Ellie was sleeping now, a uniform, her food and two shillings a week.

It was more than a job to Annie, it was a chance to better herself. As one of nine children, it was the first time in her life she’d had a bed to herself, enough to eat or even a tidy dress. Her father had disappeared some years earlier and her mother had turned to drink and prostitution. She’d seen two younger sisters die of tuberculosis and her brother Mick had his hand torn off by a machine in a factory when he was only ten.

For two years Annie willingly worked like a slave for Mrs King. She came to love the house for its elegant Georgian windows, its highly polished furniture and the air of comfort it exuded. Coburgh Street was only a stone’s throw from the slums of Somers Town and not grand like the places up by Regent’s Park, but it had a quiet sedateness about it, even if the brickwork was engrained by soot and their neighbours were tradesmen and clerks. Annie was a friendly girl who enjoyed meeting the many boarders and Ted, Mrs King’s only son, was the kind of man she wanted as a husband.

He was twenty-eight, a nice-looking man with blond curly hair and soft brown eyes who worked for the railways. He was rather pompous, perhaps, but she felt this was understandable as he was dominated by his tyrannical mother who had brought him up to think he was a cut above his neighbours.

Annie knew she was no beauty. Her fair hair was limp and she had freckles across her snub nose. She knew too she fell far short of the kind of genteel lady Mrs King would approve for her son, but Annie had youth, persistence and a quick mind in her favour.

For two more years she set to work to make herself indispensable. She learned every aspect of housekeeping from Mrs King: how to lay tables properly, how to cook, clean and sew. She listened to how the old lady spoke and copied her, and when Ted came home from work she was always attentive, listening to his complaints about his colleagues, soothing him when his mother made endless demands on him.

By eighteen, Annie was transformed from the undernourished little waif who’d arrived four years earlier. Her fair hair was neatly coiled at the nape of her neck, her body was well curved and she held herself with dignity. Even the mean-spirited Mrs King became anxious that someone would poach this girl who now ran the house so well, though she never praised Annie to her face.

Fate took a hand later that year when old Mrs King fell on the basement steps. Already frail, now she needed constant nursing. The woman’s reputation for being bad-tempered and mean meant she was unlikely to get anyone as competent or as willing as Annie to care for her and the house. Banking on this, Annie put her proposition to Ted.

She had to be blunt, there was no other way. She stated simply that only marriage would make her stay and care for his mother.

For the first and only time in his life, Ted stood up to his mother’s objections. Annie knew it wasn’t out of love for herself, only convenience, but on their wedding day she was convinced she could make him happy.

Many times in those first few years Annie doubted the wisdom of having settled for security rather than love. Old Mrs King never accepted her as anything more than a servant and Ted, once he’d slipped the wedding ring on her finger, proved to be a great deal more demanding than she’d expected. Not only did he insist she ran the boarding-house and nurse his mother unaided, but he had a powerful sex drive. Night after night he insisted on having his way with her without the slightest tenderness or affection.

Edward was born ten months after their wedding, and James, Michael and William followed at yearly intervals. If a meal was five minutes late, or if a shirt wasn’t ironed just so, Ted would ask what she’d been doing all day. Sometimes she felt as if she would drop dead with exhaustion. His mother became totally bedridden and incontinent. There were piles of soiled linen to wash, mountains of food to be prepared, small children under her feet and always a baby in her arms. Ted’s pomposity increased as he was promoted to station master at Euston, but he was tight-fisted with money and he still refused to get her any help in the house.

War in 1914 brought more problems. Ted enlisted, as did every able-bodied man, and the boarders who stayed during those war years were no longer the sedate gentlemen Annie had grown used to. Old Mrs King grew increasingly difficult and money was tight with four fast-growing boys to feed.

Early in 1918, old Mrs King died. Annie found it hard to manage even one tear for her, for in seventeen years she had never shown the slightest gratitude for all Annie had done. Ted was given a few days’ leave for the funeral, the first in two years. To Annie’s surprise, the war had changed him drastically. His old pomposity had gone and on his first night home he took Annie in his arms and apologised for being such a hard, uncaring husband.

In fourteen years of marriage he had never said he loved her. But he did then, and made love to her with such tenderness that the past was wiped out completely.

Annie’s last memory of Ted was of winding a scarf around his neck, down in the kitchen. It was a raw January morning, still dark outside, and the boys were still in bed. Ted caught hold of her two hands, pressing them to his lips, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

‘You and the boys mean everything in the world to me,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. ‘I’m ashamed of how I’ve treated you, you deserved better. But when the war’s over I’ll make it up to you, my darling.’

The telegram telling her of Ted’s death in France arrived just days after she had written a long, loving letter announcing the news that she was expecting another child.

Charley was born in October of that year. On November 11th, as bells rang out all over London for Armistice Day, Annie nursed her new baby and cried.

Yet her stoic nature refused to be bowed down by finding herself a widow with five boys to care for. She had the house and a tiny widow’s pension, and at thirty-two she was young and resourceful enough to manage.

In those first years after the Great War came times of hardship almost as bad as she’d experienced in childhood. Boarders were so scarce that sometimes she and the boys huddled round the fire in the kitchen with nothing but a couple of slices of bread each for their suppers. But slowly Annie’s natural warmth and kindness attracted lodgers who came and stayed. The basement of 33 Coburgh Street rang out with the boys’ laughter, permeating the entire house. Old Mrs King would have been appalled to find her fine linen sheets and dainty china used by working men. Doubtless she would turn in her grave at the robust stews and roasts Annie seduced her lodgers with. But Annie found real happiness, and she had time to lavish on her boys. As they grew into manhood each one of them was honest, diligent and a credit to her.

Now, when Annie looked back at over forty years of living in this house, she understood why she’d felt that sense of deep gratitude on her first night here. Her fate was marked out that day and she didn’t regret a moment of it. Her boys were scattered now: Bill married and living in Australia, James in the army, Steven in the airforce, Eddie buried in France. But she still had Charley to hold on to. She busied herself by helping her neighbours and offering temporary accommodation to those bombed out. During the Blitz her basement was open house to anyone who needed shelter.

Yet although she maintained a calm front to her neighbours and sons, Annie fretted about Charley. All through the Blitz, when he didn’t come home for days on end, she half expected each knock on the door to be a senior officer with the news he’d been killed. So many times he staggered in too exhausted to even speak, his eyebrows and lashes singed, eyes red-rimmed. He made light about the holes in his underwear, or the time his rubber boots had melted, but she knew he was haunted about friends who had lost their lives and by the bodies he hauled out of burning houses.