Ellie (3 page)

Polly sighed. ‘I’ve gotta get out of Alder Street,’ she said, looking around her with envy. ‘It’s getting me down. Wilf leers at me when I go to the kitchen or the lav. Edna’s always prying. What with them and the mice, it’s ’ell. Edna even started digging about Tom the other day.’

‘Well, I told you years ago it was daft to take ’is name,’ Marleen said tartly, getting up again and flinging thick slices of ham on to three plates. ‘You could’ve called yourself Jones, or Brown, made up a story about ’ow ’e died. I never understood why you picked on Tom.’

‘You do,’ Polly retorted. ‘You know exactly. Besides, ’e would’ve married me, given ’alf a chance.’

Back in 1926, when Polly found herself pregnant by a married man, she had run away rather than let him be disgraced by scandal. She had known Tom Forester since childhood and he’d always been sweet on her. When she heard he’d been killed in a tragic accident at the docks just a couple of months before Ellie was born there seemed nothing wrong with taking his name. But one lie led to another. She even deceived the registrar by giving Tom’s name as her husband when she registered Ellie’s birth.

Once the false date and place of their marriage had been entered on her daughter’s birth certificate, there was no going back. She had a new identity, a faded photograph of Tom and her together taken at Southend, and some happy memories of the big, kindly man who adored her. Enough, she thought, to stop tongues wagging. The only person who knew the truth was Marleen.

‘You’re a mug, Poll.’ Marleen cut a few tomatoes into slices and scooped them on to the plates. ‘You could’ve ’ad ’elp from you-know-who.’

Ellie padded out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped round her, hair dripping on to her shoulders. She’d forgotten to take her clean underwear in with her and she wasn’t sure now where her mother had put the bag. As she approached the open kitchen door she heard Marleen speaking and stopped short, instinctively knowing she was hearing something secret.

‘If I’d told ’im, soon other people would’ve found out,’ Ellie heard her mother reply. ‘I couldn’t do that to ’im, I loved ’im too much to see ’im ruined.’

Ellie knew it was wrong to eavesdrop, yet she couldn’t turn away.

‘He loved you an’ all,’ Marleen said stoutly. ‘And ’e was stinking rich. If I’d been in your shoes I’d ’ave grabbed anything I could get.’

This curious revelation, together with the sensation of thick carpet curling round her bare toes, gave Ellie the strangest feeling of having stumbled into an alien, yet luxurious world. She crept closer to the door, curiosity getting the better of her.

‘Divorce might be possible wiv an ordinary bloke,’ Polly said, her tone oddly wistful. ‘But not wiv someone wiv a bleedin’ Sir stuck in front of ‘is moniker.’

‘Get the pickles out.’ Marleen’s voice was close to the door now and Ellie was forced to retreat. But what on earth was it that her mother couldn’t tell ‘him’, and why hadn’t she ever admitted she was once in love with someone other than Tom Forester?

Ellie woke up first the next morning. Her mother was flat out on her back, her mouth wide open, her breath smelling of gin.

It had been a lovely evening. Once the supper had been eaten and a few more gins had gone into her auntie and mum, they were very funny, telling her all those stories she loved, about their time with the travelling dance troupe. Ellie had prompted Marleen to talk about the ‘stage door Johnnys’ with the hope she might discover where this mysterious titled admirer fitted in. But though Marleen told her about a butcher who gave them a leg of lamb when they had nowhere to cook it, and about ‘Dandy Jim’, whom they had to climb out of a window to avoid, and Big Frank who serenaded them under the boarding-house window in Margate, there was nothing about a ‘Sir’ anyone.

A violent storm began just before they left Marleen’s – thunder, forked lightning and the heaviest rain Ellie had ever seen. They borrowed an umbrella from Marleen, and Ellie had to catch hold of her mother’s waist tightly as they hurried to the tube, because she was quite drunk and unsteady on her feet. When they went out to the lavvy before going to bed, Polly kept singing, ‘The boy I love is up in the gallery,’ and Wilf shouted for her to shut up. Ellie had been on the point of admitting she’d been eavesdropping when they got into bed, but her mother had fallen asleep the moment her head touched the pillow, and the chance was gone.

Now Friday 1st September had finally arrived. My last morning here, Ellie thought, wriggling closer to her mother’s side. Polly was too hot and a bit sweaty but it was the last chance to cuddle her.

Ellie knew why Polly had got so drunk last night: it was the only way of coping with sending her child away. She might keep insisting that Ellie would get a better education, and come back speaking posh with swanky manners, but Ellie knew she was breaking up inside.

Teachers at school had often suggested it was wrong of Mrs Forester to take Ellie to work with her every night. But as Polly always said, ‘Better under my nose than under another woman’s thumb.’ Ellie loved helping get the costumes ready for the cast. She had learnt which stars would bite her head off if they so much as saw her, which ones appreciated her running messages and helping with the hooks and eyes. Perhaps most children would find it tiring, but Ellie had the theatre in her blood and the cast and backstage hands were family.

‘What are you thinking, Ellie?’

Ellie turned her face, surprised by her mother waking so soon. Polly’s blue eyes were bloodshot, her skin looked as worn as her old nightdress, but there was a softness in her voice that meant she too was holding on to these last precious moments with her child.

‘Just wondering whether you’ll remember to eat when I’m not here,’ Ellie whispered. She couldn’t voice her fears that her mother might start drinking like many of the theatre people did. Or admit she had butterflies in her tummy. ‘You will, won’t you, Mum?’

Polly looked at Ellie’s troubled face and her heart seemed to swell alarmingly. ‘Of course I will,’ she said firmly. ‘Now don’t you go worrying about me, sugarplum. You just be a good girl and make the best of your new home.’

A lump grew in Ellie’s throat. The pet name ‘sugarplum’ was one she had as a little girl and it evoked all those memories of sitting on her mother’s knee, of being bathed in a sink and carried home half-asleep in her arms through dark streets. It meant love, that word they never actually said, but she felt it now, hot and sweet.

‘We’ve never been apart for even one night before,’ she whispered, wriggling closer in her mother’s arms. ‘I’ve never even slept in a bed without you there.’

‘It’s all part of growing up, baby,’ Polly whispered back. ‘And it won’t be for long.’

As they reached the junction of Alder Street and Whitechapel High Street there was a sea of mothers and children thronging towards the school. Only a few carried a real case like Ellie’s, a leather one which Polly said was once part of a fancy set. Mostly the other children had only oilskin shopping bags, pillowcases or canvas haversacks, but every one of them had a big brown label with their name on it pinned to their chest and the square box containing a gas mask over their shoulder.

Women pushed prams with as many as three small children inside, bigger children holding on to the handles. There were few men, and most of those old enough to be grandfathers. Some children had entire families clustered round them. Grown-up brothers and sisters, aunts and grannies. Many of the children looked shamefully bedraggled.

Ellie looked down at a girl a couple of years younger than her, whose dress was torn and dirty. The sole of her shoe flapped as she walked. Ellie felt proud of her new blue checked dress and the matching ribbons on the ends of her plaits.

‘Don’t look like that,’ Polly whispered, shaking Ellie’s arm. ‘She ain’t so lucky as you, that’s all.’

It was enough to chasten Ellie. She was lucky. Maybe she was fat and plain, but she had the nicest, prettiest mother and she was going off on a big adventure.

‘How much longer, Mum?’ Ellie looked beseechingly at Polly. It was cooler after last night’s storm, but her legs ached from standing. There was a desperate kind of atmosphere in the playground. Some children had dumped their belongings and ran around wildly, others were clinging to their mothers and crying. They’d been waiting for over two hours.

‘Not long now.’ Polly smiled, sliding an arm round her shoulders. ‘Miss Parfitt said she thinks you’re going to somewhere in Suffolk. I’ve been in shows up that way and it’s right pretty.’

Miss Parfitt, Ellie’s teacher, was flushed, rushing around with a register in her hands. A tall, hatchet-faced woman who normally ruled her pupils with fear, today she seemed to have lost her grip.

‘Line up now, in twos,’ she shouted, blowing her whistle. ‘Say goodbye to your mothers now please and we’ll be off.’

Here in the school playground, Ellie had no wish to look like a baby and cry, yet she felt as if someone was pulling out her innards as she gave her mother one last frantic hug. She breathed in her mother’s smell deeply, that mixture of face powder and soap, and tried to imprint it on her memory. Never before had her mother’s skin felt so soft, her arms so comforting. Even though she struggled to fight it, a tear came rolling out.

‘Bye, sugarplum,’ Polly whispered, struggling not to cry too. ‘Best behaviour mind and write to me soon. I love you!’

The train journey was interminable. Doris Smithers had eaten a whole box of Pontefract cakes and then been sick. Reggie Blythe kept sticking his head out of the window and had black smuts all over his face. Carol Muller hadn’t stopped crying since they left Liverpool Street.

Their sandwiches were gone, apple cores and sweet papers littering the carriage floor and it smelt as if someone had done something in their pants.

Ellie was glad she’d got the seat by the window, furthest away from Doris and her sicky smell. At first it had been exciting seeing cows and sheep and the fields of ripe wheat being harvested. She’d marvelled at quaint cottages, rivers meandering through green meadows, and the strangeness of going for mile after mile without one house. But now she was only seeing her mother’s face, imagining her preparing for the evening’s performance, and she wished she could jump from the train and run home.

‘Five minutes!’ Miss Parfitt slid back the compartment door and forced a grim smile. She had been run ragged since early that morning and couldn’t wait to be shot of her charges. ‘Get all your belongings together and wait for the train to stop. On the platform I want you all to line up silently.’

Ellie looked down the station steps at the hordes of children ahead of her and grasped the hand of little Rose James more firmly.

‘Stop crying,’ she ordered. ‘No one will pick you if you’ve got a runny nose. I’ll look after you.’

Miss Parfitt said this place was called Bury St Edmunds, though that meant little to Ellie aside from it being in the middle of Suffolk. Around four hundred children had got off the train, but many more had remained on it, going on further still.

Rose smiled bleakly and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her cardigan, leaving a snail trail.

Once out in the forecourt, Miss Parfitt and the other helpers marshalled the children into small groups, joined by other, local women. Some of these groups were led to buses and even a couple of lorries standing by, but Bancroft Road children were herded up an incline towards the town.

Ellie’s apprehension left her, excitement taking over. The station was big and important-looking, to her eyes almost like a castle. Huge trees, bright flower beds and the clean, fresh air made it seem very welcoming. She had never really been aware of the grime in Stepney before, but now as she saw the whitewashed picket fence, the lush green of the railway embankment, the scarlet poppies and golden dandelions, it was like taking off grime-tinged spectacles and seeing the world anew.

‘I want my ma,’ Rose bleated, tugging at Ellie’s hand, presumably reminded of home by the group of women who stood waiting to view the London children. ‘I don’t like it ’ere.’

The crocodile came to a halt and Ellie gave the little girl a hug.

Rose was only five, a tiny blonde with a squint, still bearing the tell-tale marks of chicken-pox. But she was better dressed than most of the children, in shiny new sandals and a blue print dress.

‘Look, Rosie.’ Ellie felt she had to spell it out. ‘You’ve gotta be jolly, or no one will want you. You’re pretty and small, all those ladies want someone like that. So cheer up, your mum’ll come down to see you.’

Just voicing what she expected potential foster parents would require, reminded Ellie that Rose in fact fell far short of being an ideal candidate. She took her own clean handkerchief out of her pocket, spat on it, and vigorously scrubbed Rose’s face clean.

‘You lucky people,’ she said in her Tommy Trinder voice. ‘Here we have one pretty little girl for some lucky, lucky lady. And she’s got a ’eart-stopping smile an’ all!’

Rose giggled. With one eye on Ellie, the other fixed on somewhere distant, she wasn’t so pretty, but she was at least clean.

A stout woman in a beige felt hat led the crocodile across the road, holding up her arms to stop the nonexistent traffic. To their right was a huge gasometer behind a terrace of small houses not unlike the ones at home, but they were being led past them, up a hill into a pretty town.

Many women stood in groups on doorsteps watching the children pass. It was a little disarming, the way they eyed the children up like cattle going to market, and even more distressing to hear their disparaging remarks.

‘Thass a rumman!’ one old lady said loudly, pointing out Michael Bendick who had a built-up boot.

Slowly all the children stopped chattering, listening to remarks about their thinness, pallor and shabby clothes, about ‘big boys being a heap of trouble’, or more personal snipes like ‘Look at ’e with the red hair.’

But as Ellie passed by two middle-aged ladies leaning out through an open window, a remark pointed at her stung like a bee.

‘I wouldn’t want that fat one. Cost a fortune to feed and she’s got sly eyes.’