The Best of Sisters (5 page)

She had been living in Hemp Yard for three weeks when Ted came home one day looking very pleased with himself. He announced with pride that he had found just the job for her. Next morning, shortly before seven o’clock, Ted walked Eliza to the lodging house in Old Gravel Lane where he introduced her to the landlady, Mrs Tubbs.

‘I hear you’re good at housekeeping, Eliza,’
Mrs Tubbs said, looking Eliza up and down.

‘I’m a good worker, missis.’

Poking Eliza’s arm with her fat forefinger, Mrs Tubbs shook her head. ‘Looks a bit on the scrawny side to me, Mr Peck. Are you sure she’s up to a day’s hard work?’

‘Eliza’s a good girl and very willing. I’m sure she’ll give satisfaction, ma’am. But I want her to be treated fair.’

Mrs Tubbs bristled and all her chins wobbled. ‘I’m as fair an employer as you’ll find in the whole of Wapping, not to mention Shadwell and Limehouse. You won’t hear nobody round hear speak ill of me. I’m willing to give the girl a chance, so I’ll say good day to you then, Mr Peck. Follow me, young Eliza, and I’ll show you what to do.’

Without waiting for an answer, Mrs Tubbs waddled down the dark passage to the back stairs. Casting an anxious glance at Ted, who nodded and gave her an encouraging grin, Eliza followed her new employer down to the basement kitchen.

The smell assailed Eliza’s nostrils even before Mrs Tubbs opened the door: rancid food, cabbage water, mouse droppings and bad drains. It was all Eliza could do not to retch, but Mrs Tubbs didn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary. Situated as it was, half below street level, the kitchen was lit by a window leading
out into an area that was piled high with rubbish, allowing just a glimmer of daylight into the room. A slatternly woman with a mobcap pulled down over her eyes was dozing in a chair by the range. Judging by the sour smell of gin that hung about her in a damp cloud, she was sleeping off the excesses of the night before. Mrs Tubbs went over and kicked the leg of the chair so that the woman awakened with a start and a loud snort.

‘Wake up, you lazy bitch. There’s breakfasts to get for me gents.’ Mrs Tubbs shook her by the shoulders. ‘Maisie Carter, you’ll be out on the street where you belong if you don’t stir your lazy arse and start work.’

With a grunt, Maisie got to her feet. ‘All right, all right, keep your hair on, missis. I hears you.’ Blinking and wiping the dribble off her chin with the back of her hand, Maisie stared at Eliza. ‘Who’s that?’

‘This here is Eliza, and she’s going to do the cleaning. Show her where to find things and don’t let me catch you clipping her round the ear, that’s my job.’ Having said that, Mrs Tubbs heaved her large frame back up the stairs and disappeared through the baize door.

As soon as the door closed, Maisie sat down again. ‘You heard her, get the breakfasts ready for the gents.’

The table was piled high with pots, pans and stale food. Something, nasty had dripped from
an upended jug and pooled on the flagstone floor. Eliza had a terrible feeling that this was not going to be a good day. ‘I’m here to clean, miss. I dunno how to do breakfasts.’

‘Trust her to hire a stupid, lazy slut.’ Maisie reached into her pocket and pulled out a stone bottle. She clenched the cork between teeth long and yellow like those of an ageing horse, and pulled it out. She spat the cork onto the floor and took a swig of the liquid.

Eliza had smelled spirit often enough on the breath of drunken sailors to know the difference between gin, brandy and rum. This was definitely gin. She backed away from Maisie, well out of arm’s reach. ‘I ain’t stupid nor lazy and I’ll make the breakfasts if you’ll tell me what to do.’

Maisie grunted and took another swig of gin. ‘There’s joints in the larder,’ she said, waving her hand in the direction of a cupboard, ‘and they can eat yesterday’s bread, that’s in there too. There’s small beer in the pitcher and tankards on the shelf. Gawd’s strewth, do I have to do everything round here? Get to it or you’ll feel the back of me hand across your chops.’

Tempted to run, Eliza knew she must do her best, if only to prove to Ted that she was worthy of his trust. Keeping a wary eye on Maisie, who was knocking back gin as if her life depended on it, Eliza began methodically to clear the table,
piling the dirty crocks in the stone sink and filling an empty flour sack with the stale food. She bit back a scream as a startled mouse scuttled out of a half-eaten pork pie, and a lamb chop seemed to move on its own, alive with maggots.

As she opened the larder door, a cloud of blowflies flew out, buzzing angrily around her head; the stench of rotten meat and mouldy potatoes made her want to vomit.

‘Get a move on.’ Maisie let out a loud burp followed by a hiccup. ‘Take the grub upstairs to the dining room afore they starts banging on the floor and creating.’

The shelves were alive with cockroaches and silverfish and Eliza had to force herself to pick up the platter of roast beef, shaking the insects off onto the floor. She set the beef joint down on the table, returning to the larder to collect the roast pork that might have looked appetising had not the crackling been blackened with an army of ants. The bread was sprouting blue-green mould and a mouse had drowned in the pitcher of small beer. She fished it out with a wooden spoon, comforting herself with the thought that it had died drunk and happy. She did what she could to make the food look edible, loaded it onto a wooden tray and was searching for some tankards when the ceiling began to reverberate, and flakes of whitewash fell all around them, like a snowstorm. The sound of feet drumming
rhythmically on the floorboards upstairs rolled around the kitchen like thunder.

‘Get your backside up them stairs,’ Maisie mumbled in a slurred voice, half raising herself from her chair. ‘Stop dawdling, you bleeding, stupid mare.’

Eliza didn’t need a second bidding: the memory of Uncle Enoch’s last beating was still fresh in her mind. She hefted the tray upstairs to the dining room, following the sound of feet stamping, hands pounding on a table and raised men’s voices. The lodgers stopped chanting as Eliza entered the room, staring at her in a brief moment of silence, and then one of them, a fat man with half a dozen chins bulging over the top of his collar, began to laugh.

‘No wonder we’ve had to wait, boys, they’ve got this one from the workhouse I don’t doubt. What’s your name, skinny little monkey?’

Setting the tray down on the table, Eliza looked the portly gentleman in the face. ‘I may be a skinny monkey but that’s better than being a fat pig.’

The fat man puffed out his reddening cheeks as hoots of laughter rippled around the table.

‘Got you there, Tully, old chap.’

‘Serve yourselves, gents,’ Eliza said, with as much dignity as she could muster. She left the room, closing the door behind her and almost colliding with Mrs Tubbs.

‘What are you doing up here, girl? I thought I told you to start cleaning in the kitchen?’ Without waiting for an answer, Mrs Tubbs caught hold of Eliza by the ear and marched her back to the stairs.

Maisie slid off her chair as they entered the room, grinning sheepishly at Mrs Tubbs. ‘I told her to start with the pots and pans, missis. But she would insist on taking the food up to the gents. I know her sort and I’d watch that one if I was you.’

Mrs Tubbs sniffed the air. ‘Have you been at the Hollands again, Maisie?’

‘Just a medicinal drop to settle me poorly stomach.’

‘You’d better not let me catch you drunk, madam. I won’t give you no second chance this time.’ Mrs Tubbs gave Eliza’s ear a spiteful tweak. ‘And you girl, get on with your work. I’ve got Stinger on the wall there and you’ll feel the sting of his tail if you don’t do your job.’ She pointed her finger at a cane hanging on the wall. ‘Do we have an understanding, Eliza?’

In the hellish working conditions of the lodging house, Eliza kept sane by focusing her mind on returning home at the end of a hard day’s toil. Ted was so convinced that he had found her a suitable position with a kind employer that Eliza did not want to disappoint him. The Pecks were so good to her, so kind and loving, just like real parents: she would have cut off her right arm rather than upset them. And so she said nothing about the reality of working for Mrs Tubbs, keeping the bullying and beatings with Stinger to herself. At least, when she handed over her wages at the end of the week, she felt she was contributing to her keep.

Although Eliza went off cheerfully each morning, putting a brave face on things, she slowed her pace as soon as she left Hemp Yard. She had to force her bare feet to walk in the direction of Old Gravel Lane. Each day, she suffered the taunts and bullying of Maisie Carter, who was usually drunk and always vicious. Mrs Tubbs was a sadistic slattern who cheated her gentlemen lodgers, gave them rotten food,
watered-down small beer, and kept them sweet by giving them free access to the favours of her chambermaids. Eliza got to know Gertrude, Flossie and Meg when they came down to the kitchen for their meals. They were all workhouse girls, taken on by Mrs Tubbs when they were ten or twelve, ostensibly as chambermaids but, as Eliza soon realised, making the beds and emptying the chamber pots were the least of their duties. Mrs Tubbs picked only the best-looking girls and then she groomed them, feeding them up and dressing them in a manner that accentuated their physical charms; painting their faces until they looked like wax dolls and forcing them to submit to the lodgers’ demands. Eliza wondered why they put up with such treatment, but Meg told her in confidence that to go against Mrs Tubbs was a one-way ticket back to the workhouse or, even worse, ending up on the streets with the myriads of other forlorn prostitutes risking disease and sudden death.

Eliza was truly thankful that she was too young and skinny to qualify for Mrs Tubbs’s attention and she did her best to fulfil the almost impossible task of keeping the establishment clean. At night, when she went home, she hid her chapped and work-worn hands beneath her skirts and, although she was always exhausted to the point of dropping, she somehow managed to keep awake long enough to satisfy Dolly’s
close questioning about her duties and the people she met during the day.

In the privacy of her bedroom and by the light of a single candle, Eliza wrote long letters to Bart giving thumbnail descriptions of the lodgers: portly Mr Tully, who could eat two dozen oysters at a sitting and, no doubt as a result, suffered from dreadful wind. He had not forgiven her for calling him a pig and had complained bitterly to Mrs Tubbs, telling her that Eliza was rude, clumsy and in need of severe chastisement, but she left that bit out of her letters. She went on to describe Mr Benson, a clerk in a law firm who had a habit of saying ‘Ah, dearie me’ for no apparent reason, and whose black suits were shiny at the elbows and frayed at the cuffs. Then there was noisy Mr Jack, who styled himself as a dealer in fancy ware and went round with a barrow, door to door, selling cheap jewellery, cufflinks, studs, lockets and combs for the back hair, for a penny apiece. Mr Jack, who was young and cheerful, always wore a cherry-red velvet waistcoat and nankeen trousers, and was quite Eliza’s favourite – until Freddie Prince arrived, and then her whole life seemed to change.

The other lodgers came and went, most of them being commercial travellers who stayed for just a night or two and then moved on, but Freddie Prince was different from anyone she
had ever met. He insisted on being addressed as ‘doctor’, although Mr Jack said that he was a crocusser, a phoney medical man who plied his trade from a suitcase, selling pills, potions and nostrums in the streets. Eliza suspected that this was sour grapes as Mr Jack’s nose was put out of joint by the dashing doctor, whose smile could brighten the dullest day. Dr Prince was loud and flamboyant, a larger than life character with a line in patter that, in the end, silenced even Mr Jack. Eliza was rather shy of him at first, but he always had a kind word for her, and always said ‘thank you’ when she served him with his food. He never laughed at her discomfort as the other men did when their coarse jokes brought a blush to her cheeks. Dr Prince told them to hush, and to watch their tongues in front of a young lady. He even gave her a pot of salve to rub on her work-roughened hands, and he made it seem as though she was doing him a favour by testing out his new ointment before he tried it on the general public. He was all right, was Dr Prince – and quite good-looking for an old man of twenty-three or twenty-four.

Eliza wrote about all these people, never once mentioning the beatings with Stinger doled out almost daily by Mrs Tubbs for the slightest mistake or, more often than not, for something of which Maisie had falsely accused her. The only good thing she could have said in Mrs Tubbs’s
defence was that she was not as strong as Uncle Enoch, so the thrashings were painful but less severe. The letters could not be posted until Eliza had an address for Bart, but she was certain that he would contact her one day soon, and, until that time, she kept them hidden beneath her mattress.

August was a month of sweltering weather when the whole of London baked beneath a relentless sun. Even the Thames seemed to flow slowly and more sluggishly towards the sea. East Enders, desperate to get cool, plunged into the turgid, filthy waters to obtain some relief and some died of shock, others drowned and were carried off downriver and the less fortunate ended up with cholera, dysentery or typhus.

It was over a month since Eliza had started working for Mrs Tubbs, and she came downstairs one morning at the end of August, wondering how she could face another day in that hateful establishment. Ted and Dolly had been sitting quietly at the table and they leapt to their feet as she entered the living room, rushing over to hug her and wishing her a happy birthday.

‘H-how did you know?’ Stunned and suddenly choked with tears, Eliza could only stare at them. Uncle Enoch had never wished her happy birthday; he thought such treatment only spoilt a child.

‘Davy told us,’ Dolly said, wrapping her arms around Eliza in a motherly hug.

‘Let your dad give you a birthday kiss, Liza,’ Ted said, opening his arms.

‘Dad?’ Eliza was crying now, she couldn’t stop herself. ‘I wish you was me dad, Ted. And you, Dolly, you’re just like a real mum to me. Th-thank you both.’