Trinidad Street (14 page)

Ellen finished sewing on the patch. She was achingly tired and there was another day of school, homework, housework and outwork waiting for her tomorrow, but her mother’s unease had rubbed off and she could not go to bed. She pulled her shawl closer and prowled round the kitchen. Without the range on, the damp was winning its battle. Black stains were creeping up the walls. She found a cloth under the sink, wetted it and started scrubbing at the plaster.

There was a sound in the doorway behind her. She looked up, startled, and there was her mother, her hair down, a blanket draped over her darned and patched nightdress.

‘Mum! You did make me jump. I thought you was in bed.’

‘I couldn’t sleep, lovey. I’m that worried. I know it’s silly, but I am.’ Martha stood biting at her lip. ‘Look, just run round the corner to Will and Maisie’s, will you? See if he’s in yet.’

Ellen put down the rag. ‘You sit down, and stop worrying. I’ll go and ask.’

It was very still outside. Down the entire length of Trinidad Street just one bedroom window was lit. The single street-lamp was out. Ellen let her eyes adjust to the dark. The night was quiet and clear. There were stars above, and a half-moon low in the sky made the doorways into black shadowy caves. In the distance a train whistle blew, a lonely howl.

Ellen looked up the street, her heart knocking in her chest, wishing that Will and Maisie and the babies still lived at Aunty Alma’s. Now that Will was a preference man, they had their own place, with a lodger to help with the rent. It was only round in the next street, but still it was foreign territory. She took a deep breath and scuttled down the road. So far so good, but now she was away from the safety of Trinidad Street. She went round by the Rum Puncheon and into the next street. It looked almost the same, two rows of tiny houses with scrubbed steps and swept pavements, but the difference was behind the closed front doors. She could not knock on any one of these and get refuge if she needed to. They were not her neighbours. She thought of her mum waiting for news and ran the last fifty yards to arrive, panting, on Will and Maisie’s doorstep.

She tapped on the front door, not wanting to disturb the quiet of the street. Then, having produced not a sound from inside, she banged louder. ‘Will!’ she called. ‘Maisie! You there?’

After what seemed like forever, the bedroom window creaked and shuddered up and Will’s tousled head looked out.

‘What the bleeding hell’s going on? Who is it?’

‘It’s me, Ellen. Dad’s not home and Mum was worried. She sent me round to see if you was back.’

‘Oh – yeah.’

He sounded confused. Anxiety churned in Ellen’s stomach.

‘We thought you was coming back together, Will. Where’s Dad got to?’

Will leant further out of the window and hissed at her in a stage whisper. ‘We – er – we got separated, like. He had people he wanted to talk to. So he – er – he told me to go on. Knew Maisie would be waiting up. You know what she’s like. She gets in a state.’

‘Ah – I see.’

It sounded plausible enough. It was just the way he said it that made little threads of doubt in her mind.

‘But he’ll be back soon, will he? Mum’s getting in a state and all.’

‘Yeah, yeah. Sure to be.’

Not at all reassured, Ellen made her way back. Perhaps he would be there when she arrived. Perhaps it was just Mum getting worried over nothing. She listened as she opened the front door, hoping fervently for the sound of her father’s voice telling her mother about the meeting. But there was nothing, only her mother, waiting for news.

‘Well? Is he back? What did Maisie say?’

Ellen repeated Will’s explanation. Martha pursed her lips.

‘I see,’ she said. She lumbered over to the kitchen cupboard, produced a bottle from right at the back and tipped a generous measure of clear liquid into a cup. The distinctive smell of gin pricked at Ellen’s nose.

‘Medicinal,’ her mother explained. ‘I got to calm my nerves.’

She sat down at the table, nursing the cup.

‘You go up, lovey. It’s late and you got school tomorrow.’

But Ellen shook her head. ‘No. I’m waiting with you.’

The tiredness had dropped from her now, replaced by a nervous energy. She picked up the cleaning rag and attacked the patch of black mould.

Tom left the meeting buoyed up by the sense of solidarity. They were all together in this. Blacklegs had been brought in but the strikers had seen them off despite a large police presence. It ought to send men back into the arms of the union. That was what they needed, a strong union again, like they’d had in ’89. With that they could do anything; they would have the strength to defy the owners and the funds to open feeding centres so that the families did not go hungry. They could
work with the stevedores and the lightermen to make sure that nothing moved. But without the union they had no base from which to negotiate. That was the first priority, getting the members back.

‘’Night, Tom – we’ll get ’em by the end of the week, eh?’

‘Have ’em by the short ’n’ curlies, mate. ’Night!’

In ones and twos the group with him, the union faithfuls, the old campaigners from ’89, peeled off to go to their own homes. The rest of the Trinidad Street contingent had left earlier, at the close of the main meeting, but Tom had expected Will to stay till the end and walk back with him. Now that he came to think over the evening, he could not remember seeing him there at all. He had called for him to go there, but Will had said that he had some chores to finish first and would be along later. Maybe the boy had not bothered to come at all. That angered him. To think that a son of his should neglect such an important meeting, and on such a feeble excuse. He had had all day to do jobs about the house, and besides, Maisie was hardly the nagging type who insisted on things being done. Will did exactly as much as he wanted. It was not that at all. He simply had not cared to come. Tom marched along, composing a lecture in his head on the need for working people to stick together.

He needed to concentrate on something. Whenever he stopped thinking, images started up in his mind’s eye, vivid pictures of Reg Wilkins writhing in agony on the handcart or, as he had seen him later, in the long white ward of the hospital, dying from the infected acid burns. He could not get the horror of it out of his head. It fuelled his campaign against the bosses. It was not right that men should die like that, and the injustice of it roused him to white-hot anger.

He was nearly home now, passing along the backstreets by factory and storage yards. High walls, pierced by narrow passages or great locked gates, hemmed him in. Odours of horses, oil, chemicals and coal smoke hung on the air. He hardly noticed where he was going, for the way was as familiar as his own back yard. Hands in pockets, he looked only at where he was treading, for it was easy to trip over kerbs or rubbish in the deep pools of shadow in entrances or between street-lights.

The first he saw of the men was a movement out of the corner of his eye. Then he heard a voice saying, ‘That’s him. Get him.’ There was a pounding of boots. He spun round, fists at the ready, just as something hit him across the shoulders.

‘I got nothing on me worth taking, nothing at all!’ he shouted, but they came at him all the same.

There were four or five of them, all with their faces covered. Contempt for their cowardice flashed through his mind, that so many should set on one man. He lashed out at the nearest, but he had no chance. One of them swung at him with a piece of wood, catching him on the side of the head. Pain exploded in a cascade of red light. The eyes above the protective scarves blurred as the ground came up to meet him.

‘Bastards!’ he tried to yell at them, but his mouth was not working properly. Only a howl of anger came out.

‘Again, again, he’s not out yet!’

A vague nagging feeling that he recognized the voice was blotted out as boots crashed into his head. His skull seemed to be cracking. His last sensation was of being grasped by wrist and ankle. Dimly through the pain, from a long way off, he heard mention of the river.

It was a clear, still night on the water. Harry stood at the bow of the
Edith,
watching as the arches of London Bridge came steadily nearer, black against the gleam of the Thames. The tide here, between Southwark Bridge and London Bridge, was straight and fast, shooting like a millrace.

‘Steady,’ he called over his shoulder to the boy at the stern. ‘Hold her there.’

They were lined up nicely to shoot through, with the ebb tide carrying them along. Fifty feet of wooden barge with one hundred tons of sheet glass in the hold, controlled by just himself and the lad holding thirty-foot oars. The archway loomed up, water swashing round the buttresses with the force of the tide. There was a nasty sideways set to the water here and the lighter had to be held up northwards.

‘Pull,’ he called to the boy.

The bow swung a little.

‘And again – steady.’

They were under the echoing, dripping stone. The bridge slid past them, black as Newgate, making the river beyond shine like silver in contrast.

‘Nice work. I won’t drop you off at Traitor’s Gate after all.’

The boy grinned weakly in response. He had not been long at the job and there was so much to learn.

Steamers for the Continent and the Mediterranean lay up in the tiers, each with its cluster of lighters ready to carry on unloading next morning. Schooners and small craft were moored to the Yarmouth Chains. The
Edith
glided silently past, powered only by the strength of
the ebb underneath her. Wafting across the river, overpowering the general smell of tar and smoke and filthy water, came the stink of Billingsgate.

A small paddle steamer came chugging upriver towards them, water foaming from the churning paddle wheels, smoke pouring from her tall funnel. Lights were blazing on the decks and from the portholes, illuminating couples dancing to the music of a piano accordion. The tune came floating over the water above the noise, and Harry and the boy joined in with the song – ‘She was only a bird in a gilded cage, a beautiful sight to see . . .’ They were still singing as they passed the Tower and shot Tower Bridge, their voices bouncing and echoing off the structure.

More lighters on late jobs were working in and out of the docks and the myriad wharves and tiers. Harry whistled at each one and exchanged news.

‘Where are you bound?’

‘Down the Derrick.’

‘Got a th’gin to Jack’s hole.’

‘How’s old Moaner Polly?’

‘Caught a sidewinder last week and fell in the ditch.’

‘Going to the Old Vic Thursday?’

‘No, I got a full roadun.’

Out here on the river, using his skill and strength, watching the ever changing moods of tide and weather, meeting his friends and catching up with the state of trade, Harry knew he had the best job in London. The problems on shore faded into the background, easily forgotten. It was only as they swung round the sharp bend of the river into Limehouse Reach and passed the huge frontage of Morton’s factory that home concerns niggled at him, for it was at Morton’s that Siobhan worked. His mother had told him only yesterday that Maisie was sure Will was still seeing her. As if there wasn’t enough for her to worry about, what with Tom Johnson trying to whip up a strike. But if that was so with Will and Siobhan, then he was going to have to do something about it again, and that would not please Ellen. Will Johnson was a fool, and he ought to realize that there was no future in it.

The clock at St Luke’s had just chimed midnight as they approached the Torrington Arms. In the silence that followed, voices came from the direction of the barges moored off the yard, and something fell into the water with a heavy splash. Booted feet pounded hurriedly away.

‘What was that, Mr Turner?’ The boy was straining his eyes in the direction of the splash.

‘Dunno, lad, but it sounded a bit suspicious.’

Nothing was ever thrown away that could be sold. Children fought over the right to old newspapers or rags. Even old bits of rope had their buyers. Nobody would dump something large enough to make that sound unless it was on the wrong side of the law.

The moonlight caught on a dark shape surfacing. There was only one thing that looked like that.

‘It’s a dead ’un,’ Harry said. ‘They just slung him in the ditch. Quick, get your oar for’ard and bring her head round.’

The boy ran to obey. The barge swung round into the path of the body, drifting nearly sideways with the tide, but she was still moving faster than the wallowing corpse. Harry threw a length of chain over to slow her down and gradually it drew nearer, partially submerged, lapped by the black waves. Flinging himself down on the deck, Harry fished over the side with the boat hook, grappling to get a purchase, until he managed to get the hook under the corpse’s belt.

‘Got it. Give me a hand up with him,’ he called. ‘And bring a lamp over. I can’t see what I’m doing.’

Reluctantly, the boy came. They hauled the heavy, awkward bulk up the side of the barge, water streaming from his clothes.

‘It’s all right, he’s fresh in,’ Harry told him. ‘It’s when they’ve been washing around in the water for days that they look nasty. You’ll never eat shrimps again when you’ve seen ’em falling out of a dead ’un’s eye sockets.’

But when they heaved the man on deck, it was Harry who cried out in shock.

‘My God, it’s Tom Johnson. Whatever . . .?’

He was warm, and blood was seeping from a messy bludgeoned wound on his head. Harry put a hand to his neck.

‘He’s still alive! We got to get him ashore.’

He turned Tom over on his front and pushed downwards on his back. ‘Got to get the water out of him,’ he explained to the boy.

Thames water flowed out of Tom’s mouth. Harry pushed again, his own heart beating in his chest. There was no response. Another push, and with a rasping sound, Tom began to breathe. Harry looked forward. Ahead of them a line of lighters was moored five abreast at the London Wharf. He muttered a brief thanks and jumped up, grabbing an oar.

‘Get her alongside there. We’ll tie up and carry him in.’