Trinidad Street (17 page)

‘Dad is going to get better, ain’t he?’

‘So they say up the hospital. Please God they’re right.’

‘But it’s going to take a time, ain’t it?’

‘’Fraid so.’

‘And you’ll have the baby and him to look after.’

Martha said carefully, ‘That’s right. So what are you trying to say, lovey?’

‘Just that I went and got a job at Maconochie’s. I start on Monday.’

‘Ellen! What about your schooling?’

‘I told them today I was leaving.’

‘That’s not what I meant. You was supposed to be staying on and getting an office job.’

‘I know.’ Ellen frowned down at the table. It blurred before her eyes. She tried desperately to keep the catch out of her voice. ‘But I can’t, can
I? Not now. How can I stay on when I’m fourteen and there’s Jack and Daisy doing as much to earn as I am? It’ll be bad enough as it is. They’re only paying me six and sixpence. But it’s better than nothing and I can still do the envelopes and anything else we get in when I get home.’

Martha reached out and put a hand over hers.

‘Oh, Ellen. I am sorry. I know how much it means to you. But I can’t say as how it won’t be a weight off my mind. That bit extra’ll make all the difference. We’ll be able to pay the rent, for a start.’

Ellen nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her mother did not really understand how much it meant. None of them did. They could not comprehend the pleasure she got from using her head, the escape she found in stories, the satisfaction of adding up a string of numbers and getting the right answer.

‘And it’s not so bad working there, you know. Lots of girls there from around here. You’ll have a few laughs, I’m sure.’

‘Yeah.’

How could she explain the sense of failure, of having to admit that, after all, she was just like all the rest? For she could not say to her mother that she had always felt she was different; not better, just different. Going to the Central had confirmed it. There was an escape from the life that everyone in Trinidad Street led. But it had all been a dream. She was going to Maconochie’s just like everyone else.

Everyone else was glad.

‘I knew you’d see it right. Ellen. You got to do your bit for your family, ain’t you?’ Aunty Alma said.

‘All that book learning. Never did anyone no good. Never did that when I was a girl. Went out to work when I was nine, I did,’ Granny Hobbs told her.

‘We always knew you was one of us really. You coming up the Girls’ Club with us Friday?’ Theresa and her friends asked.

It had made them uncomfortable and envious that someone might be doing something better than them. Now she was back on their level and they need not think about a different way of life any more.

But
she
still thought about it. She was thinking about it as she sat hunched up at the top of the Torrington Stairs one Sunday afternoon early in the new year of 1902. It was a damp, dreary day, no weather to be sitting out, but there was no fire on at home and the place was crowded with people. The four walls had seemed to be closing in on her, the familiar refuge had become a cage. At least here there was space. She sat hugging her legs, her chin resting on her knees, watching the greasy surface of the Thames slide endlessly by.

She jumped and looked round nervously as footsteps approached. It was Harry.

‘They said you might be here. Can I sit down?’ he asked.

Ellen shrugged. ‘Suit y’self.’

Since the day of the coronation party, they had avoided each other. She could not forgive him for going off with Siobhan the moment her back was turned. It still hurt that he had so obviously been waiting to get rid of her.

Harry took that for an invitation and sat beside her.

‘Aren’t you cold here?’

‘No more than anywhere else. I like it here. I like to be by myself sometimes.’

He ignored this none too gentle hint. ‘I know what you mean. I like to be by myself out on the river.’

They were both silent for a while, staring at the thick water in which no fish could live. Dead water, for all that it seemed to have a life of its own.

‘How are you liking it at Maconochie’s?’ Harry asked.

‘It’s all right.’ It was a lie. She hated it. Hated the noise, the steam, the smells, the forewoman who seemed to have it in for her. Most of all she hated the grinding boredom of doing the same tiny process over and over again, until her mind seemed to go round in circles like a treadmill.

‘It’s a bit boring,’ she added.

‘I can imagine. It’d drive me mad, factory work. Out on the river, you might have bad foremen or foul weather or eighteen hours on the job without a break, but at least on the boat you’re master. It’s up to you to get the stuff to where you’re going whichever way seems best to you.’

Ellen sighed. It sounded like bliss. Room to move, new places, new faces, new challenges. Not like Moconochie’s.

‘You are lucky,’ she said.

‘I know.’

The thing that was bothering her most rose once more to the top of her mind.

‘Was it all for nothing, do you think?’

‘All what?’

‘The strike, Dad’s accident – everything. All for nothing.’

‘No.’ Harry was emphatic. He spoke slowly, thinking it out. ‘No, it wasn’t. It don’t matter that the strike collapsed and the ship was turned round. What matters is that someone made a stand. If your dad
had just stood by and let those men be exploited without saying a word against it, then he would have lost. That would have been acting like a white slave. As it was, he spoke up for what he knew was right, like a free man. Yeah, that’s it. He acted like a free man should.’

A great weight rolled off Ellen’s soul.

‘Yeah,’ she said, hardly more than whispering. Then added with conviction, ‘Yeah, you’re right. That’s how it was.’

‘He’s a good man, your dad. A hero.’

‘Yeah.’ The trouble was, heroes could be uncomfortable to live with.

She did not notice Harry looking at her sideways, studying her face.

‘I was surprised you gave it up,’ he said.

‘But I couldn’t go on, not now,’ she said.

‘Of course not, but you could study in the evening, couldn’t you? Read books, that sort of thing? Not just throw it all over now. But then perhaps you weren’t really serious about it.’

‘I was – I
am
!’

Harry shrugged. ‘Doesn’t look much like it to me.’

Ellen was stung. How
could
he say that?

‘How am I supposed to study when I’m at work all day and helping Mum in the evening?’ she shouted. ‘Are you saying I shouldn’t help Mum? Fine daughter I’d be!’

Harry was unmoved. ‘If you’d really wanted to, you’d’ve found a way. I think maybe you was finding it all too difficult at school.’

He picked up a piece of slate and tossed it up idly, watching as it turned over in flight before landing back in his hand

Ellen was stung. How could he say that?

‘I was not. I was fourth in my class.’

‘Why give it up, then?’

‘I haven’t. I – I’m studying in my spare time,’ she lied.

‘First I heard of it.’

‘Well, that just goes to show you don’t know everything, don’t it?’ Ellen said, and flounced off before he could ask for details.

With a sideways flick, Harry sent the piece of slate skipping over the surface of the water. He smiled to himself, showing his strong white teeth.

The first thing that struck Ellen as she slammed back into the house was the warmth. It wrapped round her like a pair of welcoming arms, soothing all her anger and confusion. She went into the kitchen, where her mother was just making a pot of tea.

‘The range is alight!’ she exclaimed.

She went over to it, letting the blessed heat sink into her chilled body.

‘Ain’t it lovely?’ Her mother looked happier than Ellen had seen her for weeks. Her face had got back its round look, instead of being strained and haggard.

A lighted range meant hot food, hot water, clean clothes, a bath – Ellen shivered with pleasure at the thought of a bath.

‘I put a rice pudding in the oven,’ her mother said.

Ellen’s stomach growled at the thought. A rice pudding. Heaven!

‘But how . . .?’ she began. There had been no coal in the house when she left.

‘Harry brought us round a sack. Weren’t that kind of him?’ her mother explained.

‘Harry!’ At once all the confusion rolled back.

Daisy was watching her reaction. ‘He was asking for you. Did he find you?’

Ellen nodded.

‘Oo. What did he want? What did he say?’

‘It’s none of your business,’ Ellen snapped. She felt perilously near to tears, though she hardly knew why.

‘Oo.’ Daisy was skipping about, her eyes gleaming at the scent of some gossip. ‘You’re blushing. You are! Come on, tell us. You’re in love with him, ain’t you? Ellen’s in love with Harry Turner –’

‘Shut up!’ Ellen shouted at her, and ran upstairs.

She flung herself on the mattress and burst in tears. She hated Harry Turner. He was bossy and interfering and insulting. He had abandoned her for Siobhan. He was kind and thoughtful. He had rescued her father from certain death. She did not know what to make of him. She did not know why he had come to talk to her today, or why she was so upset now. One thing was clear, though. He was wrong about why she gave up school.

‘I’ll show him,’ she muttered, when at last she became a little calmer. ‘I’ll show him. Finding it too hard, indeed. We’ll see about that.’

Ellen went to bed that night pink from a blissful bath in the tin tub in front of the range, her hair clean and shining, and new purpose in her heart. She was going to prove Harry wrong if it was the last thing she did.

But sleep escaped her. She could hear her mother getting up and walking round the front bedroom, and the creak of her bedsprings as
she turned in bed. Sometime in the early hours she went to sleep, only to jerk awake again, her heart beating wildly. She listened. All was quiet. Wide awake, she lay staring into the darkness. Beside her in the narrow bed Daisy slept, dead to the world, and a couple of feet away under the window she could just make out the hump under the blankets that was Jack.

Then she heard something that made her blood freeze. From her mother’s room came a low groan.

Ellen slid out from under the covers, trying not to wake Daisy. Shivering in the penetrating cold, she felt around for a shawl and hugged it to her shoulders, then carefully eased her way out of the room. With two beds in it, the door could not be fully opened. She tiptoed the two steps across the landing and tapped on her mother’s door.

‘Mum? You all right?’

There was a pause, then, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m quite all right. You go back to bed.’

Ellen hesitated. ‘I thought I heard a noise, Mum. Is there anything wrong?’

‘No, no. I’m fine.’

Then it hit her. Of course.

‘Mum, is it the baby? Is the baby coming? Can I do anything?’

‘Not yet, lovey. It’ll be hours yet. I’m just trying to rest while I can.’

Ellen knew what she was going to do, and it certainly was not go back to bed. Since Jack, her mother had had four miscarriages and a stillbirth. She could not bear the thought of another tragedy. This baby was going to live. She padded downstairs to the parlour, felt for her coat and boots and let herself out of the house. Two minutes later she was pounding on the O’Donaghues’ door. For what seemed like an age, nothing happened. Then the window was forced slowly up and a tousled head looked out.

‘Who is it?’ Brian’s voice was bleary with sleep.

‘It’s me, Ellen Johnson. Can Mrs O’Donaghue come, please? My mum’s having her baby.’

Brian’s head disappeared. There was a muttering from within the house, then he was back.

‘The missus says, go on home and she’ll be along in ten minutes.’

‘Oh thank you, thank you, I’ll go right away.’

Relieved, Ellen ran back. Mrs O’Donaghue had no nursing training, but all the women in the street swore by her. When it came to delivering babies, they claimed, she was better than any doctor.

The hours that followed went slowly. Ellen got breakfast for all of them and went upstairs to see how her mother was getting along. Mrs O’Donaghue met her at the bedroom door.

‘No need for you to hang around here all day long. It’s going to be a slow job. You get off to work and send them kids to school early.’

Ellen tried to argue, but Mrs O’Donaghue’s word was the law when it came to these matters.

‘You’re going to need the money, and you know what’ll happen if you take a day off work – they’ll give you the sack. There’s plenty round here to help me if need be.’

In turn, Ellen chivvied Jack and Daisy out.

‘You’re too young to stay around. You get off to school and maybe when you get back you’ll have a little brother or sister,’ she told them.

But she felt like a traitor, closing the door behind her and leaving her mother there.

All the way up the street, the women were scrubbing their doorsteps and sweeping down the strips of pavement in front of their houses. The news had reached them long ago.

‘How’s your mum coming along, Ellen?’

‘What’s Mrs O’Donaghue say?’

‘Just let me know if there’s anything you need.’

‘I got some lovely little baby clothes she can have. I’ll take ’em over. I won’t be needing them for a few months yet.’

‘Send them kids up to us for their tea if it’s not here by then. They can always spend the night, if you like.’

The reassuring strength of the street was around her. She could see and feel and hear it on all sides. They would not let anything dreadful happen to her mother. But it did not entirely assuage the fear that clutched at her heart. Her mum was getting old to have babies. She was a granny. Anything could happen.

At work, she could not concentrate. She kept dropping the jars she was supposed to be labelling. One slipped right through her fingers and smashed on the floor, a red mess of smelly pickled cabbage and fragments of glass.

The forewoman came snarling over to her. ‘Johnson! I told you about that before. That’s sixpence off your wages.’

The girls around her sprung to her defence.