Trinidad Street (3 page)

‘I’m cold,’ she complained.

Ellen ignored her. She was looking at the strange doll-like creature that was her friend, except that no doll could look so dark and unyielding. The real Florrie did not seem to be there. She did not seem to be hearing or seeing anything. Ellen stared at her, biting her lip, wondering what to do. Then at last her words appeared to get through, as if they had had to go a long, long way. Florrie sat, slowly, stiffly. Johnny climbed on to her lap, Ida burrowed against her. Ellen put an arm round Florrie’s bony shoulders and tried to be like her mum, comforting, making everything right, but she did not know what to say. There was nothing she could say to a friend whose dad had just done that to her mum. It was not the first time it had happened and it would not be the last. Nothing Ellen could say would change it or make it better. She could only hug Florrie. The cold from the stone step seeped through pinafore, dress and drawers. Johnny was wet, and smelt.

Still Florrie sat rigid, staring across the street. Ellen spoke to the little ones, telling them not to worry, that their mum would be all right, all the while stealing sideways glances at her friend.

Then Florrie spoke.

‘I hate my dad. I hate him. I’ll kill him one day, so help me. I will, I’ll kill him.’

The venom in her voice made Ellen catch her breath.

‘Yes,’ was all she could say.

The two little ones whimpered.

‘Hate him –’ There was a break in her words, then her shoulders were shaking, great dry sobs tearing at her chest. Ellen’s throat tightened in sympathy and tears swelled behind her eyes. There must be some way she could protect Florrie, someone who would help. Then she swallowed hard. Of course – her hero.

‘If only Harry’d been there. He’d’ve stuck up for you.’

Harry was like that, he looked after his little sisters and brother and he rescued Ellen’s hat from the bullies.

Florrie said nothing. The sobs still shook her thin body.

‘Wouldn’t he?’ Ellen insisted. She held on to the conviction. There must be someone who could do something. Florrie could not be all alone bearing this terrible thing. ‘Harry would look out for you,’ she repeated.

‘Last time’ – Florrie spoke in gasps – ‘Harry tried – to stop him – and my dad hit him – down the stairs –’

Ellen felt sick all over again. It was all too big for her. She felt powerless. The street that usually seemed so secure had a hostile feel to it. The windows were blank and unseeing, the doors hid unfriendly faces. There was no one to turn to.

The door opened behind them. Ellen nearly fell back into the empty space. A feeble light fell on their pinched faces.

‘What you kids doing on my step?’ a sharp voice demanded. ‘Blooming kids, always up to no good. Time you was home. It’s nearly dark.’

Ellen looked up at the small elderly figure. For a moment she was confused. She had not noticed whose doorstep they were sitting on. Some people minded, some didn’t, but all grannies were formidable. She began to mutter an apology.

‘Just you get off of my step. What –’ The voice changed, became gruffly kind. ‘Oh, it’s you is it, Florrie Turner. P’raps you better come in. Sitting there in the cold with nothing on you. Catch your death. Why didn’t you knock? Stupid girl.’

Florrie said nothing, so Ellen said thank you for all of them. She had got her bearings again now. It was Granny Hobbs. She was all right if you kept the right side of her, but woe betide you if you got on the wrong one. She could bear a grudge for years. She scrambled to her feet and tried to pull the others up too.

‘Florrie’s a bit upset,’ she said.

‘I can see that, Ellen Johnson. I may be old, but I’m not blind. Not stupid, neither. I can guess why she’s upset, too. Same old story, eh?’

Ellen nodded. Granny Hobbs grunted disapproval.

‘Bring them little ’uns in, and hurry up about it. You’re letting cold air into the house.’

Ellen tried to usher the Turners and Daisy through the door, but Florrie planted her slight body resolutely on the step and refused to move, while Ida and Johnny clung on to her like limpets.

Footsteps clumped down the street, breaking into a weary trot. Ellen looked up and realized why the Turners were waiting. Their aunty Alma was coming.

Even in the growing darkness, Alma Billingham struck an exotic note in the drab street. A purple coat trimmed with balding black velvet strained across her ample bust. On her floppy hat a garden of scarlet artificial poppies nodded and quivered as she moved. There was a strong reek of gin and cigarettes about her, and she was tired, a bone weariness from a long day’s work that showed in her voice and her movements; but in spite of all this, relief flowed through Ellen. Here at last was someone to take charge, to lift this impossible responsibility.

‘Been at it again, has he?’ she asked, resigned.

Ellen nodded. ‘My mum’s looking after Mrs Turner.’

‘Right, thanks ducky.’ Alma looked down at the three younger children. ‘You lot come on in to my place. I’ll find something for you to eat. Don’t know what that big sister of yours is about. Why didn’t she come down and get you in? Hope she’s not ill again.’

‘I see,’ Granny Hobbs’ voice piped up again, highly indignant. ‘Going with her, are we? Going with her when you could have come in to a respectable house.’

Alma gave her a look of contempt. ‘Oh, shut your mouth, you old bat.’

Ellen shrank away, trying to keep out of it. Granny Hobbs shut her door with a bang.

Alma shrugged and held out her hands to the children. Florrie got to her feet and picked up Johnny, Alma took Ida’s hand and put an arm round Florrie.

‘Come on, ducks, cheer up. It ain’t the end of the world, you know.’ She smiled at Ellen and Daisy. ‘You’re good girls, you are. Like your mum. You go and tell her to bring Milly over, will you? Say thank you for me and that I’ll take care of her now.’

Ellen nodded. She could have hugged Alma, gin smell and all. Alma would make Florrie back into herself again.

‘That’s the ticket. You run along home.’

Thankfully, Ellen obeyed.

She opened the kitchen door cautiously and peeped round. There was a sharp smell of witch hazel in the room. Milly was silent, her eyes closed, wet rags on her bruises. Her mother looked up sharply from stoking the range.

‘Mum.’ Ellen kept her voice to a whisper. ‘Mrs Billingham has come home. She’s taken the little ones in and she says will you bring Mrs Turner along ’cos she’ll take care of her now.’

‘Right.’ Her mother put down the coal shovel and wiped her hands on her apron. She stooped over Milly Turner, her voice gentle. ‘You hear that, Milly? Alma’s back. Now you stand up – careful now – and I’ll help you over. Your sister’ll see you’re all right.’

Ellen held the doors as her mother helped Milly hobble out of the house. Daisy came in and they both huddled close to the range, feeling the warmth thawing their chilled bodies. They heard their mother yelling at the door for Jack to come home, and soon they were all sitting round the kitchen table once more, drinking another cup of tea.

‘Is she going to be all right?’ Ellen asked.

Her mother sighed. ‘I dunno, lovey. I hope so. Alma’ll look after her. She’s all right, Alma, whatever they might say. Heart’s in the right place. You just thank your lucky stars your dad ain’t like that.’

Daisy chattered, asking questions that their mother answered abstractedly or not at all. Jack tried to tell them about his game. Ellen could only think of Florrie, hard and frozen.

Her mother got up. ‘We’ll have our tea now,’ she decided. ‘You kids are cold and it’s Friday night. There’s no knowing what time your dad’ll be in. I’ll keep his for him.’

Daisy and Ellen stared in dumb amazement. Jack yelled ‘Hooray!’ and jumped up to get the knives and forks without even being asked. They bustled about, washing hands, fetching plates. The stew was ladled out, potatoes and carrots and pearl barley with the odd scrap of meat swimming in gravy. Silently they shovelled it into grateful mouths, felt the tasty warmth of it filling empty stomachs. They mopped up the last drops and sat back. The world was a happier place.

‘Just you girls learn a thing or two from this,’ their mother told them. ‘You make sure you choose the right boy when you get married. Get it wrong then and you’re in for a life of misery. There’s no backing out of it once you’re married. Stuck with it, you are, whether you like it or not. And as for you, Jack, if I ever hear you’ve done something like that, I’ll have the hide off you, grown man or not. You hear me?’

‘Yes, Mum.’

Slowly the problems of the Turners faded in Ellen’s head and the question of her own future came back into focus. As if reading her mind, her mother spoke.

‘What was all that about Millwall Central?’

Ellen sighed. ‘It’s all right. I know I can’t go.’

Her mother was silent, frowning into her teacup. ‘Girls and boys from there get office jobs, don’t they?’

Daisy came unexpectedly into the conversation. ‘May Dobb’s sister went there and she’s got an office job at Maconochie’s. May says it’s a lovely job. She sits all day on a high stool writing things.’

‘Sits!’ Mum sounded impressed. ‘I didn’t never have a job sitting, not in all my life.’

‘She wears a tailored coat and skirt to work,’ Daisy added, warming to her theme. ‘Not an apron. May says she wants to do that too. I don’t. I don’t want to sit writing all day long. I hate writing.’

‘Sounds better than bottling pickles or getting scalded by the jam,’ Mum said. ‘Meet a nicer class of young man, too.’

They all knew what she meant: nicer than Archie Turner.

Ellen was silent. She wanted to go to Millwall Central. Wanted it like she’d never wanted anything in her life before. But she knew it was impossible.

Her mother put the tea down and gathered Ellen to her.

‘You’re a good girl. I’d like to see you with a job in an office. Real nice, that’d be. Ladylike. You deserve a chance to better yourself, get away from what some have to suffer. We’ll afford it somehow. I can always get a job if I have to. It’s not as if you little ’uns are babies any more. But we’ll have to see what your dad says. Wait till he’s had his tea. Then we’ll see.’

For several moments Ellen could not take it in. It was too good to be true.

‘Oh, Mum – do you mean it? Do you really?’

‘’Course. Maybe I’m daft, but of course I mean it. Someone in our family with an office job! It’s worth going out ship scrubbing for that.’

‘Oh, Mum! Oh, thanks.’ Ellen stood up and flung her arms round her mother’s neck. She was nearly there.

TOM JOHNSON STRAIGHTENED
up and kneaded the small of his back where it creaked in protest at the long day’s work. Old, he was getting old. He couldn’t take it like he used to. Half his life he had been here now, here at the West Indias, or over at the East Indias, and very occasionally – if times were bad – down at the Millwall. He had settled into his own specialization and was recognized as a skilful shipworker. Thousands upon thousands of tons he must have shifted in his time.

The raw products of the great British Empire and the untamed world beyond came rolling up the Thames in the holds of great timber sailing vessels and huge iron steamships, and an army of dockers unloaded them to be fed into the hungry factories of London. Wool from Australia, fruit from South Africa, coffee from Brazil, sherry from Spain, cotton from America, it all came ashore to be heaved into the warehouses by Tom and his like and disgorged again to feed and clothe and service the sprawling capital and the people of the lands and towns.

The romance of it all had fired his imagination once, but it was all too familiar now. Just another day to be got through, endless hours of lifting and carrying, with arms and legs and back aching more with each sack or bale or keg. He knew how to conserve his strength, how to lift so as to put as little strain as possible on his body, how to pace himself through the day so that the foreman had nothing to hold on him. But the fact remained that he was forty-one and past his prime. Today he had been brought face to face with the fact that he could no longer keep up with the younger men. Here he was on the quay, trundling a truck, the two-wheeled carrying device used for taking goods into the warehouses or transit sheds. He, Tom Johnson, was down amongst the quay workers because he was not quick and strong enough to work on the ship any more. His pride had taken a bad blow, but it was the same pride that stopped him from showing it.

He glanced now at the foreman, king of the quay. They were old enemies, Tom and Alf Grant, well matched, but Alf always had the last
say since it was he who had the power. He was the one who called the men on at the start of the day. He could get a man blacked so that no one would take him on.

Alf had his back to him, seeing to the gang on the forward hold, and Tom could relax for a moment.

‘Grand sight, ain’t she?’ An old sailor stopped by his side, his white beard sticking out like wire wool all round his face. He was looking up at the ship they were unloading, pride in his seamed face.

‘Yes – grand.’ Tom rolled his fists into his stiff and aching back.

‘You should see her under full sail, rolling through the roaring forties. Nothing to beat her bar the clippers. Wonderful old girl, the
Ariadne
. Wonderful.’

Tom cast an eye over the elegant lines of the windjammer – her four tall masts; her tangle of rigging; the long yellow bowsprit jutting along the quayside, and under it the garishly painted figurehead of a half-naked woman. Round her in the oily waters of the dock clustered a bunch of lighters and sailing barges receiving cargo to take up the river or round the coast to quays and small ports, waterside factories and warehouses. Beyond her a line of ships was moored, nearly all sailormen, passenger and cargo, discharging their loads on to the dockside before going round empty to the export pool to fill up with manufactured goods for the outward journey.

The old sailor was still talking. ‘I remember when we was coming out of Rio with a cargo of coffee – ’88 that would’ve been, or ’89 – and we just . . .’

Tom was not listening. The ship did not hold his attention. She was right enough, but when all was said and done, just another set of holds to be unloaded. It was the men on the quayside he was watching, the sweating gangs toiling amongst the snaking ropes, the unstable heaps of cargo, the tall cranes with their dipping beaks and swinging chains, the slippery cobbles and the leaky barrels of inflammable oil or dangerous chemicals.
They
were the ones who laboured, who spent the strength of their youth for a tanner an hour.
They
were the ones who should have the power, not Alf Grant and the bosses. Down the line the money went, hand to hand with everyone taking his cut, till it came to the bottom, where the real work was done – with the dockers. Not much left for them. But they were only casual labourers, after all, and there were plenty more at the gate. They didn’t matter. It made him sick, the way they were treated. Tom was a lucky one, a ‘Royal’, taken on in preference to the masses for any job that was going. The foremen knew that he was strong and reliable, that he could be trusted
and that he knew what he was doing. He could be sure of getting work if work there was, and his family never went cold or hungry. But his sympathy was with the casuals. His days were concentrated on fighting for a better deal for the men on the quay.