Rags to Riches, page 14
‘What you two doin’ ’ome? You ain’t bin laid off, ’ave yer?’
Arthur Jordan threw his cap onto the damp baize of the kitchen table and yanked off his choker. ‘We’re on strike.’
There had been plenty of strikes at the docks in the past and many an unsympathetic soul not familiar with dock conditions had seen it to be a docker’s regular pastime, like some sort of hobby. That there could likely be another dispute Grace Jordan wasn’t that much surprised, but she was concerned, visualising more days of eking out what money they had, perhaps finally forced to hock something until they went back to work, sometimes with their claim, whatever it was, unsettled.
‘What’s it about this time?’ she demanded, letting the sheet drop back into the soapy water and drying her hands on the already wet sackcloth apron she wore for doing the washing. ‘For more pay I suppose. Well, I don’t reckon you’ll get no better than you did last time you was all on strike. All I want is a reg’lar bit of money comin’ in each week. I can manage with whatever bit I get’s long as it comes in. All this strikin’ …’
‘It’s more’n just a dock strike,’ Tom butted in. ‘This one’s goin’ ter be the ’ole country by the sounds of it. You’ve read the paper, Mum, about bosses wantin’ ter cut miners’ wages. The miners ain’t ’avin’ it, but that Baldwin’s supporting the bosses fer a wage cut.’
‘That’s what it said in the papers,’ Arthur added.
‘Now the Trades Union Congress ’as called all transport and ’eavy industry out in support,’ Tom went on as his father offered no more explanation. ‘That’s us as well. So we’re out too. An’ there ain’t nothing we can do about it. It’s a matter fer the unions. But I agree wiv’ ’em, and so does all of us.’
‘That’s all very well,’ Grace turned on him. ‘It don’t do the likes of me any good though, do it? Havin’ ter scrimp and scrape again.’ But he wasn’t listening.
‘Damned employers – they think they can do what they like because they think we come two a penny, the ordinary workin’ man. And Baldwin’s backin’ them all the way. His bloody government ain’t interested in people like us so long as the bosses can get away with cuttin’ wages and still ’ave us silly buggers working fer ’em. But the miners ain’t ’avin’ any of it, and nor are we.’
‘Yes, Tom, I ’eard yer the first time. I don’t want no politics in this ’ouse. Go outside and talk politics. All I want ter know is ’ow long d’yer think yer’ll be out?’
‘’Ow d’we know?’ Arthur groaned. ‘Blame us fer it all, go on, why don’tcha? We’re just doin’ what we’re told. Me an’ Tom only come back ter tell yer an’ get ourselves some tea and a sandwich – God knows ’ow long we’ll be ’angin’ around them dock gates waiting ter see what’s goin’ ter go on. They’ve closed the gates at West India Docks. But if they open ’em again in the next few hours, me an’ Tom want ter be there ter be first on the stones.’
‘Well, I’ll get yer something to eat, and then yer can get out of my way. I’ve got work ter do, if you ain’t. Bloody men! Bloody country! Bloody governments and unions.’ It was seldom Grace Jordan swore, but she could see hunger stretching ahead of her. What the union paid from its strike fund wasn’t enough to keep a canary alive.
Upstairs in the bedroom, the door open, Amy heard it all. As she often did these days, she had been helping Mrs Jordan a little, but at six months pregnant the strain was beginning to be felt and Mrs Jordan had packed her off upstairs to rest for a while.
She listened to Tom’s deep voice, trying not to acknowledge the pleasure it gave her to hear it without having to meet his eyes, which after more than two months of living in this house were still unfriendly. Yet sometimes she was conscious of his looking at her more than was necessary. He would switch his eyes hastily away should she turn to meet his gaze, and lately it had become a game with her, to catch him out. With the rest of the family, she was unassuming, respectful, careful not to let her good breeding diminish them in any way. She was after all still their guest, at their mercy to be allowed to stay, and she was grateful. But with him, she allowed all she was to show, paying him back for his persistent condemnation of her – as if he had never done any wrong in his life. A handsome, well-built young man, he must have had his fair share of girls. Amy felt the jealousy rise at the thought. How dare he condemn her who had only allowed a man free rein on one … no, two occasions, but the same man, who had proposed marriage to her and to whom she had given herself trustingly.
Tom’s voice had risen a little, angered by the way Stanley Baldwin’s government was treating the working masses. But Amy was no longer listening, her thoughts flying to the man who had wronged her; to the plan she had thought so clever, gone utterly awry. Nothing was so sour-tasting as a well-laid plan thwarted.
Alice, honest Alice, unable to sustain the lie, had blabbed to Dicky about where she came from. Not so stupid Alice … scheming Alice … by the time she’d bared her lily-white soul like a prostrate little nun, Dicky had been so head over-heels in love with her that he was vowing to marry her, no matter if he had to defy the whole world to make her his. Why was he doing that for her when he hadn’t done it for herself, Amy? That was what really galled, more than any defeated plan. Alice went around putting on airs and graces, visualising herself lady of the manor in time, and no doubt thinking herself above the girl to whom she had once been a mere maid, even though she hadn’t said as much.
But it still might not last. There were Dicky’s parents to consider, their views on their son wanting to marry a common East End Cockney maid. That would take Alice down several pegs or so. And her own family didn’t seem so keen on the idea either, her father giving forth sneers, and her mother looking thoroughly worried, her sisters’ looks pure vitriolic stabs of jealousy and her younger brother chanting whenever he accosted her: ‘Al’s in luv wiv Dicky, and Dicky is a pansy!’ which to him all wealthy blokes were. Nevertheless, it was obvious that Alice was in love with Richard, as she called him, and spent every moment she could talking of him, almost as though she were taunting her one-time mistress.
Angrily Amy thrust aside thoughts of the new high and mighty Alice, and concentrated on what Tom was saying. His voice had become indistinct, but she was intrigued to hear more. A strike would mean he’d be home more often. She saw very little of him under normal circumstances. Perhaps he and she would be more thrown together and thereby get on closer speaking terms.
She got up from her bed, and taking the now-empty teacup she had brought upstairs to drink while she rested, she made her way awkwardly down the narrow stairs, the lump over her stomach as prominent as an outsize football, emphasised by her otherwise slim build.
What made the cup rattle in its saucer, she didn’t know. Perhaps her hand had trembled involuntarily in the knowledge that her presence downstairs might intrude on Tom and his father’s conversation. She took her hand off the banister to steady the cup, but the fingers caught the rim instead, sending it flying off the saucer.
Automatically she tried to catch it, a silly thought rushing through her head that the thing belonged to Mrs Jordan, but with her mind taken off her descent for a second, her heel slid over the edge of the stair immediately below, throwing her backwards. She made the rest of her journey on her back, landing in a heap at the bottom, still desperately clutching the empty saucer.
The noise of the fall brought the Jordans hurrying from the kitchen. Tom was there first, picking her up, asking if she’d hurt herself. Of course she’d hurt herself Her back hurt and so did her bottom, and one arm where she had tried in vain to save herself, giving it a nasty wrench. The shock of her tumble had started her crying. Tom was holding her to him, patting her back, saying it was all right – it was all right. It wasn’t all right. Amy clung to him, letting the tears flow.
‘I … I’m sorry about the cup,’ she heard herself sobbing foolishly. As if the cup mattered now.
‘It’s not broken, luv.’ Mrs Jordan bent and retrieved the undamaged cup. ‘I’d’ve sooner it ’ad bin and you ’adn’t slipped like that. That was a nasty tumble. Bring ’er into the back room, Tom. We’ll sit ’er down till she feels better. Where are you ’urt, luv?’
‘My back, and my arm.’
‘You’re goin’ to ’ave a few bruises,’ Tom soothed as he gently sat her down on one of the upright chairs. ‘But there ain’t nothing broken.’
‘Not even the cup,’ she said as she looked up at him, her face white and tearstained.
For a moment he gazed down at her, then he gave a chuckle. Soon they had all joined in, relieved that she could crack a joke even in her shocked state, even though she hadn’t intended any.
Mrs Jordan was the first to sober. ‘Look, luv, I think you ought to go back up ter bed. Yer don’t know what damage a fall like that could do – the baby an’ all. Yer certainly went down a thump, and that’s the truth. I’ll take yer upstairs.’
Amy got up from her chair, trying not to wince from her strained arm. ‘No, it’s all right, Mrs Jordan. I don’t need any help. I shall be fine.’
‘Are yer sure, luv?’
‘An’ we’d best be gettin’ back,’ Arthur Jordan observed. ‘Come on, Tom, let’s go and see what’s doin’.’
Tom led her to the foot of the stairs while the other two returned to the kitchen, Mr Jordan to get his cloth cap and choker.
‘Will yer be all right?’ Tom’s voice sounded more concerned and gentle than she could ever imagine it to be.
‘Honestly,’ she breathed. ‘I shall be fine.’
But she was feeling just a little giddy. With a need to steady herself she held onto his arm for support. In response, he bent to help her regain her equilibrium. Their faces came close together as for a moment their glances met. He paused, his breath brushing warm across her cheek. A fraction nearer and his lips would have touched hers. It almost seemed that he wanted to, the moment giving a distorted impression of an eternity before he drew his head suddenly away. The look on his face was odd, too swift to be interpreted but enough to provoke an unsettled feeling inside her. Then it was gone.
‘Take it careful up them stairs,’ he said gruffly. ‘Don’t want another fall.’
‘No,’ she said limply and began her ascent, feeling his eyes following her the whole way. She didn’t turn round.
It was Willie’s birthday. The seventh of May, the strike in its fourth day, it wasn’t an auspicious one for any boy’s tenth birthday with no prospect of any wages coming into the house this week and no likelihood of a birthday present of any sort, not even that pair of roller skates he’d set his heart on. They cost half-a-crown in Dimmonds in Commercial Road which sold bikes and skates and toys.
He should have gone to school, but he’d cried off. It was his birthday, he’d protested. Bad enough as it was without being stuck at school for it, and that didn’t help bring money in. Mum had conceded, too concerned by the times to argue with him. She knew what was in his mind and a few pennies coming in weren’t to be sneezed at.
He’d got up early and gone off instead to where his usual gang of paperlads collected outside Stepney East station on the corner of Commercial Road and East India Dock Road to await the first delivery of the day. Most of the boys were older than him, had left school as soon as they’d turned fourteen for a more lucrative activity, but he knew he looked older than he was, was as tall as many of them and could hold his own against any of them, loudmouthed and aggressive as they were when the need arose. He let them believe he was thirteen coming up to fourteen.
It was quite pleasant standing around in the warm early morning sunshine waiting for the drop with the older boys who swapped dirty jokes, talked about parts of girls’ bodies, some bragging about what parts they’d seen and breasts they’d touched. Willie did his best to brag, but at ten he’d only ever seen his sisters when he peeped through the crack of their half-open door while they were undressing until angrily chased away. Mum was called to give him a swift clip round the earhole and a lecture that boys and men didn’t behave dirty towards women. Which he didn’t believe, because if they behaved as she said they did, how did women get babies? The older boys had told him how men stuck their things between women’s legs and that was how babies came. And if that wasn’t behaving dirty, Willie didn’t know what was. He’d once seen the private underpart of a girl in his class behind the outside lavs when he was nine. He’d given her a farthing Golly Bar to show hers and he’d shown his. They’d giggled and then parted company. It hadn’t occurred to him to stick his thing between her legs, which the boys here said felt ever so smashing. Hearing them he wished now that he had, except that he doubted he’d have felt anything, his little diddly pressing back into itself wouldn’t have gone anywhere between her podgy legs. He was still in the same class as her at school, but she wasn’t podgy any more. She had grown tall and slim and her hair was long and blonde, tied back in a bow, and her nose tilted upwards and her eyes were cornflower blue, and he was in love with her. Her name was Edith Bates. But these days she ignored him. Perhaps she was still ashamed about that day behind the outside lavs.
The papers came up around seven, tied in ragged bundles with string to be slit free with a penknife and a pile grabbed, as many as would tuck under the arm, without being dropped all over the pavement, and made off with as fast as a lad’s legs could go.
The streets were quiet, as they had been all week. Few people were going to work. Those that did were on bikes or walking. A sort of silence hung over London, not the silence of Sunday when one expected everything to be quiet, but a hovering silence of uncertainty as if nearly everyone had gone off to live in darkest Africa or on the moon, leaving everywhere deserted.
But there was noise. Willie heard it growing louder as he ran, racing his competitors the half-mile towards the docks area where he knew men would be who would snatch up a Friday paper for one precious penny to see what was going on about this general strike, as it was called.
Surrounded by the low murmur of men waiting around, he sold his papers, not quite as many as he would have on a normal day. Few men had pennies to splash around. They gleaned the news from others.
Every now and again the murmur would rise to a roar as the dock gates, guarded by soldiers with rifles, which made Willie’s awed eyes stick out like corks, opened to let a loaded lorry pass; that too was guarded by steel-helmeted soldiers. The crowd would sway and hoot, fists raised, but no more than that. Surely the army wouldn’t shoot at its own countrymen, though no one was willing to tempt it even though it went against the grain to see them there as though dock workers were their own sworn enemy. Now and again an armed and helmeted soldier would nod and exchange a chummy remark with a nearby docker. He had nothing personal against these men so long as they didn’t try to attack. He was only following orders and probably hoped they wouldn’t become aggressive, for obvious reasons.
The dock gates opened again. Another lorry emerged to hoots and boos, a huge notice on it, like all the others, stating that it was acting under the authority of the TUC.
‘TUC!’ spat a man whom Willie was squeezing past to get nearer the gates hoping to get rid of a few more papers and earn his meagre percentage for that morning. He still had too big a bundle under his arm for his liking. ‘The bleedin’ TUC. They’re all workin’ against us.’
This time there had been an angry surge forward, taking Willie with it. He was almost at the front now and he could see the guarding soldiers begin to level their weapons, but looking worried in case they had need to use them.
It seemed they might have to as one man raised his arm, a large stone in his hand to aim through the lorry driver’s window. Others would follow suit. A riot would break out. Men injured or killed. Willie felt his innards cringe. He was right at the front now, in the line of fire. And there was no way to squeeze back into this slowly surging, increasingly infuriated crowd already intent on surrounding the lorry despite the army’s presence all around it.
The gates had remained open. Another vehicle was emerging. A silence descended over the crowd, then suddenly cheering broke out and hoots of laughter at the small donkey cart bearing a pile of vegetables and driven by a very elderly man in a battered bowler hat. He too had put a large notice on his cart. It said boldly: ‘Acting under the authority of my own bloody self!’
Tension broken, the tight-packed throng parted for it, and the little donkey cart was cheered all the way down the road until it turned left into the main road and disappeared from sight.
Willie had taken the advantage and moved back into the less dense crowd, the joke rippling through it. Men, still chuckling and better spirited for the moment, readily found a penny to buy a paper. It was a better morning than he’d expected and returning with not one paper left, Willie received the handsome sum of eightpence, thinking perhaps he might go to school this afternoon, saying he had not felt too well this morning.
His mother received him cheerily. ‘I made yer a cake,’ she said in a confidential tone as he came in famished.
‘Thanks, Mum. I could eat the lot meself.’
‘Yer probably will. It’s only a small one. But it’s got a little bit of fruit in it, what I ’ad left in the cupboard, and I’ve put candles on it from last year. I know there’s only nine, but you can pretend. And I’ve got yer a present. A bag of Golly Bars what you like. Yer like that there toffee. When things get a bit better I’ll get yer a proper present – them half-crown skates in Dimmonds. But yer’ll ’ave ter wait.’
Yeah, Willie thought as he flopped onto a kitchen chair and dropped two threepenny bits on the kitchen table. It’s goin’ ter be a long wait. He had kept back tuppence for himself, a penny to spend and a penny to save. He was saving for a bike. With a bike he could really get into the newspaper selling business, and run errands too – all that sort of thing. So far he had one shilling and eightpence in his Post Office Penny Saving Book. Once in it, the amount written down between the brown, printed covers with its Post Office emblem, nothing would entice him to draw it out again and see the precious sum diminish. A secondhand bike could be got for ten shillings and sixpence from Dimmonds. They had them chained to the outside doorpost. Ten and six, it was a fortune when you could only afford to put away a penny or tuppence at a time.
