A pattern of lozenges and stars hurtled towards Tilly’s eyes as the red, blue and
white tiled floor of the Blesseds’ entrance hall came up to hit her.
With a sickening thud that knocked the wind from her lungs, she fell to the
ground beneath a hail of blows. Shielding
her face against the savage beating from the riding crop, Tilly rolled across the
floor and scrambled to her feet.
‘You stole my garnet
brooch, you wicked little trollop.
Admit it.’ Martha Blessed’s pinpoint
eyes disappeared into the folds of her florid cheeks, and her prune-wrinkled lips
formed a tight circle. ‘Sly little bitch.’ Swishing the crop, she advanced on Tilly,
her tightly corseted flesh vibrating with each thundering step.
Rivulets of blood trickling
down her face brought Tilly back to her senses.
Springing forward, she grabbed the offending weapon, wrenching it from her
employer’s hand. ‘I never stole from
you.’ Breaking the crop across her
knee, she flung it to the ground. ‘And
I ain’t standing for being whipped for something what I never done.’
‘Morris, Morris, come
here quick.’ Martha’s refined accent slipped into broad cockney. The lustres on
the wall sconces shivered and tinkled as her voice rose to a glass-shattering pitch. ‘Morris, run and fetch a constable. I’ll have you put away, Tilly True. A few years in Brixton will
sort you out, lady.’
Morris poked her head round the door that led down to the basement kitchen, her needle-sharp features pinched and sour. ‘What’s up, missis?’
Spinning round, Martha scowled
at her cook-general. ‘Never mind what’s
up, and I’ve told you a million times it’s madam not missis.
We’re in Islington now, Morris, not bleeding Plaistow.’
‘What’s she done this time
then, madam?’ Not budging an inch, Morris stood, arms akimbo, staring curiously
at Tilly.
‘I ain’t done nothing,
you sour-faced old sow.’ Tilly backed towards the front door, dragging back the
heavy chenille portiere. ‘And I ain’t
staying here another minute.’
‘She took my garnet brooch what
Mr Blessed bought me to celebrate the opening of the emporium. He
paid all of ten
and six for it down Spitalfields Market. And she’s broke my riding crop.’ Martha
clutched her bosom, that defied gravity, jutting over the top of her stays in an
impressive ledge. ‘I’m having palpitations. Fetch the sal volatile.’
‘Well, which is it?’ demanded
Morris, still not budging. ‘Call the
constable or fetch the smelling salts?
And anyway, that crop weren’t no use.
You ain’t got a horse nor even a pony, nor never had one, nor likely to if you asks
me.’
Wrenching the door open, Tilly
shivered as a sleet-spiked gust of wind slapped her in the face.
She wasn’t going to spend another second in this hateful place but she was
going to have the last word. ‘You’re a jumped-up old haybag. It weren’t so long
ago that your old man was peddling taters from his barrow.’
‘Don’t let her get away, Morris.’
Martha staggered crabwise across the hall. ‘My poor heart, it’s racing nineteen
to the dozen. Fetch a doctor.’
Morris threw up her hands. ‘Make your mind up, missis.
First it was a copper, then the smelling salts and now it’s the doctor. What’s it to be?’
Throwing herself down on a
hall chair that creaked and groaned beneath her weight, Martha pointed a shaking
finger at Tilly. ‘You wait until I tell Mr Blessed what you’ve done.’
‘You want to watch your old
man - he’s got more hands than an octopus.’ Poised for flight, Tilly tossed her
head. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t touch your
rotten garnets. They’re probably just glass - not worth more than tuppence.’
With a roar that made the glass
shades on the gaslights tinkle, Martha launched her body off
the chair, lunging
at the open door, but Tilly was too quick; she jumped the remaining three stone
steps and hit the pavement running.
Barbary Terrace marched
along the north bank of the Regent’s Canal flanked by a regiment of red-brick, four-storey houses. The upwardly mobile Blesseds
had moved here when Mr Blessed swapped his fruit and vegetable barrow in Plaistow
for a second-hand furniture emporium in
Wharf Road
, Islington. Tilly had been pleased
enough to get a job as housemaid, that is until she realised that Martha Blessed
was a snobbish, self-indulgent tyrant and her husband, outwardly meek and mild-mannered,
had an eye for a pretty young face as well as wandering hands. To her cost, Tilly
had soon discovered that Stanley Blessed’s long subjugated carnal desires made it
impossible for him to pass her in the narrow corridors of the house without fondling
or groping some part of her anatomy.
Reaching the bridge that
crossed the canal where St Peter’s Street ended and
Wharf
Road
began, Tilly stopped to catch her breath; it was only then that she felt the cold
striking through
her flesh and gnawing at the marrow of her bones.
The sleety rain had soaked her cotton blouse within seconds and her long
skirts clung damply to her bare legs. In
her heightened state of emotion and anger, Tilly had not felt the pain from the
welts and bruises on her back until this moment.
Her teeth were chattering and she was shaking all over from delayed reaction and shock. Leaning over the parapet,
she took deep breaths, but the wintry January air was contaminated with chemicals spewing from the manufactories, coal tar, smoke, and flour dust from the mills alongside
the canal. Barely moving, the tobacco-brown water was streaked blue with indigo
dye and crusted with wood chips from timber piled high on the wharves, waiting to
be transported by horse and cart to the mills and cabinetmakers’ workshops.
The polyglot crowds scurrying past her did not seem to notice her, even though her blouse was bloodstained and
torn and she was coatless on a bitter winter day.
Tilly’s ears were filled with the din
of horses’ hooves, the rumble of cartwheels,
the clanking of great cranes loading and unloading barges, and the babble of voices
speaking in many different languages.
Gathering her wits, she knew she must make a move or
else end up frozen to the stonework:
yet another cadaver to be flung into a pauper’s grave in the nearest necropolis. Sudden death on the mean streets of
London
’s
East End
was an everyday occurrence, whether from murder, misadventure or sheer poverty. Feral children scavenged alongside feral cats and dogs, vying for scraps with tramps and drunks.
Shop doorways offered a minimum amount of shelter to the crawlers: destitute
people, mostly women, who were old, sick or merely unwanted, and were so weak that
they were unable to walk, subsisting on handouts and dying unmourned.
Tilly had no illusions
about life: survival meant using your brains or your fists.
She was in trouble and would be in even worse straits if old Ma Blessed had
called the constable and the coppers were out looking for a thieving servant girl. The irony was that she had not stolen
the wretched brooch; it wasn’t worth stealing anyway.
Tilly was pretty certain that the blood-coloured gems were red
glass and that old man Blessed had once again cheated on his wife.
The sleet had hardened
into hailstones and Tilly knew that she must keep moving, or freeze to death. There was only one place that she could
go now and that was home to Ma in Red Dragon Passage, Whitechapel.
She might not be best pleased to hear that Tilly had lost her
job, but Ma would be on her side and she would make it right with Pops when he staggered
in late at night, exhausted from working long hours as a lighterman on the river. Home, home, the mantra repeated again
and again in her brain; she must get home, even though it was a fair step to Whitechapel. Tilly broke into a jogging run, her
numbed feet skidding on the tiny pearls of sleet that turned the pavements into
a slippery skating rink, but as the crowds grew denser she was forced to slow down. Picking her way through piles of rotting vegetable matter tossed from costermongers’ barrows, stepping over the messes left
by mange-ridden mongrel curs and weaving in and out of people intent on going about
their own business, Tilly kept going until she reached
City
Road
. By this time, her clothes were steaming
and the feeling had come back to her feet.
The only trouble was that her chilblains were burning like fire and the weals on
her back had begun to itch and sting.
City Road was a maelstrom
of horse-drawn vehicles, handcarts and barrows; a pedestrian could have crossed
the street, leaping from cart to cab to omnibus without their feet ever touching
the ground. A short way along, Kitty
found her way barred by a crowd that had gathered around two carts that had collided
and, with their wheels locked, were blocking the carriageway.
The driver of the cart
heading in the direction of Pentonville was standing in the footwell hurling abuse
at the other carter. ‘Are you blind as well as bleeding stupid, Bert Tuffin? That old nag of yours is only fit for
the glue factory. Stupid old bugger,
call yourself a carter?’
‘Shut your trap or you’ll
be next.’ Tuffin leapt off the driver’s seat, grabbing the horse’s bridle. Cursing
and swearing, he raised the whip, bringing it down on the terrified animal’s back. ‘I’ll teach you manners, you brute.’
But his vicious action only made things worse and the horse reared in the shafts,
rolling its eyes in terror and lashing out with its hooves.
This seemed to infuriate Tuffin even more and he brought the whip down hard
across the animal’s flank. Enjoying
themselves as if they were at a dogfight or bear-baiting, the crowd started whistling,
catcalling and shouting useless advice.
Infuriated by the cruelty
to the poor horse and with the pain of a similar beating still uppermost in her
mind, Tilly elbowed her way to the front and, leaping forward, made a grab for the
whip. Tuffin rounded on her, his nostrils
flaring and his mouth opened in an angry roar.
A film of red mist came down over Tilly’s eyes and she saw Martha Blessed
about to bring the crop down on her own thin shoulders.
‘You’re a bloody bully,’ Tilly
shouted, tugging at the whip. ‘Can’t you see you’re making it worse?’
‘Get out of me way, you stupid
little tart.’
For a moment they tussled for
possession of the whip, but Tilly was much the smaller and lighter and she was losing. Using her last ounce of strength to
tug on the whip and kicking Tuffin hard on the shins, she gave him a shove, catching
him off balance, sending him sprawling onto a pile of horse dung that the road sweeper
had just deposited in the gutter.
The crowd hooted and howled with laughter, clapping and roaring their approval. Taking the reins, Tilly stroked the
horse’s soft muzzle, whispering comforting words in its ear, but Tuffin clambered
was to his feet and grabbed her by the scruff of the neck.
She could see his fist raised
above her head, but she held on to the terrified horse.
‘Hit me then, you bastard,’ she cried, closing her eyes
and waiting for the blow to fall, ‘but don’t you dare to lay a finger on this poor
old nag.’
‘I wouldn’t do that if I were
you, my man.’
Opening her eyes Tilly
saw a tall gentleman, dressed all in grey, wearing a clerical collar.
The crowd parted in respectful silence as he made his way to the edge of
the kerb.
‘She’s the one out of
order, guv,’ Tuffin protested, dragging off his cloth cap.
Turning to the onlookers, he held out his hands.
‘You all saw her go for me, didn’t you?’
‘For Gawd’s sake cut the cackle
and move your bleeding cart,’ shouted the other driver.
‘I ain’t got all day, mate.’
‘You should do as he
says and think yourself lucky that I don’t call a constable. I could have you up
before the magistrate for ill-treating this poor animal and attacking this young
woman, who was only doing her Christian duty.’ Turning his back on Bert Tuffin,
who seemed to have lost the power of speech although his mouth was working silently,
the clergyman stared at Tilly, his pale, grey eyes filled with concern.
‘Are you all right, my dear?’ He held out his hand, smiling. ‘Francis Palgrave. And you are?’
‘Tilly, your worship.’ Tilly
bobbed a curtsey. ‘I’m nicely, thank you, sir.’
‘Here, guvner.’ Tuffin changed
his tone a wheedling whine. ‘I’m losing money all the while we’re stuck in this here street.
What’s an honest working man to do, then?’
‘You ain’t the only one, mate.’
The driver of the other cart leapt off his seat and came towards Francis, cap in
hand. ‘You can see the problem, Your Reverence.’
‘Hold your horse steady, my
man,’ Francis said, taking the reins from Tilly.
‘Lead him slowly forward when I give you a sign.’ Speaking softly to the
agitated animal, he began stroking its neck until it grew calmer.
‘Now.’
Gradually, inch by inch, the
two vehicles were eased apart with just the grazing of wheel hubs and a shower of
wooden splinters. Once again, the
crowd applauded.
‘Crikey,’ Tilly said,
impressed. ‘That were a blooming miracle.’
Glowering, Bert took the reins
from Francis. ‘I’d have done it meself, given half a chance.’
‘Would you be the Albert Tuffin of Wapping, as indicated on the
side of your cart?’ Francis took a leather-bound notebook from his pocket, extracting
a pencil from its spine.
‘What if I am?’
Francis wrote something in
the book, closing it with a snap. ‘I suggest you treat this poor animal with a bit
of human kindness and respect if you want it to serve you well, Tuffin.
I have your name noted and I won’t hesitate to pass it on to the
appropriate authorities if necessary.
Do we have an understanding?’
‘I’m an honest man, guvner,
plying an honest trade.’ Tuffin leaned towards Tilly, scowling.
‘Best keep out of me way. I
don’t forget easily.’ Hawking and spitting in the gutter, he climbed back onto the
driver’s seat and flicked the reins.
The horse shambled forward and the crowd began to disperse.
Tilly made a move to leave
but Francis caught her by the hand.
‘You haven’t told me your full name, my dear.’
‘Tilly True, sir.’
‘You’re hurt, Tilly, and you’re
chilled to the marrow.’
‘I’m fine, your honour. I’d best be on me way.’
‘You won’t get far in that
state. Come with me. My lodgings are
nearby.’
Tilly backed away, alarmed. Francis raised his hands and shook his head, laughing. Suddenly he looked
quite young and, to Tilly’s surprise, quite good looking, for a clergyman.
‘No, please.
It’s quite respectable. My sister
will be only too happy to attend to your injuries and give you a hot drink. You were very brave today, Tilly True.’
Hesitating for a moment, Tilly
realised that she must look a complete fright; she didn’t want to turn up at home
in a state and risk giving her mum a funny
turn.
‘All right, don’t mind if I do, but just for a minute or two mind.
I still got a fair old walk home.’
‘Of course,’ Francis said,
striding forward. ‘I understand.’
Tilly had to trot to keep up
with his long strides as he led the way along
City
Road
, crossing
Old
Street
and keeping on until they came to Bunbury Fields.
The terrace of late Georgian town houses, their original white stucco now
grey and crumbling and the paintwork blistered and peeling, had been built overlooking
the municipal graveyard. The small-paned
windows were opaque with cataracts of grime, staring blindly at the high wall of
the cemetery. Tilly couldn’t help wondering
if the twenty-foot-high wall was to
keep the spirits of the dead from roaming into the world of the living, or to keep
the resurrection men from
snatching the bodies.
Realising that Francis had sprinted up the steps to the front door of a house
in the middle of the row, she quickened her pace.
Taking a bunch of keys from
his pocket, Francis opened
the front door. ‘Come along, Tilly.’
There was an unmistakeable odour
of boiled mutton and damp rot lingering in the hallway. The carpet on the stairs was well worn and threadbare in places and the banister handrail glowed with the
patina of constant use. The Palgraves’
lodgings were on the first floor and Francis ushered Tilly into a sitting room at
the front of the house, overlooking the burial ground.
A fire burned in the grate but the room was cheerless and shabbily
furnished. It looked to Tilly as though
the entire contents were a collection of other people’s cast-offs and the overall
impression was brown, from the wallpaper hung with sepia tints to the faded velvet
curtains that framed the windows.
‘Francis?’ A young woman jumped
up from a sagging wingback chair by the fire, dropping her sewing on the floor. Her smile of welcome wavered when she
saw Tilly and was replaced by
a look of concern.
‘Good heavens, who is this?’
Taking off his top hat, Francis
set it down on a chair by the door and began methodically to peel off his kid gloves,
one finger at a time. ‘Harriet, I want
you to meet a very brave young woman.
This is Tilly True who, with no apparent thought for her own safety, stood up to
a bully of a man who was ill-treating his poor horse. Tilly, this is my sister,
Miss Palgrave.’
Tilly bobbed a curtsey. ‘Honoured, I’m sure, ma’am.’
‘No, please don’t,’ Harriet
said, smiling. ‘The days are gone when I was Miss Palgrave of Palgrave Manor. Everyone except Francis calls me Hattie.’
Tilly eyed her with growing
suspicion. Toffs didn’t encourage
servant girls to be familiar and this young woman, although apparently living in
straitened circumstances, was obviously a lady.
‘I just come in to get warm, miss.
I’ll be leaving in a minute or two.’
Harriet’s delicate brown eyebrows
winged into two arcs. ‘My dear girl,
you’re hurt,’ she said, touching the congealed blood on Tilly’s forehead.
‘You’re going nowhere until I’ve cleaned up that wound.’
‘There’s blood on her back
too,’ Francis said, frowning. ‘It looks as though the poor girl has taken a terrible
beating.’
Tilly backed away.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘Leave her alone, Francis. You’re not in the pulpit now.’ Harriet
slipped her hand through Tilly’s arm.
‘Come with me, Tilly. We’ll clean you up and find you something dry to wear.’
‘And then I’m going.’
‘Of course, and I’ll loan you
a coat and an umbrella. Something
truly awful must have happened to make you leave home without so much as a shawl. But we won’t ask questions, will we,
Francis?’
Francis nodded. ‘If you can manage on your own, Harriet,
I’ll finish what I set out to do.’
‘Of course I can manage. I’m not entirely useless.’
‘That’s not what I meant
and you know it.’
‘Yes you did.
You know you did. It isn’t my
fault that I don’t know how to keep house.’
‘This isn’t the time or place
to discuss our private business, Harriet.’ Giving her a reproachful glance, Francis
picked up his hat and gloves. ‘Goodbye, Tilly.
It was a privilege to meet someone as plucky as you.’
Placing his top hat on his head at a precise angle, he left the room.
There was a moment’s
embarrassed silence as they listened to his retreating footsteps on the stairs. Harriet was the first to recover. ‘We
get along very well really,’ she said, blushing. ‘It’s just that things have been
difficult lately.’
‘Maybe I’d better go.’
Tilly glanced longingly at the door; she felt uncomfortable here with these toffs. They seemed nice enough but there was
obviously something wrong and Tilly had enough problems of her own.
‘We haven’t always lived
like this,’ Harriet said, seeming to pick up on Tilly’s thoughts.
‘Things have been difficult since our father died.
Our eldest brother inherited the estate, and Francis was granted a living
in the East End, .that is while we are waiting to go to
India
.’
‘India, miss?’
‘My brother hopes one day soon
to teach in a missionary school in
India
. This is just a temporary lodging
until the present incumbent moves out of the vicarage.’
‘Yes, miss.
I’m sorry.’
‘But here am I going on about
my own troubles when you’ve obviously had a dreadful experience.
We must get you fixed up. I’m
afraid we’ll have to go down to the basement and beg our landlady, Mrs Henge, for
some hot water. She’s a frightful dragon
and I hate to admit it, but she scares me to death.
Come along, Tilly.’
Half an hour later, Tilly was back in the Palgraves’ sitting room, seated by the
fire, drinking a cup of hot cocoa laced with sugar.
Her injuries had been cleaned and treated with salve and Harriet had insisted
on lending her a clean blouse and skirt, both of which were much washed and darned
in places, but were of considerably better quality than the cheap clothes provided
by Mrs Blessed. Tilly had just finished answering Harriet’s inevitable questions about how she had come to be in this sorry
state.
‘That’s truly terrible,’ Harriet
said, shaking her head. ‘We had dozens
of servants when I lived at home in Palgrave Manor, but they were treated like human
beings.
‘So, if you don’t mind me asking,
why couldn’t you stay in your old home?’
Harriet pulled a face. ‘My
sister-in-law, Letitia, is not the easiest person to get on with, and with her ever
increasing brood of daughters I suppose the house was getting a little crowded.’
‘How many?’
Harriet opened her eyes wide. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘How many nippers?
I mean we only got a two-up and two-down house, and I’m one of
ten, though two little ones didn’t last long, poor little beggars, and Molly went
and married Artie when she was fifteen. She’s gone to live in Poplar now, so that
give us a bit more room.’
‘Oh, my goodness, Tilly, you
make me feel ashamed of myself. Francis
is always saying that I should think before I speak, I am so sorry.’
‘Don’t be,’ Tilly said, setting
the empty mug down on the hearth. ‘There’s
always someone better off than you and someone worse off too.
I ain’t always going to be poor, I made me mind up to that.’
‘I admire your spirit, I really
do and you must keep the clothes.’
‘Ta, but I don’t need charity,’
Tilly said, getting to her feet. ‘I said I’d bring ’em back and I will.’
‘Very well, then I insist
on lending you a coat and a hat and an umbrella too.
You’ll be no good to anyone if you catch your death of cold on the way home.’
For a moment, Tilly was going
to refuse, but recognising a will as strong as her own and hearing the rain slashing
against the windowpanes, she decided not to waste time arguing.
Harriet hurried into the adjoining
room, returning with a navy merino coat, a velour hat and a large, black umbrella. ‘Have you got the cab fare, Tilly?’
‘Blimey, miss, I ain’t never
been in a hired cab in me whole life.’
‘Well, money for the omnibus
then?’ Harriet picked up her purse and taking out some coins she pressed them into
Tilly’s hand. ‘I won’t hear of you
walking all that way in the pouring rain.
Take it, just to please me.’
Just to please Harriet, Tilly took the omnibus as far as the Monument and walked
the rest of the way, saving a couple of pennies.
At three o’clock on a wet January afternoon it was almost dark and the costermongers’
barrows in
Petticoat
Lane
, illuminated by naphtha flares, made little islands of light and colour.
Wading ankle deep through discarded vegetable matter floating in the gutters,
mixed with straw and horse dung, Tilly pushed her way through the jostling crowds. Catching the eye of a saucy young coster
selling fruit, she bought an apple from him, parried his cheeky comments and went
on her way
munching the sweet fruit.
Closing her nostrils to the odour of unwashed human bodies, the stench of outdoor
privies and the noxious smells from the manufactories that hung in a pall over the
city, Tilly dodged down familiar side streets and alleyways making her way home. By the time she reached Red Dragon Passage,
not far from the notorious
Hanbury
Street
- the scene, less than ten years ago, of one of the Ripper’s horrific murders -
Tilly was soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone.
Although the lamplighters were busy in the main streets, Red Dragon
Passage was neither rich enough nor important enough to warrant investment by the
Gaslight and Coke Company. Stumbling
over uneven cobblestones in the darkness, Tilly stifled a scream as a black shape
shot out of an overflowing drain and scuttled across her feet.
The sewer rats in the
East End
were as big as cats and twice as vicious.
If you came across one in the privy, you didn’t corner the brute; tales of people
attacked and dying from rat bites were legendary.
Shuddering, Tilly hurried on, past unlit windows pasted over with old newspapers,
and others that sent out flickering ghosts of light from a single candle.
The dismal howling of a dog was drowned by the rumbling thunder
of a steam train leaving Liverpool Street Station.
The terraced houses in Red
Dragon Passage had been built over fifty years ago to house the navvies who flooded
into the area to construct the railway system. tenements and warehouses had been
razed to the ground and red-brick terraces thrown together with little thought to
comfort or beauty. The two-up and
two-down dwellings lined a street that was barely wide enough to take a handcart. If the residents had so wished, they
could have leaned out of the upstairs windows and linked hands with someone in the
house opposite. Daylight rarely penetrated as far as the cobbled road surface.
The door of number three Red
Dragon Passage was unlocked, as always, and Tilly let herself into the living room,
which opened directly off the street.
The low ceiling was smoke-blackened, and a coal fire spluttering half-heartedly
in the grate was the only source of light.
Two little girls, sitting cross-legged on the stone floor, were peeling potatoes
and dropping them into a soot-encrusted iron saucepan.
They turned their heads as Tilly entered the room and a small,
skinny woman erupted from the scullery clutching a saucepan in her hand.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Ma, it’s me, Tilly.’
‘Tilly!’ The girls scrambled
to their feet, sending a shower of potato peelings across the floor, hurling themselves
at Tilly, demanding to know if she had brought anything for them.
‘Lizzie, Winnie, let me get
me breath,’ Tilly said, laughing and ruffling their hair.
‘You’re wet,’ Winnie said,
pulling away. ‘You’ll catch cold.’
Nellie True put the saucepan down on the table, and stood arms akimbo. She wasn’t smiling.
‘Don’t you dare tell me you’ve lost your job, Tilly.
I got laid off from the mill and your dad’s been sick this past three
weeks with his chest. The only money
coming into the house is the pittance what Emily earns at the laundry and the coppers
what the young ’uns make selling matches outside the station.’
Glancing around the room,
even allowing for the deep shadows, Tilly could see that the walls were bare of
the pictures that had hung there in better days; the brass clock had gone from the
mantelpiece, as had the china spill jar and the pair of plaster dogs that Dad had
bought on a rare outing to a fair in the Royal Victoria Gardens.
It didn’t take a genius to work out that everything had been popped at the
pawnshop. This wasn’t a good moment
to break bad news.
‘I got a better offer,’ Tilly
said, taking off her hat. ‘I just come
to visit before I take up me new position.’
Winnie, just nine years old,
looked up at her with big, admiring eyes.
‘You going to work for the Queen at the palace?’
Tilly grinned, giving Winnie’s
hair a playful tug. ‘Not quite, Winnie.’
Nellie eyed her suspiciously. ‘Are you telling the truth, Tilly?
I never knew you come home just to be sociable.
And if it comes to that, where did you get them new duds?’ Nellie
fingered the cloth of Harriet’s coat, nodding in approval.
‘That’s pure merino or I’m a Dutchwoman.’
‘Miss Harriet give it
me on account of me getting caught in a shower.
She’s a real lady, Ma. Her brother
is a vicar. Real respectable.’
‘Hmm! Respectable won’t put
food on the table. How much are they
going to pay you?’
Thrusting her hand in her pocket,
Tilly brought out the remainder of her bus fare and dropped the pennies on the table. ‘I ain’t had me wages yet but that’s
a bit on account. It’ll buy us a bit
of supper.’
Poking the coins with
her forefinger, Nellie counted them, frowning. ‘I’ll send Jim and Dan when they
gets back from the
station. This won’t buy much so let’s hope they’ve had a bit
of luck today. You girls get back to
peeling them spuds and get them on the fire or we’ll be having them for breakfast.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Tilly said.
‘Fetch another knife, Lizzie, and we’ll get it done double quick.’
‘So where’s this new position
then?’ demanded Nellie, slumping
down on a bentwood chair at the table.
‘And why did you give up a good job working for that nice Mrs Blessed? I hope you’re telling me the truth,
my girl.’
Taking the knife from Lizzie,
Tilly squatted down on her haunches to help finish off the potatoes.
‘Why would I lie, Ma? You’d
soon find me out like you always did.’
‘You and Molly was a pair of
little tinkers when you was small.’ Nellie’s lined face cracked into a smile. ‘She’s expecting again, by the way That’ll
be her third since she and Artie moved to Poplar.
He’s got a job in a ship’s chandlers.’
‘Three
nippers and her a year
younger than me.’ Tilly dropped a potato into a pan of cold water.
Poor Molly; her life was over and that was for sure.
‘I had you when I was fifteen
and one almost every year after that,’ Nellie said, patting her flat chest with
a bony hand. ‘And I never regretted it, not even when the good Lord saw fit to take two of my babies afore they’d even
cut a tooth.’
‘I know, Ma. but I don’t want
my life to end up like that. I want
more.’
Nellie sniffed and tut-tutted. ‘You always had big ideas above your
station, my girl. I’m just glad that Molly’s settled.’
‘And Emily?’ Tilly looked to
Lizzie for an answer, but Lizzie pulled a face.
‘Emily is stepping out with
a gentleman,’ Nellie said, puffing out her chest.
‘I expects she’ll be next up the aisle.’
Tilly frowned. ‘She’s only
fourteen.’
‘Nearly fifteen and her gentleman has a good business and his own
house in Duck’s
Foot
Lane
, Wapping.’
‘He’s old,’ whispered Lizzie.
‘And he’s got grown-up kids,’
added Winnie.
‘You keep your smart remarks
to yourselves,’ Nellie said. ‘And get them spuds on to boil.’
A thud above their heads
and the sound of coughing made Nellie jump to her feet.
‘That’ll be your dad waking up.
I’ll make a pot of tea. I daresay
you could do with a cup, Tilly?’
Before Tilly could answer,
the front door opened and Emily walked into the room.
She stopped dead when she saw Tilly, her pretty face alight with astonishment
and delight. ‘Tilly!
What a corking surprise.’ She flung her arms around her sister, laughing
and crying all at the same time.
‘You’re a sight for sore eyes, Emmie, and that’s the truth,’ Tilly said, holding her at arm’s length.
‘You’ve grown up since I last saw you.’
‘And you’ve come just at the
right moment. Bertie’s just proposed
to me and I’ve said yes.’
Nellie clapped her hands. ‘No! That’s wonderful.
Where is he?’
‘Just seeing to his horse,’
Emily said, clutching Tilly’s arm.
‘I’m so lucky, Tilly. My Bertie’s the
kindest most generous man in the whole world.
You’ll love him.’
‘I’m sure I…’ Tilly stopped
dead, her mouth open.
Filling the doorway with his
huge bulk was the same carter who earlier that day had been so cruel to his horse. Albert Tuffin strode into the room on
a gust of smoke- laden air. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said, glaring at Tilly.
‘Look who it ain’t.’
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