Authors: Mary Gibson
If only it could always be like this between her and her sisters, Milly thought as she drifted off to sleep, but she knew the fragile threads that bound them together tonight could so easily tear apart, and tomorrow they would be at war again.
June 1923
‘Gawd,
Jesus
, Mary’n Joseph, bless us’n spare us’n save us’n keep us! Don’t you know the war’s over? I leave you for five minutes!’
Ellen Colman stood at the kitchen doorway. She was holding a matching set of three blue willow-pattern jugs, the largest in one hand and the two smaller hooked into the fingers of her other hand. She watched as her daughters fought, entangled in a struggling mass of flailing arms and legs. ‘Why can’t you three just be friends?’ she said in exasperation.
Milly Colman’s grip on her sister did not relax. Holding Elsie at arm’s length, she looked calmly over at her mother, tightening her strong fingers around the younger girl’s pale skinny wrist. Elsie launched herself forward, kicking out furiously at Milly’s shins. But her fragile frame was no match for Milly, who at seventeen was tall, powerful and swift. Effortlessly she held Elsie at bay, while Amy, the youngest of the Colman sisters, attacked Milly from below, darting around her legs like a snapping terrier and pinching her calves whenever she got close enough. Milly fended her off with one leg, while balancing perfectly on the other.
‘It’s not me!’ Milly protested. ‘It’s her.’ She gave Elsie a shake. ‘She’s a nutter!’
‘Well, you shouldn’t have called me “Dolly Daydream”!’ Elsie gasped, her energy all but expended against Milly’s immovable force. Elsie’s sharply jutting pixie chin was the last lingering evidence of her defiance and Milly judged it safe to loose her grip. Then, with a careless shove, she propelled her sister into the quicksilver path of Amy. The collision winded the nine-year-old, who bumped down on to the rag rug, gasping for air. The enmity between the Colman sisters, now only evident in their glares, seemed to fill the room with its fizzing energy.
‘You wear me out,’ said their mother, wearily stepping over Amy, before placing the three jugs on the kitchen table. She was careful with them, for they were the only matching crockery she possessed. ‘Three boys I managed to bring up, gawd rest their souls, without ’apporth the trouble you three give me.’ At the mention of her sons, Mrs Colman’s slight form seemed to flicker like a dying candle flame. She crossed herself.
Milly blanched at the gesture. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said flatly, reaching for her mother’s hand. Then defiantly, ‘Anyway, Wilf’s not dead!’
Her youngest brother had been the only one of the three boys to return from the war. He had quickly re-enlisted, posted to the Gold Coast.
‘No, but he might as well be dead for all we’ll ever see of him again. He wasn’t back home a week before he got fed up of you girls rowing and gawd knows what. No wonder he thought he might as well stay in the army!’
This was a fiction Milly couldn’t allow her mother to get away with. ‘Don’t blame us! You know it was the old man drove him away,’ she said.
Mrs Colman pursed her lips and chose to ignore Milly’s last remark. She sighed heavily. ‘It’s what I get for having girls, I suppose.’
‘Well, I didn’t do
nothing
!’ Amy sat pulling at the rug with sulky fingers. As the youngest she often got away without a telling off, but not today.
‘Don’t you play the innocent, you always have to put your two penn’orth in, don’t you?’ snapped her mother. ‘Anyway, I don’t care who started it, you’re all as bad as each other.’
She picked up the largest of the jugs, shoving it into Milly’s hands.
‘Go down the butcher’s and get me six penn’orth o’ faggots and pease pudding for the old man’s tea.’ She held out the medium-sized jug to Elsie. ‘You, stop your snivelling, take this down the Swan and Sugarloaf for his pint of bitter.’
She held out the smallest of the jugs to Amy, who had turned a defiant back on her mother and was now kicking the brass fender. Ellen Colman pulled her up by the back of her dress. ‘I’ve just about had enough of you an’all. Go to Hughes the grocer’s and get a penn’orth o’ jam in this.’ Handing her the jug, she placed a penny into her daughter’s other hand. ‘And hurry up, all of you, or the old man’ll be screaming for his tea and then you’ll be for it.’
The three girls made a dash for the passage, each vying to be the first through the front door. Milly emerged triumphant into Arnold’s Place, swinging the large china jug loosely at her side, closely followed by Elsie, a head shorter, who cupped her jug like a chalice. Amy skipped along behind, attempting to balance the smallest jug on her head.
‘There goes the set of jugs,’ said Mrs Knight to Pat’s mother, old Ma Donovan from Hickman’s Folly. The sisters might look like a set of three, as they processed in descending order beneath the glimmering gas lamp, but in truth they were as mismatched as all the rest of their mother’s crockery.
‘Better move yerselves, girls, before the shops shut!’ Mrs Knight called out to them, but as she passed by, Milly heard her mutter to old Ma Donovan, ‘If that vicious old bastard Colman gets home and there’s no tea on the table, them girls’ll know all about it!’
Milly smiled and waved the jug threateningly at Mrs Knight. ‘Let him just try it!’ she said defiantly, but in spite of her bravado, the memory of that last blow to the head he’d given her made her quicken her pace. The old man’s temper was best not roused, especially not on a Friday night, when he was looking forward to a drink at the Swan and Sugarloaf with his mates.
Arnold’s Place was a long, narrow row of two-up two-downs, facing each other across a paved alley. The light struggled to edge its way into the houses by day, and by night its dimness was relieved only by the single gas lamp, attached to Mrs Knight’s wall. Clustered beneath the lamp now, children played a ball game, while a baby in a battered old pram screamed with excited laughter every time the ball arced over it. Mrs Knight and Mrs Donovan, arms crossed over their pinafores, looked on, seemingly unworried that the baby would come to harm from the wooden cricket ball.
Milly hurried towards Dockhead. She could hear her sisters following, but didn’t slacken her pace until she passed Hughes the grocer, then she allowed herself a brief look back to make sure Amy had gone in for the penn’orth of jam. Elsie would have the furthest to go, right to the end of Arnold’s Place and the pub on the corner of Hickman’s Folly. Milly was already in the butcher’s when Elsie ambled by. Her bobbed straight hair framed her face like a pixie cap, and she had that dreamy look on her face. She would take all night, Milly thought, and then they’d all have to pay for it when the old man was kept waiting for his beer.
While Barnes the butcher was filling her jug with hot faggots and pease pudding, she tried to remember what today’s argument had been about. Nothing really, that was always the way. Elsie talked rubbish sometimes, and it annoyed her.
I’m going to be in the films when I grow up. I’ll be on at the Star and you can all come and see me.
That’s what she’d said, and when Milly, who’d worked at Southwell’s jam factory on and off since leaving school three years ago, told her not to be a Dolly Daydream, that she’d be a factory girl same as everyone else, Elsie had flown into one of her mad fits. When she got like that, all Milly could do was fend her off. Now she felt sorry about the fight, mostly for her mother’s sake. She had looked so weary.
‘And an extra one for the prettiest girl in Arnold’s Place!’ said the butcher.
She came out of her musing, to see Barnes beaming at her, ladling the extra faggot into her jug.
‘How’s your poor mother?’ he asked. For some reason Mrs Colman’s name was always prefixed by ‘poor’. Perhaps because of her two dead soldier sons, but there wasn’t a house in Arnold’s Place who’d escaped that sort of grief. No, Millie thought bitterly, it had more to do with being married to the old man.
‘Not too bad, Mr Barnes. Can you put this on the slate?’
Barnes looked up sharply as he put a large dollop of orange pease pudding over the faggots.
‘Only till tomorrow...’ Milly lied, crossing her fingers behind her back. She was going to confession tomorrow anyway. He turned to the slate.
‘Just tell your mother it’s addin’ up,’ he said, and she smiled gratefully as he handed her the jug. He’d tied oiled paper over the top, but the smell of the faggot gravy wafted up tantalizingly as she hurried home. The lion’s share would go to the old man, but her mother would mix up what was left in some onion gravy for the rest of them. It was already beginning to get dark when she reached her front door, and she prayed he wasn’t home yet. Her mother, who was stirring the gravy on the range, spun round as Milly entered.
‘Thank gawd you’re back with the faggots! Run and get Elsie for me, love, while I put these on.’ She jerked her head towards the scullery. Milly heard sluicing sounds coming from the stone sink. ‘He’s home.’
Thrusting the jug into her mother’s hands, Milly turned on her heel and ran. Her father’s targets were usually the ones nearest to hand, and Milly didn’t want him venting his displeasure on her mother. Amy would be all right, still small enough to find a corner to roll into and hide. Milly sped all the way back to the Swan and Sugarloaf before she finally found Elsie. The pink bow in her hair was slightly askew, giving her a disturbingly lopsided appearance. Her dress didn’t help matters; a worn cast-off of Milly’s, inexpertly shortened by her mother, it drooped at the front. Milly wished she’d done the sewing herself. She would have made a much better job of it. It looked a disgrace, but Elsie’s imagination had no doubt transformed it into a ball gown because she was walking in stately fashion, holding the beer jug like a bouquet, nodding and smiling graciously to imaginary crowds on either side.
‘Oi! Cinderella!’ Milly shouted in her strong, rather throaty voice. ‘You’re not going to the soddin’ ball – get a move on, the old man’s home!’
Elsie, shocked out of her daydream, started forward in a half walk, half trot which had the beer slopping over the edge of the jug.
‘Give us it here. There’ll be nothing left of it by the time we get home.’
She carefully took the jug from Elsie, who didn’t protest, and soon Milly with her steady, long strides had outstripped her, managing to spill not one drop of beer on the way.
When she slipped into the kitchen, her father was already sitting down to his faggots and pease pudding. He looked up briefly.
‘Put it there.’ He jabbed a finger next to his plate. Setting the jug down on the table, which she noticed had been covered with a clean cloth, she went to fetch the old man’s glass. Her mother stood stirring faggots in the stew pot, her face tight and body held rigid over the range. He must have started on her already. For Milly, it was never a dilemma. If she could only ever protect one person in the house, it had to be her mother. Amy largely escaped his rages, so quick on her feet she could easily evade a kick or a jab, and Elsie could always retreat into that fantasy world of hers after a hiding. But her mother... she insisted on standing like a punch bag between the old man and her children. She never seemed to think of protecting herself. Milly always had to do it for her.
Her father had scrubbed himself pink, his dark hair brushed back from his forehead, his drooping moustache trimmed. Part of his redness was due to his drinking habits. But he had shaved carefully with his cut-throat razor and had already changed out of his work clothes. After a day at Bevington’s, the leather mills in the Neckinger, he would come home with the stink of lime and chemicals clinging to him, and though he wore a thick apron at work, his clothes always seemed to smell of dead animals. His hands would be stained black, red or green, depending on what dyes he’d been mixing that day. Demanding scalding water and lots of carbolic soap as soon as he came in, he sometimes scrubbed his hands till they bled. Milly had to give him that, he was a scrupulously clean man. But she thought any other virtues must have passed over him in the womb. The good fairy never waved any magic wand over the old man’s crib, she was sure of that.
After downing his pint of bitter, he wiped his moustache with the back of his hand and stood up. Milly kept herself stationed between him and her mother, but he seemed calm enough as he pulled his jacket off the hook and jammed on his flat cap, though Milly knew he was always unpredictable. As he passed, he shot a hand out over Milly’s shoulder, grabbing her mother’s hair.
‘Don’t serve that shit up to me again, you get enough housekeeping to give me a decent, cooked dinner after a day’s work.’ Milly felt her mother flinch as he tugged harder. Fortunately, his thirst outweighed his displeasure and he stalked out, only to trip over Elsie, seated on the front doorstep. Milly heard him stumble, then his growled ‘Dozy mare!’ and the thud of his boot connecting with Elsie.
Her sister came in whimpering and nestled into her mother’s worn pinafore, like a small child. She looked up. ‘He’s messed up me grotto!’
Grottos were the latest craze with the children of Arnold’s Place, who would put flotsam and jetsam, and ‘precious’ objects, into artistic arrangements laid out on the pavement. Some pretty shells from the seafood stall, pebbles or blue glass polished by the Thames or pieces of driftwood gleaned from the foreshore, anything to bring a splash of beauty into the slate-grey street. ‘Remember the grotto’ was every child’s hopeful refrain to passers-by, who would toss a halfpenny into their laps. But Elsie didn’t care about the pennies; she always built her grottos for love.
‘Oh, Elsie, you’re too old for street games, and anyway you shouldn’t be making grottos on the doorstep, love!’ her mother said gently.
‘I was only practising.’ Elsie sniffed, holding out a handful of beads from a broken bracelet. Milly recognized it instantly.
‘That’s mine, you thieving little magpie!’ She made a grab for Elsie, while Amy dived to scoop up the scattered beads bouncing across the lino.
‘Mine now!’ Amy piped up triumphantly.
Their mother threw the ladle into the stew pot. ‘Gawd,
Jesus
, Mary’n Joseph, bless us’n spare us’n save us’n keep us, as if I didn’t have enough to put up with!’