Eva, March 1932
First it was her little brother Frankie, now it was her big sister Kathleen. Eva didn’t ever want to get ill. She knew her sister was so sick that she probably didn’t mind being away from home for weeks but Eva hated the idea of not being with her family. And then there were the rules. She hated the rules even more. No sitting on the bed, no touching the patient, no bringing in food (she ignored that rule and sneaked jam sarnies in for Kathleen), only two visitors per bed and don’t even think about turning up a minute early or that old dragon of a ward sister will chew your ears off.
Kathleen lay back on her pillow, the dark circles under her eyes making her look much older, her beautiful curls all greasy because she was too ill to have a bath yet. When she smiled, she was still Kathleen but when she coughed it scared the life out of Eva because her whole body seemed to shake. Sister appeared at the end of the bed and rang the bell to signal the end of visiting time.
‘Well, Kathleen,’ said Mum, kissing her on the forehead, ‘you just keep your spirits up, chicken, and we will have you home very soon.’
‘Can Frankie come to visit, and Jim?’ she asked.
Eva nodded. Frankie and Jim were off with Old Uncle Dennis, Nanny Day’s brother, watching the Arsenal play, but she would make sure one of them came in her place next weekend. The Royal Hospital for Children and Women was only a stone’s throw from their house but, with its grand, red-brick front entrance and echoing wards, it was a world away from their little terraced home. What if Kathleen got used to having a bed all to herself and never wanted to leave? Eva stifled a sob.
‘Chin up, Eve,’ said Kathleen. ‘I might be allowed onto the balcony soon for some fresh air and I bet I will see you and Frankie playing out in the street!’
That balcony, with its columns, overlooking Waterloo Road, was like something out of a fairy tale. Eva felt a pang of jealousy and then reminded herself that Kathleen was only trying to find something to look forward to. Eva had overheard Mum telling Dad that Kathleen might always have a weak heart because of the rheumatic fever and it could take months to get over it.
Nanny Day was threatening to come up to the hospital with her special bone broth to make Kathleen better, just as she had with Uncle when he came back from the Great War with tuberculosis. The nurses at St Thomas’s Hospital would wheel all the soldiers out for fresh air in their beds by the river Thames because that was how you got better from TB. So Nanny Day would come along and bring a big bowl of her bone broth and ladle that into Uncle Dennis as he lay there, coughing. The nurses knew better than to try to stop her. She’d give them a look, as if to say, ‘What are you going to do, then?’ and they would retreat, with a rustle of starched uniforms. Now Nanny Day was talking about coming up to nurse Kathleen herself and Eva wished she could be there to see the look on the ward sister’s face when she did!
Later that afternoon, as Nanny Day helped to press some shirts in the scullery, she made her intentions clear. Mum took in a bit of laundry from the hotels to help make a few shillings more when she could and Nanny Day was always willing to lend a hand.
‘It’s been too long, Maggie, two weeks now and no improvement. They are not feeding her right. She needs my broth,’ she said
‘Please, Ma, I don’t want to upset the doctors,’ said Mum.
‘Nonsense,’ said Nanny Day, pulling some coins out of her purse and handing them to Eva. ‘Go up to the Cut and see what bones the butcher can spare you and if he hasn’t got much, give him those to change his mind.’ She grabbed an onion and a potato from the side and began chopping with such vigour that Eva was pleased to beat a hasty retreat up to the shops.
Eva walked along Lower Marsh, past the barrows at the side of the road. A brewer’s dray horse plodded past. Someone had parked a motor car and it was attracting attention from the kids from Ethelm Street. ‘Eat’em Street’ was what Eva and Frankie called it. It was so rough that the police would only walk down it in pairs.
Eva crossed over Waterloo Road and into the Cut – a bustling thoroughfare running from Waterloo Road to Blackfriars Road, a cut through from one street to another. It was an exciting place to be. She preferred it to their little world in Howley Terrace, although they did have the muffin man and the tallyman, who might throw them a penny when the kids chased him, shouting ‘throw out yer mouldies’. The Cut had proper shops and was full of life: the butcher, the grocer, the barber, the hardware store and Peacry’s, the general dealer, which was her favourite because things hung on rails and hooks outside and it was like Aladdin’s Cave in there. The banter that went on in those shops was something she loved to hear, although she didn’t understand most of it. Everyone knew she was Nanny Day’s granddaughter and all the shopkeepers had time for her nan and her mum.
The butcher was busy when she got there. People were buying their meat for Sunday – the one day when families like hers tried to have a full roast with meat, two veg and gravy. Whatever beef they had left after would be minced up on Monday and used to make a pie or given to her father cold, to keep him going. Mum never seemed to eat much. She made sure that Dad and the kids were all fed first before she would help herself to the smallest piece of meat.
Eva came away with a packet of beef bones, wrapped in newspaper. The butcher didn’t charge her because he knew Old Uncle Dennis well. They had served together in the trenches in France during the Great War. Eva noticed that the butcher’s hands didn’t shake like Uncle Dennis’s did, though. He was steady as a rock as he wielded that meat cleaver.
She still had her pennies from Nanny Day, which she would give back to her. As she passed the grocer’s shop, some juicy oranges caught her eye. Wouldn’t it be good if she could get one for Kathleen? She turned the coins over and over in her pocket. Nanny Day couldn’t really afford it. Anyway, she had told Eva to get bones, not fruit, and Eva didn’t want to risk her wrath. But she did want her sister to get better.
She wandered around in front of the shop for a few moments, waiting for a customer. A woman from Tenison Street came along and got into quite a discussion with the shopkeeper about the price of his apples, which had come all the way from Kent and were probably the juiciest this side of the river, or that was what he said. While they were debating the price for a pound of his finest, she crept alongside the crate of oranges, snatched two and tucked them under her parcel of bones. Her heart stopped for a second when the shopkeeper glanced over. She smiled at him, turned and skipped off, pleased with herself.
When she got home, Mrs Avens from down the road had installed herself at the tiny table in the scullery. Eva put the parcel of beef bones down on the table but held the oranges behind her back while Mrs Avens prattled on.
‘I only went to the Poor Law because my Johnny can’t find work and I’m struggling to make ends meet,’ she was saying. Mum nodded sympathetically. Nanny Day harrumphed loudly over the ironing board. She’d seen that Johnny up at the Feathers Tavern in the Waterloo Road more times than she’d care to mention. Mrs Avens ignored her and carried on.
‘Well, that nasty little man, Mr Pemberton, do you know what he said to me?’ she said. She didn’t wait for a reply: ‘He said “That’s a nice sideboard, Mrs Avens, how come you can afford that, then?” Well, you know it was my mother’s. She was given it by a grand old lady who lived over by Hyde Park, in her will. She served her thirty years, she did. And more than earned that bleeding sideboard, I can tell you.’
Eva knew only too well how Mrs Avens’s mother had earned her mahogany sideboard. Her mum said she’d heard the story so often that she felt she had cleaned the parquet floors and polished the bannisters in that house over and over herself for the last ten years.
‘And that ain’t all,’ Mrs Avens went on. ‘He was looking at my table linen and everything. When he found out I had a war pension from my late Arthur, well, that was it. I wasn’t going to qualify. And he asked me if I really wanted to work. Well, you know I do, but my legs aren’t what they were. My Johnny has fairly worn himself out looking for a job.’
Mum nodded again. Johnny was possibly the biggest good-for-nothing in the whole of Lambeth. Nanny Day opened her mouth to speak but Mum shot her a look. Eva knew that look well and it meant hold your tongue. She could almost hear her mother’s thoughts: this was her street, her neighbour, and Nanny Day would not have to live with the consequences of any falling out.
‘Oh that is terrible, yes,’ said Mum. ‘But I must be pushing on now. You’ll have finished your tea?’
She swept the little cup away from Mrs Avens’s grasp before she could ask for a top-up and headed for the front door to show her out. Nanny Day, meanwhile, inspected the parcel of bones which Eva had brought and patted her on the head.
‘What have you got there, Eva?’ said Mum, as Eva produced her two oranges, which looked so juicy and delicious.
‘Grocer gave them to me when I told him Kathleen was sick,’ she lied.
‘Well, thank the Lord for his charity,’ said Mum. ‘We’ll have one with our tea and I’ll take one up to the hospital tomorrow.’
‘With my soup,’ said Nanny Day, sploshing the bones into a big pot of water on the stove.
Mum sighed and raised her eyes to heaven. She knew when she was beaten.
‘Yes, Ma, with your soup.’
Eva went out to play with Frankie, who was having the best fun building a big mountain with the other kids, using old crates and bits of wood they found lying on the ground up near the London Wastepaper Factory. They put it all in a big pile in Tenison Street, while some of the women, led by that gossipy Mrs Davies, looked on and nodded their approval.
As dusk fell, Mrs Davies disappeared for five minutes and then marched back around with a large rag doll figure, with a mop for hair and a stuffed cushion for a head, dressed in an old overcoat. She had pinned a piece of paper to it. It read ‘SLAG’. The rag figure was plonked on the top of the pile. Eva didn’t know what that word meant but the big boys started running around and around that pile of wood and crates, shouting it, much to the amusement of Mrs Davies and the other women. One of the bigger boys came running along with a bottle of paraffin oil and poured it on the crates. Then someone struck a match. The whole thing went up with a ‘whoosh’ and the flames shot six feet into the air. People came out of their houses and stared at the bonfire. Some of the women stood with arms folded. The men huddled away at one end of the street and the children darted up and down, shrieking with laughter.
Frankie was making everyone laugh doing such a funny dance that Eva couldn’t help joining in. Only one person didn’t seem to be sharing the joke. Eva saw a woman’s face at the window of one of the houses. She was crying as she pulled the curtains shut. Her kids weren’t out in the street larking about like the others. Someone chucked an old pram on the fire, making it belch black smoke. Soon all the children were covered with smuts and soot.
Peggy appeared on the street corner and signalled for Eva and Frankie to come home, now.
‘Spoilsport!’ said Eva, as her big sister clasped her hand and dragged her around the corner. Frankie was at the door first, to be greeted by their mother, who had a face like thunder.
‘Get inside, now!’ she shouted. Eva nearly jumped out of her skin. Mum was rarely angry and Eva couldn’t remember the last time she had raised her voice like that.
She took them into the back yard and made them stand there in the darkness while she brought a bucket to the tap and filled it to the brim with cold water. She stalked off into the scullery and returned with the dreaded dishcloth. She dunked it into the freezing water and began to scrub away at the soot on their faces. ‘No child of mine will ever be involved in shaming someone like that, do you hear?’ she cried.
Eva started to sob and Frankie was blubbing. They hadn’t a clue what she was talking about. It was only a bit of fun, but they knew better than to answer their mother back when she was like this. They were just grateful she hadn’t pulled the tin bath down from its peg on the wall in the back yard and dunked them in that for good measure. They were sent to bed without any tea.
It was only the next day, as Eva was talking with her friend Gladys that she got an idea of why the woman had been crying. Eva didn’t know for sure what Gladys meant when she said that the woman had been ‘having it’ with a fella from Howley Terrace whose wife was very poorly, but she knew it had made the grown-ups very angry. She had done a moonlight flit last night – taken her few belongings and her children and fled to her mother’s house in Bermondsey, so they said. No one breathed a word of it again and, strangely, Eva thought, no one said anything to the fella in Howley Terrace. He still whistled as he came and went, on his way to work at the jam factory, as if nothing had happened at all.