Eva, October 1937
Hoisting just hadn’t been as much fun since Maggie got sent to Holloway. The judge gave her two years for blinding the cozzer with her hatpin and Maggie had shrieked her head off when she was sent down to the cells.
Eva had responsibility for her own team now, including her mate Gladys, and they went out to work three days a week. The rest of the time she served up cups of tea in the canteen at the railway station, to keep up appearances. She was determined that none of her girls should get caught and the weight of that responsibility had made her feel older, much older, than her fifteen years. So Eva took her gang to where the pickings were easy: over the water at Derry and Toms in Kensington and at Whiteley’s in Bayswater.
Eva always made sure she brought something nice back for her mum. The flat above the shop in Walworth Road was tiny but it suited her and Mum and Frankie. The three of them were happy enough. Mum really wanted her to build some bridges and get over the rift with Peggy. The sisters hadn’t spoken since the family split. Peggy was always out saving the world from something or other with George. Kathleen had told Eva that Peggy had even joined some book club where they had speakers talking about the dangers of the Nazis in Germany, the benefits of Communism and God knows what else. In any case, it didn’t stop Peggy being a grass to her own sister and Eva could never forgive that.
It wasn’t that she missed Peggy much in any case. She was too busy earning money, good money, to support her and her mother and she loved going out and living it up a bit with Gladys in the West End. She didn’t generally like to wear the stuff she’d nicked – that was a matter of pride among the hoisters of the Forty Thieves. Alice Diamond would sell it on through her network of fences and Eva would then have enough money to go shopping properly to buy what she wanted. She loved that feeling, of being independent and wealthy enough to walk into Gamages or Selfridges and buy some shoes, a coat, a dress, whatever took her fancy, really. And there was no need to have a fella to pay for it. She’d come a long way since she was a little girl who used to press her nose against the glass at the bakery over the water in Covent Garden as she waited for day-old bread to feed the family.
With her long dark hair and striking looks, Eva had plenty of admirers in the pubs around Walworth Road and the Elephant but she wasn’t interested in more than a drink and a laugh. Her mate Gladys couldn’t understand it and was forever trying to play Cupid.
Gladys already had a regular boyfriend. ‘Why don’t you come out with us and we will fix you up with a nice bloke, Eva?’
‘Nah, I honestly can’t be bothered with it all. I’m better off on my own. No man will ever be the boss of me,’ she said. In truth, seeing how her father had treated her mother had put her right off marriage and everything that went with it. Mum was doing fine now with Patsy, who just doted on her and was so gentle and fussed over her, just as she deserved, but Eva never wanted to risk being the downtrodden one stuck at home with the kids.
And Kathleen, well she was like a little lovebird with Albert but Eva had her suspicions about him, too. She’d seen him grab Kathleen round the throat when they’d both had a bit too much to drink a few months back. When Eva tried to mention it, Kathleen just brushed it off. ‘Oh, I was being a bit mouthy, Eve, that’s all. Got a bit silly and he’d had a few too many. He doesn’t ever treat me like that, in fact he would never lay a finger on me!’ Albert might be a boxer but Eva had already made a promise to herself that she would wallop him one if he ever hurt her sister again. She wasn’t afraid of anyone and she had Alice Diamond and the girls to back her up.
Some of the other girls in the Forty Thieves liked a good scrap. Fighting wasn’t really Eva’s thing but there were times when she was expected to provide back-up, just in case, and today was one such occasion. Alice had ordered her and Gladys to meet at a pub down in Long Lane in the Borough on Sunday afternoon, which was usually their day off.
‘There’s a score I’ve got to settle and it might interest you,’ she’d told her. Eva had been racking her brain all day to think about who might be on the receiving end of Alice Diamond’s knuckle-duster but she’d drawn a blank. When she got to the pub, she was amazed to see it rammed to the rafters and had to push her way to the bar to get port and lemon for herself and Gladys. They huddled in a corner, listening in to the conversations around them.
‘Place is full of Commies,’ said one bloke. ‘Hundreds of them have come in from over the East End.’
‘Better them than the Fascist lot,’ said another. ‘All the dockers have come out to give them a hiding.’
Eva recognized Joe from Howley Terrace at the bar, drinking with some workmates, and she realized, with a stab of guilt, that she hadn’t seen Mary and little Florrie in ages. She rarely went near Howley Terrace these days, for fear of bumping into her father. She was just about to go over and tell Joe to pass on her best to his wife, when Alice Diamond strode in, with four of the Forty Thieves behind her.
A hush fell over the pub as she made her way to the bar. Then she picked up a pint glass and smashed it. The noise made Joe turn around. In an instant, Alice had stuck the glass in his face. ‘Grass!’ she said. ‘I know you told the cozzers about one of my girls from Howley Terrace a couple of years ago. Got her in trouble with her dad, too. Do yourself a favour, keep it shut from now on.’ He staggered backwards, blood spurting from the cut. Nobody tried to stop Alice as she turned briskly and left. Someone offered Joe a handkerchief, which he held to his face, the blood pumping through it and splatting onto the floor. Eva’s mouth fell open. So Peggy had been telling the truth all along and hadn’t spilt the beans to their father about her hoisting. But Eva would never have wanted Joe to get cut like this, no matter that he had grassed her up. There was no time to say sorry to him because a huge roar went up outside and brick flew through the window, spraying the pub with shards of broken glass.
In an instant, the pub had emptied, men arming themselves with chairs, bottles, anything they could lay their hands on. Eva and Gladys followed to see what the rumpus was all about. At the top of the lane, costermongers had built a barricade with their barrows and a crowd had gathered behind it. They were lobbing rotten fruit over the top at the police and a pack of Blackshirts who were marching to the beat of a drum and singing something in German. They looked so bloody ridiculous with their high-necked shirts, their trousers held up with huge belts and silver buckles, their hair slicked back and their shoes polished so you could see your face in them. ‘What a bleeding shower they are,’ hissed Eva to Gladys, who was jeering at them, with the rest of the pub.
From the other end of the lane came the sound of the Communists singing ‘The Red Flag’. A banner had been hung from a house over the road from the pub, reading ‘Bermondsey against Fascism!’ The men from the pub broke into an impromptu chorus of ‘Land and Hope and Glory’ in an attempt to drown out both sides. Eva, still carrying her port and lemon, threw it into the crowd of Blackshirts, just as the mounted police cantered into view, the officers whacking heads here and there with their truncheons.
Despite the efforts of the police to disperse everyone, the crowd kept growing until there were hundreds of people surrounding the Blackshirts, beating them back, booing and shouting. Chamber pots were slung out of open windows onto them, doorknobs and even billiard balls were lobbed into the fray and, in the middle of it all, Eva spotted her sister Peggy, screeching, ‘They shall not pass!’ at the top of her lungs, linking arms with some old bloke on one side and George Harwood on the other, as she kicked out at a passing policeman.
In that moment, Eva could have almost died of pride: her big sister Peggy, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, was breaking the law and fighting for what she believed in. Eva ran to her, waving her arms. ‘Peggy! Peggy!’
‘Eva! What on earth are you doing here?’
‘I was trying to have a quiet drink with Gladys but fat chance of that with you Communists about,’ she said. ‘I need to say sorry, I was wrong about you grassing me up. I know you never did.’
Their conversation was short lived because while George was busy punching a Blackshirt right in the kisser, they found themselves grappled away by two policemen. ‘Move along, now, come on! This is no place for a lady.’
Eva looked at her sister and laughed as they were shoved down Long Lane. ‘We certainly ain’t ladies, are we, Peg?’
Peggy and George came over to Mum’s flat in Walworth Road the next day, to show that there was no bad blood between them.
‘It makes me so happy to have you two speaking to each other again,’ said Mum, putting the kettle on the little gas cooker to make some tea.
Kathleen was moping about by the wireless in the front room. Eventually, Eva tired of it. ‘Come on, spit it out, what’s up?’
‘It’s Albert,’ she whispered, so that Mum wouldn’t overhear.
‘What’s he done now?’ said Eva.
‘It’s not bad, Eve, quite the opposite. He wants to marry me.’
‘Oh my Gawd!’ said Eva. ‘And what have you told him?’
‘I have said yes, of course I will, but the only trouble is Dad . . .’
‘You haven’t told him, have you?’ said Eva, who had visions of her father chasing Albert down Howley Terrace with a poker.
‘I have, and he hasn’t spoken to me for days,’ Kathleen replied. ‘You know I can’t get married without his permission. If Albert goes round there it will end in a fight but I don’t want to lose him, Eva, because half the girls at work fancy him and if I don’t say yes, then someone else will, I’m sure.’
Eva thought about it for a minute. Kathleen was would soon be seventeen but she would have to wait until she was twenty-one before she could marry without their father’s permission. ‘You don’t think he will wait for you until you can do it without our dad’s say-so?’ said Eva. Kathleen shook her head miserably.
‘Well, I can’t bear seeing you like this, Kath. Leave it with me,’ Eva said. She pulled on her coat and caught the bus towards Waterloo Station. She wasn’t really sure what she was going to do when she got there, but she found herself walking down Howley Terrace and opening the front door to number 6.
‘Is that you, Jim?’ came her father’s voice, from the scullery.
She walked in. ‘No, it’s me.’
He was sitting at the table, polishing his boots on an old newspaper, his shirtsleeves rolled up.
‘Well, look what the cat has dragged in,’ he said.
‘I’ve come about Kathleen,’ said Eva, wandering across to the range, where a pan of potatoes was peeled and ready to cook.
‘Well, you have got a nerve coming round here, I’ll give you that,’ he said. ‘She ain’t getting married and that’s that.’ He started whistling to himself and went back to polishing his boots. ‘Now, unless you have come to cook my tea, you’d better be off.’
Eva picked up the pan and walked over to her father, smiling. She slowly poured the water, potatoes and all, on top of his head. ‘That’s to pay you back for the gravy you landed on me,’ she said as he spluttered. ‘I’m sick to death of your bullying ways. We all are! It’s Kathleen’s life. You have had yours; now you should let her get on with hers.’
Dad wiped the water from his face and pushed the potatoes from his lap. He looked at her for a second. ‘I hear you are keeping some pretty tough company these days, with those Forty Thieves, Eva. I saw Joe yesterday—’
‘That was nothing to do with me!’ Eva spat. ‘I would never want Joe hurt.’
Eva knew her dad was only a small old man nowadays, sitting there at the kitchen table, but there was something in his eyes which still made Eva scared as hell of him, though she tried not to show it.
‘I tell you what,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘I will make you a deal. You get yourself a proper job and when Kathleen is nineteen, she can get married.’
‘That’s two years away!’ said Eva.
‘If Albert really loves her, he can wait that long. I’ll tell him myself. They’re too young, Eva. People can make mistakes . . .’
‘You are a fine one to talk,’ she cut in.
‘Don’t try my patience, Eve,’ he said. ‘I’ve been reasonable. Get yourself a decent job, show me your cards and your pay packet and I will keep my word on Kathleen.’
Eva had no intention of staying too long in the world of work, it was a mug’s game as far as she was concerned. But a promise was a promise, and she wanted to help her sister, and so that’s how she found herself working in a textile factory down in Southwark. She’d explained it to Alice Diamond, who had agreed she could stop hoisting for a few weeks, just until her father was convinced she was going straight. There was one condition: Eva had to work out a few fiddles on the factory floor while she was there.
It didn’t take her long to suss out that her shoplifter’s drawers would come in handy. When the foreman’s back was turned, she managed to shove a whole bolt of material down her knicker leg and make her way to the ladies’ loos. Once there, she stripped off and wound the material round and round herself, until she was wrapped up like a mummy. At the end of her shift, she waddled out of the factory, praying that the material wouldn’t slip down and give the game away.
She kept that up for a month, which was long enough for the factory boss to notice that quantities of material were going missing. By then, the whole of Scovell Road had matching curtains and Alice Diamond was very pleased with her haul. Her father had seen enough of her weekly pay packets to believe that she was going straight and Kathleen got engaged to Albert.
The week after that, Eva was laid off. She’d never been happier to lose a job in her life.