Keeping My Sisters’ Secrets

It was nice to have somewhere new to go shopping. Eva and Gladys got up early to get down to Kingston-upon-Thames before Bentall’s threw open its doors to the public, to make the most of their day out. Bentall’s was known as England’s Wonder Store and, judging by the size of it – a sprawling building which dominated the main shopping street – Eva could see why. She couldn’t wait to get inside and go to work.

There was a lot of chit-chat in the queue about the war, of course, with most folks complaining that it was a phoney thing, because there was no sign of Jerry anywhere and now food was being taken off their plates by rationing. That didn’t really bother Eva one bit. She was a picky eater at the best of times and had grown up without much food in the house so she barely noticed, and petrol rationing only really affected those rich enough to afford a car. The blackout was a nuisance, she supposed, but it also made moving stolen goods from one place to another a bit easier, at least. She kept her thoughts to herself as she peered at her reflection in the shop window.

Eva looked smart with her long black hair pinned back into a neat little bun but the sleeves of her coat were fraying a bit. She could do with a new one. She might buy that blue coat with some of her hoisting money. It was a matter of pride not to wear the stuff she nicked. She enjoyed going shopping for nice things and paying for them, with the money she had earned. Handing out gifts to the family was different but hoisters liked to buy their own clothes.

Alice had given her strict instructions to get as many luxury items as she could in case clothes rationing started. ‘It’s an ill wind that blows nobody any good,’ she had told her. ‘Clothing coupons will mean I can put my prices up.’ Eva planned to nick a good haul of silk stockings too, as they were so easy to conceal.

The doors opened and Gladys and Eva took their time working their way through the shop, checking out the stairwells and corridors where they could pass goods off to each other. Once they’d checked the place out, they made their way up to the lingerie section. Gladys tried to create a bit of kerfuffle, dropping satin nightgowns all over the place and pulling things off their hangers so that the shop assistants would follow her, rather than Eva, who had sidled up to the hosiery display. She’d already pocketed half a dozen pairs of silk stockings and was going for another lot, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

‘I know you have been stealing,’ said the man. He had such a kind, round face, Eva thought it would be a shame to have to punch it.

‘No, I haven’t,’ she said, putting on her poshest accent. ‘You are very much mistaken.’

‘But I am not, am I?’ he said, pulling open her coat to reveal the stockings, poking out of pockets in the lining of her coat. In an instant, two other blokes were at his side and they seized her.

‘We realize the temptation to steal, now there is a war on, but I’m afraid I am going to have to call the police, young lady. Come with me.’

As she was frogmarched off to the manager’s office, she spotted Gladys, hurrying away to the exit before she was caught. Realizing she couldn’t run or fight her way out in a town she didn’t even know, Eva decided to play the innocent, just as Alice Diamond had taught her.

‘Most blokes hate it when a woman cries, so be sure to turn on the waterworks if you get caught,’ she’d told her. ‘It might just persuade them to let you go.’

Eva thought back to when her little brother Frankie got run over by a lorry when he was a kid. That always brought tears to her eyes. She began to sob. ‘Please, I’m sorry. It’s all been a mistake. I just wanted to help buy some stuff for my family. We’re poor, you see . . .’

The kindly faced man didn’t look so kind any more. He turned out to be the store manager. ‘A likely story. I’ve met your type before. I can’t have thieves pilfering my best stock. There are people out there fighting for King and Country while you are lining your pockets, young lady!’ His mouth set into a thin, hard line. ‘I have had enough of it!’ He slammed his hand on the desk.

Everything happened in a blur. The police came and Eva tried it on with them, telling them it was her first time, she had just let temptation get the better of her, but they weren’t having any of it either.

She was arrested and taken to the police station, where she was charged with theft. As the cell door clanged shut and the lights went out for the night, Eva realized she was alone, more alone than she had ever felt in her whole life. The tears she cried now were real. There was no way out, no Alice to rescue her, no Maggie with her hatpin. She willed herself, in that moment, to be back in Howley Terrace, tucked up in bed with her annoying sister Kathleen, and Peggy on the other side of the room with her nose in a book. Those thoughts kept her going until morning, when the door was pulled open and a policeman told her, ‘On your feet. You’re up in front of the beak.’

As she made her way up the little wooden stairs into the dock, Eva almost cried again as she spotted her mother, white as a sheet, sitting beside Gladys in the courtroom. There was no doubt that Gladys was here as her friend but Eva knew that everything that she said in the courtroom would be relayed back to Alice and the Forty Thieves. She would be expected to keep silent about her involvement in the gang – or there could be reprisals. There would never be any question of Eva grassing them up; she was the most loyal of all of them, but she needed Alice to know that.

The magistrate looked about a hundred years old if he was a day, which gave Eva a glimmer of hope. If she turned on the waterworks again, the old sod might not send her down.

As the charges of theft were read out, he peered at her over his half-moon spectacles.

She swallowed, hard. ‘Guilty,’ she said. Well, she could hardly do otherwise, she’d been caught red-handed. She shed a few crocodile tears, standing there, wringing her hands a bit.

‘Pull yourself together,’ said the magistrate, who clearly wasn’t fooled by this display of contrition. ‘You travelled to Kingston from your home in Lambeth, which to my mind brings a degree of premeditation to your actions. What do you have to say about that?’

‘No, sir. I mean, I wanted to come and look at the shops, yes, because I had heard that Bentall’s was such a wonderful place and girls like me, we never get to see such lovely things where I come from.’

‘And when I got here and saw all the pretty dresses in the shop, I was just overwhelmed by it all. Without realizing what I was doing, I found myself slipping a few things into my coat. It was the sheer temptation of it.’

‘Poppycock!’ the magistrate shouted across the court. ‘You came to Kingston-upon-Thames to strip our finest store of its luxury goods, no doubt to sell on to a network of accomplices back on the grimy streets of Lambeth, I suspect.’

‘No, sir, I did not,’ said Eva, standing tall and looking him straight in the eye. ‘It was just me, acting on my own, out of sheer stupidity.’

The magistrate sighed. ‘Very well, I have heard your mitigation. I have taken into account that this is your first offence but in a time of war these crimes must be dealt with firmly, to send a message to others like you. I sentence you to six months in Aylesbury. I hope you learn your lesson.’

Eva’s heart sank. At least in London there was a chance of a cushier time because Alice would have guards paid off and little extra privileges sorted for her girls.

Mum stood up to protest, but Gladys yanked her back into her seat. ‘I will be all right,’ Eva mouthed to her as a policeman led her back down the stairs. She’d heard about prison so many times from the older women in the Forty Thieves, but now it was happening to her it all seemed so unreal. Their stories came back to haunt her in the bumpy ride in the back of the police wagon from Kingston. She was numb. There were no more tears as she realized that she just had to survive the next six months and get back to Lambeth as soon as she could.

Eva was handcuffed to the guard and led through Marylebone Station, with people staring at her, and onto a waiting train. She walked with her head held high. If she was going to survive this, there was no point looking like a victim. Eva thought about how Alice Diamond would carry herself, tall and proud, and tried to do the same. But the hiss of the steam engines and the noise of carriage doors slamming shut crowded in on her and the whole experience made her feel a bit sick. Travelling in their carriage were two other women prisoners – one much older, who reeked of booze and was a dead ringer for Lumps, and another, about her age, who had a livid bruise on her cheek and spent her time staring at the floor. Their guard was a woman who was manlier than many of the fellas around the Elephant. She had shoulders like a docker and wore her uniform buttoned up, right to the top of her thick neck. On her head was a hat like a giant pork pie, the same grey as her jacket. There was no chance of escape. Eva reckoned that if this guard landed on you, it would be like being hit by a falling wardrobe.

As the train made its way out of London, rain started to fall, pattering on the carriage windows. The countryside whizzed past in a blur, rain-soaked and muddy. Aylesbury station, after the grandeur and bustle of Marylebone, was an unremarkable red-brick single-storey building. They were met on the platform by more prison guards and, with passengers staring at them again, were led away in handcuffs to a waiting van.

The prison itself was a foreboding Victorian place. Eva and her two travelling companions were brought before the governor, who couldn’t have been much older than Eva’s mum. She perched, like a little bird, behind a polished table, with a neat pile of papers in front of her, and watched as all three of them lined up in front of her. There was a bookcase in the corner, stuffed with more books than Eva had ever seen in her life, and an aspidistra, with not a fleck of dust on its leaves.

The governor wore her glasses on a chain around her neck and Eva noticed that a little gold crucifix hung at her throat. Her hair was cut short, showing off high cheekbones, and there seemed to be not an ounce of flesh on her. In a fight, this woman would probably snap in two, but when she spoke, it was with such an air of authority that Eva felt compelled to listen.

Her voice was calm, rather like a schoolteacher’s. ‘My name is Miss Size but you will address me as ma’am. Is that clear?’

The old drunkard shuffled her feet and slouched but not for long because the guard poked her in the ribs.

‘Stand up straight, girls!’ said Miss Size, with a sharper tone, which made Eva jump to attention.

‘You have all committed crimes, which we need not dwell on here. I want you to listen, to obey the rules but, above all, to learn something from your time in prison, so that you do not have to repeat the experience. Do you understand?’

Eva nodded along with her little speech, to show willing. She had already worked out her game plan – keep her head down, get on with her bird and get home quickly. She wasn’t going to be pally with the screws but she wasn’t going to cross them if she could help it. Alice had warned her that troublemakers got singled out from the start and had a rougher time. Eva wasn’t going to be one of them. The ogre of a prison officer who had transported them in the train was then replaced by a series of grim-faced warders with jangling keys attached to their belts.

Eva was given a uniform – the drabbest, scratchiest cotton button-through dress with barely any semblance of a waist to it. She looked like a sack of spuds in it. God, if Gladys could see her now, she’d kill herself laughing. Once she’d put it on she was shown to the mess hall, where she joined the back of a long queue for meat stew and dumplings. It was then that Eva realized she was starving hungry, having eaten nothing since her prison breakfast of a slice of dry bread and some tea. A lot of the women chatted to each other, they seemed to know each other, but Eva just kept herself to herself.

Once she’d eaten, a warder tapped her shoulder and showed her to her single cell, which was small, maybe six feet across and ten feet long. Eva looked around. She wasn’t expecting a holiday camp but the bare walls and tiny window were depressing. There was a little shelf with a Bible on it, a wooden seat and a little table and a proper bed at least, with some nightclothes folded on top of it. She’d heard about women in Holloway sleeping on boards that had to be put away during the day. She tested the mattress; it was thin and lumpy and the pillow was rock hard but she would get used to it. Eva peered under the bed. Yes, there was a chamber pot. Eva had heard all about slopping out in the morning from the Forty Thieves. The keys turned in the lock. A single lightbulb above her head was still on. She didn’t have a watch so she had to guess the time. Perhaps it was six, seven o’clock. She took her shoes off and lay on top of the grey prison blanket, willing the hours away. There was so much to take in and, if the truth be told, she was trying not to panic at being unable to leave this place.

After a while the hatch to Eva’s door was pulled back and a voice shouted, ‘Cocoa!’

An enamel mug was thrust through the opening towards her. She accepted it, gratefully, sipping the hot chocolate which warmed her on the inside and made her feel sleepy. She could hear women chatting to each other through the cell walls, shouting the occasional comment. There was an almighty banging on one of the doors and she heard a warder yell, ‘For God’s sake, stop that racket or you’ll be in solitary again, Mavis!’

Gradually, the prison fell silent. The lights went out. Eva took off her dress and put on the prison-issue nightie and slipped under the covers. ‘Day one over,’ she said to herself, as sleep enveloped her.

Eva quickly got used to the routine of slopping out and having breakfast in her cell before cleaning the prison all day. She liked mopping floors – it was quiet, she could keep her own counsel, and she could move around the prison and see what was going on. It wasn’t that she was unfriendly but she didn’t want to get into any of the little gangs of girls who gathered for a gossip at mealtimes. She said good morning to the others, nodded her hellos and then looked forward to keeping her own company in the cell at night. In the afternoons, the ‘girls’, as Miss Size called them, were expected to take lessons to improve themselves. Eva had taken up needlework and was allowed to do some sewing in her cell before supper but she much preferred being out and about. So after three months, when the chance came for the fittest among them to work in the fields for a local farmer, she jumped at the opportunity.

Half a dozen of them were kitted out in boiler suits and taken out of the prison for the day in the back of an old van accompanied by Brunhilde, the guard from the train. That wasn’t her real name – it was Miss Evans – but given her figure, she was given that Jerry moniker behind her back. Even though her new work involved shovelling pig crap and digging the fields until her arms ached, Eva loved the freedom of it, the fresh air and the extra rations from the farmer’s wife, who always made sure they had a little cake or biscuit at the end of the day.

Other women had visitors but Eva didn’t, even though she missed her mum and her sisters. She had written to her mother, telling her she was doing fine and not to bother coming out because it was a long way to come for just a half-hour chit-chat. Instead, she had letters, lots of letters.

Dearest Eva,

I am sending you a picture of your little niece, Gloria. Isn’t she pretty? I had her at Nanny Day’s and she is the most beautiful little thing ever. She keeps me ever so busy looking after her, I don’t know how our mum coped with five of us!

I haven’t seen much of Kathleen lately. She seems busy with the housework and keeping Albert happy but she says she likes married life very much.

I hope you are keeping your spirits up and let’s hope this war will be over soon. George and Harry have both completed their army training and are determined to see action fighting the Fascists but I do worry about them both so much, Eve. I just pray we will all get through this and life will get back to normal.

I miss you,

Peggy x

Eva carefully put the picture of Gloria on the little shelf on the wall, next to her copy of the Bible. The governor encouraged little homely touches; she preferred the idea of imprisoning her girls ‘in a park’ rather than ‘parking them in a prison’ because she believed that was how women would change their characters for the better. Eva knew there were old drunks and brasses inside who would never change, no matter what people like Miss Size said or did. Eva had nothing to do with them but had made a couple of mates among her fellow farmworkers – nothing serious, just some girls to pass a bit of banter with. No one actually discussed what they were in for and she preferred it that way.

Eva was five months into her sentence when Miss Size called her into her office. Eva’s mouth went dry and she racked her brain for anything she might have done wrong, because since her first day she’d barely seen Miss Size, but in the end there was nothing to worry about. Miss Size just wanted to know if she would volunteer for the Land Army, seeing as she was so good at digging potatoes up and farm work. If she did, Eva would be allowed to leave prison a full month early. Plus, the pay was good – sixteen shillings a week and her board and lodging paid. If she mucked about, she’d be back behind bars for the rest of her sentence, Miss Size made that much clear. ‘And I would take it very personally, Eva, if you let me down,’ she said. ‘As would the guards here.’ The veiled threat was clear.

There was no question about it: Eva agreed straight away because she wanted to get out of that prison as soon as she could. There was just time to write a note to her mother telling her she was moving out of prison to help the war effort and would write to her again soon. She was kitted out, along with three other volunteers, in the most ridiculous uniform. Rather than the overalls she had worked the land in, she was given knee-length corduroy breeches, thick walking socks, stout brown lace-up shoes, a little shirt and a green tie, a bright-green woollen jumper with a red and green armband and a massive brown felt hat. Some of the girls started to giggle as they tried their clothes on, until Brunhilde told them off.

‘I know there’s a war on,’ said Eva, struggling to keep a straight face. ‘But I look bleeding silly!’

They were herded into the back of an old lorry without a guard. Escape did cross her mind but she remembered Miss Size’s words of warning. Absconding could lead to a very tough time indeed back in Aylesbury.

The journey took hours and hours. It was only on a loo stop that Eva found out, to her horror, that they weren’t staying anywhere in the Home Counties but were headed ‘up north’.

Night had fallen by the time they arrived at a little village near Ribchester, in Lancashire. They were deposited on a farm. The farmer came out to greet them, carrying a gas lantern, and showed them their lodgings, which made Aylesbury Prison look like the Savoy Hotel. Home was a sparse little hut with bunk beds in it. There was no one else in it, so Eva and the others made up their beds and took a few spare blankets to make themselves comfortable because there was no heating, and even though it was spring it was bloody freezing. It was a bit like a prison in its sparseness but Eva felt relieved as she settled down under the covers for the night that there was no locked door and no prison guard waiting outside in the corridor.

Just as she was nodding off, she was rudely awakened by a sharp poke in the ribs and someone shining a torch in her face. She squinted into the light and lashed out with her hands. ‘Oi! I’ll knock your bleedin’ block off!’

‘Oh, we’ve got a right live wire here, lasses,’ said the bearer of the torch. ‘You’ve nicked me blankets, Cockney! I’ll be havin’ ’em back, if you don’t mind.’

Eva sat bolt upright and came face-to-face with a sturdy, squat young woman with curly hair and a ruddy, round face. She was backed up by a gang of five others, who were little more than shapes, looming out of the darkness.

Eva’s three other prison comrades were cowering in their bunks at the other end of the dorm. Seeing she was going to have to handle this herself, Eva leaped out of bed and put her fists up, ready to fight, her heart pounding.

‘All right, all right,’ said the sturdy young woman, taking a step back. ‘This isn’t a boxing match. Our only enemy is Hitler. We’re Land Army, just like you. I’m afraid you’ve missed out on the pub with us lasses tonight. We can patch things up in the morning, but I will need a blanket or I will freeze to death in this hut.’

She offered Eva her hand. ‘I’m Dot. And you’d better get back to bed or you’ll catch your death by the looks of it!’

Eva realized she was shaking from the cold – or maybe it was fright – or possibly both. The flannelette nightie she’d been issued with by the prison was three sizes too small and barely covered her knees and goosebumps were prickling up her legs.

‘I’m Eva,’ she said, shaking Dot by the hand. ‘And where I come from, it ain’t polite to go sneaking up on folks in the dark but, like you say, our only enemy is that Hitler fella, so I will let it go this time.’ She was determined not to show too much weakness, just like she’d learned from watching her little brother Frankie in fights.

There was an uneasy truce that bedtime but by the morning, once the farmer’s wife called them all over for breakfast, they had made friends.

Eva quickly got into the routine of mucking out the farmer’s horse in the morning, helping to feed the pigs and even milking the cows. She had to learn how to groom and tack up the horse too, to fix him to the cart, just like the ones back home in London when she was a little girl. She liked that but the horse was a sly old devil who would aim a kick or bite when he could, just for the hell of it. Animals were fine; in the end, it was the digging which got to her, an entire field of it, endlessly, day after day. The other girls started talking excitedly about the harvest in the summer and the big dance in the village but Eva began to long for noise and traffic and London.

She waited until she had fulfilled her month at the farm and then one morning, rather than going out to work with the others, she pretended to feel ill and went back to bed after breakfast. They were a nice enough bunch and she knew that they’d try to persuade her to stay. Dot was really committed to the farm work; she saw it as her duty to dig for victory to beat the Nazis. Eva liked her best of all and she didn’t want Dot to think she was unpatriotic, so leaving without making any fuss was the best way. Eva packed up her belongings in a little rucksack and set off down the country lanes, towards civilization.

On the first main road Eva came to, she hitched a lift. The lorry was headed towards Blackpool and so that was exactly where she said she wanted to go. As the lorry trundled along, the hills became more distant and she started to think about what Blackpool would be like. Dot had been on holidays there with her family, before the war, and still raved about the promenades and the piers and the Blackpool Tower. She had made it sound like the promised land and had even told her about the best guest house to stay in. Well, after those muddy fields, it would be a relief to get back to proper roads and pavements.

Eva had money to last her a few days but she wanted to earn enough to get her train fare back to London and to have some left over to treat her mother to something nice. She found the little guest house Dot had talked about but the landlady sucked in her cheeks when Eva asked if there was a room to spare. ‘I’m supposed to keep a few free rooms in case the military need them, love,’ she said, shaking her head. Eva showed her some money and she agreed to let her stay, on the understanding that if an airman was billeted on her at short notice, Eva would have to sleep on the floor in the lounge. As a mark of goodwill, the landlady cooked Eva some spam fritters because she hadn’t eaten all day. She wolfed them down but then regretted having done so, because the food seemed to sit like a lead weight in her stomach.

Eva headed along the promenade to see if she could pick up a little job and found herself wandering by the North Pier. A bloke was pinning up a sign: ‘NEW! Under the Sea. Exotic Entertainments to Delight and Entertain.’

Eva took a deep breath and approached him. ‘Got any jobs going? I’m exotic, see.’ She loosened her long dark hair, which hung almost to her waist. ‘In fact,’ she said. ‘I’m half-gypsy and I can tell your fortune.’ With her Canadian Indian heritage from on her father’s side, she could easily pass herself off as a Romany, she thought.

‘That sounds great, love,’ he said. ‘But I need someone to lie in this fish tank and lure the punters in.’ He gesticulated to a large glass aquarium beside the sign.

She followed him along the pier and into a little shed. He pulled a costume out of a box and threw it at her. It had a very small top – a bit like a bra – and a very large fishtail, covered in sequins. He looked at her with his eyebrows raised in anticipation.

‘All right,’ said Eva. ‘But you are going to need to pay me up front, because, even though there’s no water in it, I’m likely to freeze to death.’ She could feel the spam fritters repeating on her something terrible as he left the shed while she got herself changed. The mermaid tail had little holes where you could poke your feet through to walk and Eva waddled back along to the glass fish tank, attracting a few wolf whistles from passing soldiers. Her new boss put up a little step to help her into the tank and she clambered in and settled herself down as he put a wooden lid with holes in on the top so she didn’t steam up the glass. She propped herself up on one elbow and smiled and waved at people as they strolled past. It was all going well until her insides started churning. She had gone a bit of a funny colour – several people had remarked on that as they gawked at her.

Eva went hot, then cold, and her face started to sweat. Before she knew what was happening, she had thrown up all over herself and right up the glass of the tank.

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ she cried, wriggling herself out of the tank. ‘I’ve had enough of this for one day.’

Her boss was quite cross but he agreed to give her another chance, this time reading palms in a tent at the end of the pier. She got to wear a scarf over her head and around her shoulders, which she was grateful for because it was bloody freezing in Blackpool. Mostly it was young girls coming to see her. She told them that they would find love, or if they had a wedding ring on, that their loved one had gone on a long journey overseas but would be coming home soon.

One woman was less than impressed. ‘Well, I dunno about overseas but he is square bashing with the Army in Kent, so I suppose that counts as a long journey.’

Eva did her best to bring them some comfort, but she was glad to have saved up enough for her train fare back to London after a fortnight. Would things have changed much? She wondered whether Gladys and the other hoisters would treat her differently, now she had been inside. She tried not to let that thought worry her. Most of all, she couldn’t wait to see her sisters, just to get back to normal and to hold Peggy’s little Gloria. If Eva had ever doubted it, she knew now, more than ever, that she was a London girl, a Lambeth girl, and she didn’t ever want to stray too far from home.

The bustle of London hit her as she stepped off the train. She took her time, strolling down the street, enjoying her liberty. In the sky above her were barrage balloons, loads of them, but there was still no sign of the enemy. She made her way to Walworth Road, spotting a few familiar faces and then she knocked on the front door and said the words she had been longing to say, all those nights in prison and in the Land Army: ‘Mum, it’s me, Eva. I’m home!’