I couldn’t care tuppence, she thought. If he’s got a fancy woman, good luck to him. What’s it to me?
But words which once might have been true, carelessly tripping off her tongue, now turned round to bite her. She simply could not rid herself of the sick feeling lodged in her stomach, the churning disorientation of seeing Sam there, with a woman and child he had never mentioned. She thought she knew him; even more foolishly, she believed he knew her. Perhaps he did, and perhaps he had used that knowledge to manipulate her feelings, just as Ted had. But Sam – could she really believe it of him? And even if it were true, why should she care? It was nothing to her.
The endless cycle of questions whirled round and round in her head, till she was sick of them. Eventually a small voice inside her insisted on giving the answer: she cared because she cared, and it wasn’t nothing, it was definitely something.
Even so, the next time she saw Sam Gilbie she prepared herself to give him a cooler reception than she usually did. But when he knocked at the door after work a few days later, his fresh open face made her thoughts of deception and manipulation seem absurd. Still, she told herself, she knew what she had seen.
‘Well, did you manage all right?’ he asked.
‘Fine!’ she lied brightly. She saw him glance doubtfully at her grazed knuckles.
‘You might as well tell me what happened. I thought it was funny you never came and told me all about it.’
She shook her head dismissively. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’m all right, but you might need to give the bike the once-over, though.’
She opened the door and led him through the passage to the back yard. On the way, he put his head round the kitchen door. ‘I’m just borrowing your foreman – no slacking, you lot!’
The boys laughed at his mock sternness.
‘I’ll keep them at it, don’t worry about that!’ Alice said.
The penny-farthing was propped against the back wall of the yard and Sam bent down to inspect the damage.
‘How did you know I’d come a cropper?’ she asked.
‘Little bird.’ He was already tightening the bolt on the cart axle and didn’t look up.
‘That Alice! I’ll kill her, I told her not to say anything.’
She looked on as he methodically checked each bolt and screw and lined up the wheels to make sure they were still true.
‘It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Nell. These things ain’t easy to control, even without a cart behind you.’
‘I wouldn’t have forgiven myself if I’d broke the bike, though.’
‘Oh, Nell, the bike don’t matter! So long as you’re in one piece, that’s all I’m worried about.’ He got up, wiping his hands on a handkerchief.
‘You seem a bit down in the mouth, though. I thought you’d be happier now your deliveries are easier… Don’t worry about the tumble, you’ll get better at it,’ he said encouragingly.
Her face was revealing more of her doubts than she had realized and she could see he was puzzled by the change in her demeanour. They had reached an easy sort of friendship, one that tonight she felt incapable of.
‘Perhaps I’m just tired.’
‘You work all the hours God sends, you’ve got every right to be tired, but I’m getting the feeling I’ve done something wrong.’
She sighed. She had no right to make him feel awkward; he’d been nothing but kindness. She wanted to take a step back, but her heart, like the penny-farthing, seemed to have no reverse gear. She leaned against the wall and gazed up, beyond the crowded rooftops and chimneys, to a patch of sky, now suffused with a deep orange glow. Soon it would be too dark and they would go inside. If she was going to say anything, this was as private a place as they would get.
‘You’re not in trouble, Sam, and anyway, it’s nothing to do with me.’
‘Th-there you are, I knew there was something wrong!’ His stammer had returned and he looked flustered.
He obviously wouldn’t let her get away with saying nothing, and not knowing was clearly upsetting him. She took a deep breath. ‘Oh, well, it’s been playing on me mind so I might as well have my say.’
He looked worried. Was it guilt? ‘What is it? Tell me, Nellie.’
‘It’s just that I saw you, at least I think it was you… Tuesday night, up at London Bridge, with a woman and a baby.’ There, it was out, and before she could change her mind, she rushed on. ‘And that’s your business, but I was just surprised you’d never said a word about it. I thought we were friends,’ she ended lamely.
His face reddened immediately and then she knew she had not been mistaken. ‘We are friends!’ he said, looking her in the eyes, in spite of his blushes.
Just then the door from the scullery opened and Alice poked out her head.
‘Me and the boys are going up to bed, they’re dead tired.’ She hesitated; perhaps she’d heard Sam’s last words. ‘You two carry on chatting, though!’
She smiled at them, a puzzled look on her face. Nellie hoped the tension in the air wasn’t that obvious, but Sam certainly looked even more flustered now. Nellie felt he’d wanted to say more, but the moment had passed.
‘No, it’s all right, Alice,’ Sam said, putting on his cap. ‘I’d best be going now. I’ll go out the back way.’ Glancing briefly at Nellie, he let himself out of the back gate and was gone before she could even say goodnight.
Next morning, as she hurried along Spa Road to the factory, she was still confused and at odds with herself. She had been going over her conversation with Sam all night, and there was only one meaning she could attach to those guilty blushes of his. She turned in through the factory gates, jostling a crowd of other women all eager to clock on. Nellie simply couldn’t afford to be docked half an hour’s money for only a few minutes’ tardiness, but waiting her turn to clock on, she grew more and more anxious. If only she hadn’t stopped to do the ironing this morning. The chores had to be fitted in somehow, but now she cursed herself for cutting it so fine. She wondered what her father would have said; stickler for punctuality that he was, their lives had once run by his old watch. These days the watch served a completely different purpose: it sat in the pawnshop all week, helping keep the family afloat. Dad would be turning in his grave, she thought.
‘Get a move on! We ain’t got all day!’ came a cry from further back down the line. She punched her time card and groaned: five minutes late! She flew towards the main building, but halfway across the yard noticed Sam’s cart, loaded with sacks of sugar, outside the jelly building. Although he’d been constantly in her thoughts this morning, she hadn’t expected to see him so soon. He must have been out early at the docks, picking up the sugar. Now he was standing on the back board, tying sacks to a rope, then guiding them as they were hoisted to the top-floor loading bay. Slowing her pace, she half raised her hand to get his attention. But the unspoken greeting caught in her throat and she rushed on, glad that he was occupied and that she was hidden three deep in a crowd of scurrying latecomers.
She tried to slip into the packing room unnoticed, hoping Albert would be busy at the other end. Dodging along the rows of machines, she slipped into position as Lily raised a questioning eyebrow. ‘Where’ve you been?’ Lily said under her breath. ‘We’ve been covering best we could!’
Lily was filling packets while at the same time sharing pasting and loading with Maggie Tyrell. Now Maggie shoved up, letting Nellie take her place at the trolley. Today it was Nellie’s turn to load.
‘I got carried away with the ironing!’ Nellie blew up a strand of hair from her forehead and tucked it up under her cap. Maggie gave her a sympathetic look. With six children to get ready in the morning, Maggie was always incurring late fines. Just as Nellie started loading the pile of waiting packets, Albert pounced like a stalking cat. She might have known it – he had a sixth sense where latecomers were concerned.
‘I’d about given up on you, Nellie Clark! You’ve been holding up the line! I can’t have you coming in late, Nellie, I won’t stand for it, d’ye hear me?’
Lily and Maggie dipped their heads and carried on working. Neither did Nellie pause; she carried on methodically loading and tamping down the packets. It wouldn’t do to stand idle, not even for a reprimand.
‘Sorry, Albert, it won’t happen again,’ she said, blushing with shame.
‘See it don’t!’ And he stalked off down the line, arms behind his back, stopping to pick up packets, checking chutes, while hands flew and bodies bent to their work under his scrutiny.
Ethel, who was filling at the next team, bent round to offer her opinion. ‘Bastard, ain’t he? I think it’s cos he’s so short, meself.’
‘Shhh, Ethel! Mouth Almighty!’ said Nellie. ‘I can’t afford to get on the wrong side of him!’
‘Sorry, love, I know I’ve got a gate on me, but I don’t like to see him bullying you. You’ve got enough on your plate with them poor children.’
Nellie was sorry now for speaking sharply to Ethel. She might be loud-mouthed, but she was large-hearted and always ready to defend the underdog. Ethel placed an empty packet under her chute, asking, ‘How’s things at home?’ The woman’s broad face was creased with concern. Pulling three packets off the bench, Nellie dumped them on to the trolley; it was nearly full.
‘Oh, we’re coping, Ethel.’ She couldn’t even manage a smile this morning; her brave face eluded her. She felt bone-tired and heavy-hearted.
Determined to push through her weariness, she hauled the trolley on to the tramlines that ran on a gradient the length of the room towards the lifts. She put all her weight behind it and shoved. Nothing happened. The gradient normally helped generate the necessary momentum to move the heavy trolleys. But today, however hard she pushed, she couldn’t get the thing moving.
‘Bugger it! Bloody trolley’s stuck,’ she blurted out, near to tears with the effort. In an instant Ethel was by her side.
‘Mind out.’ She almost lifted Nellie off her feet. ‘Let’s have a go.’ And with what seemed like the lightest of pushes, Ethel’s massive hands had the trolley rolling forward in seconds. Nellie took over with a grateful ‘Thanks, Ethel’, trundling the trolley the rest of the way herself. Once she’d returned to the bench, Lily moved aside.
‘Let’s swap. I’ll load today, eh?’ Lily offered.
‘But that’s not fair on you,’ Nellie protested, for they always split the various jobs equally over the week.
‘Don’t be stupid, Nell. You’re worn out already. You won’t last the day at this rate. Now get filling quick before he notices.’ Lily shot a look at Albert, standing further down the aisle of machines.
Nellie gave in; she had no energy to argue. As the morning progressed she hardly registered the banter around her, or the concerned looks from Lily. Her legs felt like water and she was beginning to doubt she’d have the strength to stand for another five hours. Perhaps she’d caught a chill while out on the penny-farthing? Soon she found herself back in the same loop of unanswerable questions about what she’d seen at London Bridge the other night. She wished to God she’d seen nothing at all.
She and Lily were making their way out at dinner time when Albert called her over. ‘You go on, Lil,’ she whispered. ‘I’m for it.’
Albert was studying a leather ledger, tallying up a list of figures. He stuck the pen behind his ear and lifted his round face to her. He didn’t look happy.
‘Do you know your team’s not done even half their quota this morning?’
She shook her head.
‘Well, it’s down to you.’
Her heart lurched. Please God, don’t let him sack me, she prayed silently.
‘And don’t think I haven’t noticed what’s been going on. You come in late, the girls are having to cover for you, and you’ve got the cheek to ask me for overtime!’
‘I’m sorry, Albert. I think I’m a bit under the weather.’
‘Well, under the weather or not, it’s not good enough. There’s plenty more’ll do the job if you can’t!’
She felt her legs trembling. ‘I really need the job, Albert. I’ll make sure our team catches up, I promise.’ Her hands were clasped behind her back, nails digging into her palms.
Suddenly he flung the ledger back on to the shelf in disgust. ‘Well, pull your socks up or you’re out.’
She took this as a dismissal, turned away, and walked as steadily as she could towards the double doors. Outside she practically fell over Lily and Ethel, who were both waiting for her. They had been eavesdropping.
‘Bastard!’ Ethel said, but this time Nellie didn’t tell her to be quiet.
For the rest of the week Nellie was preoccupied with keeping her job, and thoughts of Sam were relegated to those few drowsy minutes before falling into exhausted sleep at night. She was therefore surprised when he turned up at her door late on Saturday afternoon. He said he’d noticed the penny-farthing was missing a bolt, which he’d come to replace. She led him out to the yard, where he bent over the bike, quickly tightening the new bolt into position.
His face averted, still inspecting his work, he stammered, ‘It’s b-been playing on my mind, Nell, you know, what you saw the other night.’ He stood up to face her. ‘You said that it’s my business, and it is… but not the sort of business you think.’
Nellie sat down on the cart and motioned Sam to sit next to her. ‘Not your fancy woman, then?’ she said with a placating smile. But if not, then what had his guilty blushes meant the other night?
‘I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of, but there’s things I might not want known around here. People talk and I’ve still got a mother alive can be hurt by talk.’
When Nellie still looked puzzled, he went on. ‘Dirty laundry; you know what they’re like round here. If the front step’s not scrubbed, you’re a fallen woman. So what about having a sister who’s had two kids out of wedlock? How would that go down in Beatson Street, especially one that flaunts it.’
‘Your sister?’
As far as she knew, Sam had only one sister, and Matty was nowhere near childbearing age.
‘Matty’s not my only sister,’ he explained, interpreting her confusion. ‘The woman you saw me with at London Bridge was my elder sister. She goes by the name of James now, Eliza James.’
‘Madam Mecklenburgh’s your sister!’ Nellie had jumped up so suddenly that the trailer tipped up and Sam tumbled off the end. She offered him her hand and, brushing off his trouser seat, he shook his head.
‘I’m not proud of it, and to be honest I’m glad she changed her name to James. She broke my dad’s heart and I can’t forgive that. Don’t matter how much good work she’s done for others, she’s not done much good for her own family, Nell, I can tell you that.’
The revelation had stunned her, but so much of what she’d witnessed between Sam and Eliza now made sense. More than that, she now regretted letting Sam see how much she cared about his possible other attachment.
‘I’m sorry, Sam, about your dad, but we all make mistakes.’
For Nellie, Eliza James was still firmly on a pedestal and she couldn’t reconcile her heroine with this picture of a fallen woman and heartless sister, but Sam was immovable.
‘Mistakes? Once might have been a mistake, but twice! And it wouldn’t be so bad if she hadn’t palmed off her child. She had more important things to do, saving the world, didn’t she?’ he said bitterly.
‘She give it away?’
‘The first one, yeah, she give it away.’
He stopped abruptly and Nellie filled the awkward silence. ‘But the child I saw was just a babe in arms. Is she keeping it?’
Nellie was alarmed to see tears brimming in his eyes. He shook his head and sighed.
‘I’m not sure what she’ll do. She usually ends up doing whatever James wants, so I reckon it’ll be up to him.’
‘Ernest James is the father, then?’
Sam nodded, and Nellie had a flash of insight into her idol’s life as that man’s mistress. Ernest James had a reputation for being a tough champion of workers’ rights but a ferocious enemy. A man you would want on your side but never on the opposition.
‘He’s the type that usually gets his own way, I should think,’ she commented.
‘Eliza was only young when she went into service at Mecklenburgh Square. Dad always said she was James’s “project”. He was sure she’d come back to her family one day, but she never did. The strike was the first I’d seen of her in eight or nine years.’
‘But what’s she doing here? I thought they’d gone to Australia after the strike.’
‘She says she wanted to see us, but it’s a long way to come, seeing as she couldn’t cross the river to see us before! He’s not come back with her and reading between the lines, I don’t think he was pleased. But Mum looked on her last legs when Eliza last saw her; I think she wanted her to see the baby, in case…’
‘Anything should happen?’ Nellie finished for him.
‘That’s about it, yes.’
‘Is she going back to him?’
‘She never told me what her plans were, but now she’s seen Mum and the kids, I don’t expect we’ll see her for another nine years!’
‘So how did your poor mother take it?’
‘The thing you’ve got to remember about me mum is that she’s a lot stronger than she looks. I mean her health is bad, but her spirit, my God, Nell, she’s kept us going through everything and she’ll always speak her mind. You know what she said to Eliza, when she walked in? She said, Oh, it’s you, I must be dying!’
Nellie laughed. ‘Eliza probably gets her spirit from your mum, you know.’
‘I never thought of that before, but you’re right, she is like Mum in lots of ways. That’s probably why Dad idolized Eliza.’
‘Oh, Sam, I feel a bit sorry for your sister. It’s like she got herself caught in another world and couldn’t come back.’
Sam’s face hardened. ‘No, don’t make excuses for her. We all make our choices, don’t we?’
‘Yes, we do, and we all make our mistakes as well…’
Perhaps his thoughts now turned to her own big mistake, for he asked, ‘So have you heard from him – Bosher?’
‘No… but Lily has. You know he went to work on a Russian boat? Looks like he’s taken up with the Bolshies… and some Russian woman as well.’ Nellie felt that Sam was holding his breath, perhaps unsure what she wanted him to say, so she saved him the discomfort. ‘She’s welcome to him.’ And Nellie probed her heart to see if that were true. If she felt a twinge, she put it down to the memory of a feeling that would one day fade to nothing. But she had other mistakes on her mind. She paused. ‘Sam, you know Ted wasn’t the only mistake I made that year.’
‘No?’
‘I’m not talking about another feller. I wanted to talk to you about it when it happened, but there were so many things going on. Anyway, it wasn’t so much a mistake, more a promise…’
Her face was half-hidden in the twilight and she felt that made it easier to be honest. As dusk settled over the back yard, she uncovered the part of her heart that had been carrying the burden of that promise for almost two years. He listened quietly, till she had finished telling him how she’d been unable to disappoint his mother when she’d thought they were a couple, and had rashly made a promise to look after the children when Lizzie Gilbie was gone. How almost immediately she’d felt her mistake – that she would never be able to take on another family, without sacrificing her own – and how guilt had taken hold of her. When she fell silent, he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes.
‘You’re a good girl, Nellie Clark,’ he said, ‘and I want you to remember what I said about Mum, how strong she is really. Nellie, I’m telling you, I gave her no reason to think we were walking out. I think she just had you pegged the minute you walked in our house for someone with a good heart. Her family comes first with her, Nell, never forget that. You walked in and she saw a way to make sure they’d be all right when she’s gone. She might be ill and frail, but she’ll use whatever comes to hand when it comes to her family. Listen, Nellie, make me a promise now, will you? You just get on with your life and be happy. You’re under no obligation. It’s my family and when Mum goes, I’ll be Mum, Dad, brother… everything to Matty and Charlie. You can trust me on that.’
He was letting her off! She waited for relief to flood her, yet all she felt was a sense of loss. It didn’t make any sense. Sam had given her back her future, handed it to her on a plate; all she had to do was reach out and take it.