TWO

May, 1891

AFTER SIX MONTHS IN HOSPITAL, Fred returned home to his family. He was able to hobble around now on crutches, despite having lost his left leg above the knee. The surgeon had managed to save the other leg, but Fred said ruefully: ‘I ain’t got one good leg to stand on, nowadays.’ He was aware that he would be unable to return to work at the docks.

The new Dock, Wharf, Riverside and General Labourers’ Union secured for him a weekly sum of £1 which would pay the rent and upkeep of the company house on the Rise. This was the best place they’d lived in. True, the lavatories and the washhouses were still outside, but fortunately across level ground at the rear of the terrace. The houses were well-built with two good-sized rooms downstairs, two up plus a box room, and a basement kitchen. The back room would now be a bedroom for Fred.

Fred’s workmates rallied round his family. They usually left their gifts on the doorstep; pigs’ trotters wrapped in newspaper, a cabbage, bantam eggs, a loaf of bread. Hester had cooked the trotters up for supper, when she arrived home from the laundry. Granny shrieked at the sight of them, ‘How vulgar!’

‘We stick together,’ Fred said, when Hester and the twins visited him in hospital, and he heard about Granny’s outburst. ‘Us Poplar lads. . .’

He’d been born in Stainsby Road, as he now reminded them: ‘Like most of the roads round here, it was named after somebody famous. It was what his widow wanted, in his memory. I was lent a book to read while I was in hospital, by that writer fellow, funny name, same, back and front – what was it? Jerome K. Jerome. He lived in Stainsby Road as a lad. It was a good story about three men in a boat travellin’ down the old Thames. But don’t go thinkin’ you’ve got blue blood – the Stainsby what they called the road after, weren’t no relation as far as I know. Mind you, it’s a good name to live up to, I always think.’

‘Well, we was all called after Royalty,’ Polly said. ‘Hester got Elizabeth as her second name —’

‘That was after your dear ma!’

Polly carried on: ‘And I’m Mary Victoria, after the Queen, and Harry, he’s Henry after old Henry the Eighth and all the other Henrys —’

‘Don’t I know it,’ Harry butted in. ‘And Albert, into the bargain!’

‘If you want the truth,’ Fred said. ‘You can swaller your pride. When Granny saw you’d inherited her h’aristocratic nose, Polly, she decided you’d be called Victoria, after her!’

‘That’s why Poll’s her favourite!’ Harry dodged a cuff from his irate sister.

It was Granny Garter who took to her bed, at the thought of caring for Fred all day. She was a fine figure of a woman, as her late husband, the roguish bookie, often said, and he spoiled her to the extent she thought of herself as quite a lady. A woman came in to do the washing and housework in those days. Unfortunately, her husband died, deeply in debt, and she’d descended on her only daughter who’d married a man her mother regarded as lower class.

Hester and Alf accompanied Fred home in the ambulance, one of the new, box-shaped vehicles drawn by a pair of horses. When it drew up outside the terrace, it caused quite a stir among the neighbours, who emerged to wave their encouragement, and to direct their small boys to lurk near the horses with bucket and shovel. They’d known Fred as a jolly fellow before he lost his wife, who on Friday nights in the pub, after a single tankard of beer, entertained his friends by playing the penny whistle. He’d passed his musical expertise on to his younger children, and now they stood, jostling each other in the doorway, waiting to ‘pipe’ him indoors. They were not identical twins of course, being boy and girl, and Polly was definitely the more dominant, although Harry had a wry sense of humour which endeared him to his elder sister.

Alf brought out the wheelchair provided by the hospital, and settled Fred in this, with crutches in his lap. He and Hester eased the wheels carefully up the flight of steps to the front door. The steps were an important defence against the possibility of flooding in the winter from the nearby culvert, in which children paddled in the summer when their mother’s backs were turned. The water was tainted by mud and rubbish including sewage, and reeked like its parent, the great River Thames.

‘All right, Pa?’ Hester asked at the top. The whistling began, and Fred managed a smile. He nodded.

‘Where’s Granny?’ he asked.

‘Resting up,’ Hester told him, knowing he would be relieved. ‘Thanks Alf, for all your help – we couldn’t have managed without you.’

The ambulance was driven off, as Hester pushed Fred’s chair into the living room. The table was laid ready for supper.

‘You’ll stay and eat with us, Alf, won’t you?’ she asked.

‘Thought you’d never ask,’ Alf joked. His stepmother was too fond of the bottle to bother much with food for her menfolk.

‘I made a red jelly,’ Polly said proudly. ‘I coloured it with cochineal.’ She jiggled the plate so her pa could see it quiver. She was already taller than her sister, with ash-blonde braids, hazel eyes and apple-red cheeks. Her looks were deceptive, she was far from angelic. Harry, still whistling, was shorter with a mop of black hair like Hester. They took after Fred.

‘So long as it ain’t calves foot jelly – can’t abide it,’ Fred remarked. ‘That’s for invalids.’ He made a wry grimace.

‘It won’t taste of much,’ Harry reminded his sister, after removing the whistle from his mouth at last. ‘You watered it down, that’s why it hasn’t set proper.’

A tussle between the two followed. Alf prised them apart. ‘Say sorry to your pa, or he’ll turn round and go back to the hospital!’

This did the trick, even though the twins realised this was unlikely.

‘All that fuss about jelly,’ Hester rebuked them. ‘When there’s that big fish pie I slaved over earlier, ready to come out of the oven. It smells good, eh, Pa? Polly, Harry, sit down and shut up!’

Polly had to have the last word. ‘Hester’s friendly with the fresh fish chap down the market. She got two big cod cheap. He even gutted them for her. Fish stinks! So does he . . .’

The kerfuffle had been heard by Granny in the room above. She thumped her stick vigorously on the floor to express her displeasure.

‘Now I know I’m home,’ Fred said. ‘And it ain’t a dream.’

Alf manoeuvred the wheelchair behind the table. ‘All right, mate? I’ll help Hester bring the grub up from the kitchen.’

Hester lifted the corners of her apron to protect her hands as she carried the steaming dish from the gas stove to the kitchen table to serve up. Having gas laid on was a great improvement on the old coal range they’d previously battled with, she thought, with all the hard work it entailed, including blacking the stove. The gas lamps too were much better than the old oil lamps, with wicks to trim and that pervasive odour.

The pie had browned nicely on top, she saw, to her satisfaction. She’d cooked and mashed some old potatoes which Alf’s step-mum had thrown out. Hester had painstakingly removed any shoots from the wrinkled skins, and planted these in the border of earth round the yard. Later, they would have the pleasure of new spuds, she thought. She’d used a knob of precious butter in the mashing, as this was a special occasion. The flaked, cooked white fish had been coated with white sauce, too, another treat. ‘Stick that sprig of parsley on top,’ she told Alf, as he counted the plates out. ‘I grew it on the windowsill in that box you made me.’

‘Like that fishy fellow, do you?’ Alf asked her.

‘Alf Hodge, what’s it to you?’ she teased.

‘He’s as slippery as them eels he sells on his stall. You should see him chatting up the barmaid in The Ship —’

‘Not likely, seeing as I don’t drink,’ Hester retorted. ‘You take Pa’s and your own plate, I’ll carry the twins’ dishes up, then come back for Granny’s.’

‘What about your own supper?’

‘I’ll keep it warming, with the teapot, while I see to Granny. The rest of you must tuck in. You slice the bread – Polly’s too wasteful. I’ll be as quick as I can.’

Fred looked at the pie appreciatively. He wouldn’t say that he’d had enough steamed fish in hospital to last him a lifetime. ‘Good cook like your ma,’ he said to Hester. ‘She’d be proud of you.’

Granny was sitting up in bed in the big bedroom, which she had taken over while Fred was away. She’d turfed out young Harry, who’d shared the room with his pa, into the box room, which smelled musty, being a repository for Granny’s old finery. This was much to the girls’ relief, as they no longer had her in their room.

With a sheet of newspaper protecting the fancy bedspread from her former home, Granny Garter offered no praise for the meal. She said instead, ‘Fish again. I fancied a nice bit of steak.’ Her small mouth was pursed and she looked disagreeable.

‘Who don’t?’ Hester responded with spirit. ‘Wouldn’t you care to hear how pa’s doing?’

Granny feigned deafness, as she poked at the potato crust with her fork. ‘Send Polly up with my cuppa. She’s always got time for me.’

So have I, Hester thought, but Ma had taught her to respect her elders, so she couldn’t say it. Granny wasn’t yet sixty, and was still a handsome woman, surely she wasn’t past stirring herself and making the most of life, even if it was not the one she’d chosen.

‘Good to be home,’ Fred said later. He looked tired. It had been a long day. Being so dark, he always had a stubbly chin by nightfall. Granny often said he ought to shave twice a day, but his smart reply was always, ‘You want to try it, Missus! Bess never objected. . .’ Now, he passed a hand over his face and felt the roughness of it. If he left it a day or two, he could be old Bluebeard! It had all been rather too much, coming home, and wondering how they would cope.

‘I’ll take you out back,’ Alf said tactfully, ‘Then help you into bed. I can come in again before I leave for work, and get you dressed, and young Harry’ll see to your needs when he gets in from school at midday, eh.’

‘Alf’s a wonder,’ Hester said to Pa. ‘He shifted the bed and that, downstairs for you, and Granny agreed to let you have the commode.’

‘She’s got to make do with the chamber pot,’ Polly put in, grinning. ‘That’s a balancing act, I reckon.’

‘Maybe it’ll decide her to get up and come downstairs,’ Alf said.

‘I ain’t always going to be helpless,’ Fred said suddenly. He sounded fierce, and they knew he meant it. ‘I don’t intend to be a burden on me family. Don’t look so solemn. I might get practising the old penny whistle again meself – go down the market and play a tune or two for my supper. I’ll be one of them street musicians, eh?’

‘Oh, Pa,’ Hester wiped her eyes. ‘Surely it won’t have to come to that?’ She was glad Granny Garter hadn’t heard him say it; she would have thrown another fit of hysterics, she thought.

Fred held out his arms. ‘I ain’t given none of you a hug yet! No more tears . . . I’m here, ain’t I? That’s all that matters.’