Chapter 46

A GIFT IN THE GUTTER

WHITECHAPEL—1945

“You got to tell her when she gets to an age, love,” said Mother.

“Christ, Mum, don’t go on about it,” said Bet.

She took another drag and blew out the smoke in a cloud that hid her mother for a moment.

Wish I could make you disappear in a puff of smoke, she thought.

“Don’t blaspheme, Bet,” said Mother.

Jesus, thought Bet.

Mother had been here all week, berating her.

There was always something.

You ain’t doing the potatoes right, Bet.

You ain’t cleaning the dishes right.

You ain’t changing the kid’s nappy properly.

Now she sat in the armchair and stared at Bet with those blue eyes that seemed to drill straight into your soul.

Get out of my life, Bet thought. Leave me alone.

Bet was twenty. The youngest daughter and fifth child of seven. Born when her mother was thirty-three.

She looked at her daughter. She was eighteen months old. She cried in her crib. Bet felt cold towards the child. But maybe that’s because she felt cold towards the kid’s father.

Everybody said Derek Cooper was bad news. The police kept arresting him. They beat him up sometimes and threatened to jail him.

But Derek hadn’t done anything. Or at least he hadn’t been caught.

“Did he give you that?” asked Mother now and reached out to touch Bet’s black eye.

She slapped her mum’s hand away. “I fell. Tripped over the kid.”

“Child’s got a name, you know.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“You should use it, or she won’t know it.” Her mother leaned in. “And then she won’t know where she’s from.”

“She’s from the gutter, Ma. Just like the rest of us.”

Bet and the baby lived in a cold, damp, dark room on the top floor of a tenement building. Beneath her, the neighbors rowed. Above her, the rats scuttled. She had to piss and shit in a pot, which stank the place out, because she rarely bothered to clean it. The kitchen reeked of rotting vegetables and sour milk. And now there was the baby—screaming and puking and shitting all night and all day. Life was hell. She’d been left in the abyss. No Derek, no hope. He promised mansions in Kensington. She was desperate enough to believe him. Nothing came of his pledge. She was left in the gutter.

They should’ve carried on from where Hitler left off and flattened the whole of the East End.

Bet hadn’t seen much of Derek during the war. He was away a lot.

“Busy, darlin’,” he’d said.

He argued that he was too sick to fight and duly failed a medical. But he kept himself occupied, although rarely in Bets company.

He turned up when he wanted something—money, food, sex.

It was a visit for the latter that got her lumbered with the kid.

She dragged on the cigarette.

“You ain’t showing any motherly inclinations, Bet,” said Mother. “I don’t know what’s wrong with you.”

“I don’t feel none.”

“Shame on you. It ain’t natural. You behave like this, who knows how the little one will turn out.”

“We don’t know anyway, Ma.”

“You know that’s not true, Bet.”

“Oh, Mother. We can’t see the future. We can’t see anything. If we could, we wouldn’t live in shit.”

The baby cried.

Mother rose from the armchair, tutting.

Bet said, “Leave her,” and got up as well. “I’ll sort it.”

She went to the infant and scooped her out of the crib. The kid stank. She needed changing. The idea sickened Bet. She never saw herself like this. She’d pictured herself on stage, in movies—she’d pictured herself glamorous.

Another Derek promise. “Stick with me, sweetheart,” he’d said, “and you’ll be quaffing champagne and dressed in silk in no time.”

No champagne, no silk. Only dirty water and threadbare cloth.

Cringing, she set about changing the baby’s dirty napkin. While doing it, she thought about her grandad, who’d been on the stage. Not an actor. He’d go mad if you called him that. And so would Mother.

“My dad, he weren’t no actor,” she’d say. “He was for real.”

Grandad Jonas was a medium. He spoke to the dead. He looked into the future.

Never looked into mine, thought Bet, safety pinning a clean cotton cloth around her daughter’s waist.

Mother said, “That little girl deserves to know where she’s come from, Bet.”

“I told you, she’s come from the gutter like the rest of us. And that’s where shell end up.”

“She’s got the gift.”

“Shut up, Ma. No one can speak to the dead. The dead are dead. They’re gone. We’ll all be gone in the end. What’s the point?”

Mother’s face darkened. “Don’t you speak ill, my girl.”

“I ain’t speaking ill.”

The baby cried. Bet laid her in the crib again and went back to smoke her fag. She stared out of the window. The rain fell. Her chest felt heavy. The baby wailed. Mother cooed over it.

Bet listened to her mother’s words.

“Don’t you worry, little darlin’, Granny will tell you how special you are. Granny will tell you everything. You’re a special little girl, Gracie.”

Tears filled Bet’s eyes.