Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams Read online

  She turned away, sighing, and went to put the kettle on. She left him still giggling to himself while she set about making him strong coffee. Her first instinct was simply to put him to bed to sleep it off. It was what she’d normally do. But she couldn’t bear the sight of him at the moment and certainly didn’t want him spending the night here. The only way he’d be able to walk out of the house tonight was if he sobered up, and she forced him to drink two cups of strong coffee. She didn’t intend to talk any more than she needed to, so she switched on the wireless and sat leaning her head back on the chair, listening to Jack Payne and his orchestra on the BBC, while Will slurped uncertainly at the hot brew to the strains of ‘Sunny Days’.

  Eventually she became aware of him staring at her. She stared back, as Jack Payne sang on – ‘Sunny Days, never let the darkness fool ya, Sunny Days you’ve got something comin’ to ya, smile with those bright Sunny Days!’

  ‘You’re just like her,’ he said eventually, ‘got your little secrets all tucked away in a box.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Will,’ she said wearily.

  ‘That Yank – so-called manager of yours – you kept quiet about what he really is, didn’t you? His little cocaine canary, is that what he called you? Let you entertain his gangster friends, did he? Singing the old songs, and what else did he expect you to do?’

  Matty was still holding her own coffee, which she launched at Will’s head. He was too drunk to duck and the contents dripped down his face like black blood, staining his shirtfront and trousers, as Eliza’s bone-china cup bounced on to the hearth and shattered.

  ‘All right, I will say it, you are a bastard! Now you can get out.’ She stood before him, trembling, and he slowly got up, wiping his face with a handkerchief. ‘I don’t know what I’ve ever done but love you, but now I don’t even care.’

  ‘Of course you don’t care. You’ve got what you wanted, stolen my inheritance.’ He shrugged, holding out his hand, rubbing finger and thumb together.

  ‘Do you really think that? I had nothing to do with it. I don’t know why your mother wanted to give this place to me... she was a good woman.’ She was tired of defending herself and, full of disgust at Will’s behaviour, she blurted out, ‘You really are an ungrateful, spoiled little git. Eliza didn’t deserve a son like you!’

  His face twisted with rage and he roared back at her. ‘And she didn’t deserve a daughter like you either!’

  At first she thought she’d misheard him, a drunken slip of the tongue. But his expression had changed to one that she recognized from his boyhood: when he’d been found out in a childish crime, his lips would twitch in a nervous smile. It used to drive Eliza mad and Matty had often spoken up for the boy – he wasn’t being deliberately insolent, she would explain, it was an involuntary thing. She knew that, because she’d done it herself whenever her cheeky ways had got her into trouble with her mother. Now Will’s nervous smile told her that he hadn’t made a mistake, and that he knew he had got himself into deep water. She sat down heavily, holding tightly to the arms of the chair, fearing she might faint. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The wireless was still playing, and she tried to focus on the song, Ambrose was playing now, what was it? She hated it when she couldn’t remember a song. It seemed vital that she identify it, then the vocalist broke in with ‘Wrap your troubles in Dreams and dream your troubles away’ and she saw Will walk over to switch the wireless off. The silence roared in her ears as her world crashed around her. For some reason she saw again the flyer, the poor man who had flung himself off the skyscraper and landed at her feet. She understood now, how when there was no solid place left to stand, a person might have no choice but to fly, launch themselves into an abyss that seemed less painful than the remnants of their shattered world.

  ‘How long have you known?’ she finally asked. It never occurred to her to protest that it couldn’t be true. She knew it was true. A light had been shone into the darkest, deepest part of her and illuminated what was buried there.

  He reached into his inside pocket and handed her a folded birth certificate.

  ‘She kept you in a Peek Frean’s tin, Matty. Do you still want to defend her?’

  *

  Matty wasn’t aware of Will stumbling out of the house. She sat with the birth certificate in her hands, reading it over and over. Mother: Eliza Gilbie; Father: Ernest James; Residence: Mecklenburg Square. The words were a meaningless jumble and she forced herself to concentrate on them, to make them have something to do with her. If the Wall Street Crash had stolen her glittering future, tonight had robbed Matty of her past as well. Now there was nothing left of Matty Gilbie. No future, no past. She’d thought she could rebuild her life, here in her Bermondsey home, and she had stayed hopeful – the days of Peek’s and pubs would pass, she’d told herself, better days would come. What had Jack Payne been singing earlier tonight? ‘Sunny Days, never let the darkness fool ya, Sunny Days you’ve got something comin’ to ya, smile with those bright Sunny Days!’

  But she had been a fool to trust her own optimism; the darkness had won. She dropped her head to her lap and wailed, as she hadn’t done since the day her beloved mother had died. ‘Oh, Mum, why did you leave me?’ Like that bereft twelve-year-old, she rocked back and forth as grief tore through her, merciless and magnified by the knowledge that her mother had been stolen from her twice. Once by death and now by Eliza – her sister, her mother.

  And Will was her brother? The thought made her sit up. Sam. Did Sam know? Did Nellie know? Did everyone know who she was but herself? Everything in her life had been a lie. She had loved her mother with a passion, tending the sick woman when only a child herself, praying all the prayers of innocence that God would spare Lizzie Gilbie’s life. Her prayers hadn’t been answered and now she felt the intense cruelty of fate that could rob her a second time of her mother. Had she been loving the wrong woman all these years? Yet how could she ever un-love Lizzie Gilbie?

  She couldn’t remember taking herself upstairs to bed, but it was in the early hours of the morning that she woke, and like a ravenous beast the memory of Will’s revelation tore into her heart. In an attempt to shake it off, she got out of bed, but staggered as she stood, almost as if she were back on board the boat coming home and there was only the ever shifting ocean beneath her feet. But she knew that no matter how wide she spread her arms to balance herself, her world would never right itself again.

  She felt like a caged animal with no place in herself to find peace and she went downstairs with the vague idea of making some tea. She took down a cup from the dresser, and found she’d forgotten what she was meant to be doing with it. She let it fall to the ground and, in an agonized attempt to wipe away all her memories, she lunged at the dresser. Piece by piece, she hurled Eliza’s pretty rose-patterned cups, saucers, plates and tureens on to the kitchen floor. With each crash she felt a part of her old existence disintegrate and when there was nothing left, she walked across the shards, crunching her stockinged feet over their sharpness. She welcomed the stinging cuts, distractions from a pain in her heart which she knew would never go away.

  *

  It was Nellie who found her, curled like a baby on the bed, her sheets stained with blood and her pillow stained with tears. When she opened her eyes she watched silently as Nellie examined her stockinged feet. Whey were her stockings dark brown? That wasn’t her usual colour at all, she wore lighter shades, and why was Nellie pulling at her feet? Matty yelped with pain and found herself staring into Nellie’s blue eyes. Those brave eyes, which Matty had seen endure so much, were now clouded with fear.

  ‘Matty darlin’, what have you done to yourself?’ she asked, coming to the head of the bed and taking her hand.

  For a moment Matty had no idea what she’d done, only that the pain in her feet had been welcome at the time. But that wasn’t last night, surely? Her kind memory failed her for as long as it could and then in a wave of sickness she remembered.


  ‘I walked on the crockery.’ Her voice sounded hoarse, for her tears had ripped through her throat.

  ‘But how did it happen?’

  Matty shook her head. ‘I’m not sure... I think I smashed Eliza’s place up, Nellie.’

  ‘You? But why would you do that, love?’ Nellie’s bemused expression made Matty weary. She didn’t want to explain; she wanted to sleep. She groaned and turned over, wincing with pain as her feet brushed against the sheets.

  ‘All right, Matty love, you can tell me later, but I’ve got to clean them feet up or else they’ll go septic.’

  She disappeared downstairs and Matty heard her clearing a path through the ruined kitchen. Soon she was back by her side, with a bowl of hot water.

  ‘Here, take these first.’ She handed Matty a couple of Aspro, then set about peeling off Matty’s stockings. Sometimes she pulled away china shards which had been embedded in her feet, making Matty flinch, but eventually the stockings came off and Nellie gently cleaned every wound, finally covering them with lint and brown sticky Lion ointment to draw out the hidden slivers.

  ‘We don’t want none left in, darlin’, do we?’ She spoke to Matty just as she had when a child. Matty knew she hadn’t always been an easy charge for Nellie. Her mother had spoiled Matty and she’d taken a while to be won over by Nellie. But eventually she’d come to see her as a second mother. And now there was a third, the real one. Did Nellie know?

  When Nellie went downstairs to make a pot of tea, Matty tried to recall what it had been like when Eliza had first come back into their lives. She had a vague memory of a visit from a tall lady with a wide hat, an imposing figure in her mother’s tiny kitchen, and someone had told her it was her sister Eliza. And during the war she’d returned, wanting to befriend Matty. But like a door slamming shut, Matty refused to follow her thoughts into that past, for none of it was as it had seemed.

  She eased herself up in bed as Nellie came in with the tea.

  ‘I’ve swept up,’ Nellie told her. ‘You’ve not got a plate left to eat your dinner off, but I found a couple of mugs. Thank gawd the teapot’s enamel.’

  ‘Thanks, Nellie. I’ll get up in a minute.’

  ‘No, you won’t, you’re stopping there. I think that court case has been playing on your mind, it’s been a shock to your system—’

  ‘It’s not that. I had a visit from Will.’

  ‘What’s he come round upsetting you for? Hasn’t he done enough? I’ll get Sam to talk to him, it’s got to stop.’ Matty could see that Nellie had gone into her protective mode.

  Matty’s eye was caught by a piece of yellowing, screwed-up paper sitting on her bedside table. She reached over for it and began smoothing it out.

  ‘He brought this with him. He found it in Eliza’s things,’ she said, passing the birth certificate to Nellie. She watched her intently while she read.

  Nellie closed her eyes briefly, then folded the paper and let out a long sigh. ‘My poor little canary, you didn’t deserve to be hurt like this. That boy wants shooting.’

  ‘Have you always known? Does everyone know except me?’

  ‘No, love, I didn’t always know.’

  ‘Will you tell me, Nellie?’

  Nellie took Matty’s hand and sat on the bed. ‘All right, love. I will, but I want you to remember, that whatever was done was out of love. You was such a happy little thing before your mum died, and afterwards, well, me and Sam and Eliza, we wanted you to stay happy... But it’s true, Eliza fell pregnant with you when she was in Ernest James’s service. He wouldn’t let her keep you, so she did what she thought was best and give you to your grandparents to bring up as their own. They thought it’d be better for you not to know and I suppose it was hard for Eliza, so she stayed away...’ Nellie paused, waiting to see the effect of her words. But Matty felt almost frightened to breathe; the bed was a precipice and the next word from Nellie could propel her into an abyss.

  ‘I only found out Eliza was your mother during the war. At first she wanted you back, but she could see it was too late. And your mum – Lizzie – she’d made me promise to look after you once she was gone. She didn’t ask Eliza. She asked me to take you on, and Sam wanted that too. So in the end we decided it would be best not to tell you. You were such a fragile little thing in lots of ways, missing your mum, and Sam in France. But in other ways you’d got a will of iron.’ Nellie smiled wistfully. ‘I remember the day you told me you wasn’t working at Duff’s like the rest of us, you wanted to be a singer. I thought you’d have no chance, but you did it, Matty, you did it...’

  ‘Who was it decided not to tell me?’ Matty asked, aware that her face was a rigid mask, but needing Nellie to finish her story.

  ‘We all agreed, Eliza, Sam and me. We wanted to protect you. There was a war on, we didn’t know if Sam would come back... and there was the promise I made your mother.’

  ‘My grandmother.’

  ‘No, Matty, your mother, Lizzie Gilbie. Eliza gave birth to you, but you know who your mum was. I’ve never seen a child so devoted to their mother as you. God, you used to fuss round her like a clucking hen. And you couldn’t even reach the stove, but you’d be making soup for her—’

  ‘No! Nellie, don’t. Don’t talk about it. She lied to me half my life! And you and Sam and Eliza, well you’ve lied to me for the other half. So don’t talk to me about how much I loved my mother!’

  She saw alarm on Nellie’s face, but she went on. ‘You know what, I can understand our Will now. It’s just like he said to me at court – I’ve got no mother and I’ve got no father, and I’ve got no family either. I want you to go now, Nellie, and tell Sam not to come round. I don’t want to see him.’

  *

  It was only later that day, when Winnie turned up on her doorstep, that Matty found out how Nellie had come to discover her. After making sure that the caller was not Sam, Matty let Winnie in. Her friend explained that when Matty hadn’t turned up for her shift at Peek’s that morning she’d grown worried.

  ‘Well, you hadn’t mentioned nothing about taking a day off and I knew you wouldn’t risk going off Tom and Dick if you wasn’t. So I nipped round at dinner time to see if you was all right, the door was ajar and the state of the place! I thought you was dead in your bed and burgled. I lost me bottle and run round Nellie’s. Mind you, it nearly killed me. I’ve got to get this weight off, Matt, I thought I was having a heart attack.’

  Just at that moment Winnie was dipping a broken Nice biscuit into her tea, so Matty took her resolution with a pinch of salt.

  ‘So I said to her I said, I think something bad’s happened at Matty’s, and she’s done no more than left Albie with the neighbour and runs back round here with me. She’s got no fear that woman – up the stairs she goes, you stay down here she says, they might still be in the house. But she come down and her face was white as a sheet. She just said you was all right but not feeling well... I never asked no questions, love, but you wasn’t burgled, was you?’

  Matty shook her head, choking back tears that she didn’t want her friend to see.

  Winnie dipped her hand into the white paper bag full of broken biscuits, then shook the bag at Matty, offering what comfort she could. ‘Go on, love, you look like you need cheering up.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ Matty said, with a weak smile, and pulled out a Bourbon cream.

  And in spite of her tears Matty joined in Winnie’s laughter at the sight of the reviled biscuit.

  *

  About a week after Will’s revelation Matty was in her garden. She loved the way the roses defied Bermondsey’s sooty air and she tended them like children. She’d never had a garden before moving to Reverdy Road, but she’d felt sorry for Eliza’s untended patch and had made it her own. Now it was one of the few places where she could escape the turmoil of her own thoughts and she was examining an early blooming red rose. There had been an unseasonal snow shower, and its barely opened petals were outlined in frosty white. She doubted it would survive.
She stroked the deep red velvety bloom and a song came to mind, ‘My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose’. Her father’s favourite, the song Lizzie Gilbie had asked Matty to sing to her as she lay dying. Tears stung her eyes at the memory and she opened her mouth to sing, but no sound emerged. What was the matter with her? She put a hand to her throat and coughed. She tried again to force a note from her mouth, but produced little more than a stuttering breath. It was as if a hand were tightening round her windpipe. Now panic gripped her. She realized she hadn’t sung at all since hearing the truth about her parentage. Sing, just sing it! she urged herself. Still holding on to the rose, she took in a deep breath, but on exhaling let out only silence. Her hand closed around the rose stem and a thorn dug deep into her palm. She yelped with pain. It was obvious she hadn’t lost her voice; she just could no longer sing.

  No Singing. That sign over the packing line at Peek’s now came as a blessed relief. For it felt to Matty that all her songs had been silenced. They simply didn’t bubble up from inside as they had her whole life and to force them out was impossible. She had never been one of those singers who tried to ‘save their voice’ – she’d earned her family name of ‘little canary’ because she simply never stopped singing. Sometimes she thought it had driven Sam and Charlie mad, but her parents had always encouraged her. And perhaps that was why she could no longer sing. Now, every time she attempted to breathe deeply and let out a note, she would remember her mother saying sing from your stomach, Matty, and scenes flashed into her mind’s eye of the little concerts she’d given for her parents in their kitchen. Who had she been singing for? Who had she been trying to please? There was no peace in those memories; there was only peace in staying silent. So she blessed the strict governors at Peek’s who’d deemed singing an unnecessary distraction, for now she agreed with them.

  Over the following weeks she tried again and again to sing. She wasn’t going to let go of her voice without a struggle, however tempting it was to give in to the silence. But each time the result was the same: her throat closed up tight and the more she strained the more she was seized by fear that she’d never sing again. Without the company of Eliza or Will, and with no visits from Sam or Nellie, the quiet of the house began to close in. Sometimes she felt it would stifle her. Tonight, thinking it might help to sing along with the wireless, she tuned in to Jack Hylton’s band. She’d always liked his upbeat arrangements. But the song they were playing seemed to mock her, and her attempt to join in with ‘Happy Days are Here Again’ ended in tears of frustration. She slammed her fist on the top of the radio so that Jack Hylton was momentarily drowned by static, but his irrepressibly optimistic singers soldiered on. ‘Oh, shut yer row up!’ Matty shouted at the wireless and switched them off, finding that she preferred the silence after all.