Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams Read online

  ‘Matty!’ Sam’s face flushed.

  ‘I’m on the Peek’s beano,’ she explained, sadness washing over her at the awkwardness between them.

  Winnie and the others were waiting patiently. ‘You remember Winnie, Tom’s sister.’ Sam nodded a hello and smiled.

  ‘Nellie and the boys are on the sands – do you want to come and say hello?’ he asked finally.

  ‘You go on,’ she said to Winnie. ‘I’ll catch up with you at the pub.’

  When the girls had left, Matty eyed the melting ice creams. ‘For gawd’s sake, Sam, go and give the kids their bloody ice creams before they melt,’ she said, reaching for their old uncomplicated easiness.

  ‘All right, wait here though, Matty, don’t go away!’

  She looked into his once dear eyes, seeing hurt and incomprehension, mixed with an unbearable hope, and gave a brief nod.

  He turned down the stairs leading to the beach and she saw him trying to hurry in the deep soft sand, so smart in cap and blazer and white trousers. Sam, looking after his family first, just as he’d looked after her. It broke her heart to think how he’d deceived her and then she remembered Esme’s words – the sins of her sister, the sins of her brother, what were they compared to her own? They had only been trying to protect her. Who had she been trying to protect when she kept from them the true nature of her life with Frank? How, knowing what he was, a common gangster when all was said and done, she had stayed with him. The love of an audience was a powerful narcotic; she had felt it. Sometimes, after a show, she’d joined in Frank’s cocaine parties, just to keep the euphoria going for a little longer and it had led her into situations she would be ashamed for her brother to know about. She was only protecting herself from the judgement of those she loved after all.

  He found her where he’d left her.

  ‘I’ve told Nellie I’m going for a walk round the harbour,’ he said quietly.

  As they walked side by side she glanced at Sam. She saw the slow clenching and unclenching of his jaw, which he always did when he was nervous, and then he said, not looking at her, ‘Don’t be angry with me.’ Her brother dug his hands deeper into his pockets. ‘I’m just asking you not to judge me and Nellie – nor Eliza – till you know what happened, Matty.’

  ‘I’m not judging you. I’m just sadder than you can ever imagine, Sam. I’ve lost everything.’

  He took his hands out of his pockets and they were balled into tight fists. ‘No! That’s not true, you’ve lost nothing, Matty, not if you don’t want to. I loved you from the moment I saw you tucked up in Mum’s old sideboard drawer. I was only a kid myself when you come to us and they told me you was me sister, and of course I believed them. Everything I ever felt for you I still feel. It didn’t make no difference when Eliza came back and Mum had to tell me the truth. She was so scared, Matty, that Eliza would take you away, that she would upset your life. We didn’t want to lose you and if it meant a tussle with Eliza, then I was bloody well going to fight her tooth and nail so Mum could keep you.’

  Her brother was the mildest of men, she’d never been able to imagine him a soldier, but he’d enlisted in order to protect his family, or so he’d thought. It was that protective streak in him that had the power to overcome his gentle nature, and she saw a fire in his eyes now that she remembered from when she was small and he would fight her battles for her.

  ‘Nellie told me Eliza came for me, during the war. I was horrible to her from the start. Is that why she agreed to keep quiet?’

  ‘No, Matty, she agreed because she loved you. Don’t you see? All the pain you’re feeling now, that’s what she wanted to save you from.’

  They stopped and found a little shelter that looked seaward. The sound of children’s laughter rose from the red-striped booth on the beach where Punch was battering Judy and her baby, and finally Matty asked the question that had been searing its way up from the deepest places of her hurt. ‘Sam, why did she keep Will and not me?’

  Children’s laughter and the discordant squeals from Judy’s baby filled the silence between them. Sam gave her a pitying look and said, ‘Oh, Matty, she didn’t have much choice. Ernest James gave her an ultimatum, he didn’t want an illegitimate child sodding up his life – sorry, Matty, but it’s the truth. If she didn’t give you up she was out on her ear, and bringing up a kid on your own back then – it usually ended in the workhouse. So she did what she thought would be best for you, she gave you to Mum. James set aside an allowance for you and Eliza sent it to Mum every year, but he didn’t want to know nothing about you or where you were.’

  It was a common enough thing for an illegitimate child to be brought up by grandparents. But the thought of a woman being coerced into giving away her baby chilled her blood. She knew his blunt honesty was designed to show her that here, finally, was the unvarnished truth and she could trust him, but part of her perversely wished he’d had a different story to tell. It would have been easier to blame Eliza. But Matty had her own experience of being under the sway of a powerful man. It had taken all her courage to run away with Frank’s child and she found herself understanding Eliza’s plight.

  ‘You’ve got to realize, she was only his housekeeper, well, that’s what he told his family and friends. She didn’t have no money of her own and she’d been at Mecklenburg Square since she was fourteen, I think.’

  ‘So what changed when Will was born?’

  ‘Eliza. Eliza had changed. They were out in Australia by then and Ernest was just the same when Will came along, said she had to give him up. But Eliza told me once that letting you go was the biggest mistake of her life and she wasn’t going to do the same again.’

  ‘She told you that?’

  Sam nodded. ‘And the other thing she said, Matty, was that what she was proudest of in all her life, was you and Will. You know I didn’t always approve of her, but I’m sure of one thing, she always loved you, Matty.’

  ‘So how did Ernest James come round? He met Will, paid for his schooling and left him the trust money.’ Matty couldn’t help the painful comparison with her own irrelevance to him.

  ‘I reckon it’s ’cause he was a boy. James was that sort of feller, didn’t think much of women, didn’t treat ’em very well either, if Eliza’s anything to go by. But she got away from him, got her passage money together and brought the baby back to England before he could stop her. It took him a couple of years to track her down, but she’d got the better of him over Will by then. She told James he could pay for Will’s schooling and see him, but she was going to keep the boy at home. Sometimes I wonder if she did the right thing.’

  Matty was listening intently, rapt by the unfolding story of her own hidden past and struck by how closely her life had mirrored Eliza’s. But now she interrupted Sam. ‘How can you say that? At least Will’s had his mother all these years!’ Matty felt a flush of anger rise to her cheeks. ‘Which is more than I have.’

  But then she saw a matching flare in Sam. ‘Oh no, I’m not having that. Mum – our mum – would have cut off her right arm for you. Don’t tell me you missed out on mother love, ’cause you didn’t!’

  He was right, she knew he was right and yet the story he’d just told her made her feel he must be wrong.

  ‘All I’m saying,’ Sam went on, ‘about Will, is that half his problem is he didn’t know where he belonged, and he’s spent all his life pulled from pillar to post. At least you were settled.’

  Yes, she had been settled, so settled that when the chance first came up for America, she’d refused to leave her home, partly from fear, partly because Nellie needed her with Sam missing in action at the time. And when she’d finally pulled herself away from Bermondsey to Broadway, she’d been successful, but she hadn’t thrived. Not one day had passed when she didn’t wish she were home. And knowing what she now did about Eliza wouldn’t have changed that. Eliza had sometimes called her a rose amongst thorns, as though Matty were somehow too good for Bermondsey, and she’d always assumed it was beca
use of her growing fame, but now she understood. Eliza was simply feeling a mother’s love, a mother’s guilt.

  She sat in silence next to Sam, staring at the restless motion of the distant incoming waves, rolling and rippling along the shore, dissolving into foam and disappearing into the golden sand; she thought they seemed to be seeking something to hold on to and yet never finding it.

  ‘You’re right, Sam,’ she said finally. ‘I was settled. But I’m not any more.’

  *

  Before they parted Matty asked Sam not to mention their meeting to Nellie: their former closeness had been one of the hardest things to lose and she couldn’t face Nellie’s hurt as well as Sam’s. She went off in search of Winnie, finally tracking her down after trying three pubs on the front. The fish and chips had long been eaten and the Tiller Girls were lined up along a plush-covered bench in a dim corner of the pub, a table of half-empty glasses in front of them.

  Her heart was in turmoil after her talk with Sam, but she was used to ignoring her own feelings in order for the show to go on. It was no good facing an audience with a face like a fiddle. She put on her brightest smile.

  ‘What are you sitting in here for, when the sun’s shining outside! Come on, let’s go and get that photo taken, Win.’

  She dragged them up one after another, forcing them out into the sunshine, linking arms with Winnie as they walked back to the Sunbeam Studio. Before long they were both dressed as matching cowgirls, not quite what Winnie had envisaged, but the showgirl outfit wouldn’t fit her. Matty was quite happy to pull on a leather waistcoat and outsize leather chaps which flapped about like wings. She adjusted Winnie’s cowgirl hat to match the angle of her own and they each picked up a whip.

  ‘Now try and look fierce for the camera,’ the photographer said. ‘You’re meant to be tough westerners!’

  ‘That’s easy, Win,’ Matty said under her breath. ‘Just imagine we’re keeping Edna in line with one of these.’ And she cracked the whip, just as she’d once seen a cowboy do in a wild-west show in California. The photographer jumped but seemed delighted with the pose.

  ‘Perfect!’ he said. ‘This one’s going on the front of the shop!’

  Later, when they picked up the print, Matty could see why. Her expression, which she thought of as habitually mild, was in fact quite fierce. Perhaps just knowing that Eliza was her mother had begun a transformation, for she could see in her own face a reflection of Eliza as she once was, standing on the podium in front of the lions in Trafalgar Square, ready for a fight, taking no nonsense from barons of industry, politicians or hecklers. Matty in her cowgirl outfit might be a million miles from Trafalgar Square, but she knew she’d need every strain of inherited toughness if she was to find her way home.

  On the charabanc going back to Bermondsey that night, she sat next to Winnie, pretending to listen to her friend’s chatter. This time no one asked her to lead the singing. The girls started up themselves with ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’ and ‘Four Leaf Clover’. When they moved on to ‘Mammy’, Matty turned her face to the window. She could see nothing, the night was so black, but as she listened to the refrain: ‘Mammy, Mammy, I’d walk a million miles, for one of your smiles, my Mammy!’, she thought she saw faces reflected in the glass: Lizzie, Nellie and Eliza, all with smiles proclaiming that each one loved her as powerfully as any mother could. Yet Matty felt nothing but bereft, for there in the glass was another reflection, a tiny face with eyes fast shut and a serene smile. Wiping her hand across the glass, she erased their images from her mind’s eye and closed her eyes to dam the brimming tears.

  ***

  It became obvious that Peek’s were laying more and more girls off. At first it was just in the fancy tin department, as demand for the more luxurious lines declined, but soon it became a regular thing for Matty to pass a bench of girls in the morning, only to find they were all gone by dinner time. Not that factory girls expected to get notice; when they were no longer needed they collected their cards and left the same day. The firm knew that when it was ready to begin hiring again, there’d be no shortage of women lining up for the jobs.

  One day, as they were eating dinner in the canteen, Winnie, who had made short work of her own, cast a covetous eye on Matty’s.

  ‘Here.’ Matty handed over half her sandwich. ‘I’m not that hungry.’

  ‘You sure?’ Winnie asked, taking a bite. ‘Thanks, Matt, Mum says I’ve got hollow legs.’ They laughed, but then Winnie’s expression turned sombre. ‘Matt, I think I’m gonna have to leave home.’

  ‘But why?’ Matty knew that Winnie’s father had been out of work for months. ‘Don’t your mum and dad rely on your wages?’

  ‘Of course they do. But the relieving officer’s been round and told ’em they’ve got to sell half their home, all the bits and pieces it’s taken ’em twenty odd years to pay off! All because of my piddling eighteen shillings a week coming in. Don’t matter about it being my wages, they say it goes to the household, so Dad’s relief’s been cut. They’d get more if I wasn’t living there. Besides, Mum says I’m eating ’em out of house and home!’

  When Winnie was anxious, she calmed herself with food, and the worry about her parents had sent her into a spiral. Not content with a packet of broken biscuits each week, she was now snacking on whatever she could filch from the lines each day. It was something everyone did occasionally, in fact they sometimes set up a competition to see who could pinch a favourite biscuit without getting caught. It was a dangerous game, though, earning a fine or even instant dismissal if they were discovered. But in the middle of a boring day, with five hours still to go, the risk of nicking a sugary Nice or a pink iced Playtime biscuit seemed a necessary distraction. But for Winnie it was more than that. Matty believed she genuinely mistook anxiety for hunger and, though she’d urged her friend to wait till their dinner break, the following morning Winnie found the temptation too much.

  Winnie gave Matty the eye and mouthed, ‘I’m having that one.’ She nodded towards an approaching Bourbon cream. Quickly reaching round Matty to whip it off the line and into her overall pocket, she let out a little yelp as she touched it. The biscuit was still hot enough to burn her fingertips and as she dropped the Bourbon cream Matty’s hand shot out to catch it. But it was like holding a hot coal and she batted it away, sending it spinning to the factory floor, where it landed at Edna’s patrolling feet.

  The forelady’s face curled in disgust as she trod on the biscuit. Matty waited for the telling off. But instead Edna beckoned to Winnie, who blushed like a naughty schoolgirl as she left the bench to stand before her.

  ‘I’ve seen you, Winnie Roberts, half-inching stuff off the line when you think I’m not looking, but this takes the cake, right under me nose!’

  Winnie was squirming and Matty was mortified for her. The other girls dropped their heads, so as not to witness Winnie’s shame – it could so easily have been one of them.

  ‘You know the rules about ’alf-inching stuff! Well, you can just go and get your cards.’

  Winnie’s lower lip began to tremble.

  ‘It won’t happen again,’ she said, then, lowering her voice, pleaded. ‘Give us another chance, Edna. Me mum and dad rely on my wages.’

  With any other forelady it might have worked, but Edna was a stickler. ‘You should a’ thought of that before, sticky fingers! Get yourself up the office.’ Edna turned to walk further up the line, but Matty couldn’t stay silent.

  ‘Come on, you mean old cow,’ she called after the forelady. ‘It’s one bloody Bourbon cream! And anyway, it looks like a broken one to me!’ she said, eyeing the crushed biscuit, still on the factory floor.

  This was a mistake, for the Tiller Girls giggled and Edna’s face reddened. She walked towards Matty till her face was inches away. ‘And you’d better watch yer cheek or I’ll have you out an’ all, for swearing.’

  Matty saw that the woman wasn’t going to back down, but the idea of Winnie going home to tell her parents there w
ould be no wages this week was too hard to bear.

  ‘Well, it wasn’t Winnie – it was me. I just can’t resist them Bourbon creams. It was me trying to nick the sodding biscuit, not Winnie!’

  Edna broke into a smile. ‘Well, you just made my day, they asked me to clear out the dead wood. Go and get your cards and you, gutsy...’ she pointed at Winnie. ‘I’m watching you.’

  ‘But it’s not true!’ Winnie tried to explain and Matty gave her a warning shake of the head. ‘It’s all right, Win, I don’t need this job. I’m only here doing research for the next talkie...’ As she promenaded past the line of the Tiller Girls, whose hands hadn’t ceased moving, she raised her voice to the level necessary to reach the back of the auditorium in the Star. ‘I’ve found out everything I need to know about this place and when the film comes out there’ll be an evil cow of a forelady in it you’ll all recognize!’

  Now the Tiller Girls paused, just for long enough to give her a round of applause, and she curtseyed low, before making her exit through the swing doors at the end of the factory floor.

  In the office they were very quick to give Matty her cards, eager to take on a fourteen-year-old in her place at half the wages. No doubt the school leaver would be kitted out in mob cap and overall before Matty had exited the factory gates.

  It was dinner time and she left the factory surrounded by a swarm of chatting, hurrying women. Still clutching her cards, she walked up Drummond Road towards the John Bull Arch, the reality of her situation slowly sinking in. Without her voice she had no other income and she had needed the money from this job simply to live. She realized she’d given Edna exactly what she wanted. But why had she done it? Perhaps a part of her had wanted the sack, and she’d simply given herself a far nobler motive than the true one, which was that at fourteen she’d never wanted to be a factory girl and she didn’t want to be one now.