Bourbon Creams and Tattered Dreams Page 19

  ‘I knew what he was. It took me a while to work it out and by then I was up to my neck in his business – there were things I didn’t want to know about...’ She gave an involuntary shudder. She was ashamed of her naivety, her weakness and most of all that she’d fallen in love with a man she now despised.

  ‘It’s easy to get sucked in, Matty. I should know – it took me years to shake off the Elephant mob, but you’re never really free. Even now they come sniffing around when they want an inside man in the council. I don’t want to tell you what to do, but be careful, Matty. Rossi’s a dangerous man.’

  Matty hugged herself unconsciously. ‘Why do you think I left?’ she asked.

  ***

  Matty knew he would come. He looked even taller and skinnier, as if his new burst of growth could only go in one direction, his thin wrists poking out from his blazer sleeves and his shorts now halfway up his thin thighs. Like a fragile, leggy sapling, at ten Billy seemed to be shooting up in search of the light, and it looked to Matty as though he might disappear in the process.

  He flung his arms round her and she squeezed him tightly, pulling off his cap to kiss the top of his head. She didn’t ask if his parents knew he’d come.

  ‘Want to play the old joanna?’ she asked, knowing the answer, and leading him to the front room.

  ‘Is it all right?’ His fingers stroked the closed lid.

  ‘Go on,’ Matty urged, and watched as the young boy sat down at Eliza’s dark brown upright.

  He lifted the lid and played a chord, then looked up and smiled, his eyes bright with anticipation. ‘Needs a tune!’ he said.

  ‘A poor workman always blames his tools, get on with it!’ she joked. ‘I’ll go and make us some tea. Do you want a jam sandwich?’

  He shook his head. ‘No thanks, Aunt Matty, I’m not hungry.’

  Matty could hardly credit that his growing body wasn’t crying out to be fed. Perhaps he was just being polite, knowing, as all Bermondsey children did, that not everyone who offered a slice of bread or spoonful of jam necessarily had them to spare.

  She made them tea, giving Billy an extra helping of condensed milk, but as she carried them from the kitchen she was halted by the music coming from the old piano. Holding the two cups and saucers, she listened outside the half-open front-room door and peered through.

  Billy sat at the piano, head bent over the keyboard in concentration. He’d taken off his blazer and she could see the bony back and shoulder blades protruding through his thin cotton shirt. He was making a pretty good job of a difficult jazz song. ‘Street of Dreams’ had a changeable melody and a melancholy mood that struck her as an odd choice for a young boy. She leaned softly on the half-closed door, as Billy gave a tinkling run up the minor scale and sang the incongruously world-weary lyric in his unbroken choirboy voice: ‘Midnight, you heavy laden, it’s midnight. Come on and trade in your old dreams for new. Your new dreams for old. I know where they’re bought. I know where they’re sold...’

  The floorboard creaked beneath her feet and his head shot up.

  ‘Ain’t very good, am I?’ He grinned.

  She pushed open the door. ‘Rubbish. You’re doing well! Why d’you pick that one?’

  He shrugged and blushed. ‘Dad was listening to it on the wireless the other night... He told Mum it reminded him of you. But I liked the words anyway...’ he added, perhaps seeing her blanch at the mention of his father.

  It was odd to think of Sam talking about her, keeping her fresh in his mind, when all she’d wanted to do was forget him.

  ‘You liked the words?’ What broken dreams could he have at his age? But then, she hadn’t been much older when she’d made a bid to fulfil her own.

  ‘What do you dream about, Billy?’

  He swivelled round on the piano stool. His eyes were bright and two red spots burned on his cheeks. ‘Oh, Aunt Matty, I want to be a piano player, more than anything in the world, and I want to go to Goldsmiths College after I leave school.’

  ‘Goldsmiths!’

  Poor Billy, she feared that college would be beyond Sam’s wages. She remembered her own brother Charlie giving up his chance to go there in those hard wartime days. She wished Billy better luck.

  ‘Play it again.’

  He gulped down his tea, and was overtaken by a coughing fit that had him doubled up. As she ran to pat him on the back she realized how fragile he’d become, no longer the sturdy little boy she’d greeted on her return from America. There was a damp patch of sweat on the shirt where she patted him. A chill alarm rippled through her as she put the back of her hand to his forehead.

  ‘You’re hot, have you been feeling rough, Billy?’

  He shook his head, waiting for the coughing to pass. When he could breathe again she heard a papery wheeze, like a breeze rustling autumn leaves.

  ‘Just bit of a cough and I get achy, but Mum says that’s growing pains.’

  ‘All right now?’

  Squashing down a dread she wouldn’t give a name to, she sat down in the armchair. ‘Off you go then, give it your best.’

  But this time he stumbled over the key change.

  ‘Shove over,’ she said, sitting beside him on the stool.

  ‘Like this.’ She began to play.

  ‘Sing it, Aunt Matty.’ He leaned his head on her shoulder, watching as her fingers played over the dark and the light keys. ‘Sing it for me.’

  She took a soft breath in and then, with the out breath, she began very gently to sing to the young boy who had barely lived long enough to have any dreams broken. She sang it like a lullaby.

  ‘Dreams broken in two, can be made like new, on the street of dreams. Gold, silver and gold. All you can hold, is in a moonbeam...’

  She sang on, hardly daring to believe what she was hearing, marvelling at how the young boy had drawn from her the voice she thought was lost. And when she was finished, she was astonished to find that Billy had fallen asleep resting on her shoulder.

  *

  The next evening found her standing on the familiar doorstep of what had once been her home. It was late enough for Vauban Street to be empty of the usual tribe of children and she hoped that the boys were all in bed by now. Sam opened the door in his shirtsleeves. For a moment he said nothing, and she wondered if she’d even be welcome. She’d assumed, perhaps wrongly, that the injury was hers alone. Then he swung the door wide open. ‘Come in, duck, come in.’ He smiled and relief surged through her.

  Nellie was there, and though the shock was more evident on her face than on Sam’s, she was kind enough to try to suppress it. She got up and offered Matty her chair.

  ‘I’ll make us some tea,’ she said and skirted Matty at an uneasy distance.

  Matty couldn’t blame her; she’d made herself a stranger after all. ‘Are the boys in bed?’ she asked Sam, who sat rather rigidly with hands flat on his thighs.

  ‘The little ’uns have been in bed a while. Usually we can’t get Billy in off the street, but he took himself up to bed with them too.’ He hesitated. ‘It’s nice to see you, Matty.’ He reached for his tobacco pouch and began rolling a cigarette. ‘Nellie told me you’re working with the borough films. How’ve you been?’

  She supposed she would have to talk about herself, but she didn’t want to. How could she explain to him that, in the end, it had nothing to do with her own hurt, or sense of betrayal, it had nothing to do with blame or forgiveness. It was simply her love for a child that had finally bridged the gap. She didn’t care how he was related to her, Billy was an ten-year-old child that she loved and would do anything to protect. Understanding that, she understood everything she needed to about the choices Sam, Nellie and Eliza had made for herself at that age.

  ‘I got the sack from Peek’s and had to bump on for a while. But things are looking up. The job with the film department’s been a lifesaver really.’

  He nodded, hardly daring to look at her, intent instead on pulling out loose tobacco strands from his roll-up.


  ‘But in a way that’s what’s brought me here, Sam. You see, I’ve learned a lot from working on the films, from the pamphlets and lectures – about all sorts, germs and teeth and looking after children’s health...’

  At that moment Nellie came in with tea and Matty saw a look pass between her and Sam, a look that said they had talked about this moment of Matty’s return many times and had agreed not to pressurize her. That look, more than anything, unlocked Matty’s heart. She simply couldn’t have it, these two near strangers were the same beloved people who’d got her through the darkest days of her past and who’d supported her while she was forging her glittering future; she refused to have them frightened of her. She put out both hands, one to Sam and the other to Nellie.

  She drew them into a long, tight embrace, in which she longed to glue back together all that had been shattered. Matty felt Sam’s tears wet her own face and she pulled back, smudging them from his cheek with her thumb.

  ‘Matty, I’m so glad you’ve come home,’ he said in a choked voice and Nellie, who was always called upon to be the strong one, wiped her eyes with the edge of her pinafore.

  ‘I’m glad to be home too, really I am,’ she said. ‘But there’s something important I need to tell you. It’s about Billy.’

  ***

  Billy’s tuberculosis was not so advanced that there was no hope. How he had caught it was not a question any of them thought to ask. TB was still thick in the air of Bermondsey, the rate of infection still one of the highest in the country, despite the borough’s heroic efforts to reduce it with its slum-clearance programme, its propaganda for tuberculin-tested milk, to say nothing of the health education posters and films. All of which hadn’t been enough to combat a disease that thrived in the old crowded housing that still formed the bulk of the borough’s stock.

  The family were ordered into the isolation mode that Matty had acted out in her scenes with Reggie. But to live separate lives in such a cramped house was almost impossible and the doctor said Billy must go to the TB ward in Guy’s Hospital. The ward, situated in the oldest, grimmest part of the hospital, was actually little more than a long open-air balcony divided into cubicles. Large shutter windows built into the balcony were propped open, day and night, whatever the weather, and when Matty went to visit Billy the nurse showed her to his cubicle, gave her a mask and warned her sternly against any kissing. She sat in coat and hat, at a heartbreaking distance from the boy, who was in bed, masked and swaddled in several jumpers. He had taken the news with the resilience of youth, confident that his stay would be short and successful. But as she sat in the ward’s icy draught Matty’s heart quailed. His pallor had deepened to chalk white, relieved only by the brightness of his eyes and the telltale red spots on his cheeks.

  ‘How d’you like your room?’ she augmented her speech, muffled by the mask, with a sweep of her hand around the balcony.

  His eyes smiled and he sang through his mask. ‘A room with a view, and you! With no one to worry us, no one to hurry us...’

  ‘What a trouper!’ She laughed.

  But even such a small burst of song seemed to tire him and he let his head fall back on the starched white pillow.

  ‘Tell me about your new film.’ His large eyes showed as much eagerness as if she was working for Paramount instead of Bermondsey Borough Council.

  ‘Well, it’s all about looking after babies so I don’t know if you’ll be interested.’

  She could see from his eyes that he was pulling a face, but he nodded. Obviously the long hours alone in the hospital had made him eager for diversion.

  ‘We’ve just started filming at the mother and baby clinic down Grange Road and I play mother, demonstrating making up bottles and giving baby a bath. So there I am looking all calm, trying to keep hold of this wet, squirming, screaming baby and the chief medical officer’s in the director’s chair, sitting there like George Cukor, saying, “My dear Miss Gilbie, do try not to drop baby, there are only so many infants we can acquire in one day!”’

  She heard a crackly laugh from behind Billy’s mask at her expert impression of D.M.’s clipped tones.

  ‘You know what they say in showbiz, Billy? Never work with animals or children. Well, remember – babies are the worst! I nearly ended up chucking it at him.’ But she only put that part in to make Billy laugh. She hadn’t wanted to throw the child at all; she’d wanted to keep it. And she hadn’t really struggled; she’d been as natural with the child as if it were her own.

  On the tram coming home from Guy’s she allowed herself to remember the day’s filming. It had been like playing at motherhood and it had been sweet and bitter at the same time. She’d needed little of her acting skill to convey maternal love, for that was something which had always run deep in her veins, this love of the small and the helpless, the urge to protect and nurture. In the family it had always been Matty who soothed the crying infants or entertained the young ones. It was an instinct she’d put on hold when she’d left for America and it had been one of the things that had caused her rift with Tom, for he’d wanted to marry and have children. Shooting the new film had stirred up too many suppressed longings and painful regrets. It had been almost unbearably painful holding the baby, which was so much heavier than her own tiny infant. She looked down at her hands now, and she could almost imagine her lost baby nestling there. Perhaps she should tell Tom she couldn’t make this one, but he would want to worm out her reason, and that was best left buried, for there were only so many confidences her old lover would be able to tolerate.

  She turned her mind to Billy. Sam and Nellie had been devastated by the news, but grateful to Matty. Because of her, the disease had been caught early enough for there to be hope. Nellie had blamed herself for not spotting the telltale signs, though Billy’s symptoms weren’t severe yet and Matty had only recognized them because of working on the TB film.

  But she became increasingly frustrated at his slow progress. Her work in the public health department had taught her that there was always more that could be done, always new methods to try. The films were a case in point. Their MP Dr Salter had been the driving force behind them, even buying the camera equipment out of his own pocket. His work had transformed Bermondsey from an area with one of the highest infant mortality rates to a place where children now survived scarlet fever and diphtheria, with mother and baby clinics, immunization programmes and, above all, in Billy’s case, there was the chance for heliotherapy, the sun cure.

  Matty had learned the value of light. While making the consumption film she’d seen how it wasn’t just fresh air, but also pure sunlight that was needed if Billy was to be saved. Bermondsey, with its huddled buildings crowding out the sky, was not a place that saw much sun. When it did poke its golden disc above the rooftops it had to compete with smoke from a hundred factory chimneys and the yellow pea-soupers that rolled off the Thames. But in an old Victorian house in Grange Road the council was using the new electrification of the borough to mimic the sun’s healing rays. There it had set up an array of sun lamps in a solarium clinic, with its own generator to fuel them. Rickety or tubercular children, wearing nothing but white loincloths, powdered with talcum and looking like emaciated pale Mowglis, paraded in a circle beneath the lamps. Billy had been let out of the isolation ward once a week to take his place amongst them, and Matty had hoped that a weekly blast of artificial sunlight might see him improve. But the time had come to admit that he had not.

  *

  They were coming to the end of the outdoor screening season. They dropped off D.M. at London Bridge Station and were returning the cinemotor to the depot.

  ‘You’re looking down in the dumps,’ Tom commented as he pulled out into Tooley Street. ‘Is it your Billy?’

  ‘I went to visit him yesterday, and he doesn’t seem to be rallying. Surely there should be some improvement by now!’

  Tom shot her a sympathetic look. ‘Every case is different. He’s young and strong—’

  ‘Tom,’ Matty int
errupted. ‘I want him to go to Leysin. I want to get him to Switzerland.’

  He looked startled. ‘You think he’s that bad?’ He knew, as she did, that the borough funded only the worst cases to go to the outdoor sanatorium school in Switzerland.

  ‘Not yet, but I can’t wait for him to get to death’s door. I’m not sitting around waiting for a miracle, not when I know there’s one waiting for him in Leysin.’

  Only a handful of Bermondsey children were sent each year to Leysin, and then only when all else had failed and the sunlight of the high Alps was deemed the last hope of curing their tuberculosis. She’d seen a photograph of the children there, lying on beds in the snow, wearing only white hats and loincloths, gradually having their bodies exposed to the strongest sunlight imaginable. Their pale skins, formed in sun-blocked Bermondsey, had to get used to the shock of so much light, but gradually miracles did take place. Skin firmed and muscle toned, while hair began to shine and lungs to clear. In his lectures D.M. called ‘Old Sol’ the greatest healer off the planet, which sometimes got him a laugh. But for Matty it was deadly serious and she had become convinced that Billy’s best chance lay in ‘Old Sol’s’ healing rays.

  ‘Do you want me to have a word with D.M.?’ Tom asked unexpectedly.

  She shook her head. ‘No, I woudn’t ask that. It should be me.’

  ‘D.M.’s more likely to listen to me,’ he said bluntly as he turned the cinemotor in through the depot gates and switched off the engine.

  ‘You mean more likely to listen to a chap – hysterical females a bit too much for him?’

  ‘He’s just known me longer,’ Tom explained, but Matty didn’t believe him. She’d been a bit of a novelty in the department, and while the three musketeers had welcomed the touch of glamour she brought, she never felt that they took her very seriously.

  It was well past ten o’clock and Tom helped her down from the van, offering to walk her home. ‘I’ll be all right. Bermondsey’s lit up brighter than Broadway these days!’