South Of The River

by Sally Spencer

Genres: Family Life; Sagas; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

A tale of courage, warmth and grit, continuing the South London saga begun in old Father Thames. In turn of the century Southwark, times are changing. Traffic on the river is waning, replaced by the railways, and the mass of new inventions - the telephone, moving pictures, motor cars - is beginning to transform every day life. It's all change for the members of the close knit community too, and some find it easier to adapt than others. Belinda is forgiving her way as an independent woman; Mary tries to find the courage to stand up to her mother; Fred faces the ultimate challenge when the docks go up in fire; Maggie driven by the loss of her baby, and Tom cannot escape his chequered past.

Release date: July 26, 2012

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 368

Sample

PROLOGUE

Spring 1903

 

The scissors-grinder had parked his cart on the corner of Southwark Bridge Road and was pumping furiously on his foot pedal. In his right hand he held a carving knife that a washerwoman had just given to him, and as he pressed it against his rotating grindstone, sparks flew off in all directions.

He was not the only honest street trader trying to scrape a living on that mild spring day.

The salt-seller pushed his handcart from door to door, chipping a little off his huge block here, and a little there, until he had sold a couple of pounds.

A fishmonger, standing between the handles of his cart, announced to all the world that his fish were so fresh that ‘it’s a wonder they ain’t still floppin’ about’.

A street entertainer popped a piece of broken glass into his mouth in the expectation of earning a few coppers from the small crowd which had gathered round him, while a watercress-vendor held out his basket in the hope of tempting passers-by, and a sweep, his brushes over his shoulder, examined the skyline for badly smoking chimneys.

Nettie Walnut, ignoring all these diversions, turned left by Southwark fire station, and made her way towards number thirty-six, Lant Place, where she was certain there would be a warm welcome and a cup of tea awaiting her.

Nettie was a tramp – but no ordinary one. As she told anyone who would listen, her family had been vagrants for well over two hundred years – and if they didn’t believe her, they’d only to check the records that St Saviour’s Workhouse kept of its casual paupers.

Nettie had reached her destination. She knocked on the door, and waited patiently. There was the sound of footsteps coming up the passageway, then the door opened and Colleen Taylor was standing there.

‘Nettie!’ Colleen said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you round here at this time of year.’

‘I’s ’ere to see your babies, isn’t I?’

‘Then you’d better come in.’

Nettie followed Colleen down the passage to the kitchen. The twins were both there, Ted crawling around on the floor, and Cathy sitting in her highchair.

‘I ’asn’t seen them since the day they was born,’ Nettie said. ‘’Asn’t they grown?’

‘They have,’ Colleen agreed. ‘It’ll soon be their first birthday, and they’re becomin’ more of a handful with every day that passes.’

Nettie looked around the kitchen. ‘Your ’usband at the wood yard on the ’Ibernia Wharf, is ’e?’ she asked.

‘That’s right,’ Colleen agreed.

‘What’s ’e want to go down there for?’

Colleen laughed. ‘Because that’s where he works.’

Nettie nodded her head sagely. ‘Yes, I believe there is people who ’as to work for a livin’.’

Colleen picked up the kettle and headed over to the sink. ‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

‘I’s not bothered either way,’ Nettie said, ‘but if you’s makin’ one, I supposes I might as well.’

Colleen filled the kettle and put it on the range. ‘So where have you been since we last saw you, Nettie?’ she asked.

‘’Ere an’ there,’ the old tramp said vaguely. She stuffed some evil-looking tobacco into her old clay pipe, and struck a match on the heel of her boot. ‘I likes to see different places. That’s why I wouldn’t go into the work’ouse fulltime, even though they thinks the world of me in there.’

Colleen smiled. ‘Would you like a nice piece of bread an’ marge, Nettie?’

‘If you’s ’aving some.’ The old woman looked down at Ted, and then up at Cathy in her highchair. ‘Does you want me to tell your little babies’ fortunes for you?’

‘Is it really possible to read their fortunes when they’re so young?’

‘’Course it is. Their futures is written in their palms the moment they’s born.’

Colleen picked up a loaf and reached across to the Welsh dresser for the bread knife. ‘Go on, then, tell me what you see,’ she said. ‘It might be a bit of fun.’

Nettie squatted down next to Ted, who stopped crawling around and looked up in fascination at the brown-skinned woman with the clay pipe in her mouth.

‘Don’t be frightened, my little one,’ the old tramp crooned, gently taking his hand. ‘Nettie don’t want to ’urt, I just wants to see if you’s goin’ to be ’appy.’

Colleen cut an extra-thick slice off the loaf – Nettie always liked it that way. ‘What does it say?’ she asked.

‘I sees a long life for him. It’s in this line ’ere,’ Nettie told her, tracing her finger along Ted’s palm. ‘’E’ll give you a lot of grandchildren, this one.’

She released Ted’s hand, and walked over to the highchair where Cathy was sitting.

‘And what about you, my precious?’ she asked. ‘Is you goin’ to ’ave babies an’ all?’

Cathy gurgled happily, and didn’t look the least worried when Nettie took her pudgy little hand.

Nettie had read Ted’s palm immediately, but she stood gazing at Cathy’s for some time, as if she was searching for a different answer to the first one she’d found.

‘Well?’ Colleen asked.

‘Daft thing, fortune tellin’,’ Nettie said. ‘I sometimes don’t know why I does it,’ and then she released Cathy’s hand and headed towards the back door.

‘Are you goin’?’ Colleen asked.

‘Yes, I ’as to be on my way,’ the old woman replied, in a shaky voice.

‘But what about your tea?’

‘It’s not tea that I’s wantin’ right now. I’s off to ’ave a glass of gin.’

Chapter One

Lant Place was not a big street by London standards, but the people who lived there liked it well enough. It started at the corner of Southwark Bridge Road, crossed Sturge Street and Queen’s Court, and then came to a dead end. The terraced houses had been built as two-up, two-downs, but over the years, several of them had had kitchen extensions added. Many of the residents took in lodgers, giving the paying guests the front bedrooms and settling themselves in the back, from where they overlooked their own yards and the yards of Grotto Place.

The houses all had tiny front gardens. Some of them – like Lil Clarke’s – were as lovingly cared for as if they’d been the grounds of stately homes. Others were treated as nothing more than dumping sites for things like broken furniture and rusty prams, which people couldn’t bear to throw away, yet no longer wanted in their houses.

There were no manufacturies on Lant Place, unlike the much bigger Lant Street, where there was both a patent leather factory and a corkmaker’s. It was a good thing there weren’t any factories, Lil Clarke often thought, because somehow it wasn’t quite respectable to have that kind of thing going on close to your own doorstep.

Annie Bates plumped up the cushion she’d painstakingly embroidered with poppies, then looked around her front parlour. The antimacassars were straight on both the mock-leather sofa and the matching armchairs. The rag rug in front of the tiled fireplace had been given a thorough scrubbing and was as good as new. The ornaments in the display cabinet positively gleamed, and the picture of the sailing ship, which she’d bought down at the market the day before, now hung pleasingly on the wall opposite the window.

The cushion with the poppies on it still didn’t look right. Annie picked it up and rearranged it again.

‘Stop yer fussin’, Annie,’ her husband Tom told her. ‘Everyfink’s fine for the party as it is.’

Annie smiled. ‘It might be fine to your eyes, but it won’t be to my mum’s.’

Tom grinned back at her. ‘I’ll tell yer what I’ll do for yer, then. I’ll make sure that the very first person ’oo arrives parks ’is bottom on that chair, then yer mum won’t even be able to see the cushion.’

‘Very clever,’ Annie said. ‘And what about the rest of the room? How are you going to hide that from the famous Lil Clarke tour of inspection?’

‘Yer worry too much.’

A slight frown came to Annie’s face. ‘Oh, I know I do. It’s just that I feel so guilty.’

‘Guilty? What ’ave you got to feel guilty about?’

‘You work so hard on the river, and all I have to do is look after the house.’

‘An’ a smashin’ job yer make of it.’

‘I don’t want it to be just smashin’. I want it to be absolutely perfect.’

Tom put his arms around her. ‘It is perfect – as long as you’re ’ere in it.’

Annie kissed his neck. ‘I love you.’

‘An’ I love you.’

They had been married exactly a year to the day, which was the reason for the party which Annie was getting herself into such a state about.

The sound of several sets of footsteps coming down the street alerted Annie.

‘That’ll be the first guests,’ she said, breaking away from her husband – though what she really wanted to do was to ask him to carry her upstairs and make love to her.

Annie walked over to the fireplace and checked her appearance in the engraved mirror. A pretty girl – with naturally springy hair the colour of dark chocolate, and green eyes which seemed almost to glow – stared back at her, and looking over the pretty girl’s shoulder was a man with jet-black hair, brown eyes and a strong chin.

‘Don’t worry. You look a real picture,’ Tom said.

There was a knock at the front door. ‘If only I’d had another half hour to get things really straight!’ Annie said.

Tom grinned again. ‘Yer could ’ave ’ad another day, an’ yer’d still not ’ave been ready,’ he told her as he stepped into the passage to open the front door.

Standing on the pavement outside were all four of Tom’s family: May, his widowed mother; Joey, his younger brother, who desperately wanted to be a boxer; and his two younger sisters, Mary and Doris.

‘Ow’s the ’atbox business, Mum?’ Tom asked, as he led the family into the front room.

‘Terrible,’ his mother told him. ‘There just ain’t no call for ’atboxes at the moment.’

‘So what are yer doin’ to earn a livin’ now?’

‘Makin’ paper flowers. An’ on a Friday, I boil up beetroot an’ sell it down at the New Cut market.’

Tom shook his head in admiration. When his dad had died, his mum had converted their front parlour into her own little factory, and now she made anything and everything from brushes to fly paper, according to demand.

‘Yer’ve got the place lookin’ very nice, I’ll say that for yer,’ May said to Annie, glancing around the front room.

Tom gave his wife a look which said that he had told her as much himself.

‘I had good training,’ Annie said, thinking of her mother’s front room, which was crammed with far too much furniture – most of which they still owed the tallyman for.

The Taylors turned up next. George had lost part of his left leg at the Battle of Omdurman, but he managed to get around fine on the wooden one which had replaced it – even if it did look like he’d stolen it from an old-fashioned Victorian table. Colleen had a lovely smile, despite her large nose. She had been brought up in her father’s pub in Cheshire, and now worked as a part-time barmaid in the Goldsmiths’ Arms.

‘So how are the kids?’ Annie asked Colleen.

‘A real handful,’ Colleen admitted. ‘I love ’em dearly, but sometimes it’s a pleasure to leave ’em an’ go to work.’

‘Who looks after them while you’re out at the Goldsmiths’?’

‘A girl who lives on Southwark Bridge Road. I don’t pay her much, but I think her family’s glad of the money.’

‘Yes, with the way things are on the river, I expect they are,’ Annie said.

She didn’t explain – she didn’t have to. Everyone in Southwark understood how much the mighty Thames could affect their lives. When the river was busy – when there was work for the dockers and watermen – then the costermongers sold all their wares and the clog dancers soon filled their caps with coppers. But when trade was in recession – as it was that summer – people lived on fish instead of meat and were always out when the rent man came round.

Another knock on the front door announced the arrival of the Clarke family, who lived at number thirty-four, and this time it was Annie who answered it.

‘How are you getting on, Dad?’ she asked, after she had kissed her father.

Sam Clarke’s eyes flashed, like they always did when he was going to make a joke. ‘Woolly ’eaded, that’s ’ow I am.’

‘Woolly headed?’ Annie repeated, looking at her father’s straight, thinning hair.

‘Yer lookin’ in the wrong place,’ Sam said. ‘It’s inside me head I’m talkin’ about.’

‘’E’s been unloadin’ a wool ship from New Zealand,’ Lil Clarke explained.

‘Goodness knows, I’m glad of the work,’ Sam told his daughter, ‘but so much of the wool ’as got up me nose that by now me brain must be full of it.’

Annie laughed. ‘And how are you, Mum?’ she asked.

Lil Clarke smiled. ‘I’d be doin’ fine if it wasn’t for these cantankerous children of mine.’

She turned to look at the two children in question. Eddie, who had dark, tousled hair, and had just turned sixteen, was training to be an automobile mechanic. Peggy, in complete contrast, was much paler and fairer than her older sister, and had an otherworldly look about her, as if she belonged in a fairy story, rather than on the streets of Southwark.

‘Just look how respectable yer sister is,’ Lil said to her two younger children. ‘An ’ouse of ’er own an’ everyfink. That’s what you should be aimin’ for.’

Annie laughed again. ‘They’re still only kids, Mum.’

Eddie scowled at being called a kid, but it didn’t seem to bother Peggy. Not much ever seemed to bother Peggy: as long as she had animals around her, she was quite content just to drift through the rest of life.

‘It’s never too early to start bein’ respectable,’ Lil said firmly. ‘Is it, Sam?’

Sam grinned. ‘You mean like your china plate, Nettie Walnut?’ he asked.

Even after nearly twenty years of marriage, Lil rarely noticed when Sam was making fun of her – and she didn’t now. ‘Well, Nettie is very respectable . . . for a tramp,’ she said weakly.

The front parlour was getting quite crowded, and there were still two more people to come, but nobody minded. It was nice to get together for a good rabbit every now and again. That was what families were for.

Tom Bates and Peggy Clarke were standing near the door.

‘’Ow’s yer goat gettin’ on?’ Tom asked Peggy.

‘Napoleon’s doin’ luverly,’ Peggy said enthusiastically. ‘It was ever so kind of yer to give ’im to me.’

‘An’ it was ever so kind of you to be one of the bridesmaids at my wedding.’

‘Think nuffink of it,’ Peggy said, but it was goats, not weddings, that she wanted to talk about. ‘When Napoleon’s finished growin’, I’m goin’ to get a cart an’ charge all the kids in the street a farthin’ to go for rides in it.’

‘Yer should make a fortune,’ Tom said, trying not to laugh. ‘What are yer goin’ to do with the money?’

Peggy checked around the room to make sure her mother, who was sitting near the fireplace, couldn’t overhear her, then said, ‘I’m startin’ me own zoo.’

‘An’ where are yer goin’ to ’ave this zoo?’

Peggy looked at him as if he’d lost his marbles. ‘In our back yard, o’ course.’

Tom shook his head doubtfully. ‘I can’t see yer mum ever allowin’ that.’

‘I’ll only be keepin’ little animals,’ Peggy said. ‘It’s not like I want an elephant or nuffink. Mum won’t mind.’

‘Is that right? Then why are we whisperin’?’

‘She won’t mind in the end. I’m just givin’ ’er a bit of time to get used to the idea.’

Annie was half-listening to Tom’s sister Mary talk about life at Stevenson’s match factory, but what she was really thinking was how much Mary had changed in the last year or so.

When they’d first met, Mary had been nothing more than a child, who still had her puppy fat and wore her short blonde hair straight. Now the fat had melted completely away, the hair was in curls which cascaded down to her shoulders, and what had once appeared to be nothing more than a cute little button nose was rapidly developing into her best feature.

‘It’s that Miss ’Unt, ’oo really gets me,’ Mary was explaining. ‘She’s always pickin’ on me . . .’

‘She always did pick on the pretty girls,’ Annie said, thinking back to her own days in the factory.

‘. . . an’ some days, I get so fed up with it all. I just feel like screamin’.’

‘I’m sure you do,’ Annie said sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you leave, like I did?’

‘It ain’t that easy when yer’ve got no trainin’.’

‘I hadn’t got any training when I joined the telephone company,’ Annie said, although that was not quite true. She’d had no training in operating switchboards, but before they’d ever agreed to take her on, she’d had to have elocution lessons from Miss Crosby, her old board school teacher.

‘That was a good job yer ’ad at the exchange,’ Mary said. ‘It’s a real shame that you ’ad to lose it.’

‘It was company policy,’ Annie told her. ‘They just don’t employ married women.’

‘Well, they should ’ave more sense. Losin’ a good worker like you, just ’cos yer’ve got an ’usband – that’s plain silly.’

And a great pity, too, Annie thought. She and Tom could certainly have used the extra money she would have earned. Besides, she’d never been used to staying home all day, and, if she was honest with herself, it was starting to bore her.

‘How’s that young fireman of yours getting on?’ she asked Mary.

Like Peggy earlier, Mary glanced quickly across the room to see if her mother was in earshot. ‘Fred’s doin’ fine,’ she said, almost in a whisper.

‘So what’s the problem? Doesn’t your mum like you going out with him?’

Mary sighed. ‘Me mum wouldn’t like it if I was goin’ out with the Prince of Wales.’

Annie laughed. ‘Quite right, too: he’s far too old for you. But what’s your mum got against Fred Simpson?’

‘She thinks I’m too young to start ’avin’ boyfriends, but you wasn’t much older than me when yer started goin’ out with our Tom, was yer?’

‘No, I wasn’t,’ Annie agreed, ‘but my mum didn’t like that any more than your mum likes you seeing Fred. You just have to give mums time to get used to things, Mary.’

‘I’ll ’ave grey ’air by the time my mum thinks I’m ready for a boyfriend,’ Mary said wistfully.

The last two guests to arrive were Harry Roberts and Belinda Benson. Harry, a powerful figure with sandy hair, was a sergeant in the river police – or the Wet Bobs, as they were known. He had once been in love with Annie, but despite that, he had still helped prove that his rival, Tom, had not committed the murder that he’d been imprisoned for.

Belinda was an ‘honourable’, though she never used the title. She was what people called a ‘big-boned’ girl, and though no one could deny that her face was attractive, every single feature which made it up seemed larger than life. She had worked as a telephone operator with Annie and now spent a lot of time with Harry – ‘giving him his supper’, as she liked to put it, which was a nice way of saying she was doing something nice girls didn’t do, and couldn’t give a hang about what anybody thought of it.

‘Have you finished preparing the food yet?’ Belinda asked Annie as they stood in the passageway.

‘I was just getting around to it.’

‘Good, then I’ve arrived just in time to give you a hand.’ Belinda turned to Harry. ‘You go through to the front room,’ she said bossily. ‘Annie and I have some work to do.’

‘An’ no doubt some gossip to exchange,’ Harry said with a knowing grin.

‘Possibly, but since most of it will be about you, and I know how modest you are, it’s better said out of your hearing. So why don’t you save yourself the blushes and go and make yourself amenable to the rest of the guests?’

‘Yes ma’am,’ Harry said, saluting smartly, then opening the parlour door.

Belinda and Annie walked down the passageway to the kitchen.

‘I must say, you two seem to be getting on very well together,’ Annie commented.

‘Oh, we are,’ Belinda agreed. ‘I was no innocent flower when I met our Sergeant Roberts, but the things he’s shown me in the last twelve months . . .’

‘Belinda!’

‘Oh, don’t come the blushing virgin with me,’ Belinda said airily. ‘From the looks of him, your Tom can put on a good show when he wants to.’

Annie smiled. Belinda could be simply impossible sometimes, but she was never going to change, so you just had to accept her for what she was.

The food – eel pie, oysters, cold cuts of beef and ham – was already out on the kitchen table, and all that remained to do was to arrange it tastefully on Annie’s best plates.

‘Have your family met Harry?’ Annie asked, as she stretched up to reach the crockery on the top shelf of the Welsh dresser.

‘They haven’t actually met him, but I’ve certainly told them all about him.’

‘And what did they say?’

‘What did they say? What do you think they said when they learned that their high-bred daughter was going out with a common policeman? They were outraged.’ Belinda chuckled. ‘I think that’s part of what makes it all so much fun.’

In the front parlour, Tom and Harry were talking about the river, where both of them felt much more comfortable than they did on dry land.

‘I tell yer, it’s gettin’ ’arder an’ ’arder to make ends meet as a waterman,’ Tom said. ‘Sometimes – like now, for instance – traffic on the river’s so slack that yer can go for hours without pickin’ up a passenger.’

‘That’s what I like about my job,’ Harry said. ‘Yer never spend any time just ’angin’ around.’

‘An’ when yer do get to row somebody out to their ship, they usually act like they was doin’ yer a favour by even gettin’ in yer boat,’ Tom complained.

‘Well, if yer not ’appy, then maybe it’s time you was lookin’ for some other line o’ work,’ Harry suggested.

‘I agree with yer. But what?’

Harry hesitated for a second. ‘’Ave yer considered joinin’ the Wet Bobs?’

‘Me? In the river police?’

‘Why not? Yer a smart lad an’ a good rower. Yer’d take to it like a fish to water.’

‘Yer forgettin’ me criminal record,’ Tom said. ‘First of all, there’s the twelve-month suspended sentence for the fight I got into with Rollo Jenkins an’ his gang. An’ then, of course, there was the murder charge.’

‘You wasn’t guilty of that, so it don’t count, an’ as for that other matter – yer suspended sentence – I was just thinkin’ that now I’ve got a bit of influence in the Force, we might be able to find some way of overlookin’ that.’

‘Yer’d be takin’ a chance, puttin’ my name forward. Are you willin’ to do that?’

Harry shrugged awkwardly. ‘Why not? If yer can’t go out on a bit of a limb for the bloke ’oo asked yer to be the best man at ’is weddin’, ’oo can yer go out on a limb for? So what do yer say? Do yer fancy joinin’ the Wet Bobs?’

Tom thought about it. As a river policeman he would be getting regular wages instead of being at the mercy of the wharfingers and sailors he normally had to rely on. And police work might be more interesting than ferrying people to and fro.

‘Well, do yer want to give it a try?’ Harry asked.

‘Do yer know, ’Arry, I rather think I do,’ Tom replied.

Eddie Clarke and Joey Bates did not really know each other very well, but as the only two lads at the party, they had naturally drifted towards one corner of the parlour together. They were about the same age, but they were far from the same size. Eddie was small and wiry, with the hands of an artist. Joey, thanks to his weight training, had grown four inches since his brother’s marriage, and had fists as hard as house bricks.

‘I’m goin’ to ’ave me first fight soon,’ Joey said.

‘Yer first fight?’

‘Yes. I’m goin’ to be a boxer.’

‘I see,’ Eddie said.

‘Somefink wrong with that?’

Eddie shrugged his shoulders. ‘Nuffink, I suppose. Leastways, not if your idea of fun is to step in a ring an’ ’ave some bloke beat ’ell out of yer.’

‘An what’s your idea of fun?’ Joey demanded. ‘Tinkerin’ about with motorcars all day? That’s no life for a man. It ain’t natural, neither. If God ’ad wanted us to ’ave motors, ’e’d ’ave put ’em in ’orses.’

The two boys glared at each other.

‘Boxin’,’ Eddie scoffed.

‘Motorcars,’ Joey retaliated.

Each of them looked around, deciding where to go next. Back to their mums? That was unthinkable. Go and join Harry and Tom? From the way they were talking to each other, it didn’t seem as if they would welcome the intrusion. So it looked, Joey and Eddie thought simultaneously, as if they were stuck with each other.

It was Eddie who broke the silence. ‘No point in fallin’ out now that we’re related, is there?’

Joey grinned. ‘Naw. Each to ’is own, that’s what I say.’ He hesitated for a second. ‘Will yer come an’ watch me first fight? Only, I could do with a bit o’ support to egg me on.’

Eddie thought about it. He didn’t want to see a boxing match, but the foundations of his newfound friendship were too shaky for him to refuse. ‘I’ll tell yer what,’ he said finally. ‘I’ll come an’ watch yer first fight if you’ll come down to the garage an’ let me show yer the cars.’

Joey said, ‘Yer’ve got a deal,’ and the two boys solemnly shook hands.

Belinda and Annie carried the food into the parlour and placed it on the table, while Tom dispensed the drinks – mostly beer for the men and port and lemon for the women. The children stuck to plain lemonade, but not without a certain amount of indignant protest from Joey and Eddie.

‘When yer twenty-one yer’ll be old enough to drink,’ Lil Clarke told her son.

‘But our Annie’s drinking, and she’s not twenty-one,’ Eddie protested.

‘Annie’s married,’ his mother said. ‘It’s respectable to drink when yer married, ’. . .