A Glimpse at Happiness (13 page)
Sophie’s father, the Quaker minister, believed that charity didn’t begin at home - as Mrs Munroe would have it - but at his ever open front door. Because of Mr Cooper’s tireless work in the dark alleyways and stews of the area, Sophie was also well known and respected and therefore never needed an escort.
The shops and businesses that made their living from their proximity to the river were already halfway through their morning by the time the two girls walked past, their baskets of provisions held tightly in their hands. It was hard enough to cross the road with the constant flow of heavy wagons rolling by in each direction, but it was also difficult to navigate their way along the pavement, which was equally busy. The shop frontages were piled high with open barrels and crates displaying the goods for sale, while young lads in long aprons that almost covered their toes stood on sentry duty against opportunistic pilfering.
Between the shops, small businesses that supplied the ships in port with provisions were flourishing. Every other yard had miles of rope, some as thin as your little finger and some as thick as your wrist, coiled around overhead beams. Unwary passers-by lost hats or bonnets if they weren’t mindful of the hazards above them. The pungent smell of tar wafted out as ships’ pitch was boiled and barrelled, ready for loading. Behind bevelled window panes, watchmakers tinkered with sextons, nautical clocks, barometers and compasses.
As they made their way past quartermasters ordering provisions and shopkeepers replenishing their displays, Josie told Sophie about her visit to Patrick’s house.
‘I can hardly believe it,’ Sophie said, her oval face a picture of concern.
‘Of course it was a bit awkward,’ Josie replied, as the little niggle of hurt settling around her breastbone jabbed at her again. ‘But, as I
keep
telling everyone, it was a long time ago.’
keep
telling everyone, it was a long time ago.’
‘Well, at least you know why he didn’t return.’
Yes, because he fell in love with someone else! Not that I give a jot.
‘Where are we going?’ Josie asked, turning the conversation away from Patrick. She stepped over a gutter full of a reeking, slushy brown mixture of something better not investigated too closely.
‘Seven Street,’ Sophie replied. ‘There’s a young widow there with two children under five. Her husband fell in the East India dock and was crushed between the dock and the ship’s hull.’
‘When Mr Arnold, my stepfather’s apprentice, came to dinner last week he told us about men killed and injured in the dock.’ Josie said. ‘He said that drink was one of the contributing factors, which gave Mrs Munroe the perfect opportunity to launch into one of her tirades about the evils of inebriation.’ Josie, who had already unburdened herself to Sophie about Mrs Munroe’s visit, added, ‘I am surprised that she’s chosen to “give her life”, as she puts it, to the poor, as it seems that almost everything they do or say disgusts her.’
Two women in faded gowns and knitted shawls stepped back as they passed and, out of the corner of her eye, Josie saw them nudge each other and point at her bonnet and gown. They turned left onto Elizabeth Street, where a dog with patches of mange on his hind quarters barked half-heartedly, lifted its leg and squirted urine up the wall, leaving a dark patch on the brickwork. On one side of the alley a couple of muddy pigs scratched about behind an improvised barricade. Sophie stopped in front of an old door that had once been cornflower blue but now only had a few flecks of the paint left on the panels.
‘Try not to be too shocked,’ Sophie urged, as she pushed the door open with her gloved hand.
Josie nodded, thinking that her old home in Anthony Street was surely not much different from the one she was about to enter.
Sophie stepped inside and Josie followed her down the narrow passage to the back of the house. Something scurried by her foot and she jumped.
Don’t be silly, it’s only a mouse
, she thought;
a rat would have stood its ground.
, she thought;
a rat would have stood its ground.
Upstairs, heavy boots stomped across bare floorboards. A man’s voice grumbled while a child grizzled. Sophie pushed open the scullery door.
‘Mrs Purdy, it’s only m—’
Josie collided with her friend who was frozen to the spot. Looking over Sophie’s shoulder, she saw that the room was sparsely furnished, if furnished could describe a three-legged table, a milking stool and an upright chair. A pile of rags that had once been blankets were folded in one corner but there was no bed. Beside the empty fire grate an upturned fruit box lined with a knitted shawl served as an improvised cot. On the table was a plate and a broken-handled cup, half a loaf of dry bread and a jug with bluebottles hovering above it.
In the centre of the earth floor stood a pale and thin young woman of about twenty with a baby in her arms and a little girl clinging to her skirt. She stared at the two newcomers with a mixture of relief and dread on her emaciated face. Something caught Josie’s eye to her right and she turned to see a familiar figure.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Tugman,’ Sophie said, with a slight tremble in her voice.
The misshapen figure, dressed in what looked like old rags, turned around. Josie found herself facing the same horrid woman whose slovenly son had manhandled her on the day when she’d met Patrick. The fury surged up in Josie as she remembered their first encounter. She gave the old woman a withering look.
A flicker of recognition passed over Ma Tugman’s grimy face as she glanced up at Josie.
‘Call me Ma, Miss Cooper, everyone else around here does,’ she drawled, scratching a finger through her tangled, oily hair. ‘And you have the pretty Miss O’Casey with you.’
‘You’ve
met
Ma Tugman?’ Sophie exclaimed, a look of alarm on her rosy face.
met
Ma Tugman?’ Sophie exclaimed, a look of alarm on her rosy face.
‘I have,’ Josie replied.
Amusement flickered across Ma’s face and then she thumped her chest and coughed noisily. ‘Well, Meg, you have better company than me calling on you, so I’ll not intrude.’
A too-bright smile spread over Sophie’s face. ‘Oh, don’t leave on our account; we can always come back another time,’ she said in tight voice. ‘Can’t we, Miss O’Casey?’
Josie looked across at Meg, whose whole demeanour screamed terror, and then to the child staring at the basket on her arm. She couldn’t have been more than four, with dirty, worn clothes, no more than rags, covering her thin body. Her bare feet were almost as black as the floor she stood on. There were scabs at the corners of her mouth and her legs were already bowing with rickets.
Josie thought of her brother Joe, only a little older. She swept past her friend and swung her basket onto the table.
‘The children look too hungry to wait,’ Josie said, turning her back on the old woman.
She unpacked the fresh bread and milk before her friend could argue. Ignoring the traces of grease on the plate, she set out the bread and poured some milk into the cup.
She held her hand out to the small girl at her mother’s skirts who, after the briefest hesitation, ran to the table and snatched up a hunk of bread. She crammed it in her mouth, slurping milk at the same time. Ignoring Sophie, who was glaring at her, Josie turned to Ma Tugman.
Fury passed briefly across the old woman’s face before it cracked into an artificial smile. ‘What a good heart you have, Miss O’Casey.’
Ma crossed the room and ran a black-nailed index finger slowly down Meg’s cheek. The young woman flinched. ‘Charity all well and good, but it’s me who can put food in your brats’ mouths, regular like. Your friend Lucy’s living like a queen since she took up with my Charlie. You’d be wise to study her and see where your best interests lie.’
She lurched back across the floor and stopped in front of Josie, exuding a smell of unwashed body and gin. ‘Oh, and Miss O’Casey, when you see your friend Patrick Nolan tell him I was asking after him.’
She shuffled out of the door, banging it shut behind her.
Sophie put her basket on the table next to Josie’s. ‘I feel rather faint,’ she said, fanning her hand in front of her face.
‘What on earth is the matter?’
‘
That
was Ma Tugman,’ Sophie said.
That
was Ma Tugman,’ Sophie said.
‘So I understand,’ Josie replied, leading Meg to the chair and handing her one of the small meat pies Mrs Woodall had sent with her.
‘No, you don’t,’ Sophie said.
‘Ma controls everything below Commercial Road and from Limehouse Dock to New Gravel Lane,’ Meg explained. ‘Including the lighthorse men who rob the ships and the heavyhorse ones who move the stolen goods up river. She also runs most of the brothels up Rosemary Lane. Keeps the girls hungry and charges them rent for their clothes and room.’
Josie stroked a stray lock of fair hair out of the little girl’s eyes then looked at Meg. ‘That’s what she was offering you, Meg, a chance to earn some money in one of her stews?’
Meg nodded.
‘Don’t you worry,’ Josie told her. ‘We’ll find you some work, won’t we, Miss Cooper?’
‘Of course we will,’ Sophie replied, although she looked less than certain.
‘It’s not just Ma who shoves her weight around,’ Meg said. ‘There’s those boys of hers, Harry and Charlie and the Boatman gang headed by that weasel, Ollie Mac. Between them they have a penny out of every till and cashbox.’
‘I’ve met Harry,’ replied Josie.
‘Charlie’s the devil himself,’ said Sophie with feeling. ‘It was he who attacked my father last year on his own doorstep because one of those poor girls sought refuge in our hostel. The police couldn’t prove anything because the witnesses were too afraid to come forward.’ She spread a generous portion of plum jam onto a slice of bread and gave it to the little girl.
‘What do you say, Polly?’ Meg asked her daughter.
‘Fank you, Miss,’ Polly answered, spraying crumbs.
The baby in Meg’s arms woke up and started to whimper. Josie poured some of the milk into the spoon and carefully dripped it into its mouth while Meg held her.
‘Do you know Patrick Nolan, Miss?’ Meg asked, looking shyly up at Josie.
‘We are old friends,’ Josie replied, hoping her voice sounded neutral
‘He’s the one who helped my Tommy, God rest him, get a job in the dock. He spoke up for him to the dock manger. He’s a good man is Patrick Nolan.’ Meg winked. ‘And he’s right handsome, too.’
To her dismay, Josie felt herself blushing.
‘But Ma hates him because he won’t take her pilfered stuff in his boat upstream. But it’s not just that what’s got her riled, it’s the fact that now, with Patrick leading them, lots of the men - especially the Irish who live around the Knockfergus stretch of Cable Street - are saying no to her and she don’t like it one little bit, I can tell you.’
Josie’s stomach fluttered.
‘But, Miss, you want to be careful,’ Meg said in a trembling voice. ‘She’s wild to get him and if you’re a friend of his you could be in danger, too.’
Chapter Seven
Patrick and Brian shuffled forward a few paces as the queue for the Tunnel tickets moved. It seemed that the whole of London had decided to follow them under the capital’s river that afternoon. Although it had been open a year, the novelty of crossing from one bank to the other beneath the Thames hadn’t lost its appeal. The north entrance down from Wapping High Street was packed with a variety of people, from smartly dressed men in heavy overcoats escorting elegant women in silk hats and furs to those, like themselves, who were more modestly attired. Brian ran his finger round the starched collar of his shirt and eased it away from his neck.
‘Bloody heat,’ he said, mopping his brow.
‘If you stood still, you great lummox, you wouldn’t look like a boiled swede,’ Patrick said, grinning at his flushed friend. ‘If you get any redder I won’t know where your hair stops and you begin.’
‘That’s easy for you to say,’ Brian replied. ‘You’re not being strangled by your own shirt.’
Patrick smiled. He, too, was hot in his cheap suit and starched shirt but had learnt in the tropics that remaining still helped to stay cool.
Brian nudged him. ‘Anyway, man, I thought we were going to the Garrick tonight not to this dog-and-pony show. I can’t think why Mattie wanted to come here to see a hole in the ground.’
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