Jam and Roses (7 page)

Sid breathed in deeply. ‘Mmm, smell that, Milly, just in time for dinner!’

Excited children came running across the field as soon as the lorry came into view. Mothers left the cooking fires and ran with babies in their arms. This was the highlight of their week – the men were sure to have brought treats. Milly was the last to jump off the lorry, pulling her box down after her.

‘Bloody deserter! You left me driving all on me own!’ Pat joked, jumping down from the cab.

‘Sorry, Pat, they just wouldn’t let me off!’

‘Well, I don’t know what your mother’ll say about you turning up blind drunk!’

She shrugged. ‘You never seemed bothered before whether I got drunk or not. Anyway, I’m not tipsy!’

Eager to be away, she scanned the field for her mother and sisters. She was looking forward to surprising them. About two dozen hop huts were ranged in long lines round the edge of the field. Built of wood, they were topped with corrugated-iron roofs and looked little more than stable blocks, with only a door for light and ventilation. She wandered along the row of huts, dodging round cooking fires, greeting women she knew. Finally, at the very end, she saw her mother sitting on a wooden chair, stirring the hopping pot. Elsie sat with Amy on the grass; both held huge hunks of bread and balanced tin plates on their knees. Milly tried to creep up unnoticed, but Amy had spotted her, and she saw her sister’s face fall.

‘Oh no, what’s she doing here? Now we’ll have to squash up in the bed!’

Milly was anxious not to begin on a bad note, so said nothing. She dropped her box and dashed up behind her mother before she could turn round. Putting both hands over Mrs Colman’s eyes, Milly whispered, ‘Guess who?’

‘Oh Gawd,
Jesus
, Mary and Joseph, you frightened the life out of me!’ Her mother twisted round with a delighted smile on her face. She cupped Milly’s face with her black, hop-stained fingers and kissed her noisily. ‘How did you get here?’

Elsie hadn’t said a word; she was looking at Milly without a trace of surprise.

‘I had a dream about you last night,’ she said solemnly. ‘I knew you’d be coming.’

‘Well, you’re just an old Polly Witch!’ Milly blurted out her normal response to Elsie’s flashes of intuition and had to duck quickly as Elsie spun her tin plate through the air, narrowly missing Milly’s head.

‘Sod me if you’ve not started already!’ Mrs Colman snatched the plate from the ground and Milly glared at Elsie, but was determined not to let her sisters ruin her arrival. She dug into the cardboard box, drawing out a paper bag of humbugs and another of cough candies. Her sisters accepted the peace offerings with bemused looks on their faces. Milly had learned during the past weeks with her father that there was more than one way to win a fight, and as she thought again of her musings on the journey down, she realized that once, long ago, her sisters had not been her enemies. The war between them had crept in, insidiously, with the cold and dark, the day her father had turned into ‘the old man’.

Her mother’s face relaxed as she saw Milly making an effort to be friends.

‘I’ll just go and put my things in the hut,’ Milly said, ‘then I’ll tell you all about it!’

Ducking into the dark interior, the familiar smell of damp earth and sweet straw mattresses hit her. As always her mother had made their hut a home from home. The roll of wallpaper had been pinned over bare wooden walls, lino rolled out on the earth floor and, on a deep wooden platform at the back where they would all sleep together, the straw-ticking mattresses had been laid out, neatly covered with blankets. Milly stowed the box in the only spare corner and sat on the bed platform. Patting the springy straw-filled ticking, she sighed and lay back. Tonight would be spent at the village pub and tomorrow feeding the men at a great communal Sunday roast. She would have to wait till Monday for what she really longed for: to be among the wide hop fields, with blue sky breaking through green tunnels of bines, her nose assaulted by a thousand citrus explosions as she crushed papery hop flowers between her fingers.

September 1923

On Sunday morning Milly poked her head out of the warm nest of bodies curled up, top to tail, on the straw mattresses at the back of the hut. The others were still sleeping. Amy’s small, grimy foot prodded her in the face as Milly pulled herself up gently. The wooden hut was freezing cold and damp from the morning mist, which seeped through every crack in the ill-fitting weather boards. She tucked the blanket firmly around Amy’s legs and, wriggling to the edge of the sleeping shelf, slid off, trying not to wake the others. Slipping on her coat, she shoved her feet into her shoes and eased open the hut door. A mist-wreathed world of grey-green and pearl greeted her. Through the mist came the sounds of other hoppers already stirring, the splashing of water as buckets were filled from the standpipe, and the subdued murmurs of the early risers collecting faggots for fires. Sharp woodsmoke began to fill the air, and the crackle of kindling catching fire shot through the muffled sounds of their voices. She went to fetch a bundle of faggots from a nearby pile the farmer had provided. Carefully arranging the twigs, she made up their own fire and put the kettle on to boil. Once a good blaze had started and the kettle was billowing steam, she called her mother and sisters, who emerged from the hut, groggy and grateful for the hot strong tea and slices of bread and jam she offered them. These early morning hopping rituals were something she’d always loved, and in spite of the chilly start and the spartan hut, there was deep comfort in waking to the sounds of other pickers and the smells from dew-damp earth and dripping trees, all seasoned with woodsmoke.

‘Hurry up and get ready, you two,’ she urged her sisters after breakfast. They both looked as if they hadn’t washed all week. ‘I’m not walking up to the green with you looking like scruff bags.’

Her mother always seemed more lenient with them when they were hop-picking. Her sisters were allowed to roam wild over the countryside all day, with the other youngsters in the camp, so long as they first picked a bushel or two of hops. But today there would be no picking. As more and more hoppers gathered round the fires there was already an air of gaiety pervading the huts. People were dressing up in their Sunday best, ready for a walk up to the village green, where Bermondsey traders would be setting up their stalls. They followed their customers to the hop fields each year, and the pickers were grateful. Signs on many village shops warned
No hoppers!
And even those who did serve ‘the foreigners’ from London kept a suspicious eye on them. For however much their labour was valued, often, their presence was not.

The family took it in turns to wash in a bucket of cold water that Milly had already filled. But Amy’s brief dip in the bucket with one hand didn’t go unnoticed by Mrs Colman, who yanked her back as she tried to escape.

‘Get here, you soap dodger. Nine years old and still can’t give yourself a proper wash. Look at the tidemark round your neck! It’s not had a drop of water on it.’ After giving Amy’s neck a vigorous scrubbing, she passed her over to Milly.

‘Here, let me do your hair.’ Milly reached for Amy, who ducked out of her grasp.

‘I can do it meself!’

Milly caught her, marching her to the mirror.

‘Look at this, it looks like that straw mattress we slept on!’ And ignoring Amy’s complaints, Milly began teasing out her sister’s tangles. As she squirmed, Milly tapped her head with the brush. ‘Stand still and be made respectable, you little scarecrow!’

She’d forgotten this side of hopping, the fractiousness of Amy and the dreaminess of Elsie, who was still mooning about outside, gathering wildflowers into a posy to brighten the hut. Their annoying traits intensified once they were freed from their everyday lives. They all seemed to become more vivid versions of themselves, and that was not always comfortable, especially when living together in a tiny hut.

Once she was satisfied that her sisters looked respectable, she got ready herself, putting on her second-best dress, a pale green shift with long sleeves. In the tiny mirror tacked to the hut door, she made the best of her dark wavy hair and put on a straw cloche hat. She slipped on her shoes and they strolled over to the gate. There had been little rain this season and the grass, though wet with dew, wasn’t muddy. From every hut, families emerged, until the whole field of hoppers formed a straggling procession down the lane between the high hedgerows. Amy and Elsie ran ahead with the other children, while Milly ambled with her mother and neighbours, past oast houses and farm buildings. The mist had burned off to a bright morning, washing the wide village green in a golden warmth. Stalls decked with bunting made the green look like a fairground as groups of hop-pickers wandered from stall to stall, beginning to haggle with familiar tradesmen just as if they were back in Bermondsey.

Milly linked arms with her mother. The night before, after the usual walk home from the pub in pitch dark, followed by a sing-song round the camp fire, her mother had taken her aside and made her explain exactly how she’d managed to persuade the old man to let her come. Mrs Colman hadn’t commented much, merely nodded and sometimes sighed. But today she resumed the conversation.

‘Milly, love, are you sure you should stay for the week? He only said yes ’cause you pushed him. But you know how he stews, there’ll be hell to pay when you get back. Why don’t you go home with Pat on the lorry today, eh?’

‘No, Mum! I’m not creeping back. I’m not scared of him.’

Her mother’s face creased into lines of worry and she drew Milly in closer.

‘No, darlin’, but I am.’

‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t hurt you, Mum.’

Her mother gave her a sad smile and shook her head. ‘Brave words, love, brave words.’ There was a melancholy resignation in her tone that seemed to surface when she was down here. At home, Mrs Colman held herself taut, ready for a blow, ready to stand between the old man and one of her children. But once away from him, she seemed to allow herself the luxury of regret and Milly’s instinct was to resist it. But she hated to be at odds with her mother; instead she preferred to brighten her mood with a distraction, and she pointed across the field.

‘Look, there’s Hughes’ stall, let’s see if he’s got any paraffin oil for the lamp, that hut’s black as Newgate’s knocker at night.’

‘Mrs Colman, Milly!’ It was Hughes’ nephew Bertie, manning the stall. He gave them a friendly smile as they walked over to look at the oil cans. ‘Nice to see some familiar faces. You and half of Dockhead seem to be down here.’

‘Nice to have a friendly face serving us too,’ her mother said warmly. ‘Some of the shops down here only let us in one at a time, in case we ’alf-inch the stuff! Snooty buggers, as if our money’s not good enough.’

Milly thought that Bertie looked a little uncomfortable at that; perhaps he was thinking about his uncle’s not dissimilar treatment of Dockhead customers.

‘Your uncle not down?’ she asked Bertie.

‘No, he’s handed over the Dockhead shop to me. You won’t be seeing so much of him.’

‘Good... I mean, that’s good... for you!’ she stuttered, covering her blushes by pretending to inspect the tinned goods piled up on the stall. When she looked up, he’d raised one of those winged eyebrows and a smile was playing on his lips. She thought he’d got her meaning exactly.

They quickly bought their oil and moved on to the old clothes stall, where Mrs Colman found a replacement for Amy’s everyday dress. Amy had ripped it to shreds on some barbed wire the previous week.

‘That child’s getting like a little savage down here,’ she confided to Milly. ‘Still, the fresh air’s good for her, and at least she can let off steam without upsetting everyone the way she does at home.’

Milly privately thought Amy capable of upsetting everyone
whatever
her surroundings. She was the most wilful child she’d ever met. ‘Yeah, shame she can’t stay here.’

‘Milly! Don’t talk like that about your sister, one day you might be glad you’ve got her... and Elsie.’ Her mother nodded sagely as if she knew something Milly didn’t.

‘Sorry, Mum, but I reckon that day’ll be a long time coming.’

Seeing her mother’s hurt expression, Milly softened. ‘I am
trying
to be friends, Mum, but I wish you’d talk to them. They provoke me on purpose, you know!’

‘Mary, Mother of God, give me strength,’ Mrs Colman said, raising her eyes to heaven. ‘And another thing I was thinking,’ she went off at a tangent, barely pausing for breath, ‘I heard from Sid you was on the back of that lorry on the way down, knocking ’em back like a good ’un.’

‘It was only a bit of fun, we had a good old sing-song and I never got drunk at all!’

‘Don’t make no difference! Now you’re getting older, Milly, you’ve got to be careful. You can’t be drinking with men on your own, specially not on the back of a bleedin’ lorry... you’ll get a bad reputation, love, d’you know what I mean?’

Milly knew what she meant. But the accepted rules of behaviour of her mother’s generation sometimes mystified her. To be seen drinking with men was one of the things that set the women talking, but a group of women her mother’s age, sitting in the corner of the snug, singing the old songs and getting slowly sozzled, was perfectly acceptable.

‘And don’t let that Pat get too familiar either.’

Milly was startled, wanting nothing more than to wriggle out of her mother’s grasp. ‘Why not, he’s a nice feller, I thought you liked him.’ She blushed.

‘Nice enough as a friend of your brother’s, but he’s had a girl in the family way before now, and I don’t want you bringing no trouble home to my door!’

Her mother had never given her such a pointed warning before and as well as feeling deeply embarrassed, Milly resented the tone, which made her feel guilty without knowing why.

‘Mum! He offered me a lift in the lorry – he was being kind, that’s all!’

Her mother tucked in her chin and pursed her lips in such a way that Milly blushed to the roots of her hair. ‘I’m just warning you, that’s all,’ her mother went on. ‘Once the boys get down here, they think all the girls are easy, that’s why you get so many babies born in June – we don’t want no hopping babies! So if he asks you to walk up the field with him, you just say no!’