The Dollmaker's Daughters (11 page)

‘To give back to them, of course.’

‘And why would he steal it in the first place if he intended to give it back?’

‘It’s a long story, Rose.’ Ruby bit her lip, not wanting to tell Rosetta the whole truth.

‘You must have made up some story to make him do that, but I tell you you’re wasting your time. It’s me he’s interested in, not you,’ Rosetta said, with a sulky shrug of her shoulders, and
then her face brightened. ‘You’re still wearing my shawl. I’ll bet he mistook you for me.’

Taking off the shawl, Ruby tossed it at Rosetta. ‘Here, take your old shawl, but steer clear of Jonas. He’s no good, Rose.’

‘You’re just jealous,’ Rosetta said, clutching the shawl. ‘Go away and leave me alone.’

‘Stop this, both of you,’ Lottie said, heaving herself to her feet. ‘Give it back, Rose. You can’t send her out in this weather without a shawl.’

‘I’ll fetch your rotten old shawl, but you keep away from Jonas. He’s mine! I saw him first.’ Rosetta ran from the room and her footsteps echoed on the bare boards as she raced up to her attic room.

‘Better go, cara,’ Lottie said, sinking back into her chair and reaching for the gin bottle. ‘She’ll get over it.’

Ruby made her way slowly downstairs. Facing the cold without a shawl was preferable to listening to Rosetta’s hysterical ranting. Once Rose got an idea into her head, it was almost impossible to shift it. Mum always said you’d have to stick her neck on the block on Tower Green and chop her head off to change anything once Rosetta had made up her mind. As she rounded the bend in the staircase, Ruby could hear voices in the hall below. Leaning over the banisters, she saw Sly and Billy standing in the hall, chatting.

Billy looked up and saw her. ‘Rosetta?’ Then, as she came nearer, he grinned apologetically. ‘No, it’s Ruby, ain’t it?’

‘That’s right, it’s me.’

‘Is your rich feller taking you home then, Ruby?’ Sly asked, winking and tapping the side of his nose.

Before Ruby could answer, Rosetta came flying down the stairs clutching the old grey shawl. She came to a halt when she saw Billy. ‘Oh, it’s you, Noakes.’

Billy dragged his cap off. ‘You ain’t forgotten that you promised to step out with me today, Rosetta?’

Rosetta tossed the shawl at Ruby. ‘Here, this is your one. Ta for the loan but I don’t need it now, as you can see.’ Placing her hands on her hips, Rosetta twirled around to show off her new dress.

‘You look good enough to eat,’ Billy said, licking his lips.

Rosetta frowned at him, pouting. ‘Don’t be vulgar. And I ain’t in the mood to walk out with you. Anyway, it’s freezing cold and I got to look after me voice. I got a solo in the second half tomorrow.’

Sly winked at Ruby. ‘I got work to do,’ he said, heading for the back stairs. ‘Bye, Ruby.’

‘I’d best be off too.’ Ruby wrapped her shawl around her shoulders, suppressing a shudder as
the matted wool scratched through the thin cotton of her blouse.

Billy pulled his cap on. ‘So you don’t want to come with me then, Rosetta?’

‘I said so, didn’t I?’ Rosetta turned on her heel and started back up the stairs.

‘In that case,’ Billy said loudly, aiming his words at Rosetta, ‘I’m going Whitechapel way, Ruby. Course I can’t compete with a flash motor car, but if you ain’t too grand to accept a ride on me cart, you’re welcome.’

Rosetta stopped, turning her head to give Billy a searing glance. ‘See if I care, Billy Noakes.’

‘Ta, Billy, I wouldn’t say no.’ Following him out into the street, Ruby accepted a hand up onto the cart.

Billy threw the horse blanket over her knees and leapt into the driver’s seat, flicking the reins. ‘Straight home then, Ruby?’

Ruby thought quickly; she could hardly take a bag full of money into the house without Mum demanding to know everything. The first person that came to mind was Big Biddy. ‘I got to take something to Rope Yard. Any chance you might be going that way?’

‘Right ho,’ Billy said cheerfully. ‘Rope Yard it is and no questions asked, but it ain’t the sort of place a young lady like you ought to go on her own.’

Rope Yard was, as Billy had said, a deprived area, so poverty-stricken and rough that it made Spivey Street look almost respectable. Tucking the horsewhip in his belt, Billy left his cart in Cable Street, giving a boy a halfpenny to mind the horse for ten minutes, with the promise of another when they returned. Ruby was glad to have a big fellow like Billy at her side as they walked through Rope Alley, a narrow passage between warehouses that opened into the twilight world of Rope Yard. The tenements were near derelict, one of the last remaining rookeries that had scarred the East End for a century or more, where the dregs of society huddled, sometimes twenty or more to a room, living more like sewer rats than human beings.

‘Gawd, what a hellhole.’ Billy linked his arm through Ruby’s. ‘Are you sure this is the right place, Ruby?’

Ruby nodded, unable to speak as the stench of raw sewage and rotting rubbish made her want to retch.

Barefoot children, with stick-like arms and legs poking out of their tattered clothes, hung about the doorways, staring at them like feral cats, ready to scratch and spit or to snatch a purse, a fob watch or anything that had the smallest street value.

‘Here, you!’ Billy beckoned to a girl who could not have been more than six or seven but was
carrying a baby in her arms and had a toddler clinging to her ragged skirt. ‘Come here.’ Billy held up a penny.

The girl sidled over to them, her gaze fixed on the coin.

Ruby shuddered at the sight of the weeping sores that scarred the otherwise pretty face. This was poverty and neglect at its ugliest and her heart contracted with pity as well as anger at a society that could let the innocent suffer in this way. Billy squeezed her arm and Ruby’s anger turned to fear as she saw the boys, grouped into a hunting pack, edging towards them. ‘For Gawd’s sake tell them who you’re looking for,’ Billy urged, snatching the horsewhip from his belt and wielding it over his head. The boys backed away, snarling, predatory and yet afraid.

‘Big Biddy,’ Ruby said, smiling at the girl, who stared back without a flicker of expression. ‘Where can I find her?’

‘Top floor.’ The girl snatched the penny and ran into the building with amazing speed considering she was hefting a baby and dragging the smaller child by the hand. Some of the boys went to follow her but Billy cracked the whip and they slunk off into the shadows.

The interior of the tenement was even worse than the exterior. The air was foul and the bare floorboards were littered with rubbish, excrement from both humans and animals, and
running with cockroaches. As they climbed the stairs Ruby could hear the scrabbling of rats and mice behind the skirting boards. The building echoed with the sound of wailing babies and adults shouting at each other in a confusion of different languages. It was, Ruby thought, hell on earth and something should be done about it.

They found Big Biddy’s rooms on the top floor. When she got over her surprise at seeing Ruby, Biddy invited them in, apologising all the while for the state of the place. Shaken by what she had just seen, Ruby was deeply touched to see how much effort Biddy had put into making the room habitable. Although the floorboards were bare of any covering, not even a rag rug or a piece of drugget, they had been scrubbed bone white. The only furniture was a table and two chairs that had been roughly hammered together using old timber and orange crates and, in one corner, stood an iron bedstead where a man lay on a palliasse covered with one, thin blanket. Even though the temperature outside was close to freezing, there was no fire or evidence that there had been one for many days.

‘Biddy!’ A feeble voice called out from the bed.

‘It’s me husband, Mickey,’ Biddy whispered. ‘He’s been bedridden since the accident.’ She hurried over to him and held his hand. ‘We got visitors, love. It’s Ruby from work, and a gentleman friend, no need to get upset.’

‘Perhaps we should leave,’ Ruby said, casting an anxious glance at Billy.

Biddy tucked Mickey in with the tenderness she might have shown to a small child and dropped a kiss on his forehead. ‘He’ll be all right now.’ She turned to Ruby with a tired smile. ‘Don’t go. It is nice of you to come visiting, Ruby. But where’s me manners? Sit down both of you. Anyway, it makes my Mickey nervous to see people hovering.’

Billy went to sit down but the chair creaked so loudly beneath his weight that he jumped up again and moved to stand by the door.

Ruby perched cautiously on the edge of the chair. ‘What’s wrong with him?’

Biddy shook her head, sighing. ‘Got crushed by falling barrels when he was working the docks. Can’t move a muscle now; can’t never work again neither. I’d like to do the same to them villains what stole our wages. I got six nippers to feed as well as taking care of Mickey. We’ve been reduced to begging from the Sally Army soup kitchen these past few days.’

Ruby brought the pouch from beneath her shawl. ‘I got good news for you this time.’

Biddy’s eyes widened in astonishment. ‘Well I never! How did you come by that?’

‘Mr Crowe had a whip-round in his club and they come up with the money. Now we got to get it back to the women at Bronski’s. I can’t take it
home and I was wondering if I could leave it with you?’

‘I wouldn’t dare carry this much money about on me person,’ Biddy said, shaking her head. ‘Not that I ain’t grateful for it, but as you can see, Ruby, we’re in a poor way, what with one thing and another.’

‘Ruby can’t do it neither,’ Billy said from the doorway. ‘Them kids down below would tear her to shreds for a farthing.’

‘Ta, Billy, but I can speak for myself. I would do it, Biddy, but I dunno where the rest of them lives.’

Mickey called out something that Ruby could not understand, but Biddy did and she threw him a grateful smile. ‘Ta, love. You always comes up with good sense. Mickey says let our three eldest lads do it. They can slip out of the yard and no one would take a blind bit of notice.’

Ruby was not convinced. ‘But won’t they get beat up by the other kids?’

Biddy swelled with pride. ‘Not my lads! They can stand up for theirselves. Leave it with me, Ruby, and bless you for getting the money back.’

Once outside the building, Ruby clutched Billy’s arm, hanging on to him for dear life until they reached Cable Street. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw his horse and cart waiting where they had left it, with the skinny little boy
hunched up under the horse blanket on the driver’s seat. Billy pressed a couple of coins into his hand and the child raced off, his legs going like the pistons in a steam engine.

‘You all right, Ruby?’ Billy asked, his face full of concern as he helped her up onto the cart. ‘You look a bit pale.’

‘I never knew people had to live like that,’ Ruby said, shivering and shaking her head. ‘We been through hard times and that’s a fact, but we never starved.’

Climbing up beside her Billy picked up the reins. ‘At least you done them a good turn and they’ll all have full bellies tonight. You can’t do no more, girl.’

Ruby said nothing as the cart moved off along Cable Street. Huddled beneath the horse blanket, she was deep in her own thoughts when they turned into Spivey Street and encountered a scene that was like arriving at the gates of hell. Smoke and flames were pouring out of the baker’s shop on the corner. Men had already formed a chain with buckets of water from the pump, and women and children were running up and down the street screaming and shouting for help. A man staggered out of the burning building, his face blackened and his clothes badly singed, exposing the scorched flesh on his chest and forearms.

Shoving the reins in Ruby’s hands Billy leapt
off the cart and grabbed the man by the shoulders. ‘Is anyone left inside?’

The man’s dazed look turned into one of anguish. ‘Me wife and child. Oh, God, I got to get back in there.’

Hearing screams from an upper window, Ruby looked up and saw a woman and child hanging out, their faces contorted in terror. She leapt off the cart and grabbed Billy by the arm. ‘Billy, look up there.’

‘Take care of him.’ Leaving Ruby to cope with the injured man, Billy raced across the road and charged into the building. Bits of masonry and burning wood were hailing down on the street below and thick, acrid smoke belched out of the broken windows, making it difficult to breathe.

‘Billy, be careful,’ Ruby screamed, but her voice was lost in the general noise and confusion.

‘It’s me wife and Lizzie.’ The man pointed a shaking finger up at the window. ‘I got to get them out.’ He made a move to follow Billy, but he stumbled, doubling up and clutching his chest. His face paled, beads of perspiration stood out on his forehead and his eyes bulged from his head as he gasped for breath. Half dragging, half pulling him, Ruby managed to get him onto the cart. She loosened the necktie round his throat and undid the top buttons of his shirt; all the while she kept glancing up at the first floor
window and the desperate woman and child screaming for help.

She tried to comfort the man but he seemed to be losing consciousness. A crowd had gathered in the street and there was a sudden roar of approval. Looking up, Ruby saw Billy pull the woman from the window and, lifting the child beneath one arm, he dragged them back into the billowing smoke. More men had appeared on the scene and a couple of them, with their jackets over their heads, charged into the burning bakery. Seconds later they emerged, sooty as chimney sweeps, coughing and gasping for air as they helped Billy with the unconscious woman and child. A loud cheer went up, echoing down Spivey Street, and the clanging of a bell made everyone scatter as the fire engine arrived.

They laid the woman in the cart beside her husband and child.

‘You done well, mate,’ one man said, slapping Billy on the shoulder.

‘The bloke looks like a goner,’ the other said, shaking his head.

‘We’ll get them to the hospital.’ Ruby glanced anxiously at Billy, who was struggling to get his breath. ‘Are you all right, Billy?’

Billy nodded, but it was obvious to Ruby that his hands and arms were badly burned and he was in no condition to drive the cart.