All My Mother's Secrets Read online

  Carefully, she jammed her nails under the ridge and pulled upwards, gently, and a piece of wood lifted to reveal a secret compartment. There was a piece of paper in there, carefully folded. She knew she shouldn’t, but she picked it up and stuck it in the pocket of her cardigan. There was something else, bigger, thicker, like a piece of card, wrapped in brown paper. The corner was stuck at the bottom of the box, so she had to twist it a bit to get it out. She closed the box, put the brown paper parcel on the top and unwrapped it, as quietly as she could. The paper rustled, but Nanny didn’t stir.

  It was a photograph, an old one, of a gentleman with a jaunty moustache and his hair neatly parted. He was wearing a nice suit, by the looks of it, with a proper starched collar and a tie. He was smiling a slightly forced smile. It was the kind you made when someone told you to ‘watch the birdie!’ but the bottom half of the photo was missing and the card was burned, as if it had been caught in a flame.

  She turned it over. There, in the faintest pencil, was written, ‘To my darling Emma, love always, your Henry.’

  She would have recognized him anywhere; looking into his eyes was like looking into her own.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Annie.

  Time seemed to stand still. Hours passed with Annie just sitting in the rocking chair, poring over every detail of the picture of her father, Henry Austin. He had a carnation in his buttonhole and a handkerchief in his top pocket; there were wisps of hair along his hairline, just like hers, and his nose was rounded too. She wanted to reach into the photograph and touch him. She closed her eyes and imagined his voice. It would be kind and gentle, she was sure of that.

  Annie almost jumped out of her skin when she heard the front door creak open. There was no time to put the picture back in its hiding place, so she tucked it down the front of her liberty bodice and sat there, with the work-box on her knee.

  ‘Are you all right?’ said Aunt Clara, brushing some raindrops out of her hair. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost!’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Annie, who hated lying – she’d been brought up to be truthful. ‘I was just watching Nanny and I forgot the time.’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She woke up for a bit and said my name and told me she wanted me to have her sewing box . . .’ Aunt Clara’s eyes narrowed a little.

  ‘Annie, love, she’s already promised the sewing box to me, as her daughter,’ she said, brusquely. Aunt Clara walked over and took the workbox from Annie’s lap. ‘You mustn’t set too much store by what she says. She’s confused, that’s all.’ She put the workbox back in its rightful place. Annie was crestfallen and Aunt Clara’s face softened. She gave her a hug. ‘Come on, chin up, I wasn’t trying to upset you. You’d better get yourself off to work or the Missus’ll be after you.’

  Annie nodded. She darted upstairs and took the picture out from her liberty bodice, looking for a safe place to hide it. She took the folded paper from her cardigan pocket and shoved it between a couple of handkerchiefs in her drawer – the top one in the chest that she shared with George and the girls. She felt her heart thumping, nineteen to the dozen. She’d never had any secrets before, not like this, and the guilt of it was burning her up from the inside. Perhaps Nanny had promised the workbox to Aunt Clara and got confused, but she was certain that Nanny had been trying to give her the gift she’d longed for, something to remember her father by. With trembling hands, she tucked the picture inside her pillowslip and carefully placed Raggedy Annie, her doll, on the top, to guard it.

  In the sorting room at Hope Cottage, Vera was humming to herself as she folded some shirts and placed them in blue tissue paper, ready to go in the next hamper.

  She ran over to Annie as she came in and gave her a big hug.

  ‘How are you doing, chicken? Your mum told me all about it, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realize it was serious last night or I would have left the show and come with you,’ she gushed.

  ‘It’s all right, Vera, there’s nothing more to be done about it,’ said Annie, staring at the floor. ‘The doctor says it was a stroke and only time will tell.’ To her shame, she felt annoyed with Vera. It wasn’t fair to be angry with her, but she couldn’t quite get the memory of Ed putting his arm around her friend out of her mind.

  She picked up some freshly pressed sheets and put them in the bottom of the Felstones’ hamper. There was a real sense of achievement in seeing so many things ironed and smelling lovely and clean. Of all the places to be in the laundry, the packing room was the calmest – she needed that, today of all days.

  Vera sidled up to her: ‘The thing is, Annie, I wanted to ask you if you’d mind terribly about something and I know the timing ain’t great, with things being the way they are. It’s just, we’re mates, aren’t we? And I wanted to be straight with you . . .’

  The Missus stuck her head around the packing room door. ‘Vera, for the love of God, girl, will you stop chattering? Annie, you are wanted down in the wash house. Bessie needs help running some blankets through the mangle.’

  Vera opened her mouth to protest.

  ‘Don’t stand there catching flies, girl!’ shouted the Missus. ‘Get on with it. You’ll work more quickly on your own, in any case. This is not a gossip shop.’

  Annie had to wait until teatime to find out what was on Vera’s mind. Vera had to pick up some free powdered milk for her family from the Poor Law on the way home and so Annie agreed to go with her. They walked up Bollo Lane and along to the nursery on Bollo Bridge Road to collect it.

  ‘The thing is, Annie,’ said Vera, linking arms with her, ‘Ed has asked me out.’

  ‘Oh,’ was all Annie could manage.

  ‘I didn’t want to tread on your toes because I thought you two might be courting?’

  ‘No,’ said Annie, noticing how the cartwheels had worn ruts in the mud at the edge of the road. Her throat had gone terribly dry. ‘He hadn’t asked me properly or anything.’ She wanted to scream, ‘but he was going to, Vera, before you butted in’. Then she saw something in Vera’s eyes, a look she hadn’t ever seen in all the years they’d known each other at the laundry. Her friend’s face was glowing. It was happiness.

  ‘I haven’t said yes to going out because I was worried about hurting your feelings,’ said Vera. ‘He kissed me, Annie, after the varieties. I think he’s serious about me.’

  Annie squeezed her friend’s arm: ‘Oh, Vera! You mustn’t even think about me. Don’t be silly. I just like talking to him about the horse, that’s all. Me and Ed are just friends and you’d be daft not to go out with him. It sounds like he is mad keen.’ Inside, a new feeling was gnawing away at her. It was jealousy, she knew that, but she was determined not to stand in Vera’s way and spoil her big moment.

  Vera threw her arms around Annie. ‘He’s asked me to go to the Crown with him, you know, the one with the double seats on the back row.’

  Annie sighed inwardly but forced a smile: ‘Yes, it sounds wonderful, Vera, you must go of course, and it will be lovely.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Vera.

  ‘Yes,’ said Annie, ignoring the stab of disappointment that Vera would be walking out with Ed, in her place. ‘But there is something I need to ask you.’

  ‘Anything,’ said Vera, breezily. ‘Ask away!’

  ‘Well, you know when soldiers went off to the war, like your dad, did they always get a picture done, in their uniform?’

  ‘I think so,’ said Vera. ‘I mean, I know we’ve got one of Dad. Mum chucks it at him when they are arguing, mostly.’

  ‘It’s just I haven’t got one of my dad in his uniform, at least I don’t think there is one,’ said Annie. She didn’t want to give away too much about having found the picture of her father, but the more she thought about it, the fact that he wasn’t in his uniform was a bit strange.

  ‘Maybe it’s because your dad died and so your mum is too sad to put it up,’ said Vera. ‘But all the widows got one of those memorial medals – you know, the Dead Man’s Penny.’


  Annie looked puzzled.

  ‘They used to be made at a factory up the road, but it was bad luck to work there, at least that is what my mum told me. Doesn’t your mum have one of those?’ asked Vera.

  ‘No,’ said Annie, ‘but then again, even if she did, I don’t suppose Bill would want it on the mantelpiece, would he?’

  ‘He’s probably traded it in for a side of bacon,’ said Vera, making piggy noises, which set them both off laughing.

  They parted company at the end of Stirling Road and Annie wandered home to find her mum waiting for her on the doorstep. Annie knew by the look on her face that it was bad news.

  Her mother walked towards her, with arms outstretched, and Annie felt tears starting to spill down her cheeks.

  ‘Nanny just slipped away peacefully,’ said Mum. ‘She didn’t suffer. The doctor said it was better this way. The last words she spoke were to you this morning, Annie.’

  Annie’s heart leaped into her mouth.

  Her mother’s eyes searched her face. ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘Nothing really,’ said Annie, regaining her composure and drying her eyes. ‘She just called out my name and wanted to see her sewing box for one last time, so I brought it to her.’

  Mum nodded to herself, satisfied with her daughter’s answer.

  But Annie knew then that the photograph of her father that she had discovered in that sewing box and the lie she had just told her mother would change things between them forever.

  11

  May 1926

  ‘One Out, All Out!’

  The newspaper billboards up on Acton High Street were full of union workers’ slogans on the eve of the General Strike.

  As dawn broke on the morning of Tuesday 4 May, the railway line at the back of Annie’s house was eerily quiet.

  The women of Fletcher Road stood gossiping on their doorsteps, fuelling the air of anticipation, as Annie dashed up to the shops to buy some bread, before it all sold out. People were panic buying and there was even talk of food shortages.

  Hundreds of transport workers from Acton and Ealing were due to gather at Ealing Common later that day but, as her mother grumbled over the breakfast table this morning, life in the laundry would still have to go on.

  ‘It’s all very well for the factory workers and the dockers and the railwaymen to walk out, but someone’s got to do the washing,’ she huffed, as she browned a slice of bread on the toasting fork over the fire for Annie.

  ‘It all comes down to the miners – they’re controlling it,’ said Bill, grabbing the toast before Annie could get to it. ‘It’s all very well saying they don’t want a penny off their pay or a minute on their day, but they live up north. It isn’t like that down here. Who is speaking up for us?’

  ‘I think it’s just all the workers trying to stick up for each other,’ said Annie. ‘To speak with one voice.’

  ‘And who asked for your opinion?’ said Bill, scowling at her. ‘You’re beginning to sound like one of them Communists.’

  ‘I just overheard Ed and Jack talking about it at the laundry,’ she mumbled, wishing she hadn’t bothered speaking. Ed’s dad was among the union organizers and Jack’s dad was a copper, so they each saw the argument from a different side and it had been interesting to listen in to them discussing it. Months of rumblings about strikes because of the miners’ pay had come to a head and the whole country risked being crippled by it. There were fears of extremists stirring up trouble on one side and of the rich folk taking liberties with the poorest workers on the other.

  ‘Well, that’s men’s talk, Annie, and no point in you repeating it, now, is there?’ said Bill, with a laugh. ‘As if you’d understand it, anyway!’

  She stood there, as if she’d been slapped, feeling foolish for opening her mouth in the first place. Mum sighed to herself; she didn’t like any unpleasantness, and she didn’t want to get involved. It was all too much when she was worn down by life at the laundry.

  Ivy and Elsie skipped in and kissed Bill on the cheek. He offered them a bit of bread each: ‘Ah, a lovely kiss for your old dad! How are my princesses? Are you looking forward to school?’

  ‘Yes, Dad,’ they chorused.

  ‘And who is going to be the cleverest today?’ he said, pinching Ivy’s plump cheek. ‘Will you be top of the class in arithmetic?’

  She nodded.

  He turned to Elsie: ‘And what about you? Still top in spelling?’

  ‘Yes,’ she giggled.

  Both of her half-sisters were bright as buttons, it was true, and Miss Frobel, the headteacher, expected great things of them. She’d already had a word about them staying on at school until they were fifteen, to get the best chance of a clerical job afterwards. Annie felt proud of them both, they were so clever.

  Annie knew that her brother George was no dunce either, but Bill had refused to let him try for a scholarship for the grammar school last year. Bill had moaned that if he passed, they’d have to find extra for the school uniform. ‘He wouldn’t fit in with those privileged kids,’ Bill had said. ‘Fancy your son being the “scholarship boy”, with a load of toffs for mates, Em?’ So the idea was quietly dropped.

  Poor George just needed someone to take a bit more of an interest in him, to keep him out of trouble and away from the likes of Alf, Vera’s brother, who was a wild one. Mum doted on him but she was always so busy, she didn’t have time to keep an eye on what he was up to.

  Lately, Annie had tried to get him to come into the laundry after school, so she could watch him. The other day he’d spent ages helping the laundry hands get the boiler going, which was something. He seemed to like taking things apart and putting them back together again. Mum would always tell him, ‘Keep your greasy hands off my whites!’ but if he was pulling a bicycle to bits, at least he wasn’t getting up to no good with Alf.

  It was too late for Annie to have any breakfast now, so she set off. She passed some tram drivers on the way down Fletcher Road, with placards slung over their shoulders, heading up to Ealing Common for their rally. Women were busy donkey-stoning their front steps to make them gleam, strike or no strike.

  Annie laughed to herself at the thought of the laundry girls daring to walk out of Hope Cottage when they were forced to stay back an hour and scrub the floors, or clean the house for the Missus on a Saturday morning, or fetch her a pig’s head from the butchers. There were no unions to represent them – the Missus wouldn’t stand for it, for a start.

  By Wednesday, people were starting to get jumpy about the strike and Mum and the Missus went off to a special meeting of the Acton Ladies’ Laundry Association at lunchtime to listen to a BBC broadcast. Miss Toomey, who owned the power laundry in Packington Road, had a radiogram set. Men were not invited, much to Bill’s annoyance. ‘It’s just a women’s talking shop,’ he grumbled. ‘Load of tittle-tattle.’ But he knew that the association was more than that: it was a sign that women in Soapsud Island had a voice of their own because they had financial clout, and that rankled.

  Bill and the laundrymen were left to sip warm beer and pore over the only news they could get their hands on. There were two news-sheets printed but they were like gold dust. Jack, the delivery boy, managed to get one of each, the British Worker – that was by the trade unionists – and the British Gazette, the voice of the government. He appeared in the laundry yard, flushed with the effort of running from the High Street. Bill and Chas had set up their headquarters on an upturned washtub in the yard and Bessie made sure that the back door was open, so they could all hear the gossip.

  ‘There’s a tram been pushed over,’ gasped Jack. ‘It was driven by a blackleg, some posh boy from Cambridge University, and he ran into a load of striking drivers from Ealing who gave him what for. I wanted to stop them but I was worried I’d get beaten to a pulp.’

  Bill reached out to take the news-sheets, but Jack clutched them tighter: ‘I had to hand over a thruppenny bit for each of ’em, instead of a penny. So, that’s sixpence you owe
me.’

  ‘Pull the other one! That’s profiteering, Jack, plain and simple,’ said Chas, slapping him on the back. ‘No wonder the country is on strike if that is what the world is coming to.’

  Bill pulled out a sixpence and ruffled Jack’s hair. ‘It says here they need special constables, Jack. Your old man’s a cozzer – why don’t you volunteer and then you can go about cracking some heads with your truncheon?’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Jack. ‘I’m going to do just that.’ And he turned tail and left the laundry.

  Ed sauntered in, to add his tuppenceworth: ‘You wouldn’t catch me backing either side. It’s the reds on one side and a bunch of toffs on the other. Look after number one, that is my motto. My dad said there’s blokes in Eton ties acting as porters down at Paddington Station and the funniest thing is watching them trying to drive the trains. There’s no need for anyone to set about them. They can’t bleeding well get them going in the first place.’

  Bill and Chas guffawed.

  The Missus and Mum walked into the yard.

  ‘Oh, evening ladies,’ said Bill, tapping his watch and making a little tutting noise.

  ‘Mind your language, William Pett,’ said the Missus. ‘We have just been fully informed by Her Majesty’s Government that all the trains are running as normal and there is no need to worry about your tea because they’ve got plenty of supplies of that, so you’ll be all right. I have to say I didn’t believe a word of it. Now, get back to work.’

  She turned to Ed: ‘Don’t stand there idling, you’d better go and get the dirty linen in from Notting Hill. Where’s that good-for-nothing Jack?’

  Bill and Chas exchanged glances.

  ‘He’s gone to volunteer as a special constable,’ said Bill, matter-of-factly. ‘Felt it was his patriotic duty.’

  The Missus threw her hands up. ‘That is all we need!’

  ‘Annie!’ she yelled, in the direction of the wash house.