Keeping My Sister's Secrets Read online

  Despite the efforts of the police to disperse everyone, the crowd kept growing until there were hundreds of people surrounding the Blackshirts, beating them back, booing and shouting. Chamber pots were slung out of open windows onto them, doorknobs and even billiard balls were lobbed into the fray and, in the middle of it all, Eva spotted her sister Peggy, screeching, ‘They shall not pass!’ at the top of her lungs, linking arms with some old bloke on one side and George Harwood on the other, as she kicked out at a passing policeman.

  In that moment, Eva could have almost died of pride: her big sister Peggy, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, was breaking the law and fighting for what she believed in. Eva ran to her, waving her arms. ‘Peggy! Peggy!’

  ‘Eva! What on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I was trying to have a quiet drink with Gladys but fat chance of that with you Communists about,’ she said. ‘I need to say sorry, I was wrong about you grassing me up. I know you never did.’

  Their conversation was short lived because while George was busy punching a Blackshirt right in the kisser, they found themselves grappled away by two policemen. ‘Move along, now, come on! This is no place for a lady.’

  Eva looked at her sister and laughed as they were shoved down Long Lane. ‘We certainly ain’t ladies, are we, Peg?’

  Peggy and George came over to Mum’s flat in Walworth Road the next day, to show that there was no bad blood between them.

  ‘It makes me so happy to have you two speaking to each other again,’ said Mum, putting the kettle on the little gas cooker to make some tea.

  Kathleen was moping about by the wireless in the front room. Eventually, Eva tired of it. ‘Come on, spit it out, what’s up?’

  ‘It’s Albert,’ she whispered, so that Mum wouldn’t overhear.

  ‘What’s he done now?’ said Eva.

  ‘It’s not bad, Eve, quite the opposite. He wants to marry me.’

  ‘Oh my Gawd!’ said Eva. ‘And what have you told him?’

  ‘I have said yes, of course I will, but the only trouble is Dad . . .’

  ‘You haven’t told him, have you?’ said Eva, who had visions of her father chasing Albert down Howley Terrace with a poker.

  ‘I have, and he hasn’t spoken to me for days,’ Kathleen replied. ‘You know I can’t get married without his permission. If Albert goes round there it will end in a fight but I don’t want to lose him, Eva, because half the girls at work fancy him and if I don’t say yes, then someone else will, I’m sure.’

  Eva thought about it for a minute. Kathleen was would soon be seventeen but she would have to wait until she was twenty-one before she could marry without their father’s permission. ‘You don’t think he will wait for you until you can do it without our dad’s say-so?’ said Eva. Kathleen shook her head miserably.

  ‘Well, I can’t bear seeing you like this, Kath. Leave it with me,’ Eva said. She pulled on her coat and caught the bus towards Waterloo Station. She wasn’t really sure what she was going to do when she got there, but she found herself walking down Howley Terrace and opening the front door to number 6.

  ‘Is that you, Jim?’ came her father’s voice, from the scullery.

  She walked in. ‘No, it’s me.’

  He was sitting at the table, polishing his boots on an old newspaper, his shirtsleeves rolled up.

  ‘Well, look what the cat has dragged in,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve come about Kathleen,’ said Eva, wandering across to the range, where a pan of potatoes was peeled and ready to cook.

  ‘Well, you have got a nerve coming round here, I’ll give you that,’ he said. ‘She ain’t getting married and that’s that.’ He started whistling to himself and went back to polishing his boots. ‘Now, unless you have come to cook my tea, you’d better be off.’

  Eva picked up the pan and walked over to her father, smiling. She slowly poured the water, potatoes and all, on top of his head. ‘That’s to pay you back for the gravy you landed on me,’ she said as he spluttered. ‘I’m sick to death of your bullying ways. We all are! It’s Kathleen’s life. You have had yours; now you should let her get on with hers.’

  Dad wiped the water from his face and pushed the potatoes from his lap. He looked at her for a second. ‘I hear you are keeping some pretty tough company these days, with those Forty Thieves, Eva. I saw Joe yesterday—’

  ‘That was nothing to do with me!’ Eva spat. ‘I would never want Joe hurt.’

  Eva knew her dad was only a small old man nowadays, sitting there at the kitchen table, but there was something in his eyes which still made Eva scared as hell of him, though she tried not to show it.

  ‘I tell you what,’ he said, after a long pause. ‘I will make you a deal. You get yourself a proper job and when Kathleen is nineteen, she can get married.’

  ‘That’s two years away!’ said Eva.

  ‘If Albert really loves her, he can wait that long. I’ll tell him myself. They’re too young, Eva. People can make mistakes . . .’

  ‘You are a fine one to talk,’ she cut in.

  ‘Don’t try my patience, Eve,’ he said. ‘I’ve been reasonable. Get yourself a decent job, show me your cards and your pay packet and I will keep my word on Kathleen.’

  Eva had no intention of staying too long in the world of work, it was a mug’s game as far as she was concerned. But a promise was a promise, and she wanted to help her sister, and so that’s how she found herself working in a textile factory down in Southwark. She’d explained it to Alice Diamond, who had agreed she could stop hoisting for a few weeks, just until her father was convinced she was going straight. There was one condition: Eva had to work out a few fiddles on the factory floor while she was there.

  It didn’t take her long to suss out that her shoplifter’s drawers would come in handy. When the foreman’s back was turned, she managed to shove a whole bolt of material down her knicker leg and make her way to the ladies’ loos. Once there, she stripped off and wound the material round and round herself, until she was wrapped up like a mummy. At the end of her shift, she waddled out of the factory, praying that the material wouldn’t slip down and give the game away.

  She kept that up for a month, which was long enough for the factory boss to notice that quantities of material were going missing. By then, the whole of Scovell Road had matching curtains and Alice Diamond was very pleased with her haul. Her father had seen enough of her weekly pay packets to believe that she was going straight and Kathleen got engaged to Albert.

  The week after that, Eva was laid off. She’d never been happier to lose a job in her life.

  20

  Peggy, January 1938

  As the clock on the mantelpiece struck midnight, Peggy and George gave each other a peck on the cheek, while Kathleen bashed out ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on the piano in the front room. Peggy had done her best to bring some Christmas cheer into the little house in Howley Terrace, with some paper chains around the door and pinned up along the picture rail, but a few brightly coloured decorations were no match for her father’s black mood.

  Dad had heard about Mum’s new boyfriend on Boxing Day and had been seething ever since. He had refused to go down to the pub with most of the other folk since then, fearing that people were talking about him behind his back. Their neighbour, Mrs Avens, had stuck most of the evening out, bringing round a bottle of sherry, and playing cards with Jim, Albert and Kathleen, but even she had retreated before the New Year arrived.

  Kathleen and Albert made their way to the front door and opened it. Peggy and George followed, shouting, ‘Happy New Year!’ They were greeted by whoops and cheers from other houses in the street, where people also came to their doorways and raised glasses to each other.

  Peggy hugged George tightly in the cold night air. She had such a good feeling about 1938. For a start, she would be twenty-one this year and she and George had already secretly planned to get married once she was of age.

  With her father safely ensconced in his favourite armchair, they seize
d the chance to have a proper kiss without him seeing. ‘I can’t wait to be Mrs Harwood,’ she whispered.

  He nuzzled her neck and whispered back, ‘Me too.’ She hadn’t told Kathleen about her plans – she knew her sister was desperate to marry Albert but had to wait until the end of next year before Dad would allow it. Peggy couldn’t tell Kathleen but she had a lot of sympathy with their dad’s view; Albert and Kathleen were still very young and she didn’t like the way that Albert seemed to have her sister under the thumb. It was as if a little spark in her went out when she was with him. The fact that she was planning to marry George was something she longed to share with her, but telling her would probably only make matters worse. Poor Kathleen seemed to have enough on her plate dealing with Albert’s moods as it was.

  Peggy looked up at the stars and made a wish. It wasn’t for herself – she had so much to be thankful for – but for her old friend Susan. She hadn’t been up to the hospital to visit her for a few months but was planning to go at the weekend. She’d just been so tied up with work and meetings of the Left Wing Book Club, where they were raising money to help the Communists in Spain fight the war against the Fascists. Peggy had even met some of the volunteers who had gone off to fight. One of them was a woman artist who had been shot dead weeks after arriving there. Peggy still remembered her owlish face and cheery manner. It seemed shocking that she was killed like that. Peggy had no intention of ever doing anything so brave, or foolish, but she did feel it was her duty to try to raise money where she could and she was happy to rattle tins along the Walworth Road or up in the West End, even if some people did say nasty things to her about collecting for the Commies.

  There was so much talk about the possibility of war with Hitler, it kept Peggy awake at night with worry sometimes. The Communist Party had endless meetings and discussions about it, which Peggy attended, listening quietly and occasionally adding her pennyworth. Susan would understand her not visiting so often, she was sure of that.

  The hospital in Muswell Hill loomed large over the street, an imposing red-brick Victorian villa with turrets at either end. It had a vast and impressive entrance hall with a highly polished wood floor but, once inside, Peggy noticed there was an all-pervading smell of disinfectant. The little day room where she was to meet Susan was dilapidated, with peeling wallpaper and armchairs which were so ancient that the springs almost poked through as she sat down.

  Susan shuffled in, barely recognizable as the bright, funny and daring girl who had started work with Peggy at the Post Office. Her hair was unkempt and she wore an old dressing gown and slippers. Her face, once so pretty, was bloated and she seemed distracted, scratching away at her arms. Peggy saw that one of her wrists was bandaged.

  ‘Well, how are you keeping?’ Peggy said brightly, as she handed over a paper bag with some tangerines in it, from the fruit stall up at the Cut. For some reason, she couldn’t say why, Peggy had saved up and bought Susan a lipstick from Coty in a lovely shade of pink. It seemed stupid now, out of place, as she handed it over to her friend, who clasped it absent-mindedly for a second, before stuffing it into her dressing gown pocket, along with her old hankies.

  A nurse bustled about in the corner of the room, arranging some flowers and straightening a few dog-eared books on a little table.

  ‘They might let me out soon; I’m doing much better,’ said Susan, eyeing the nurse’s back.

  ‘What happened to your wrist?’ said Peggy.

  ‘Accident. Cut myself in the kitchen. It was an accident, that’s all.’

  Peggy swallowed hard and then nodded. ‘Are you feeling better in yourself, then? You look well . . .’ Her friend looked so terrible it made Peggy want to cry, but she had to keep going with this, for Susan’s sake.

  The nurse tapped her watch. ‘Just a short visit today, Susan. We don’t want you getting upset, now, do we? I’ll get you both a nice cup of tea.’ She glared at Peggy, then turned on her heel and left.

  Peggy didn’t know what to say. Was the nurse telling her not to mention the baby? Peggy looked out of the window at the patchy lawn, where a bird was forlornly pecking at the frozen ground. A man was following the bird around and it kept fluttering off to a nearby tree to escape him.

  She jumped as Susan suddenly reached forwards, clasped her hand and pleaded with he urgently. ‘I’ve got to get out of here, Peg. They keep putting things in my food to keep me quiet. It all got too much the other day and I slashed my wrists – well, one of them. They caught me with the knife before I could make a proper job of it.’ She put her arms around herself and started to rock back and forth.

  Peggy put her hand on Susan’s knee. ‘Oh, Susan, you mustn’t do such things to yourself. If you want to get out, you need to tell them what they want. Just pretend you are happy. Can you do that? If you can get out you can start afresh.’

  Susan’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I can’t forget my Tommy. My mum says my aunt will have me down in the East End and she can get me work but it’s a hard job trying to keep my chin up, Peggy, the hardest job in the world. How can I say I am happy that my baby is with somebody else?’

  The nurse returned with two cups of stewed, brown tea in chipped teacups and a little biscuit each, bringing their conversation to an abrupt end. Susan sniffed and looked away, wiping her eyes on the sleeve of her dressing gown. Peggy realized she hadn’t managed to have any lunch and was starving. She drank the tea down, almost in one gulp and then regretted it, as it gnawed away at her insides.

  The nurse lurked over their shoulders, pretending to flick dust from the window ledge.

  ‘Have you got any news, then?’ said Susan.

  ‘Not much,’ Peggy lied. How could she tell Susan that she was planning to marry her sweetheart and live happily ever after, to have children and grow old together; to create her own family? ‘It’s all just the same as it ever was. You’ll be back home soon, you’ll see. Nothing has changed a bit.’

  ‘Send word to your mother. I need to talk to her.’

  Peggy wasn’t sure she’d heard Dad right. She turned round from the range, where she was frying a bit of bacon for their tea. ‘Pardon?’

  There were dark circles under his eyes and his cheekbones were so sharp you could cut yourself on them. He’d not been eating properly since Christmas. He used to like going up the Cut and getting stewed eels or hot pie and mash for a few pennies, but he had stopped doing that of late.

  ‘You heard me, Peg. Tell her we can meet tonight at seven o’clock on Waterloo Bridge. There’s something important I need to say.’

  She put some bacon aside – she’d have that later – pulled on her coat and hurried up to the Waterloo Road, where she caught a tram down to Walworth to see her mum. Eva was out when she got there, thank God, because Peggy wasn’t sure what her views on it would have been but she wanted to try to take the heat out of the situation. Mum had her hair in rollers and was applying some lipstick for a night out up West with Patsy.

  ‘He wanted me to do what?’

  ‘To come and see him on the bridge at seven,’ she said.

  ‘And why would I go and talk to him, the bullying bastard?’ said Mum. ‘Excuse my language, Peggy, but I have done my time with your father.’

  ‘Please, Mum, it seems important to him. I think he might be ill or something.’

  ‘Ill? He can pay to see a doctor like the rest of us, can’t he? I’m not his nursemaid!’

  ‘He knows about you and Patsy . . .’

  Mum sat down at her little kitchen table with a sigh. ‘I knew he would find out eventually. But I ain’t done anything wrong. Not after the way he treated me.’

  Peggy wished she didn’t have to be involved in this but, as the eldest daughter, she could see that it had to fall to her. ‘Just hear him out and then you can move on with things; maybe you can both move on.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mum, ripping off her apron. ‘But if I am seeing him, I am damn well going to look my best. And I am not doing it for him, see. I’
m doing it because you asked me to.’

  She spent ages getting dressed, so long that Peggy watched the minutes tick by on the clock which Eva had nicked from Gamages, in pride of place on the mantelpiece. It was much posher than the one back in Howley Terrace, Peggy noted with some indignation, because she had worked for theirs.

  Eventually, her mother appeared in the doorway, resplendent in a full-length fur coat, matching hat, heels and carrying a smart handbag. A bitter wind blasted down Waterloo Road as they made their way along the pavement towards the bridge in the dark. The river was inky beneath them with the glow of dim gaslight from tug boats making their way home for the night.

  Dad stood against a railing, his coat collar turned up and his hat pulled low over his ears.

  ‘Don’t you leave me alone with him,’ said Mum, clutching Peggy’s arm as they drew near. She seemed genuinely afraid.

  ‘Can we just talk for minute, Maggie?’ he said, reaching out to her.

  ‘We can chat, but Peggy stays where I can see her,’ said Mum, recoiling from his touch.

  Dad looked as if he had been punched in the stomach.

  Peggy shuffled back a few paces, to give them some privacy. She really didn’t want to be here but she had to stay, for her mother’s sake. Her father seemed so small and thin standing there, it was as if he was made of newspaper and might just blow away in the night air.

  ‘I have so much to say sorry for, Maggie,’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘I should never have hit you. Things just got too much. You know, you are the only woman I have ever loved, the only woman I will ever love.’

  Mum grew taller with every word he spoke. ‘Well, you’ve a got a funny way of showing your love and I don’t need you. I’m doing just fine without you, thanks.’