Farewell To The East End

THE MASTER’S ARMS

The Master’s Arms in Poplar had seen much history in its hundred years. It was a freehold, started by old Ben Masterton in 1850, and passed from father to son over four generations. Many of the big breweries had tried to buy the family out, but they were a stubborn lot, the Mastertons, and in spite of the difficulties of running a freehold, not to mention the financial insecurity, they had always refused to sell, preferring shaky independence to safe wage earning. It was said that old Ben, with his one sound leg and one wooden one, had fallen off a trading vessel when drunk, and the ship had sailed away without him. He had nothing else to do but indulge his favourite activity, so he started a drinking house, which became a firm favourite among the seamen. He married a local girl who enjoyed the bawdy life, and she bore fourteen children, six of whom survived childhood. Old Ben ultimately expired in an alcoholic stupor, as everyone had said he would, and two of his sons took over the business, at the time of the economic depression in the 1880s, when it was nearly impossible to get work in the docks, and thousands starved as a result. In times of hardship pubs always flourish, and people will always drink, whatever the suffering of their families.

When the Jack the Ripper furore broke out in 1888, and the area became the centre for ghoulish visitors, the two brothers decided to expand their cramped premises, smarten up the dingy interior and put a few macabre pictures and posters on the walls proclaiming: ‘This is where it all happened.’ The visitors flocked in, and one of the two brothers led a guided tour of all the murder spots, with grisly details of how the killings were done, embellished for the shivering delight of the crowd, who then returned to the pub for suitable refreshment. Business was looking good.

The pub took on a life of its own after that and became well known for its landlords, its warmth and hospitality and its easy-going atmosphere. Every pub was easy-going in those days, but there were limits to how easy the going should be, and the brothers set the tone. There was to be no fighting, no child prostitution, no illegal gambling, or money handling and no opium smoking. Again the Masterton brothers were successful, and the pub flourished.

In the year that Queen Victoria died, one of the brothers died also. His funeral was less spectacular than the Queen’s but lavish enough by Poplar standards, and was enjoyed by all. There’s nothing like a good East End funeral to raise the spirits, and the Master’s Arms opened its generous doors to patrons after the church solemnities. The surviving brother decided to hang up his boots and pass the freehold on to his son, who ran the pub efficiently for twenty-five years throughout the Edwardian period, the disaster of the 1914-18 War and the chaos of the years that followed. It was he who bought a piano, found a piano-player and introduced the communal sing-songs. He did so because of the misery of the times, with the hope that it would cheer people up to have a good sing – or a good cry if need be. The sing-songs and dancing became a feature of the Master’s Arms, and, try as they might, no other pub in the area could rival the Arms for their Saturday night entertainment.

In 1926, the year of the great General Strike, when most industry in Britain was forced to close, Bill Masterton’s father died, and he, fourth generation, took over the Master’s Arms. He was a thick-set man, a little above average height, with great strength and phenomenal energy. He could work any other man into the ground without breaking sweat. He had a good, practical intelligence, ideal for running a small business, and was known by all as the Master. He was married to an Essex girl, who had not expected a pub life when she married a self-employed carter, and she never really settled down in Poplar or took to the life. Bill once persuaded her to act as barmaid, but she hated it so much that he said she would drive the customers away with her miserable face. Relieved, she devoted her time to her children.

Oliver, her eldest, was the joy of her heart, resembling his good-looking father in appearance, but with a more loving nature. Julia, her second, was a bit of a mystery; she was a solemn little girl who never said much, and children who don’t talk always make grown-ups feel uneasy. But Mrs Masterton had plenty to do with the three younger boys, who tumbled and romped all over the place. Then she found herself pregnant again, and a little girl was born, as pretty a baby as you could wish for. They called her Gillian. Her husband seemed to like the last baby, which was a surprise to the newly delivered mother. He had not taken much notice of the others, always saying, ‘The children are your concern. You look after them – I’ll look after the money. Can’t say fairer than that.’

And indeed he couldn’t. He worked hard, and the pub was profitable. Mrs Masterton was never short of money, unlike so many Poplar women. She did not want to see her children growing up like the Cockney kids and with a Cockney accent, so, when the time came, they all went to a small private school outside the borough. Her husband grumbled, but paid the term’s fees for each child, saying, ‘You know best when it comes to the kids. Let’s hope it’s worth the money.’ Husband and wife rubbed along together, each with their own role, but with little communication or understanding. ‘You’re more interested in your pub than your children,’ grumbled Mrs Masterton sometimes. ‘Don’t be daft,’ her husband remarked, ‘what do you expect me to do – change nappies? Ha, ha, I should think! Anyway they’re all right, aren’t they? Doing nicely. What more do you want?’

Julia was nine when her older brother started coughing. ‘It’s a winter cold,’ said his mother and rubbed his chest with Vick. But the cough continued. ‘It will go in the spring,’ said the mother and applied a flannel jerkin under his school clothes. But the cough did not go away.

Oliver wanted to be chosen for the school football team. He practised his kicking and passing skills resolutely; the cough was a nuisance. He didn’t really feel ill, and he didn’t see why it should interfere with his soccer career. When he started coughing up thick, yellowish phlegm, he spat into a bit of paper and put it in the dustbin. He didn’t tell his mother. Mothers fussed so, and he wasn’t going to be fussed. Not him. He was going to be captain of the team.

When his mother found blood on his pillow one morning, she was very alarmed. She questioned him about his health, but he said he felt all right. Nonetheless she called the doctor, who on examining the child suspected tuberculosis and advised an X-ray and a pathology lab analysis of his sputum. Both results confirmed the presence of tuberculosis. As a precaution, the doctor arranged for all other members of the family to be X-rayed, but they were all pronounced clear. He also arranged for Oliver to be removed immediately from school because, he told the parents, the boy would probably infect other children. He would be sent to a special school attached to Colindale Sanatorium in North London. He would have to reside there, and he would have the latest and best medical treatment available.

Oliver was deeply distressed. What about his football, and the athletics team he had joined? The doctor tried to explain that sports were played at the new school, but nothing would console the child. His mother was distressed for other reasons. Her adored eldest son, her pride and joy, was being sent away, and although she could visit him, it was small consolation.

Oliver stayed for about six months at Colindale. He settled down and began to enjoy himself. The country air suited him, and all summer he played games and appeared to improve greatly. His mother was delighted, and was given permission by the doctors to take him away for a summer holiday by the sea. ‘It will do him good,’ they all said. Hope is so important during illness. But he never got as far as the sea. He never left Colindale. ‘Le Belle Dame Sans Merci’ had him in thrall.

Oliver died, and the family was thrown into a state of shock. The poor mother nearly went demented with grief, and it seemed as though she would never raise herself again. The father became very quiet and withdrawn, but opened the pub as usual.

Whenever Julia thought of that first death – her big brother, whom she had idolised – she was filled with anger and disgust. The family rooms were over the pub, and the child was lying in an open coffin for family and neighbours to come in and pay their respects. The children, aged from two to nine, were subdued and sad, their mother was weeping all the time, while their father said nothing. Women, some known to the children, some strangers, came in with flowers and small gifts. They laid their posies on the young body and sniffed. ‘You’ll have to bear up, Amy. Think of the others,’ they said. Her mother wept and could not answer. The women crept downstairs, leaving the family with their loss. And all the time the noise from the pub was rending the quiet. The piano was pounding out popular songs, raucous voices were singing ‘Pack up yer troubles in yer old kit bag and smile, smile, smile’. The stamp of feet shook the table on which the coffin was laid. The shrieks and screams of half-drunken voices continued until late evening, after which there came peace, which the poor mother yearned for. One night Julia went into the room and sat with her mother in the blessed quiet. They fell asleep together in the armchair. ‘You are my comfort,’ said her mother and stroked her hair.

The day of the funeral was a nightmare. It took place on Whitsun Bank Holiday. Julia’s mother had begged her father not to open the pub that day, but he refused. There was a terrible row, and the children cowered in the attic, terrified. Their mother and grandmother and aunts all went at him, telling him to show some respect, but still he would not change his mind. ‘Business must go on,’ he shouted, as he ran downstairs to open up. On bank holidays, pubs could be open from 10 a.m. until the small hours of the morning and always did good business.

The hearse drew up at the back of the pub while crowds of excited holiday-makers were pouring in the front. The mother had wanted a horse-drawn funeral cortège for her eldest son, but it turned out to be a fiasco. The coffin was reverently carried downstairs and placed in the carriage, but at that moment a group of excited youths emerged from the pub and staggered round the corner, closely chased by four shrieking girls. The high-pitched voices frightened the horses, one of them reared, and this was the signal for panic among the other three. They bucked and lunged in all directions. The funeral directors lost their solemn demeanour and started shouting and pulling on reins and bridles in a desperate effort to prevent the carriage overturning. The coffin could be heard crashing against the wooden panels of the carriage. The group of mourners wearing black, the women veiled and the children carrying flowers, were distressed and terrified.

The horses eventually calmed down and the funeral was conducted calmly, but with frozen silence between Julia’s mother and father. Neither tried to comfort the other for the loss of their first-born. Immediately after the ceremony, her father said, ‘I must get back to the Arms; it’s going to be a busy day. Are you coming, Amy?’ She shook her head, ‘I can’t go back to that noise, not feeling as I do.’ ‘Please yourself,’ he replied and walked off. The family stayed out all day, and most of the evening, but finally they had to return because the little children were tired and crying. The noise from the pub was deafening as they drew near, and a crowd of half-drunk holiday-makers grabbed Mrs Masterton and tried to get her to join in the dancing. With difficulty she tore herself away and shepherded her children upstairs, then slammed and bolted the door. The singing reached a crescendo at about eleven o’clock with ‘Hands, knees and boompsey-daisy, let’s make the party a wow, wow-wow’. Men and women clapped, slapped their knees and then banged their bottoms together to shrieks of laughter and cat-calls and lewd whistles. As it was a Bank Holiday, the grieving family had to endure several hours more of the high jinks.

That was just the first death. Even though they had been screened and pronounced clear, one after another the three younger boys contracted the disease. The distraught mother nursed them. Two went to Colindale Sanatorium, but came home to die when the doctors said that there was nothing more that could be done. Julia could never forget the years spent with the hush of death upstairs and the din of drunkenness downstairs. Her mother seemed to be numb with grief, and her father increasingly morose and silent, but each time he said, ‘Business as usual,’ and opened the pub. This caused tension between husband and wife, giving rise to terrible quarrels as each vented their anger and frustration on the other.

The last remaining boy was nine when he first showed signs of weight loss, fainting and sweating. He did not cough, but the doctor advised Mrs Masterton to take him away to the country to get more fresh air. They went to Skegness, where the sea air is bracing, so they say.

Mrs Masterton took Gillian with them also. ‘Just to be on the safe side,’ she told her family and friends. She did not consult her husband. By then, husband and wife were barely on speaking terms. Gillian was the youngest, and her father’s favourite. She was a pretty, affectionate child, and she adored her father, who spoiled her shamefully. He had paid six months’ advance rental on a cottage by the sea and had assumed that just his wife and youngest son were going. They left during pub hours whilst Mr Masterton was working, and it was not until later in the day, when Gillian did not return from school, that he realized with a shock that she had gone.

The impact was terrible. He had not reckoned that women could be so devious. He was filled with rage and his first instinct was to take the next train to Skegness and bring the girl back. But he was an intelligent man. After closing the pub that night he sat in his office to brood, head in hands. He felt hot tears coming, so he locked the door – he didn’t want anyone to see signs of weakness. Perhaps she was right. They had lost three boys, and now the fourth was showing signs of illness. He slumped over his desk and bit his lip until he tasted blood. If his Gillian, his pretty little girl, died, he felt he would die also. She was better off by the sea, away from the foul London air. She would be back in six months, and her chatter and laughter would fill his heart again.

Julia stayed at home with her father. She was sixteen and doing well at school, coming up to her School Certificate, which her teachers were confident she would pass with Matriculation. Father and daughter were left alone together.

The relationship was tricky. Julia had never liked her father and felt that he did not like her. In reality they had both suffered from the fact that they were too similar in temperament. In particular, neither of them could talk much, which was a great disadvantage. Both of them imagined that the other was looking at them with some sort of malign thought, whereas each one was actually trying desperately to think of something meaningful to say. So long periods of silence existed between them, each wanting to break the ice, but not knowing how to do so.

They were both intelligent, but the gulf widened because they each had a different type of mind. His was entirely practical and instinctive, whilst hers was becoming increasingly academic. She would be doing her homework, and he would pick up a book and say ‘What’s this?’

‘Algebra.’

‘What’s that?’

‘A branch of mathematics.’

‘You mean arithmetic?’

‘Yes, if you like.’

‘Looks like a load of rubbish.’

‘Well it’s not. It’s beautiful.’

‘Beautiful! What do you mean?’

And so it went on. The publican spent just about all his time immersed in his business, and Julia spent all her time at school, in the public library, or doing her homework. Each of them, father and daughter, were locked into their own worlds of loneliness and unhappiness.

But the young can be perceptive beyond their years. Although she said little, or perhaps because she spoke little, Julia observed, absorbed and interpreted everything. She began to think that her father was not as indifferent as he appeared to be. She and her mother wrote to each other every week. Mrs Masterton never wrote to her husband, but every time a letter arrived from Skegness her father was eager to know the news.

‘How are the children, are they doin’ all right?’ and he grunted with satisfaction at the weekly good news. Once he shyly handed to Julia some pretty hair ribbons and a child’s bolero. ‘It’s Gillian’s birthday. Send this to her, will you? I hope it’s the right size.’ He kept on repeating, ‘I hope I got the size right. The woman in the shop said it would fit. It’s pretty, don’t you think? Do you think she’ll like it?’ Nervously he repeated the doubts and questions several times. When a picture done with coloured crayons and a letter in childish print arrived for him he seemed happier than Julia had ever seen him. She was surprised and saw her father with new eyes, but still she could not speak openly to him. Neither of them had ever shown any affection towards the other, and it was impossible now that he was so completely turned in on himself and his business, and she was verging on adulthood, expanding her mind and emotions to the world beyond the Master’s Arms.

Six months passed, and the boy seemed to be completely better after the summer at the seaside. The family returned home, and Mr Masterton had his little girl again.

Julia watched them together and was amazed at the liberties he allowed. Gillian would sit on his knee at breakfast and dip bread-and-butter soldiers into his boiled egg – something it would have been unthinkable for any of the other children to do. He brushed her hair and tied a ribbon in it. He seemed to notice the little boy more too, and was kind to him. ‘You did right,’ he said to his wife with grudging respect. ‘They are glowing with health.’

But tuberculosis is cruel. A person can contract the disease, and the bacillus will lie dormant for years, sometimes for a whole lifetime, and the host will not even know it is there. At other times it can strike and kill within months or even weeks – that sort used to be called galloping consumption. The little boy came home from school with a temperature. His mother put him straight to bed and called the doctor. He was transferred to the sanatorium and given all the treatment known at the time. But, three months later, the doctors advised that there was nothing more that could be done for him, and he would be happier if he came home to die.

Grief again gripped the family with cold, grey hands. The boy was laid out in the parlour, like his brothers before him, and family and friends came to pay their respects. ‘You’ve got your girls to comfort you,’ they said to the weeping mother. ‘It always strikes the boys first. It’s their constitution, see.’ Mrs Masterton did not ask her husband to close the pub; she knew it would be useless. ‘I’ll come to the funeral,’ he said, ‘In the meantime, business as usual.’ Daytimes were quiet enough, but each evening the racket started. ‘I hate the pub,’ said Mrs Masterton, who looked more like sixty than forty. ‘So do I,’ said Julia. ‘With all my heart, I hate it.’

Julia passed her School Certificate with Matriculation. She had but one longing – to leave home. But it was not easy for young girls in the 1930s. Britain was in the grip of the Great Depression, opportunities for girls were few, and wages were very low. She wanted to continue her studies, but could not do so without money. It should have been possible; the pub was profitable and her father was not hard up, but she did not feel she could ask him to finance a college course. She discussed it with her mother, who said, ‘You must ask your father,’ but so wide was the gulf between father and daughter that she could not bring herself to say a word. So, in the end, she applied to the Post Office for telegrapher’s training. She went to Leytonstone, which was more genteel than Poplar but less interesting, and lived in a hostel for girls.

She was lonely, very lonely. She never felt herself to be one of the girls. She always felt apart from them, separated by something inside her that she could not understand. She developed the habits of an observer, sitting on the outside of a group of giggling girls, watching, but quite unable to join in their light-hearted chatter. This was not popular. At different times several girls demanded, ‘What are you looking at us for?’ to which she had no answer. They proclaimed her stuck-up. She was friendly, in a superficial way, with several of the girls, but had no real friends. Once she did venture out with a crowd of girls, and afterwards vowed never again! The greatest part of her time, when she was not working, she spent in the public library, and she read everything available – history, novels, theology, travel, science fiction, poetry – literally anything she could lay her hands on. The world of books extended her mind and compensated for the dull routine of the telephone exchange. She dared not leave her job because in the depression of the 1930s she was lucky to have a job at all.

She did not really enjoy the work, either. She applied herself, but knew in her heart that, intellectually, it was beneath her. The superintendent was a bitch, and seemed to pick on Julia, perhaps because she was different, and tried to make her life a misery. It was not a happy time, but at least she was away from the foul atmosphere at home between her mother and father, away from the riotous revelry of the pub, and away from the figure of death that seemed to stalk every room. She would put up with anything rather than go back.

Each week mother and daughter corresponded. Neither of them had much to say in their letters, but it kept them in touch. The best news was always that Gillian was well, doing nicely at school, was friends with the vicar’s daughter, was going on a Sunday School outing, and so on. The mother said little about herself, and nothing about her husband.

Then came the terrible news that Gillian was unwell. The vicar was praying for her. The doctor had been called. A sanatorium was advised. The mother went with the child, and the husband rented a small cottage for his wife so that she could be near. The sanatorium came highly recommended, but then they heard that the air in Switzerland would be better. Santa Limogue in the Alps achieved a very good cure rate, it was said. So a place was booked, and Gillian and her mother crossed the Channel in the middle of winter by sea, then were conducted by train to the haven of miracle cures for tuberculosis. But the journey, lasting two days and nights, was too much for the child, and she died shortly after arrival.

Julia wept. Her family was cursed. She hid her tears under the bedclothes in the dormitory where she slept with twenty other girls, and during the day she was more silent than ever. She wrote a long, grieving letter to her mother, for the first time opening her heart to her, which to her surprise she found liberating. She wrote a brief letter to her father but could not think what to say. She remembered him with little Gillian on his knee, as she dipped soldiers into his boiled egg; she remembered the present of hair ribbons and a bolero. But still she could not think of what to say to him. So in the end she sent a few words on half a sheet of notepaper, to which he sent no reply.

The funeral took place in Switzerland. The mother returned home, but after a few months she left her husband to live with a sister in Essex. Correspondence continued between mother and daughter, and they met every so often and had a day out together. The father continued to run the pub, but they never corresponded, and Julia never visited. In spite of loneliness, which had become a way of life for Julia, she did not regret leaving home. The memories of drunken revelry repelled her, and thoughts of death haunted her.

No, she would never, she vowed, never go back to the Master’s Arms.