Shadows Of The Workhouse: The Drama Of Life In Postwar London

NONNATUS HOUSE

Nonnatus House was both a convent and the working base for the nursing and midwifery services of the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus.¹ The house was situated in the heart of the London Docklands and the practice covered Poplar, the Isle of Dogs, Stepney, Limehouse, Millwall, Bow, Mile End and parts of White-chapel. I worked with the Sisters in the 1950s. It was a time, shortly after the Second World War, when the scars of the devastated city could be seen everywhere – bomb sites, blown-out shops, closed streets and roofless houses (often inhabited). It was a time when the docks were fully operational, and millions of tons of cargo poured in and out every day. Huge merchant vessels sailed up the Thames, to be piloted into the wharves through a complex system of canals, locks and basins. It was not unusual to pass along a road within a few feet of the towering hulk of a merchant ship. Even in the 1950s about sixty per cent of all cargo was unloaded manually, and the ports teemed with labourers. Most of them lived with their families in the little houses and tenements around the docks.

Families were large, sometimes huge, and living conditions cramped. In fact, by today’s standards, the living conditions would be considered Dickensian. Most dwellings had running cold water, but no hot water. About half had an indoor lavatory, but for the other half the lavatory was outside, usually shared with other families. Very few homes had a bathroom. A bath was taken in a tin bath placed on the floor of the kitchen or living room, though public bath houses were also frequently used. Most houses had electric light, but gaslight was still common, and I have delivered many a baby by this flickering light, as well as by torchlight or hurricane lamp.

It was a time just before the social revolution of ‘the Pill’, and women tended to have many children. A colleague of mine delivered an eighteenth baby to one woman and I delivered a twenty-fourth! Admittedly these were extreme cases, but ten babies was quite common. Although the fashion for hospitalisation for a birth was fast gaining ground, this “fashion” had not affected the Poplar women, who were slow to change, and a home birth was still preferred. Earlier in the century, even as little as twenty or thirty years previously, women were still delivering each other’s babies as they had done in earlier centuries, but by the 1950s, with the advent of the National Health Service, all pregnancies and births were attended by trained midwives.

I worked with the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus, a religious order of Anglican nuns with a history dating back to the 1840s. This was also a nursing order pioneered at a time when nurses were commonly regarded as the dregs of female society. The Sisters, bound for life by the monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, had been in Poplar since the 1870s. They started their work at a time when there was virtually no medical help for the poorest of the poor, and a woman and her baby survived or died unattended. The Sisters lived a life of ceaseless dedication to their religion and to the people whom they felt were in their care. At the time when I worked at Nonnatus House, Sister Julienne was Sister-in-Charge.

Convents tend to attract within their portals ladies of middle years who are unable to cope with life in one way or another. These ladies are always single, widowed or divorced, and lonely. They are nearly always gentle, timid and shy, with an immense yearning for the goodness which they see in the convent but cannot find in the harsh world outside. Usually they are very devout in points of religious observance and have an unrealistic or romanticised idea of monastic life and long to be part of it. However, they often do not have a true vocation that would enable them to take the life vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. Nor, I suspect would they possess the strength of character necessary to live within these vows. So they hover on the fringe, neither fully within the world, nor withdrawn from it.

Such a lady was Jane. She was probably around forty-five when I met her, but she looked much older. She was, tall, thin, aristocratic in appearance, with delicate bone structure, beautifully sculpted features, and refined manners. In another context she would have been an outstanding beauty, but her excessive dowdiness made her look plain and nondescript. It was almost as if she did it on purpose. Her soft grey hair could have curled prettily around her face, but she cut it herself, so that it was jagged and shapeless. Her height, which should have rendered her distinguished, she reduced by bending her shoulders, so that her carriage and walk were stooped and cringing. Her large, expressive eyes were filled with nameless anxiety and surrounded by worry lines. Her speech was so soft that it sounded like a far-off twitter, and her laugh a nervous giggle.

In fact, nervousness was her chief characteristic. She seemed frightened of everything. I noticed that, even at meals, she did not dare to pick up her knife and fork until everyone else had done so, and when she did, her hands frequently shook so much that she would drop something. Then she had to apologise profusely to everyone, especially to Sister Julienne, who was always at the head of the table.

Jane had lived at Nonnatus House for many years and fulfilled a role that was neither nurse, nor domestic servant, but a mixture of the two. I had the impression she was a highly intelligent woman who could easily have trained as a nurse, and been very good at it, but something must have prevented her. No doubt it was her chronic nervousness, for she could never have taken the responsibility that is a daily part of any nurse’s life. So Sister Julienne sent her out to do simple jobs, like blanket baths, or enemas, or delivering various things to patients. In doing these little jobs, Jane was all of a twitter with anxiety, going over and over her bag obsessively, muttering to herself such things as, “Soap, towels. Have I got everything? Is it all there?” Consequently it took her two or three hours to do a job that any competent nurse could have achieved in twenty minutes. When she had finished, she was pathetically eager for recognition, her eyes almost pleading for someone to say that she had done well. Sister Julienne always praised her small achievements, but I could see that it was a strain for her to be so constantly alert to Jane’s craving for praise.

Jane also helped the nurses and midwives in the clinical room in small ways, such as cleaning instruments, packing bags and so on, and again she was irritatingly eager to please. Asked for a syringe, she would rush off and get three. Asked for some cotton-wool swabs for one baby, she would bring enough for twenty and then almost grovel as she handed over the item with a nervous giggle. This craven urge to please brought her no rest, no comfort.

It was all very disconcerting, especially as she was old enough to be my mother, and as it generally took her about three times as long as it took me to do a job, I refrained from asking. But she intrigued me, and I watched her.

Jane spent most of her time in the house, so one of her jobs was to take telephone messages, which she did with meticulous, and needless, over-attention to detail. She also helped Mrs B in the kitchen. This led to many a rumpus, because Mrs B was a quick and efficient cook, and Jane’s dithering nearly drove her to distraction. She shouted at Jane to “put a move on”, and then poor Jane would be paralysed with terror, faltering, “Oh dear, yes, of course, yes, quickly, of course.” But her limbs wouldn’t move, and she just stood stock-still, whimpering.

Once I heard Mrs B tell Jane to peel the potatoes and cut them in half for roasting. Later, when she wanted to put the potatoes in the oven, she found that Jane had cut every potato into about twenty pieces. She had been so desperately anxious to please by cutting them into exact halves that she couldn’t stop and every half had been cut in half again, and so on until all that was left was a mound of tiny pieces. When Mrs B exploded, Jane fell back against the wall, pleading for forgiveness, shaking all over and white with terror. Fortunately, Sister Julienne came into the kitchen at that moment, saw the situation, and rescued Jane. “Never mind, Mrs B, we’ll have mash today. They are just the right size for steaming. Jane, come with me, will you, please? The laundry has just come back and needs checking.”

Poor Jane’s eyes said it all – her fears, her grief, her gratitude and her love. I watched her go, and wondered what had happened to make her so fragile. Despite the kindness always shown to her by the Sisters, she seemed to live in a world of unfathomable loneliness.

She was very devout and attended Mass every day. She also attended most of the five monastic offices of the nuns. I had seen her in chapel, her fingers counting her rosary, her eyes earnestly fixed on the altar, half-intoning the words “Jesus loves me, Jesus loves me,” over and over again, a hundred times or more. It is easy to scoff at such devotion. Women like Jane can be seen everywhere and they are always fair game for a cheap laugh.

I was with Jane on one occasion in Chrisp Street Market. It was just before Christmas and the stalls were laden with knick-knacks and curios – obvious Christmas presents. We approached one of these stalls. Lying in the centre was a small wooden object, about five or six inches long. It was nearly, but not quite, round and smooth, with a slight ridge running up the under side towards a pronounced rim. The tip was rounded, smooth and polished, with a small hole in the centre.

Jane picked up the object and held it between thumb and forefinger for everyone to see.

“Oh, what’s this?” she said enquiringly.

Everyone fell silent and stared at Jane and the object. No one laughed.

The stall-holder was a fast-talking, street-wise coster of about fifty, who had been selling bric-a-brac most of his life. With a theatrical gesture he pushed his cap to the back of his head, took the fag out of his mouth and stubbed it out slowly on the edge of his stall. He glanced at his audience and opened his eyes wide with surprised innocence before answering: “Wha’ is it, lady? Wha’ is it? Why, lady, haven’ chew seen one o’ these fings afore?”

Jane shook her head.

“Why, it’s a honey-stirrer. Vat’s what it is, lady. An ’oney-stirrer, for stirrin’ ’oney.”

“Really? How interesting!” murmured Jane.

“Well, yes, very interestin’, it is. They’re old, you know, lady. Been around a long time, they ’ave. I’m surprised you ain’t come across one ’afore now.”

“No, never. You learn something new every day, don’t you? How do you use it?”

“How do you use it? Ah, well now, allow me to show you, lady, if you don’ mind.”

He leaned forward and took the object from Jane’s outstretched hand. The crowd, which had grown considerably, pressed forward, eager not to miss a word.

“Let me show you, lady. You sticks vis ’ere ’oney-stirrer in yer ’oney pot, and you stirs yer ’oney like vis” – he made a slight movement of the wrist – “an the ’oney, it catches on vis ’ere rim – you see vis ’rim ’ere, lady?” (He rubbed his fingers around it appreciatively.) “Well, ve honey, it catches on the rim, an’ drips off, like.”

“Really?” said Jane, “how fascinating. I would never have thought of it. I suppose it must be used a lot by country people who keep bees.”

“Oh, yes, country people, vey use it all the time, wha’ wiv all ’em birds an’ bees an’ all.’

“Well, I’m sure it must be very useful. Sister Julienne likes honey. I think I will buy this for her as a Christmas present. I am sure she would appreciate it.”

“Oh yes. Sister Julienne will appreciate it all right, not ’arf she won’t. If you asks my opinion, lady, you couldn’t get Sister Julienne a Christmas present as wha’ she’d appreciate more. Now, I was askin’ four shillins for vis ’ere remarkable honey-stirrer, but seein’ as how it’s you, lady, wot’s buyin’ it for Sister Julienne for Christmas, I’ll let you ’ave it for two shillin’ and sixpence, an’ you got a real bargain, I can tell you.”

The coster beamed benignly.

“That’s very good of you,” exclaimed Jane as she handed over the money. “I must say I’m delighted, and I’m sure Sister will be delighted when she sees it.”

“No doubt abaht it. No doubt at all. It’s bin a pleasure doin’ business wiv you, madam, an’ I must say you’ve made my day, you ’ave.”

“Have I really?” said Jane with a sweet, sad smile. “I can’t think how, but I’m so glad. It’s always nice to give pleasure to someone, isn’t it?”

Christmas Day arrived. We returned from morning church and prepared the dining room for Christmas lunch. A tableau of angels adorned the table centre. Our presents were exchanged at lunch time and were placed on the dining table beside each person’s plate. I found it hard to take my eyes off a small box, wrapped in silver paper, decorated with a red ribbon, resting beside Sister Julienne’s plate. What was going to happen?

We were fourteen to lunch that Christmas Day, including two visiting nuns from North Africa, beautiful in their white habits. Grace was said, with a special remembrance for the gifts of the Magi, then we all sat down to open our presents. A chorus of “oohs” and “ahs” and little squeaks and giggles arose from the table, as kisses were exchanged between the ladies. Sister Julienne picked up the silver box, saying, “Now what can this be?” and my heart stood still. She removed the paper and opened the box. Just the flicker of an eyebrow, instantaneous and then gone, was all that betrayed her. She carefully put the lid back on the box and turned to Jane with a radiant smile, her eyes alight with pleasure.

“How very kind. A most charming thought, Jane. It is just what I have always wanted, and I am truly grateful. I will treasure it always.”

Jane leaned forward eagerly. “It’s a honey-stirrer. They are very old.”

“Oh yes, I know. I saw that at once. A delightful gift and so like you, Jane, to be so thoughtful.”

Sister Julienne kissed her gently and quietly tucked the box away beneath her scapular.

To all appearances Jane was a bit of a dimwit. It was her reading that gave me the clue that she was, in fact, exactly the opposite. She was a voracious, almost obsessive reader. Books were her only self-indulgence, and she handled them with loving care. I took to spying on her authors: Flaubert, Dostoevsky, Russell, Kierkegaard. I was astonished. Predictably, she had a daily discipline of Bible-reading, but beyond the Old and New Testaments her devotional reading was formidable: St Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, St John of the Cross. I looked at her with new eyes. Aquinas for recreation! This was no dimwit.

Yet if anyone came into the room whilst she was reading she would jump up, all of a dither, and throw down her book guiltily, saying something like: “Do you want anything? Can I get you anything?” or, on one occasion: “I was just about to lay the table for breakfast. I haven’t been idle, really I haven’t.” This did not seem like the behaviour of an intelligent woman.

Later I discovered that Jane had spent twenty years in domestic service. She had been put into service at the age of fourteen, when life for a humble servant girl was very hard indeed. She had to be up at about 4 a.m. to fetch the wood and coal, clear the grates and light the fires. Then it would be a day of constant heavy work, at the beck and call of the mistress of the house, until ten or eleven at night, when she would finally be allowed to go to bed.

Jane had been hopeless at the job. However hard she tried she could never master the skills of simple housework. Consequently the mistress was always cross with her. She became increasingly nervous, breaking things, bungling things. She lived in a state of sheer terror that she would do something wrong, which she always did, so she was continually getting the sack and having to find another position – where the cycle started all over again.

Few domestic servants can have been less suited to the job than Jane. Her incompetence was monumental, although it is not uncommon for highly intellectual people to be baffled by the practicalities of everyday life.

Poor Jane! I once saw her trying to light a gas mantle. It took her forty minutes. First she spilled the matches all over the floor, and by the end she had broken the mantle, broken the glass shade, cut herself, set fire to a tea towel and scorched the wallpaper. No wonder she was always getting the sack.

I remember another occasion at Nonnatus House when Jane spilled a drop of milk on the floor. She trembled and whimpered, “I’ll clean it up. I’ll clean it up. I’ll do it.”

She then proceeded to wash the entire kitchen floor, including moving all the tables and chairs. No one could stop her. She insisted on doing the whole kitchen. I asked Sister Julienne why she behaved in this way.

“Jane was utterly crushed as a child,” explained Sister; “she will never get over it.”

Jane very seldom went out, and never left Nonnatus House for a night. The only person she was ever known to visit was Peggy, who lived on the Isle of Dogs with her brother Frank.

No one could describe Peggy as plump. Voluptuous would be a better description. Her softly rounded curves spoke eloquently of ease and comfort. Her large grey eyes, fringed with dark curling lashes, had a sensuous quality in their dreamy depths. Her smooth, clear skin glowed with radiance and every time she smiled, which was often, dimples enhanced her beauty, making you want to look upon her all the more. “Allure” might well have been her middle name.

Yet Peggy was not an idle lady of leisure, preserving her beauty with creams and lotions, or toying with men for her own amusement. Peggy was a charwoman. What with office cleaning in the early hours of the morning, her “ladies” in Bloomsbury and Knightsbridge, and restaurants and banks each afternoon, she was always busy.

Peggy cleaned at Nonnatus House three mornings a week and the house always smelled sweetly of wax polish and carbolic soap when she left. Everyone liked her. Her beauty was refreshing, and her smile raised the spirits. Furthermore, she sang quietly to herself as she polished and scrubbed. She had a pretty voice, and sang in tune. Her repertoire consisted of old-fashioned folk songs and hymns, the sort that children used to learn in schools and Sunday schools; it was a delight to listen to her. Her speaking voice was equally charming.

She was kind to everyone, and never seemed to get ruffled. I recall once when I had been out half the night (in my memory, babies always seem to have been born in the middle of the night, especially when it was raining!) and came in wet and muddy. I had been obliged to wait in Manchester Road for forty minutes, whilst the swing bridge was opened for cargo boats, and consequently was tired and ill-tempered. I crossed the hallway leading to the Clinical Room, not even conscious that I was leaving wet, muddy footmarks all over the fine Victorian tiles that Peggy had just buffed up to a glow. Something made me turn at the top of the stairs and I saw the mess I had made of her hard work.

“Oh, gosh – sorry!” I said, feebly.

Her eyes sparkled with laughter, and she was down on her knees in a trice. “Don’t give it another thought,” she said, affably.

Peggy was a good deal older than she looked. Her beautiful skin, in which the only wrinkles were laughter lines around her eyes, made her look about thirty, but in fact she too was approaching forty-five. Her supple body was as agile as that of a young girl and she was graceful in all her movements. Many women of forty-five would wish to look as youthful, so what was her secret, I wondered? Was it a sort of inner glow, a secret joy that irradiated her features?

Although they were around the same age, Peggy looked at least twenty years younger than Jane. Her softly rounded curves contrasted with Jane’s stiff, angular bones; her clear, youthful skin with the other’s dried-out wrinkles; her pretty blonde hair with Jane’s ill-cut greyness. Her easy-going laughter was infectious, whilst Jane’s nervous giggle was irritating. Yet Peggy treated the tall, angular woman with great tenderness, making allowances for her nervous twitter and general silliness, and often making her laugh in a way that no one else could. Jane seemed more relaxed when Peggy was in the house; she smiled more readily and seemed, if possible, less apprehensive.

Peggy’s brother Frank was a fishmonger, known to all as “Frank the Fish”. By common consent he kept the best wet-fish stall in Chrisp Street Market. Whether his ability to sell his fish was due to the excellence of the fish, the ebullience of his personality, or his commitment to hard work was not known. Probably his success was due to a combination of all three.

He slept little, and rose about three o’clock each morning to go to Billingsgate Fish Market. He had to push his barrow along the quiet streets, as very few working men had a van in those days. At Billingsgate he personally selected all his fish, having an encyclopedic knowledge of his customers’ likes and dislikes, and he was back at Chrisp Street by 8 a.m. to set up his stall.

He was an effervescent bundle of energy and he loved his work. He brought fun and laughter to hundreds of people, and many dockers were served kippers for tea, simply because their good wives couldn’t resist the bantering flirtation that fell from his lips as he slid the slippery fish into their outstretched hands, always with a wink and a squeeze.

He shut up the stall at 2 p.m. every day, and started on his delivery round. He kept no books, but carried in his head a detailed knowledge of his customers’ daily requirements. He never made a mistake. He called at Nonnatus House twice every week and he and Mrs B, who was not a great admirer of men, were best of friends.

Frank was a bachelor and, because he was comparatively well off and always good-natured, half the ladies of Poplar were after him – but he just wasn’t interested. “’E’s wedded to ’is fish,” they grumbled.

Frank seemed an unlikely friend for Jane, who was pathologically shy of men. If the plumber or the baker called at the house and Jane opened the door, she would go to pieces. She would chirrup and twitter around them, trying to be pleasant, but merely succeeding in being ridiculous. But with Frank she was different somehow. His ready banter and Cockney wit were tempered by gentleness and consideration, to which Jane responded with a shy, sweet smile and eyes filled with gratitude. Or was it love, my colleagues Cynthia and Trixie wondered. Did repressed, dried-up Jane also harbour a secret passion for the extrovert fishmonger?

“Could be,” reflected Cynthia. “How romantic! And how tragic for poor Jane! He’s wedded to his fish.”

“Not a chance,” said Trixie, the pragmatist. “If it were a case of unrequited love, she would go to pieces with him even more than she does with other men.”

Once, after Jane had been to visit Peggy and Frank, she said wistfully, “If only I had a brother. I would be happy if I had a brother.” Later, Trixie said, acerbically, “It’s a lover she needs, not a brother.” We all had a good laugh at Jane’s expense.

It was only later that I learned the sad stories that brought these three people together. Jane, Peggy, and Frank had been brought up in the workhouse. The two girls were nearly the same age, Frank was four years older. Jane and Peggy had become best friends and shared everything. They had slept in adjacent beds in a dormitory of seventy girls. They had sat next to each other in the refectory, where meals for three hundred girls were taken. They had gone to the same school. They had shared the same household chores. Above all, they had shared each other’s thoughts and feelings and sufferings, as well as their small joys. Today, workhouses may seem like a distant memory, but for children such as Jane, Peggy, and Frank the impact of having spent their formative years in such an institution was almost unimaginable.

THE RISE OF THE WORKHOUSE

My own generation grew up in the shadow of the workhouse. Our parents and grandparents lived in constant fear that something unpredictable would happen and that they would end up in one of those terrible buildings. An accident or illness or unemployment could mean loss of wages, then eviction and homelessness; an illegitimate pregnancy or the death of parents or old age could lead to destitution. For many the dreaded workhouse became a reality.

Workhouses have now disappeared, and in the twenty-first century the memory of them has all but faded. Indeed, many young people have not even heard of them, or of the people who lived in them. But social history is preserved in the accounts of those who lived at the time. Very few personal records written by workhouse inmates exist, so the little we do know makes the stories of people such as Jane, Frank and Peggy all the more compelling.

In medieval times, convents and monasteries gave succour to the poor and needy as part of their Christian duty. But in England Henry VIII’s Dissolution of the Monasteries put a stop to that in the 1530s. Queen Elizabeth I passed the Act for the Relief of the Poor in 1601, the aim being to make provision for those who could not support themselves because of age or disability. Each parish in England was encouraged to set aside a small dwelling for the shelter of the destitute. These were known as poorhouses. It was a remarkable act of an enlightened queen, and crystallised the assumption that the state was responsible for the poorest of the poor.

The 1601 Act continued in force for over two hundred years and was adequate for a rural population of around five to ten million souls. But the Industrial Revolution, which gathered pace in the latter part of the eighteenth century, changed society for ever.

One of the most remarkable features of the nineteenth century was the population explosion. In 1801, the population of England, Wales and Scotland was around 10.5 million. By 1851 it had doubled to 20 million and by 1901 it had doubled again to 45 million. Farms could neither feed such numbers nor provide them with employment. The government of the day could not cope with the problem, which was accentuated by land enclosure and the Corn Laws. Industrialisation and the lure of employment drew people from the villages into the cities in huge numbers. Overcrowding, poverty, hunger and destitution increased exponentially and the Poor Law Act of 1601 was inadequate to deal with the number of emerging poor. There can be no understanding of the poverty of the masses in the nineteenth century without taking into consideration the fact of a fourfold increase of population in one hundred years.

Victorian England was not the period of complacency and self-satisfaction that is so often portrayed in the media. It was also a time of growing awareness of the divide between the rich and the poor, and of a social conscience. Thousands of good and wealthy men and women, usually inspired by Christian ideals, were appalled by the social divide, saw that it was not acceptable, and devoted their lives to tackling the problems head on. They may not always have been successful, but they brought many evils to light and sought to remedy them.

Parliament and reformers constantly debated schemes to change and improve the old Poor Law Act. A Royal Commission was set up, and in 1834 the Poor Law Amendment Act was passed. Responsibility for relief of destitution was removed from individual parishes and handed over to unions of parishes. The small parish poorhouses were closed and the unions were required to provide large houses, each designed to accommodate several hundred people. The aim was that “the poor shall be set to work, and they shall dwell in working houses”.

And so, the union workhouses were born. Each was to be run by a master and his wife, who were responsible for day-to-day administration, together with a number of paid officers, who assisted them. Overall responsibility for each workhouse was in the hands of a local Board of Guardians and they were financed partly by the local Poor Law rates and partly through government loans that had to be repaid. Running costs were to be met by local rates, but income could also be generated through the work of the inmates.

It can be argued that the workhouse system was the first attempt at social welfare in this country. Certainly it was intended as a safety net to house and feed the very poorest of society, and it laid the foundations of our modern welfare state. In this respect it was nearly one hundred years ahead of its time, yet the implementation of the high ideals of the reformers and legislators went tragically wrong, and the workhouses came to be dreaded as places of shame, suffering and despair. People would often rather have died than go there – and some did. My grandfather knew a man who hanged himself when the guardians informed him that he must go into the workhouse. Most of the labouring poor lived on a perpetual knife-edge between subsistence and destitution. For them, the workhouse represented not a safety net, but a dark and fearsome abyss from which, should they fall, there would be no escape.

The authors of the 1834 Act proposed separate workhouses for different categories of paupers, but within a year or two, economy and ease of management dictated that mixed workhouses became the norm. These were built to house all groups of paupers – the old, the sick, the chronically infirm, children, the mentally disabled – as well as able-bodied men and women who were unemployed and therefore destitute. However, such a great diversity of people under one roof and one administration was doomed to failure.

The original policy was that the workhouse should be a “place of last resort”, therefore that conditions inside a workhouse should be less comfortable than a state of homeless destitution outside. Strict rules for admission were introduced and enforced nationwide, and these rules were intended to deter the idle and shiftless from seeking admission. But the result, in a mixed workhouse, was that all classes of paupers suffered. Nobody could come up with an answer to the question of how to deter the idle without penalising the defenceless.

In order that the workhouse really should be a “place of last resort” a rigid, inflexible system of discipline and punishment was introduced. Families were separated, not only men from women, but husbands from wives and brothers from sisters. Children over seven were taken away from their mothers. The official policy was that babies and children under seven could stay with their mothers in the women’s quarters. But policy and practice often diverge and mothers and toddlers were frequently separated. The construction of the buildings was such that there was no access from one group of paupers to another. Heating was minimal, even in the depths of winter. People had to sleep in dormitories in which anything up to seventy paupers could be accommodated. For each, an iron bedstead, a straw palliasse and a blanket were provided; inadequate protection against the cold winters. Paupers were locked into the dormitory each night and the sanitary arrangements were disgusting. A coarse rough uniform, often made of hemp, which was very harsh on the skin and offered no real warmth in the winter, was provided. Paupers’ heads were sometimes, though not always, shaved. Regulations permitted the hair of children to be forcibly shaved. This was intended for the control of lice or fleas, but was sometimes done as a punishment, especially on little girls, for whom it was a humiliation.

Food was minimal and meals frequently had to be eaten in silence, the paupers sitting in serried rows. The quantity of food for a workhouse pauper in the middle of the nineteenth century was less than that provided for a prisoner in jail, although this improved towards the end of the century.

Paupers were only allowed to go outside the workhouse walls with the permission of the master, to look for work, or for special reasons such as attending a baptism, funeral or wedding. In theory a pauper could discharge him- or herself from the workhouse, but in practice this seldom happened because of their abject poverty and the limitations of available work.

All these rules, and many more, had to be obeyed on pain of harsh punishments, which included flogging, birching, withholding food, and solitary confinement. Complaints about the daily living conditions were usually dealt with by punishment. Deference to the master, his wife and the officers was required at all times.

It is easy at this distance of time to be critical, and to sneer at what we call “Victorian hypocrisy”. But we should remember that this was the first attempt at a form of social welfare, and mistakes will always be made in any pioneering venture. Numerous reports were commissioned and published during the century of workhouse existence and many attempts at reform and improvement were made.

These evils had been designed to deter the indolent from entering the workhouse. The tragedy was that in a mixed workhouse with one administration, one central building and one staff, the rules, regulations, and punishments applied universally, with the result that old people, the sick, the crippled, the mentally disabled, and children, suffered dreadfully. The atmosphere inside a workhouse was not only stifling to the human soul, but destroyed the last shreds of human dignity.

Another great problem that led to the ill repute of workhouses was the staff. In the early years none of them had any training or qualifications. This could not be expected, because there was no precedent, but the unfortunate result was that it opened the floodgates to all sorts of petty dictators who enjoyed wielding power. The masters had unlimited authority, and their character determined the lives of the paupers, for good or ill. Rules had to be obeyed, and the Master could be a good and humane man, or he could be harsh and tyrannical. The “deterrent rules” ensured that the only qualification required of applicants for the posts of Workhouse Master and officers was the ability to enforce discipline. Many came from the armed forces, reflecting the controlling and disciplinary role that was expected of them.

The “work” aspect of the system rapidly became an acute and intractable problem. The sale of goods was not the primary purpose of the Poor Law Act, but to generate some income for the day-to-day running of the workhouse items and produce made by the paupers were sometimes sold in the open market. This led to protests from employers in the private sector, on two counts: firstly, that goods produced in the workhouses by cheap labour and sold in the marketplace would seriously undercut them; secondly, that the resulting loss of business would affect their employees, who would either have to accept reduced wages or even lose their jobs. This would be a dire outcome when, in most cases, and unlike their workhouse counterparts, they had families to support. On top of these difficulties there was, of course, the problem (still alive and well in the twenty-first century) that in a free-market system work cannot be created out of thin air. Although the British industrial economy was booming throughout the nineteenth century, it was subject to periodic recessions that threw unskilled labourers out of work in their thousands, thus swelling the workhouse population. So pointless, profitless work was introduced to keep the paupers busy. For example, stone-breaking was required of the men. Industrial England could break stones using machinery, but the paupers had to break granite with a mallet. Animal bones could be ground into powder for fertiliser by machine, but paupers had to grind bones by hand. In one workhouse there was a corn mill for men to push round and round for hours on end, but it had no function; it was grinding nothing.

The women did all the cooking and laundry for their fellow inmates. “Scrubbing” is a word I have encountered frequently in this context. Hours of scrubbing vast lengths of stone floors, corridors and stairs was a daily requirement. Sewing sails for sailing boats, by hand, and picking oakum for caulking ships were further tasks that fell to the women and children. Oakum was old rope, frequently impregnated with tar or sea salt, which had to be unpicked by hand and tore the skin and nails. The fibres were then used for filling in the cracks between the wooden planks of ships.

The 1834 Poor Law Act required elementary education (basic numeracy and literacy) for children three hours per day, and a schoolmaster was employed by each Board of Guardians. When the Education Act of 1870 was passed, children were removed from the mixed workhouses and placed in separate establishments and had to attend the local Board School.

Under the 1834 Act a qualified medical officer was required to attend the sick, but nursing was carried out by untrained female inmates. In large groups of enclosed people who were not allowed out, infectious diseases spread like wildfire. For example, in the 1880s in a workhouse in Kent, it was found that in a child population of one hundred and fifty-four, only three children did not have tuberculosis.

One hears about “the insane” crowded into workhouses. I think workhouse life bred and fostered its own insanity. I once heard, in the 1950s, what used to be called “the workhouse howl” emitted from the throat of a woman who had been a workhouse inmate for about twenty years in the early twentieth century. It was a noise to make your blood run cold.

Medical infirmaries were also available for the hospital treatment of the poor who could not afford to pay a doctor or to go to hospital. But the infirmaries came to be feared almost as much as the workhouses themselves, and were regarded as places of disease, insanity, neglect and death. Medical and nursing staff were of the lowest order, and were frequently brutal and ignorant – it was work which no doctor who valued his career would undertake. The attitudes of medical and nursing staff, who were careless of the lives of paupers, reflected the mores of the time.

The stigma of illegitimacy has destroyed the lives of millions of unfortunate young women and blighted those of their children. If a girl’s lover deserted her, and her parents could not, or would not, support her and the child, the workhouse was often the only form of relief available. The baby would be born in the infirmary. After weaning, the girl would be encouraged to leave the workhouse with her baby to seek employment. But this was usually impossible to find because of the limited labour market for women, further restricted because of the presence of a baby. The girl would also be encouraged to give her baby up for adoption. Many girls were medically certified as “hysterical” or “of unsound mind” or even “morally degenerate”, and the baby would be forcibly removed and brought up in the workhouse. The young mother would be expected to leave, find work outside and contribute to the poor rates to offset the cost of keeping and educating the child. If she could not find work, she would have to return to the women’s section of the workhouse. The system was heartless and stupid, but those were the rules, and they reflected the social attitude that a “fallen woman” should be punished.

It was one such story that brought Jane to the workhouse when her mother was dismissed for an illicit liaison with her employer.

JANE

“We’ll have to watch that one, saucy little madam. Did you hear the way she spoke out of turn at breakfast?”

“Don’t you worry, my dear. I’ll break her before she leaves here.”

The Master and Mistress were talking about Jane, who had been in the workhouse since birth. It was rumoured that her father was a high-class gentleman, distinguished in Parliament and at the Bar. When his wife found him in bed with a servant girl, the girl was immediately dismissed and went to the workhouse, where Jane was born.

The baby stayed with her mother to be breast-fed, but was removed when weaning commenced and was then taken to the infants’ nursery. The mother returned to the women’s section of the workhouse and never saw her baby again. Thus Jane was entirely reared by the institution and knew no other life.

It was a harsh, repressive existence, but no amount of smacks or punishments could subdue Jane’s bubbling laughter and joie de vivre. In the playground, she chased the other children, or hid and jumped out on them with a delighted “boo”. In the dormitory she crept under the beds and poked the mattresses of sleeping children with a stick. Her behaviour caused uproar and an officer would run in with smacks and orders to be quiet. Jane always got smacked, being the cause of all the trouble. But she cried herself to sleep, then giggled and did it again.

As she grew, her high spirits got her into endless trouble. Docility and obedience were expected from the children at all times, and if there was any deviation from this, naughty little Jane could generally be found at the centre of it. Who was it that tied Officer Sharp’s shoelaces together as she sat darning socks, so that she fell over when she stood up and took a step? No one knew for certain, but as Jane had been seen in the vicinity, the little girl got a good smacking for it. Who was it that climbed the drainpipe in the playground? Why, Jane, of course. And who mixed up all the boots in the dormitory so that everyone had the wrong sizes? If it wasn’t Jane, it might as well have been, so she got the punishment.

Jane’s great misfortune was that she stood out. In a group of children she could not be overlooked. She was a good deal taller than average, and also prettier, with her dark curls and clear blue eyes. Worse than this, which was bad enough, she was a great deal more intelligent than most of the other children, and the Master and Mistress feared an intelligent child. They told the officers to keep an eye on her.

“Keep in line, don’t straggle. Heads up, now. Don’t slouch.”

Officer Hawkins would show them how to do it!

The girls were marching to church one Sunday morning. It was a very long crocodile, consisting of nearly one hundred girls. Jane, halfway along on the outside, watched fat old Officer Hawkins strutting along like a penguin and with an instinctive gift for mimicry she copied the walk, head thrown back, arms flapping, feet splayed. The girls behind started to giggle. A hand shot out and hit Jane on the head with such force that she fell through the column of girls on to the road on the other side. She was hauled up and hit again and then pushed back into line. Her ears were ringing and lights were darting before her eyes, but she had to keep marching. She was six years old.

“Where did it come from?” demanded the Master, his eyes bulging, his face turning red. “Who is guilty of this piece of insolence?”

He was looking at a sketch of himself, on a page torn from an exercise book. It was a remarkable drawing for a child, but the Master couldn’t see it that way. All he could see was himself with an exaggerated moustache, a square head, small eyes, and an exceedingly large stomach. The picture had been circulating among the girls for three days, causing endless amusement, which only added to the Master’s fury.

He assembled all the girls in the hall and addressed them from the pulpit. He reminded them that they were paupers who must respect and obey their betters. No act of disobedience, disrespect or insubordination would be tolerated. He held up the pencil drawing.

“Who did this?” he demanded, menacingly.

No one moved.

“Very well. Every single girl in this room will be beaten, starting now, with the first row.”

Jane stood up. “I did it, sir,” she whispered.

She was taken to the discipline room – a small, square room with no windows and no furniture except for one stool. Several canes were hanging on the wall. Jane was beaten severely on her bare bottom. She could not sit down for several days. She was only seven years old.

That should be enough to break her spirit, thought the Master to himself with satisfaction. But it wasn’t. He couldn’t understand it. Why the very next morning, he had seen her, with his own eyes, dancing across the playground, as though she hadn’t a care in the world.

The reason why Jane’s spirit was not broken was that she had a secret. It was her own special secret and she had told no one else except Peggy. She locked it in her heart and hugged it to herself. It was this glorious secret that filled her with such irrepressible joy and exhilaration. But it was also to be the cause of her greatest disaster, and her life-long grief.

The rumour that her father was a high-born gentleman in Parliament must have reached Jane’s ears when she was a little girl. Perhaps she had heard the officers talking about it, or perhaps another child had heard the adults talking and told her. Perhaps Jane’s mother had told another workhouse inmate, who had passed it on. One can never tell how rumours start.

To Jane, it was not a rumour. It was an absolute fact. Her daddy was a high-born gentleman, who one day would come and take her away. She fantasised endlessly about her daddy. She talked to him, and he talked to her. She brushed her hair, and cast a flirtatious eye at him, as he looked over her shoulder, admiring her curls. She ran down the playground as fast as she could, because he was standing at the other end, admiring her strength and speed. He was always with her. He was everywhere.

She had a very clear picture of him in her mind. He was not like any other man she had seen at the workhouse, not like the coal man, nor the baker, nor the boiler man. They were ugly and short, and wore rough working men’s clothing and cloth caps. He was not like the Master or any of the officers. Jane’s little nose wrinkled with disgust at the thought. Her daddy was quite different. He was tall and slim with fine features and pale skin. He had long fingers; she looked at her own slender hands and knew that she had inherited her daddy’s fingers. He had lots of hair – she didn’t like bald men – and it was a soft, grey colour, always clean and nicely brushed. His clothes were nothing like the awful stuff worn by the workmen she saw, and her daddy didn’t smell of sweat the way they did. He always wore beautiful suits smelling of lavender, and he wore a top hat and carried a walking-cane with a gold crest on top.

She knew just what his voice sounded like also – after all, he was constantly talking to her – it was not rough and grating like other men’s voices; it was musical and deep, full of laughter. She knew this because he was always laughing with her and making fun of the Master and the officers. His eyes had twinkled with amusement, and he had called her ‘his clever girl’ when she had drawn a funny picture of the Master.

So how could Jane be unhappy? The more they beat her, the closer she drew to her daddy. He comforted her when she cried at night. He dried her tears and told her to be a brave girl. She swallowed her tears quickly, because she knew that he liked to see her smiling and happy, and she made up a funny story to amuse him, because she knew that he liked her funny stories.

She had also invented his house. It was a beautiful house with a long drive and fine trees in the grounds. There were steps up to the front door and, inside, the rooms smelled of beeswax and lavender. There were pictures on the walls and fine rugs on the floors. Her daddy took her by the hand and led her through the rooms, one by one. He told her that one day he would come and take her away from the workhouse, and they would live together in the beautiful home with the long drive and fine trees.

Jane was seven years old when she began to attend the local council school. She was very proud – it was a big, proper school for big girls and Jane loved it. It brought her into contact with a life outside the workhouse which she had not known existed. It also introduced her to learning, which she loved, and her young mind began to expand. She realised that there were thousands of things that she could learn and she absorbed and retained her lessons quickly. Excellent reports of her progress were sent back to the workhouse. The Master was not impressed. A request from the school’s headmistress for Jane to be allowed to take piano lessons, as she showed an unusually good ear for music, was refused, the Master saying that no workhouse pauper should be singled out for special treatment. A request that Jane should be allowed to take the role of Mary in the school’s nativity play was refused for the same reason.

Jane was bitterly disappointed at this, chiefly because her daddy would have been so proud to see her playing Mary, and she cried herself to sleep for several nights, until he whispered to her that the silly old school nativity play was not worth crying over. She would have the chance to perform in many more, much nicer plays when she came to live with him in the beautiful house with the long drive.

The workhouse girls were kept apart, as much as possible, from the other girls at the school. This was because several local mothers had complained that they did not want their daughters mixing with ‘them workhouse bastards’. This segregation was a source of great pain to many of her friends, but not to Jane. She laughed at the rule that workhouse girls should not play in the same playground as the other children, and tossed her dark curls scornfully. Just let them wait. She would show them. All those dreary girls whose fathers were dustmen and street-sweepers and costermongers. They would be sorry one day, when they saw her daddy, a high-born gentleman, drive up to the school in a carriage. She would run up to him, and all those dreary girls would see her. He would pick her up, kiss her, and take her to the waiting carriage, and all the girls would see and be jealous. The teachers would say to each other: “We always knew that Jane was different.”

Jane was fortunate in her class teacher. Miss Sutton was young, well educated and eager. In fact, to say that she possessed a missionary zeal for teaching the poorest of the poor would not be overstating her dedication and enthusiasm. She saw in the vivacious Jane unusual qualities that she was determined to promote. The child learned to read and write in about a quarter the length of time that it took the other children, so whilst Miss Sutton was engaged with the rest of the class, who were learning the alphabet and painstakingly spelling out words, she asked Jane to write stories for her. Jane did so with great joy and fluency, picking up any subject Miss Sutton suggested and weaving a delightful child’s story around it. Several of these stories were shown to the Headmistress, who commented: “There is an unusual mind at work here,” and she obtained a copy of A Child’s Garden of Verse, which she handed to Miss Sutton for Jane’s use. The child was enraptured by the rhythm of the words and quickly learned many of the poems by heart, which she recited to her daddy when they were alone together.

Miss Sutton also introduced Jane to history and geography, using a children’s encyclopedia as her textbook. These lessons had to be surreptitious, because Miss Sutton was employed to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic. Furthermore, she was canny enough to suspect that if she requested extra lessons for Jane, the request would be refused and that would be the end of history and geography for Jane.

Miss Sutton took the wise step of introducing one volume at a time, with the words, “I think you will enjoy reading this. When you have done so, write me a story about it, and we will talk about it at lunch time.”

Jane adored Miss Sutton, and their lunch-time conversations about kings and queens and faraway places were the high point of her day.

The children’s encyclopedia was her treasure. There were ten large volumes, each beautifully bound in dark blue with gold lettering, and she pored over each one with a hungry mind. She loved the books, their feel and touch and smell, and wanted to keep them, but she knew she couldn’t; they were kept in the classroom cupboard, but she knew that Miss Sutton would let her see them any time she wanted. To Jane these books were sacred. Every word she read was – must be – gospel truth, because it was written in the “’cyclopedia”.

One day she came across a long word she had not met before. She traced it with her finger and tried to say it to herself: “Par” – that was easy; “lia” – what did that mean? “ment” – that was easy, too; but what was it all put together? Suddenly, like a lightning stroke, it came to her: Parliament. People had said her daddy was in Parliament. She devoured the relevant pages as though her life depended on it. In the background the other children were reciting C-A-T, D-O-G. Jane heard nothing. She was busy poring over information on Parliament and the British Constitution. She didn’t understand it all, but that didn’t matter, it was about her daddy. Like one possessed she read on. She turned a few pages; and then she saw him. The picture leaped towards her. It was her daddy, as she had always known he would look: tall and slim, with slightly grey hair, a thoughtful face, but kindly. He was wearing a beautiful frock coat with tails, just as she had always known he would, with slender trousers and elegant shoes. He was carrying a top hat and a walking-cane with a gold crest. He had long, slender fingers just like she had. She kissed the page.

The lunch bell sounded. Miss Sutton roused her.

“Come on, Jane, time for lunch.”

“What is Parliament?” demanded the child.

“The Houses of Parliament are where His Majesty’s Government sits. Now come along to lunch.”

“Where are these Houses? Can I go? Will you take me?”

Miss Sutton laughed. An eager pupil is the breath of life to a dedicated teacher.

“I will tell you as much as I know about Parliament. But you must have your lunch first. You want to grow to be a big strong girl, don’t you? Come back to the classroom after lunch.”

After lunch Miss Sutton did her best to explain to the understanding of a seven-year-old that the Members of Parliament made the rules that govern the country.

“Are they very important people, and very important rules?” the child enquired.

“Very; there are none higher in the land.”

“More important than the workhouse Master?”

“Oh, much. Members of Parliament are the most important people in the land, after the King.”

Jane’s breath was coming fast. She seemed unable to contain her excitement. Miss Sutton was watching her closely with astonishment. Jane looked up at her teacher, her blue eyes flashing through dark lashes (extraordinary, the vivid combination of blue eyes and dark hair, thought Miss Sutton). Jane’s white teeth showed as she bit her lower lip. One of her milk teeth had come out and she drew air in through the gap with a sucking sound, then poked her tongue through it and wiggled it around. A smile spread across her face, as she whispered, confidentially: “My daddy is in Parliament.”

Miss Sutton was, to say the least, taken aback. She was too fond of the child to reply, “Don’t be silly,” but she felt it necessary to say something to dispel this illusion.

“Oh, come now, Jane, that cannot possibly be.”

“But he is, he is, he’s here in the book. I’ve seen him.”

She turned a few pages on and pointed the artist’s impression of a Member of Parliament.

“That’s my daddy. I know it is. I’ve seen him lots and lots of times.”

“But Jane, that is not a real man. That’s just a drawing to show the clothes that a Member of Parliament might wear. That’s not your daddy, dear.”

“It is, it is, I know it is!” Jane began to cry, and jumped up. “You don’t know anything. You don’t know my daddy. I do, and I know it’s him.” Jane ran from the classroom in tears.

Poor Miss Sutton was troubled by this scene, and discussed it with the Headmistress. They agreed that Jane’s reaction was just the longing of a highly imaginative child for a father she had never known. The Headmistress advised channelling Jane’s thoughts in other directions and said it would be best not to mention Parliament again. That way Jane would forget about it.

Alone, Jane had also decided upon a similar course. She would never again mention her father to anyone, except Peggy. No one, not even Miss Sutton, was worthy of being let into her secret. She pretended she had forgotten all about the lunch-time conversation and carried on as though it had never occurred. But now she knew the book and the page where her daddy was to be found, and whenever she could, she went to the cupboard and opened the page, to gaze upon him with rapture in her heart. If anyone came near, she turned the page quickly, pretending she was looking at something else.

SIR IAN ASTOR-SMALEIGH

Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh was a true philanthropist. He was an Oxford man who had devoted most of his life, and a considerable part of his fortune, to improvement of living conditions and life expectancy among children in the poorest areas of London. He was a founder member of the Oxford Philanthropic Society for the Improvement of Poor Children, having formed a charity dedicated to the provision of holidays for workhouse children. This work was also close to the heart of his wife, Lady Lavinia. They had made a systematic study of the workhouse system, and though they acknowledged that conditions had improved a great deal since the 1850s, they had seen with their own eyes hundreds of grey, unsmiling children crowded into workhouses and orphanages and were determined to do something about it. The idea of an annual holiday was Lady Lavinia’s. Surely, she argued, two weeks by the sea for unwanted children, with healthy air and sunshine, was not too much to ask of society?

The opposition was loud in its scorn. “Holidays! For pauper children! What next? Let them learn to be grateful that they are given food and shelter.”

Sir Ian and his lady battled on. When it was proved that one of the causes of rickets was lack of sunlight, they knew that this information could be used to further their cause. Were not many workhouse children afflicted with rickets? And were they not advocating a holiday in the sunshine?

Eventually they won the debate and, to their overwhelming relief, the committee passed, by a narrow majority, the resolution that money should be set aside for holidays for the children of one London workhouse. Additional funds were approved for a further five, if the experiment proved successful.

Suitable premises were found in Kent. These consisted of a series of large barns and sheds that could be adapted as dormitories for the children, who would sleep on straw mattresses on the floor. One of the sheds could be converted into a kitchen. The sheds were situated in fields that ran down to the sea. Sir Ian and members of the committee travelled to Kent to inspect the site and the accommodation. It all seemed perfect.

Sir Ian’s next visit was to the workhouse selected for the experiment, in order to address the children himself and tell them of their good fortune. He wasn’t going to hand over that pleasant task to anyone else, he told his wife. Was it not he who had haggled with the committee, hour after hour? Now he was going to have the reward of seeing the children’s faces when they were told.

Accordingly Sir Ian had taken the train from Oxford, and was in a cab bound for his destination in the East End. He told the cabman to halt about a mile from the workhouse, because he wanted to walk the rest of the way in order to absorb the atmosphere. He attracted much attention in the London streets. He was tall and slim and well dressed. He was also clean. “Vere’s a toff, nah, do-goodin’,” was one of many whispers as he passed. Sir Ian was unaware of the sideways glances. His mind was fixed on his mission and he was determined that, in years ahead, the holiday project would be expanded to all workhouse children, nationwide.

The crocodile of little girls was returning from school. Jane was about halfway along the line, humming to herself as she marched along. She was looking at the pigtails of the little girl in front of her, watching them bounce up and down and wondering why they bounced more times than each step. “There must be some reason,” she was thinking. She looked up, and her heart stopped beating. Pigtails, marching, the street, the buildings, the very sky itself vanished from her universe. Her daddy was on the other side of the street, walking straight towards the workhouse. She stood stock-still. The girls behind piled into her, causing commotion in the line.

“Get along there,” shouted Officer Hawkins and hit her on the head. She neither heard nor felt a thing. Her daddy had turned into the workhouse gate and was walking straight towards the main door. She knew that it was him. Not a shadow of doubt. He was exactly as she had always known he would look, and exactly like the picture in the book – tall, slim, grey trousers, a frock coat, a top hat and a walking-cane. He had come to take her away, as he had always said he would.

Joy, unspeakable joy, flooded through Jane, with a rush of love impossible for a mere adult to describe. The intensity of a child’s feelings is quite beyond our understanding, though we have all been children. Jane was almost suffocating with the power of her emotions. She felt that something huge and unknown was inside her and she was going to burst wide open.

“Get on there, I told you.”

Another clout round the head, and Jane ran a few steps to catch up with the others. The door had closed behind her daddy, and the girls marched round the back to their usual entrance and stood in line for inspection before being told that they were to go to the hall.

Jane didn’t stand in line with the others. She rushed straight upstairs to the dormitory, colliding with an officer on the stairway. She was flushed and breathless, but she grabbed the officer’s hand, almost shouting.

“Quick, quick! I must have a clean dress and a clean apron!”

The officer was not used to being spoken to by a child in that manner. She shook Jane off.

“Don’t be stupid. You’ll have a clean dress on Sunday. Not before.”

The child stamped. “But I must, I must! My daddy’s downstairs, and I want a clean dress and apron before I see him.”

“Your what?”

“My daddy. He’s downstairs. He’s in the Master’s office. I saw him go in.”

There was something so intense, so urgent and compelling about the child, that the officer gave in, and Jane was supplied with a clean dress and apron, against all the rules. She rushed to the washroom and washed her face and hands, brushed her hair until her curls shone, then flew downstairs to join the other children.

The officer plodded downstairs and told her colleagues of the extraordinary scene. They agreed that the child was mad, but one, with a snigger, said, “She may be right. Everyone says Jane’s father was a high-born gentleman. Well, there’s a fancy-lookin’ gent gone in Master’s office. We don’t know what for.” And she rubbed the side of her nose suggestively.

The girls filed into the hall and sat in rows, the youngest at the front, and the oldest at the back. Jane sat in the fifth row, her eyes fixed on the door where she knew her daddy would enter. She was burning with expectation.

The door opened and Sir Ian walked in, followed by the Master. Her heart stopped beating again. Yes, it was him, the same grave yet kindly face, the same smooth grey hair, and the same deep-set eyes with a smile at the corners. She sat up straight and tall. She was taller than the other girls anyway, but she increased her height by her posture. Her eyes were aflame with love, her mouth was slightly open, her teeth gleamed white as she smiled.

Sir Ian spoke to the children from the pulpit. He could see right down the long hall, with the massed young faces staring up at him. Most of the faces looked glum and unresponsive, and it is always difficult to address an audience from whom the speaker feels no wave of sympathy. He had a joyful message to impart; he had hoped for a joyful response. But most of the girls looked straight ahead, no emotion registering on their features. However, there was one little girl, sitting in the middle near the front, who looked really animated. Sir Ian therefore did what many public speakers do; he fixed his attention on one face in the audience and spoke to that person alone. He spoke of the coming summer and how hot London became at that time of year. He said: “I am going to take you away in the summer.”

The little girl stifled a gasp, her eyes alight.

He spoke of the countryside and the seaside, and said: “I am going to take you to a beautiful place by the sea.” The little girl could scarcely contain her emotion as he continued: “You will be able to paddle and swim, and build sandcastles and collect shells.”

The little girl in the fifth row was now breathing fast, alternately clenching and stretching her fingers.

Sir Ian said, “We will do all this when the summer comes.”

The little girl gave a sigh of delight as he stepped down from the pulpit. He felt pleased with himself. Overall, it had been a good address, and a good response.

The Master had also seen Jane’s reaction and made a silent note to reprimand her about exhibitionism. He had not yet heard from his subordinate officers about the clean dress and apron.

The girls stood up to leave the hall. One by one they filed past the Master and Sir Ian. It was at this point that Jane lost all control of herself. As she passed, she rushed out of line and flung her arms around Sir Ian’s waist, crying, “Thank you, Daddy, thank you, thank you,” then she burst into tears, sobbing into his waistcoat.

He was surprised by this, and not a little touched. He ruffled her pretty hair and murmured, “There, there, my child. Don’t take on so. You’ll go to the seaside, and have a lovely time.”

The Master tried to apologise and pull Jane away, but Sir Ian restrained him, saying that it was to the child’s credit that she showed so much gratitude. He patted her hair and shoulders and took out a fine lawn handkerchief to wipe her eyes.

“There, now, dry your eyes. You can’t go spoiling your pretty little face with tears. Let’s see you smile. That’s better.”

The girls continued to file past, but Jane still clung to him. The Master was standing beside them, seething with fury. After all the girls had left the hall, Sir Ian finally disentangled Jane’s arms from around him. “There now, little one,” he said, “off you run. Join your playmates. And I promise you will go to the seaside in the summer time.”

Jane reached up and touched his face, and breathed the words: “Oh Daddy, I love you, Daddy, I love you so much.”

She whispered it very softly, for him alone, but the Master heard every word. He said, out of the side of his mouth, to an officer: “Take her to the punishment room.” He then escorted his guest to the boys’ section, where Sir Ian gave his second address.

Jane ran to join the rest of the girls. They were agog with excitement and she was the centre of attention. She entered, proud and confident, her eyes dancing.

“That’s my daddy. He’s going to take me away.”

They crowded around, chattering. Most of the girls believed her, although some of the older ones didn’t. “Don’t be silly. We’re all going on holiday, not just you.”

Jane replied haughtily. “Oh well, perhaps he will take some of you as well. He’s very rich. But he’s my daddy and he’s taking me specially. After that we will live together in his big house.”

An officer was standing right behind her. Jane was not aware of it while she spoke, but when she saw the girls looking over her shoulder, she turned round. The officer grabbed her.

“You come along with me, my girl. The Master wants to see you.”

Jane’s heart leaped. Her bright eyes looked over to the other girls. “There, you see! My daddy’s going to take me away now. That’s why the Master wants to see me.”

The officer looked grim and most of the girls looked nervous. Only Jane was happy as she walked confidently away with the officer.

She was taken to the punishment room. The door was opened, she was pushed in, then the door was locked from the outside.

Jane was surprised, even startled, to find herself in a small room, about eight feet square, with no windows except the slit of a fanlight high up on one wall. There was no furniture, except for a three-legged stool sitting alone on the stone floor. Around the wall hung several canes of different lengths and a leather-thonged whip which had three tails, with a small lead pellet attached to the end of each tail.

She couldn’t understand it. Why should they want her to wait here? Still, what did it matter, she thought to herself. She could still feel her daddy’s kind, warm hands as he caressed her hair, and the sound of his voice as he called her “my child”. What did it matter? What did anything in the world matter but that she had told him she loved him and he had called her his child and promised to take her away?

Jane sat down on the stool to wait.

Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh returned to Oxford that evening full of philanthropic satisfaction. It had been a wonderful day. All the arrangements had been agreed with the workhouse master, the dates settled, the travelling arranged, catering organised, even the clothing supplier had been contracted. No wonder he was pleased. Over three hundred desperately poor children would benefit. He would be able to give a full and satisfactory report to his committee.

Lady Lavinia read his face as he entered the house. She shared her husband’s happiness. The maid brought in a late meal and they sat down to discuss the day’s work. He told her how he had addressed the children twice, first the girls and then the boys. They were poor, grey little things, he said, with very little life or vitality about them, not like their own children, who tumbled all over the place, and couldn’t be contained. She protested that their children were not all that bad – “but do go on, dear.”

“However,” he said, “there was one little girl who seemed different. She was full of life. She was hanging on to every word as I spoke. She didn’t take her eyes off me and she was obviously overcome with joy at the news. In fact she ran up to me afterwards to thank me.”

Sir Ian had been on the point of saying that the little girl had called him ‘Daddy’, but then he thought better of it. After all, women were funny creatures and you never knew what they might think once they got an idea into their heads.

Lady Lavinia asked what the child was like.

“Oh, I don’t know. Those damnation workhouse uniforms make all children look alike. I know she had dark hair. That’s all I can say. But one thing I do know for certain: she was the only one to come up and say ‘thank you’ personally.”

Lady Lavinia smiled fondly at her husband. “It does her much credit,” she said, “and you can be sure of another thing: there is one little girl for whom this will be a day to remember.”

A DAY TO REMEMBER

Jane waited for nearly two hours in the punishment room. This was because the Master had to accompany Sir Ian to the boys’ section, after which many practical arrangements had to be sorted out. Then the Master wanted his supper, and a chance to discuss Jane’s wickedness with his wife.

Two hours is a long time for a small child to wait alone in a closed room (Jane was eight years old). She grew hungry and fidgety. She was not particularly worried or frightened, in fact her mind was still buoyant. Her daddy had cuddled her and called her “my child”.

She heard a key in the lock, and jumped up expectantly, smoothing out her apron and running her fingers through her curls, her face eager. The Master and a male officer entered. Her face fell.

“Where’s my daddy?” she asked in a little voice.

The Master was bent on vengeance, and her question only added fuel to his fury. He took two steps across the room and hit her full in the face. She fell against the wall.

“You wicked girl. I’ll knock that nonsense out of you.” But Jane was a girl of spirit, and now that she had her protector, she wasn’t afraid of anyone. Her eyes gleaming, she faced the Master.

“I’ll tell my daddy on you,” she shouted.

The Master hit her again, harder this time. “Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh is not your father. Do you understand? Now say it after me: ‘Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh is not my father.’ Say it.”

Now at this point a very curious thing happened. Curious to an adult, that is, but logical to the mind of a child. Children frequently hear something quite different from what has actually been said, particularly if it is something new and unrelated to anything else in their experience. (For example, throughout her childhood, my daughter thought our telephone number was “fried potato”. She had heard us say “53280”.)

Jane thought the Master had said: “See a nasty smelly is not my father.” It didn’t make sense. She stared at him in sullen amazement.

“Say it, say it,” shouted the Master.

She didn’t say a word, but just looked at him.

The Master repeated the whole sentence, and demanded she say it, his hand raised threateningly.

The child continued to stare at him in amazement. “A nasty smelly?” she exclaimed, her tone raised enquiringly.

“You insolent little bastard,” the man roared. “First you insult Sir Ian, and now you insult me.”

To the officer: “Undress her.”

The officer grabbed her and started to undo the buttons of her dress. At this Jane really became alarmed and tried to pull away.

“Stop it, let me go. I’ll tell my daddy on you, I will.”

“Oh, the wickedness! Has she no shame?” muttered the officer, and continued to undress Jane until she stood naked before them. She was crying and frightened now, but still she resisted as much as her puny strength would allow.

“Hold her hands tight and turn her around,” ordered the Master, selecting the leather-thonged whip from the wall. Jane saw him take it down, and screamed.

“No! No! Don’t! Let me go! Da—”

The first lash fell across her back, knocking all the breath out of her. Pain like fire shot through her body, and the second stroke fell before she had time to breathe. When the third fell, with excruciating pain, Jane realised what was happening. She gathered all her strength and pulled hard at the hands holding her screaming, “No, stop it. Daddy, Da—”

The fourth lash fell with added force. The three lead pellets at the end of the thongs cut into her back.

The pain was like nothing we can imagine. A flogging across the back and shoulders causes indescribable agony because the bones, which are a mass of sensitive nerve endings, are only just beneath the skin surface, and there is very little soft tissue to protect them. The leather thongs were hard and cut the skin, exposing the bones to further pain and injury. The lead pellets struck in random places, tearing the flesh.

By the fifth lash, Jane began to lose consciousness. All her weight fell on to the arms of the officer who held her, and she vomited down his trousers.

“Dirty little thing,” he exclaimed, and jerked his knee upwards, catching her in the mouth. Her teeth clamped together over her tongue, which was lolling forward, and blood trickled out of her mouth.

Still the Master continued his self-appointed task. He had intended twenty lashes of the whip, but his wife had cautioned him, saying, “You don’t want to kill her. Questions might be asked. Ten lashes will be enough to teach the girl the lesson she deserves.”

Jane felt no more pain. She was only conscious of a terrible jolt to her body each time the lash fell. She could hear and see nothing beyond a red mist that swam all around her.

Eight . . . nine . . . ten. The Master brought down the last stroke with satisfaction. The officer let go of Jane’s hands, and she fell to the floor. She had wet herself, and she slid into the urine that was mixed with vomit and blood.

“Get a couple of the women to take her to the dormitory. She is to come to my office at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, before she goes to school.”

The Master issued the orders, hung the whip on the hook, and left the punishment room.

A nurse and a female officer came to collect Jane and take her up to the dormitory. The nurse was shocked with what she saw but the officer, who had seen it all before, was very blasé.

“She’ll get over it. A good beating never did a child any harm. ‘Spare the lash and spoil the child.’ Come on. Get up on your feet, you lazy girl, and put your dress on.”

The nurse was horrified. “You can’t put a dress on with her back like that. She needs lint and gauze and ointments.”

“Well she won’t get them,” said the female officer, with finality in her voice. “The Master would never stand for favouritism.”

The nurse took off her apron and wrapped the child in it. Jane could barely stand, let alone walk, so the nurse carried her upstairs to the dormitory. She laid her on the bed, face down, and fetched a bowl of cold water. She sat beside the bed for hours, bathing the girl’s back with cold water to reduce the blood flow and restrict the terminal capillaries, so reducing the inflammation.

In spite of the pain Jane fell asleep. The nurse continued to bathe her back and all the girls crept into the dormitory, subdued and silent. They slipped into bed, and only a few whispers were heard. One of their number, the brightest and liveliest, had been terribly flogged, and a wave of shock and horror united them in silence.

A little girl with blonde hair crept up to the nurse. She was crying piteously. She said her name was Peggy and she laid her fair hair against Jane’s dark curls, whispering to her, kissing her, and sobbing. She asked the nurse if she could help, and so she took a cold sponge and bathed Jane’s back just as the nurse showed her. Together, the stunned and silent nurse and the weeping little girl ministered to the stricken Jane, until Peggy was so tired that she too fell asleep.

It was probably this action on the part of the nurse and her child helper that saved Jane’s life. All night she drifted in and out of consciousness, and the nurse sat up with her through the long hours whilst the other girls slept. Sometimes Jane moaned in pain, and moved her limbs. Sometimes she let out a weak cry of “Daddy”. Sometimes she took the nurse’s hand, and held it fast. The blood on her back was clotting, the nurse noted with satisfaction, and the child could obviously move her legs, so at least her spine had not been broken. The hours slipped past.

The Master had ordered that Jane should report to his office at 8 a.m. before school. But Jane could not be roused. The Mistress was called and she, although secretly shocked by the child’s appearance, declared that she was shamming, and pulled the mattress so hard that Jane fell out of bed onto the floor, where she lay, immobile. The Mistress then looked coldly at her, turned her with her foot and declared that she could have the day in bed, but must be ready for school the following morning.

Thinking to be helpful, the nurse (who knew nothing of the background), said to the Mistress as she was leaving. “The child has been calling for her daddy all night long, madam. Do you think it would be helpful if we were to fetch him?”

To her surprise the Mistress exploded. “Her daddy! Oh, the iniquity, the sinfulness! Will there be no end to this child’s wickedness?” and she stormed off to tell the Master this latest revelation. Something else must be done to purge Jane of her lies.

Jane was not able to go to school the next day, nor for many days after that. Gradually the pain eased, and her mind began to clear. She was able to stand, and to take a little food. She barely spoke, and scarcely raised her eyes from the ground.

The Mistress came to the dormitory to tell her that all this shamming would not be tolerated a moment longer and she must go to school, but first the Master wished to see her. Jane went deathly white and started to shake all over. She attempted to follow the Mistress out of the dormitory, but her legs gave way, and she sank to the floor. An officer hauled her to her feet and dragged her downstairs. As she approached the door of the Master’s office Jane vomited the contents of her stomach all down her apron. The Mistress was furious.

“We’ll soon have that off you,” she shouted, and tore off the apron.

The Master sat at his desk and eyed Jane up and down. The officer kept hold of her, or she would probably have fallen.

“You wicked child. You monstrous liar. It seems there is no end to your depravity. In spite of just chastisement you persist in calling Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh your father. If you ever do so again, I will flog you again. But, at my wife’s request, I will not do so now. You see how good and kind the Mistress is to you, and how little you deserve it. For the time being, as a reminder to you of your wickedness and as an example to the others, you will be deprived of your dress and apron, and you will wear a sack. Now go. And remember, if you say that Sir Ian Astor-Smaleigh is your father one more time I will flog you. And the next time I will show no mercy.”

Jane was taken away to the laundry room and her dress removed. A sack with three holes, for head and arms, was put on her with string tied around the waist. Her hair was shorn as close as possible, so that she looked nearly bald. She was sent to school like that.

If Miss Sutton was horrified at her appearance, she was even more horrified at the change in the child’s behaviour. The little girl sat shivering and cringing. Each time Miss Sutton went up to her, she reacted with terror. In fact she seemed terrified of everyone, even the other children who spoke to her. She did not read, and she barely joined in any of the lessons. If she held a pencil, her hand shook so much that she was unable to write. The most alarming feature was her total silence. For two whole weeks she said absolutely nothing.

The Headmistress wrote to the Master of the workhouse, asking what had happened. He replied to the effect that he had absolute authority over the workhouse children and was answerable to no one. He reminded the Headmistress that he was a member of the Board of Governors of the school. If there was any interference, he was in a strong position to complain to the Chairman about the conduct and competence of the Headmistress. No further action was taken.

Humiliations were heaped upon Jane. She started bedwetting. The workhouse punishment for this was that the offending child would be stood on the detention platform, which was at the front of the dining hall, visible to everyone, holding her wet sheet. The child had no breakfast that day. Morning after morning, throughout the winter and spring, Jane, shorn of her hair and wearing a sack tied with string, stood miserably, conspicuously on that platform, clutching a wet sheet. Day after day she went to school with no breakfast. This morning penance continued with monotonous regularity.

The scars on Jane’s back healed more quickly than the scars on her mind. In fact, her mind and personality never did fully recover. She was never seen to smile, nor heard to laugh. Her buoyant, bouncing step changed to a cringing shuffle. Her flashing blue eyes were scarcely seen, because she would look up briefly, fearfully, and then look down again quickly. Her voice changed to a whisper. Her precocious level of schoolwork changed to average or below average in the class. Miss Sutton was heartbroken, but however much she tried to encourage Jane to write stories for her, as she had in the old days, she had no success. Jane would put her hands up to her mouth, cast fearful sideways glances at her teacher, and whisper: “Yes, Miss Sutton.” But after half an hour the page would still be blank.

Jane’s mind was largely blank as well. She had very little memory of the events that led up to her flogging, and she hadn’t the faintest idea why it had occurred. She went through it all in her mind, over and again, round and round, an endless repetition of thought that got her nowhere. Everything was confused. Nothing made sense.

She was clear in her mind that it had something to do with the day her daddy had come to the workhouse and told her that he would take her away in the summer. But why had the Master been so cross with her? Her daddy wasn’t cross, so why should the Master be cross? Why had he flogged her, and made her wear the sack? She tried and tried to think what she had done wrong, but could think of nothing. And why had the Master shouted several times: “See a nasty smelly is not your father?” This was the biggest puzzle of all. “A nasty smelly?” What did it mean? Her daddy wasn’t a “smelly”. Her daddy smelled of lavender, as she had always known he would. She had cuddled him and smelled the lavender. She had never called the Master or Mistress nasty smellies, so why had he flogged her? Like a swarm of wasps these thoughts buzzed in her mind all the time, day and night, until she felt she would go mad with the buzzing.

But not for one moment did Jane, in her thoughts, impute any blame to her daddy or cease to love him. In fact her love grew stronger and more real because she had seen him and touched him, and he had stroked her hair, called her “my child” and said he would take her away in the summer time. The spring came, and Jane knew that the summer would follow. It would not be long now. She only had to endure and be good, and not get into any more trouble. Her daddy would come, as sure as the summer sunshine, and take her away from the workhouse for ever. This fragile dream she clung to. It was her one solace in her misery and bewilderment.

May, June, July. The summer days were drawing out. There was a buzz of excitement amongst the workhouse girls – they were going on holiday. It had never happened before. Jane’s crushed spirits rose a little, and occasionally she allowed herself to lift her eyes from the floor.

August arrived, and preparations were made. Summer dresses and sandals were provided. The girls could talk of nothing else. There was a fever pitch of excitement. The day for departure arrived.

The girls were standing in the dining hall after breakfast and everything was ready.

The Mistress entered. “Right, now. Form a line and march out quietly. We will proceed to the station.”

The girls stepped forward.

“Not you. Stay where you are.”

The Mistress pointed at Jane. The other girls marched out.

Sick disappointment took possession of Jane. She saw the last girl leave, as she stood in her place. She heard footsteps echo down the corridors and doors banging. Then silence.

Now it was that Jane’s heart finally broke. Hitherto her suffering had been physical. Now the torture was mental, emotional, and spiritual. The utter desolation of rejection was hers to savour. Her daddy was not going to take her away. Her daddy did not love her, or want her. That was why she was there in the workhouse. He had put her there because he did not want her and she would never see him again. She knew it in her heart.

Throughout the long weeks, alone but for the porter’s wife who brought her food twice a day, Jane lived with this bitter knowledge. She had nothing to do, day after day; no books, no toys, no pencils and paper. She cried herself to sleep alone in the dormitory; ate alone in the huge refectory; went out alone in the yard (euphemistically called a playground) and walked around the walls. She spoke to no one except the porter’s wife, twice a day.

The other girls returned, sun-browned and happy. Jane heard stories of the seaside and paddling and catching crabs and building sandcastles. She didn’t say a word.

The knowledge of rejection, of being unwanted, is more terrible to live with than anything else, and a rejected child will usually never get over it. A physical pain entered Jane’s body, somewhere in the region of the solar plexus, which ached all the time and from which she would never be free.

Unknown to Jane, Sir Ian and Lady Lavinia had visited the children’s holiday camp. They had played with the children by the sea, organised races for them across the sands, hired a man with a donkey to give them rides and read stories to them in the evening. They were very happy with their work.

At the end of the day, Sir Ian asked the Master: “I have not seen that pretty child who came up to thank me when I first met you. Where is she?”

The Master was nonplussed, but his resourceful wife stepped forward with a curtsey. “The child has an aunt, sir, who always takes her on holiday each year. I assure you, sir, that at this very moment the child is playing happily on a beach somewhere in Devon.” She curtsied again.

“I am glad to hear it,” said Lady Lavinia, “but for my part, I am sorry not to see the child. My husband spoke most highly of her.”

After they had left, the Master said. “What a blessing we did not bring that wretched child. If she had gone running up to that man in front of his wife, and clung to him and called him Daddy, heaven knows what trouble it would have stirred up.”

And on this occasion – who can tell? – the Master may have been right.

FRANK

Frank had but a dim recollection of his father. He remembered a tall, strong man, whom he held in awe. He remembered his big voice and huge, rough hands. He could remember once tracing the veins on the back of this vast hand with his little fingers, and looking at his own smooth white skin and wondering if he would ever have hands like that. To be like his father was his only ambition and he worshipped him. In the later, sadder years of his childhood he tried desperately to remember what his father had been like, but a phantom that comes and goes could not have been more elusive and only the dimmest memory remained.

He remembered his mother much more clearly; his sweet, gentle mother who was never strong because she was always coughing. He remembered the sound of her voice as she sang songs to him and played with him. Above all, he remembered her cuddles as she put him to bed and lay down beside him.

In the winter his mother hardly went out of doors because of her weak chest and his father would say, as he went off to work, “Now you look after your mother while I’m away, Frank lad. I’m relying on you to take care of her for me.” And Frank would look up at his god with big solemn eyes and accept the task as a sacred duty.

When a tiny baby was born – so tiny that everyone said she would not live – Frank was four years old. He had been an only child all his life and could not conceive of any other child entering his world. Many boys of that age become very jealous of a new-born baby, but not Frank. He was mesmerised by this tiny creature, hardly bigger than a teacup, who could move and cry, and who needed so much care. Not for a moment did he resent the hours of attention given to the baby. In fact, he liked to help. The most fascinating thing of all was to watch his mother breast-feeding the baby, and he tried never to be far away when this mysterious and beautiful ritual was going on. He kept very quiet, crept close to his mother and watched, spellbound, as the baby sucked and the milk oozed from the nipple.

The baby was premature and sickly, and for a long time her life hung in the balance. His father said to him, many times: “You’ve got a special job to do, young man. You’ve got to look after your little sister. That’s your job now, lad.”

So Frank watched over her, and hardly went out to play with the other boys in the court, because he was so busy looking after his little sister.

The baby didn’t die. She gained strength and became quite robust, although she always remained small. She was christened Margaret but was called Peggy, because Margaret seemed too long a name for such a small baby. After the christening Frank’s father said, “You done a good job there, son; and I’m proud of yer.”

Then catastrophe struck. In those years typhoid was raging through East London. His huge, strong father, who had never known a day of illness in his life, was hit by the disease and died within a few days. His mother, who had never been strong, was spared and so was the baby. His mother went out to work, cleaning offices. She left home in the early hours each morning, and again each evening, leaving Frank to look after Peggy, who was by now a toddler.

One day Frank ran home from school (he didn’t think much of school, regarding it as a waste of time) to take over the domestic responsibilities from his mother, so that she could go out to her job. It was cold and she was coughing badly, but she went nonetheless. Money had to be earned, or they would be homeless. Frank did as he had so often done before: he put some wood that he had found on his way home from school onto the fire, made some tea for himself and Peggy, played with her and, as the fire was dying, he undressed her and put her to bed, creeping in beside her for warmth.

In the middle of the night he woke up, aware that something was wrong. It was pitch-black, and the quiet was terrifying. He could hear Peggy breathing, but that was all. Something was missing. Nausea seized him as he realised that his mother was not there. In a panic he felt all over the bed, but the side where his mother usually slept was empty. He called out in a small voice so as not to wake Peggy, but there was no reply. He crept out of bed and found the matches. He struck one and the flame leaped up, lighting the whole room momentarily. His mother was not there. Blinded by tears, he crept back into bed and held Peggy in his arms.

The cold had badly affected his mother as soon as she stepped outside. She was asthmatic and bronchitic, and had been fighting off a chest infection for several weeks. She had a mile to walk to the bus, and the freezing mist rising off the river had got into her lungs. She was thankful for the brief respite of sitting in the bus, but by the time she got to the building where she was employed, she felt more dead than alive. She went to the cleaning cupboard to get out her things, but the bucket felt so heavy that she could hardly move it. She asked permission to make herself a cup of tea, saying she would feel better with something warm inside her. The tea was indeed comforting, but the building was cold and she sat shivering in the basement, pulling her shawl around her shoulders and coughing. One by one the office workers left and she found herself alone.

Normally, this office took her about three hours, but after one hour, she had scarcely cleaned one tenth of it. She felt so weak she could scarcely drag herself around, and there was still the scrubbing to do. She returned to the basement to get the bucket – the one that had felt impossibly heavy when empty – and filled it with water. She pushed it along the floor with her feet and then lifted it up the stairs one by one, resting it on each stair as she did so. She reached the second storey this way, and then her failing strength must have given out. She fell down the stairs that she had climbed so laboriously, knocking the bucket over as she fell. She was drenched with water and lay on the stone floor all night. In the morning they found her dead at the bottom of the stairs.

Frank had never spent a night away from his mother. There was only one bed so they had all slept together even when his father was alive. He had never even contemplated a time without the comforting warmth of her body beside him. Now, in the dark and cold of the room, the bed felt like a hostile and alien territory, and he wanted to run away from it, run to the next-door neighbours, screaming. But there was Peggy to think of. She was quietly sleeping, unaware that anything was wrong. So he bit his lips, rubbed his fists into his eyes and cuddled up close to her.

He was six years old.

He must have slept, because it was daylight when he was awoken by Peggy crying. There was some milk and water left from the night before but it was cold and she pushed it away. He did not know what to do. He took a wet nappy off her, as he had seen his mother do, but then he didn’t know what to do with it, so hid it under the bed. There was no more wood for the fire. He drank the cold milk himself and crept back into bed. They fell asleep again.

He awoke as a crowd of neighbouring women entered the room.

“Oh, it’s a shame, oie tells ya.”

“Poor li’l kids. Vey didn’ ask ’a be born.”

“Both dead in six months.”

“It makes yer wanna cry, don’ it?”

Frank looked around him in bewilderment and held Peggy defensively, pulling the blanket up higher.

A man entered the room. “Are these the children of the deceased?” he enquired.

A chorus of voices answered.

“Yeah, more’s the pity.”

“Poor li’l lambs.”

“Vey don’ know wha’s ’appened.”

“And is there no relative to look after them?”

“No’ as ’ow I knows on, do you, Lil?”

“Nah, no one.”

“They will have to come with me, and the effects sold to contribute to the Guardians’ expenses.”

He looked around the room at the meagre furniture – one bed, one table, and two chairs, a small cupboard, a washing bowl, a chamber pot, a candlestick, some tin plates and cups – all back-breakingly acquired by the father, to provide for his family.

“Will someone get them ready while I take an inventory?”

Two women stepped forward, and Frank grabbed the back of the bed, clutching Peggy. “Where’s Mummy?” he asked plaintively.

“Yer mum’s dead, luvvy, more’s the pity.”

“No, my dad’s dead,” he insisted.

“An so’s yer mum, dearie. Found dead vis mornin’ in ye office.”

“Blue, she was,” chorused the women to each other.

“Froze stiff, vey say, an’ soakin’ wet.”

“Wet froo, an’ all, and ’er wiv her weak chest.”

“No’ surprisin’, is it?”

Frank looked from one to another, and horror struck his heart. Was his mother dead? He had promised his father that he would look after her! What had gone wrong? Peggy was beginning to whimper again. Kind hands were placed on him. He clung to the bars of the bedstead with all his strength and turned his back on the women, holding Peggy, who was beginning to scream now, between his body and the head of the bed.

“You will have to get him free,” said the man. “They cannot stay here alone.”

It took four women to loosen his fingers from the bars. A child’s fingers can be incredibly strong if they are curled around something. Eventually two women were holding him and Peggy in their arms. He was biting and scratching and kicking in a hysteria of fear and rage. He shouted at the woman holding Peggy, “Give her to me. She’s my sister. Don’t take her away.” Tears were streaming down his face.

“We will have to go. Does anyone know where the key is kept?” said the man.

The door of the room was locked, and they made their way downstairs. The woman holding Frank was badly bruised. They walked through the streets, collecting a crowd of onlookers as they went.

Frank and Peggy were admitted to the infants’ section of the workhouse, where boys and girls under seven years of age were housed. They were undressed and bathed and treated not unkindly. In fact, Peggy’s tiny stature and wispy blonde hair evoked a stream of sympathy from the women who received them. Frank had exhausted his fury, and sullenly allowed himself to be washed and his hair examined for fleas.

“We’ll have to cut it off. You know the rules.”

He submitted to having his head shaved, but when he saw a large woman doing the same to Peggy, he rushed at her and butted her in the stomach with his head. She collapsed onto a chair winded, then grabbed the boy and thrashed him soundly, whilst another officer shaved Peggy.

“It’s a shame, cutting this pretty hair. But it will soon grow again.”

Poor little Peggy looked like a tiny Martian when they had finished, and Frank sobbed with impotent rage.

The children were dressed in workhouse clothes and taken to the playroom to meet the other children. We would not call it a playroom today, because there was nothing to play with. It was just a large, bare room, about forty feet long by twenty feet wide, with high, uncurtained windows and rough floorboards.

“Now you play quietly with the others until tea time.” The door was shut, and the officer left.

They stood shyly in the doorway, looking at about forty other children, all wearing the same clothes. Frank, acutely self-conscious that he and Peggy had no hair, tried to hide her under his jacket. A boy of about his age ran up to them, shouting: “You’re new. You’re new. Where’ve you come from? What’s your name, baldy? An’ who’s this little squirt, then?” He pulled at Peggy’s arm and tickled her scalp.

Frank flung himself at the boy, fighting with savage fury. All the rage that had been building up during the day was concentrated in his attack. The rest of the children stood back to watch the fun. The other boy was no slouch when it came to fighting and the two were evenly matched. There were no adults in the room to stop them.

Peggy was terrified and ran screaming to a corner, where she crouched down, hiding her head. A little girl with dark hair left the others, came over to her and put her small arms around the sobbing child. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry. They’re only fighting. Boys are always fighting. Boys are awful. Here, sit on my knee.”

The girl sat down on the floor and Peggy climbed onto her knees. She played with a long, dark ringlet hanging down near her face, and laughed when she pulled it and it bounced back up again.

The girl smiled happily. “You’re like a little doll. I’ve never had a doll, but I’ve seen them. And you’re better than a doll, because you’re real, and dolls are only pretend. Will you be my friend? My name’s Jane, and I’m four. What’s yours?”

Peggy didn’t say anything, but her tears stopped. Jane sat quietly, cuddling Peggy, and laughing to herself as she watched the fight.

The boys were roughly the same weight, but Frank had the advantage of cold, calculated fury and his need to defend his sister. He glanced at the other boys who were egging them on, and knew instinctively that if he lost this fight, Peggy would never be safe from their torments.

After a few minutes Frank’s adversary was on the floor in a corner. “Truce. Give in. Hold ’im off,” he called out.

Frank turned to face the others. He raised his fists defiantly. “Anyone else want a go?”

No one stepped forward.

Frank swaggered over to the corner where Peggy sat on Jane’s knee. “Thanks,” he said. “She’s only two, and she’s scared. Her name’s Peggy and I’m Frank.”

The girl had a merry laugh, open features and piercing blue eyes. Frank liked her, he liked the way she was nursing Peggy, and he saw the contentment with which the little girl responded to the older one. He knew that he could trust her. “Let’s be friends,” he said.

Over the next few weeks, the reality of his mother’s death dawned upon Frank.

He would never see her again and pain inside reduced him to tears. Other boys laughed and jeered at him, but he only had to stick out his jaw and raise his fists aggressively, and they quickly backed off. Peggy did not seem as unhappy, because Frank was always there for her. Also, Jane had taken to her and petted and fussed over her, calling her “my little doll”. Jane was indisputably the leader among the girls, so her protection meant a good deal.

Jane was good for Frank also. He liked her with the instinctive affection that recognises a kindred spirit. He approved of her gentle ways with Peggy, and he also liked her naughtiness. She was always playing tricks and pranks, making everyone laugh. She would jump out from behind a door when the officer opened it, shouting “boo”, and then run away laughing. She was always caught and smacked, but nothing seemed to quench her high spirits. The day she climbed the water pipe in the playground and sat on the gutter and wouldn’t come down was one of the funniest things Frank could ever remember. Fat old Officer Hawkins had been on duty that day and got onto a ladder, then lumbered up it, with all the boys crowding around underneath, trying to see her knickers. When she finally got Jane down, she thrashed her soundly in the playground, and then again in the evening before bedtime, but Jane just rubbed her bottom, shook her curls defiantly, and did not seem to care.

The night times were the worst for Frank. Alone in a small, hard bed, with darkness all around, he sobbed silently for his sweet mother, whom he had adored with all the passion of boyhood. He missed the warmth of her body, he missed the smell of her skin, the touch of her hand, the sound of her breathing. He would creep over to Peggy’s bed and get in beside her, where the smell of her hair would numb his pain, and they would sleep together till morning. This became their one comfort in the first months of their life in the workhouse.

A year passed. After breakfast one morning, Frank and two other boys were taken to the Matron’s office. She said abruptly, “You are big boys now that you are seven, and we are taking you to the boys’ section today. Wait in the hallway, and the van will come for you at nine o’clock.”

The boys did not know what she meant, and the three of them sat on the bench, engaged in mock fights and ribaldry.

At nine o’clock, a man entered the front door and enquired, “Are these three to go?”

They were taken outside to a green van and told to climb in the back. It was all very exciting. They had never been in a van before, so they clambered in willingly, ready for adventure. The van started with a jerk, and they were thrown off the bench onto the floor. They shrieked with laughter. This was going to be a good day. A ride in a van! You wait till we get back and tell the others. The van stopped twice, and other boys of their own age climbed in. Soon there were eight boys, all shouting and skidding around the floor of the van as they turned corners, or pressing against each other to see out of the small back window in order to wave at people as they passed. Everyone turned to look, because motorised transport was comparatively unusual in those days. The boys felt very privileged, and infinitely superior to the people walking or travelling in horse-drawn carts and wagons.

Eventually the van stopped and the back door opened. Frank saw a very large, grey-stone building in front of him, and he did not much like the look of it.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“This is the boys’ section. You come here when you are seven and stay until you are fourteen,” said a tough-looking man, who was a workhouse officer.

“And where’s Peggy?” he demanded.

“I don’t know who Peggy is, but she’s not here.”

“Peggy is my sister and I look after her. My dad told me to.”

The officer laughed. “Well, someone else will have to look after her. There’s no girls allowed in here.”

Still Frank did not understand. He was unsure, frightened, and he felt like crying, but he wasn’t going to let the other boys see him, so he squared his shoulders, clenched his fists and put on a swagger as they were taken to the Master’s office.

The interview was brief. They were told that they must obey the rules, obey the officers at all times, and that if they did not do so they would be punished. The Master then said, “You will be given your duties and lunch is at one o’clock. You will start school tomorrow.”

Frank had wanted to ask about Peggy, but the Master so terrified him that he did not dare speak. He followed the officer to the dining hall with a feeling of panic in his heart that he had not known since the night when he had awoken to find his mother’s side of the bed empty.

Lunch in a huge refectory with about a hundred and fifty other boys, some of them very big, was terrifying and he could hardly eat. He ate half a potato and drank some water, but it nearly choked him, and he could not stop his tears from falling. Some of the bigger boys pointed at him and sniggered. None of the male officers showed any sympathy. The three new boys who had come together were all considerably more sober now. The fun and high spirits of the van ride evaporated as the reality of the situation began to dawn upon them. They had left the small world and comparative kindness of the nursery, where there were women officers and nurses, for the harsh, often brutal world of the workhouse proper, where, for the next seven years, they would encounter only male officers.

Back in the nursery, after breakfast, Peggy looked around for Frank, but could not find him. She looked in the lavatory and the washroom, but he was not there. She looked in the classroom and under the stairs, but he was not in those places either. Bewildered and frightened, she stood on the bottom stair hugging the banister, and stamped her feet. An officer came up to her, but she screamed and stamped her little feet even faster.

“Poor little thing,” remarked the officer to a colleague, “she’s going to miss her brother, they were very close. She’ll just have to get over it in her own time. There’s nothing we can do.”

Peggy was three years old and Frank had been with her all her life. She had not noticed the loss of her father, when she was eighteen months old, and had only the vaguest memory of her mother. But Frank was her world, her life, her security and she was utterly devastated. All day she stood on the bottom step, hugging the smooth, round balustrades, sometimes silent, sometimes sobbing. Sometimes she kicked the stairs and hurt her toe. Twice she wet herself, but still she wouldn’t move. Jane tried to talk to her, but Peggy shook her shoulders and screamed, “Go away.”

“Leave her alone,” said an officer to Jane, “she’ll get over it in a day or two.”

Towards evening Peggy started to bang her head on the balustrade. It hurt, but she wanted it to. Perhaps Frank would come when he knew she had hurt herself. When he didn’t come, she sobbed uncontrollably, then slipped down onto the stairs in a deep sleep. A nurse picked her up, carried her to the dormitory and put her to bed.

For the next three months, Peggy hunted for Frank every day. She always expected to find him, but never did. She asked everyone: “Where’s Frank?” and was told that he had been transferred to the big boys’ section, but she did not understand. She developed the habit of sitting alone in a corner and rocking herself. A nurse, who knew that this was a particularly frightening development in a lonely, insecure child, tried to comfort her. But Peggy would not be comforted. Each lonely night, she sucked her thumb and rocked herself and cried for Frank to come to her. But he didn’t come.

As time passed, she stopped looking for Frank and asked for him less, until eventually she stopped asking. It was assumed that she had forgotten all about him.

It was to be nine years before brother and sister saw each other again, and by that time they did not recognise each other.

BILLINGSGATE

At the age of seven, Frank had entered an all-male world of petty rules, upheld by harsh, uncompromising discipline and gratuitous tyranny. Many of the workhouse officers were men who had been brought up in a workhouse themselves during the nineteenth century, when conditions for paupers were simply appalling. A child had to have a very strong constitution to survive the brutality, the work, the cold, and near-starvation. These men knew of no other way of life, and to them it was only natural to impose the same sort of regime on the boys in their charge.

Frank was immediately set to work on one of the numerous tasks assigned to paupers: cleaning potatoes, cutting cabbage, scrubbing out the huge cooking vats (only the smallest boys could get inside them), burnishing the stoves, cleaning the brass, and hosing down the vast stone floors of the kitchen – and woe betide any boy who got himself wet! The list was endless and the day long, starting as it did at 6 a.m. The boys also went to the local council school, so the work had to be done before or after school. Frank found that if his tasks were not finished before he went to school, he got a beating from the officer in charge, and if he stayed behind to finish the job, he got a beating from the schoolmaster for being late!

Small boys quickly learned to hide their tears. They knew that any sign of weakness would be seized upon by a bigger boy and mercilessly exploited. Bullying, constant intimidation and jeering were the only response a smaller boy would gain from tears.

Once, and once only, Frank asked an officer where Peggy was. The man must have told one of the older boys, perhaps maliciously, knowing what would happen. The same day, in the washroom, a chorus went up. “Peggy, Peggy, who’s Peggy?”

“Peggy’s his tart. What a fart!”

“Peg, Peg, peg your nose, what a pong!”

“Peggy’s a stink.”

“He has to put a clothes peg on his nose ’afore he can touch ’er.”

Frank burst into tears, and a big boy came and pushed him over onto the slippery floor.

“Garn, you ain’t got no tart, yer titch,” said the boy, squeezing Frank’s testicles so hard that he screamed with pain.

The officer came in and the big boy swiftly merged into the crowd, looking innocent.

The officer looked round and asked no questions. “Get up,” he said curtly to Frank, “get washed and go to the dormitory.”

Frank crept into bed and cried, as he did every night, for his mother and his sister. He had learned to make no sound when crying, so as not to attract attention, and to keep very still, so that he seemed to be asleep. But he often lay awake for hours, his heart bursting.

During these wakeful hours he often – nearly always, in fact – heard movements and soft footsteps, grunting and puffing and cursing sounds, as iron bedsteads rattled and straw mattresses squeaked. Each dormitory had an officer in charge who had himself once been a workhouse boy. The officer slept in a closed cubicle at the end of rows of beds, and each night a boy would slip quietly out of bed and go into the cubicle.

What can one expect if a crowd of boys are thrown together, with no escape and no female influence? All the boys were lonely. All of them were motherless. They had only each other in whom to find comfort and, let us hope, a little happiness because for them life would be short. From 1914 to 1918 the older boys in Frank’s dormitory – those born in the 1890s – were destined to be sent straight from the workhouses of England to the trenches of France, to die as cannon-fodder in defence of King and Country.

It was September 1914. A costermonger by the name of Tip called at the workhouse and asked to speak to the Master. The Master was prim and pompous; the coster flashy and talkative. He explained, in a husky voice inclined to sudden squeaks, that his lad had gone off to the war, and he had been left without a boy, and a coster must ’ave a boy, how else was he goin’ to do his trade, like, an’ what he was lookin’ for was a sharp little lad of about eleven or twelve, eleven being the preferential age, seeing as how they learns quickest, a boy who was a good worker, an’ quick, an’ it didn’t matter about no book learning, because he never could see no use for that in the fish trade, and them as ’ad book learning never seemed to get on spectackiler in the trade, but he, Tip, would edicate the boy himself an’ make a right sharp coster out of him, as how he could earn his living honest-like, an’ keep his head up with the best, an’ he would supply his lodgins an’ his victuals, least as to say his doxy would, an’ ’ad the Master got such a boy, who was hard-workin’ an’ willin’?

The coster delivered all this in a curious voice that growled and gurgled sometimes, and squeaked and whistled at others. The Master paused to think, and the coster, who never paused and could not conceive of anyone else doing so, started again, “An’ he’s gotta be strong, ’cause its no place for a wimpish lad, an the doxy’ll feed him well an’ keep his strength up, an’—”

The Master held up his hand to silence the man. “Just wait here, will you?” he said, as he left the office.

Workhouse masters were encouraged to off-load inmates in order to reduce expenses, but they were not allowed to turn them out onto the streets unless provision for their maintenance was assured. The apprentice system was the answer.

The Master thought carefully about the coster’s request, and his mind fixed on Frank – he was eleven, he was strong, he was hard-working, he was obedient, and he was, according to his school reports, one of the “has ability but must try harder” type – the despair of every honest schoolmaster.

The boys were at tea, and Frank was called out.

“Now stand up straight, look lively and don’t answer back,” said the Master as he cuffed him round the ear. “There’s a man here wants to see you.”

They entered the office, where the coster was whistling. He had a beautiful, mellow whistle that seemed a most unlikely adjunct to his peculiar speaking voice.

“This boy seems to answer your requirements. I give you my assurance that he is hard-working. All our boys are trained to work.”

The coster looked Frank up and down and sucked his teeth. He had only two, one in the upper and one in the lower jaw, both at the front, so he was able to vary his sucking with singularly comic effect.

He pinched Frank’s ear. “You’re a skinny li’l sprog. Can you lift a box of herrings?”

Frank didn’t dare to answer back in front of the Master, so he just nodded.

“Ain’ chew got a tongue, ven?” demanded the coster.

Again Frank nodded.

“Yes, he has and he can use it to good effect when he wants to,” answered the Master.

“Vat’s what I needs, a boy as can holler good and loud like, an’ make ’em all sit up.”

“This is the boy for you, then. He’s got a voice like a foghorn,” said the Master conclusively.

“I’ll take ’im. An’ if he don’t come up to scratch, I’ll bring him back next week.”

Before Frank had time to say a word, he was whisked off to the clothes cupboards, his workhouse uniform removed, and ill-fitting street clothes put on him. The coster took him by the hand and they stepped out into the road together.

Tip was a flashy dresser. Not for him the drab greys and browns of working men. He wore green corduroy trousers and a shirt of vivid blue. His shoes were tied with enormous bows which bore no resemblance to the humble shoelace, and at his throat was tied a silk neckerchief of red and blue. His cap was not your ordinary cloth cap, as worn by the English, nor the beret favoured by the French, yet it bore a close similarity to the French style. Tip’s cap could be described as a very large beret, made of the best velvet, and the colour, neither blue nor green, seemed to change with the light and movement. Tip considered himself a real swell, and his doxy admired him prodigiously.

He glanced down at Frank and his masculine vanity acknowledged that the boy was taking in his elegance. “You gotta look sharp in our trade, titch. No use lookin’ like a bag ’o dirty washin’. The ladies don’ like it. An’ it’s the ladies as wha’ does the buyin’, see? So you gotta please the ladies. That’s rule number one. We’ll ’ave to get you some new clobber. Can’t ’ave you goin’ round lookin’ like vat, queering my pitch. The ladies would run away fritted, vey would. I knows of a Jew as what can fix you up cheap and natty like.”

Tip had started the sentence in his baritone voice, but as he came to the end of it, the words came out in a series of high, unexpected squeaks. Aware that Frank was listening with puzzled attention, he explained.

“It’s the toobs. The toobs what wears out with all that ’ollering. They gives out if you’re a good coster, like what I am, ’cause they’re too delicate to stand all that ’ollerin’. Vat’s what I needs a boy for, to ’oller, along with other fings, lots of other fings, all of which I’ll teach you, but ’ollerin’ will be one of your first jobs. Now let’s ’ear you ’oller. See vat li’l lad over there, playing in vat puddle? Well, you call out, loud as you can now, ‘Hey, mucky, your mum’s comin’.”

Frank caught the spirit of things, and bellowed the words out with all his strength. The boy jumped up and ran round the corner like a greyhound.

Frank roared with laughter, and squeezed Tip’s hand. “Vat’s what I needs,” said Tip. “Reckons as how you’ll suit me, an’ if you can pick up ve other tricks of the trade quick like, we’ll get on famous. Now we’re gettin’ to my lodgings, an’ my doxy’s Doll see, and Doll, she’s a rare ’un, but she won’ stand no lip from boys, see, so don’ you give her no lip an’ you won’t feel the back of ’er ’and.” Tip rubbed the side of his chin reflectively and muttered, “An’ you don’t wanna feel the back of ’er ’and, I can tell yer.”

They climbed a dark and foul-smelling staircase to the fourth floor. A large and shapely woman ambled towards them. She wore a red skirt, frayed and dirty at the hem, and a purple blouse, high at the neck, with a row of jet buttons down the front against which a full bosom pressed, screaming for release. Black jet beads hung to her waist, and heavy black hair hung down around her shoulders. When she smiled, her teeth were also black, as though they had been painted to match her outfit. She looked at them both, then cried out, “Is vis the li’l workhouse kid, ven? Oh, look, he’s thin, the pet,” and she pressed Frank’s head to her bosom, an experience which he found to be not unpleasant, though the smell could have been sweeter. “We’ll ’ave to give ’im some pie dahn Dill’s, eh Tip?”

“Let’s ge’ goin’ ven,” said Tip with a leer.

Doll twisted her hair up on top of her head in a fashionable coil (Frank watched, fascinated) and stuck several pins in. One of them had a bird on the end and this she settled on the top of her head.

“You bet, squire,” she said with a wink. Then she leaned down to Frank. “He’s a nice-lookin’ li’l lad, bu’ thin like. Oh, I don’ like ’a see ’em so thin. What’s yer name an’ all, eh? We’ll ge’ choo some pie, ven. Howzat?”

It was nearly seven o’clock and the streets were filled with people. Apart from marching to school in a crocodile, Frank had not been outside the workhouse gates for years. He was filled with wonder and to linger was irresistible. Here, a family was fighting, the man and woman threatening each other with equal fury; there, some boys were playing skittles; yonder a woman was fetching water from the pump whilst a crowd stood around with their buckets, gossiping as they waited. Frank had not seen women for years, and couldn’t take his eyes off them, until he realised with alarm that Tip and Doll were almost out of sight, and he had to run to catch up with them. They sauntered along, greeting people, chaffing children, Tip pinching the cheeks of young girls, Doll screaming across the street to another woman. They both dressed in a more gaudy fashion than any of their neighbours, and Frank felt proud to be with them, although neither looked round to see if he was still there.

They entered a beer shop, high-ceilinged, bare-walled, with a wooden floor. The serving counter was at one end next to a raised platform with a piano on it. The room was not particularly full, and Tip and Doll seemed to know everyone. Frank was all eyes and ears. This was the high life indeed!

“You standin’ a top o’ reeb [pot of beer], Al?”

“Sey [yes], I done a doogheno flash [good deal] today. But kool ’im [look at him]. Who’s he?”

“My wen dal [new lad] Give ’im some reeb an’ rater” [beer and water].

Frank took his beer and sipped it, puzzled. Conversation continued.

“Jack, ’e ’ad a regular tosseno tol [bad luck]. ’Ad a showful [bad money]. Bigger loof [fool] ’im.”

“He musta bin flash karnurd [half drunk] at ve time.”

“On [no], just a dabeno [bad debt].

Costers in those days spoke to each other almost entirely in back slang, incomprehensible to an outsider. This continued until well after the Second World War.

Frank’s eyes rested on each of these big, confident men as he spoke, but none was as flamboyant or assured as Tip, and the seeds of hero-worship were sown in this young heart.

He drank his beer. No one seemed to notice him. He was hungry, and Doll, who was flirting with a man sporting a walrus moustache, appeared to have forgotten the pie she had promised him.

The beer shop filled up, cards were brought out and men sat down to the serious business of gambling. A group of boys in a corner were engaged in the equally serious business of ‘three ups’. A piano player started a tune, and everyone sang along, getting louder and louder at each chorus. A girl leaped onto the stage and started dancing with more energy and vigour than grace, accompanied by shouts and catcalls from the audience. The beer flowed and the laughter swelled. Exhausted, Frank fell asleep on the floor.

He was awakened by Doll, screaming, “Oh, the poor li’l nipper. ’Ere, Tip, you’ll ’ave to carry ’im.”

“Take me for a monkey?” said Tip, scornfully. He shook Frank hard and pulled him to his feet.

“Come on, there’s a day’s work ahead.”

Doll was the worse for wear and hung onto Tip’s arm as they walked through the streets. Frank, more asleep than awake, kept close behind them. They climbed the endless steps to the fourth floor, and a straw mattress and a blanket were pulled out from behind the big feather bed and put on the floor under the table for Frank, who was only too thankful to lie down anywhere. He went to sleep to the comforting and familiar sounds of grunting and puffing and rhythmic bed rocking.

Frank was awakened by a flannel soaked in cold water being thrown on his face. He leaped up and banged his head on the table. Stunned, he gasped: “What’s up? Where am I?”

Tip spoke. But it was a very different Tip from the evening before. Gone the flashy clothes, gone the easy swagger and pleasant bonhomie. The morning revealed Tip the coster, Tip the businessman, Tip of the calculating, clever, ruthless eye for a bargain. “Out o’ bed, sharp now. There’s work ’a be done. Billingsgate opens at four, and it’s three o’clock, an’ we’ve gotta get the barrow an’ the gear, an’ be there. Get some clothes on, an’ follow me.”

Tip was already in his work trousers and was pulling on his heavy boots. Frank felt the urgency and leaped out of bed. He was still dressed from the night before and had only to find his boots. He pulled them on hastily and stood up straight.

“Good. Now take vat bag, an’ we’re off.”

Out in the night air, Tip was electric with energy. He kept doing little runs and skips and punching the air with his fists. He gave several short, barking shouts, took in great lungfuls of air and blew it out noisily. He was working himself up to a fever pitch, and Frank caught the energy. He sensed that something significant was happening, and he ran along the dark, quiet street, alive to everything, tingling with anticipation.

They went to a tunnel under a bridge. Other men were there already and each man had a boy. They greeted each other in their own lingo. A door was opened, revealing a pitch-black cavern, and a naptha flare was lit with a match. The flame leaped up, revealing a stack of barrows, trucks, handcarts, donkey carts, bridles, hooks, chains, ropes, tarpaulins – a medley of wood and metal.

Tip growled to Frank, “Watch wot I takes, and be sure you remembers it. If you don’t ge’ the right gear, you can’t do yer job, an’ the tally bloke there, he’ll cheat you if ’e can.”

He selected what would be needed for the day, and paid the rental to the man with the flare. “Push this ’ere, an’ let’s get goin’.”

A boy called out, “Hey, yennun – you.”

Frank took no notice.

The boy kicked him hard. “Don’t you answer ven, yennun?”

Tip explained. “He means ‘new one’. That’s you, see? Take no notice, we got work ’a do. You’ll pick up ve lingo in no time.”

In pain, and limping, Frank pushed the barrow. He had learned to hide all signs of weakness in the workhouse and it had stood him in good stead.

“Now, we mus’ get a move on.” Tip leaned his weight on the barrow and it sped over the cobbles, rattling on solid, iron-framed wheels.

Billingsgate was London’s fish market, and lay on the north bank of the Thames, east of the Monument. Fishing boats came in throughout the night and the market stalls, laden with fresh fish, were ready for business when the market opened at 4 a.m.

Tip’s electric excitement is, if anything, intensified and every nerve in his body seems to be quivering. A fishy, seaweedy smell hits his nostrils, and he inhales deeply. “Beautiful, be-oootiful,” he murmurs appreciatively.

The noise all around is intense. Above the babble of voices Frank can hear the shouts of salesmen, standing on boxes or tables, roaring out their merchandise and their prices. A Babel of competition.

“’Andsome cod, best in the market – all alive.”

“Fine Yarmouth bloaters – oo’s the buyer?”

“Eels O! Eels O! Alive O!”

“Wink, wink, winkles, best for tea.”

“’Ere you are, guvner, fine brill, come an’ look at ’em, guv. You won’t find better.”

“Over ’ere. Finney ’addock. ’Ad – ’ad – ’ad – ’addy ’addock.

“Now or never – whelks, whelks, whelks, I say.”

On all sides everyone is asking “What’s the price?” whilst shouts of laughter from salesmen and customers, bargaining and bantering, pepper the noise of the crowd.

Frank can see, in the semi-darkness of the sheds, the white bellies of turbot shining like mother-of-pearl; living lobsters, their claws flailing helplessly in the air; mounds of herrings with scales glittering like sequins; huge baskets piled with grey oysters, blue mussels, pink shrimps, sackfuls of whelks, their yellow shells piled up high; buckets of grey-and-white eels slithering and sliding all over each other.

Frank sees porters in strangely shaped leather helmets, rather like squashed pagodas, carrying fish baskets on their heads. Eight hundred tons of fish pour in and out of Billingsgate every day and all of it, down to the last herring, is unloaded and portered in this way. A man whose neck is ‘set’ can carry sixteen baskets, each weighing a stone, on his head. These powerful men are the backbone of the fish market, and their history is one of high romance. The quinquereme of Nineveh, laden with spices and precious oils, was unloaded in exactly the same way in medieval London. Caesar’s galleys, rowed up the Thames by chained men, were berthed here, London’s most ancient port, and unloaded by men such as Frank sees.

Frank flattens himself against a wall as one of these giants passes, shouting: “Move over – make way, please – gangway.”

A thin man, trembling under the weight of his load, mutters, through clenched teeth: “Shove to one side, can’ choo?”

Everywhere ragged, desperate-looking men and boys are clamouring for the job of porterage, hoping to earn a shilling or two before the day’s end.

Through the arches of the open end of the huge covered building, silhouetted against the grey sky of dawn, Frank can see the masts and tangled rigging of the oyster boats and lobster trawlers. Sails, black against the skyline, shift and tremble. He sees the red caps of sailors as they draw in the sails. He hears the chug-chug of primitive engines as a throttle is opened. He hears the shouts of men as they unload their vessels.

“Keep close beside me,” Tip growls, “an’ listen to everyfink. Don’t miss nuffink, see? You gotta learn how to buy.”

He assumes a nonchalant air and saunters down the gangway, whistling as though he were on holiday. He passes through the arches onto the quayside, where the river glides black and secretive, and silver threads of light pierce the wakening sky. They clamber over ropes and rigging to the long row of oyster boats moored close along the wharf – known as “Oyster Street” in the trade – where the fishermen sell direct from their boats.

“No middlemen here. Best prices,” hisses Tip out of the corner of his mouth.

Each boat has its blackboard and the master, in his white apron, walks up and down calling his prices. The holds are filled with oysters and sand, which a man turns over with a spade, rattling the masses of shells.

Tip discusses price with the master, shakes his head and walks away, saying loudly to Frank, “I knows of better oysters dahn ve sewers.”

The oyster merchant shouts after him. Tip ignores the shouts, and clambers over shrimp nets and weights to reach a fisherwoman, with huge muscular arms, shouting the price of shrimps. The master of the vessel is behind her, filling a jug with shrimps and letting them fall back like a shower of confectionery. Tip breaks the head off one, and sniffs it.

“I wouldn’t give that to my dog,” he says and hands it to Frank, who doesn’t know what to do with it.

Clambering over ropes, rigging, sails, cans of engine oil, netting, lobster pots, gangplanks, ladders, baskets, trays – all littered over the quayside in a seeming mass of confusion, Tip and Frank scramble the whole length of Oyster Street. Nothing is bought.

Six o’clock is approaching. Tip snaps into action, his nonchalance leaving him as fast as he had assumed it. He returns to the fisherwoman, and buys shrimps at half her asking price, oysters for a third. Brill and dab he buys, which he had earlier disdained as “poison”, with a bucket of eels added, “to clear ’em”.

Buying is over and the excitement has passed.

Tip hired a porter – a starved-looking man of sixty – and refused to pay the sixpence the man asked.

“Three pence, then,” said the man, humbly.

“I’ll gi’ yer tuppence, take it or leave it. I can soon find another, stronger’n you, you miserable ol’ skele’on.”

The man took it, and staggered out of the gate to where Tip and Frank had left the barrow.

“An’ now for breakfuss,” said Tip.

A COSTER LAD

“Betty, my dear, I say, Betty, why you look charming’ this mornin’. I’ll draw up my chair here an’ get close in by this nice, invitin’ fire. An’ you, Betty my love, can ’ave the infinite pleasure of supplyin’ me with some good ’am an’ heggs an’, if you got some nice ’ot muffins an’ butter, I’ll ’ave ’em an’ all, an’ some of yer best Rosie Lee, good an’ strong. Betty, my love – why you do look ravishin’ this fine morning – you can look after vis young lad, like wot he was your own son. Bring him the same, cause ’e’s new, an’ there’s a hard day’s work ahead, an’ likewise a man can’t go to work on an empty stomick, no more can a boy.”

Tip leaned back in his chair, put his feet on the table, and placed his order, with an expansive wave of the hand. Frank sat down to the best breakfast he had ever had in his life. After years of workhouse bread and margarine it tasted like nectar. The muffins oozed butter down his chin as he sank his teeth into them; the yellow yolk of the egg ran over the pink ham and he dipped his bread into it. He ate with concentrated enjoyment. Men and boys came in and sat down. Betty rushed around serving. The fire crackled and tobacco smoke filled the air. Voices merged into a quiet hum, and Frank fell asleep, his head on the table.

A heavy hand hit his shoulder. “Right now. It’s eight o’ clock, an’ we gotter get a-goin’ on the round.”

Tip walked swiftly out into the yard and Frank staggered after him, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. They arranged the cart together, Tip instructing every move, securing the sides, the shafts, the step, placing the trays, the weights and measures, the knives, bags and torn newspapers. At each move, he would say: “Now don’t forget this one.”

They started the round. If Frank thought that life in the workhouse was hard, that was because he had not experienced life as a coster. From that day on he never stopped working and he never stopped loving every minute of it.

He hollered his way down the streets, bawling out the day’s catch. Shrimps, mackerel, herrings, whelks – his high-pitched voice carried from one end of a street to the other. He learned quickly, and within a month he could gut a fish so fast you wouldn’t see him do it. He charmed the ladies with his appealing eyes, so that they bought things they didn’t want. He flicked a mussel from its shell with a twist of the knife, faster even than Tip. He could worm a whelk before it knew what had hit it.

The round was about ten miles’ walking distance. Tip usually closed the barrow at about three o’clock in the afternoon. Anything left over was Frank’s to sell. A tray was suspended round his neck and he went out alone. Tip would size up the value of the fish on the tray and say what he wanted Frank to get for it. Anything over that amount was commonly known as a “bunt”, or “bunce”, and the boy could keep the money. This was regarded as a coster boy’s pay, because they received no wages for their work, food and lodgings being regarded as quite sufficient recompense for a day’s labour.

Frank quickly discovered that this was to be the hardest part of his day’s work. The tray was heavy and his legs soon felt heavy too. Buying was mostly over for the day, and customers were few, so they had to be first attracted, and then persuaded to buy. The fish was getting stale and nothing can disguise the smell or look of stale fish, especially in summer. Frank often had to trudge several miles before he had sold his stock and gained the money Tip demanded for it. Frequently there was nothing at all left over for his bunt. But on other occasions there was, and Frank was ecstatic at having earned himself sixpence or a shilling – a fortune for a boy who had never had anything of his own. To earn his bunt became his main aim, and often he did not return to the lodgings before nine or ten in the evening. He would then crawl under the table, dog-tired, and sleep until 3 a.m., when he was wakened to go to the market.

Frank picked up the lingo within a few weeks, and was soon talking fast and confidently in the incomprehensible jargon costers proudly shared. He assumed the devil-may-care swagger of the other coster lads. He copied Tip’s easy-going banter with the ladies. He also copied Tip’s flamboyant style of dress, achieved with a few cut-downs from the master-dresser and a few bits such as a neckerchief and shoelaces which he had bought himself with his bunts. His ambition in life was to buy himself a flashy cap.

He adopted the costers’ attitude to money: “Spend it while you’ve got it, tomorrow you may die.” He saw that costers worked very hard and that a good trader earned a lot of money. He saw this money being thrown around each evening in the pubs and taverns with extravagant ease. Any man who had had a good day wouldn’t hesitate to spend his entire profit on drinks for his mates. If he’d had a bad day, another coster would buy for him. If any coster was in hard street, or was turned in by the police, there would be an immediate whip-round for him. No coster saved a penny, not even a halfpenny, for the future.

Costers didn’t live in homes; they lived in lodgings, where they dossed down for a bit, and then moved on. The lodgings were always unspeakably squalid and cheerless, because costers and their women were hardly ever in them. Life was lived in the streets, the markets, the pubs, the penny hops, the penny gaffs, at the race tracks and in the bawdy houses. Life, with all its richness, was lived outside. Costers went back to their lodgings only for a few hours’ kip, before the next day dawned and the markets opened.

Above all, Frank learned the trade. Unless he had been trained from boyhood, no man had the slightest chance of becoming a successful coster. The tricks and dodges, the graft and guile, were just as important to learn as the skills of buying and bartering. Frank learned all this lore from the other coster lads as they went around in the early evenings, selling off the day’s ‘left-overs’ and trying to earn an honest bunt. He learned to cover his fish with parsley, to keep it smelling nice. He learned to squeeze a lemon over it, to improve the taste. He added a few nuts to his store, to increase his range. He learned to sell four pints of whelks as five, by taking a bit off the top of each. He learned where he could sell fish heads and tails, and the best times to find the buyer. He learned to mix dead eels with live ones to increase his stock by five to one, and “they don’t notice one’s dead until vey gets vem ’ome”. He made the acquaintance of an unscrupulous pieman who would take eels that had been dead for two days for ready money. He learned that herring and mackerel look fresher by candlelight, so he carried a candle stuck in a turnip for dark evenings. He learned to wheedle and whine, saying his master would knock him about if he didn’t sell his wares. He always sold.

By the age of twelve, Frank was as sharp as a terrier. He was up to every dodge in the business, and there were some who said he was as clever a man as Tip. He spent long hours in the markets, he knew the price of everything and forgot nothing. An expert in slang, he conducted all his business in the lingo. He could chaff a peeler so uncommon curious that the only way to stop him was to let him off. He was a master of his trade.

At the age of thirteen Frank decided it was time to go it alone. He wasn’t going to give the best years of his life to a master, not he. He’d be his own master, do his own buyin’ and sellin’, and keep his own profits He’d show them how it was done.

He left Tip and Doll and moved into a common lodging house for men – the back room of a public bar that was open only to the water’s edge. The floor was rough stone, the ceiling and walls unplastered. For twopence a night he could hire a straw mattress and a blanket on the floor. Any other lodgings would cost him tenpence a night. So Frank took it, reckoning that he would hardly be there anyway, and why waste good money on a place he only slept in?

The men were rough, obscene, vicious, and put the fear of God into the lad, but he was growing fast, was quick on his feet and good with his fists. He coped, but only just. His greatest terror was of being robbed. He had seen it happen more than once. A sobbing lad of about twelve stuck in his mind. The boy had been skinny and pale and had lost all his stock money overnight. If a lad can’t buy, he can’t sell. Frank gave him a shilling to buy some walnuts for the theatre trade, and learned to keep his stock money safe. He kept it in his socks and slept each night with his socks and boots on, and the boots tightly laced.

Most of the men in the lodging house were casual labourers, picking up a day’s work if and when they could. All were unskilled. Frank considered himself an aristocrat, being skilled in the fish trade. He hired his own gear, bought his own stock, and sold in the streets, keeping all his profits which he spent on flashy clothes, fancy food, beer, girls, the penny hops, the penny gaffs and gambling . . . gambling.

By the age of fourteen, it would be safe to say Frank was a desperate gambler. All the coster men and boys gambled, but none more seriously than Frank. The love of the game was first in his thoughts and dreams, and not a spare moment would pass but he would toss a coin and invite a bet on it. He did not care what he played for, or who he played with, as long as he had a chance of winning. Every day he worked untiringly, spurred on by the thought of the money he would earn, which he could lay against the odds with the next gamester he met. Many a time he lost not only his money but his neckerchief and jacket as well, but nothing could dampen his ardour for the game, a run of continual bad luck making him more reckless than ever.

The coster boys would meet at various points to pitch against each other. They met under railway arches, in pub yards, on the quayside of the river, or even on the shingle when the tide was out. If ever a group of boys’ backs and heads were seen crouching in a circle, it would be safe to say that it was a group of gamblers, and ten to one Frank would be in the middle, calling the loudest, the quickest, the fiercest.

“Sixpence on Tol.”

“Sixpence he loses.”

“Done.”

“Give ’im a gen [shilling].”

“Flash it them [show it].”

Tol wins and the loser bears his losses with a rueful grin.

Now Frank goes into the ring and takes up a stance to toss his coins. His face is scornful.

“Sixpence on Frank.”

“A gen he loses.”

“I take that one.”

“Owl [two shillings] on Frank.”

“Kool Tol, he’s fritted [Look at Tol, he’s afraid]. Done.”

Frank is cool and determined. He plays three up, and calls “Tails.” The three coins fall, all tails up. Frank takes his winnings.

Betting starts again. Tol throws, calling “Heads.” The coins fall, one head, and two tails. He throws again. The coins fall, showing three tails. Frank takes his winnings. Tol curses and spits, and throws again. “Heads.” Again they come down tails. Frank wins. He stares hard at Tol.

“An half-couter [half sovereign] next throw.”

A gasp goes up from the onlookers, and they bet among themselves for or against Frank.

“Done,” says Tol defiantly.

Frank tosses. “Heads,” he calls. The three coins fall, all heads up.

“You stinking fish,” screams Tol, and pledges his jacket and his boots to honour the debt. He is getting aggressive, and the crowd presses closer. Tol jerks his elbow savagely. “I wish to Christ you’d stand back.” Tol’s lips are pressed together, his eyes anxious and watchful.

The tense atmosphere has attracted men to the scene, who start their own betting on the two gamesters.

Tol adopts new tactics to bring back his luck. He pushes aside the onlookers and shifts his position a quarter-circle to the right before throwing.

“I’ll have it off you. A half-couter,” he cries with bravado, knowing full well that he is pledging half his stock money.

“Done,” says Frank, confidently.

Betting amongst the onlookers continues and Frank and Tol know that sovereigns are being placed on one or other of them.

Tol spits on the coins, then takes a halfpenny and tosses it on his hand to see what he should call. He then spits again on the three coins and shifts his feet defiantly on the cobbles. He tosses his three coins, calling out “Tails.” The coins fall, all tails up. His features relax, and he looks round the circle with a triumphant grin. He puts on his jacket and boots with a triumphant air. Money changes hands among the spectators.

That throw marks the end of Frank’s luck for the day. He tosses again and again and, four times out of five, loses. He can hear the bets of the men going against him, and grinds his teeth in fury. If it were an accepted part of gambling to murder your opponent, he would do so. Tol calls again and again. Every time Frank accepts and challenges in return. He loses all his winnings, all his earnings, his neckerchief, his jacket, he even pledges his magnificent velvet cap, vowing it will bring him luck. It doesn’t, and he loses it.

With the cap in his hands, Tol stands up. He casts a contemptuous look at Frank, spits on the cap and throws it in the river.

“I’m off now to get a liner [dinner].”

He swaggers away to the admiring gasps of the boys and the amused shrugs of the men.

Seething with fury Frank vows revenge. “You wait, you scab, I’ll ’ave you to rights. I’ll muck you, you scurf, you,” he screams.

The men laugh and saunter off. The boys lose interest. A new game starts.

Frank tried to strike a jaunty pose as he stood up, but with no jacket, no neckerchief and no cap, he didn’t feel like the cold, calculating gamester any more. He turned quickly and walked in the opposite direction from Tol.

He walked for hours, not feeling the keen wind blowing off the Thames, his mind full of the next game, when he would get even. He’d show ’em. He’d ’ave the houses [trousers] off that lousy skunk. He’d get ’is money back, an’ more. Hatred filled his heart when he remembered the insult to himself and his trade. Being called a stinking fish was more than a man could stand. He’d get even. His luck’d be back next week. Not for an instant did it occur to him that he had been a fool. The passion for gambling had him in its obsessive grip.

In anger and resentment Frank trudged on, unaware of his surroundings, hating everyone, scowling at those who passed. Ahead of him was a two-bit jerk of a little nipper in baggy trousers, and shoes down on the uppers, leading a little girl, not yet out of nappies, by the hand. He hated them both. The little girl was laughing as she toddled along on unsteady legs. Suddenly she fell and let out an exaggerated howl of pain. The boy bent down and helped her up. He wiped her eyes with his sleeve, and rubbed her knees, spitting on his fingers in order to clean them. He laughed and said: “All better now,” but the little girl wouldn’t be consoled. She rested her blonde head on his shoulder and put her arms around his neck. He picked her up and carried her into a court, and Frank saw them no more.

Life turns on little things. The momentous events in history can leave us untouched, while small events may shape our destinies.

Frank stood quite still in the street, suddenly feeling cold. The heat of revenge left him, and a cold uncertainty entered his heart. He shivered and leaned against the wall, feeling unexpectedly dizzy. What was it? Everything seemed so cloudy, so misty. What could it be? He didn’t seem to be real any more. He touched his face and felt tiny soft arms around his neck. He breathed in and could smell the lovely scent of a baby’s hair. Stunned, he wanted to run after the boy and the little girl, to find out who they were. But they had gone. Had he really seen them – a boy in baggy trousers and a tiny girl with blonde hair – or were they ghosts? He shivered and rubbed his eyes, trying desperately to recall something. But the mists of forgetfulness swirled around, and he could not remember what it was.

He made his way back to the lodging house, his mind in turmoil. He was Frank the coster; Frank the rising man; Frank the desperate gambler, feared by all. What did those kids in baggy trousers and nappies mean to him? Nothing! He tried to shake off the image. All right, he had a sister and she was in the workhouse. So what? That wasn’t his fault, was it? Let her look after herself, like he’d done. Anyway, he hadn’t thought of her for years, and, likely as not, she’d forgotten all about him. He hadn’t asked his father and mother to die, that was their lookout, he’d got on all right without them. He shook off the thought of the boy and girl, and whistled his way back to his lodgings. He’d had nothing to eat all day, because he had lost his money, but he wrapped himself up in his blanket in defiance of hunger, and lay down on his palliasse. Sleep evaded him, however.

He heard the other men coming into the lodging room. He heard their cursing and swearing, their belching and farting, and he hated them. How could they be like that? A ghost of a man crept up to his bed, a big man who was strong and gentle. This man looked after his wife, who was frail and coughing. The ghost merged into the farmyard sounds and smells of the men around him, and Frank fell into a light sleep. For the first time in years he dreamed of his mother, whom he had loved so passionately. She was leaving him to go to work. With a cry of anguish he sat up in bed. He felt all over the bed for her, but she wasn’t there, and then he remembered where he was and wept bitterly. He remembered now that terrible night when she had not returned, and he remembered holding little Peggy in his arms until the next day when they had been taken to the workhouse.

Memories came flooding back as he lay staring into the darkness: the court where they lived, the room they shared, his mother laughing and singing to him, or his mother coughing and his father anxious. The big ghost hovered over the place, but never quite materialised. He remembered the tiny baby, born not much bigger than a teacup. He thought of the times they had washed her, he and his mother, and put baby clothes on the little creature that were far too big for her. He remembered his mother feeding her, and he wept afresh at this strange and beautiful memory. He buried his face in the straw palliasse, as he had done so often in the workhouse, to muffle the sounds of his sobs. The ghost came nearer and seemed to want to speak to him but did not.

Frank woke at the sound of the other costers getting ready to go to market. What a crazy night! What had been going on? This was the real world. He threw a boot at his mate, and asked him for the loan of some stock money for the day. He knew that costers always helped each other out when one of them hit hard times.

At Billingsgate he was the cool, hard, professional buyer again. His eyes never missed a trick. His ears didn’t miss a sound. He hollered his way through his round with double the usual energy and was sold out by 2 p.m. He found his mate to repay the loan. It was a point of honour for costers to repay a debt.

He counted his earnings. There was enough for stock money for tomorrow, and a tightener [dinner] today. He went to Betty’s and ordered the best Kate and Sidney [steak and kidney], with spuds and two doorsteps [thick lumps of bread], followed by spotted dick [currant pudding] and custard, and a pint o’ reeb [beer]. No. He thought again. Make that two pints o’ reeb.

That’s what a man needed inside im, some good grub. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast yesterday, what with the game, and queer goings on. No wonder he’d felt funny. A man couldn’t keep goin’ without a good lining to his stomach. He sat down with his back to the door. Betty brought his food and pinched his ear, but somehow he didn’t feel like responding and she retired, offended.

A big man came in. He had hired a boy to hold the bridle of his horse, and called out to the boy as he entered, “You look after her, lad, while I’m away.”

Frank heard the words, and the ghost came back and sat down beside him. He remembered, at first dimly, and then as clearly as though it were yesterday, that he had promised his father that he, Frank, would look after his mother and his sister. The spotted dick nearly choked him, and he could eat no more. Did Betty hear him mutter, “I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry,” as he glanced sideways, or was she imagining it? She certainly saw him brush a tear from his eye with his sleeve, and said to Marge, the cook, in her motherly way, “Vere’s somefink up with vat young ’un. Can’t eat ’is spotted dick, an’ all. Sumfing’s up, I tells yer.”

Frank sat at the table for a long time, unable to move. The ghost left him, but the memories remained. His mother was dead but his sister, as far as he knew, was alive and in the workhouse. He thumped his fists on the table and dug his nails into his hands as he remembered the tyranny and cruelties he had endured. He prayed that it had not been as bad for his sister in the girls’ section. Perhaps they were kinder to girls. He remembered the time they had spent together in the infants’ section, and carrying her to his bed when she cried at night. He recalled fighting a bully who had called her “baldy”, and he grinned with satisfaction. He remembered a little girl called Jane, who was a friend to them both, and he prayed that Jane had looked after Peggy when he had been transferred to the boys’ section. He had never prayed before, but now he did so, and he vowed to heaven, his teeth and fists clenched, that if his sister was still alive he would find her and get her out of the workhouse. He would look after her as he had promised his father.

Betty came over, concerned, and cleared the table.

“How about a nice cup o’ Rosie Lee, luv, good an’ sweet? On the ’ouse, o’ course.”

PEGGY

Frank found himself in the workhouse once more. This time he was waiting in the Master’s office. He had smartened himself up, as best he could in a communal lodging house, and was waiting with dread in his heart. Was she still alive? Children died in workhouses. He had seen it himself, and had heard stories from people he had met. If Peggy had died, he’d kill those responsible and swing for it. Footsteps came along the corridor, and he stood up.

Frank’s first surprise at meeting the Master after nearly four years was how little he was! He had a childhood memory of a large, terrifying man, whose word was absolute law and who had the power to beat and flog for the slightest misdemeanour. Yet here was this flabby little man, about a head shorter than Frank himself, who looked as if he hadn’t the strength to lift a bit of cod off a plate, never mind a box of them off a slippery quayside. Frank looked at his puny muscles and compared them in his mind with the lean and muscular men he had worked with for years, and nearly laughed out loud. Was this the terror of the workhouse, this pathetic-looking jellyfish?

But he had come for a purpose, and must be polite. He enquired about his sister: was she still alive? Yes, the Master replied, without giving anything away, she was. Frank gave a huge, shuddering sigh of relief. Where was she, then? The Master replied, guardedly, that she was in the girls’ section, where she was well cared for. Frank’s joy was unconfined. Here, in this very building? Could he see her, then? His eyes were eager. The Master was prim. No. Boys were not allowed in the girls’ section.

Frank was nonplussed. “But I can’t help bein’ a boy,” he blurted out. “If I was ’er big sister you’d let me see ’er, wouldn’t you?”

The Master smiled, and agreed, but rules were rules, he said, with such finality that the interview ended.

Frank’s joy at knowing she was alive was greater than his disappointment at not being allowed to see her. But he would see her – damn the Master – and he changed his round so that he would be near the workhouse gate at 4 p.m. when the girls returned from school. He hung around, shouting “whelks and eels” as the crocodile of girls marched past him. But he couldn’t pick her out. There were a couple of dozen little girls with blonde hair, about the age that she would be, but even though he went every day for a fortnight and looked carefully at them, he couldn’t recognise his sister. Several of the bigger girls giggled and nudged each other, winking at him as they marched past. Normally he would have flirted back, but he had no heart for flirting now. He changed his round again.

He sought another interview with the Master. On this occasion he had carefully prepared his questions. If he couldn’t see his sister because of the rules, what were the rules about taking her away altogether? The Master was surprised at the boy’s persistence and explained, condescendingly, that any relative could apply for the discharge of an inmate and, provided the applicant could prove that he could provide adequately for said inmate, the application would be considered favourably.

Frank’s quick brain translated. “You means, if I can support my sister, I can get her out of ’ere?”

The Master nodded.

“An’ what would you means by ‘support’?”

The Master looked at the eager fourteen-year-old sitting before him, and smiled at the impossibility of his hopes. “I would say, firstly, that the applicant must be of good character and must have decent accommodation. He must prove himself able to support the inmate for whose discharge he is applying, and should have a reasonable sum of money saved against illness or loss of work.”

“An’ ’ow much would you call a ‘reasonable sum’?”

The Master tapped his pencil, and smiled archly.

“Oh, I would say twenty-five pounds. That is a fair sum.”

Frank swallowed. Twenty-five pounds! Ask a working boy today to save £25,000 and he might swallow and turn pale, just as Frank did.

The Master concluded the interview and assumed that he would see no more of the boy.

Frank dragged his feet miserably back to the lodging house. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. Why couldn’t he just take her? When he entered the squalid doss-house, in which about twenty men slept and ate, he realised the Master was right. He couldn’t possibly bring a girl here. He would have to be able to provide for her and find somewhere decent to live.

Frank then worked as he had never worked before, spurred on by necessity. He did his fish round, as ever, but instead of knocking off when he had sold it all, he looked into the fruit-and-nut trade, and hawked them around the pubs and theatres and music halls until ten or eleven at night. He doubled his income. He changed his habits and became something of an outcast from his old mates, because he never gambled, never flashed his money around by joining them in the tavern. They resented it and ridiculed him. He opened a Post Office National Savings Account. No coster ever saved. Conspicuous spending each evening in the pubs and taverns was their habit. But Frank wasn’t interested in what the others did. He had opened the account because he knew that in a communal lodging house he would eventually be robbed. When he learned that he would earn four per cent on his investments he was thrilled and carefully worked out how many pennies that would be to every pound saved. By the age of fifteen he had saved eight pounds.

There is no doubt about it, Frank was a brilliant and imaginative coster. He went into the fried-fish market, arranging for the fish to be cooked at a baker’s and employing a lad to hawk it around at a fixed rate, plus the bunting system. He looked into the roast-chestnut market and worked out that the hire of the gear would pay for itself around Christmas time. He was right. By the age of sixteen he had twenty-five pounds in his Post Office account.

He then looked round for a room to rent for himself and Peggy. It had to be a decent room – on that point he was determined. His sister was not going to be dumped in any old hole. She would be twelve years old now, quite the young lady. He had not seen her since she was little more than a baby, but he visualised her as petite and pretty, and felt sure she looked like his mother. Mother and sister merged into each other in his imagination, a numinous female ideal, the guardians of his hopes and longings.

He found a room on the top floor of a house at eight shillings a week, plus two shillings for the rent of furniture. It was an upper-class house, he felt. There was a gas stove on the middle landing for everybody’s use, and a tap in the basement, There was even a lavatory in the yard. He was well satisfied.

Frank stood again in the Master’s office. He had on his best clothes and his Post Office book was in his pocket. The Master had not expected him, and was astonished when he saw the proof of twenty-five pounds saved in only two years. How had a boy of sixteen achieved it? He looked at him with new respect and said: “Your request will have to be considered by the Board of Guardians. They meet in three weeks’ time.”

He gave Frank the date and time of the Guardians’ meeting and told him to come back on that evening.

Frank asked if he could see his sister, and was told curtly that he would see her in three weeks’ time. Seething with frustration, he looked at his powerful fists and nearly knocked the man down. But he remembered he had to be “of good character”, so thrust his hands behind his back. He would never get Peggy out if he hit the workhouse master!

The Guardians debated the application. It was unusual, but they agreed to release the girl, if she wished to go with her brother. Frank was called into the boardroom and interrogated. They seemed satisfied and were especially impressed by the Post Office book. They told him to stand by the window, and Peggy was called away from her evening duties.

Peggy was in the washhouse, helping to prepare the younger girls for bed. It was a duty she loved – better than scrubbing the greasy old kitchen floors, or putting out smelly dustbins. She could play with the little girls, and there was always laughter when Peggy was putting them to bed. They had to laugh quietly, so as not to get into trouble, but, somehow, a bar of soap slithering across a stone floor seemed even funnier if you had to stuff a towel into your mouth to stop shrieks of laughter. Suppressed giggles double the fun for young girls.

Peggy was flushed with the steam and the laughter. Her blonde hair was damp and the wispy bits around her forehead curled upwards. Her apron was wet, and her arms soapy.

An officer came in. “The Guardians want to see you. Come with me.”

She didn’t know what the summons meant and had no time to feel alarm. She was shown into the big boardroom, where a group of gentlemen sat around an oval table.

Frank, standing inconspicuously by the window, watched her every step. She was taller than he had expected. He had imagined a tiny creature, because he remembered a tiny baby. But this was a grown girl in early puberty. He liked her dishevelled hair and laughing features, still damp from the washhouse. He saw, with a stab of pity, the fear and uncertainty as she stepped towards the oval table.

The Chairman said, not unkindly, “Your brother has made an application to remove you from the workhouse.”

“My brother?” Peggy looked bewildered.

“Yes, you have a brother. Didn’t you know?”

She shook her head. The anguish inside Frank made his legs turn to jelly. He leaned against the wall.

“Well, you have, and he asks permission to take you out of our care and to look after you himself. Do you wish to go with him, or do you prefer to stay here with your friends?”

Peggy didn’t say anything, and a member of the Board said sharply, “Speak up, child, and answer the Chairman when he is good enough to speak to you.”

Peggy’s lip trembled and she began to cry, but still she said nothing. Frank’s anguish had turned to dread. What if she did not want to come? It was a possibility he had not even considered.

The Chairman, who was kindly, with daughters of his own, said gently, pointing to Frank: “This is your brother Frank. It is to be regretted that you have not seen him since you were three years old, but now he has applied for your discharge and we, your guardians, are satisfied that he can provide for you. Do you wish to go with him?”

Peggy looked over towards the window, and saw a tall stranger. He did not mean a thing to her. Insecure children are terrified of change. She thought of the happy laughter in the washhouse, and her friends at school and in the dormitory. She stared at this unknown, unknowable young man, and her heart was set on her friends and the routine she had always known.

Frank saw rejection in her eyes and panic spurred his movements. Before she could speak, he stepped swiftly across the room.

“Stay where you are, you have no right—” shouted the Master.

Frank took no notice. He walked straight up to Peggy and stood looking down at her. Everyone in the room was hushed as brother and sister looked at each other for the first time in nine years. Then, slowly, he extended the little finger of his right hand and curled it round the little finger of her right hand. He held it close and grinned. “Hello, Peg.”

The action stirred her memory as nothing else could have done. Holding little fingers was a special and intimate gesture from a childhood almost lost to her now. No one else had ever done that to her. She had forgotten all about it, but now she remembered. A dim, far-off memory of loss and longing stirred within her. She looked at this tall lad and the love that she had not known for years flooded her heart.

She squeezed his little finger in return, and smiled a smile of secret understanding. He saw the dimples in her cheeks, and knew that he had seen them before. Then with sudden, impetuous warmth, she threw her arms about his neck and leaned her head on his shoulder. The Guardians watched with breathless wonder. Even the Master was silent. The intoxicating smell of her hair sent a thrill through Frank’s tense body and he relaxed, knowing that she was his sister, and that all would be well.

She did not hold him for long, but turned to the Chairman and curtsied. “I will go with my brother, if you please, sir.”

Memories of early childhood dwell in a limbo that is neither forgetting, nor quite remembering. As Peggy danced along the pavement, looking up at Frank, she tried desperately to recall him, but could not. She looked up at his face, his hair, his smile, and tried to persuade herself that she knew him and could remember him when they were little, but she had to admit to herself that he was a stranger. Yet somehow he wasn’t. His big, rough hand grasping her own felt familiar, his arm round her shoulders as he led her down a dark street was familiar too. Something in his touch struck a chord within her that she knew and responded to.

Frank was jubilant. He felt like a king. None of his mates could have done what he’d done. He had got her out of that place, his little sister, and he would never let her go back. She did not look as he had imagined, but that did not matter; she was better than he had imagined. He greeted several of his friends, who nudged each other and shouted, “Who’s yer tart? Where’d ’ja find ’er? Any more like ’er fer us?”

Frank replied, good humouredly, “She’s my sister, and there’s no one in the whole world like her.”

He took her back to the lodgings – in a respectable street, he pointed out. He was proud to show her the facilities of the house. He led her up to the second floor and showed her the last word in luxury: the gas stove on the landing, where she could cook. They climbed two more flights of wooden stairs, and he proudly flung open the door.

It was a small attic room with a sloping roof and a garret window, in which a broken pane had been patched up with cardboard. The walls were unpainted and bits of plaster were falling off. The ceiling was yellow and stained with damp. The furniture, rented for two shillings a week, consisted of a rough wooden table and chair, a narrow iron bedstead with coarse grey army blankets, a wooden box, a candle stuck in a milk bottle, a jug and washbowl and a chamber pot. It looked fairly bleak, but children like small rooms, and to Peggy it seemed like heaven.

She threw her arms around Frank. “It’s lovely, lovely. Are we really going to live here?” Her eyes filled with uncertainty. “Will I have to go back? Don’t let me go back. I want to stay here with you.” He folded her in his arms and said fiercely, “You’ll never go back. Didja hear me? Never. Not as long as I can see to it. We’ll be together, always. Vat’s a promise, an’ all. Now, let’s see vat smile o’ your’n, so I can see them dimples.”

She smiled with trusting confidence, and he put his little fingers into the dimples.

“You’ll ’ave to smile a lot more offen, yer know.”

He brought in some wood and lit a fire in the narrow grate. Red and yellow flames leaped up, filling the little room with colour. He had bought some muffins and some real butter, and they sat on the floor by the fire, toasting the muffins on the end of a knife. They were so delicious she couldn’t stop eating them and the butter ran down her chin. He chuckled and wiped it off with his finger. She took hold of his hand and licked the butter off his finger, looking up at him with melting eyes. A thrill ran through him, and he did not know what to say.

She murmured, “Muffins. Muffins and butter. Better than nasty smelly old bread and margarine. Can I eat muffins for evermore, Frank?”

“Course you can. Thousands of ’em. I’ll see to that, you’ll see. Muffins every day, if you wants ’em. An’ candy, an chocolate, an’ cakes an’ all.”

“And can I have jam and honey and cream?”

“Wha’ever you wants, my li’l sister, you can ’ave. You’ll see.”

“And pretty dresses?”

“Loads of ’em.”

“And a carriage with four horses?”

“Of course. Six ’orses, and a coachman, an’ all.”

Peggy sighed with happiness. But something inside her stirred, and she clung to him. “But you won’t go away? You won’t let them take me away from you again, will you?” Her eyes were wide with terror. His eyes were serious and his voice firm. “No one can take you away from me, not no one, never. I’ve promised, haven’t I? We’ll be together always.”

Satiated with muffins and warmth and the emotion of the day, her eyes began to close. Frank watched her closely, thinking he had never seen such a pretty face. She was so much prettier than the coster girls most of his mates had. They were rough-looking girls with loud voices and dirty hair. He leaned forward and touched her hair. It was like silk, and so fine he had to blow it, just to watch it move. She felt his breath on her face, and opened her eyes.

“Come on, little girl, it’s time for you to go to bed.”

Frank used the words he had used when he was six and she was two. A distant memory stirred and she giggled, and leaned back against the wall, kicking her heels against the floor.

“Can’t make me.”

He leaned towards her and took off her boots and socks, saying as he did so, “This little piggy goes to market. This little piggy stays at home.”

She caught the rhyme and finished, “And this little piggy goes wee, wee, wee, all the way home. Home, Frank, not the workhouse but home, with you.”

He undressed the sleepy young girl just as he had done nearly ten years before. He put her into the bed and she fell asleep straight away, snuggled into the warm blanket that he pulled around her.

He threw another log on the fire. He did not feel sleepy. He felt wide awake, teeming with emotions that tumbled into his conscious and subconscious mind. He had done it! He’d got her out. Out for good an’ all. Hadn’t that stinking workhouse master sat up when he’d showed him the Post Office book, and told him there were respectable lodgings to take her to? Frank looked proudly round the little room. This was real swell, this was.

He stroked the hair of the sleeping child, and a wave of tenderness swept over him. This was his sister. Was she really like their mother? He couldn’t say. Already the shadow of his mother was fading as the reality of Peggy grew more distinct. How soft and pretty girls were. He stroked the smooth white skin of her arm and compared it with his own, all covered with black hairs. He took up her hand, then noticed with fury that it was all red and rough, her nails short and broken, with little cracks at the fingertips. The bastards. They’d got her scrubbing and doing heavy washing already! They’d better not come his way again, or he’d murder them! No – that was too good for them. He’d get the Master and the lousy officers scrubbing the floors themselves. They could scrub for years. That’d learn ’em! He swore angrily to himself, and vowed that Peggy would never have to work so hard again.

He got up and turned the log with his boot. Sparks shot up the chimney and the embers glowed red, making the meagre little attic look cosy. He looked around, and thought of the squalid men’s doss-house on the waterfront where he had lodged for two years. Disgusting! Men were always coughin’ an’ spittin’. Men were always fartin’ and belchin’ an’ swearin’. Always fightin’ over nuffink, they were. It wasn’t just Peggy who’d been rescued. Rescuing her had rescued him from that lousy, flea-ridden dump, and he was never going back. Never.

He sat down again beside her and listened to her quiet breathing. Men snored! Leastwise, all the men he’d ever known had snored like elephants. Enough to keep a person awake all night. Peggy let out a tiny puff as she moved in her sleep, and he held his breath. Was that how girls snored? The workhouse dormitory with seventy boys and an officer came to his mind, and he shut the thought out quickly. He didn’t ever again want to think of it. It was too awful. They were both out now and they’d stay out. They belonged together. His jaw was set with determination as he looked into the future.

She would have to go to school. His sister was going to have a good education and grow up to be a lady. He’d see to it, he would. His sister wasn’t going to be a common coster girl, like them poor little kids. Half-starved, half-frozen, unwanted kids, sent out for hours and hours to sell a few lousy apples or rotting pears that no one would buy and then they’d get beaten because they hadn’t sold a thing. His sister would be a lady with book-learning and a posh accent.

The log shifted on the fire, and the sound broke his train of thought. Perhaps he’d better get some shut-eye. He’d have to be up at three to go to the market. It was more important than ever that his trading showed a profit. He could think about schools tomorrow. But he didn’t want to disturb the magic of the moment. The firelight was fading, but he could see the dark curve of her lashes against her pale skin. He could see the slender white shoulder against the grey blanket. He leaned over and kissed it, very gently, so as not to disturb her. This was the best day of his life.

Quite suddenly he felt really tired. The excitement of the day had caught up with him at last. He pressed the log down into the ashes, undressed, and crept into bed, hoping not to wake her. But the bed was so small that he had to push her over to make room for himself. She sighed, and stretched out a sleep-warmed arm, which, feeling his body, curled around his neck and drew him towards her. She murmured: “Is that Frank? Is that really Frank, my lovely brother? Oh, I love you so much.”

He kissed her eyes, her hair, her face, her mouth. He passed his hands down her slender body, and fire ran through him as he felt the circle of her tiny firm breasts and buttocks. She was neither asleep nor awake, but she loved him with all her heart and mind, with all her soul and her body. Their union was as inevitable as it was innocent.

TILL DEATH US DO PART

Peggy was singing her way through her scrubbing and polishing at Nonnatus House. It was always nice to hear her. Sister Julienne casually remarked, “You sound happy. How’s Frank these days?”

“Frank? Well, he’s had a bit of a stomach ache recently, but a dose of Epsom Salts will soon see that off.”

A few weeks later she confided to Sister, “Frank’s still got the stomach ache, Sister. Salts don’t seem to do him any good. What else can I give him?”

Questioning revealed that Frank’s stomach ache had lasted for six weeks. Sister advised seeing the doctor, but Frank would not go to the doctor. Men like Frank never do.

“I’ve never bin to a sawbones in me life, an’ I’m not startin’ now. I’ll work it off, you’ll see.”

But he couldn’t work it off, and a couple of weeks later he had to shut up his stall in Chrisp Street Market at 11 a.m. leaving half the fish unsold – something unheard of. He took a couple of codeine and slept when he got home, and felt sufficiently well to go to Billingsgate at 4 a.m. the next morning.

“There, I said I’d work it off, didn’ I?” he said as he kissed Peggy goodbye.

But some of his mates brought him home at 7 a.m. The pain had got so bad that he couldn’t continue. Peggy put him to bed and called the doctor, who examined him and advised hospital. Frank refused. The doctor assured him it would only be for a few days for tests. Peggy insisted and finally Frank acquiesced. Tests revealed the early stages of carcinoma of the pancreas. They were told it was inflammation of the pancreas and radium treatment was advised.

At Nonnatus House Peggy sought reassurance. “It’s only inflammation, and what’s the pancreas, anyway? It’s only a tiny organ in the body, they tell me; it’s not like the liver or the stomach. The radium treatment will get rid of it in no time, I suppose. After all, the pancreas is not much bigger than your appendix, and thousands of people have their appendix out, don’t they?”

We reassured her. What else can you do? We did not say that, in those days, no one had ever been known to recover from cancer of the pancreas. Frank was given the choice of hospitalisation for the radium therapy, or an out-patient visit twice a week. He stayed at home. He handed over the lease of his stall to a mate of his for three months, saying he would want it back when he had had a good rest and was better. He told Peggy not to give up any of her work, because he didn’t want to be fussed. However, Peggy did give up most of her work, arguing that this would be the only time in their lives when he was not working six days a week, and they could treat it as a holiday. A bit of radium therapy would hardly get in the way and they could go out and about on the other days and have a good time.

However, Peggy continued her work at Nonnatus House. Perhaps she needed the proximity of the Sisters for reassurance and advice. She did not appear anxious, saying things like, “He’s getting on nicely now, thank you, Sister,” or, “We haven’t been out anywhere, really. The radium seems to make him tired, so we stay in, and he likes to hear me reading to him. It’s better than going out, we reckon.”

One day she said, “He seems to get pain at night, but they’ve given him some tablets, and that’ll do the trick, eh, Sister?” Another time she said, “He’s lost a bit of weight. Good thing too, I tell him. ‘You were beginning to get quite a paunch on you,’ I said, and he laughed and said, ‘You’re right there, Peg.’”

Within a few weeks we were requested to take Frank for home nursing. Sister Julienne and I went to assess him.

Peggy and Frank lived in a prefab on the Isle of Dogs. These were small, ready-made buildings erected in huge numbers after the war, to house some of the thousands of people whose homes had been destroyed. The prefabs were put up as an emergency measure and intended to last only four to five years, but many of them lasted forty to fifty years. They were very pleasant, cosy and greatly preferred to the terraces that had been destroyed by the bombs. As we approached the prefab estate in the morning sunlight, it looked charming, with the low buildings, leafy trees full of sparrows and the river lapping in the background. It always surprised me that only a short distance from one of the biggest commercial ports in the world such quietness and peace could prevail.

Their tiny garden, about six to ten feet of space all around the house, was well tended, with flowers and cabbages and runner beans growing well. A vine was trained up the south wall and I wondered if they ever got any grapes worth eating. The front door opened straight into the sitting room, which was comfortable and pretty. It was also spotlessly clean. Peggy was obviously very house-proud.

She greeted us with her usual happy smile. “It’s good of you to come,” she said as she took Sister’s cloak and hung it up. “He’s in bed at the moment, but he’s getting along nicely. He’s had two weeks of the radium treatment now and he’s getting stronger all the time. He says he’ll be back at the market in no time.”

We went into the bedroom and I was thankful that Sister Julienne was with me. Had I been alone, my reaction at seeing Frank for the first time in about three months would probably have betrayed my shock. He looked ghastly. He lay in the middle of the big double bed, his eyes sunken, his skin grey. He had lost so much weight that his flesh hung in wrinkles and he had lost most of his hair. I doubt if any of his mates at the market would have recognised him.

Sister went straight up to him, with her gentle warmth. “Hello Frank, how nice to see you again. We miss you at Nonnatus House, and look forward to your return. The other man’s good, we’ve no complaints, but it’s not the same as having you.”

Frank smiled, and the skin pulled tight across his nose and cheek bones. His eyes, sunk deep into their bony sockets, gleamed with pleasure. “I’ll be back right enough, Sister. It’s only a few more weeks of this radium, an’ I’ll be on me feet again.”

“Are you sure you won’t go into hospital for the remainder of your treatment? It would be more restful, you know. The ambulance journey back and forward can be very tiring, especially after the treatment.”

But Frank and Peggy were both adamant that he should remain at home.

Sister examined him. She carefully moved his emaciated body, the arms and legs that seemed to have insufficient muscle to lift their own weight. Was this the man who had lifted a hundredweight box of cod only a few short weeks ago? I went to the other side of the bed and caught in my nostrils the smell of death as I leaned over him.

Strangely enough, Peggy did not seem to notice how desperately ill he was. She seemed perfectly happy, and kept saying things like: “He’s getting on fine,” “He’s getting stronger each day,” or, “He ate all the milk pudding I made for him. That shows he’s getting well, doesn’t it?” I was struck by the fact that we all see what we want to see. Peggy appeared to have closed her mind to the reality of Frank’s condition, to the extent that she literally couldn’t see it. To her, Frank was exactly the same as he had always been, her brother and her lover. He was the beat of her heart, the blood in her veins, and the physical changes, obvious to anyone else, she just did not see.

It was arranged that I should call for home nursing twice a day, and that Sister would come any time that Peggy requested.

I do not know whether or not Sister Julienne noticed the sleeping arrangements in the little house. The prefabs were constructed in a rectangle with a single large room and two small rooms leading off it. These were intended as bedrooms, but one of the rooms in Frank’s house was a dining room, which we could see through the open door. The only room used for sleeping had a double bed in it. If Sister Julienne noticed these things, and put two and two together, at no time did she say so. The Sisters had seen it all before, many, many times. In cramped living conditions, where a family of ten, twelve, fifteen or more lived in one or two rooms, incest was hardly surprising. Families kept their secrets and the Sisters did not comment or judge. I felt that there was nothing in human life that they had not witnessed in the seventy years they had worked in Poplar.

Later Sister said to me, “We will have to keep up this pretence that he is going to get better. The charade has to go on – treatments that will do no good, drugs that are useless – to give, the impression of medical competence and nursing care. ‘Hope’ lies in those treatments and, without hope for the future, most of our patients would find themselves in torment at the end.”

One day when I called they were studying travel brochures received from Thomas Cook. Frank was very alert in his mind. His speech was slower and quieter, but his eyes were bright, and he seemed almost animated.

“Peg an’ me, we thinks we’ll go to Canada for a good ’oliday when the treatment’s done an’ I’m on me feet again. She’s never bin abroad afore. I was in France and Germany in Hitler’s war, an’ I never wants ’a go near Europe agen. But Canada, now – big clean open spaces. Look a’ this ’ere, nurse. Lovely pictures, aren’t they? We reckons Canada’s just the place for us, don’t we, Peg? Who knows, we might stop there if we likes it enough, eh, Peg?”

She was sitting on the edge of the bed, her eyes glowing with happy anticipation. “We’ll go on the Queen Mary,” she agreed. “First Class, like a couple of swells.”

They both laughed and squeezed hands.

Together Peggy and I helped him to the bathroom. It was difficult, but he still had the strength to get there. She washed him all over, because although he could get into the bath, he did not have the strength to get out. In clean pyjamas he sat in the sitting room looking at the plaster ducks flying across the wall, whilst Peggy and I changed the bed with the text over it, executed in big, childish embroidery stitches, ‘God is Love’.

We had taught Peggy many essentials in the art of nursing, such as treating pressure points and dealing with pain or nausea. She was quick to acquire any small skill to make Frank more comfortable. I enquired about appetite, pain, bowels, vomiting, headaches and fluid intake, and left them happy with their plans for Canada. Should it be Vancouver or the Rockies? They couldn’t decide.

The air was sweet as I left the little house, and the sounds of the huge cargo vessels, the cranes, the lorries, seemed far off. I thought of the thousands of powerful men working ceaselessly in that great port, and the fragility of life. Health is the greatest of God’s gifts, but we take it for granted; yet it hangs on a thread as fine as a spider’s web and the tiniest thing can make it snap, leaving the strongest of us helpless in an instant.

Frank received a six-week course of radium therapy and was taken twice a week by ambulance to the hospital. Both he and Peggy expressed wonder and a touching appreciation that all this was free on the new National Health Service. “It’s lucky I got ill now, an’ not a few years ago. I could never ’ave paid for all this expensive treatment.” They seemed completely confident that it would be effective, probably because it was so elaborate. That he was getting weaker every day was put down to the temporary effects of the radium, which would pass when the treatment was completed. Everyone – that is, all the medical and paramedical staff, which must have totalled at least thirty people – kept the illusion going, though there was no corporate decision to do so.

Nausea is an unpleasant side effect of radium treatment and was something that Frank had been warned about in advance. He attributed his weakness and weight loss to the fact that he could not eat much. ‘Cos a man’s gonna get thin like, if he’s not eatin’ like what I’m not. Once I get some good grub inside me, an’ keep it down, I’ll pack the old weight on, you’ll see.”

Pain was another matter. The control of pain is the first responsibility of anyone involved in the care of the dying. Pain is a mystery that we cannot fathom, because there is no measure. Everyone’s tolerance of pain differs, therefore the correct dose of analgesic will differ. One must balance the strength of analgesic to the level of pain perceived and not allow the pain to develop beyond the patient’s tolerance.

Frank was having half a grain of morphine three times a day. Later this was increased to four, then six times daily. It was sufficient to dull his pain to an acceptable level, but did not impair his faculties. He was interested in everything.

He once said: “Every mornin’ I hear the fishin’ boats come up the river. Can’t get out of the ’abit of wakin’ . In my mind I can see the sails, dark against the red sun, like wot’ they used to be like, comin’ quietly out of the morning mist. Boo’iful they was, just boo’iful. You’ve gotta have seen them sailin’ boats to know wot’ a lovely sight it was. Now I listen to the sounds of ve engines. I can tell you by ve sound if it’s an oyster smack or a mackerel trawler. I can even tell you ’ow many deep-sea vessels from the Atlantic come in. It’ll be good to be back at Billingsgate.”

Peggy and I agreed that it wouldn’t be long. He was getting on famously.

Peggy had given up all work now and never left his side, except for essential household duties. She spent hours reading to him. Frank had never learned to read fluently, and could barely write.

“Book-learnin’s never been my strong point – but Peg, she’s the scholar. I love to ’ear her read. She’s got a lovely voice.”

Peggy read about half a dozen of Dickens’s novels in this way, sitting close to him, outwardly reading but inwardly attentive to every mood and movement. She was conscious of every shade in her loved one, ready to close the book if she sensed tiredness, or to change his position if she saw discomfort. Peggy knew almost before he knew himself what his needs were going to be.

Love permeated every nook and cranny, every corner and crevice of that little house. You could feel it as soon as you entered the front door, like a presence so tangible you could almost reach out and touch it. If there is one thing that a dying person needs more than relief from pain, it is love. I have seen, later in my career when I was a ward sister at the Marie Curie Hospital in Hampstead, unloved, unwanted people dying alone. Nothing can be more tragic or pitiful. And nothing is more hopeless or intractable for the nursing staff to deal with.

Love prompted Peggy to sing to Frank every evening, the old songs, the folk songs and hymns that they had both learned in childhood. Love prompted her to move the bed so that he could see the masts and funnels of the boats as they approached the docks. Love told her which visitors to admit and which to turn away from their front door. They grew even closer. They had always been one flesh; now they were one spirit, one soul. And all the time she kept up the pretence that he was going to recover. If she cried alone in the kitchen, he never saw it.

It was Frank who first startled me. We had just finished a blanket bath (he no longer had the strength to get to the bathroom) and he had asked Peggy for a hot drink and a hot-water bottle. As soon as he heard the kitchen door close, he said, “Nurse, you must promise me you won’t let on to Peggy. It’ll break her heart. Promise, now.”

I was putting things away in my bag and my back was turned towards him. I didn’t move or breathe. I had to respond in some way, but I couldn’t find my voice.

“I want you to promise, now.”

“What do you mean?” I said, eventually. I had to turn round, and he was looking straight at me, his sunken eyes bright in their dark sockets.

“I mean I’m not gonna get better an’ I don’t want Peg to know until she has to.”

“But Frank, what makes you think you won’t recover? The radium treatment ends next week and then you will begin to feel stronger.”

I hated myself for this pathetic falsehood. I felt degraded by it. Why do we have to be like this? In India, apparently, a man often predicts his own death, says farewell to his family, goes to a holy place, and dies. Yet we cannot admit to someone that he is dying, so we have to play false, and I have been as big a deceiver as anyone.

He didn’t say a word, but closed his heavy eyes. We heard the kitchen door open. He hissed fiercely, “Promise. Promise you won’t tell her.”

“I promise, Frank,” I whispered.

He sighed with relief.

“Thank you.” His voice was husky. “Thank you, now I can rest easy.”

The radium treatment halted the malignant growth for a while, but could not be continued beyond six weeks, as it would destroy other organs. Frank’s deterioration was rapid when treatment stopped. The pain became more intense, and the morphine was increased to one grain, then two grains every four hours. He could barely eat, and Peggy sat beside him feeding semi-solids into his unwilling mouth.

“There, Frank love, just another little spoonful, put some strength into you.”

He would nod, and try to swallow. She washed and shaved him, turned him, cleaned his mouth and his eyes. She dealt with his urine and his bowels, and kept him clean and comfortable, all the while humming the songs he liked. He no longer looked at travel brochures, nor had the mental strength or interest to listen to Dickens, but he seemed to like to hear her singing. He rarely spoke and was drifting in and out of consciousness.

Frank was quietly slipping away into that mysterious border land between life and death where peace and rest and gentle sounds are the only needs. One day, in my presence, he gazed at Peggy for a long time as though he did not recognise her and then said, quite clearly: “Peggy, my first love, my only love, always there, always when I need you.” He smiled and drifted away again.

More than anything else a dying person needs to have someone with them. This used to be recognised in hospitals, and when I trained, no one ever died alone. However busy the wards, or however short of staff, a nurse was always assigned to sit with a dying person to hold their hand, stroke their forehead, whisper a few words. Peace and quietness, even reverence for the dying, were expected and assured.

I disagree wholly with the notion that there is no point in staying with an unconscious patient because he or she does not know you are there. I am perfectly certain, through years of experience and observation, that unconsciousness, as we define it, is not a state of unknowing. Rather, it is a state of knowing and understanding on a different level that is beyond our immediate experience.

Peggy was aware of this and, in ways that neither she nor anyone could explain, she entered into Frank’s mental state in the last few weeks and days of his life.

One day, as I was leaving, she said, “It won’t be long now. I shall be glad for us both when it’s all over.” She did not look unhappy. In fact she looked as serene and as confident as ever. But all pretence was gone.

I asked her, “How long have you known that he was going to die?”

“How long? Well, I can’t say exactly. A long time, anyway. From the time the doctor first said he should go into hospital for tests, I suppose.”

“So you’ve known all the time, and never let on?”

She did not reply, but stood on the doorstep, smiling.

“How did you guess?” I asked, intrigued.

“It wasn’t a question of guessing. I just knew, quite suddenly, as though someone had told me. I’ve had so much happiness in life with Frank, more happiness than anyone can expect. We’re more than brother and sister, more than husband and wife. How could I fail to know that he was going to die?”

She smiled, and waved to a neighbour who was passing, and replied to her enquiry, “Yes, he’s getting on nicely, thank you; he’ll be up and about soon, you’ll see.”

The last evening of his life came surprisingly quickly. Rash is the professional who will predict death. The young can die while your back is turned, yet the old and frail, who you think will die in the night, live on for weeks.

The late summer evening was beautiful as I approached the prefab estate. Long shafts of sunlight glimmered on the river and made the little buildings glow like pink marble.

Peggy greeted me at the door with the words, “He’s changed, nurse. About an hour ago he just changed. Something’s different.”

She was right. A deep motionless stupor had come over Frank. He did not appear to be in any discomfort or distress. In fact I have never in all my experience known anyone to die in a state of distress. “Death agony” is a common idea, but I have never seen it.

Frank’s breathing had changed. It was very slow and deep. I counted the breaths and there were only six per minute. He was slightly blue around the mouth, nose and ears. His eyes were open but unseeing. Peggy took his hand and grasped it firmly. She stroked his forehead with her other hand and leaned over him whispering, “I’m here, Frank. It’s all right, my love, I’m here.”

He seemed quite unconscious, but I saw his hand move as he gripped hers more firmly. What is this mystery we call the unconscious? I felt sure he knew she was there. Perhaps he could even hear her and understand her words. I felt his nose, his ears, his feet. They were quite cold. I felt his pulse; it was only twenty beats per minute. I whispered, “I’ll stay here quietly. I’ll sit over by the window.”

She nodded. I sat down to contemplate them both. She was completely calm and relaxed. She did not look unhappy or even anxious. Every nerve of her concentration was focused on the dying man. She was with him in death as she had been in life.

His breathing rate dropped to four per minute and the hand holding Peggy’s fell limp. I felt his pulse again, but could not locate it, and when I did it was a feeble eight or ten beats per minute. I sat down again, and Peggy continued to stroke his face and his hands. The clock ticked steadily, and quarter of an hour elapsed. Frank gave a deep, deep breath, which made a rasping sound as it passed through the collapsed throat muscles. A little fluid oozed out of his mouth and trickled down the pillow. His eyes were still open, but a white film was collecting over them.

Peggy whispered, “I think he’s gone.”

“I think so. But wait quietly for a minute.”

She sat unmoving by the inert body for about two minutes. Then, to our surprise, he took another huge, rasping breath. Would there be another? We waited for a full five minutes, but he did not breathe again. There was no pulse or heartbeat.

Spontaneously Peggy said, “Into Thy hands, Oh Lord, I commend his spirit.” Then she recited the Lord’s Prayer, in which I joined her.

Together we straightened and laid out the dead man’s body. We closed his eyes. We could not keep his mouth shut so I tied the chin with a bandage to keep the lower jaw in place. We could take it off when rigor mortis had set in. We had to change the bed linen completely, because at the time of dying his bowels and bladder had emptied.

We washed him all over, and I said, “We will leave him in a shirt, put on back to front. The undertakers will bring a shroud.”

She replied, “I’ve got one. I got it several weeks ago. I couldn’t have left him indecent could I?”

She fetched a chair and climbed up to a small cupboard high above the gas meter. There was a box in it from which she extracted a shroud. We put it on him. I asked her if she would like me to contact the undertakers. She thanked me, and said she would be grateful. “But tell them not to come till tomorrow morning, will you, please?”

That was perfectly normal. In those days the deceased often lay in the house for a day or two as a mark of respect for the dead. Family and neighbours would come in to “pay their respects”.

Throughout, Peggy was completely calm and tranquil. Her face and voice betrayed no sign of sorrow or loss. In fact I would have said she had an almost ethereal quality about her. I left her with a feeling of admiration.

At the door, she said, “If you see anyone, any neighbours, don’t tell them Frank’s died, will you? I’ll tell them tomorrow. I want to tell them myself.”

“Of course not,” I reassured her, although I would have to report it at Nonnatus House.

Her anxiety passed.

“That’s all right. It’s just the neighbours, I don’t want them to know yet. They can come tomorrow to pay their respects. But not tonight.”

We smiled at each other, and I squeezed her hand. No one would come barging in tonight, not the undertakers, nor the neighbours, nor anyone. She could be alone with her thoughts and her memories. Would she like a couple of sleeping tablets?

She thought for a second. Yes, that would be a very good idea. I opened my bag and handed her a couple of Soneryl.

Peggy shut and locked the door when I left. She sat for many hours on the edge of the bed, unable to take her eyes off Frank, their life together tumbling through her mind. Her happiness had been perfect and complete, she had always known that, and now she was not going to be parted from him.

She pulled up a chair and climbed again to the cupboard above the gas meter and took out two more boxes, one very small, the other larger. She undressed and brushed her hair. She opened the larger of the two boxes and took out a white shroud, which she put on, tying the ribbons carefully at the back. She opened the small box and tipped out fifteen grains of morphine, to which she added the two Soneryl. She took a bottle of brandy and a glass from the bedside cabinet, and swallowed all the tablets in two or three gulps. She continued drinking brandy until she could no longer sit up.

When the undertakers arrived the next morning they could not get in. They broke the window and saw her dead, her arms around her brother.

AND THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

The Reverend Thornton Applebee-Thornton had been a missionary in Sierra Leone for twenty-five years. He was enjoying a six-month furlough home in England, which he tried to spend mostly at the Applebee-Thorntons’ country house in Herefordshire. This was not always easy, because his father, a widower of ninety who was looked after by two ladies from the village, was a retired Indian Army colonel who had never been able to understand his only son’s priestly persuasion. In fact, he despised it, despised his wet and wimpish ways, and secretly felt aggrieved that he should be afflicted with such offspring. His only son, he grumbled to himself, might have had the decency to turn out to be more of a man than that poor thing with his dog collar and his sermons, a missionary pandering to the blasted natives.

“Bah!” he would shout, “kick hell out of the blasted wogs. That’s the only way they will respect you. It’s the only language they understand.”

At which point his reverend son decided that perhaps it was time to visit his cousin Jack at his farm in Dorset; but cousin Jack had just retired to the South of France, leaving his son Courtney in charge of the farm and yes, of course, (the letter read) cousin Thornton would be more than welcome to stay if he could accommodate Fiona’s busy programme at the riding school that they had just opened. A week at the farm convinced the Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton that all this horsey stuff was not for him. Equally, the young couple decided between themselves that the poor old boy was really a frightful bore and they couldn’t be expected to introduce him to their circle; perhaps Africa was the best place for him.

So he visited old school friends, and students from his days at theological college. They were delighted to see him, but sadly, after they had exhausted the shared experiences of thirty to forty years ago, found they had little to say to each other.

Perhaps a couple of weeks in Brightlingsea – or did they call it Brighton these days? – would be pleasant. The Metropole was comfortable and he enjoyed the sea breezes, but, as he sat on the front watching life pass by, he was forced to conclude that he had spent so long in Africa and given so much of his mind and energy to the mission that he had lost touch with the changes in England. Expecting the customs and manners, dress and behaviour of the 1920s, he was a little shocked, and more than a little pained by what he saw.

The Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton was a bachelor – not, he was quick to assure his friends, by choice. He greatly admired, indeed revered, the fair and gentle sex, and would very much have wished the solace and companionship of a loving wife, joined in the felicity of holy matrimony as vouchsafed to his more fortunate friends and colleagues; but the fair ideal had not come his way. The truth is that the reverend gentleman was essentially a one-woman man, and the only woman he had ever fancied was, unfortunately, a nun. He had never spoken to her, beyond the sacramental words: “This is the body of Christ, take this . . . ” as he gave her the consecrated bread; but she was enshrined in his heart and when he was moved to another mission her memory went with him. But that was all a long time ago, he mused, as he watched the boys and girls flaunting themselves half-naked on Brighton beach, and times had changed. Perhaps one was out of touch?

He pulled a letter from his pocket. One of his old friends from theological college was the rector of All Saints’, Poplar. The Rector would be delighted to see him, the letter read, and to show him around the parish. Would a couple of weeks be sufficient?

This was how the Reverend Thornton Applebee-Thornton came to be in Poplar at the time of which I write. As the mission in Sierra Leone was planning to introduce a midwifery service, the Rector suggested that his old friend might like to study the work of the Sisters of St Raymund Nonnatus. It seemed like an invitation not to be missed. Accordingly, the Rector contacted Sister Julienne, and arranged that conducted tours of our practice would start the following day, with visits, by arrangement, to some of our patients.

The Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton came to lunch at Nonnatus House. We were about twelve at table that day. We were accustomed to luncheon visitors, mostly clergymen and sometimes retired missionaries, and it was always a pleasant change. The Reverend was a tall, distinguished man of around fifty. He was good-looking, with fine, slightly sharp features and a sensitive mouth. He had a full head of pure white hair and sun-weathered skin. He was very thin and I thought this was probably due to repeated bouts of dysentery and other intestinal infections. He ate heartily of the lamb stew provided by Mrs B, our cook, complimenting her with loquacious courtesy upon its excellence. He had a deep, kindly voice and kindly eyes that looked at each person around the table with intelligent understanding. If he spoke directly to anyone his attention was so focused, and so penetrating, that he seemed to be able to read the mind and character of the person he was speaking to.

Conversation was general. Sister Julienne asked him to tell us about the mission at Sierra Leone and he expounded on the size of the Christian community, the dire poverty of the natives and the work being done to found schools and hospitals. He spoke with fluency and charm, with not a trace of self-aggrandisement, to which he would have been entitled, having been a pioneer in a challenging and hostile environment.

He was fascinating. We all hung on his words, especially Chummy, our nursing colleague, whose burning ambition – in fact her only reason for training as a nurse – was to be a missionary. Eagerly she asked him about the plans to start a midwifery service, to which he smilingly replied that he hoped she would honour the mission by being their first trained midwife. Chummy’s huge shoulders expanded with pride and joy. She closed her eyes and exclaimed, “Oh, I will, I will. You can rely on me.”

He looked at her quietly and carefully, his pleasant eyes taking in her youthful enthusiasm. Many people reacted to Chummy’s massive size and awkward gestures with ill-concealed humour, but not this gentleman. He leaned towards her and said softly, “I am quite, quite sure that we can rely on you.”

Chummy’s breath quivered out of her in a series of happy gasps and she could bring herself to say no more.

The Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton turned to Sister Julienne. “Which brings me to the purpose of my visit today. What with the charm of the company and the excellence of the luncheon, I had almost forgotten that I was here to be shown around your district nursing and midwifery practice.”

Was it an accident? Was it coincidence? Was it a mistake? Or was it devilish cunning? With a perfectly straight face, saucy Sister Julienne, whose eyes never missed a trick and whose mind was everywhere, looked coolly at him and lied through her teeth, without so much as a blush.

“I very much regret that none of the Sisters will be available to escort you on a tour of the district. I cannot express my regret too strongly, but we all have other duties this afternoon.”

He looked disappointed and everyone else looked surprised. “It is a busy time for us,” she continued, “and unfortunately none of my trained nurses can be spared for the purpose either.”

The poor man looked uncomfortable, as though he were superfluous to requirements, and ought to be going.

“However, Jane is available this afternoon . . . ”

At this poor Jane nearly fell off her chair, knocking over a salt pot and a dish of mint sauce, which slid greenly across the table. Sister Julienne appeared not to notice.

“. . . And Jane, who knows the district well – perhaps better than any of us – would be delighted to accompany you.”

She rose to her feet, and we all got up with her and stood behind our chairs as she said grace. My eyes were lowered, but I glanced up and looked across the table at Jane. Her hands were not folded; they were clinging to the back of her chair and she was panting. Little beads of perspiration had broken out on her forehead and all in all she looked as if she were on the point of collapse. What on earth was Sister doing, I wondered. This was sheer cruelty.

In the hallway I heard Sister suggesting to Jane that she could take the Reverend to the Manchester Road and the Dockland areas first. Then they could look at Bow, Limehouse and the other parts of the district another day.

Jane went to fetch her coat and her legs were shaking. I saw the Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton watch her closely as she walked in front of him. His face was thoughtful. Jane reached to take down her coat, but her hands twitched so convulsively that she could not take it off the peg.

“Allow me,” he said courteously, and helped her to put it on. He put his hand on her arm and led her to the door. He turned and thanked Sister for allowing him such an excellent guide, who he was quite sure would be most helpful and informative. He opened the door for Jane with a slightly old-fashioned bow and murmured: “After you, madam.”

They returned at tea time and he was full of praise, saying how informative Jane had been, and how greatly he valued the time she had so graciously spared him. Asked if he would like more conducted tours of the district, he said that there was no limit to his thirst for knowledge. Asked if he was quite happy with Jane as his escort – would he prefer a trained midwife on another occasion – he became profuse in stating his preference for Jane, who, he declared, was the perfect guide. Her erudition and encyclopedic knowledge of the topography and sociology of the area were more than he had dared hope for.

Jane appeared to accept her new role as guide for the Reverend Mr Applebee-Thornton, and carried out her duties with her customary attention to detail. Sister Julienne advised her to take a map, and to keep notes of what they had seen.

A week or two later, at lunch, Sister enquired how things were going. Jane replied eagerly, “Well, Pippin wants . . . ”

She turned a deep red and her hands flew to her mouth. Stuttering, she tried to excuse herself. “I don’t mean to be impertinent, Sister, but he asked me to call him Pippin. I said I couldn’t presume to be so familiar, but he said that all his friends call him Pippin, and he would be hurt if I didn’t.”

To this. Sister replied, with exaggerated solemnity, that Jane had done the right thing, and must certainly call him Pippin, if that was his wish.

That same evening we were in the bicycle shed. Sister Julienne was mending a puncture, and I was tightening my brakes. To my great surprise, she said, “Where do you get your clothes from, Jennifer?” With the tyre lever grasped firmly in her small hand, Sister ripped off the outer tube.

“Well, I have a dressmaker. I don’t usually go for off-the-peg stuff.”

“But what store would you recommend for good clothes?”

I thought for a while. Sister plunged the inner tube into a bowl of water. “Liberty’s, I suppose, in Regent Street.”

“Ah yes, Liberty’s. That sounds most suitable.” She was turning the inner tube thoughtfully in the water, looking for bubbles.

“Jane needs some new clothes. I am going to tell her to get some. I wonder, Jenny, would it be too much to ask you to go with her? I’m sure she would value your advice. You need spare no expense, because Jane earns money but she never spends it.”

No one could ever resist an appeal from Sister Julienne – certainly not me. More surprises were in store.

“And who is your hairdresser?”

“I always go to Chez Jacques in Regent Street, which just happens to be opposite Liberty’s.”

Her eyes lit up. She had found the puncture now; the water was bubbling. But her real interest seemed to be in my hairdresser.

“Just opposite! Now, that’s marvellous. It couldn’t be more convenient. If you are in the area, could you take Jane to the hairdresser? She always cuts her hair herself, but I am sure she would look prettier if a good hairdresser attended to her.”

Now, none of my nearest and dearest would suggest that I am quick off the mark when it comes to matchmaking. My poor mind doesn’t work that way. Slow, they call me. But on that occasion the penny dropped. “It would be a pleasure, Sister. Just leave Jane in my hands.”

Jane was dingy, drab and plain. Her clothes were about the worst I have ever seen. Her shoes were heavy, black lace-ups. Her stockings – tea-coloured lisle – were baggy. Her hair always looked a mess, and her skin was grey and deeply lined. To smarten her up would be quite a job.

After breakfast the next morning, Sister Julienne said: “Jane, you need some new clothes. Go with Jennifer this afternoon and she will choose some for you. You also need a haircut.”

Jane meekly replied: “Yes, Sister.”

It may seem extraordinary to speak to an adult in such a manner, but there was no other way of dealing with Jane. She was incapable of making even the smallest decision for herself and had to be directed in everything. I took my cue from Sister. I had thought carefully, and decided that a new look for Jane would have to be subtle. If I tried to dress her up like a fashion plate, the result might be disastrous. But first, the hairdresser.

Jane had never before been inside a West End hairdresser’s and she hung back timidly at the door. But I only had to say, “I’ve made an appointment for you; you’ve got to come in,” and she obeyed meekly.

I had a quiet word with Monsieur Jacques: “A gentle style, to frame the face, nothing exaggerated, no backcombing, something to suit a mature lady of quiet habits.”

Monsieur Jacques nodded gravely, and took up his scissors.

As every woman knows, it’s the cut that counts, and Jacques was a master-cutter. Had he ever achieved anything as spectacular as his reinvention of Jane? Perhaps the enormity of the challenge inspired him, for the result was little short of a miracle. Her natural curls moved in all the right places, her dingy greyness was now a confident iron-grey, with a softening of white at the temples. Jane looked at herself with astonishment in the huge mirrors, and as he flicked a wayward curl with his tail-comb, she actually smiled. Some of the worry left her face and she giggled. “Ooh, is that me?”

At Liberty’s I looked out for a sales assistant who would not intimidate Jane. Some of them can be so smart and sharp they set the teeth on edge. A languid young woman with a drainpipe figure and a contemptuous eye shimmied across the carpet, but I steered Jane towards a homely-looking soul with a tape measure round her neck.

I explained the requirements, and she murmured reassuringly, “The unconscious elegance of a Hebe-Sports, with a little blouse or two. Leave everything to me.” She deftly applied the tape measure to Jane’s bony frame.

As promised, Jane emerged from the changing room transformed by a tailored suit in elegant grey. The tape measure breathed, “The iconic statement of the suit is in keeping with modom’s splendid height. The subtle moulding of the skirt lends softness to the hips. Observe the detail of the pockets, rounding and moulding the line of the hips. Notice how the curve of the collar flatters modom’s superb shoulders.”

All of which was another way of saying that Jane’s gaunt figure and prominent bones had somehow been concealed by the cut of the suit. She stood, meek and silent, passively allowing the collar to be adjusted a fraction of an inch.

One would have thought that the tape measure had by now exhausted her repertoire, but not at all. She was just winding herself up for a virtuoso performance.

“The slender figure and sublime height of modom are perfection for the timeless beauty of the true suit. Observe the effortless grace of modom’s posture -” (Jane was drooping as usual.) “Good clothes reflect the creativity of their creator, striving for the zenith of creation. The true suit is visionary, in a restrained and dignified mode. Modom’s intuitive understanding of the truly chic speaks volumes for her ineffable vision.”

Jane looked utterly bewildered, and even I felt as though I were sinking out of my depth.

The tape measure cast a swift, professional eye over us both, absorbed the fact that we were floundering, and swiftly came in on the attack. “Observe how the silken threads pick out a million dancing lights, and enhance the flickering shades in modom’s beautiful hair.”

I had to agree that the colour certainly matched Jane’s hair, although she stood silent, having no opinion on the subject.

The tape measure now turned to the drainpipe, who had joined us. “And now we must consider the passive and perfect necessity of the little blouse. Quintessentially, tara lawn is the first essential. Such a fine fabric – wouldn’t you agree?”

“Oh, quintessentially essential,” the drainpipe gushed as we crossed the floor to a room filled with blouses.

“The colour at the throat is all important. Modom requires understatement. The bold gesture is not for modom. Dusty pink, I think.”

She pulled from the rail a pink blouse and held it against Jane’s scrawny throat. The result was undeniably pleasing.

“Whilst the blue – muted, of course – draws attention to modom’s fine eyes.” A second blouse was held up. It was true. I had never before noticed how blue Jane’s eyes were.

The tape measure drew forth yet another. “And what does modom say to mellow yellow?”

Jane had nothing to say, but the drainpipe ventured to suggest that perhaps mellow yellow was a little over-emphatic in its proclamation, and would not the merest whisper of lilac speak with quiet authority?

The tape-measure raised her manicured hands. “Lilac! Heavenly lilac! How could I forget?”

She signalled to the drainpipe, who trickled away and returned with a third blouse, of perfect fit and colour. Jane looked charming in all of them.

The tape-measure was rhapsodic. “Ah! the perfection of lilac. Queen Mary’s favourite colour, and modom’s truest friend. Lilac is a poem, a fragrance, a hint of nothingness. Modom cannot possibly miss heavenly lilac from her wardrobe.”

These women certainly gave value for money and we took the lot.

Shoes, gloves, handbag and some decent stockings were all chosen in the same manner, and we were on our way east of Aldgate, back to Poplar.

Was Pippin likely to be aware of all the intense female activity that had been going on for his delight and diversion? Was he likely to see any difference? The sad answer to both these questions was probably “No”. I have yet to meet a man who can give you even the vaguest description of what a woman was wearing ten minutes after she left his company. He would probably say, with an airy wave of the hand, “Oh, she was looking lovely in a green floaty thing,” when she was wearing tight-fitting blue!

Jane changed for lunch and therefore it was to an all-female audience that she displayed the results of our outing. Cries of “Lovely”, “transformed”, “fab hair-do”, went up all around, and Jane looked surprised, quietly gratified by all the compliments. Sister Julienne allowed herself a meaningful wink as she whispered to me, “Well done.”

Pippin came at 2 p.m. prompt, and exhibited no surprise at Jane’s appearance. Perhaps he saw no change! They left together for Mile End, the northerly border of our district.

Let us not enquire too closely into these guided walking tours, conceived and executed with a view to benefiting the native people of Sierra Leone. To do so would be a lapse of good taste. Suffice it to say that the two-week stay at the Rectory was lengthened to six and that, day by day, bit by bit, Jane began to look more relaxed and happy, and less chronically nervous.

Pippin came to lunch one Sunday a few weeks later, and towards the end of the meal he said, “I will have to be leaving you all soon. My six-month furlough draws to its close, and I must return to the duties God has been pleased to entrust to me in Sierra Leone. Before I leave England I must spend a few weeks with my aged father in Herefordshire. These visits are not always easy for me, because we do not always see eye to eye, especially over the treatment of the native African. My father, now aged ninety, was an army officer in the African wars of the 1880s, and his principles I regard as harsh, whereas he regards mine as weak and mollycoddling. It can be very difficult.”

He turned to Sister Julienne. “I was wondering, Sister, if you could possibly spare Jane for a couple of weeks to come with me? I feel that a feminine influence would ease the tension in an all-male household. With her charm and tact, and her gentle disposition, I feel that she could mollify my father in ways that I never could with my blunderings. Jane has already agreed to come if you can spare her. And I, for my part, would be eternally grateful.” Jane’s hand was resting on the table; he touched it lightly, and gave it a little squeeze.

She blushed and murmured: “Oh! Pip.”

The visit started badly because the old colonel called Jane “a raw-boned horse” and Pippin was furious and would have walked out of the house without even unpacking. But Jane laughed and said she had been called worse than that in her time. Pippin raged on about “that impossible old man” until Jane went up to him, placed her fingers on his lips, and whispered: “Just be thankful that you have a father at all, dear.”

In an agony of self-reproach he caught hold of her wrists and drew her to him. “May God forgive me. I am not worthy of you.” He kissed her gently. “All my sins will be redeemed by your suffering, my wise and perfect love.”

Later that evening the Colonel returned to horses when he referred to “that little filly of yours”. Pippin stiffened, but his father carried on, “She’s got good legs. Always a sign of pedigree in a horse or a woman. You can tell the breeding by the shape of the ankle.”

The weeks passed well and the Colonel took to Jane. Her quietness appealed to him and he approved of her self-effacing habits. He barked at his son one evening: “Well, there’s one thing to say. That little filly of yours is not going to drive you mad with a lot of silly chatter. Never could abide those magpie women, m’self; yackety-yackety-yak, all day long.”

His son smiled and said, “I take it that we have your blessing, then, sir?”

“Whether you have my blessing or not, my boy, I can see you are set on the filly and nothing will make any difference. Go ahead, go ahead; your mother would have been pleased, God rest her soul.”

The Reverend Mr and Mrs Applebee-Thornton returned to Poplar for a few days before they sailed for Sierra Leone. I have never in my life seen a woman so changed. She was tall and regal, her eyes were smiling, and calm confidence seemed to spring from deep within her. Pippin hardly took his eyes off her, and always referred to her as “my dear wife”, or “my beloved Jane”.

Of course, we had to have a party. Nuns love a party. They are very sedate affairs, ending at 9 p.m., in time for Compline and the Greater Silence, but they are fun while they last. Mrs B provided excellent cakes and sandwiches, to which we added a little sweet sherry, compliments of the Rector. The invitation was open to anyone who had known Jane and wanted to wish the happy couple well in their new life. About fifty people came, and some boys from SPY (the South Poplar Youth Club) provided music with their guitars and drums, which was considered to be very risque. Pippin gave a delightful speech. The length of the phrases and the extravagance of the language – about pearls of great price, and the best wine being served last – was lost on many people; but the gist of the message was that he was the luckiest man alive, and everyone cheered.

Dancing had just begun when the telephone rang. I was first on call.

“Yes . . . yes . . . This is Nonnatus House. Mrs Smith . . . What address, please? How frequent are the contractions? Have the waters broken? Keep her in bed, please. I’ll come straight away.”