The Orphans of Halfpenny Street

‘I’m afraid she has, but she isn’t quite as bad as Dick.’ Michelle looked at him anxiously, because he was the most undernourished of them all, his spirit much stronger than his poor little body. ‘How are you – any headache or feeling hot?’

‘Nah, I never get nuffin’ like the others,’ Jake said proudly. ‘Shall I sit wiv me sister?’

‘You get back in bed, there’s a good lad,’ Michelle said. ‘Would you like some comics to look at? I’m sure we’ve got some Rupert Bear copies in the cupboard somewhere, or there might be a Beano … one about an ancient caveman?’

‘I’d rather ’ave an adventure story,’ Jake said, ‘but if there ain’t none the comics will do.’

‘I’ll have a look in a minute, after I get Susie to swallow this draught …’

‘Wot is it?’ he asked, looking interested. ‘Susie don’t like medicine, but Ma always takes an Aspro for ’er ’eadaches.’

‘It’s just a special medicine we use in hospital but you can’t buy in the shops – that will stop her feeling so bad, helps to cool the fever. You can’t use Aspirin for children with chicken pox, you see.’ She held the glass to the little girl’s lips, but Susie had clamped them shut and refused to swallow.

‘You ’ave ter be firm wiv her,’ Jake said, leaning over and pinching his sister’s nose so that she was forced to open her mouth and gulp the mixture down. ‘That’s wot me dad used ter do wiv me when I were a nipper. He were a good ’un, me dad. We were all right afore he died …’

Michelle smiled as he retired to his bed, lying on top of it in the striped cotton pyjamas the home had supplied. She would find something for him to read if she had to send one of the carers out to buy him an adventure story.

Sally entered the ward just as Michelle was looking in the cupboard for the promised comics. The nurse turned her head, giving her colleague a wry smile.

‘Are you furious with me for picking you to help?’

‘No, of course not,’ Sally said. ‘I’ve rung my sister Brenda at her office and told her I shan’t be going dancing with them tonight. We can share the nursing.’ She looked at Dick as he flung out his arms and muttered something unintelligible. ‘Are they all ill?’

‘Jake says he is feeling all right,’ Michelle said, pouncing on a pile of comics and two much-read Biggles books in triumph. ‘I knew we had this somewhere. Give them to Jake; it will save him from being bored for a while.’

Sally took the pile of comics and sat on the edge of Jake’s bed, smiling as he grabbed them eagerly. Clearly he’d been taught to read at school, even though he probably wouldn’t have had much help from his mother. ‘My brother likes these Biggles books. He still reads them even though he’s grown up and I bring them in for the children when he’s finished with them, though Sister would have my guts for garters if she knew …’ Sister Beatrice didn’t like books and comics brought into the sick ward, because of the germs they might hold. She thought the violence portrayed in some of the comics unacceptable.

‘I shan’t tell her,’ Jake said solemnly and drew a finger across his throat. ‘I’m awful thirsty, miss.’

‘Do we have any lemon barley in the rest room?’ Sally asked Michelle.

‘There’s bound to be something – and you can put the kettle on and make us a cup of tea …’ Michelle pulled back the covers and smoothed her cool cloth over Susie’s heated body, dried her gently and applied calamine lotion to the spots to help stop the itching.

Sally went into the next room and filled a kettle for their tea, but when she looked in the cupboard there was nothing to make a drink for the thirsty little boy. Michelle looked impatient when she told her.

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, can’t the kitchen staff ever do their job properly? You’ll have to take off your apron and wash your hands, then go down there …’

Just as Sally was about to obey, there was a knock at the door. Discovering one of the kitchen girls with a loaded trolley, including a jug of iced lemon barley, some milk in a jug and a bottle of concentrated orange squash, she laughed.

‘You must be psychic,’ she said. ‘I was just coming to fetch some of this.’

‘Sister Beatrice told me to bring this to you – and I’m to bring another jug up before I go off for the evening.’

Carrying the loaded tray to a table, Sally set it down and filled a glass for the thirsty child. Then she went through to the little room next door just as the kettle boiled. She made a pot of tea and took back two steaming mugs.

‘Fancy Sister Beatrice thinking of all this,’ she said as she put Michelle’s tea on a table and sipped her own.

‘She’s very efficient,’ Michelle said. ‘Just don’t get on the wrong side of her, that’s all …’

‘Well, I think she’s a brick,’ Sally said, sipping her tea, ‘but I wouldn’t dare tell her so.’

Michelle smiled, finished her tea and went back to Dick, who was tossing from side to side again. Poor little boy, he was really feeling very ill and it was no wonder that Sister was worried about him. In cases where the patient was already weakened, chicken pox might lead to pneumonia, and Dick just wasn’t strong enough to go through that; none of them were.

FIVE (#ubb64e586-485e-5342-b9ed-1e963d768eb1)

Alice left St Saviour’s at just after eleven that evening, shivering a little because it had turned colder and her coat was thin, almost threadbare in places. She was saving for a new one from the market, but there was always a crisis at home and her mother needed most of Alice’s wages. Although she didn’t really grudge the money, it made her as mad as fire when her father got drunk on pay night, having spent more than half of what he earned all week. The rows in their house on a Friday night were awful, and she was glad that she could get out of it because she was working the late shift.

She walked quickly, wishing that she could have afforded to catch the tram that would take her to the end of their road, which was not far from Commercial Street. She had to cross over the wide thoroughfare, which, during the day, was always choked with traffic, horses and carts, buses and lorries, delivering goods to the shops. Her way took her down Brushfield Street towards Gun Street and Artillery Lane, where her family were housed in part of an old town house that had been turned into multiple dwellings by the landlord. To reach home she would have to pass the ugly building that served as a night refuge for women; these destitutes were always poorly dressed and often drunk, their faces grey with the exhaustion that came from poverty. Nearby was what Alice knew to be one of the finest Georgian shop-fronts left over from a grander past, because this area had once been most respectable. London was such a hotchpotch of the ugly and the beautiful, sometimes standing side by side.

As she turned the corner, Alice thought about the home she shared with her parents and brothers and sister, which was within walking distance of Halfpenny Street. The house had once been a large property but was now partitioned off with entrances to the front and rear; the latter reached through a narrow passage at the side. All six of her family were crowded into three rooms, with a tiny scullery; the only toilet was in the back yard and shared by two other families. The stench from the old-fashioned closet on a warm night was almost unbearable and Alice never used it, preferring a pot behind the screen, which she emptied in the morning before leaving for work, averting her head and trying not to breathe as she did so. She and her sister Mavis, who was just a year younger and working in the cardboard factory, shared one half of the front bedroom. Behind a curtain hung from a thin brass rail her two younger brothers, Saul and Joseph, slept in one small bed, head to tail. If Alice woke in the night it was usually to the sound of her brothers quarrelling.

Her parents had the smaller bedroom at the back, and since the walls were painfully thin it was possible to hear what went on when they retired for the night. If they weren’t shouting at each other the bed springs would be pounding, Alice’s mother protesting unfairly at what she termed her lout of a husband’s brutality, because he wasn’t a violent man. To Alice’s knowledge, he’d never hit her mother and it was more likely that she would use her rolling pin on him.

Sometimes, Alice wished that her father would leave home again, for his sake, because she couldn’t bear to see him looking so miserable. He wasn’t all bad; she knew it was her mother’s tongue that drove him to the drink and wondered why he stayed, yet she knew his leaving would not improve her mother’s temper. Mrs Cobb was a scold with a nasty tongue and she used it on her family and neighbours, quarrelling regularly with everyone that shared the crumbling building.

Houses like theirs ought to have been pulled down long since. The council had talked about it long before the war but nothing was ever done. Even Hitler hadn’t obliged them by dropping a bomb on the place, though his Luftwaffe had left gaping holes everywhere you looked.

Why couldn’t her family be moved to one of those smashing new council houses like Sally Rush’s lived in? Alice envied them their warm home – and it wasn’t just the lovely new stove that made Sally’s home seem warm. Her parents didn’t row all the time.

If only she could find somewhere else to live, Alice thought. She’d asked Sister Beatrice if she could have a room in the Nurse’s Home, but had been told that she lived too close to need it. It wasn’t the walking she minded, though on cold nights it was far enough, but she longed for some peace and privacy.

‘Where are you off to at this hour, then?’ Accosted by a voice she knew, Alice refused to turn round, though she fluffed up her hair, wanting to look her best even though she ought to ignore him. She didn’t want anything to do with Jack Shaw, because he was no good. He might have film star looks with his black hair, slicked down with Brylcreem, and bold blue eyes, and he always had money in his pocket to spend, but that was only because he ran with the local bad boys. Alice’s father had warned her when he’d seen her talking to Jack once, and since then she’d tried to avoid speaking to him.

‘Aw, don’t be like that, Alice luv,’ Jack said, coming up to her and swinging her round to face him. ‘Why are yer avoiding me these days?’

‘I don’t want anything to do with the likes of you, Jack Shaw. I keep meself out of trouble – and you’re bad news.’

‘Now where did you get that idea?’ Jack said, grinning at her. They were standing in the light of a street lamp, giving him a yellowish and slightly malevolent look as he gazed down into her face. ‘I could be good news for a girl like you. I’m going places, Alice, and I might take you with me if you’re nice to me.’

‘Go away and leave me alone,’ she said sharply. ‘I’ve asked you politely, but if you persist I’ll scream.’

Jack laughed, seeming delighted with her resistance. ‘A fat lot of good that will do you round ’ere,’ he teased. ‘There’s girls screamin’ all the time, most of ’em because they like it – they make out they don’t want it, but they do … just like you do, Alice Cobb.’

‘You just shut your filthy mouth,’ Alice said fiercely. ‘I know how to protect myself and I’ll kick you where it hurts if you touch me.’

‘She’s a feisty one,’ Jack said and his grin broadened. ‘Maybe that’s why I like you, Alice. You ain’t easy. I know you ain’t been with anyone and that’s why I’m interested. If you went out with me, you’d soon see I’m a proper gent. Jack Shaw knows how to treat a girl right. I’ll give you a good time, and I’m not talking about a quick one up against the wall either. I’ll take you to a dance or a nightclub and dinner – and then we’ll go back to my place. I’ve got somewhere really cosy but I only take special girls there.’

‘I don’t want to be one of your special girls,’ Alice said. She glared at him as he edged closer and then made a grab for her. Even though she tried to escape, he had her in his arms, pressed hard against him as his mouth closed over hers. His kiss surprised her, because she’d expected the kind of slobbery mess that some of the lads at school had tried on with her; instead his mouth was firm but soft, exploring hers sweetly in a way that made her heart jerk with fright because it aroused new feelings. His tongue explored the shape of her lips, trying to force entry but she kept it firmly shut and suddenly brought her knee up sharply. He yelled as she made contact with him and jerked back, clearly hurt and shocked. ‘I warned you. Just stay away from me, Jack. That was just a friendly reminder, next time I’ll really hurt you.’

Alice walked away swiftly, knowing that he was watching her. She half-expected him to run after her and give her a good hiding but he didn’t, though after a moment he called out, ‘I’ll have you begging me yet, Alice Cobb, and you just see if I don’t. I’ve got something you want even if you don’t know it yet.’

Alice didn’t dare to answer in case he changed his mind and decided to punish her for daring to protect herself. She knew that some of the gang he ran with would have slapped her about if she’d done the same to one of them, and a little shiver went through her as she wondered whether he would take his revenge another time.

He was mixed up in bad things, Alice knew he was, and she wasn’t going to let the sweetness of that kiss blind her to his character. Alice had no intention of ending up like her mother, tied to a smelly house with four children, no money, a drunken husband and no prospects of a better life. When she got married, if she did, she wanted to live in a decent place – perhaps out of London, in the suburbs. She wanted no more than two children and the money to raise them properly … but in her heart she knew that life wasn’t so simple. Girls like her too often gave their hearts to the wrong men and ended up having to get married to a man who would make them miserable – or even worse, ending up having a backstreet abortion in one of those filthy houses everyone knew existed but pretended they didn’t. Alice didn’t want that. No sweet-talking charmer was going to do that to her. She had too much of her mother in her.

Alice smiled as she recalled an incident from her childhood when her mother had chased her father up the lane with a rolling pin, and she’d battered him when she caught him. Sid Cobb went off for a while after that but in the end he’d returned to his wife and family. If she’d been him she would have stayed away, but it seemed her mother had something he liked even if he did drink half his pay every Friday night. Alice wasn’t sure whether it was her cooking or what they got up to in bed; they made enough noise to waken the dead sometimes.

She was still thoughtful, torn between anger and the memory of that sweet kiss, as she paused outside the house where she lived. The smell of stale cooking, the stink from the back yard and the odour of mildew greeted her as she opened the front door and went in. Immediately, she heard her mother screaming abuse at someone, but this time it didn’t seem to be her father. As she hesitated in the parlour that led in off the street, the kitchen door opened and a woman with long, straggling dark hair and a filthy apron came storming out.