Authors: Mary Gibson
‘So, a few months ago, you hadn’t even thought of me?’ he asked, a little crestfallen.
‘A few weeks more like!’ Seeing his face fall, she immediately wanted to soothe him. ‘Well, I never imagined you’d want to hook up with someone like me, Bertie, not in a million years. Uncle said it all, didn’t he? Besides,’ she paused, ‘I didn’t think you were free.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, with the eagerness of a new lover, anxious only to prolong that first conversation, endlessly fascinating to the two people whose lives were being bound together with every disclosure.
‘I mean Florence Green,’ she ventured, so softly that he had to ask her to repeat herself.
‘What about her?’ he asked.
‘I thought you loved her!’
In answer he threw back his head and laughed, a little drunkenly, she thought.
‘I like her, respect her, and we’re friends, but no, I don’t love her, Milly. And besides, she’s engaged to Francis Beaumont!’
‘But, I saw her kiss you on Thursday and then you looked so happy!’ She ended with a sort of wail that sobbed into tears as the remembrance of her sudden, painful jealousy broke over her, mixing with her present heady happiness into a strong brew of emotions.
‘You soppy date, I was happy because I’d just told her what I planned to do and she was congratulating me in advance.’
‘What did you plan to do?’
Bertie took his arm from round her shoulders, and dug into his pocket. The ring was a single diamond on a claw clasp of platinum; the sun, now low in the sky, lifted warm glints from the facets.
‘Milly Colman,’ Bertie said, turning towards her, ‘will you be my wife?’
She twined her arms round him, and forgetting how impossible it was, her answer was whispered softly against his cheek. ‘Yes, Bertie, I will.’
It was hard afterwards for Bertie to drive them the short distance to the hop farm. He kept taking his eyes off the road, searching out Millie’s gaze, almost as if he feared she would be spirited away. They talked all the rest of the way, about her confusion over Florence Green and his fear that she would refuse him. She learned that he’d loved her long before he found her on Fountain Stairs.
‘Remember how everyone in Arnold’s Place used to call you three sisters “the set of jugs”?’
She smiled at the memory.
‘Well, I used to have eyes for only one. You would come into the shop, your poor beautiful face all screwed up with fear that you wouldn’t get back home before your father, and all I wanted to do, even then, was say
Don’t go home, stay here and let me look after you!
’
‘Really, Bertie? Really?’ But how hadn’t she seen that? Where was her mind, where were her eyes? How could she have had this marvellous man so close, every day, and never have looked at him twice? How could she have ever considered anyone else?
‘I’m sorry I didn’t know,’ she said gently.
He shrugged. ‘It just wasn’t the right time,’ he said.
‘I was a different person then,’ she mused as he slowed the van and turned into the field of hopping huts, where she would stay with her mother and Amy. ‘The best I could imagine for me was to escape the old man. I couldn’t see further than that. I looked in the wrong place, I suppose.’
He turned to face her. ‘Well, you’ve found the right place now, Milly.’
October
–November 1924
For the rest of that hop season, every weekend saw Milly and Bertie making the trip to Horsmonden, in Uncle’s brown and cream van. The weather was kind to them, the mild late summer easing gently into a mellow autumn, and on every trip it became their habit to stop on the high ridge above the garden of England, where Bertie had proposed. But for the forced separation from Jimmy, who was thriving in the country air, these were the happiest days Milly had ever known. Yet it wasn’t until the last day of hop-picking that she was brave enough to tell her mother about her engagement to Bertie. She wasn’t sure what had made her hesitate, but however good the match might seem, something made her fear her mother’s reaction.
The cry from the pole-pullers – ‘Pull no more bines!’ – had gone up for the final time, the last hop had been picked, and this year’s hop princess had been chased and garlanded. Milly had held Jimmy tight, hoping the princess’s garland would protect the girl more than her own had. Afterwards the farmer paid them and they walked back to the huts, singing all the way, ready for a final evening of celebration in the village pub and then round the big bonfire.
Milly handed Jimmy over to Amy, who’d grown so close to him she could barely stand a few minutes’ separation. The young girl swung him on to her hip and went to show him off to the other children playing in the centre of the field. Her mother sat heavily down on the chair outside the hopping hut, following Amy with a wistful gaze. Perhaps she was thinking of Elsie. Milly drew in a long breath; it would be now or never.
‘Mum, I’ve got some really good news...’
Her mother’s face brightened. ‘Elsie?’
Milly shook her head and launched in. ‘Me and Bertie’s getting married!’
There was a long moment’s silence.
‘Bertie Hughes!’ her mother said finally, shock written over with disbelief.
Milly had been right to hesitate, yet she was still surprised by her own sense of disappointment. God knows, they needed some happiness in the Colman family, and even if her mother only thought of practicalities, surely she must see that this marriage would secure her and Jimmy’s future, to say nothing of making Milly respectable again?
Milly flushed with anger. ‘Yes, Bertie Hughes! And what are you turning your nose up for?’ She was seated opposite her mother, on an upended crate they used for a table.
Mrs Colman, still tight-lipped, ignored her question. ‘Well, if you’re sure he’s what you want...’
‘Mum! I thought you’d be pleased for me. He loves me and my Jimmy... and I love him!’ she said defiantly.
‘Do you?’ Her mother’s simple question was more painful than any words of condemnation. Besides, Milly didn’t really understand her resistance. ‘All right, just tell me what’s wrong with him.’
Her mother sighed and then, as though explaining simplicities to an idiot, said, ‘Well, he’s not one of our own, is he?’
‘Not one of our own! Mum, he was born in Dulwich, not Timbuktu! And you can’t talk, your family’s all from Ireland!’
Her mother sat with hands firmly planted on her knees. ‘He’s a Protestant.’
Milly groaned disbelievingly. ‘So you’d rather I marry a Dockhead Catholic villain like Pat Donovan, who’ll never be any good to me,
and
a man that I don’t love, than see me marry Bertie Hughes!’
‘Pat’s the father of your child, Milly. Doesn’t he deserve to give the boy his name if he’s willing?’
‘He deserves nothing,’ Milly snapped, not wanting to let on that Pat had suggested the same. ‘And in case you’ve forgotten, he wanted me to get rid of Jimmy! Anyway, he’s banged up and it won’t be the last time either.’
Her mother’s list of excuses hadn’t satisfied her and she pressed further, as Mrs Colman plucked at an invisible thread in her coarse, hop-stained apron.
‘Tell me the real reason.’ She looked at her mother’s disappointed face, with its sad eyes and tight lines, formed by a thousand blows from the old man, and she knew this was more about her own disappointed hopes.
‘Milly, love, don’t marry Bertie Hughes just because you think life will be easier for you and the family with his money coming in. Don’t do it. Money’s not everything, gel.’
‘You think I’m marrying him for his money?’
Milly shook her head in disbelief and walked away, before she said something she would regret.
Money’s not everything!
Milly knew that, but every lesson she’d had from her mother’s failed marriage had taught her not to undervalue its presence.
Money’s not everything!
And this from the woman who had to pawn their clothes every week. Too proud to go herself, she would always pay Mrs Carney the extra coppers to do it for her. Sometimes her mother’s contradictory reasoning infuriated her. She made her way along the lane, and, picking up a fallen branch, beat the long grass and the hedgerow as she went. And what was all that about her not marrying for love, when she’d already explained it was the very reason she didn’t want Pat?
By the time she reached the village green, she had forgiven her mother. However much Mrs Colman got under her skin, Milly knew that all her muddled suggestions were only demonstrations of love. And knowing the life she’d had, how could Milly stay angry with her? Perhaps her mother had taken one too many blows to the head from the old man. Brain damage would certainly excuse her addled thinking.
Bertie and the other stallholders were packing away. She knew he’d spotted her across the green, though he carried on loading chests and jars into the van.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked as she came up to him. ‘You’re ruining that beautiful face with a scowl, you know.’
She growled. ‘Ugh, my mother! I can’t fathom her sometimes!’ She and Bertie had talked about the best time to announce their engagement, and had both agreed her mother should be the first to know. Understanding dawned on his face.
‘You told her. What did she think, that I’m too old for you?’ he asked quickly.
‘No, Bertie, love, that was the one thing she didn’t complain about.’
‘Strike me dumb, Milly, I thought at least she’d see it would be security for you and the boy. I almost don’t want to ask.’ He slammed both van doors shut and leaned his back against the van. Then, taking her elbow, he walked her to the edge of the green where they sat together on a little bench.
Milly thought he was taking her mother’s disapproval very well, but then she was finding that Bertie had a resilient core, one that wouldn’t bend to pressure, especially if he believed in something strongly. She thanked her stars that he had believed in her enough to see past the bad reputation, the illegitimate child and her boisterous ways.
She catalogued her mother’s reservations, leaving out the accusation that had troubled her the most – that she’d agreed to marry Bertie only because of his position, his comfortable home and income. It had set up a ripple of self-doubt that made her feel uneasy.
As she reached the end of his shortcomings, he heaved a sigh and said, ‘See that sign?’ He pointed to one of the nearby village shops, which had been re-enforced with shutters and chicken wire. A white-painted board read
No hop-pickers
. ‘Well, Dockhead’s no different when it comes to outsiders. She’ll come round, once she gets to know me.’
Milly only hoped his faith in human nature would be proved right.
More than six weeks had passed since Elsie’s admittance to the asylum. They had received a letter telling them visiting times, but Elsie hadn’t written and they’d heard nothing about her. Freddie hadn’t seen his brother, who lived in staff accommodation at the asylum, which by all accounts was like a small village. Self-sufficient, with its own farm, Bob had told her they owned a herd of cows for milk, pigs, sheep, chickens and vegetable allotments. They even had their own well and gasworks. The inmates formed the workforce, maintaining the buildings, running the farm and generating much of the income needed to run the place by selling shoes, sacks and ironwork made in the asylum workshops. There was no reason to call on the local towns and villages for anything; they were like a self-contained island in the low-lying Kent marshland that surrounded the asylum. There was a laundry, a carpentry shop, a chapel, and every need, physical and spiritual, was catered for, except the need for freedom.
Milly, her mother and Amy took the bus all the way from Tower Bridge Road. Hour after hour of jolting and stopping took its toll on them all. Amy had to be sick in a paper bag, which her mother tucked neatly under the seat, behind her polished tie-up shoes. They were all in Sunday best, Mrs Colman wearing the only hat she possessed, stuck firmly with pins, Milly in her coffee and cream outfit, and Amy in Elsie’s old best dress.
‘How do you think she’s been?’ her mother asked Milly pointlessly.
‘Oh, you know Elsie. She’s been in a world of her own, probably loves it there with all the gardens and trees. Bob Clark said they’ve even got a recreation hall, with a stage. She’s probably been putting on shows!’
Her mother smiled wanly, unconvinced by Milly’s forced optimism. But, as the bus descended to Stonefield’s bleak approach, the picture she’d tried to paint of Elsie’s idyllic life in the asylum was firmly shattered. The place sprawled over a vast area. Two long, darkly forbidding, Victorian buildings loomed up, with rows of sharp-toothed Gothic windows, and wings jutting out at either end. As they descended from the bus and passed through the massive, wooden-arched door, Milly felt she was entering a mixture of church, court and prison. All the comforting fantasies melted away.
‘This place is horrible!’ Amy’s voice, echoing in the vaulted entrance hall, spoke for them all. ‘I don’t want to go in.’ She stopped dead and refused to go any further, holding up the other visitors filing in behind them. Amy was cringing against her mother’s side. If such a normally defiant creature had been cowed into submission already, Milly doubted there was any hope for Elsie.
‘Don’t show me up!’ Her mother stood, self-consciously rigid, looking towards a white-capped, blue-skirted matron, who was bearing down upon them. The matron clapped her hands against the confused hubbub.
‘Visiting families, please follow me!’ she said, and set off briskly, leading them down a seemingly endless corridor.
Amy dragged on her mother’s skirt so much that Ellen Colman was in danger of losing it. Seeing her mother’s mounting distress, Milly grabbed Amy’s hand, swinging her away. She wished they’d left her with Mrs Knight as they had done Jimmy, but the girl had insisted she wanted to see her sister – though Milly thought there might have been some ghoulish interest from Barrel and Ronnie, in ‘the nuthouse’, which Amy had promised to satisfy.
‘Listen, you wanted to come, now stop acting the goat!’ she scolded her. ‘Mum’s upset enough as it is.’