It was the worst disaster Biddy could imagine, since it would mean that Ellen would not be earning, but it turned out that there was another disaster which had not even crossed her mind.
‘No, they’ve said nothin’ at work, but they soon will; Biddy, I think I’m in the family way!’
‘The f
-family
way?’ Biddy stammered. ‘What do you mean? You don’t mean you’re going to have a baby? But how can you, when Mr Bowker’s been dead almost three months?’
‘I reckon I’m more’n four months gone,’ Ellen said miserably. ‘You said yourself I ate a lot; I’m eatin’ for two, I guess. So it’s either go in one of them places for bad girls or go ’ome, and if me Mam’ll tek me in …’
‘Oh, Ellen, of course she will, your Mam’s ever so kind,’ Biddy said, hugging her friend. ‘But I thought you were careful, or Mr Bowker was, anyway. I thought you said …’
‘It were a mistake,’ Ellen said drearily. ‘Anyone can mek a mistake. And now I’ve told you I’ve gorra admit it’s real, see? Before, I telled meself it weren’t goin’ to ’appen, even though I knew it were.’
‘And you’ve not told your Mam yet, nor your sisters?’
‘I’ve not even told meself I said,’ Ellen pointed out rather sharply. ‘So much ‘as’appened, chuck, that it were easy to push it to the back of me mind. But now I’ve gorra face up to it. I’ll tek a day off work – can you tell ’em I’m sick? – an’ go down an’ see me Mam.’
‘Right,’ Biddy said. ‘I’ll see if I can get a place somewhere … there must be somewhere …’
‘Come wi’ me, back to me Mam’s,’ Ellen suggested, but though Biddy thanked her and hugged her once more, she refused.
‘Your Mam will have enough on her plate with you and a new baby,’ she said shrewdly. ‘Your house bulges at the seams already. But I’ll manage, never you fear. Us O’Shaughnessys are a tough lot, my Mam told me so.’
It was easy to talk about lodgings but not so easy to get something even half-way decent, as Biddy discovered next day. She carried her trusty carpet bag in to work with her, stowing it away in the back room, and told Miss Whitney that the rent of the flat which she and Ellen shared had been put beyond their means by a new landlord and asked for a couple of hours off to search for new accommodation.
After two hours she returned to the shop. ‘It’ll have to be the day off, or I’ll be sleeping in Millie’s doorway,’ she told Miss Harborough despairingly. ‘I never thought a place would be so hard to find, never! And some of ’em’s not rooms, they’re just a bit partitioned off, and the bugs … well, it’s not what I’m used to.’
But desperation began to set in as six o’clock got nearer. She returned to the shop and reclaimed her carpet bag, then trudged off again. And before night fell she found a room, of sorts.
The house itself was situated in a court off the Scotland Road, too far from Millicent’s Modes to be truly practical. The room on offer, to a single young lady or gentleman, had been the property of a daughter of the house, and she bitterly resented being pushed out and incarcerated with half a dozen smaller sisters, particularly by a girl of her own age. She said quite audibly, whilst Mrs Tebbit, the landlady, showed Biddy the room, that ‘Mam really wanted a feller – we all does’, which did little to reassure Biddy as to her welcome here.
But it was a roof, somewhere to put her carpet bag and Dolly. Biddy had brought her own pillow, complete with the little lump of savings buried deep in the feathers, and the woollen blanket which Ellen had knitted out of bits and bobs of leftover wool.
‘You’ll bring your own beddin’, o’ course,’ Mrs Tebbit snapped, when she saw Biddy staring, appalled, at the dirty, stained mattress with the stuffing oozing out from one end. ‘I never provide no beddin’.’
Biddy was grateful she had brought her own bedding. The house was terribly overcrowded with a couple of seedy-looking middle-aged females whom Mrs Tebbit had referred to, collectively, as ‘Auntie,’ an ancient grandfather who had glared at Biddy with pointless senile fury as she was taken through the back kitchen, and an old grandmother with a flourishing beard and moustache who reeked of liniment. And of course there were eight or nine assorted children and presumably a Mr Tebbit somewhere in the offing, since the youngest child was still a babe in arms.
But at least I’ve got a room of my own, Biddy thought thankfully. At least I shan’t have to share anything but the stairs and hallway.
Something of this may have shown in her expression, however, for Miss Jane Tebbit, the injured daughter, who appeared to be about Biddy’s age and was already beginning to look and sound like her mother, put her oar in as Biddy stood silently surveying the small room.
‘We don’t carry up your washin’ water, neither,’ she said aggressively. ‘There’s a tap in the yard, you ’elps yourself.’
Biddy thanked them both, tongue in cheek, and proffered the first week’s rent, which was received with a sniff.
‘My ladies usually pay a month ahead,’ Mrs Tebbit said, taking the money with assumed reluctance. ‘Or two weeks?’
‘A week is what I’m used to paying,’ Biddy said calmly, but with a deep shake of fear inside her in case the woman called her bluff. She was afraid of sleeping rough, and equally afraid of having to go to a boarding house or small hotel and pay their exorbitant prices if this place fell through.
However, despite the sniff, Mrs Tebbit obviously felt that half a crown in the hand was a good deal better than waiting for another desperate person to appear, and she and her daughter disappeared down the rickety stairs, leaving Biddy to ‘make yourself at ’ome,’ as Mrs Tebbit put it.
Alone, Biddy sat down on the bed, then sprang up again and examined the surface of the mattress uneasily. Bed bugs! She might have known, and they were dreadfully difficult to get rid of. What was more, the bites the disgusting insects made on their victims were easily identifiable; employers did not like those who worked for them to show the marks of poverty and deprivation too clearly. They found it easier to say that Miss so-and-so was dirty and didn’t wash, though God knew if washing cured bed-bugs there wouldn’t be one alive in most of the houses along the Scottie Road.
Paraffin? Was it that which killed them? You could catch them on a wet bar of soap and put them out of the window, or set fire to them with a lighted match, or squash them …
Biddy shook the mattress vigorously, then propped it up against the wall and pulled the rickety iron bedstead into the middle of the room. She put her pillow on it, then laid her blanket out and put Dolly down on the bed. She would rather sleep on bare springs than share her bed with the fat grey bugs which needed her blood to live.
The next few weeks were miserable ones for Biddy. She and Ellen had planned to go up to London to watch the Coronation but Ellen was in no condition to travel and Biddy didn’t have the heart to go alone. She went to the cinema and watched it there, and fell in love with the whole family – the pretty little Duchess who was now Queen Elizabeth, her handsome husband and their two beautiful, curly-headed little daughters. But somehow it all fell a bit flat after the lovely plans she and Ellen had made together. No one, as yet, had taken the place of her friend.
So Biddy continued to work as hard as ever, handed over the rent to Mrs Tebbit each Friday, and searched for decent accommodation which she could afford whenever she got the opportunity. But when she found a nice little room the price was beyond her, and often to her horror she found even worse conditions than those under which the Tebbits lived.
Once she went round and visited Ellen, to find her friend almost as miserable as she.
‘They sacked me from Gowns when they saw me stomach sideways,’ Ellen said. ‘I spent me savin’s on a sewin’ machine, though, so I’m takin’ in curtains, alterations, stuff like that. It makes me a bob or two.’ She smiled at Biddy. ‘Makin’ sweets, are you? To ’elp out, like?’
‘If you could see where I live you wouldn’t ask,’ Biddy said, pulling a face. ‘It’s not a nice place, Ellie, and they aren’t nice people. I try to eat away from the house because it’s so dirty, so I couldn’t possibly make sweets there. Still, as soon as I find somewhere decent I’ll be out, you may be sure.’
‘I’m thinkin’ of havin’ the kid adopted,’ Ellen put in. ‘What do you think, Biddy? There’s no Da for it, so I might as well, hey?’
‘What does your Mam think?’ Biddy asked guardedly. She could quite see the advantages of adoption, but parents could be funny about such things she had heard.
‘She says it’s my life and my soul that’ll be at risk if the Lord don’t approve,’ Ellen said rather uneasily. ‘I’ll wait till its born … but I might let someone ’ave it who can give it a chance. I can’t, God knows. But in a way, I want the kid.’
‘You’ll marry, though, Ellie, one of these days,’ Biddy said. ‘Then you’re bound to have other children.’
‘Oh aye? Oo’ll marry a judy what’s got another feller’s kid?’ She flapped a hand at Biddy as her friend began to answer. ‘Ne’er mind, lerrit rest, time will tell.’
Summer turned to autumn, and with the colder weather, Biddy was forced to spend money she could ill afford on an extra blanket. She went up to Paddy’s Market though, and bought second hand, which was a help, and could not resist taking a quick look at Ma Kettle’s emporium as she went past; even her life there seemed bearable when she was lying in her narrow bed at the Tebbits’, listening to them quarrelling and swearing at one another downstairs, or hitting the kids or each other when tempers really rose.
Not that I’d go back, she reminded herself sometimes. At least here I’m all right during the daytime. I’ve got a nice job which I enjoy and I’m earning my independance slowly but surely.
As the weather got steadily colder, living with the Tebbits became easier in some ways and more difficult in others. The bed-bugs disappeared, and since the fleas could be kept at bay with liberal doses of Keatings powder, Biddy felt she could stand them. But the paraffin stove in her room, on which she was supposed to cook her meals leaked, which meant fumes forced her to open the window whilst using it. So any warmth from the little stove was lost through the open window, and anyway she was becoming increasingly suspicious over her can of paraffin, which seemed to become empty, in some mysterious fashion, whether Biddy lit her stove or not.
Someone’s nicking my paraffin, Biddy told herself, and decided to save up for a lock. She did mention the strange way her paraffin disappeared to her landlady, but Mrs Tebbit drew herself up, sucking in her stomach and pushing out her very large chest, and announced that there were no thieves in her house, a remark so reminiscent of Ma Kettle that Biddy had hard work not to laugh.
She did not laugh a week or so later, though, when December brought the first snow-storm of the season. Biddy had had a hard day bicycling through the newly laid snow, and though it was pretty and she enjoyed the freshness and sparkle which it added to the dingy, early-morning streets, she remembered all too clearly the difficulties it had made for her the previous winter and dreaded a repetition. What was more, Ellen’s baby had been born a fortnight earlier and she had gone round to the Bradley home and taken some clothing for the child, only to realise that, though Ellen adored her son, things were going to be hard for her. The baby seemed to drain her of energy and even her sewing did not bring in enough money to support them both. Biddy had willingly handed over a bob as well as the clothes, but she could see that her friend would have her work cut out to manage and intended to do her best to help out. Cold weather, therefore, was very unwelcome on several counts.
However, she cycled up the Scottie Road and turned off into John Comrade Court, known locally simply as Commie, actually anticipating her return to the Tebbit household with something akin to pleasure. She had a couple of eggs up in her room and half a loaf of bread, so she had splashed out on a pint of fresh milk when she had seen a milkman earlier, and intended to make herself French toast, a delicacy of which her mother had been inordinately fond.
The milk was in a ginger-beer bottle, nestling in the pocket of her warm duffle-coat and she had some bull’s-eyes which a customer had given her. Quite a feast – and best of all, a new book!
Living so near to the shop now, she often popped in on Mr Meehan, the bookseller on Cazneau Street, and picked something to read out of his tuppenny tray, for Mr Meehan did not just sell smart new books, but some older ones as well.
Biddy had gone in there earlier, having a delivery in the area, and Mr Meehan, who had always been a good friend, had suggested to Biddy that she might like to put her name down for a place with Mrs Freddy, at Accrington Court, just down the road from her present abode.
‘Mrs Freddy’s clean, a good cook, and a pleasant sort of person,’ Mr Meehan had said, smiling at her. ‘But her rooms are very popular, which is why she has a waiting list. Costs nothing to add your name, madam, and she charges three and six a week with evening meal.’
‘I’ll go at once and put my name down,’ Biddy said. ‘Thank you very much Mr Meehan, you are good to me. Can I have this one, please?’
Mr Meehan took the book and glanced at it, then flipped it open. ‘
Lorna Doone
,’ he said. ‘You’ve not read it, madam?’
‘No, not this one,’ Biddy assured him. Often she bought books she had read and enjoyed when her parents had been alive, but occasionally she took a chance and bought something she had never even seen before. She had been attracted to
Lorna Doone
both by the first few pages and by the illustration in the front, which was a brown and white photograph of the most beautiful river she had ever seen. She took the book from him and opened it at the photograph. ‘Where’s that, Mr Meehan? It’s so beautiful!’
‘It’s Watersmeet, in Devonshire,’ Mr Meehan said. ‘The story takes place in Devonshire, on Dartmoor, if I recall. You’ll enjoy it, madam.’
He took Biddy’s money and they smiled at one another. He always called her madam, it was his little joke. ‘Go round to Mrs Freddy’s and say I sent you,’ he advised as she turned towards the door. ‘You deserve better than that Mrs Tebbit, and you would fit in very well at No. 3 Accrington Court.’