not tired, you’re drunk as usual.’ Despite Alice’s frail figure her accusation was strong and she lithely sprang to her feet, clutching the precious bundle of her baby sister protectively against her ribs as she paced this way and that.
‘Get yerself in the back, ’fore I use this on yer,’ her mother slurred, showing her a wobbling fist. But Tilly’s chin was already drooping towards her bosom.
Alice made a tentative move forward, and then tottered quickly back as her mother snapped up her head but, as she had correctly assumed, Tilly made no move to rise from the bed once she’d settled into the comfort of its sagging edge.
‘You’re a bleeding nuisance, you are. Worse’n all the rest put together. Now git! Let me get meself to bed. Cor, I’m all in.’
Tilly Keiver was a big-boned woman with a florid face topped by reddish-blonde hair. Usually she kept her beautifully thick mane under control: plaited and coiled in a neat bun either side of her head. But a night of roistering with her cronies in the Duke pub, and a painful stumble on the way home, had resulted in her crowning glory resembling a fiery bird’s nest. She yanked out two pins from one side of her head and a thick plait uncoiled sinuously onto a shoulder. She left it at that. The other side was forgotten.
After a few quiet minutes Alice thought her mother had dozed off where she slouched. But before she could act, Tilly managed again to rouse herself and, having folded forward, her callused fingers began pulling at her footwear.
Tilly’s new boots had been got, against fierce competition, just that afternoon from Billy the Totter. Carefully she tried to unlace them but the fancy double bow she’d fashioned when sober got the better of her. In a frenzy of impatience she used toe against heel to squash down the leather and prise them off. The last one freed was tossed from her foot against the wall in a fit of temper. Even in her inebriated state Tilly regretted rough-handling her prized possession. Her frustration resulted in coarse cursing that continued as she fumbled with her heavy skirt. She managed to work it to her ankles and shake it away. Done with undressing, she swung her feet up onto the mattress and momentarily lay quiet and still; the only sound from that side of the room was the settling bedsprings.
Alice moved quietly closer to help her mother cover herself. But Tilly’s flopping hand had finally located what it sought. After a few attempts she managed to swing the solitary blanket high enough to drift about her body.
‘Don’t go to sleep yet, Mum. Lucy needs feeding,’ Alice pleaded in a whisper. ‘And there’s no milk left. There was only a drop that’d gone sour and Dad put it in his tea before he went off to work.’ She gently shook her mother by the arm to rouse her.
Alice knew her mother was conscious but choosing to ignore her pleas, so now she must wait. In a very short while Tilly would sink so deeply into sleep that she’d hear and feel nothing. Alice gently placed little Lucy on the bed a safe distance from her mother’s twitching, and started to tidy the room. She must loiter until she heard her mother snore.
She picked up Tilly’s best coat from the floor, shook it, and draped it across the end of the bed. The small-back stick chair had been made even more rickety by rough treatment; nevertheless Alice moved it to neatly join the three still pushed under the table. The precious boots were collected and placed together out of sight beneath the bed. A rumbling sound drew her back, on tiptoe, to her mother.
‘Mum?’ she tested quietly. There was no response. Even when baby Lucy let out a wail Tilly stirred only to suck in another ragged breath. Alice tested her mother’s consciousness again, this time with more volume to her voice. Tilly snored on.
Quickly Alice’s nimble fingers unbuttoned her mother’s blouse. Deftly she positioned the baby close to a plump breast to nurse. Alice froze stock still, her fingers covering the baby’s mouth to stifle her whimpers. One of her mother’s hands had fluttered up as though she might swipe them both away, but after a moment, hovering, it fell back to the mattress.
Little Lucy’s face had become crumpled and crimson as though she sensed imminent comfort slipping away. But Alice was sure now that her mother was sufficiently stupefied. With furtive care she guided the baby close then snatched away her fingers, allowing the baby to latch on and feed.
Slowly Alice sank to her knees by the bed, feeling quite weak and exhausted. She guessed it must be past midnight. She began to gently move straggly hair away from her mother’s bloated face and when done with that she ran loving fingers over the fleece covering her little sister’s bony head. The gentle hum created by her mother’s rumbling breathing and her sister’s enthusiastic suckling made her drowsy and her lids fell a few times. She forced herself back to wakefulness before her forehead touched the mattress. Feeling chilled, she crept to the end of the bed and put on her mother’s coat. It pooled on the floor about her and she used the material to cushion her bony behind as she sat on the rough boards and looked about for something to do whilst she waited for her sister to finish her feed.
Drawing one of the boots from under the bed, she slowly turned it to inspect its fine quality. The laces had been tightened into small, hard knots by her mother’s clumsiness. Patiently she picked at them until they loosened. Smiling at the bows she had tied, she began to pull the leather at the heels until the ridges started to disappear. Satisfied with her handiwork, she slipped it onto her skinny foot and extended her leg to admire the boot, waggling it this way and that to inspect it from different angles. One day she’d buy herself such things … better things, she promised herself.
They were good boots. Quality. Billy the Totter had said he’d got them from a woman over Tufnell Park way. Alice knew a lot of women hereabouts charred for posh ladies over there in the better district of North London. But he’d said that they weren’t even that lady’s property. She’d got them off her sister who lived in Mayfair in one of the houses with pillars out front and servants out back. Alice reverently smoothed the soft leather with her fingertips.
Barely were the boots neatly back in position beneath the bed when she suddenly shot up to a crouching position. A loud thud from the floor below had curtailed her yawning and startled her into wakefulness. Her eyes darted to the bed but nobody was stirring.
The tenement house in which they had rooms was never peaceful. Day or night people came and went and constant noise was only a minor inconvenience to an existence in what was known as Campbell Bunk. In the rooms below lived her aunt Fran and her husband Jimmy. Alice had been partially aware of the ebb and flow of an argument issuing from those rooms the whole time she had waited for her mother to come home. But now it seemed the ruckus was about to turn nasty.
Aunt Fran and Uncle Jimmy were always at it and, judging by the increased din, their disagreement was about to take its usual turn and become violent. Even knowing it, Alice again jumped in her skin at the unmistakeable clatter of a missile striking a wall. Screamed abuse from her aunt immediately followed. Alice shot across the splintery floorboards on her bony knees to stare unblinking at her mother’s sagging face. But Tilly remained oblivious to her warring relatives, and her soft snores continued unabated.
The noise below had worsened and Alice was relieved to see that little Lucy had finished feeding and was also sleeping quite soundly, undisturbed by her aunt and uncle fighting close by. Alice remembered that she’d witnessed her aunt Fran pull a knife from a drawer in the table and rush at her uncle Jimmy. She remembered too that her dad had had his hand cut when he took it off her.
Nervously Alice shifted the baby aside, keen now to get herself and little Lucy to bed. She pulled her mother’s gaping bodice together and painstakingly refastened the buttons. Then the stiff, worn blanket was properly pulled over her so it might be of some small benefit against the cold March night. Alice opened out her mother’s coat to act as an extra blanket
