After he’d had his fun, my father disappeared off the scene as far as I knew, and I never heard tell of any grandparent, so when she died I ended up at The Castle – well, that’s what we called it because the place was so huge and gloomy and it had pointy windows and those whatchamacall-ums, them zigzaggy patterns around the top of the walls where the roof should be.
‘Castellations?’
It was certainly a fortress, with high iron gates and brick walls all around. To keep dangerous people out, they told us – this was the East End of London after all – but we knew it was really to stop us lot running away. There was no gardens as such, no trees or flowers, just a paved yard we could play in when the weather was good.
Inside was all dark wood and stone floors, and great wide stairways reaching up three or four storeys; to my little legs it felt like we was climbing up to heaven each time we went to bed. It sounds a bit tragic when I tell it, but I don’t remember ever feeling unhappy there. I knew no different, it was warm and the food was good, and I had plenty of company – some of them became true friends.
The nuns was terrifying to us littl’uns at first, in their long black tunics with sleeves that flared out like bats’ wings when they ran along the corridors chasing and chastising us. Most of ’em was kindly even though some could get crotchety at times. No surprise really, with no men in their lives, and just a load of naughty children.
It was a better start in life than I’d have had with my poor mum, I’ll warrant. Pity it didn’t turn out like that in the end.
Anyway, the nuns’ sole aim in life was to teach us little monsters good manners and basic reading and writing, as well as skills like cooking, housework and needlework so we could go into service when we came of an age, which is exactly what happened to me. I ’specially loved needlework. I was good at it, and I loved the attention it give me.
‘It’s a gift from God,’ the nuns would say, but I didn’t believe that. It was just ’cos I had tiny fingers, and I took more trouble than the others, and learned to do it properly. We had all the time in the world, after all.
D’you do any sewing, Miss?
‘Not really, I’m more of a words person.’
You should give it a try. There’s nothing more satisfying than starting with a plain old piece of wool blanket that no one else wants and ending up with a beautiful coat that’ll keep a child warm through many a winter. Or to quilt up scraps of cotton patchwork to make a comfy bedcover that ain’t scratchy and makes the room look pretty besides.
The needlework room at The Castle had long cutting tables and tall windows set so high you couldn’t see out of them, and that was where we spent most of our days. In winter we’d huddle by the old stove in the corner, in summer we’d spread out round the room in gaggles so that we could gossip away from those nuns’ ears, which was sharp as pins.
It was all hand-stitching, mind, no sewing machines in those days of course. And by the time I was ten I knew which needle to use with which fabrics and which kind of thread, and I could do a dozen types of stitch, from simple running stitch and back stitch, to fancy embroidery like wheatear and French knots, and I loved to do them as perfect and even as possible so you could hardly tell a human hand had made them. Sister Mary was a good teacher and loved her subject, and I suppose she passed her enthusiasm on to us, so before long I could name any fabric with my eyes closed, just by the feel, tell the difference between crêpe and cambric, galatea and gingham, kersey and linsey-woolsey, velvet and velvetine, and which was best for which job.
Not that we saw a lot of fine fabrics, mind, it was mostly plain wool and cotton, much of it second hand what we had to reclaim from used garments and furnishings. But on occasions the local haberdashery would bring rolls of new printed cottons and pattern-weave wools they didn’t want no more, out of charity I suppose for us poor little orphan children, and the other little orphans we was making the clothes for.
You look puzzled? Sorry, I get carried away with me memories. The reason we was so busy sewing at The Castle was because the nuns had been asked by the grand ladies of the London Needlework Society to help them with their good works – which was making clothes for poor people. It made us feel special; we had nothing in the world except our skills, and we were using them to help other children like us.
The days when those haberdashers’ deliveries arrived was like birthdays and Christmases rolled into one: taking the wrappers off the rolls and discovering new colours and patterns, and breathing in that clean, summery smell of new fabric, like washing drying on a line – there’s nothing to match it, even now. When we was growing out of our clothes the nuns would let us have offcuts of patterned cotton to make ourselves new dresses and skirts, and Nora and me would always pick the brightest floral prints. We didn’t see too many flowers for real, so it brought a touch of springtime into our lives.
‘Nora? You knew each other even then?’
Oh yes, we go way back. She was my best friend. We was around the same age so far as we knew, and always shared a dormitory, called ourselves sisters – the family kind, not the nun kind – and swore we’d never be parted. Not that we looked like family by any stretch: she was blonde and by the time we was fourteen she towered above me at five feet six, with big feet she was always tripping over, and a laugh like a tidal wave which made anyone around her – even the nuns – break out into a smile. She had large hands, too, double the size of mine, but that didn’t stop her being a good needleworker. We was naughty little minxes but we got away with it ’cos we worked hard.
Like I say, we was happy because we knew no different, but we was also growing up – even though my chest was flat and my fanny still smooth as a baby’s bottom, Nora was getting breasts and hair down there, as well as under her arms, and both of us was starting to give the eye to the gardener’s lad and the baker’s delivery boy, whenever the nuns weren’t watching.
That day we was doing our needlework when this grand lady with a big hat and feathers on the top of her head comes with a gaggle of her lah-di-dah friends, like a royal visit it was, and she leans over what I am embroidering and says, ‘What fine stitching, my dear, where did you learn that?’
And I says back, ‘It’s daisy chain, Ma’am. Would you like to see how it works?’ And I finish the daisy with three more chain links spaced evenly round the circle like they are supposed to be, and quickly give it a stem and a leaf which doesn’t turn out too bad, even though my fingers are trembling and sweaty with being watched by such a grand person. She keeps silent till I’ve finished and then says in her voice full of plums and a bit foreign, ‘That is very clever, dear, very pretty. Keep up the good work’, and as she moves on to talk to another girl I breathe in the smell of her, like a garden full of roses, what I have never smelled before on a human being.
Afterwards I hears her asking Sister Mary about me and Nora, was we good girls and that sort of thing, but we soon forgot about her and that was it for a few months till my birthday – it was January 1911 when I turned fifteen – and me and Nora, whose birthday was just a few days before, gets a summons from Sister Beatrice, the head nun. This only usually happens when one of us has done something wicked like swearing ‘God’ too many times or falling asleep in prayers, so you can imagine the state that Nora and me are in as we go up the stairs to the long corridor with the red Persian runner and go to stand outside the oak door with those carvings that look like folds of fabric in each panel. I am so panicked that I feel like fainting, and I can tell that Nora is trying to stifle the laugh that always bubbles up when she’s nervous.
Sister calls us in and asks us to sit down on leather-seated chairs that
