Just Around the Corner Read online

  Contents

  About the Book

  About the Author

  Also by Gilda O’Neill

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Copyright

  About the Book

  All big-hearted Katie Mehan has ever asked from life is health and happiness for her family and the love of her stevedore husband, Pat. But times just seem to get harder, and as work at the docks gets scarce and the political unrest of the 1930s reaches the terraced house in Poplar’s Plumley Street, Pat begins to show the strain – in fits of temper aimed, to her astonished fury, at Katie herself.

  For Katie’s sixteen-year-old daughter Molly, home is increasingly a place to escape from – to the world of boys where her good looks are beginning to get her noticed, in particular by Bob Jarvis whose masterful generosity soon wins her over. But Jarvis has a darker side – his links with the violent Blackshirts – and when Molly meets Jewish Simon Blomstein, she begins to realise life isn’t as simple as she thought it was …

  About the Author

  Gilda O’Neill was born and brought up in the East End, where her grandmother ran a pie and mash shop, her grandfather was a tug skipper and her great-uncle worked as a minder for a Chinese gambling den owner. She left school at fifteen but returned to education as a mature student, studying with the Open University and the Polytechnic of East London, and taking an M.A. at the University of Kent while lecturing part time. She is now a full-time writer, and has had seven novels and three non-fiction books published. She lives in Essex with her husband and family.

  Also by Gilda O’Neill

  FICTION

  The Cockney Girl

  Whitechapel Girl

  The Bells of Bow

  Cissie Flowers

  Dream On

  The Lights of London

  Playing Around

  NON-FICTION

  Pull No More Bines:

  An Oral History of East London Women Hop Pickers

  A Night Out with the Girls: Women Having Fun

  My East End: A History of Cockney London

  Just Around the Corner

  Gilda O’Neill

  For Auntie May and Uncle Alf

  with my love

  My acknowledgements and thanks to Michael Odell from Essex PACT, Jackie Grant from the Colchester Physiotherapy Clinic, and Neil Winton from Voice Recognition Computers. They know why.

  1

  Summer 1933

  ‘THANK GAWD YER got me this gas stove while there was still a few bob about.’ Katie Mehan wiped the back of her arm across her sweat-soaked forehead, then, using both hands, lifted the big pan of neck of lamb stew from the hob. ‘Honest, Pat, I couldn’t have stood this heat if I’d had to have that old Kitchener going in here.’ She looked over her shoulder at the big, black-leaded range that took up the whole of the kitchen fireplace.

  ‘We bought that stove in time all right.’ Pat leant back so that Katie could put down the pan. ‘No matter how hot the weather would’ve turned, there’d have been no affording one now.’

  Pat Mehan sat at the head of the scrubbed kitchen table, holding up his bowl in his big, rough hands, while his wife ladled thick, glistening gravy, pearl barley, chopped vegetables and dumplings into his bowl, then topped it up with the choicest pieces of lamb. During the past eighteen months Katie Mehan had learnt all kinds of tricks to stretch the bony bits of meat she bought in the market into tasty, filling suppers for her ever-hungry tribe of a family.

  Pat put down his bowl in front of him with a nod of thanks, and ran his finger round the neck of his collarless shirt. ‘Yer know, I reckon it’s bloody hotter this evening than it’s been all day.’

  Katie flashed her eyes at her husband. ‘Language, Pat,’ she said primly and jerked her head along the table to where their five children and Nora Brady, her mother, sat waiting for their food.

  Pat winked conspiratorially at eighteen-year-old Danny, the oldest of the Mehan children, before turning to his wife. ‘Sorry, love. I forgot meself for the minute.’

  Danny made sure that his mother couldn’t see what he was doing before grinning back at his dad: a man’s gesture of unity against women’s unfathomable ways.

  ‘I should think you are sorry,’ Katie said, and dropped an extra dumpling into her husband’s already brimming bowl as a reward for his apology. ‘You just remember to keep that language for down the docks, if yer don’t mind. We don’t need it here indoors, thank you very much.’

  As she made her way round the cramped table, filling up her family’s bowls and correcting their manners, Katie hummed happily to herself. She was a woman who had what she had always wanted: a fine, healthy, happy family. And even though her kitchen was, like the rest of the little house, crammed full of second-hand odds and ends that even in easier times were all she and Pat could afford, she still considered herself a fortunate woman – a lot better off than many. Crowded and a bit threadbare the terraced two-up, two-down might have been, but Katie Mehan was thankful for what she had, and lavished as much care on her home as she would have done on any grandly furnished West End mansion.

  She saw the upkeep of number twelve Plumley Street, Poplar as her duty, but she also took pleasure in knowing that she kept her place immaculately clean and would never be ashamed no matter who came knocking at her door. It all took a lot of effort, but so long as she had breath in her body there would not be any mouse droppings in her food cupboard. The fact that the cooking basins and pots stood on a simple, painted dresser rather than on shelves made of fine oak couldn’t be helped, but there was never a trace of grease left on any of them when Katie had finished with the washing soda and wire wool.

  And, as she always liked to tell her kids, although she might not have much in her purse now, there was always the hope that there’d be better times just around the corner, but, until those better times arrived, she could still keep up her standards. A bar of laundry soap didn’t cost much, she told them, which was a good job, considering the amount of the stuff she bought from the corner shop. The evidence of her labours with the soap and scrubbing board could be seen in the pure white lace runner pinned round the mantelshelf over the fireplace, and the spotless vests and underpants airing on the cord stretched across the chimney breast.

  Above the hearth, a wooden overmantel took pride of place, its gleaming looking-glass a testament to regular polishing. Katie never allowed junk to accumulate on the overmantel, nor to be poked under the mantelshelf below it, as happened in some houses in Plumley Street, including number ten next door, her mother’s house; not that she thought it any business of hers what her mother did in her own home. Even though Katie’s four sons slept in their grandmother’s two upstairs bedrooms, what happened in number ten was her mother’s concern. It wasn’t that Katie didn’t care about other people – she would always do anyone a good turn – it was just that she wasn’t the sort to go sticking her nose into other people’s affairs. She was content with making sure things were just so in her own place – that was her life, and she had no reason to complain or for it to be otherwise.

  ‘Here you are, Michael, love,’ she said, ladle brimming and ready to pour.

  Michael looked up at his mother as she fille
d his bowl. At ten years old, he was the youngest but one of the Mehans; the advantages and the burden of being the baby of the family going to eight-year-old Timmy.

  ‘I’m glad we don’t have to have the range alight and all, Mum,’ he said, busily spooning through the gravy in a search of bits of meat, ‘’cos I really hate going down Levans Road to fetch the coke for yer. It’d be all right if I had a proper barrow, but all the kids laugh at me when I have to push that old pram down there.’

  Banging the saucepan back down on the table, Katie straightened up and wagged her finger at her son. ‘But I’ll bet they don’t laugh at yer when yer tell ’em I treat yer for going, now do they?’

  Michael wasn’t sure how to answer that one, so he gulped down a spoonful of stew instead, burning his lips and tongue in the process, making him cough and splutter all over the table. His grandmother, Nora, slapping him hard across the back only made matters worse. His eyes ran and his shoulders stung.

  ‘Good boy, Michael,’ she encouraged him. ‘Cough it up. Who knows, it might just be a gold watch.’ Despite living in the East End for over thirty years, Nora still spoke in the lilting Irish brogue that marked her out as not being Poplar born and bred as her daughter and son-in-law had been. ‘And even if yer did start gobbling down yer grub before yer should,’ Nora added, ‘yer a good boy for reminding me.’

  Michael smiled, his smarting mouth forgotten; he was being praised.

  ‘I was having a look under those stairs of mine next door and I noticed me coke’s got a bit on the low side. So yer can go and fetch some for me later. How’d you like to do that for your old nanna, eh, Michael, love?’

  ‘But Nanna!’ he wailed. ‘It’s summer. Yer don’t need no coke in this weather.’

  ‘And how about me cooking?’ Nora demanded, looking around at the family for support.

  Michael’s freckled forehead creased into an anxious, thoughtful frown. ‘What cooking? You have all yer dinners and that in here with us.’

  ‘And how about the heating up of the water for me bit of washing?’

  His voice took on an even more desperate, whining tone; if he didn’t do something fast he’d wind up spending the whole of Saturday night running errands instead of playing out in the street with his mates. ‘But Nanna, you and Mum do all the washing in here.’

  Nora thought for a moment, then leant back in her chair, her arms folded across her apron-covered bosom. ‘Well, I suppose that’s all right then. Yer’ll not have to bother fetching me none, will yer?’

  Michael’s mouth dropped open. He appealed to Katie: ‘Mum! Nanna’s tormenting me again.’

  ‘You’re such an easy one to string along,’ grinned Nora, chucking him under the chin. ‘Like putty in me hands, sure you are.’ Her smug expression softened to a wistful smile. ‘Just like I was with yer grandfather. He could kid me into doing or believing anything. Talk about the gift of the Blarney.’

  ‘Here we go, let’s hear about the good old days,’ Michael said, his voice laden with sarcasm in an attempt to get his own back on his grandmother.

  Katie glared at her son. ‘Button that lip now, Michael,’ she hissed into his ear. She lifted the pan and carried it round to the other side of the table and set about serving up a portion of stew for young Timmy.

  Michael knew better than to argue with his mother but he allowed himself a sulky pout as he sat there, a picture of injured innocence, watching her through his gingery lashes as she finished seeing to Timmy and then sat herself down at the opposite end of the table from his father.

  ‘Bow yer heads,’ Katie said and pointed to sixteen-year-old Molly, her and Pat’s only daughter. ‘You can say it tonight.’

  Molly sat up straight, dropped her chin demurely and put her hands together.

  Danny curled his top lip into a sneer and whispered so that only his sister could hear him: ‘Goody-goody.’

  ‘For what we are about to receive,’ she began in a sweet voice that covered the fact she had one eye open, was sneering back at Danny, and was about to kick him hard in the shin, ‘may the Lord make us truly thankful.’

  ‘Amen,’ the eight of them said in ragged unison, as spoons and forks were lifted, ready for the attack.

  But Katie didn’t seem interested in her food. She put her spoon down again and folded her hands in her lap. ‘Yer know what I saw this afternoon, Pat?’

  ‘No. What was that, love?’ Pat looked at her across the table, as he reached for the salt.

  ‘That welfare woman. She was over the road at number three again.’

  ‘What, over at the Miltons’?’ asked Michael, his mouth full of potato. ‘On a Saturday afternoon?’

  ‘Yes, over at the Miltons’ on a Saturday afternoon, but I don’t think I was talking to you, was I, Michael? Thank you very much.’

  ‘Sorry, Mum.’

  Pat shook his head and let his spoon dangle from his hand. ‘He looks haunted, that poor feller. Can’t be more than, what, thirty years old? And he’s bent over like an old man with the aggravation of it all.’

  ‘As far as I can tell, they ain’t had a carrot coming in from nowhere except the RO, not since he got laid off.’ Katie fiddled absent-mindedly with the edge of the oilcloth table covering. ‘See, what’s worrying me, Pat is . . . well . . .’ She lowered her voice. ‘I know it’s none of my business, but yer know what them welfare people are like.’

  He nodded. ‘What’s happening in this world, eh? Tell me that.’

  Nora sighed loudly. ‘They’ll take them children away from her, first chance they get, and they won’t be satisfied till they do neither. And you know what they’ll do then? They’ll put them in one of them homes. Terrible places. Terrible. And it’ll kill that poor girl, losing her kids, you see if it don’t.’

  Michael and Timmy looked at their grandmother, appalled that such a thing might happen to their friends.

  ‘All right, Mum,’ Katie said under her breath. ‘Not in front of this lot.’

  Nora shrugged. ‘It’s only the truth I’m speaking.’

  Young Timmy looked wide-eyed at his grandmother, then turned to his mum, his little face tense and solemn beneath his heavy auburn fringe. ‘When we was playing footer this afternoon, I give Robbo Milton the bread and dripping what Nanna made me. Right starving he was, Mum. Growling, his belly was.’ Timmy clutched his stomach by way of demonstration. ‘But that filled him up. The welfare lady could have seen for herself he weren’t hungry no more. They can’t take him away if he ain’t hungry, can they? And our Michael’s got them spare shoes what don’t fit Sean no more. He could have them. They’d make him look right smart, they would.’

  Katie narrowed her eyes and looked purposefully at her mother. ‘You was eating in the street, was yer, Timmy? Bread and dripping what yer nanna give yer?’ She slowly turned her head to look at her son. ‘And yer can wipe that gravy off yer chin and all.’

  Timmy rubbed his shirt sleeve across his mouth. He looked offended. ‘I thought yer’d be pleased I give it to him. Yer always saying how we should share things. And he was really starving hungry.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Katie said warily. ‘But don’t you let me catch yer showing me up eating out in the street again, all right? Now be quiet and get on with yer tea.’

  Nora didn’t seem in the least concerned that she had got her youngest grandson into trouble. ‘I see that Relieving Officer was round at the Miltons’ again and all yesterday afternoon.’ She snorted contemptuously. ‘Going in for his Friday nose around, I suppose. It makes me laugh. What does he think – that they’ve suddenly come into a fortune since last week and are trying to fiddle the flaming means test for a few bob?’

  Timmy hadn’t learnt his lesson. ‘Robbo Milton says the Relieving Officer’s a rotten bastard. He taught me a song about it and all. Shall I sing it for yer?’

  Katie reached out and rapped her son sharply across the back of his hand with her spoon. ‘No you will not.’

  ‘Ouch!’ he said, nursing his tingling
knuckles and his injured pride.

  ‘See?’ Nora hissed at him. ‘Yer should have done what yer mother told yer and kept quiet.’

  Pat, used to such goings-on around the table, had been eating as though nothing had happened, but now he put his spoon down. He had a faraway look in his eyes as though he were watching a scene playing in his head. ‘He was down the docks the other day – Milton – to see if there was any casual about. There was nothing, of course. It’s bad enough for the regular crews.’ Pat rested his elbows on the table and rubbed his hand over his chin. ‘I tried to have a word with him, to cheer him up, like, make him realise it was nothing personal, but he was so down, poor bloke. Couldn’t get through to him at all. Joe Palmer reckons he’s scared out of his sodding life they’re gonna make him go down to Essex to one of them labour camps. Poor bleeder.’

  ‘Padraic!’

  The sound of their mother using their father’s full name alerted the children; all eyes were on Katie.

  She was outraged. ‘Whatever’s got into everybody round this table? All this language. And just look at you with yer elbows on the table and all. What example’s that to set to the kids?’

  ‘Yer worried about language and elbows?’ Pat said the words ominously quietly. He picked up his spoon and jabbed it at Katie as he spoke. ‘Yer’ve told us what you see, well, d’yer wanna know what I see on me way to the docks yesterday morning?’

  The children sat in fascinated silence as they waited to see if their parents were actually building up to a row. Their mother flying off the handle and almost immediately calming down again was a familiar sight to all of them. But even though their big, dark-haired father looked tough, and dwarfed his slim, red-haired wife, he was usually such a mild-mannered, gentle person that, no matter how she flared and blustered at him, he very rarely lost his temper with her, or anyone else for that matter – except when he thought that another man might even be thinking about looking at Katie – and it was this that made the exchange of rare interest to them.