A Brighter Tomorrow
Cover
Title Page
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
About the Author
Also by Maggie Ford
Copyright
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Table of Contents
Start of Content
One
The narrow width of Gales Gardens captured and held the reek of cooking, stale cabbage and urine. Men leaving the Salmon & Ball pub close by often used this ill-lit street as a convenient alley in which to relieve themselves of the pints they’d drank. Some women, too, standing astride the grated drain out of the light of Bethnal Green Road to drag aside a bloomer leg, their errand hidden by a long skirt, trying to appear as if they’d merely paused for thought.
Ellie Jay, christened Alice Elizabeth but called Ellie, stood at her front door that opened directly from the single living room on to the cracked pavement and peered through the darkness towards the more brightly lit main thoroughfare. Her neighbour next door, Mrs Sharp, had gone for the doctor it seemed ages ago, but he was taking his time. No rush over a dead body.
There was singing coming from the Salmon & Ball, quickly drowned out by the rumble of a train passing over the railway bridge spanning the main road, its smoke drifting lazily through the curve of Gales Gardens to add another layer of sooty smuts to already blackened brickwork and the peeling paint of window sills.
A figure entering the street made her straighten up in anticipation, but it was just someone slipping into the shadows on a call of nature, his frame positioning itself for a second to face a wall. But seeing the light from her doorway he hastily adjusted his dress and hurried off.
Ellie pulled her short jacket closer about her against the cold, early-March evening. If the doctor didn’t come soon she would have to go back indoors and start on the job herself, washing and laying out the body before the limbs set rigid. She’d seen it done, but this would be the first time she had ever done it herself. So far she had put the pennies on the eyelids to keep them closed and fastened a piece of cloth about the chin and forehead to prevent the mouth falling open; but the thought of stripping and washing the body made her cringe. Her mother had been a decent woman all her life, would never have dreamed of allowing anyone to see her naked, not even her husband, and would have been appalled at her own daughter looking upon her private parts in death. Mrs Sharp next door might have done it, being around Mum’s age – forty; but she had no intention of letting a neighbour stare at her mother’s nakedness, even with the best of intentions. If only the doctor would arrive.
She glanced down as the hand in hers tightened fractionally. She’d forgotten her thirteen-year-old sister standing beside her. Dora was three and a bit years younger than her, equally slender, dark-haired and green-eyed. Tears were glistening in those eyes and her voice was small.
‘Do yer think Mum’s orright on ’er own in there?’
Ellie wanted to retort that Mum had no cause any more to care if she was on her own. Instead she gripped the girl’s hand a little tighter. ‘Ain’t a lot we can do till the doctor arrives.’
As if in reply to her remark, another figure turned into the street, this time his silhouette against the gaslight of the main road showing him to be carrying a sturdy doctor’s bag. Ellie let go her sister’s hand and hurried the few yards to meet him.
‘I’m so glad yer’ve come,’ she burst out. ‘I’ve been waiting.’
‘Yes, well, I’ve been busy with patients.’ By his tone he might as well have said he’d been busy with the living. ‘Where is your mother?’ he asked brusquely.
‘In the bedroom upstairs,’ Ellie returned. Where else would she be?
He’d been told how ill she was and must have known that someone with pneumonia would be at death’s door. But, with no money to pay for a doctor’s visit, she’d been palmed off with a bottle of cough mixture for the few pence she had and advised to keep her mother as warm as possible while the illness ran its course. That was the lot of most people living in areas like this if they had no money. At least she hoped there’d be no charge to officially declare Mrs Jay deceased and write out the death certificate.
With Dora standing forlorn by the street door they went on inside the empty house. ‘Are you alone?’ he asked. ‘Where is your family, your father?’
‘Gone,’ Ellie replied tersely. ‘He ain’t coming back, neither. Nor is me brother. I don’t know where they are so as to tell ’em me mum died.’
Saying no more she led the way upstairs to the larger of the two tiny bedrooms, leaving Dora downstairs on her own. At the doctor’s enquiry a surge of bitter hate had raced through her against her father, walking out of the house two days earlier, leaving just her and Dora to cope with a sick woman. Her brother she could understand, after the fight, but her dad…
‘I ain’t sticking around ter catch ’er cold,’ he’d declared. ‘She’s been moaning on about ’er ill ’ealth ever since I married ’er. I’m off to enjoy me own life, nor will I be coming back. I’ve ’ad enough of ’er always being ill.’
It wasn’t true. Her mother hadn’t always been ill – only these last two or three years, worn down by childbearing, only three now living, having had three miscarriages, one stillborn, three dying in infancy; that and working herself to a standstill to keep her family in food while he did nothing other than a few underhanded dealings – money he’d spend on himself, mostly.
Mum did outdoor work for a local hatbox manufacturer, bringing home the thin cardboard to make the fine boxes in which silk top hats were sold. On a good week she’d do three gross if work was there, half a crown a
