Page 4

Eighteen years earlier, Whitechapel, East London

Hearing what sounded like a child crying in the back yard, Ruth Carstairs opened her first-floor kitchen window and leaned out.

It was a very cold January day, already dark though only four in the afternoon. Ruth could barely see the child’s pale face in the darkness, but knew it was Mary, who lived downstairs.

‘What the matter, Mary?’ she called out.

‘Mum ain’t in and I’m freezing,’ came the reply.

The two flats at 4 Crimp Street did not share a front door. The landlord had fixed up a flimsy partition in the hall to make them self-contained. Ruth upstairs had the street door. The Prices had the back door, accessed by the back alley.

Ruth Carstairs did not approve of Emily Price, or Ronnie Birch, but she certainly wasn’t going to let an eight-year-old suffer because of her mother and the company she kept.

‘You’d better come up with me, then,’ Ruth suggested. ‘Come round and I’ll open the door.’

Ruth was sure Emily was in. She’d seen her from her kitchen window about an hour earlier coming in with a man.

She’d heard his voice not long before Mary began hammering on the back door, and he certainly hadn’t left, as she would’ve seen him.

But then Emily Price was as careless with her child’s wellbeing as she was with her virtue.

Crimp Street in Whitechapel was a short row of small terraced houses opposite the high wall of a laundry. Boys often climbed up on the wall to see the horse the laundry owners used for pulling their collection and delivery cart. And they also played noisy ball games against the wall.

Ruth was already at the front door when Mary got round there. ‘Come on in, and sit by the fire,’ she said.

The child’s raincoat was not suitable for January weather and was soaked right through.

Ruth told Mary to slip off her shoes and saw one of them had a hole in the sole where water had got in and made her sock wet, so suggested she take off the socks so she could dry them by the fire, and carried the raincoat up to dry it too.

Ruth wanted to laugh as Mary’s mouth fell open in surprise at her flat. To her it was quite ordinary, but the view of her sitting room, with a roaring fire, book-lined shelves and the pretty chintz-covered sofa and armchair, was clearly nothing like Mary’s home.

She took the child into her kitchen at the back of the house. Again, Mary looked astounded at the red-and-white checked cloth on the table, and the matching curtain round the big sink to hide the clutter beneath. She looked too at the dresser holding all the matching plates and dishes.

‘It ain’t ’alf posh ’ere, do you use ’em all?’ she asked.

‘Of course, my dear. I bought pretty matching china because I wanted it on display. I’m sure your mother does the same?’

Judging by Mary’s bewildered expression this wasn’t so.

The child was very thin and pale, like so many of the children who lived in the East End.

Her dark-brown hair was in dire need of a wash; Ruth felt it had been cut with garden shears as on one side it was just below her right ear, and an inch longer on the other.

But she did have lovely eyes, very blue, although they looked sad.

‘Sit down, dear,’ Ruth said, pulling out a chair with a red cushion on it. ‘Would you like tea, or cocoa?’

‘Tea if it ain’t too much trouble.’ Her response was very faint.

Ruth cut her a slice of chocolate cake and put it in front of the child. She looked like she couldn’t believe her eyes. ‘Did you make this?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I did. I’ve had a few days off from my work and I find baking very soothing.’

‘What’s “soothing”?’ Mary asked.

Ruth laughed softly. ‘It’s when something makes you feel relaxed and happy. Reading is like that for me too. Can you read yet?’

‘A bit, but my teacher says I’m slow. But I really like it when she reads us a story.’

‘If you’d like to come and see me again, I could help you with your reading?’

‘Really?’

‘Yes really, I am a teacher.’

Ruth looked at her and smiled. Mary thought she had a lovely face for someone old.

Soft brown eyes that twinkled, pink cheeks and nice white teeth.

She wasn’t wearing any make-up, and her brown hair was cut short, but it had a bit of a wave in it and was very shiny.

Her clothes were very plain, but somehow just right.

A lavender-coloured twin set, and a checked skirt of a similar colour.

She was wearing brown slippers, but Mary guessed she didn’t ever wear high heels like her mother, but stout lace-up shoes.

‘Normally I’m still at work at this time of day, as I have another job after school. But you could come on a Saturday, or around seven in the evening if your mother agrees.’

Mary had no intention of asking; she knew what the response would be. But as her mother always went out between half past six and seven to the pub where she worked, she need never know.

‘Which school do you teach at, Miss Carstairs?’ she asked.

Her teacher, Miss Stone, had talked about good manners and polite conversation just recently.

She had said it was important to take an interest in other people, so asking what they worked at was a good way to start.

She had pointed out it was very rude to ask how much money they earned, but if they did a job you didn’t understand, you could ask about that.

‘Bankcroft Road, but I also work at the council offices, helping people with their problems. I expect you know that when the Great War ended, many women were widowed and many of the soldiers who did come back were too sick to work.’

‘My dad was a soldier and was killed in France,’ Mary volunteered.

‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry, Mary.’ Ruth blushed and covered her mouth with her hand. ‘I didn’t know that.’

‘It’s OK, I never met ’im, ’e died afore I was born. We’ve got a photo of ’im on the mantelpiece, and sometimes I talk to ’im.’

‘What do you talk to him about?’

‘I ask ’im when Ronnie will go away. ’E’s a nasty man. Mum just does what ’e says or ’e whacks ’er.’

Ruth Carstairs was used to such bald statements from children, but she still found it very upsetting that such bad examples were being set to them by adults.

She had overheard this Ronnie character laying into Mary’s mother many times and it was common knowledge in the area that he had pushed her into prostitution.

‘Does he hurt you too?’ Ruth tried to make the question as gentle and tactful as possible.

‘I try to keep out of ’is way,’ Mary replied. She probably imagined that meant she wasn’t telling tales. But the way she avoided looking directly at Ruth told the true story.

That was how they left it that January day.

Teaching had been Ruth’s goal for as far back as she could remember.

She had even taught her younger brother to read when she was seven.

She lost him in the Great War, not from battle wounds but typhus, and that cemented the idea in her head that education was the most important thing in life.

Not just being able to read and write, but to educate those who hadn’t had the advantages of a good home, as she had, in all aspects of hygiene, cooking nutritional food, and other household skills.

Her parents did not understand why the daughter they’d brought up to share their middle-class values should turn her back on marriage and children of her own and go to live and work in a slum area.

But for each child she taught to read, to write a good letter, and each adult she helped through a bereavement, a crippling illness or other problems, she found happiness and satisfaction.

She saw in little Mary Price an ideal pupil. To give her the confidence to feel able to break away from a careless mother and the strong, bad influences this area held. Also, reading, writing and other useful knowledge would enable Mary to make a better, happier life for herself.

Ruth had no doubt people would say she was a lonely spinster, trying to hold on to a girl who could become her family.

But that wasn’t her aim. She’d heard enough from downstairs over the last two years to know Mary was at risk.

Ronnie, the man who controlled her mother, was a vicious piece of work, and Emily was too stupid to see that he had not only taken over her home and forced her into degrading work, but he almost certainly had plans for Mary too.

Sometimes when Ruth heard violence breaking out downstairs she was tempted to go and intervene, but she knew from experience with bullies that he would attack her too, and possibly he would make her life so miserable she would have to leave her little flat.

Going to the police was a waste of time, they would do nothing.

The best way she could help the little girl was to teach her useful skills, so one day she could get away completely to a decent job.