Tales of Pyrmont Road & Other Stories

Cherry Ripe
by MaryAnn Brooks

London 1927

It was about a quarter to nine when I heard someone knock on the front door.

I took off my apron and smoothed back my hair before I went up the hall: I’m never that untidy but it s a woman thing to assume there’s a man at the door.

It wasn’t a man; it was young Ellie from across the street down by the corner. She was out of breath from running and had her hand out to rat a tat the knocker again.

“Well hello Ellie,” I opened the door a little more, just to put her at ease, “what brings you over so early in the morning?”

“My mum sent me,” she pulled her hand back quickly, “to ask if you would please pop over and see her when you have a minute.” There was brief pause then, “she said to say she s feeling poorly.”

I was a bit surprised. “Are you sure she said come to me?”

I asked that because my sister Vi who lives up the street, knows a few things about nursing, having done some during the war. Anyone who needs a bit of advice, on our street, that is, usually goes and talks to her.

“Oh yes,” Ellie assured me, “my mum said I was to speak only to Mrs Blackford at number seventeen.” Then she was off with her friend, the two of them running and skipping down the street to school.

I finished drying the dishes, not many because Fred and me only dirty two plates, three if you count the bread plate though I usually just wipe that off, two cups and saucers, the milk jug, and the cutlery of course.

With everything put away, I like a tidy kitchen, I slipped into my coat and went over to see what was the matter with Iris Buckley that she only wanted to talk to me about.

I’m Doris by the way and I live at number seventeen – Pyrmont Road of course – with my husband Fred.

Vi is my sister and she lives at number eleven with her husband Bill.

They have three children. We have just us.

Iris is a war widow, has been since 1917 when her husband was killed in France. At least she knows where his grave is which is more than we can say about our dad who just vanished in one of the big pushes.

She never said where she came from when she moved here and we didn’t ask. It was something you didn’t do, especially when you found out that someone could only afford to rent half a house; she had the bottom half, two rooms and a kitchen.

At first she shared the middle room with her little girl and kept the front room for a parlor. But for whatever reason – maybe she just needed privacy what with Ellie growing up and all that – she turned the front room into her bedroom.

As Ellie had said her mother was poorly, I presumed Iris was in bed in the front room but I presumed wrong because I’d hardly opened the front door when she called from the kitchen. Well, I thought, she can t be that bad so I went on down the hall and there she was laying in a bed chair looking very pale.

A bed chair, in case you don t know, is just that; a chair that can be turned into a bed. It s very convenient with wooden arms, a drop down back and a flip up front but you have be careful or the whole thing can collapse and give you nasty pinched fingers.

My sister Marie, she s the next to youngest of mum s five, has two that we sleep on when we visit her and her family for the weekend. Problem is they use them instead of armchairs because their council flat is rather small, so we have to wait until everyone else is in bed before we can go to sleep. But they re not too bad, the chairs I’mean, as long as you re not the tossing kind.

“Want me to make some tea?” I offered as I took off my coat. I could see into the scullery where she hadn’t done the dishes yet but I pretended not to notice.

“Yes please,” she waved a hand in the direction of the kettle on the range, “the water’s about boiling.

There are cups and saucers up behind me,” she indicated a glass fronted affair with a few pieces of good looking china in it, “and the tea caddy’s over there,” she pointed to the corner cupboard. “Milk and sugar’s on the table and you’ll find clean spoons in the kitchen drawer.”

All this to keep me out of the scullery I thought but I said nothing. It was obvious Iris had been a proud housewife once upon a time and this must be a real come down.

Bloody war!! For a moment I felt strongly enough to swear about that terrible time.

“Now,” I began, the tea was made and Iris was comfortable with a cup in her hands, “what’s this all about that you don t want to tell my sister? She knows a bit about nursing, after all.”

“I’m not sure she d understand,” Iris began, then all of a sudden she started crying and nearly spilled her tea.

“There there,” I took the cup and put it somewhere safe, then looked for and found Iris’s handkerchief, a bit wet already but it was all I could find, “it can’t be all that bad.”

“Oh Doris,” she wiped her eyes as best she could with a wet handkerchief, “I’m so ashamed.”

Ashamed? Now I really was interested. She wasn’t dying, that was obvious, but something was worrying her. “Whatever have you got to be ashamed about?”

Now there are times and I’m sure you’ve had them, when things come together and you snap your fingers and say that s it! Well I’didn’t snap my fingers but suddenly I knew, at least I thought I knew, what Iris was upset about.

Both of us, Iris and me that is, sing in the choir; it’s part of our church entertainment group. She has a nice voice: nothing special like they have in opera but she holds a tune pretty good. It s the high notes she has trouble with. She reaches them but only just.

Now we’ve been rehearsing for weeks for the annual event at the church hall. This year we re putting on Murder in the Red Barn, a mystery with enough goings on to satisfy the audience and not upset the Church Society censors.

I don’t get to act in it but I’ll be doing the ladies makeup which I like because I get to put all this stuff on the girls faces which makes them look like real tarts except when they’re on stage when they look rather good. They say it s something to do with the lighting.

Anyway, before Murder in the red barn is performed, the men’s choir are going to sing something, I forget what it s called but it s good, and then us in the ladies choir are going to sing Cherry Ripe.

It’s not difficult to sing, doesn’t even have too many high notes but I realized after the second rehearsal that Iris was better than usual; clear notes and hardly a pause before she got the top one. Very nice, I thought; she must be practicing.

Then I remembered one of my mum’s sayings, like how a woman s voice always improves when she s having a baby. I always reckoned mum’s sayings to be a lot of old wives tales but I never forgot them. So naturally I wondered.

But that can’t be Iris, I told myself. She’s a war widow; been one since 1917 and I’d kind of taken it for granted she d stay that way.

Then again, why should she? She couldn’t be much over thirty, she was good looking and she had a very nice figure; slim enough not to need a corset which was more than I could say.

So maybe she was getting married again, and maybe they’d anticipated the wedding. It happens.

I’didn’t ask outright, I’mean, what if I was wrong? So I suggested she tell me all about it and I’d just sit and listen.

So she told me and I listened. And it all boiled down to she’d been going with a man, and she found out after she got pregnant, that he was already married. The shock had upset her so much, she’d had a miscarriage.
“It happened last night and I suppose it’s all for the better, but,” she looked up with tear filled eyes, “I’m so unhappy.”

For the first time since we d known each other, I saw my friend, not as a war widow, but as a woman with feelings. Who for good or bad, had started a baby. And now it was gone.

I’m not an emotional person. My mum brought me up the way she was brought up, to keep all that stuff hidden. Which doesn’t mean I don t feel – I do – but whenever I want to reach out to someone, something inside stops me. And I pull back.

But when I saw Iris sitting there all pale and upset, I realized how she was hurting, and I wanted to take her in my arms and comfort her. But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

What I did do though was kneel down beside her, take one of her hands and put my clean hanky in it. I didn’t say anything: if I had, I would have been crying too.

Iris reached out with her other hand and caught mine and for a short while we kind of connected. I sensed her loneliness, her longing for what she couldn’t have, would never have, and once again I cursed that bloody war.

But moments like that don’t last long; they can’t. Iris pulled her hand away, I stood up and there we were, back in the here and now. She had a problem. And I was here to help, if I could.

“Have you sent for the doctor?” I asked.

“I wasn’t going to bother,” she sat up and pulled her dressing gown into place, “I’mean, it’s all over and a doctor’s visit will only have half the street talking.”

“What if something goes wrong?” I gave her a hard look.

“What can go wrong?” Iris began to rearrange herself, “as I said, it’s all over.”

“Things happen you know,” I wagged a finger at her, “and it’s obvious you haven’t thought a bit about what it’ll do to young Ellie if you go and die. She’ll be put in a home for orphans, she will. Now what do you think of that?”

That really was a mean thing to say and I kind of regretted saying it but it was the truth. Iris had no relatives she knew of and the authorities would put young Ellie straight into an orphanage. Anyhow, it did the trick.

“Alright, alright,” Iris sounded a bit sharp but that was good, it meant she was listening, “but I’m still not having a doctor come here. I ll go to his surgery first thing tomorrow.”

“Promise?” I gave her a hard look. Another hard look.

“I said I’d go,” she began, then, “oh alright, I promise.”

Satisfied, I picked up the cups and saucers, “Now you just stay there and I’ll come over later with something for you and Ellie to have for dinner.”

“You don’t have to,” Iris saw me turn towards the scullery, “and Ellie can do those things when she comes in.”

“You mean you trust young Ellie with your good stuff?” I spoke lightly but I kept going; this wasn’t the time for social niceties. But I’didn’t want to upset Iris more than she was already upset so I talked as I washed up.

“This is some of the nicest china I’ve seen,” I called from the scullery, “had it long?”

“Wedding present,” she answered and I could tell by the way she spoke, she was flattered I’d noticed.

“Lucky you,” I called back, “I had to wait years to get anything anywhere near this good.”

“Charles always liked that set,” she went on, “and insisted we use it all the time. Which is why I don t have much left.”

“D you know,” I paused to admire the pretty Alexandra Rose design on the cup I was washing, “I think maybe we should do the same. I’ve got a lovely best set and the way we hardly use it, I ll only end up leaving it to someone.”

By now I had the washing up done, and as I carried the china and other stuff back into the kitchen Iris was looking quite her old self. Maybe just talking about her husband, she always called him Charles, never Charlie, had done her some good.

“Remember,” I put my coat back on as it was time to go, “if you need anything, you just send young Ellie over.”

“I’ll try not to,” she smiled back, “you’ve done so much already, and you know if I send young Ellie over any more, talk’ll have it I’must be real bad with something.”

“Don’t you worry about the rest of the street,” I gave her a stern look, “if anyone asks, I’ll just say you’ve got a real bad chest. They all know how I feel about colds going bad.”

Iris nodded; she knew I was talking about how the pneumonia got my mum.

Later, when Vi heard about me going over the street and asked about Iris, I just said she had a terrible chest and I’d advised her to go to the doctor.
I mean, there are things you tell your sister. And there are things you don’t.