Jennifer Worth - Farewell To The East End

Chummy was all solicitude.

‘Sorry, old bean, didn’t mean to sound a wrong note, what? Here, I’ve just finished folding these swabs. You have them; I can quickly do some more. And the autoclave is at 180 degrees; I put it on twenty minutes ago when I came in. We’ll get these bally bags done in a jiff. Did you see Mrs B making bread this morning?’

We had. Mrs B not only made the best bread north of the Thames, she made jams and chutneys, cheesy scones and cakes to die for.

Our bags packed, we emerged from the clinical room and headed towards the kitchen, hungry for supper, which was a casual meal that we prepared ourselves. Lunch was the main meal of the day, when we all gathered around the big dining table, usually about twelve or fifteen people including visitors. Sister Julienne presided, and in the presence of the nuns and, frequently, visiting clergy, it was a more formal affair, and we girls were always on our best behaviour. Supper was different; we all came in at different times, including the Sisters, so we took what we wanted and ate in the kitchen. Standards were relaxed and so was conversation.

The kitchen was large, probably Victorian, and had been modernised in Edwardian days, with bits and pieces added on later. Two large stone sinks stood against the wall beneath windows that were set so high no one could see out of them, not even Chummy, who was well over six feet tall. The taps were large and stiff, fed by lead pipes that ran all the way round the kitchen and were attached to the wall with metal fixtures. Whenever you turned a tap on, the pipes gurgled and shook as the water made its way along its course, sometimes coming out in a trickle, sometimes in vicious spurts – you had to stand well back to avoid a soaking. Wooden plate racks were fixed above each sink which was flanked on either side by a marble-topped surface. This was where Mrs B did all her mixing and kneading of dough, covering the mixture with a cloth for it to rise, and all the other magic rituals necessary for making bread.

Against the second outside wall stood a double-sized gas stove, and the coke stove, which had an oven attached and a flue which ran up the wall and disappeared somewhere near the ceiling about fifteen feet above. The hot water for the whole convent was dependent upon this boiler, and so Fred, the boiler-and odd-job man, was a very important person indeed, a fact even Mrs B was obliged to concede. Fred and Mrs B were both Cockneys, and a guarded but fragile truce existed between them, which now and then erupted into a slanging match, usually when Fred had made a mess of Mrs B’s nice clean kitchen, and she would go for him hammer and tongs. She was a large lady of formidable frontage, and Fred was undersized even by Cockney standards, but he stood his ground and fought his corner manfully. The exchanges between them were rich, but Mrs B knew that the Sisters couldn’t do without him, so reluctantly they settled down to another period of truce.

Mrs B certainly had a point. Fred certainly was messy. The main problem was his squint, the most spectacular you have ever seen. One eye pointed north-east, the other south-west, so he could see in both directions at once, but not in the middle. Not infrequently, when he was shovelling his ash, or tipping his coke, it would go in the wrong direction, but he would sweep it up willy-nilly, and often whatever he was sweeping, particularly the ash, would go the wrong way also. Ash could be flying all over the place, at which point Mrs B ... well, I need not go on!

We settled down to our bread with cheese and chutney, and dates and apples, with a few pots of lemon curd, jam or marmalade. We really appreciated our food because we had all been war-time children, brought up amid strict rationing. None of us had seen a banana or chocolate until we were in our mid to late teens, and had been brought up on one egg and a tiny bit of cheese that was to last a whole week. Bread, along with everything else, had been strictly rationed, so Mrs B’s delectable provender brought murmurs of delight.

‘Bagsie the crust.’

‘Not fair, you had it last time.’

‘Well, we’ll split it, then.’

‘How about cutting the crust off the other end, as well?’

‘No, it would go stale in the middle.’

‘Let’s toss for it.’

I can’t remember who won the toss, but we settled down.

‘What do you make of Fred’s puzzle?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ said Chummy, her mouth full. She sighed with contentment.

‘It’s a load of rubbish if you ask me,’ said Trixie.

‘It can’t be rubbish, it’s a question of arithmetic,’ I replied, cutting another wedge of cheese.

‘Well, you can think of arithmetic, old sport, I’ve got better things to think about. Pass the chutney.’ Chummy had a large frame to fill.

‘Leave some for Cynthia,’ I said. ‘She’ll be coming in any minute, and that’s her favourite.’

‘Whoops, sorry,’ said Chummy, spooning half back into the jar. ‘Greedy of me. Where is she, by the way? She should have been back an hour ago.’

‘Must have been held up somewhere,’ said Trixie. ‘No, it’s not arithmetic. I passed my School Certificate with merit, and I can assure you it’s not arithmetic.’

‘It is. Three nines are twenty-seven – that’s what they taught me at school – plus two makes twenty-nine.’

‘Correct. So what?’

‘So where’s the other shilling?’

Trixie looked dubious. She didn’t have a quick answer, and she was a girl who liked quick-fire repartee. Eventually she said, ‘It’s a trick, that’s what it is. One of Fred’s low-down, wide-boy Cockney tricks.’

‘Nah ven, nah ven, oo’s callin’ me a low-down Cockney wide-boy, I wants to know?’

Fred entered the kitchen, coke-hod in one hand, ash bucket in the other. His voice was friendly, and his toothless grin cheerful (well, not quite toothless, because he had one tooth, a huge yellow fang right in the centre). From his lower lip hung the remains of a soggy Woodbine.

Trixie didn’t look abashed at having insulted the good fellow; she looked indignant.

‘Well, it is a trick. It must be. You and your “three men went into a restaurant” yarn.’

Fred looked at her with his north-east eye and rubbed the side of his nose. He rolled the Woodbine from one side of his mouth to the other and sucked his tooth, then gave a sly wink.

‘Oh yeah? You reckons as ’ow it’s a trick. Well you work i’ ou’ Miss Trick – see? You jest work it out.’

Fred slowly kneeled down at the stove and opened the flue. Trixie was furious, but Chummy came to the rescue.

‘I say, old sport, go and look in the big tin, see if there’s any of that cake left. She’s a gem, that woman Mrs B, a jewel. I wasted two years at the Cordon Bleu School of Cookery, fiddling about stuffing prunes with bacon and filling figs with fish, soppy things like that. But no one there could come up with a fruit cake like Mrs B’s.’

Trixie calmed down as we tackled the cake.

‘Leave some for Cynthia,’ said Chummy. ‘She’ll be here in a minute.’

‘Aint she come back yet? Ve quiet one? She should be ’ere by now.’

Fred, as well as being a tease, frequently showed a protective instinct towards us girls. He rattled the rake in the flue.

I still wasn’t satisfied that Trixie was right about Fred’s story being a trick. I had been puzzling about it on and off all day, and now that Fred was here I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

‘Look here, Fred. Let’s get this straight. Three men went into a restaurant. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘And they bought a meal costing thirty shillings?’

‘Straight up.’

‘So they paid ten shillings each. Correct?’