A Memory of Violets (8 page)

T
urns out Mammy was right about them lucky shamrocks on the handkerchiefs, 'cause I know it was them for certain what brought Mr. Shaw to help me and Rosie at the Aldgate Pump. It was those lucky Irish shamrocks, sure as eggs is eggs.

Mr. Shaw stopped to help me, see, after some swell had knocked the flower basket clean out of my hands. Running for something that swell was—or from someone, maybe. Either way, he didn't even stop to say sorry, so he didn't. Right ruined they were—all my cresses and primroses—muddied and spoiled on the ground, and there I was, sobbin' and sobbin' as I tried to wash 'em under the freezing water, when up walks this great black top hat, soaring into the sky like the factory chimneys. 'Course there was a head attached to it, and a smart frock coat. Stopped to ask me
what the matter was, that hat did—wanted to know why I was all weepin' and wretched.

Thought he was a copper's nark at first, come to arrest me for shouting after a gen'leman, but then didn't he pay me the money for the spoiled flowers and give me and Rosie a breakfast ticket for a room he has at the Garden. I known he was a good, kind man then. “He's a good, kind man, Rosie.” That's what I told Little Sister when she asked who it was had stopped to talk to us. “A good, kind man with a great big hat. A good, kind man what prays to God and has given us a special ticket to get a hot drink and a slice of bread and butter.”

We go to the Club Room each mornin' now. I give Rosie most of my bread and butter, and her cheeks get rounder each day and have a bit of color in them. And that hot cocoa feels just grand in our bellies after the cold nights and mornin's at the market buying our stock. Like a taste of Heaven, so it is. And when it's after raining, we get dry clothes to wear and some kind women read to us from the Bible, telling us about God's love. Sometimes they mend the holes and tears in our clothes and dip a rag in a bowl of warm water and teach us to wash our hands and feet and faces, telling how it stops the disease if ye stay clean. Sometimes we get given a blanket, and that's a grand thing to be given altogether!

Mr. Shaw is the name of the man in the hat who helped us. A good, kind man he is, and no mistake. And the ladies who help in the Club Room are good and kind, too. One lady, who Rosie has come to have a particular liking for, always stops to buy a couple of bunches when she sees us out selling on the street. She gave a silver sixpence once, when a penny would do. “Buy a mug of hot cocoa for yourself and your sister, and you'll still have plenty left to take home to your father,” she said. And she'll sometimes pay
for the violets, too, when they're all ruined and wilted by the late frosts.

There's lots of other flower sellers go to the Club Room. Some have a crutch, like me. Some have an arm missing or hands that won't work proper, and some are midgets, no taller than Rosie, though they're much older in years. One of them girls is after telling me that Mr. Shaw takes his Sunday School girls on a trip to the seaside at Clacton every summer and that they swim in the sea—putting their whole bodies in the water! I told her I don't think I'd dare to even put my toe in the sea—“Ye could drown,” I say. But it would be a grand thing to walk on the sand, all the same, and they say the sea air smells as fresh as peas after the summer rains.

It's them shamrocks on our handkerchiefs for certain. It's them what brought Mr. Shaw to us—they're looking out for us, just like Mammy said. Even so, I know that good, kind men in chimney-pot hats and fancy frock coats can't keep me an' Rosie safe and warm forever. I still shiver till my bones rattle when we huddle together under a market barrow at night. I still keep my eyes open, watching for those bad men what lurk in the shadows. I can hear them, creeping in and out of the laneways, as quiet and menacing as a winter fog.

I
do the washing and run errands for Da, and each morning he gives me a few coins and sends us out to the markets at the Garden to buy our stock for the day's sellin'. I have to bring Little Sister—“sure, minding babies is women's work,” he says. I'd rather she was with me anyway. “A proper little mother ye are, Florrie Flynn.” That's what Maura Connolly, down the market, says.

So, it's just me and Rosie now, sellin' the flowers. It's awful hard for me going about on the crutch, but Da says there's no hope of a cripple the like of me getting work in service, or in the factories, so sellin' the flowers and cresses is all I can do—other than stealin' or beggin', and that's not a good way for a person to live. We manage as best we can, me and Rosie, and there's no use blubberin' about what you can't change, is there?

It's fierce dark when we set out each mornin' so as ye can barely see where y'r steppin'. I trod on a rat last week, its tail all wiry between my toes. Screamed so loud you'd think my throat was being cut. I been longing for a nice, smart pair of boots ever since. Wouldn't care how many rats I was standing on then, sure I wouldn't.

We go down Wellington Street, off the Strand, and then along Russell Street. There's no noise like it when the markets is getting goin'. Sure, ye can hear the shouts and cries from as far away as Chancery Lane. It doesn't matter which way you're coming from 'cause all the roads to market—Southampton Street, Bedford Street, Long Acre, Bow Street—are stuffed to bustin' with the hawkers and costers, pulling their handcarts and barrows. Hundreds of men there are, balancing great baskets on their heads as they rush past, shoutin' and cursin' as they weave in and out of each other's way, past the carts and the knackered old donkeys. The greengrocers' wagons rumble past us, piled higher than an omnibus with their cabbage and sea kale, and I gawp at them funny-looking pineapples 'cause I never seen nothing like 'em. The wagons and carts make the road shudder under our feet. Me an' Rosie don't care about steppin' on the rotten cabbage leaves and we don't take no notice of the saucy dollymops who hang around the costers as they take their pint in the early taverns. We don't look at 'em, like Mammy always told us not to.

I take Little Sister along the back streets if it's getting too busy on the main roads. It's easy to lose people in all that busyness—and that's what frightens me more than anything else, losin' Rosie. I'd rather lose the use of both legs and not eat for a year, so I would, than lose Little Sister. So I hold on to her hand fierce tight, 'cause you never know who might be lurking round them corners: the natty lads waiting to steal y'r stock
money, or wicked men waitin' to steal worse. You'd never know what, or who, was in them shadows, sure you wouldn't. So we go darting like rats down the narrowest alleyways, picking another way to the Garden, and when we turn in to the grand avenue and see the Floral Hall, all gleaming glass and iron, it's a nice feelin', familiar, like.

I know we're terrible filthy, we're hungry and cold all the days and nights, and I wish for a pair of sturdy boots for us both, but when the sun shines on the flower markets on a summer's morning, it can look real pretty; them baskets of violets shine like jewels. I tell Rosie how they reflect against the rain-soaked cobbles and turn the stones purple.

Sometimes, before we go sellin', we visit the Club Room. I make sure we pay our ha'penny and we wait as patient as our rumbling bellies will allow as the ladies ladle the soup or mutton out of great cooking pots. Spoonful after spoonful they pour into the bowls and that meaty steam all risin' up and the smell of that gravy getting up y'r nose is so good we can hardly wait a minute more. I never tasted nothing so good, sure I didn't. We both get an ache in our bellies from eating too quick. And then we sit around the kind lady who tells us all about noble and good people. I tell Little Sister that we should try to be noble and good, then we won't end up like that Nellie Byrne. Fell in with a bad lot so she did. Ended up at the bottom of the Thames. Only twelve year old. Lord knows what's to become of her brother and sister what she used to mind.

I don't think about food most days, it's easier that way, though it was hard not to think about them hot cross buns when the coster boys arrived near where we was selling on Shaftesbury Avenue on Good Friday. Little Sister said she wished we could stay there selling our flowers forever, just so as she could breathe
in that delicious smell. Poor little Rosie. How I wished I could pay a penny for one.

Well, the luck of the Irish came to me then. Didn't one of them glistening buns fall out the seller's basket! Rolled right up to my feet, so it did. I grabbed it before he could notice and stuffed it into my pocket. Off we ran then, me an' Rosie. We hid behind a rag and bone cart on Haymarket. Stuffed that bun into our mouths quicker than you can say “one-a-penny, two-a-penny.” It weren't stealing, sure it weren't, 'cause it fell on the ground and I just found it there and that's different from stealing from the basket, so it is. Sure, there's nothing nicer than a belly full of sweet bun and those spices were still on our lips when we went back to Rosemary Court. Best of all, Da was out Greenwich way, hoping to pick up some rag before the Greenwich Fair. Me and Rosie slept better that night than we had in months. I said a prayer and thanked Granny for her lucky shamrocks and slept until daylight.

But them nights of a good sleep don't come around often. When me an' Rosie is sleeping outside, I can't help thinking of the frightening men who walk around at night. I'm always glad to see the lamplighter come along with his pole and his light. I watch him from where we're hidden; watch him reach the pole up and then the flame starts. Like magic it is when the lamp starts to glow, and it's always nice to see that little puddle of light on the street. I can sometimes sleep for a while then, but mostly I keep my eyes open, watching out for danger, along with the cats and the rats and the scabby dogs who snuffle about near us looking for vegetable scraps. I start thinking on the stories the costers tell us then—the stories they're after reading in the penny dreadfuls. Scare your bones off you, so they would, with all their talk of murder and ghosts. So I don't sleep much. Can't. I lie awake, and wait for morning, and remember my promise to Mammy.

T
he late spring frosts are after making life hard. We ain't had flowers to sell for a week now—all ruined they are before they even get to market. The oranges and cresses are keeping us going, but only just.

Things are troublesome at home, too. Cousin Kathleen has run off and nobody's seen her for two week or more and Da's after taking ill with the consumption. Auntie May is minding him as best she can, but I don't think she's the full shilling herself these days and her nerves is playing up what with Kathleen disappearing. Auntie May says Da's sure to die before the month is out. I can't feel sad about it, even though I know I should, 'specially 'cause that'll make me and Rosie orphans, and most orphans get
taken into the workhouse. Mammy's lucky handkerchiefs maybe ain't so lucky after all.

At least me and Rosie have Mr. Shaw's Club Room to go to—and we've got each other. Not like the little match sellers. Most of them are orphans—all alone—and some no bigger than Rosie. They come running like rats through the alleyways when they see the omnibus coming, the boxes of matches on the ends of their long sticks so as they can reach up to the passengers on the top deck. Rosie says they sound like a flock of birds with their little voices screeching all together.

More and more sellers come out as the months get warmer. We see the ham sandwich sellers, the coffee sellers, and the newspaper vendors who stand at the theater doors and the bridges and railway stations like us flower sellers do. Me and Rosie like the music of the nigger bands who play all the day in the summertime. It's nice to hear them when we sell around Oxford Street and Regent Street.

Sometimes we stop to talk to the midget who stands at the corner of St. Martin's Lane and Long Acre, selling his nutmeg graters. He's a dwarf and no higher than me. I thought he was just a young boy at first, but then I saw his face—a man's face in a boy's body. He has a sign hung around his neck:
I WAS BORN A CRIPPLE
. I know 'cause he told me himself what it says. The graters hang all around him on fraying bits of string, clinking and clanking whenever he moves. He fell over once and sent up such a great clatter. He wears a smart cap and a neckerchief of crimson red. Y'd know him if you saw him. He has sad eyes, so I try and remember to smile at him when we see him.

I don't care for some of the sellers, though. I 'specially don't like the lemonade seller on Westminster Bridge. Looks at you
funny when he talks to you, so he does. His eyes are shifty and his teeth all rotten and fallin' out of his head, and he sneers when he looks at you. He stands all hunched over his stone barrel, his coat hanging about him and his hat balanced on his head. Maura Connolly says he looks like a monster. She says you could put him on the cover of a penny dreadful and have half of London terrified. “More frightening than Spring-Heeled Jack.” That's what she says.

“Lemonade, buy your ice-cold lemonade fresh,” he cries when we go past. “Halfpenny a glass, sparkling lemonade.” He knows we ain't got a ha'penny to spare—cruel so he is to tempt us like that. But the glasses sparkle in the sun and it all looks so nice when you see the boys guzzling that drink down their throats without stopping. But I reckon the powder he mixes into the water ain't lemonade powder at all. Persian sherbet he sometimes calls it when he makes it turn red. Vitriol—I reckon that's all he's putting in there.

“Don't look at 'im, Rosie,” I say as we scurry past. “Don't look in his eyes.” 'Cause the coster boys say if you look into his eyes he hypnotizes you and takes little girls off to work for him, stealing and begging and pickpocketing.

So we dart and dodge among the ladies and gentlemen as they go for a stroll. We duck underneath the horses' bellies, making sure we don't get a kicking from them, and we crowd around the carriages, begging the pretty ladies to buy our flowers as they get in or out. The horses snort and paw at the ground, their coats all covered in white sweat, and I hold on to Little Sister's hands tight as I can. “Don't let go, Rosie,” I tell her. “Don't let go.”