Matilda smiled at the pretty young woman who’d squashed a path through the crowd.
‘You remember Mrs Keiver, don’t you, Grace?’
Grace frowned and bit her lip, not wanting to appear rude.
‘You know, young Christopher Wild’s great-auntie … lived down Campbell Road … or Whadcoat Street as it turned into some years ago as I recall.’
A sweet smile parted Grace’s lips. ‘Oh yes, of course I remember you …’ She did remember too. Nobody who had visited Campbell Road, or The Bunk as it had been nicknamed thanks to its proliferation of doss houses, was ever likely to forget it. Neither would Grace ever forget the couple of times her friend Christopher had taken her on visit to his auntie, despite the fact it had been over a decade ago.
Her parents had constantly warned her to give Campbell Road, and the people who lived there, a wide berth. But when she’d found out from Christopher where his great-aunt lived she had, with the inquisitiveness of youth, begged him to take her there. She’d been astounded to discover one of Christopher’s relatives lived in a dirty hovel. Christopher and his father had lived close to Grace’s family and, while it certainly wasn’t luxurious in Crouch End, their terraced homes were adequate in most respects. Grace recalled she had been about ten or eleven at the time of her secret visits to The Bunk, but even at that tender age she’d been thrillingly shocked that such a slum existed and it had left an indelible mark on her memory.
‘Well … nice to see you both, but I suppose I should be making tracks.’ Matilda glanced about. ‘Bleedin’ cold night, ain’t it. I’m gonna be off and catch the bus back.’
‘We’ll walk with you to the bus stop.’ Shirley and Grace settled into step beside her. They walked in silence for a short while, huddled in their coats, shoulders hunched up to their ears, hats pulled low, to protect against the drizzle.
The two Coleman women settled into a slower pace as they noticed Matilda walking with a slight limp.
‘Got arthritis bad in one side,’ Matilda brusquely explained. ‘Damp don’t help.’
‘Wilf suffered with arthritis something chronic in the winter,’ Shirley remarked. ‘Young man too he were when he first got afflicted.’
‘Had a bad accident a long while ago,’ Matilda offered up. ‘Never been right since.’
‘Oh … ?’ Shirley said curiously.
‘Don’t talk about it,’ Matilda answered bluntly.
‘So where you living now then, Tilly? Did Reg come back from the war? I remember he went off to fight early on.’
Tilly shook her head. ‘Died in 1943. Should never have gone. Told him he were too old. Lied about his age, didn’t he, to get hisself enlisted.’
‘Brave man …’
‘Stupid man.’ Tilly begged to differ, but with a soft smile twisting her lips.
‘Two husbands you lost to the Germans then,’ Shirley said sympathetically. She knew that Jack Keiver, Matilda’s first husband, had been killed fighting on the Somme. She knew too that Matilda and Reg Donovan, although living as man and wife, hadn’t taken a trip to the Town Hall to say their vows.
‘Yeah,’ Matilda confirmed with a wry grimace. ‘Long, long while since I lost my Jack, God bless him.’
‘So where you livin’ then?’
‘Same place,’ Matilda replied a touch brusquely. She tended to be defensive when asked her address. People always followed that first question with another that began why … ? while gawping at her as though she’d lost her marbles.
Grace inclined forward to peer past her mother at Matilda. ‘You’re still in Campbell Road … I mean Whadcoat Street, Mrs Keiver?’ Her voice was pitched high in surprise.
‘Yeah … but not for long,’ Matilda replied with a sour smile. ‘Slum clearance has started up one end.’ She dug her hands further into her pockets. ‘So gonna be re-housed at some time. Don’t know where.’ She slanted a look sideways at her companions. ‘You’d be surprised, there’s still a good few people living there in the street. Remember the Whittons and the Lovats and old Beattie Evans? Some of them that are still alive are still about.’ She gave an emphatic nod. ‘Still got enough friends and neighbours left around me.’
‘Bleedin’ ’ell …’ Shirley breathed, her astonishment causing her to revert to language she hadn’t used in a long while. Having lived in Surrey, Shirley liked to think she’d travelled up in the world. ‘Never would have guessed it. Thought you’d all be long gone from there. You must’ve lived there a time, Til.’
‘Nearly all me life … over seventy years, bar a few years here and there, before I turned twenty, when me parents moved about London a bit. But we always come back to Campbell Road … usually ’cos it was the only place we could afford to kip, it’s true.’ She sighed. ‘But had some good times in amongst the bad. Me ’n’ Jack settled there just after we was married. Had all me kids there, with old Lou Perkins’ help.’ She broke off to grin. ‘She’s still about Islington somewhere, too. I intended to be carted off from The Bunk in me pine box but seems like the Council’s got other ideas for me.’
Grace exchanged a furtive look with her mother.
‘So how is Christopher doing, Mrs Keiver?’ she blurted. She was a sensitive young woman, not one to deliberately cause offence to another, and she knew Matilda had spotted the glance, clearly questioning her sanity.
‘Yeah … he’s doing alright. Works in his dad’s building firm as a foreman. In fact their firm, Wild Brothers it’s called,’ she informed them proudly, ‘is doing the demolition work that’s started at the top end of Whadcoat Street. Whadcoat Street,’ she repeated derisively. ‘Daft name. It’ll always be Campbell Road to me.’
Matilda halted as they reached the bus stop. ‘Well, nice to see you both after all this time.’
‘We’ll keep in touch,’ Shirley said quickly. ‘Would you mind if I sort of popped by?’ She had a morbid curiosity to see whether Matilda’s hovel was better or worse than the one she remembered.
‘Come any time. Sometimes go out for a little drink round the Duke, but that’s it.’ Matilda smiled. ‘You’ll be bound to catch me in.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘You look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ Matilda tapped Kathleen Murphy’s cold nose playfully with a finger.
‘Hello, Mrs Keiver.’ Noreen Murphy gave Matilda a smile. ‘It’s bitter today, isn’t it?’ She pulled her daughter’s hat down further over her ears then adjusted the collar of Kathleen’s coat in an attempt to shield her cheeks from the sharp breeze.
‘About time we had a bit more sunshine to warm us up now it’s April,’ Matilda said, clapping together her gloved palms. She’d been shopping for vegetables in the market when she’d spied Noreen pushing a pram and had ambled over to talk to her. Asleep inside the pram, swaddled to the chin with a woollen shawl, was baby Rosie. Little Kathleen was sitting on top of the coverlet, holding onto the handle to keep her balance, her little legs, bare above her socks, mottled purple with cold.
‘You off home now?’ Matilda asked. She’d noticed that a bag containing a very few potatoes was pegged on the pram handle, but Noreen seemed to be heading back in the direction of The Bunk.
Noreen nodded.
‘I’ll