Read Online Elegy for Eddie by Jacqueline Winspear - Free Book Online Page B

give up on him.” She cleared her throat and pulled at the hem of her cardigan. “Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that Eddie had been pushed around a bit by some of the men. A new bloke started a few months ago, name of Jimmy Merton, and he’s what you might call a hard nut. I don’t know why people listen to him, but they do. He started nipping at Eddie—at first he acted like it was a game, you know, and that it was just a bit of harmless joshing. Then he seemed to get a little crew around him. It was surprising, really, because some of the other men—not those in Jimmy’s crowd—would talk about organizing at Bookhams, and they asked people from the union to come down. But Jimmy would say his piece against it and get stroppy with anyone who had a different opinion. He would go on about how the unions were only out for themselves and that he was against it—he could get nasty with it, too. I was in the pub after work with some of the women here—sitting in the corner for a quick drink before we went home on a Saturday—and I heard them talking.” The woman sighed and shook her head, pressing her lips together for a moment as if to quell her emotions. “And I saw him having goes at Eddie—Ed sometimes dropped in to see the landlord, who’d have a bit of work for him. That Jimmy always got up to his mischief when the men who would stand by Eddie weren’t there to see it happening.”
    “And you said his name was Jimmy Merton?” asked Maisie.
    “Yes. Bit of a boxer on the side, he is. Every night he’s in a boxing gymnasium upstairs at one of the pubs over on the Old Kent Road; that’s where they all go to throw a few punches. I can’t remember what it’s called, though.”
    The sound of a door slamming came from the direction of the offices above, and Marchant looked up the stairs. “I’d better get back to work. I just wanted to let you know that Eddie’d had trouble with that Merton and some of his mates, and I reckon it made him miserable. He wasn’t looking himself lately.”
    Maisie reached out and touched the woman’s arm again. “Miss Marchant—do you think Eddie’s death was an accident?”
    She sighed. “I really don’t know. If I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ I’d go home feeling as if I’d told a lie. But if I said I thought it was deliberate, I think I’d feel the same.” She sighed. “The only thing I know is that it wasn’t right. None of it. I must go now, or Mr. Mills will start docking my pay.”
    The woman ran up the stairs, patting her hair as she went. Maisie stood for a moment, then left the building, pulling the door towards her until she heard the loud click that signaled it was closed completely. She retraced her steps until she came to the pub on the corner. It was called The Lighterman, the sign above depicting two men unloading a Thames barge. Billy could pay a visit to the pub; he might find out a thing or two there, thought Maisie. A few shillings invested in buying a drink for some of the men from the paper factory could prove to be a worthy investment.
    T hat Maud Pettit and Jennie had been friends together at the Union Workhouse, along with Jennie’s brother, Wilf, was well known. And that the three had worked hard—two or three jobs each, with hardly any respite—was testament to their resolve never to return to the dank place where they had met. The workhouse was not as full of the dispossessed as it had once been, but it was rumored that poverty caused by the depression had caused an increase in the number of men, women, and children living within the redbrick Victorian buildings. The men were not idlers, and the women had been as busy as they could, but the shifting sands of fortune had pulled any semblance of stability from under their feet and they had fallen on times harder than they could have imagined—thus the workhouse had once again become the shelter of last resort. Maisie shuddered when she thought about it, and considered the conditions