CAMBERWELL BEAUTIES - ANNIE MULBERY - PART 2

Little Lou was brought up as my baby brother, and if anyone else did know the truth, it was never mentioned, and in time I think everyone forgot that Lou was mine; it was hard for me looking at Mum caring for him, and having to pretend all those years that he was my brother.  Sometimes my heart ached like it would burst. The payments kept coming from Clara, and paid for fencing lessons and the like for Louis, but they were not as much as promised because Charlie’s Dad had passed away just before my baby was born, and they dried up altogether when Clara died when he was only seven.  I was sad about that, she was a gentle soul and I think she would have liked to have known her grandson.

So my life carried on much as anyone else’s in Camberwell.

Mabel was the first of my sisters to get wed:  she married Henry Nelson Stubbs in May 1907, a few months after our Dad died, and went to live with his widowed mother Isabel in the Commercial Road, Peckham. They soon had three children, Jeannie, Henry and Mabel Louvain who was born after her father was killed in Belgium in 1914; they gave her that middle name because that’s where they believed her Father had died. Mum always made sure they were well looked after with food and that when they lost Harry ’Look after your own’ was always her motto. She was good to our Gert when she was widowed too.

 Our Joe did well; he was a clever boy always messing about with engines and the like; he started off learning about ships’ engines then went on to fit and repair petrol engines in the bus works and Garage at Peckham where Dad had been a conductor. He married Elsie Reed in 1911 and they went to live with her widowed Mum in the Commercial Road in Peckham, just along from our Mabel.  I knew Elsie from the shirt factory, nice girl and a good little machinist she was, even though she was stone deaf.

My sister Gert married Guy Gregory round about the same time, and I was a witness at their wedding; 1911 was a busy year in our family! They lived along by us in Leyton Square. Guy was in the Army too; he was killed in the Balkans in 1918, what bad luck that was, right at the end of the war. Their little girl Annie was only 6, never remembered her Dad. Gert was my favourite sister, great friends we were, we used to visit her a lot in the Commercial road and always had fun; she was a right scream, after a visit my sides ached with laughing.

In 1895 I had married Walter Mulbery, whose family lived near us.  He was a traveller in plate glass, quite a nice chap and Mum said I was lucky to get him being as I had already been ruined.  We lived in Maismore Street next door to Mum and Dad, in the very house where Charlie’s family had lived years before. I had my suspicions they still actually owned it and wanted to make sure my little boy had a decent home. I didn’t see much of Walter anyway as he was always away selling his glass.

It was quite a while before word got back to me that Louis’ Dad Charlie had been killed at the Battle of Paardeberg in South Africa in 1900, he was a Lieutenant in the Cavalry and was killed leading the charge.  He hadn’t had much of a life really, poor sod, I never heard news of him much after he went away with the army but I’ve always thought it was sad he never had the chance to get married or have children. Except our Louis of course.

Mind you, I never had any more kids either; I was pregnant once but that came to nothing.  I took it as a punishment for being an unwed mother, and just made the best I could out of my life, though at times I ached to put my arms round my little boy and hear him call me Mother.

Wally and I got along well together, he used to be a proper joker; told my little grandchildren – who of course thought I was their Auntie – that he was in the Secret Service which is why he was away so much!  I had been very relieved when Louis came back safe from the war in France in 1918, wounded but still alive, specially after both my sisters being widowed, though he did have a bit of a funny turn and went missing for a few months several years later.

Our life was comfortable enough, living near Mum and my Louis and his wife Lil, a nice local girl who also worked in the shirt factory on collars with her sisters. I was so proud seeing them get married during the war in 1915. They had two children Louis and Annie. Our little Annie was only eight when I died in 1934 when my kidneys packed up, I suppose it was all that weight I was carrying!  Sixty-one I was, which I suppose was not a bad innings, but I would have loved to have seen my grandchildren growing up; maybe even my great grandchildren.  But it was not to be.  

Mum was getting on for 90 when she passed away, she had been living with our Gert in the same house next door to us in Maismore Street but had gone to stay with my brother and his family in North London when she died.  A good old age; but then she always was a strong old bird.  I’ve kept my eye on all of them all through the years, and now I reckon it’s high time we had a proper family knees-up. 

Perhaps I can even introduce my Lou to his real Dad when I can find him. Maybe he’s that little Angell over there – well,  you’ve got to laugh ain’t you!