When Tomorrow Comes

Prologue

                        It might as well have been the middle of winter for all the difference the sunshine of an April day made to the grey, bug-ridden houses crumbling away on either side of Wimple Street, and the labyrinth of dark alleys and footpaths surrounding it. The Shambles, a nickname given to the district by its long-suffering residents, was a grim place in which to live. Tiny homes, splitting at the seams by the ever increasing size of the families that existed in them, shared lavatories, sewers that overflowed into the streets, rats, some the size of small dogs, and the constant emission of soot from the nearby railway station, covering everything in a grey blanket of grime, had earned the place its reputation. In the decaying streets, children, many in rags and with bare feet, played games in the gutters, sang their skipping songs and, knowing nothing better, cheerfully accepted their lot. Disease among them was rife, and the sight of a little white coffin being borne away to the Cemetery so commonplace it scarcely raised an eyebrow.

                        As he stood on the corner and surveyed the festering squalor of the place he’d brought his wife to some five years’ earlier, the man, whose immaculate appearance bore no resemblance to his surroundings, wondered how she could have put up with it for so long without one word of complaint. He also wondered if the letter he knew would have arrived today, - the letter he was half-afraid to open, - would mean a better life for his family, and be the means of their escape from the misery of living in such a hellhole of a place.

                        He entered his house, took the brown envelope from the kitchen dresser, tore it open and read the contents.

Chapter One

                        At two o’clock on the afternoon of 12th September 1932, Harry Cartarett, having finished his milk round for the day, arrived home at number twelve Kestrel Road to find the Midwife’s bicycle propped against the wall of the house. As he stepped inside the front door, the familiar smell of antiseptic and strong carbolic meant that either his wife Esther had given birth or it was imminent. He hung his coat and cap on a peg in the hallway, went through to the back of the house and sat down in his armchair, past experience telling him to keep well out of the way of the ministrations going on upstairs.

                        One of the advantages of starting work at four o’clock in the morning was that he finished early in the afternoon and could spend what was left of it dozing in his armchair, and catching up on his early morning start. There would be no such pleasure for him today. The thumping back and fore of two pairs of feet across the room above sounded like a regiment of soldiers on the parade ground, the first belonging to the Midwife and the second to his sister Frances. Frances would, as usual, be holding Esther’s hand and mopping the perspiration from her face while urging her to push the child she had carried for the past nine months out into the world. He sat with his head in his hands until, some half an hour later, he heard Esther cry out, then the first wail of a newly born baby. It was all over, and he had another mouth to feed.