Seventh Daughter is a work of fiction originally inspired by my husband’s paternal grandparents, Albert and Daisy Keates. Albert appeared briefly in my second novel, Land Fit For Heroes, as a young docker. Like the young lad in the story, the real Albert earned his living at Southampton Docks — at least he did when there was work to be had — and, being born in 1907, he was too young to have been touched by the Great War. He was the second of eight children, born to Albert and Ada Keates in Lower Canal Walk, Southampton, an area known locally as The Ditches.
Daisy, the seventh daughter of Walter Frederick and Florence Woodman, was born in a tiny two up two down terraced house in Northam Street. Her mother, Florence, died when she was eight, leaving Daisy to be brought up by her elder sisters. Florence was also the seventh daughter. The seventh daughter of a seventh daughter is traditionally said to have the gift of second sight. Whether this is true or not, the family rumour is that Daisy was a witch who saw things before they happened.
I never met Albert or Daisy, so their descriptions are based on a handful of family photographs and their characters are figments of my imagination. The life they lived, in the run down terrace in Northam Street was informed by the stories my father-in-law, Albert, told about his childhood. It was a life of poverty and uncertain employment during the difficult years of the Great Depression. Life was hard, but the community of Northam Street stuck together and took care of their own. The Northam Street houses are long gone now. They were swept away by slum clearance in the 1960s. Luckily, I had Albert’s memories to draw on.
Sam is, of course, fictional, although his story began in Land Fit For Heroes. He was meant to be a minor character, but I grew rather fond of him and felt he needed his own voice. In fact, he insisted on it. Nancy and the brothel run by Connie and Gabriel are figments of my imagination, too. The building is based on one I used to work in on Portland Street, but, to the best of my knowledge, there was never a brothel there. Gabriel/Abigail came to me after reading several articles about Eugene Falleni, a woman who lived her life as a man until she was caught out in 1920, when her first ‘wife’ was murdered. It’s an interesting tale and even now, I’m not sure if Eugene was a hero or a villain. Jacob’s character and his injures were inspired by some of the stories I read in pension records on westernfrontassociation.com, and stories I had read in Richard Van Emden’s wonderful books.
This book may owe a lot to Albert and Daisy, but it is really a story about love, friendship, poverty and overcoming the odds. Southampton’s slums may have been cleared, but the resilience of the people who survived in them and the strong communities they built deserve to be remembered.
The day had trouble written all over it — what kind of trouble, Daisy couldn’t tell. While she hunched over the big white sink peeling potatoes, she stared through the grimy window into the back yard. An ominous heaviness hung in the air, as if a storm was gathering, although the little bit of sky she could see was bright blue. Lily said Mum used to have visions too, except she called them premonitions. She said it was because Mum was the seventh daughter, and being Mum’s seventh daughter, Daisy was bound to have them. People called her a witch, but the odd forewarning and a knack for reading people wasn’t magic. Anyone could do it if they bothered to look at what was in front of their eyes. Instead, they talked on and on when they had nothing to say. If she could do magic, she wouldn’t be living hand to mouth in this tumbledown terraced house with her husband, her sister and the man who had been her father before his mind deserted him.
Copyright © 2022 Marie Keates
All rights reserved. ISBN: 979-8-8428-3020-6
1 – Wednesday 8 July 1931
The day had trouble written all over it — what kind of trouble, Daisy couldn’t tell. While she hunched over the big white sink peeling potatoes, she stared through the grimy window into the back yard. An ominous heaviness hung in the air, as if a storm was gathering, although the little bit of sky she could see was bright blue. Lily said Mum used to have visions too, except she called them premonitions. She said it was because Mum was the seventh daughter, and being Mum’s seventh daughter, Daisy was bound to have them. People called her a witch, but the odd forewarning and a knack for reading people wasn’t magic. Anyone could do it if they bothered to look at what was in front of their eyes. Instead, they talked on and on when they had nothing to say. If she could do magic, she wouldn’t be living hand to mouth in this tumbledown terraced house with her husband, her sister and the man who had been her father before his mind deserted him.
The frantic banging on the front door told her that whatever was coming was outside on the step.
Lily gave Daisy a puzzled look and walked down the dark hallway, grumbling, ‘All right, I’m coming. No need to break the door down.’
Being the fifth daughter, Lily didn’t have visions. Like Daisy, she had raven black hair and wide eyes that couldn’t decide if they wanted to be brown or green, but she was a talker, not a seer. When she returned with Isobel and Nancy, Daisy could see the direction her bad feeling was taking.
‘Mum’s not answering the door.’ Isobel’s big brown eyes were full of fear and tears. ‘She wouldn’t have gone out. She knows I always visit on half-day closing. He’s hurt her again, I know it.’
She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket, loudly blew her beaky nose and began to cry in earnest. She was sixteen, but her untidily plaited brown hair and the tears spilling from her eyes made her look childlike.
While Isobel was talking, Nancy, a tall, thin thing with a hard face and a flat chest, stood awkwardly on the cracked linoleum, and ignored Lily’s disgusted looks. Lily made no secret of her dislike for Nancy Blythe, just as Nancy made no secret of selling her body for a living. Lily thought living next-door-but-one to a prostitute lowered the tone of the place. As if it could get much lower than these dilapidated houses with doors opening onto the street and privies in the filthy yards.
Now Nancy took up the story. ‘Jacob was banging on my door on Saturday night, drunk as usual. As if I’d have him as a customer after last time. He’s too violent when he’s been drinking.’ She gave Isobel an apologetic look as if she wasn’t aware what her father was like after a few drinks. ‘Anyway, there was a hell of a racket in his house. I haven’t heard hide nor hair from Annie since. I didn’t even see her put the washing out on Monday.’
‘She’s hardly the noisy type, is she?’ Lily curled her lip. ‘And I doubt she’d have much truck with your kind.’
‘She’s not my best friend, but we share a wall between our houses, and, unlike some people, she’s always polite to me.’ Nancy looked down her long straight nose at Lily. The harshness of her high cheekbones and boyishly short brown hair was balanced by a long fringe, swept to one side and curled seductively across her cheek. She brushed it impatiently out of her eye.
‘Have you tried the back door?’ Daisy asked.
The unease she’d felt all morning was now a pricking foreboding. She looked hard at Nancy and saw an undercurrent of alarm beneath her bluff and bravado. She’d never knock on their door without good reason, any more than she’d give up the chance of Jacob’s money if she had a choice.
Nancy bit her lip. ‘To be honest, I was scared. That’s why I knocked on your door. The way Jacob was carrying on, on Saturday night . . .’
‘He’s done for her this time, I know it.’ Isobel blew her nose again.
With solemn faces, they all trooped out of the back door onto the uneven flagstones of the grim yard. A few rotten fences and disintegrating walls stood between the back-to-back privies and the high wall of the terrace behind. Despite these, there was no privacy and very little to stop anyone walking from one end to the other through the gaps. The houses were a hotchpotch of mismatched windows and doors, worn steps and washing lines. The women stepped over the remains of what had once been a wall, stopped outside Annie’s door and looked nervously at each other. Daisy took charge. She climbed the steps and knocked on the door, but there was no answer. The people of Northam Street had nothing worth stealing, so they didn’t generally lock their doors. Daisy took a deep breath, turned the handle and pushed the door open.
The kitchen was gloomy, with a big wooden table, three worm-eaten ladder-back chairs and a battered cabinet, with one door hanging off. Annie was on the floor, a deathly pale bag of bones with a crooked beak of a nose and limp hair like a moth-eaten blackbird’s wing. Daisy knelt beside her and felt for a pulse, it was weak, but she was alive.
‘Go and get her some water.’ Daisy turned to Isobel, who cried even harder.
While Isobel found a glass and went outside to the tap, Daisy gently raised Annie’s head and rested it on her knees. Smoothing back the hair from her forehead revealed purple bruises on the side of her cheek and around her neck. It looked as if someone had grabbed her throat. Obviously, that someone was Jacob. Who else could it be?
Finally, Annie’s eyelids fluttered. She struggled to sit up and pulled up her collar to cover the marks. Then Isobel came back with the water, and Daisy made Annie take a few sips.
‘You don’t need to make all this fuss.’ Annie stared at the four concerned women watching her. ‘It was a stupid fall, nothing more. I missed my footing going down the back steps to the privy and took a tumble. Nothing’s broken. You know what I’m like, Isobel, always tripping over things.’
Daisy saw the lie. The bruises told the tale.
Lily didn’t see it or chose to ignore it. ‘Do you need to see the optician? Mum’s eyes started to go when she was approaching forty. She was always banging into things and tripping over before she got her glasses, wasn’t she Daisy?’
Daisy said nothing — she had been eight when Mum died, so she barely remembered her. Her six sisters had brought her up.
‘I’m only thirty-seven,’ Annie said with a weak smile. ‘I’ve always been clumsy.’
‘Those bruises didn’t happen today.’ Daisy pointed out.
‘No.’ Annie lowered her huge dark eyes. ‘I fell on Sunday night. This morning I was getting the laudanum from the back of the cupboard when I fell again.’ She held up a small brown bottle.
‘That’s an awful lot of falling,’ Daisy said.
The way Annie sat, slightly twisted to the right with her shoulder stiff and her arm clasped to her chest, said it wasn’t only her face that was bruised. Jacob had given her a right battering by the looks of it. People thought he was a nice chap. He’d had a tough life, fought at Gallipoli and Ypres, been wounded and gone back to work at the docks without a word of complaint. Like most of the men in Northam Street, he worked hard and drank hard too. Daisy saw bad things in Jacob’s head, though — evil things, and darkness, like a shadow following him. She was sure he had a nasty end ahead of him.
‘It might have been a faint.’ Annie stared at her hands. ‘My head was aching, and I’d had no breakfast. Just help me up, and I’ll take the laudanum and be as right as rain.’
‘I don’t think you should.’ The bottle in Annie’s hand screamed danger to Daisy, as sure as if it had had the word poison in big red letters. ‘Let me make you a mixture instead, willow bark for the pain, daisy and elder-leaf ointment for your bruises and some raspberry leaf tea for the child.’
‘Child?’ Annie stared up at her blankly.
‘The child you’re carrying, the one you need to protect from any more accidents.’ Daisy raised an eyebrow. How could Annie not know when it was so clear to see?
‘A baby?’ Lily said. ‘In that case, you should listen to Daisy and put that laudanum bottle in the back of the cupboard. Give this one the best chance you can, eh?’
‘There is no baby.’ Annie shook her head.
‘You might be able to fool yourself, but you can’t fool me,’ Daisy said. ‘I’d say it’s due Christmas time, about a month after mine.’
With a disbelieving shake of her head and a helping hand from Isobel, Annie got slowly to her feet. Lily pulled out a chair, then took Annie’s arm and guided her to it.
‘Go and get Mabel.’ Daisy turned to Nancy, still by the back door gnawing on her fingernails anxiously.
Annie protested, but Nancy went anyway.
When Mabel arrived, she was carrying the tools of her trade in a black leather bag. Her gaunt face was calm, but the vertical line between her brows showed her concern. She pushed a strand of greying hair out of her eyes and shooed the women out into the yard. ‘Let her have some privacy while I examine her.’
After what seemed like hours but must have been minutes, Mabel called them back into the kitchen.
‘She is pregnant,’ she said. ‘But she won’t be much longer if Jacob keeps beating her like this. It’s shameful what he’s done to her.’
‘It was my fault,’ Annie said. ‘I fell asleep and let the dinner burn. I was tired, but he’s entitled to expect —’
‘He isn’t entitled to beat you black and blue, Annie.’ Mabel shoved things back into her bag angrily. ‘If he keeps doing it, you will lose this baby, like all the others.’
‘He doesn’t mean to hurt me. It was my fault. If I hadn’t fallen asleep — He was so sorry afterwards. He forgets himself sometimes, that’s all.’
‘You can make all the excuses you like for him, but how many babies are you prepared to lose, Annie? I’m surprised you managed to carry Isobel to term.’ Mabel shook her head sadly.
‘He wasn’t like that then.’ Annie looked pleadingly at Isobel, then quickly looked away. ‘It’s because of the war — he had pieces of another man’s skull blown into his head. Can you imagine what it must have been like? He was in the hospital for over a year, and he could scarcely remember who he was. He still has the most horrific dreams and wakes up screaming. It’s the drink and those dreams that make him like it. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s always so sorry afterwards and so gentle. It’s almost worth it to see him like he used to be. If I could stop him drinking and having the dreams —’
‘If you stay here with him, it won’t only be another baby he kills.’ Daisy took Annie’s hand. ‘It will be you too, and then he’ll hang. Is that what you want?’
‘Of course not, I love him, and he needs me. Anyway, how could I leave him? Where would I go?’
2 – Wednesday 8 July 1931
The rich, meaty scent of stew greeted Albie as he walked through the door. It made his stomach rumble. Lily was at the table buttering bread while Daisy stirred a big bubbling pot on the range.
‘You’re early,’ Daisy said as he kissed her cheek on his way to the tap in the yard.
‘We didn’t wait for Jacob,’ he shrugged. ‘He’s been weird all week. Dan said he’d had to spend the whole day with a living corpse, and he couldn’t bear the thought of walking home with one.’
Albie didn’t know if Jacob had moods, sulks, or funny turns. Whatever they were, they were probably because of his war wounds. He’d always had odd vacant days, but this had dragged on longer than usual. The blankness reminded Albie of his father-in-law, Woody, trapped in his parlour bedroom in a twilight world, barely aware of who he was or what was happening. On vacant days Jacob was the same — he followed instructions but in an odd, mechanical way as if he was sleepwalking or his mind had left his body somehow. It was disturbing, and it seemed to be happening more often lately. Everyone made allowances because they liked him. Albie felt guilty for abandoning his friend in the crowd at the dock gate, but, like Woody, Jacob was so locked in his own world it was unlikely he’d even noticed.
Albie had just come back in, dripping from rinsing the dirt of the docks off his hands and face, when a terrific hammering came from the front door. Daisy stopped ladling the stew into bowls, and an anxious look passed between her and Lily. All the while, the banging continued.
‘I’ll get it.’ Albie pushed a strand of damp, brown hair off his face and stomped down the narrow hallway, still drying his hands on his trousers. It had been a hard day. They’d had to shift tons of potato sacks by hand when the crane broke down. His shoulders and back ached, and he was anxious to sit down and eat his tea. Someone needed to learn a little patience before they upset Woody.
Albie wrenched the door open with a scowl, ready to give whoever it was a piece of his mind. He was surprised to find Jacob, the big lump, glaring like a maniac, hatless with his greying sandy hair dishevelled.
‘What’s up, mush?’ Albie asked, not expecting a response.
Jacob shoved past Albie without a word and strode down the hallway with a face like thunder. Alarmed at the turn of events, Albie followed.
‘Where’s Annie?’ Jacob shouted as he burst into the kitchen.
‘At your house, I should think.’ Daisy calmly opened the cabinet drawer and pulled out a handful of knives and forks.
She didn’t look concerned, but Albie’s heart was pounding.
‘She’s gone. What have you done with her?’ Jacob took a slow step toward Daisy.
Albie quickly shimmied between them, all his muscles tensed and ready for action.
Daisy didn’t even flinch. ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about. Maybe she’s visiting your Isobel?’
Albie put his hand on Jacob’s chest to stop him from getting closer to his wife. From the corner of his eye, he saw a terrified Lily edging towards the back door. Jacob would never hurt anyone, he was sure, but he could understand her fear. Albie was tall, lean and muscular from all the heavy lifting, but Jacob was a mountain of a man, thickset with a heavy-browed, square face, a battered nose and hands like shovels.
‘Her stuff is gone.’ Jacob stared at Albie with the confused look of a man who’d just woken up. ‘She must know. She’s a witch. She knows everything.’
He turned and glared at Daisy.
‘Jacob mate, she said she doesn’t know anything, so she doesn’t. She’s not a liar, and she really isn’t a witch.’ Sometimes it amused Albie when people called Daisy a witch. Now it irritated him. She had bewitched him, and she looked at the world a little differently, but she was cleverer than anyone he knew. Reading people and working out what was likely to happen next wasn’t witchcraft, and she wasn’t always right. At least she wasn’t right about Jacob. He was a man filled with disappointment and grief. Nine lost babies in eleven years, and his only daughter refusing to speak to him must affect a man, never mind all the business in the war. All Daisy saw was his drinking and the way he bossed Annie about. She didn’t hold with men ordering their women around.
‘Where’s Annie then?’ Big as he was, Jacob reminded Albie of a lost little boy.
‘I don’t know, mate, but she’s not here.’ Gently, because he felt sorry for him, he led Jacob to the front door. The anger had left him as suddenly as it had arrived, and he was now back to the strange, blank and compliant Jacob he’d been all week. Despite everything, Albie liked Jacob. He kept himself to himself, but he was affable, a hard worker, a hard drinker and a man’s man. Apart from fighting in France and recovering from his injuries afterwards, he’d always worked at the docks. He rarely talked about the war, and he never complained about the shrapnel that had smashed his skull. Dockers admired that kind of stoicism. Still, if Annie had gone, he wasn’t sure he blamed her. Jacob did lead her a merry dance with all his drinking and strange moods. With the flash of rage he’d seen tonight, perhaps she had good reason to leave.
3 – Thursday 9 July 1931
When Winnie Barfoot stepped out of Mabel’s front door, Daisy knew what she’d been up to. Winnie was a pale little thing at the best of times, with her platinum curls and big blue eyes. Now she was almost grey, as if all her blood had been drained. She steadied herself on the doorframe as she said goodbye to Mabel and then slowly walked up the road towards the parks. Usually, she’d be tearing around on her bicycle, visiting all her mothers, delivering babies, or checking up on them. There were no babies in Mabel’s house, though. Not living ones anyway.
Daisy stood at the window and watched until Winnie turned the corner at the end of the street. She had been reading the newspaper to Dad, but he’d fallen asleep slumped in the old wood-framed armchair, with his bald head tilted to one side and his mouth open, snoring gently. He didn’t look like Dad any more. Even his big, bricklayer’s hands seemed shrunken, shrivelled, and liver-spotted like the rest of him. She hated to see him like this or to hear him when he started rambling.
Once upon a time, he’d been full of tales of the buildings he’d built and the changes he’d seen in his seventy years. When he spoke now, it was mostly nonsense. He kept calling Daisy Florrie, and she couldn’t decide if he thought she was her mother, her sister, or the baby who’d died. It was no kind of life, barely being able to see and too weak and confused to even go to the privy on his own. It wasn’t much of a life for Lily either. She was the one who did most of the work of looking after him. She washed him, fed him and cleaned up after him as if he was an enormous baby. It would be better if he passed out of this misery, but Daisy knew he had a few years left in him yet. She folded up the newspaper, tucked a blanket over his legs and quietly closed the door.
Instead of joining Lily in the kitchen, she went across the road and knocked on Mabel’s door. She wanted to warn her about Jacob. Last night, when he burst into the house, it hadn’t come as a surprise. She’d known he would accuse her. His vacant eyes and the anger simmering within him reinforced her feeling that there was something horribly wrong with him, no matter what Albie said. Jacob blamed her because he believed she was a witch, and he thought she had somehow magicked Annie away. He was unlikely to connect Mabel to Annie’s disappearance. Still, she lived alone, so it was best she was wary.
Mabel still had her sleeves rolled up and her apron on when she came to the door. She looked nervously up and down the street and then quickly ushered Daisy inside. Once they were in the kitchen, Mabel pulled a stool out from the table and directed Daisy to sit. Mabel wasn’t exactly a friend, so she’d never been in her house before. It was much like hers, except Mabel’s kitchen table was larger, and everything was spotlessly clean. Even though it wasn’t Monday, the wash-copper was alight, and Daisy caught a glimpse of bloody sheets in the bubbling water. The smell of blood and carbolic made her feel sick, and she put her hand to her stomach as if she could protect the child inside her.
‘Don’t look at me like that.’ Mabel turned to the big ceramic sink, plunged her hands into the steaming water and began to scrub at the bloody metal instruments she had been cleaning. ‘Being a handywoman isn’t simply about sitting with labouring women and helping the midwife. It’s about doing the best thing, even when it is disagreeable. When they’re poor and desperate, it’s the lesser of two evils. If I didn’t do it, they’d try to do it themselves with knitting needles or poisons. Or someone else would, and likely not someone who knew what they were about.’
Daisy looked at Mabel’s back as she leaned over the sink. She was a thin woman, a touch taller than average. The glow of sunlight through the kitchen window created a halo around her salt and pepper hair. Her clothes — a dull blue skirt and greyish cardigan unravelling at the hem — were faded and threadbare, like Daisy’s. She did what she did from compassion, not greed.
‘I know, but it doesn’t mean I have to like it. Especially not when it comes to your last customer. She’s neither poor nor desperate.’ Daisy arched an eyebrow.
‘Not poor, but her need is as great as any. Winnie’s a good woman, she taught me how to do it safely, and she can’t do it for herself.’ Mabel turned her back to the sink and stared at Daisy. Her faded grey eyes were filled with sadness. ‘No woman should be forced to bear a child she doesn’t want, no matter why.’
‘What about her husband, though? Doesn’t he get a say?’
Winnie may have had her reasons, but her big ugly husband couldn’t understand why he hadn’t been blessed with the children he longed for after four years of marriage. Daisy knew why. Marie Stopes’ caps, pessaries and sponges were a lifeline to many women whose bodies had been ruined by endless childbearing. It was the deception Daisy disapproved of. Poor Percy had no idea Winnie was thwarting all his efforts with a piece of rubber, and when that didn’t work, Mabel’s curette.
‘Men aren’t my concern. They don’t have to suffer through pregnancy and childbirth, so why should they have any say in it? You’re wasting your time if you’ve come to see me on Percy’s account.’
‘I came to warn you about Jacob. I had a visit from him last night. He thought I knew where Annie was.’
‘You didn’t tell him anything, did you?’ Mabel blanched.
‘Of course not.’ Daisy hadn’t even told Albie, although she didn’t like keeping secrets from him. Thankfully, both he and Jacob believed her. ‘Besides, I have no idea where Annie is, so what could I possibly have told him? I thought you should know he’s asking questions. If Albie hadn’t been there —’
‘Do you think I’m in any danger? I know you see things. Have you come to warn me what he’s going to do? Can I even avoid it?’ Mabel’s terrified eyes darted to the door as if Jacob might burst in.
‘I can’t see the future any more than you can. He doesn’t know you were the one who arranged everything and spirited Annie away, but I know he won’t give up searching, and with you living on your own, I think you should be wary, that’s all.’
‘Well, I won’t be on my own much longer.’ Mabel relaxed. ‘My Sammy is coming home from the farm soon. You don’t have to worry about me. He’d never let Jacob hurt me.’
In the five years Mabel had lived across the road, no one had seen her son, although she talked about him often. Daisy had an inkling that her story wasn’t entirely true. Still, it wasn’t her business. Mabel obviously loved him very much and was excited that he was coming home. With Jacob poking around, it would be just as well for her to have a man in the house.
If you like what I write, and you’re interested in my novels are available now on Amazon in paperback, on Kindle and via Kindle Unlimited. Check out my Amazon page here and my Goodreads page here. If you would like to help me keep writing, you can now buy me a virtual coffee by clicking on the little orange coffee cup at the bottom right.