A Liverpool Lass (32 page)

Nellie opened her eyes. Lucy was kneeling by the bed, her thin face eager, her dark eyes shining. When she saw Nellie was actually with her at last she leaned over and gave her a big hug.

‘Oh Nell, isn’t it wonderful? No more fighting, no more killing ... no more wounds, even. And we can go home, all of us, not just poor little lads with no legs or arms, not just fellows with great gaping chest wounds or bad gas cases but everyone, all of us!’

Nellie blinked up at her, tears beginning to form in her eyes. It might be over, but at what cost?

‘We’ll all be boat-sitting or boat-lying, even if we’ve managed to keep all our arms and legs,’ she whispered through the sobs that fought to close her throat. ‘We’ll go home, Lu, but we’ll all be red-labels, every last one of us. This has changed everyone who took part in it – and for what? Who won, really? Frightened children, babies whose mothers are dead, kids whose fathers aren’t even a memory, women who’ve lost everything. They aren’t going to be singing and ringing bells, drinking French champagne and pinning on medals. They’re finished, over. And us with them.’

‘Nellie, love, you shouldn’t talk like that,’ Lucy began uncertainly, just as a voice outside the window roared, ‘La guerre – fini, fini, fini!’ ‘Oh Nellie, love, you can’t say that – you can’t believe it!’

‘Why not? It’s God’s truth – if there is a God,’ Nellie said quietly. ‘There may be no more wounded, Lu, but the place is full of people who’ve got this terrible Spanish ’flu – seven died during my shift last night, in two days’ time most of the men I said goodbye to an hour ago will be dead. And do you think this – this miserable mess, these terrible five years, won’t be branded on all our souls? Do you think, just because we won, we’re going to get off scot-free?’

‘Oh Nell, Nell,’ mourned Lucy. Tears were chasing each other down her pale cheeks. ‘Just tell yourself no more killing. Then you’d better go back to sleep, you poor kid.’

Nellie nodded wearily and retreated once more beneath the blankets. But not to sleep. In their own family, Charlie and Bertie had been badly wounded and Fred and Hal were dead. Drearily, she thought of them, the thousands and thousands of soldiers, sailors
and airmen, poets, tailors, clerks, young men with brilliant minds, with kind hearts, with nothing save an urgent desire to serve their country. Dead, all dead. All swallowed up by the inefficiency of generals, the ineptitude of their officers, the cruel cold, the clinging mud.

And now this Spanish ’flu which killed with a swiftness and efficiency which made the huns look amateur. Was this how God treated the young men who were only trying to do their duty? They had got through it, the fighting had stopped, but why should that save them? So swing your scythe, Death, bring them low! Harvest the hopeful and the helpless, the guilty and the innocent, leave no poppies blooming on Flanders field!

And watch the widows, the mothers, the helpless children, mourn.

‘There’s goin’ to be a big party in the Corry,’ Etty told Lilac when the two of them met the day after Armistice Day. ‘They’ll all be comin’ ’ome, me Dad, me Uncle Reggie, all of ’em. Your Nellie an’ all ... the fellers, too ... what’s their names? Big blokes they are, your Charlie’s bruvvers.’

‘When’s the party, then?’ Lilac asked suspiciously. ‘They can’t all come home right now, can they? It’ll take a while, Auntie says.’

‘Sat’ day,’ Etty said briefly. ‘Got a dress I could lend? Or a skirt an’ jumper?’

‘Yes, I’ll lend you something,’ Lilac said. The two girls were standing on the flagstones by the entrance to the court, but now she turned and began to walk slowly across to number eleven. It was a cold day, but clear, the frost skimming the paving stones so that they sparkled when the rays of the sun struck them. Not that there was much sunshine in the court, but on the
Scotland Road, where people in their best were hurrying along to the pubs to start celebrating, the afternoon sun was beginning to melt the frost.

‘Can I come an’ see?’ Etty asked eagerly. ‘Oh, Li, you’re ever so kind to me you are, much nicer than me mam.’

‘Not now, Et, I’ve got to get me aunt’s tea,’ Lilac said kindly. ‘Come round when you’ve ’ad yours, all right?’

‘Right. Art’s workin’ at the market today, so we’ll ’ave somethin’
worth
’avin.’ The child licked her lips reflectively. ‘Art’s all right,’ she said as Lilac turned away, ‘’e’s a good bruvver, is Art.’

Lilac, letting herself into the small house, smiled at Aunt Ada, sitting on the sofa with the fire burning brightly and holding a slice of bread impaled on a sharpened metal corset rib towards the fire. This toasting fork was Art’s invention and very efficient it was too, provided you kept a bit of rag wound round the blunt end of the rib, to protect your hand from the hot metal. The smell of toasting bread was delicious and Lilac flung her bag of books down on the table and collapsed on the sofa by her aunt, sniffing appreciatively.

‘Oh, Auntie, that smells good! Do we have any butter?’

‘No, but pork dripping’s better, I say,’ Aunt Ada said, hissing her breath in as she turned the toast and scorched her fingers. ‘Fetch us the salt, there’s a good gairl.’

Lilac went through into the little lean-to with the sink and the cupboard and the big, brass tap. She got the screw of salt out, then picked up the teapot, carefully spooned in a tiny amount of tea, and returned to her aunt.

‘Here we are, Auntie! Ooh, I do love dripping toast!’

‘There’s baked apples for afters,’ Aunt Ada said, handing Lilac the first piece of toast. ‘Matt’s money arrived, so I got two on me way back from seein’
Granny Stamp. One of the mary ellens sold them cheap ... she was that excited because the war’s over.’

‘They look lovely,’ Lilac said, peering at the round Glaxo tin settled amongst the smouldering coals. The apples were gleaming golden brown already, their skins splitting, the smell of them mingling with the smell of the toast. ‘Did you put a bit a sugar in? And a clove?’

‘Course I did,’ Aunt Ada said, pretending to be huffy. ‘I been bakin’ apples on the fire before you was born, chuck. You comin’ to this street party tomorrer?’

‘Can’t,’ Lilac said briefly. ‘Not till late. I’m workin’, aren’t I?’

With the war devouring more and more men – the age for conscription had gone up to fifty-one earlier in the year – there was a great dearth of women willing to do domestic service. Why should they, when they could do men’s jobs and earn four or five times the money? So Lilac had taken a Saturday job with an elderly Jewish couple living on Rachel Street, which ran between Cazneau and Great Homer Street. The house seemed like a mansion to Lilac and it was not a particularly arduous job, either. Lilac enjoyed it as much for the opportunity to see how other people lived as for the wage of half a crown which she received each Saturday evening.

When the job was first suggested, Lilac knew very little about the Jewish religion and could not understand why the Coppners should want a girl to clean, prepare a cold meal, and light the fires and the gas mantles on a Saturday. Why could they not get their maidservant to do it? But Ruth, the maidservant in question, explained it all.

‘We’re all Jewish, me too,’ she said, sitting in the rocking chair in the small, cozy kitchen at number
five, Rachel Street. ‘Our religion says we must not work on the Sabbath and though some families turn a blind eye to the servants, that isn’t the Coppners’ way. They believe in the spirit of the law and not just the letter, so they employ a gentile to do it for us on a Saturday.’

‘But Sunday’s the Sabbath,’ Lilac pointed out. She was on her hands and knees, brushing coal dust from the stove-front. ‘I may not know much, but I do know that!’

‘Not for Jews it isn’t,’ Ruth assured her. ‘Our Sabbath starts at sunset on a Friday and goes on until sunset on a Saturday. So later on I could light the gas mantles, though now it’s getting dark earlier, we’d rather you did it before you go.’

‘Oh!’ Lilac said. She sat back on her heels the better to digest this information. ‘So no Jews work on a Saturday? But Uncle’s a Jew, and he was open when I went past this morning.’

‘Oh aye, but he’s just going to sit behind his counter, someone else will do all the work whilst Uncle watches to make sure he isn’t being cheated,’ Ruth said. ‘Can you light the fire in the main bedroom now, chuck? There’s kindling and coal ready.’

But now, Aunt Ada began to spread dripping on the second piece of toast whilst Lilac tipped the heavy, blackened kettle so that the steaming water fell into the warmed teapot.

‘Eh well, if you must work you must,’ Aunt Ada said. ‘I’m mekin’ a cake for the party and there’ll be dancin’ an’ all sorts.’

‘Not much fun with no fellers to dance with,’ Lilac pointed out. ‘Still, I’ll come as soon as the Coppners have finished with me.’

‘That’ll be fine, then,’ Aunt Ada said. ‘Now if you’re
really goin’ to lend mucky Etty a dress you’d better look something out.’

As there was rejoicing in the streets, so there was rejoicing in the Coppner household, for Abraham Coppner, the son of the house, was with the West Lancs Pals, pushing their way into Germany by now, no doubt.

‘But alive,’ Mrs Coppner said when Lilac asked about him and when he was expected home. ‘Away for a good bit yet, yes? But alive, bubeleh.’

Lilac, busily dusting, lighting fires, cooking a big pan of potatoes and putting a chicken casserole into the oven – they had a real gas oven which seemed marvellous to her – heard the street party down the road start, but contained her natural impatience to be off until she heard the lamplighter pedalling his bicycle along the narrow pavement. When he came, she usually went, so now she checked that all the gas mantles were lit, the fires burning up bravely and the food almost ready. She went and told Mrs Coppner that she was about to leave and Mrs Coppner, who was fat and rosy with a hooky nose, bright, beady dark eyes and a kind smile, opened the fringed silk purse which hung from her waistband and handed Lilac a big, shiny half-crown.

‘Good girl, thank you for your help,’ she said. ‘Ah ... a little extra to help you celebrate and to make up for missing your street party.’

And to Lilac’s complete astonishment she handed over another half-crown, every bit as shiny as the first.

‘Oh thanks, Mrs Coppner,’ Lilac said breathlessly. ‘See you next Saturday, then.’

She went into the kitchen and Ruth was there, also smiling.

‘Something for your party,’ she said. ‘I made them myself ... yesterday, of course.’

‘Oh, Ruth!’ gasped Lilac. A bag of honeycakes was pressed into her hand. ‘Oh, you are so good to me!’

‘You do your work well and you’re always cheerful,’ Ruth said, smiling. ‘Have a good time at your party – see you next week.’

Lilac slipped out of the back door, across the tiny yard and out into the jigger which ran along between the house-backs. It was dark here, but she turned left into the entry and could see the first gas lamps blooming in the street ahead of her. The lamplighter was old, his bicycle a model so ancient that you could hear him coming half a mile away. Lilac greeted him and he grinned toothlessly at her, stopping his bicycle at the next lamp-post and reaching up with his hooked stick to tug the little chain and turn the light on.

‘Wotcher, young’un,’ he wheezed. ‘Eh, I’m late tonight and no wonder ... there’s folk everywhere, dancin’ in the gutters, swingin’ from me lamp-posts ... I’ll be lucky to finish by midnight.’

‘Have a bun,’ Lilac suggested, holding out the bag. ‘Go on, they’re awful good.’

The lamplighter took one and bit, then beamed. He held the bun up in the air in a salute.

‘Here’s to victory!’ he mumbled. ‘Fanks, chuck.’

Usually Lilac wandered home rather slowly through the dusky streets because there was so much to see. What was more, she usually spent a bit of money on her way home – a treat or two for Auntie, some- thing nice for herself. But tonight there was the party – and the sight of other parties in almost every small street and court she passed made her eager to reach the Corry.

She arrived at last and stood in the entrance for a
moment, just staring. It reminded her of Charlie’s wedding day, long ago, when she had been a tiny girl and Nellie had brought her here for the first time. She remembered everything so clearly! The oil lamps and candles provided by everyone living in the court to illumine the festivities, the long tables borrowed from the church hall with white paper spread out over them, the food, the excitement, the best clothes ... here it all was again. She remembered Davy, dark and beautiful, with his smiling mouth and twinkly eyes and Charlie, so young and proud, with Bessie pretty and plump in her pale dress and big hat.

And Nellie. Smelling of soap and cleanliness, soft-handed, low-voiced, blushing when Davy teased her, playing with Lilac, talking to her cousins. And Matt. Dear Matt! She had fallen in love with Matt then, just as she had fallen in love with Stuart, now.

She looked appreciatively round the court. Families who were as familiar to her as though she had known them always, the cask of ale everyone had put money towards, the pile of apples from Hester, who was a mary ellen and often contributed fruit to local gatherings.

She walked into the court slowly, smiling at everyone. She put the bag of honey-cakes down near the rest of the food and turned to find Aunt Ada. She could not see her, but then there were so many people about, singing, shouting, dancing on the central flags. She saw Art, holding a glass in one hand and talking to someone. She called his name and he came over to her.

‘Ello, our Lilac! You bin workin’? Me an’ all, but I got back afore you. Come an’ ‘ave some ale.’

‘In a minute; I just want a word with Auntie ... where is she, Art, d’you know?’

Art shrugged, looking around him.

‘I ’aven’t seen ’er for a whiles,’ he said vaguely. ‘Probably indoors, ’avin’ a rest. It’s tirin’, a party.’

The door stood open. Everyone’s door stood open. Lilac went into the black cave, crossed the room, fumbled for the matches to light a lamp or a candle. It was odd seeing the light all outside and none within, but Auntie would have taken her lamp to illumine the party, as everyone else had done.