Little Girl Lost (5 page)

Sylvie had told him crossly that this was no excuse for his behaviour and had listened to his promises of future saintliness with considerable disbelief. Len wasn’t a bad-looking bloke. He had thick, dark brown hair, very dark eyes and a strong, cleft chin, but he reminded Sylvie of a prize bull she had once seen being led through the streets on the way to a show. The bull had had a big, bland, handsome face, but there was a look in his eye which said, plainer than words, that he had a mean streak as wide as the Mersey, and if you overstepped the mark he’d see you regretted it.

Then, of course, there had been the incident with Ronnie Evans, and Len had been sentenced to three years in Walton Gaol. Sylvie had always known that it had not really been Len’s fault. Had the man been normal and healthy as Len had believed him to be, then he would simply have muttered off home with a few bruises, or perhaps a black eye. But he had recently been diagnosed as having tuberculosis. Resentful, frightened and feeling ill, he had come into the Ferryman to drown his sorrows and had become belligerent, for he was not used to strong drink. He had been with two or three friends who had watched his descent into drunkenness with some amusement, but of course when Mr Dugdale had called upon Len to evict Ronnie his pals had rushed to his aid, and what should have been a simple ejection rapidly became a scrum in which half the customers had eagerly joined.

Len had landed the troublemaker a punch in the solar plexus and the man had gone down. Len, Sylvie knew, would never have put the boot in on purpose, but he had surged forward to grab another troublemaker, and had kicked and trodden upon Ronnie without realising it. The young man was probably unaware of it, being then in a drunken stupor and incapable of so much as a groan of protest, but when the fracas began to clear Ronnie’s pals discovered him and carted him off to hospital, muttering dark threats about how Len would be made to pay for nigh on killing a sick man.

Ronnie had been in hospital for weeks; at one time the medical staff had feared for his life, but he had pulled round. A good many customers had wanted to speak up for Len in court, and of course the Dugdales had done so, but the fact that Ronnie had tuberculosis and would not, in any event, have much of a life before him had caused Len to be found guilty of inflicting grievous bodily harm and sentenced to three years in prison.

Sylvie was sure that Len’s stay in Walton Gaol would have taught him a lesson, and knew that, had it not been for her present condition, she would have been looking forward to his release. Becky could not even remember her father, and Sylvie herself would not be sorry to give up the job at Lewis’s, which she had taken on to make up for the sudden loss of income when Len was sent to gaol. Still, with Constable Brendan O’Hara on her side, things seemed a good deal brighter now than they had looked only a few hours previously. Sylvie yawned. She had no need to worry. Brendan would look after her; he had promised to do so. It would be a wrench to leave Becky, but it would not be for ever, and far better for the child in the long run if her mother could avoid discovery, and the inevitable rupture from the Dugdales that would follow.

Beyond her window, she heard the clock strike three. Gracious, this would never do. She had to be up in four hours’ time to help Ma Dugdale clean out the big room where the wake would be held and to make mounds of sandwiches, sausage rolls and little cakes. Sylvie had had many sleepless nights since confirming her condition, but now she closed her eyes resolutely, and was soon deeply asleep.

‘Mammy! Mammy,
will
you wake up? Grandma Dugdale called you ages ago and Granny Davies is helping with the breakfast, ’cos you ain’t around. Have you forgot it’s the fune-er-al of Great-grandpa today?’

The shrill, insistent voice brought Sylvie slowly up from fathoms deep. She opened her eyes with some difficulty, for the lids felt as though they were weighted down with lead, and saw the blue gaze of her daughter fixed anxiously on her face. Sylvie moaned and discovered, as she moved, that her whole body was one enormous ache and her head was thumping like a trip hammer. She sat up on one elbow and tried to smile at Becky. ‘Be a little angel, queen, and ask Granny Davies if she could bring me up a cup of tea,’ she urged. ‘I – I had an accident last night and didn’t gerrin till terrible late and I don’t feel so good this morning. Tell ’em I’ll gerrup as soon as I’ve drunk me tea.’

Becky’s small, rosy face lit up. ‘I’ll tell ’em,’ she said, importantly, pounding out of the room. ‘I’d bring it up meself only I’s too little.’

This made Sylvie chuckle and somehow chuckling made her feel less dreadful, even as the events of the previous night came back to her mind. Someone was actually on her side – she was not going to have to struggle on alone. She would see Brendan O’Hara today at the funeral and they would probably manage to exchange a few words.

Reluctantly, Sylvie swung her legs out of bed and stood up rather shakily, then sat down abruptly, hearing footsteps on the stairs. She would have to tell her mother some tale because of her muddy and crumpled clothing, but she did not think that the truth would be too well received. After all, though she often visited Annie after work, she had never before left her sister’s neat little room and gone wandering off beside the Mersey. Explaining how she came to fall in the river would have been straightforward enough, but explaining what she was doing walking alone in the heaviest rain they’d had for weeks would be nigh on impossible. But the footsteps were getting closer; hurriedly, Sylvie rehearsed her story.

‘Morning, chuck,’ her mother said breezily, pushing the door open and stumping, flat-footed, across the room. The tea in the large earthenware mug slopped on to the linoleum as she approached but this did not appear to worry her, and she gave her daughter a wide and gummy grin as she handed over the mug. Mrs Davies was a large, fat woman with untidy grey hair which she pinned into a bun on top of her head each morning, but which had usually descended to hang in witch locks around her face by the time she reached her place of work. She was easy-going, placid and hard-working, and Sylvie was carelessly fond of her, though she had grown used to the astonishment with which people greeted the announcement of their relationship, for no two people could have looked less alike than Sylvie and her mother. Mrs Davies’s small blue eyes squinted towards her large and bulbous nose, and her skin was red and roughened, whilst she had lost all her teeth long before Sylvie was born. She had acquired a set of false ones from the dentist on Brougham Terrace but seldom bothered to wear them, though Sylvie knew she would do so for the funeral as a mark of respect. Her mother had liked old Mr Dugdale, who had lived in the front turret room, and never complained when she had to climb three flights of stairs carrying his breakfast or his shaving water. In fact, she never complained about anything her employers asked her to do provided she was given time off to attend morning and evening service on a Sunday, and an hour off each day to clean the church and give what she described as ‘a brush and a whitening’ to the front steps of the priest’s house.

Sylvie’s eyes ran over her mother’s large and untidy figure, currently clad in a drooping brown dress and an enormous calico overall. Her thick woollen stockings were concertinaed round her legs and she wore ancient gym shoes on her feet. There were large holes in both toes through which one could see bare skin, for her stockings were always tattered and worn. Sylvie sighed. ‘Morning, Mam,’ she said. ‘You aren’t thinking of going to the funeral in that dress, are you? Only it’ll be a big do, ’cos the old feller were well liked.’

Mrs Davies bridled. ‘Course I ain’t. I’m stayin’ at the Ferryman to look after Becky and see to the grub. Wharrabout you, young lady?’ She tutted and one of her eyes swung sharply up to stare at the ceiling for a moment, as it always did when she was uneasy. ‘Young Becky said as you’d had an accident last night, which from the state of your clothes I don’t doubt. What did you do – fall in the Mersey?’

Sylvie jumped, then turned it into a shrug. ‘It were rainin’ cats an’ dogs so I nipped in to see our Annie, hopin’ the rain would stop. I stayed wi’ her for ages but it was still pourin’ down when I come out. I’d missed the last tram so I were hurryin’ along the street and I slipped.’ She wrinkled her nose disgustedly. ‘I went down in a puddle of mud and muck; someone had emptied a load of rubbish out on the flagway, I reckon. I were real shaky an’ this mornin’ I ache all over. A feller come along and give me his arm back to the pub. That’s why I didn’t wake this morning when Ma Dugdale shouted me.’

Her mother nodded, as though satisfied, but Sylvie was dismayed to see a knowing look cross the older woman’s face. ‘This young feller what helped you home,’ she said, picking up the big tin jug and pouring water into the round china bowl which stood on the washstand. ‘Handsome, were he? Anyone I know?’

Sylvie went over to the washstand and dabbled her fingers in the water. In normal circumstances, she would have pulled her nightgown over her head and had a nice strip-down wash, but she felt it would be unwise in her present condition. Speaking casually, she said: ‘It were a scuffer actually, though he weren’t in uniform. He were ever so nice, real fatherly. He wanted to knock the Dugdales up so’s they could make sure I hadn’t broken nothing, but I wasn’t having that. So he just said I should call a doctor if I felt poorly later, and went off home.’

Her mother nodded. ‘Aye, that sounds reasonable,’ she said, and Sylvie realised, with a stab of dismay, that her mother did not believe her story but would go along with it. And it isn’t so far from the truth, Sylvie thought resentfully, soaping her old flannel and beginning to wash her neck and face vigorously. I wonder why she doesn’t believe me, though? I’m sure I sounded as convincing as anything.

Her face was covered with suds and she was in no position to say much when her mother suddenly spoke. ‘You and Annie, you ain’t a bit alike to look at; Annie being brown-haired and brown-eyed, and pretty tall and hefty, like meself. But one thing you do have in common: when you’re tellin’ your old mam a story – a lie, that is – a special sort of tone comes into your voice. Oh aye, I always know when you or our Annie is letting her imagination run away wi’ her.’ She clucked impatiently. ‘Tek off that bleedin’ nightie and have a good strip-down wash, ’cos you’re streaked with mud, you know, and it won’t do for the old lady to start asking questions.’ Her mother always referred to Mrs Dugdale – though not in her hearing – as the old lady, despite the fact that they were almost of an age.

Sylvie rinsed the soap off her face and neck, then turned to glare at her mother, now seated comfortably on the bed and staring at her with a very odd sort of look. ‘Haven’t you got any work to do, Mam?’ she said, trying to sound friendly but hearing the querulousness creep into her voice without much surprise. Aggravating old devil! Why on earth was she hanging around up here when she doubtless had a thousand tasks awaiting her attention downstairs?

‘Oh aye, but I can spare you five minutes,’ her mother said. ‘Unless you don’t want to take off your nightgown in front of your old mother? If so, of course, I’d best be off.’

Sylvie felt the heat creep up her neck and invade her face, and guessed she was as scarlet as a beetroot. She was beginning to say, frostily, that it was all the same to her if her mother had time to spare but that on such a busy day, with the funeral in a few hours, she would have thought . . . when she was rudely interrupted.

‘No need to get naggy at your old mother just because you’re in the family way,’ Mrs Davies said. ‘An’ no need to tell me it ain’t Len’s ’cos though I’m no professor I can still put two ’n’ two together ’n’ make four. You’d best get round to Mrs Grundy what lives in Nightingale Court; she helps young gels in trouble, or so I’ve heard.’

Sylvie stared, round-eyed, at this astonishing parent of hers, then pulled herself together. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said briskly. ‘Besides, old Ma Grundy kills people, or so the talk in the bar goes.’

‘Len’ll kill you when he gets out of jug if he finds you’ve been carryin’ on wi’ that Robbie Wentworth,’ her mother pointed out. ‘I blame meself, though I’m sure I done me best to bring you up decent, but it’s a bit late to start layin’ blame. First it were Len takin’ you down the jigger so’s there weren’t no choice but for you to marry him, and now it’s young Wentworth. Told ’im yet?’

Sylvie was about to reply when she heard a faint hail from below. Hastily, she tore off her nightgown and began to soap off the mud from last night’s adventure. ‘I’ve not seen Robbie for ages, but you’re right, of course, I am in a spot of trouble,’ she said. ‘There is a way out, though, and now I come to think of it you could help me ever so much, if you would. But I can’t explain now, it’s too complicated. We’ll talk after the funeral.’

Brendan attended the funeral as he had promised, scarcely recognising Sylvie at first, with her bright hair covered in a black felt hat and her small figure also shrouded in black. Len, however, was easy to pick out. He was in the front pew with a warder on either side of him, and though the warders were burly Len Dugdale dwarfed them. Brendan had known he must be a big man but thought that inactivity and prison food had probably increased the other’s weight by several stone. Sylvie, in the pew behind, was tiny in comparison with her hulking great husband.

The church was packed and there were several policemen present, including a sergeant who had once, he told Brendan, walked Brendan’s own beat. ‘The old feller was a very different kettle of fish from the Dugdale that’s in charge now,’ he said nostalgically. ‘If you went to the back door in them days you’d get a mug of porter if the bar was open, or a big cup of tea and a lovely buttered scone if it weren’t. He’d ask you in to sit by the fire for five minutes so’s he could tell you any gossip which might be useful, and you’d go on your way feelin’ that a policeman’s lot weren’t so bad after all.’

Brendan had listened wistfully. The present landlord of the Ferryman did not encourage police visits, though he was always polite. But at this point in the sergeant’s reminiscences the notes of the organ rang out, and the service began. When it was over, the priest announced that they should vacate the pews one at a time, starting at the front, and Brendan got a really good look at Len Dugdale as he, the two warders and a couple of policemen processed solemnly down the aisle and out into the morning freshness.