Mulligan's Yard
Authors: Ruth Hamilton
For Diane Pearson, the best editor in the world . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . probably
(no apology to lager brewers, by the way)
I thank you, Diane, for nursing me through thirteen books, for teaching me so much, for your forbearance with this difficult woman. Most of all, I thank
you for your friendship, your loyalty and your humour.
God bless you and yours.
A
POLOGIES
If there is a Makersfield in Texas, I am sorry that I used the name herein.
The crematorium in Bolton was built much later than 1921 – I beg licence.
Any religious community bearing a name similar to the one in this novel should be aware that I mean no disrespect to its founders and fellowship.
One
Diane Hewitt was as bright as a button. She could run like a racehorse, was light-fingered, crafty, and several shopkeepers in Bolton were on the lookout for her.
In her younger, slightly more innocent years, her gamine appearance had won hearts, but once belts tightened in the wake of the Great War, the charity in people’s souls began to run dry.
Many had their own families to worry about. Widows wept, mothers grieved, crippled soldiers begged on street corners.
So Diane went into the business of finding things. She found bread, milk, fruit, vegetables and, on good days, purses with an odd sixpence or two wedged into folds of worn leather beneath
pennies and farthings. She could be in and out of a back kitchen or a scullery without the busy householder noticing any draught created by an opening door.
At the age of ten-going-on-eleven, Diane broadened her horizons. She picked carefully from a crowd of eager applicants, choosing children who, like herself, were thin and swift, boys and girls
with lines of hunger and disappointment already etched into fine, undernourished skin. The rules were few and simple. Groups were formed, scenarios planned, babies, dogs and cats borrowed. A child
crying over a lost pet could empty shops and houses in seconds, while a wailing baby was worth a fortune, especially on market days. Like a seasoned choreographer, Diane Hewitt trained the members
of her chorus line to slick perfection.
On a windy March Tuesday in 1921, Diane discovered the wash-house. It was situated in a square originally called Massey’s Yort, now titled Mulligan’s Yard. Rumour had it that an
Irish card-sharp had won the yard and its buildings at the turn of an ace, but Diane could not have cared less about names and origins. Her attention was riveted firmly to the present day. She
didn’t care who owned what – as long as she got her unfair share.
She pressed an inquisitive nose against a steam-misted rear window and watched women doing battle with sheets, possers, scrubbers and mangles. Tilly and Mona Walsh were in charge of the huge
laundry. Spinster sisters built like battleships, they were poor movers, not at all hasty off the mark. Diane knew the two women from the Temple of Eternal Light, a new faith that had started to
burgeon in Bolton’s Deane and Daubhill. Yes, she had seen this pair bobbing and scraping about in the congregation.
A woman brushed past Diane, turbaned head lumpy with steel curlers, workday clogs slapping the cobbles, a pramload of washing in front of a shapeless body clad in a bottle-green coat. She
entered the building, walked to a desk and handed money to Miss Tilly Walsh. After this transaction was complete, the customer passed her purse to Miss Tilly for safekeeping, then hobbled off to
claim a place at one of the massive sinks.
Diane’s gaze was glued to the older Miss Walsh. She was mountainous, a great deal fatter than Miss Mona, with several wobbly chins, a huge belly and legs like twin oak trees. Tilly Walsh
took the purse and placed it under the counter. The child’s blue eyes narrowed as she counted the laundry’s occupants. About twelve, she reckoned, though there might have been a couple
more behind the steam-heated drying cupboards. Easy pickings? How best to play this one? Lost dog, a sick baby, an accident in Mulligan’s Yard?
Serious thinking set in. Wandering back on to Deansgate, Diane Hewitt sat herself on one of the steps leading into the Red Lion coaching house. The Red Lion was an unmentionable place in the
Hewitt household. Diane’s mother used to borrow a room here, a place where she had taken men. Of course, once the landlord had cottoned on to Brenda Hewitt’s doings, he had kicked her
out and had sacked the member of staff who had made the arrangements. Shortly after that event, Diane’s mother had packed a cardboard suitcase and had left the family slum in John Street for
ever. A nearly-orphan with a frail brother, the daughter of Brenda Hewitt was now fighting for survival.
She sucked a thumb, chewed on the filthy, broken nail. Perhaps it wouldn’t be for ever. Mam might come back with a load of money from all the men she was going with in London or some such
place. Tuesday. The wash-house would be fuller on Mondays. Mam wasn’t a nice woman, anyway. Gran was always going on about how horrible Mam was. A fuller wash-house would mean more purses,
more money. But it would also mean more folk, more eyes, more chances of getting caught. The Misses Walsh were slow and fat, but many of Bolton’s housewives were quick, thin, and used to
defending their property in the face of young marauders.
She must not sit here for too long. The School Board had men on the lookout for children these days. There was even a rumour that those who truanted too frequently might be taken away and put in
orphanages. As a breadwinner, Diane had responsibilities. If she went to school every day, she’d have fewer chances of getting her hands on food or money. But she had better start putting in
the odd appearance: an orphanage place could mean that her younger brother and her grandmother might starve.
A shadow fell across her body, so she shifted sideways to allow its owner into the hotel. In a way, an orphanage was almost attractive. Three square meals, clean clothes, no messing about and
stealing . . . What about Joe and Gran, though? The shadow remained. When, after several further seconds, no one ascended the steps, she glanced upwards at a tall, dark-haired man dressed all in
black.
‘And what are you doing here, young lady?’ he asked.
Diane made no reply. He was Irish. Gran had ordered Diane to stay away from Irish people. They were usually drunk or Catholic, sometimes both.
‘Shouldn’t you be at school?’ the shadow asked.
She lifted a bony shoulder. ‘Nits,’ she replied, then added, ‘and fleas,’ for good measure.
He leaned on an ebony cane. ‘Wouldn’t it be a good idea to go home and clean yourself, in that case?’
Again, she shrugged listlessly.
‘Well, you can’t stay here. We don’t want the hotel catching fleas, do we? You could infect the whole building.’
He didn’t need that cane, mused Diane. He wasn’t old. Idly, she wondered how much the silver-crowned item might bring if offered to a second-hand stall on the market. She stopped
gnawing at her thumb. ‘Fleas can’t jump that far.’ She jerked the chewed thumb over her shoulder in the direction of the foyer.
‘But they might jump from you to me,’ he argued reasonably.
She awarded him her full attention. No flea on God’s earth could ever possess the temerity to light on such a man. From her present position in life, low down on the Red Lion’s
steps, he looked as big as the giant in
Jack and the Beanstalk
. ‘You’ll never have fleas.’ Her tone was flat.
‘Won’t I, now?’
‘You’re too clean.’ He owned the appearance of someone who took a bath every day.
‘Nonsense.’ He stooped over her slightly. ‘A flea doesn’t know the difference between dirty and clean. All it wants is a free ride and an ample supply of
blood.’
‘Eh?’ Dark eyebrows raised themselves. ‘Blood?’
‘What else did you think they feed on, child? That’s why they bite. They’re blood-suckers.’
Diane Hewitt had never given a thought to the domestic and social arrangements of lower life forms. Fleas bit folk. Everybody recognized flea-bites. Like freckles, they appeared on the skin
before disappearing or relocating from front to back, leg to arm, hand to foot. ‘So . . . so fleas eat us?’
He nodded gravely. ‘See, I’m standing here next to you, am I not?’
‘Yes.’
‘If fleas were athletes, they’d beat every human being into a cocked hat. They can jump so far – well – it would be like one of us leaping over a cloud.’
‘Like the giant in
Jack and the Beanstalk
?’ This fellow could clear the Town Hall clock if he set his mind to it. And his cane would clear half-a-crown and all. He talked a
bit like a teacher, though he was a sight more interesting than most of the dried-up sticks in Diane’s school.
‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘So a few might leap from you to me, then from me to someone inside the inn. Why, there’d be murder done if the best hotel in Bolton became
infested.’
She understood now. The creatures on her body were both threat and asset. ‘I’ll go away for sixpence,’ she announced bravely. ‘For a shilling, I’ll stop
away.’ She spat on her hand, then pushed the wet palm against her chest. ‘Promise. Hope to die if I don’t keep my word.’
He smiled.
‘It’s not funny,’ Diane insisted. ‘I’m serious.’
‘Are you, now?’
She didn’t want to like him. In fact, she needed to hate him, because he was one of them, one of the folk who dressed well and hung on to money so that proper people couldn’t eat or
have a decent set of clothes. And he was Irish into the bargain. Mr Wilkinson down at the Temple of Light was always going on about Catholics and all that kind of stuff. ‘Yes, I’m
serious. I’ve got something you don’t want, so you can pay me to keep it to myself.’
‘Ah. A business arrangement, so.’
‘That’s right’. He was good-looking, she admitted grudgingly. Big broad shoulders, large brown eyes, some black curls peeping out beneath the brim of a tall hat. His voice was
soft, fascinating, the sort of voice that might put you to sleep if he read a story out loud. ‘It’s business,’ she snapped.
He looked at his watch. ‘And if I don’t pay?’ What a bright child this was. Thin, straggly brown hair hung over her forehead, almost obscuring eyes that seemed to cut through
to his core. The irises were dark blue, the cheekbones as fine as he had ever seen. ‘What if I get the police?’
He would not do that. Diane stared into his face and saw something for which she could find no name. It wasn’t pity or sympathy – she had the ability to recognize such expressions.
No, it was as if he already knew her, as if he’d known her always.
‘Or the School Board man? I could go and fetch him.’
‘I told you – I’ve got fleas.’
He pulled a silver disc from a pocket. ‘A florin,’ he said. ‘But don’t push your luck, Miss . . . What is your name?’
Her mouth watered. Two bob. But he held the money aloft while awaiting her answer.
He coughed impatiently.
‘Mary Pickavance,’ she replied, after a short spell of hesitation.
His head shook slowly. ‘I don’t think so. Give me your full name and address – don’t worry, I won’t visit as long as you behave yourself. It’s just that I
like to have some idea of my money’s destination.’
She wavered. ‘Diane Hewitt, number thirteen John Street,’ she admitted eventually.
‘And your parents?’
She sighed. They were all the same, this type. They either wanted to know everything, or they ignored you completely. Busybodies and Couldn’t Care Lesses, Gran called them. ‘My dad
died in the war. My mam . . . she went away. There’s me, our Joe and my gran. Joe’s got crooked legs and Gran’s got no heart.’