Queen of the Mersey (16 page)

she sighed. ‘Me, I thought I heard Carl go out. I never said anything because I wasn’t entirely sure.’ Her eyes darkened and her face became grim. ‘Then, a year later, didn’t he go and do the same thing again in Manchester! I heard Mrs Merton on the phone. She got him a solicitor from London. I don’t know what happened, whether he went to court or not. If he did, he must have got off, because he was home a few weeks later and Mrs Merton was full of the joys of spring.’

‘He was trying to pull me into the den,’ Queenie whispered. ‘He must have leaned down too far and toppled over.’

‘Remember me thinking I heard a noise outside the kitchen door?’ Gwen said thoughtfully. ‘It must have been him, listening. He knew you were on your way and got there before you.’

‘I thought Hester and Mary were there.’ She remembered wondering why it was so quiet.

‘No, they were in the garden, lovey, looking for something. It was them that found you. They ran into the house, screaming their little heads off. Sergeant Adams from the police came and they told him the same thing. He’s coming to see you in the morning.’

‘Where are they now?’ she asked, alarmed. ‘Is Carl still around? I don’t want them anywhere near him.’ She would never go back to The Old School House, whether Carl was there or not.

‘Don’t worry, they’re with Jimmy’s old lady. And Carl isn’t around any more, Queenie. He broke his neck in the fall. He’s dead and Mrs Merton’s completely lost her mind.’

‘Do the girls know he’s dead?’ a horrified Queenie asked.

‘Me and Sergeant Adams thought it best not to tell them.’

Laura and Vera arrived late that night. Queenie had never been so glad to see anyone in her life before. They’d had a terrible journey. The train had crawled along, the bus was late. They’d thought they’d never get there. ‘And we were worried to death the whole way,’ a red-faced Vera gasped.

‘Whatever happened, Queenie?’ Laura asked gently. ‘I got this garbled telephone message at work saying I was to come to Caerdovey straight away, Vera too, but the person couldn’t tell me why. I downed tools and left immediately and collected Vera on the way.’

‘There was an accident.’ She told them the story she’d agreed with Gwen. She’d been climbing the ladder, Carl Merton, whom she hardly knew, had leant down to help her up, but lost his balance and fell. ‘There’s no need to mention the miscarriage, lovey,’ Gwen had said. ‘Just imagine the fuss there’d be. Laura, everyone, would be terribly upset, and it’d only complicate things.’

‘I’ll never tell anyone I was pregnant,’ Queenie vowed. She’d keep it to herself for the rest of her life.

Both women were already upset enough about her broken arm and the fact that Hester and Mary had found her unconscious. ‘Poor little mites,’ Vera wailed. ‘It must’ve given them a terrible fright. Was the man hurt too?’

Queenie took a deep breath. ‘He was killed,’ she said in a shaky voice. ‘Hester and Mary don’t know.’

At this, Vera proceeded to have hysterics, but Laura remained calm, although she was obviously badly shaken.

‘How long will it be before you can leave hospital, dear?’ she asked crisply.

‘I dunno.’ It could be days, it could be months, Queenie had no idea. ‘A policeman’s coming to see me in the morning.’

‘I’ll ask. If they say you’ll be discharged in a day or so, I’ll hang on. Longer than that, and I’ll come back and fetch you.’ She turned to Vera and sternly told her to calm down. ‘You’re to take Hester and Mary back to Liverpool first thing tomorrow. I don’t want them here a minute longer than necessary. There must be a hotel in Caerdovey where us two can spend the night, hang the expense.’

‘But the raids, Laura,’ Vera wailed. ‘They’re getting worse.’

‘We’ll find somewhere in Southport for them to stay. In fact, I don’t know why we didn’t send them to Southport in the first place. It’s only half an hour away by train. We can visit every weekend.’

Queenie’s arm felt naked and vulnerable when the plaster was removed. It had been on for ten weeks, covering her entire arm, from the shoulder right down to her wrist.

‘I can’t bend it,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I can move it either.’

‘You’ll do both in time,’ Dr Hollis advised. He looked much too young to be a doctor, barely out of his teens. The lenses on his horn-rimmed spectacles were very thick. His poor sight was probably the reason why he wasn’t in the forces.

‘I’ll give you a list of exercises to do three times a day. ‘How’s your grip?

Shake hands.’ He put out his hand and Queenie had to lift her right arm with the left to shake it. ‘Very good,’ he said. ‘At least your hand is working. The arm will soon follow.’

‘The doctor in Wales told me to use me hand as much as possible. I’ve been gripping things like mad ever since.’

‘Sensible girl. You’ll be as right as rain in no time. Out of interest,’ he asked curiously, ‘do you know why it wasn’t set the first time it was broken?’

‘I fell downstairs. Me mother must have thought I’d only hurt it. She put a sort of bandage on it, a sling.’ Mam had thrown her downstairs. It had come back to her in Caerdovey hospital and she’d remembered a time in her life when she seemed to be enveloped in a cloud of pain which she thought would never go away.

It wasn’t long before she’d started school, and she’d put it out of her mind, just as she’d done the incident with Carl Merton, because it had been too painful and she’d prefer to forget, particularly the angry look on Mam’s face.

Dr Hollis looked at her doubtfully, but, ‘Come and see me again the same time next week and we’ll see how you’re getting on,’ was all he said.

Queenie left the hospital and walked down to the sea front where the water glinted dully in the distance and the fairground looked forlorn and neglected.

Southport was an attractive town, but not at its best in January. She doubted if it was much colder at the North Pole. She shivered when she was caught in an icy blast of wind that went right through her thick coat. Shoving her left hand in the pocket, she found it hard to believe that the day would come when she could do the same with the right, now hanging, completely useless, at her side. She was scared she’d bump into a wall, or someone would knock against it, and it would break again.

She turned into the path of a well-kept detached house with ‘Sea Shells’ on a shell-shaped sign attached to the door. When she turned the knob, another blast of icy wind almost threw her inside.

‘Shut the door, quickly now,’ said Mrs Palfrey, who seemed to spend her entire time hovering in the hall waiting for someone to come in. ‘Oh, I see your plaster’s gone. Pretty soon you’ll be able to give me a hand with the dishes.’

‘I’ll be looking for a job as soon as I’m fit again.’

Mrs Palfrey was the owner of Sea Shells, a bed and breakfast establishment, but business had been poor all summer and, as hardly anyone except the occasional commercial traveller wanted to stay at the seaside in winter, Mrs Palfrey took in evacuees to occupy the empty rooms. She had eight at the moment and, being a businesswoman, considered herself entitled to make a profit. The allowance from the Government, ten and sixpence for each child, wasn’t sufficient to provide nourishing food and leave a few bob over, so the evacuees had toast for breakfast, no jam, and margarine instead of butter, despite them being entitled to a butter ration. They ate a good dinner at school, which was fortunate, as the tea Mrs Palfrey provided was more a snack than a proper meal; tinned soup, or a single sausage with fried tomatoes, or beans on toast. Puddings were strictly off the menu.

Vera thought it disgusting and was all for tearing Mrs Palfrey off a strip, but Queenie pleaded with her not to. ‘She’s all right. I’d sooner there wasn’t any trouble.’

She’d had enough trouble. All she wanted was a quiet life and for her arm to get better. Fortunately, Vera agreed to let Mrs Palfrey alone. ‘Though she’s a bloody miser,’ she breathed, curling her lip, ‘expecting to make money out of children while there’s a war on. What happens to your meat ration, that’s what I’d like to know.’

‘Would you like a cup of tea, dearie?’ Mrs Palfrey enquired. The gesture was made only because she wanted someone to talk to. ‘I bet it’s cold outside.’

‘It’s icy. I’d love some tea, thank you.’ It was almost as chilly inside as out.

A small electric fire kept the dining room faintly warm while they ate, but was removed when the meal was over. If the children wanted to stay and do their homework, play cards or board games, read, or generally make a racket, they did so in an atmosphere that was close to freezing. The lounge was strictly off limits in case they damaged the furniture. Queenie sometimes took the girls for a walk along Lord Street after tea, where the shops were still open, or they went up to their bedrooms and tucked themselves in bed, fully dressed, after making themselves a jam sarnie or eating Vera’s scones, sadly denuded of currants that had disappeared from the shops, like so many other things. There was a supply of food kept in the wardrobe to ward off their frequent pangs of hunger; bread and jam, Vera’s scones and sausage rolls. Laura gave them her cheese ration.

Queenie was invited into the kitchen, the only place where there was a proper fire. A big pan of beans was slowly heating on the stove and she hoped they wouldn’t be given the ones that had stuck to the bottom and had turned into a hard, lumpy mess. Mrs Palfrey must have been feeling generous and gave her a custard cream to have with the tea.

The landlady was a widow and reminded her a bit of Mam, with her bright blue eyeshadow, stiff black lashes and heavily painted lips, except her hair was dyed the colour of cherries and Mam’s had been a curious yellow. She was fascinated by Laura, her ladylike ways and the refined way in which she spoke.

‘What does Laura’s hubby do?’ she asked today.

‘He’s a lieutenant in the Army. His name’s Roddy and he’s in Egypt.’

Mrs Palfrey looked suitably impressed. ‘Is that short for Rodney or Roderick?’

‘Roderick. He writes to me sometimes.’

Roddy’s letters were surprisingly dull. Laura said the same. ‘He’d never written to me before. I didn’t realise he was so bad at it. They’ve got no warmth. You’d think I was a distant friend, not his wife.’

The subject of Laura continued to occupy Mrs Palfrey until the front door was flung open, crashing against the wall, a signal that the children had arrived home from school. ‘I suppose they’ll be starving,’ Mrs Palfrey muttered as if she was likely to do anything about it.

Before they ate their beans on toast, Queenie was obliged to roll up her jersey sleeve to show Hester and Mary her arm, which was now completely straight.

‘It looks like a new one,’ Mary commented.

‘I can’t use it yet. Someone’s still going to have to cut this toast up for me.

I think it’s Hester’s turn.’

‘I’m glad the plaster’s gone,’ Hester said, looking very important as she sliced Queenie’s toast into squares. ‘It won’t remind me any more.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of us finding you with your arm all broke and Mrs Merton’s son with a bloody head. It was horrible.’

‘Don’t say bloody,’ Mary admonished.

‘His head was all bloody,’ argued Hester, ‘and it was all twisted too. It looked awful funny, as if he were dead.’

‘He wasn’t dead. Carl Merton’s alive and well and living in Wales.’ It had been decided not to tell them the truth, one of the reasons Laura had whisked them away as soon as possible. It was the first time either had spoken about the day the mist had swirled around Caerdovey and what had happened in the den, and there was a question Queenie had long wanted to ask. ‘What were you looking for in the garden?’ She’d wondered how they could expect to find anything in the thick mist.

Both girls appeared bemused. ‘We weren’t in the garden.’

‘But Mary, you told Gwen – and the policeman – that you were looking for something, then you went into the garage and found …’ She didn’t finish.

They already knew what they’d found. It seemed odd to be talking like this in the rowdy dining room among children whose main objective seemed to be to demolish their food in record time.

‘We only said that because we were scared,’ Hester admitted.

‘Scared of what?’

‘Of what we’d done.’ Mary looked at her uneasily. ‘Will you be cross if we tell you?’ Queenie shook her head, though was beginning to feel uneasy herself at the turn the conversation was taking. ‘We were lying on the bed in the den,’ Mary said gravely, ‘when Carl Merton came up the ladder. It was dark and we were whispering, so he didn’t know we were there.’ Queenie’s heart missed a beat, imagining what Carl might have done had he known.

Hester took up the story. ‘I’d already told Mary about the night he’d come into our bedroom and hurt you.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were awake?’ Queenie gasped.

‘I thought it best to wait until you said something first. That’s why I didn’t tell Mummy, only Mary, ’cos she’s my friend.’

‘I’m your best friend.’

‘She’s my best friend,’ Hester concurred. ‘Did he hurt you badly, Queenie?’

‘He didn’t hurt me at all,’ Queenie lied. ‘He was drunk, that’s all, and he came into the wrong room. I soon put him right. What happened that night in the den?’

She tried not to sound as anxious as she felt.

‘We could see Carl Merton bending down over the ladder. Then you came and you screamed, so we crept over and Mary took one foot and I took the other and we tipped him up and he fell down. Then we felt frightened and told Gwen we’d been in the garden in case she got cross. Was that wrong?’ she asked nervously ‘I don’t know,’ said a horrified Queenie. ‘Perhaps it’d be best not to breathe a word to a soul about what happened. Let’s keep it a secret between us three.’

The girls were happy to agree. Mary said she’d sooner not think about it any more and Hester said she’d hardly thought about it all. It was only Queenie’s plaster that had reminded her.

Queenie tried to imagine what Laura and Vera’s reaction would be if they learnt their daughters had killed Carl Merton. It was a feat of imagination that was quite beyond her.

The movement in her arm was improving with each day, just like the weather. She could hold a knife and fork and cut her own food, fasten the hooks and eyes on her clothes, tie shoe laces. Dr Hollis was very pleased with her progress.