The Girl From Penny Lane

About the Book

Kitty stood on the edge of the kerb, contemplating the length of Penny Lane. As she did so a figure came cycling slowly along Greenbank Road, stopping at each lamp post as he reached it. The lamplighter was doing his rounds. If I don’t get up me courage an’ start a-knockin’, the Lord above knows what I’ll do tonight, Kitty reminded herself stoutly. Git a move on then, kid!

Obedient to her own command, Kitty crossed the road and began to walk along the pavement. Immediately it struck her that these neat little suburban houses had no great flights of steps under which she might hide herself for the night, nor could she even begin to think about a return to Rodney Street until she’d had a few hours rest.

So you’ve got no choice, Kitty Drinkwater, she told herself firmly. It’s find the girl from Penny Lane or get took up for a vagrant and chucked into the work’ouse. So start, Kitty, or git back to that park afore the gates is locked an’ barred.

About the Author

Katie Flynn has lived in the North-West for thirty-two years and during that time has seen many changes in Liverpool, especially around the docks and in the city centre. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories, articles and radio talks when her children were small. As they grew up she turned to writing novels under several names, and has enjoyed great success.

A Liverpool Lass

Liverpool Taffy

The Mersey Girls

Strawberry Fields

Rainbow's End

Rose of Tralee

No Silver Spoon

Polly's Angel

The Girl from Seaforth Sands

The Liverpool Rose

Poor Little Rich Girl

The Bad Penny

Down Daisy Street

A Kiss and a Promise

Two Penn'orth of Sky

The Long and Lonely Road

The Cuckoo Child

Darkest Before Dawn

Orphans of the Storm

Little Girl Lost

Beyond the Blue Hills

Forgotten Dreams

Sunshine and Shadows

Such Sweet Sorrow

A Mother's Hope

In Time for Christmas

Heading Home

A Mistletoe Kiss

Lost Days of Summer

This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Epub ISBN: 9781446455838

Version 1.0

  

First published in Great Britain 1993

by William Heinemann Ltd

Arrow Books

The Random House Group Limited

20 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London SW1V 2SA

Adresses for companies within the Random House Group Limited can be found at:

Copyright © 1993 by Katie Flynn

The author has asserted her moral rights

ISBN
0 7493 1348 x

A CIP catalogue record for this title

is available from the British Library

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

BPCC Paperbacks Ltd

Member of BPCC Ltd

Contents

For Tim and Sylvia Turner,

who introduced me to the Rock.

My thanks go once again to the late Richard Brown, whose wonderful stories have helped me to build up a picture of Liverpool some seventy years ago, and whose experiences ‘on the tramp’ as a youngster have been freely adapted to enrich my tale. Thanks also to the staff of the Local History section of the Central Libraries on William Brown Street, and to the café on the top floor, for feeding me when reading got me down!

In addition, thanks to Rosie Hague and her mother, Lily Evans, who introduced me to
Her Benny
, by Silas Hocking (essential reading for all Liverpudlians), and last but not least a big thank you to Terry Billing of Norwich, who was kind enough to lend me, gratis, a keyboard for my word processor when I found myself in his area, with a book to write and no keyboard to type it on.

Chapter One

1924

‘Kitty Drinkwater, ain’t you the idlest kid ever to come out o’ Paradise Court? Didn’t I tell ye an hour since to take them trimmin’s over to the milliner for me? Might just as well save me breath. Now will you put that handful o’ rubbish down and git over there right this minute, afore I catch you one across the side o’ your lug!’

Kitty guiltily lay down on the doorstep the three fragments of broken pottery she had been holding and got to her feet. Trust Ma, she thought crossly, to interrupt the only winning streak she’d had for days and days . . . she’d lost her five hoarded cherry stones the previous day to Humpy Alley, who had amazing luck, and she could scarcely remember the last time she’d actually owned an oily; for weeks now she’d been forced to borrow other people’s for the odd game, which meant anything you won was theirs, and made playing pointless, almost.

‘All right, Mam, if the stuff’s ready I’ll git a-going,’ she said as soothingly as she could. Sary Drinkwater’s temper was legendary, not only amongst her large brood of neglected children but amongst the neighbours, too. Little Etty O’Mara, who had been playing with Kitty and Ellen Fosdyke, stumbled to her feet as Kitty did and prepared for flight. Etty knew full well that Sary, with drink inside her, could fetch you a thump which would knock you halfway into next week whether you were her kid or not, and Etty was too little and weak to risk that sort of violence.

‘Well? If you’re just a-going, why ain’t you here, takin’ the stuff off of me?’

‘You put it down on the step, an’ I’ll fetch it,’ Kitty said diplomatically. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Mam, I’s not comin’ too near, not I!’

‘Nasty, sly little slut,’ her ungrateful parent mumbled, eyeing her first-born broodingly through slitted lids and clenching her fists in a horribly workmanlike way. ‘You’ll come ’ere when I sez or . . .’

She swayed and clutched the doorpost. Inside herself, Kitty chuckled. Sunshine was the enemy of the morning after, she reminded herself gleefully. Mam had been down at the Black Dog on the corner of Vauxhall Road until the early hours, she wouldn’t come into the bright afternoon willingly. ‘Where’s the box to go, Mam?’ Kitty asked. She could tell her mother’s head must be paining her something shocking, what with the drink and the close work which making the trimmings entailed. ‘Which milliner do you mean? Is it Miss Hughes on Upper Freddy?’

Sary made another threatening gesture with her fist but it was weaker than the first. She’s yaller as a wax candle, Kitty thought gratefully. She ain’t going to belt me one, not now she ain’t. If only I can get her to bring the box out onto the step . . .

‘You know bloody well I only works for Miss Hughes, now,’ Sary Drinkwater said thickly. She put a wavering hand to her brow and half-closed her eyes, but Kitty could see she was still watching with spiteful intensity through her swollen lids. ‘Oh Gawd, me ’ead’s splittin’. Come ’ere, Kit, or . . .’

‘Put the box on the step, Mam,’ Kitty coaxed softly. ‘I aren’t going to let you tek a swipe at me, you don’t know your own strength an’ that’s the truth! If you give me a broken arm I ain’t likely to get that box delivered this side o’ Christmas, am I? Put the box on the step and I’ll be over to Upper Frederick Street and back again afore you’ve had a chance to miss me.’

‘Me own child . . . ungrateful . . . never a word but she’s wicked as the devil . . . what’ve I done to deserve . . .’

Sary’s muttering retreated as she began to go back into the house behind her. Kitty waited. If she got within a couple of feet of the door and her mother was hiding behind it she’d not escape, but if she stood well back and bided her time . . .

A small figure appeared in the doorway. Kitty’s sister Betty stood there, both arms wrapped round a large cardboard box. Like all Sary Drinkwater’s children she was barefoot and dirty, but she wore a proper dress and not a man’s shirt with a piece of orange rope round the waist, as Kitty did, and her fair curls were tied back from her face with a piece of once-white ribbon. She was an appealing child, round-faced, healthy-looking, but now her blue eyes were saucered with apprehension and her small mouth drooped pathetically. She kept glancing behind her as she came out onto the step, a clear warning to Kitty that her mother was still lurking. ‘Ere you are, our Kit,’ she said. ‘For Miss Hughes.’

‘Righto, Bet, fetch it over here,’ Kitty said briskly. ‘Did Mam give you a penny for me tram fare?’

A muffled roar from behind the door was answer enough – not that Kitty had the slightest expectation of having to do anything other than lug the box, on foot, half across the city. And for nothing, too, she knew. If Mam had made one of the other kids go it would have been a farthing for a gob-stopper or a couple of liquorice sticks, but if she sent Kitty . . .

‘You’re the eldest,’ she would say briefly, if Kitty ever questioned her treatment. ‘You owes it to us.’

Once, Kitty had felt forced to point out that though she was indeed the eldest, Amy and Bob, the twins, were a mere eleven months younger than she, and both bigger and stronger. Her ears had rung for days from the resultant pounce and pounding, so that was one point she had not laboured. It was useless expecting fairness from Mam, and Pa, when he was home, was worse. The other kids got ha’pennies, sweets, even hugs. All Kitty got was abuse. Pa even grudged her food, wouldn’t have her sitting near them when he brought in a paper of chips or a hot pie. She was forced to lurk in the back kitchen, a noisesome hole with no fireplace and a damp earth floor, waiting for a brother or sister to have pity on her and sneak her a mouthful or two.

Sometimes Kitty indulged in a beautiful fantasy – that she was not Mam’s eldest daughter at all but a changeling of some sort, which was why Mam treated her not like her own flesh and blood but more like a slave, or an enemy, even. She would look at her reflection in a window pane, seeing not the tangled mop of red-brown hair tied back with a bootlace nor the man’s shirt which reached to her knees and was all the dress her mother bothered to provide. Instead, her mind’s eye saw white skin, coppery curls, a pretty dress . . . and shoes on her bare and dirty feet. After all, Mrs O’Rourke, who had lived only two doors away from the Drinkwater’s, though her home was as different from theirs as it could be, had once hinted that there was something special about Kitty, but she wouldn’t go the whole hog and say what that something was. Mrs O’Rourke had been a nurse in her young days and had gone abroad with Florence Nightingale to nurse wounded soldiers, so she should know.

Kitty and Mrs O’Rourke had first become friends when the older woman had found Kitty in the Court, weeping bitterly over a cabbage. Kitty had been small and the cabbage was large, so lugging it home from the Great Nelson Street market, where she had stolen it from a busy stallholder, had been a task which had taken her most of the short winter afternoon. So when her mother had snatched the cabbage from her arms, snarled at her for being out late and slammed the rickety door in her face, it had seemed like the end of the world to the young Kitty.

She had cast herself down on the dirty flagstones and not only sobbed but railed against fate, too – and railing against fate, when you are seven years old and don’t have much experience of life to call upon, consisted, in Kitty’s case at least, of using the worst words at your disposal at the top of your tear-choked voice.

‘Bloody, bloody, bloody-bloody-bloody cabbages,’ she shrieked. ‘Lazy, sluttish, greedy, idle cabbages! Stinkin’, rotten, bastard cabbages!’

In her heart, she half-hoped her mother would come out again, even if she only battered her for swearing and then took her inside, but Sary did not reappear; the stained and crooked wooden door with a hole where the handle should have been remained closed.