The Leaving Of Liverpool (36 page)

‘A fight? A
war
? But it’s hardly five minutes since the last one.’ She pushed away the tea and made to get to her feet. ‘I don’t want to hear this, Harry. I’d sooner not know.’

‘You can’t close your eyes to it, Moll.’ He looked at her regretfully, as if he’d considered her made of sterner stuff.

‘I can if I want,’ she said stubbornly, but sat down again.

‘Trouble is,’ Harry said, ‘the government’s closing its eyes too. This country needs to start re-arming. Instead there’s some people talking about appeasement.’

‘I’m not sure what that means,’ she confessed.

‘It means letting Hitler do whatever he wants as long as he doesn’t touch us.’ Harry looked so angry she didn’t like to say that sounded a sensible, if somewhat cowardly approach.

The old man was leaving. ‘Would you like a fag, Bill?’ Harry offered.

‘Wouldn’t say no.’

Harry produced a packet of Woodbines. ‘Take a couple. Have you got matches, mate?’

‘I’ve got some at home. Ta, Harry, you’re a sport.’ The old man shuffled away.

‘Could we talk about something different?’ Mollie asked when his footsteps could be heard slowly descending the stairs.

‘All right,’ Harry said, lighting a ciggie for himself. ‘Let’s talk about why you went as white as a sheet when I mentioned the
Queen Mary
was sailing to America. You asked if it was going to New York; have you ever been there?’

‘I nearly did - once.’ She explained what had happened, leaving out, as she always did, anything to do with the Doctor and finishing, ‘I’ve never seen Annemarie since. My brother, Finn, went to New York to look for her, but had no luck. I’ve an auntie there who still keeps an eye out. I’d love to go myself one day, but I’ll have to wait until the children are older.’

‘Perhaps we could go together?’

This seemed so unlikely that Mollie thought it wouldn’t hurt to say that perhaps one day they could. She looked around the squalid room with its odds and ends of furniture and dirty, steamed-up windows. Where was Annemarie right now? What sort of room was
she
in? She hoped it was a better one than this, but at least she couldn’t fault the company.

‘What does your brother Finn do?’

‘He’s an accountant back in Ireland; a village called Duneathly where we were born. He’d married to Hazel and they have eight children: four boys and four girls.’ Mollie smiled. On average, Hazel produced a new baby every fifteen months. ‘My young brothers live with them, Thaddy and Aidan, so they’ve got a houseful.’ She’d had photos of the new children, but would love to meet them - and see Hazel again. She hadn’t seen her sister-in-law since she’d been to Ireland with Tom, the girls and Joe. Finn had come to Liverpool twice, but that was the only real contact she’d had with her family. ‘I really should be going, Harry.’

‘I’ll ask Rita for some newspaper to protect your hat.’ A grin crossed his thin, handsome face. ‘See, I can be quite gallant when I want.’

 

The three Ryan brothers, their wives and children descended on the house on Sunday. Irene was in her element as she served tinned salmon sarnies, with cold stewed apple and cream for afters. Mollie had insisted she use butter, not marge, on the bread.

They hadn’t exactly become rich overnight once she’d started work at the Rotunda, but money was no longer the nagging worry it use to be. She’d given up making gloves, though had continued to read to Mr Pettigrew. After a while, it had dawned on her that it was unfair to keep the job, when a man or woman whose need for an extra ten shillings a week was much greater than hers could do it. To her surprise, the old man had been upset to learn she was leaving.

‘You read very well,’ he said. ‘You put expression into the words. It’s like listening to a play.’

She didn’t remind him that he’d told her he didn’t like plays, couldn’t see the point in them. She promised to drop in whenever she was in town, but when she’d called one day soon after Christmas, he’d been too unwell to see her.

‘He seems to sleep most of the time,’ the woman, an ex-nurse who’d taken her place, told her. ‘I usually end up reading the papers to meself.’

Three months later, only half listening while Lily and Pauline made digs at each other, Mollie realized how much she missed being kept up to date with the latest news bulletins. From tomorrow, she’d start buying the
Daily Herald
, if only to keep track of what Hitler was up to. All that stuff Harry had come out with last night had really taken her by surprise.

Tom’s brothers were talking about the new King, Edward VIII, yet to be crowned. It was rumoured he was having an affair with a married woman who’d divorced one husband. ‘The British people are being kept in the dark,’ Enoch said indignantly. ‘I met this chap the other day who knew another chap who’d just come back from France. He said it’s in all the papers over there. She’s an American with a dead funny name.’

‘What does divorced mean, Mammy?’ Megan whispered.

‘I’ll tell you later. Why don’t you play out in the street with your cousins, love?’ Mollie whispered back.

‘I’d sooner stay here. S’interesting.’ Megan was the nosiest child under the sun.

Irene looked just as indignant as Enoch, but for an entirely different reason. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she declared. She was a devout royalist. ‘The King would never have an affair, let alone with a woman who’s already married.’

The lads groaned.

‘Our mam thinks royalty can do no wrong,’ Brian snorted. ‘They’re just human beings, Mam; they go to the lavatory and wipe their arses, just like us ordinary mortals. And have affairs with married women.’

It was Pauline’s turn to be indignant. She claimed that sounded as if Brian was speaking from experience and had actually had an affair with a married woman.

‘I should be so lucky,’ Brian muttered underneath his breath.

‘I heard that,’ Pauline spat.

‘Bloody hell, Pauline, he was only joking,’ Lily said with a sneer.

Irene glared. ‘If you’re going to swear, Lil, I’d sooner you did it in your own house.’

‘I’ll make more tea.’ Mollie left the room, feeling she might explode. She was pouring water in the kettle when Gladys joined her.

‘Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?’ she asked mournfully.

‘Oh, let’s laugh. It’ll do us more good than crying.’

‘I wouldn’t mind divorcing Enoch if it meant I’d see no more of that lot. How you stand living with Irene I’ll never know - and if you say her heart’s in the right place, I’ll kill you.’

‘All right, I won’t say it, though it is.’ Mollie dodged out of the way when Gladys came towards her making a throttling gesture with her hands. ‘They all mean well. They just have a funny way of showing it.’

‘
I
don’t find it funny.’ Gladys groaned. ‘How can we avoid Lily and Mike’s twentieth wedding anniversary the Sunday after next?’

‘We can’t,’ Mollie said crisply. ‘We both married a Ryan and we’ll just have to grit our teeth and bear it.’

 

Mollie’s anniversary present to Lily and Mike was two front stall tickets for the Rotunda on the night before the do. ‘The show’s called
Parisian Music Hall
,’ she told them. ‘It sounds really good.’

Outside the theatre, last week’s posters had been torn down. The replacements showed a row of colourfully clad women doing the cancan. Mollie hoped the sight of twenty-four legs clad in black stockings and suspenders and exposing a great deal of naked thigh wouldn’t offend Lily. There were Chinese acrobats, an Indian snake-charmer, a Russian choir, Apache dancers, roller-skaters, and a ballerina called Mimi. The star of the show was a young man called Zeke Penn, a tap-dancer, who’d actually starred on Broadway. Mollie couldn’t wait. She’d only manage to see the last part of the show, but she’d do her best to count the takings in record time and get into the auditorium as soon as she possibly could.

 

The Chinese acrobats seemed literally to fly through the air, as if, unlike ordinary people, they’d been granted the gift of flight. Mollie stood at the back of the theatre beside Betsy and watched, open-mouthed, hands on cheeks, terrified one of these human birds would plunge to the ground and break every bone in his body. And how Mimi could twirl around so fast and so furiously without getting dizzy and falling flat on her face she would never know.

Then the cancan dancers came on, six from each side of the stage. They met in the middle, kicked their legs, and shook their frilly skirts. Where did they get their energy from? Mollie wondered. She felt exhausted after half an hour of selling tickets. They finished with the splits, making her wince, then the stage went dark until a single spotlight revealed a young black man, Zeke Penn, dressed in white, who began to dance on the spot, faster and faster, his shoes clicking at an incredible rate. Suddenly all the lights went on and the girls came back, having changed into brief, glittering frocks. The young man danced with them one by one, each time doing a different step. The ballerina danced and he danced with her. Everyone seemed to be having an extraordinarily good time, laughing and clapping their hands. The audience joined in and laughed and clapped with them.

Mollie felt moved, exhilarated, excited, as if she, too, wanted to rush on to the stage and dance. The Russian choir - she’d only heard them before as she sat in her cubby-hole counting money - filed on at the very back and began to sing, then the jugglers came on, followed by the Apache dancers and the skaters. The acrobats flew overhead, and still Zeke Penn danced, a look on his face that said he was enjoying every minute. The stage was a mass of moving, singing people. Then, all of a sudden, as if a lever had been pulled or a switch turned, they stopped singing and moving, Zeke Penn stopped dancing, and the orchestra ceased to play. For a few seconds, they all stood as still as statues, until the curtain fell.

The audience leapt to their feet and began to cheer wildly. For the regulars, it was the best show they’d ever seen at the Rotunda and they could only wonder if they’d ever see another like it.

 

Harry Benedict was standing outside the theatre. ‘What was it like?’ he asked.

‘Out of this world,’ she said, linking his arm. ‘You should come one night. I’ll keep a ticket aside so you won’t have to queue.’

‘You’d do that for me?’ He looked both surprised and pleased.

‘Of course.’ She’d like them to become friends. Unlike most men, who spent every spare minute in the pub, Harry wanted to make the world a better place. He cared about people. Since the night he’d walked her home, her feelings for him had become clearer - she would quite like him to kiss her again. How things would proceed from there, she had no idea. They could never marry, not only because he was a Protestant, but because he had a miserable, dead-end job where he no doubt earned peanuts. Where would they live? Anyway, marriage, to her or any other woman, might be the last thing on his mind.

‘Fancy a cuppa at Charlie’s?’ he asked. ‘We could talk.’

‘All right,’ she said happily. Charlie was dead, but his wife still managed the chippy where they’d been a few times, much to Rita’s delight.

Tonight, there was a different girl behind the counter who looked just as pleased to see him. Her name was Issy and she brought the tea just as swiftly as Rita had.

‘What happened to your mam and dad?’ Mollie asked as soon as they sat down. She felt the urge to know everything about him.

‘They died in the big ’flu epidemic after the war along with me two little sisters. I was nine. We’d always lived with me gran, so I just stayed there and she brought me up. She’s where I got me politics from, me gran.’ He smiled fondly, his dark eyes far away, as he thought about the erect, silver-haired woman who’d raised him. So far, Mollie had merely passed the time of day with Mrs Benedict. ‘She’s a Socialist through and through, kept giving me books to read. When she was a young woman, she got sacked from a jam and pickle factory in Vauxhall for trying to organize a strike for better working conditions.’

‘She sounds wonderful,’ Mollie murmured.

‘She is . . . wonderful.’ He said the word as if he’d never used it before. ‘What about your mam and dad?’

‘They’re both dead, too. My dad was a doctor—’

‘A doctor!’ Harry broke in with a guffaw. ‘A doctor for a dad, an accountant for a brother, and a copper for a husband; I never realized I was in such exalted company. I’d better mind my Ps and Qs from now on.’

‘Don’t be ridiculous, Harry.’ She felt annoyed. ‘We both live in the same street, don’t we?’

‘Yeah, but I was born there. You only landed there by accident.’

Mollie had no idea how the conversation - or was it an argument? - would have continued, had there not been the sound of someone rapidly climbing the stairs two at a time and a young black man leapt, smiling, into the room. It was Zeke Penn, who’d just danced so brilliantly at the Rotunda. He lit up the dreary little room, his eyes shining and his skin glowing. His teeth were the whitest she’d ever seen. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she gasped.

‘I’m hungry, ma’am,’ he replied politely, the smile fading just a little, ‘and there wasn’t a sign outside saying “No Blacks Allowed”.’

At this, Mollie felt so horrified she nearly dropped her tea. ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that,’ she stammered, ‘Only I’ve just seen the show and I thought you’d be staying at a desperately posh hotel with its own restaurant.’

‘I am staying at a desperately posh hotel, but the meals take a helluva long time coming.’ He sat at the next table, crossing his legs elegantly. He’d changed into well-cut brown trousers, a brown jersey, and a heavy suede jacket with fur lining. ‘First there’s the soup,’ he said, holding up a finger. ‘You have to wait until they’ve slaughtered the ox and cut off its tail, or caught the mulligatawny - whatever a mulligatawny may be.’ He raised another finger. ‘Then there’s another long wait for the main course.’ A third finger was raised. ‘The dessert appears about midnight, followed by the coffee,’ another finger, ‘which last night was cold. When I came out of the theatre, I saw this little diner across the street and thought I’d eat here. I’m sure as hell hungry,’ he added a trifle pathetically.