The Leaving Of Liverpool (8 page)

 

The Brophys lived in Wavertree in a four-bedroom house with a big garden. Mrs Brophy could have moved somewhere cheaper when her husband had been killed in the Great War but, as Agatha explained, ‘she’s determined to hold on to the place, although it’s a struggle. According to her, it’s a matter of principle. She’d sooner we all went hungry than move. We get all our clothes from Paddy’s Market, though don’t mention that as she doesn’t want people to know. The way she looks at it, once all us girls are working, she can get a job herself and there’ll be plenty of money coming in and we can get rid of our creepy lodger.’

Agatha had four younger sisters: Blanche, Cathy, Dora and Ellen, who were all as thin as herself. ‘I often wonder if they’d have gone through the entire alphabet if Dad had still been alive,’ Agatha mused. ‘I was only six when he volunteered. He and Mam had terrible rows about it - our Ellen had only just been born - but he said it was his duty to fight for his country. Not long afterwards, he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. He’d had a really good job with a shipping company and worked in an office on the Dock Road, so Mam’s not used to being poor.’

Mrs Brophy was small and dainty, and welcomed Mollie into her home with a warm kiss. ‘Aggie told us about you the other day. She was so envious of you going off to New York. It’s such a shame what happened.’

Cathy, Dora and Ellen were still attending school. Blanche, who was fifteen and growing to be very tall, had wanted to become a mannequin and model clothes in one of the big London shops, but worked as a junior in an office down by the Pier Head.

‘I’m wasting me life,’ she grumbled on Mollie’s first night. ‘All I do is run round town with messages, do the filing, and make the tea. I’m nothing but a skivvy.’

‘You’re very lucky, having a nice clean job,’ Mrs Brophy told her. ‘If it hadn’t been for your father’s contacts, you could be a
real
skivvy. Then you’d have reason to complain.’

Apparently, Mr Brophy’s contacts reached from beyond the grave. Agatha’s job in the chemist’s was also due to the manager having been a friend of her father’s.

‘I thought you worked there all by yourself?’ Mollie commented.

‘I do, but I’m not supposed to. Mr Gerard takes himself to the pub the minute it opens and doesn’t come back until it closes, so I’m there by meself most of the time.’

Mrs Brophy was already in negotiation with another friend of her late husband to give thirteen-year-old Cathy a job in his restaurant in St John’s Street when she left school in the summer. Dora and Ellen wondered aloud what she had in mind for them.

‘We’ll just have to see, girls,’ their mother said enigmatically. ‘We’ll just have to see.’

The lodger, Mr Wainscott, occupied the big bedroom at the front of the house. He sold Bibles door to door and read aloud a passage from his wares every night before he went to bed.

‘Don’t be scared, Mollie, if you hear a ghostly voice quoting Leviathan or Exodus at about eleven o’clock,’ Mrs Brophy warned her. ‘It’s just Mr Wainscott telling himself a bedtime story. He’s quite harmless, really. Always pays his rent on time, never complains about the food, and is mostly very quiet.’

‘He leaves a horrible smell in the lavatory, Mam,’ Dora complained, ‘and makes rude noises with his bottom.’

‘That’s because he has a problem with his bowels, love. Just ignore it; I do.’

‘You can’t just ignore a
smell
, Mam.’

‘Then hold your nose, Dora,’ her mother said sharply. ‘I do that as well.’

 

All in all, despite her worries, Mollie quite enjoyed her stay with the Brophys, where the first thing she did was write to Aunt Maggie and Hazel. During the day, she helped with the housework and went on the occasional errand. Afternoons, she attached the buttons to gloves that Mrs Brophy had already painstakingly sewn together, a task for which she received sixpence for a dozen pairs.

‘It all helps, Mollie,’ she said serenely. ‘They come from an old friend of Robert’s. He always makes sure I receive the smallest sizes so there’s less sewing to do.’

Since her husband had died, there’d been no chance of replacing the worn lino, the thinning carpets, curtains that were beginning to fray and wallpaper that had badly faded, so the house looked very shabby. Dinner consisted of the cheapest meat, which was minced in the big, cold kitchen and stewed with an enormous amount of vegetables, mostly potatoes. It tasted very watery and there was never a pudding. Yet Mollie admired Mrs Brophy for hanging on to her house. It would have been a simple matter to rent a smaller, cheaper one, but she had her standards and was determined to keep to them, even if it meant they ate like paupers and there was never a decent fire in the grate.

On Wednesday, half-day closing, she met Agatha and they went to a matinée at the Palais de Luxe, a picture house in Lime Street where they saw
Little Annie Rooney
starring Mary Pickford. Seats down at the front only cost a penny. It was the first film Mollie had ever seen.

‘It was
wonderful
,’ she breathed ecstatically when it was over and they were strolling back to the tram stop.

Agatha linked her arm. ‘I won’t half miss you when you’ve gone. I’ve got used to you living in our house.’

‘I’ll miss you, too,’ Mollie said sincerely. ‘But we can write to each other and perhaps one day you can come and see us.’

‘I’d love to, but it’ll be a long while before I have the opportunity,’ Agatha sighed.

It would take weeks for her letter to reach Aunt Maggie and for her to answer, but Hazel’s reply came within just a few days, a long letter written in big, bold writing, just like Hazel herself. ‘Is your head better?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I bet you’d like to kick yourself, but it couldn’t be helped. If I weren’t nearly eight months pregnant, I’d come and see you. Finn’s as mad as hell: with you, with me, but especially his father. The family you’re staying with sound very nice . . . ’

On the day the
Queen Maia
was due to dock in New York, Mollie thought about her sister constantly and prayed hard she would be all right. Annemarie was only thirteen. Surely she wouldn’t be left to look after herself.

A few days later, Hazel wrote again. This time the letter was short and to the point: ‘Finn is coming to Liverpool on Saturday and wants you to meet him off the ferry. He should arrive at about ten o’clock.’

On Saturday, Mollie went to meet her brother, wondering why on earth he was coming to Liverpool. She hoped it wasn’t to try to persuade her to go back to Duneathly. But she soon discovered that Finn was there for quite a different reason, something far more serious.

 

It was two weeks and four days after the
Queen Maia
had set sail for New York when Finn Kenny arrived in Liverpool on the Irish boat. In that time, the weather had miraculously improved. It was still cold, but the sun shone brilliantly in a light-blue sky, making the River Mersey shimmer. Seagulls swooped over the water, crying mournfully in their vain search for food. Finn had enjoyed two earlier visits to the city, but wished this time that the reason for his trip wasn’t quite so grim.

His sister, Mollie, met him off the boat, and they went to a little café with a lofty ceiling and bare, scrubbed tables, not far from the Pier Head. The delicious smell of frying bacon wafted from the kitchen. He ignored it and ordered a pot of tea for two. Apart from a bored-looking waitress and whoever was frying the bacon, they were the only people there. Neither spoke until the tea was brought.

‘Who’s this friend you’re staying with, Moll?’ he enquired.

‘Her name’s Agatha Brophy,’ Mollie replied. ‘We met in the chemist’s where I bought the digitalis for Annemarie. The family are Catholics and they’re very nice.’

Finn frowned slightly, but otherwise felt satisfied with the answer. Mollie looked much thinner since he’d last seen her and he hoped the Brophys were feeding her properly, but, right how, it was his other sister he was most concerned about. ‘You know, Moll,’ he said sternly, ‘you should have told us about Dad the first time he . . . ’ He paused, not quite knowing how to put it. ‘The first time he did what he did. If you had, it would never have happened to Annemarie.’

Mollie’s white cheeks went pink. ‘I know that now, don’t I, Finn?’ she said in a small voice. ‘But I didn’t want to cause any trouble. The first time wasn’t long after Mammy died. Everyone was already upset, and I didn’t want to make matters even worse.’

‘Our dad’s the only one who’d’ve been feeling worse once I’d sorted him out,’ Finn said hotly. He’d been shocked to the core when he’d discovered what had been happening in his own family and that he’d known nothing about it. He was an upright, virtuous young man and his father’s behaviour sickened him. ‘I’d’ve told him that if he touched you again I’d punch him into the middle of next week, dad or no dad.’ He quivered with anger. ‘The other day, I went to the house and had it out with him - Hazel told me the whole story when she got your letter saying you’d missed the boat.’ They hadn’t stopped rowing about it since; with him wanting to know why she hadn’t told him before, and her saying she’d promised to keep it to herself. ‘Until then,’ he said to Mollie, ‘I’d been going mad with worry, wondering where the pair o’yis had gone.’

‘What did the Doctor have to say?’

‘That he’s sorry.’ But he hadn’t been all
that
sorry, not at first. He was simply surprised that it was
him
who’d driven his daughters away, though he had looked uncomfortable when his son had accused him of being a rapist and described the terrible effect it had had on Annemarie. Finn had never been all that fond of his father and his fingers had itched to punch the haughty, supercilious face. If it hadn’t been for his little brothers, he’d never have gone near the house again. ‘You don’t have to worry, Moll. He won’t dare touch you when you come home,’ he said now. Should he try, he’d have Finn to deal with, not to mention Hazel, who was threatening to report him to the peelers.

‘Oh, Finn, I’m not going home.’ Mollie shivered at the thought. ‘I never want to see Duneathly again. I want to go to New York and be with Annemarie. I wrote to Aunt Maggie at the same time as I wrote to Hazel and asked her to send the money for the fare to Agatha’s address. There’s thirty-six pounds in our suitcase. It’s what was left from Mammy’s inheritance after the tickets had been paid for. As soon as it arrives, I’ll be on the next boat to New York.’

Finn reached for her hand and squeezed it, knowing he was about to relay some really horrifying news. ‘I’m sorry, Moll, but Annemarie never arrived at Aunt Maggie’s,’ he said gently. ‘Maggie sent a telegram the next day. Since then, she’s been searching for her everywhere, but hasn’t had any luck so far.’

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God!’ Mollie crossed herself and burst into tears, causing the waitress to stare. ‘Then what’s happened to her?’ she wailed.

‘I don’t know, sis.’ He squeezed he hand again. ‘Tomorrow, I’m sailing to New York from Southampton to help look for her. Maggie has already contacted all the hospitals and now the police are involved. Last night, I spoke to her on the telephone. I called from my office in Kildare and she answered in the shop beneath her apartment.’ He still couldn’t quite get over the wonders of modern technology, though dreaded to think what the call had cost.

‘Can I come with you to New York, Finn?’

‘No, Moll, I’m sorry,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ll only get in the way.’

Mollie sniffed. ‘There was a German woman in the cabin with us, Gertrude Strauss. I don’t know why, but I thought she’d look after Annemarie. She seemed very kind.’

‘Was anyone else in the cabin with you, sis?’

‘There was a girl called Olive Raines. I quite liked her, but she was what Nanny would have called a “baggage”. Miss Strauss accused her of all sorts of things.’

Finn nodded, but didn’t speak. He didn’t want his sister to know that Maggie had discovered a young woman answering to Annemarie’s description had been taken to the hospital on Ellis Island where her passport had later been found. By the time Maggie arrived, the girl had gone, collected by another young woman who’d produced Mollie’s passport. The girl in the hospital had gone by the name Olive Raines. It would seem the real Olive Raines had used both his sisters for some dark, inexplicable reasons of her own.

‘Have you got any money, sis?’

‘No. I only had a few shillings in my purse, but I’ve spent it.’ She hung her head. ‘The rest was in the suitcase. I expect that disappeared an’ all.’

‘Maggie’s never mentioned it, so I reckon it has. Look, take this.’ He gave her five ten-shilling notes. ‘I’ll send more when I’m back home. I don’t suppose you’ve got any clothes, either?’

‘Only the ones I’m wearing, Finn.’

She looked so miserable it made him want to kill their father and do the same to Olive Raines should he ever get his hands on the girl. ‘Hazel got Sinead Larkin to run you up a frock in a single day. Sinead had your measurements. It’s in my case with a few other things.’