The Mersey Girls (20 page)

Roddy was carrying the cups over to the nearest table; he stopped short, put the cups down so hastily that he splashed tea on the table’s plain deal top, and turned back to the counter. ‘You need someone like our Linnie ’ere,’ he said. ‘Me mam swears by ’er – she’s a dream of a cook, our Linnie, an’ that fast on ’er feet . . .’

‘Hold ’ard a moment, young Roddy,’ Mrs Cobble said. She stared at Linnet across the counter. ‘Your mam don’t ’ave no gels!’

‘No, our Linnie’s a – a cousin,’ Roddy said quickly. ‘She’s been livin’ with us for a while, ain’t you, Linnie? Real quick, is Linnie – why don’t you let ’er give you an ‘and just for this mornin’, eh?’

Linnet looked from one face to the other. The possibility of a job loomed suddenly, and this – this was a nice place! Little Evie would have thought it low, but Linnet had stopped taking little Evie’s word for things like that long before she left for America. So she smiled hopefully at Mrs Cobble, and to her pleasure Mrs Cobble smiled straight back.

‘Well, gel? Gorra tongue in your ’ead, ’ave you?’

‘Yes, Mrs C-Cobble,’ Linnet stammered. ‘I’d like to give you a hand.’

Mrs Cobble nodded slowly. ‘Convent schooled?’ she hazarded. ‘Mam Irish, father missin’?’

‘More or less, Mrs Cobble,’ Linnet agreed. ‘My mam died a while ago and I never did meet my dad, but Mrs Sullivan’s been very good to me.’

‘Aye, Janice is a good woman,’ Mrs Cobble said, still staring thoughtfully at Linnet whilst leaning her elbows and a large bosom heavily on the counter. She suddenly seemed to make up her mind and stood up straight. ‘Awright, queen, you’re on. Come round ’ere an’ get the overall off of the kitchen door. You can start servin’, I’ll explain as we goes on.’

Linnet came out of Cobble’s at eight that night, almost dizzy with tiredness but with a big smile from ear to ear. It was snowing again and as she left the shelter of the doorway someone fell into step beside her. It was Roddy, his striped butcher’s overall filthy, his boots clagged with slush.

‘Hello, chuck,’ he said, taking her arm and tucking it through his. ‘How did it go?’

‘Oh, Roddy, I can’t ever thank you enough – she’s going to keep me on and it’s a grand job, I love it! She’s already taught me how to cook scouse for twenty people, to bake a huge flat loaf of bread – she cuts it in pieces to go with the soup – and to make a sandwich so fast you wouldn’t believe. And I serve the customers . . . they give you the odd ha’penny, too . . . and get to bring leftovers home . . .’

‘What’s the money like?’ Roddy said. ‘Twon’t be great, but work’s so scarce any job’s a good job.’

‘It’s all right; ten bob a week, and it’s only eight till eight because Mr Cobble helps early and late. What d’you think?’

‘It’s bleedin’ good,’ Roddy said admiringly. ‘I only get twelve an’ a kick meself. Well, you’re made up, I can see. So’ll me mam be when we tell ’er. When does Ma Cobble pay you, eh?’

‘Saturday night, but because today was just a trial she gave me two bob in my hand – wasn’t that kind? And she gave me half a fruit cake, I’ve got it in under me coat.’

‘Coo,’ Roddy said reverently when Linnet showed him the cake, nestling in her apron pocket. ‘The kids’ll go barmy – it ain’t often they get cake mid-week.’

‘They’re welcome to it,’ Linnet said. ‘Mrs Cobble gave me a big dinner at noon and a big tea an’ all. Me stomach’s tight as a drum, you won’t see me eating cake.’

‘No? All the more for the rest of us, then,’ Roddy said. He squeezed her arm. ‘I’m that glad for you, queen, because I knowed you was miserable, feelin’ you were a charge on me mam.’

‘Well, I was,’ Linnet pointed out as they turned the corner and plunged under the arch into Peel Square. ‘I’ve helped her in the house of course, and done the ironing when she’s washed sheets and stuff, but I couldn’t pay for me keep, though I know you handed over extra, often and often. You Sullivans have been very good to me, Roddy.’

‘Oh well, you can pay us back some day,’ Roddy said obscurely. ‘Want to go in first and tell me mam about Cobble’s? Or shall I go first an’ make trumpet noises for your entrance?’

Linnet laughed delightedly. She thought she had never felt so happy, not even when Mammy had been alive to share her pleasure.

‘You go first,’ she urged. ‘Get ’em all in the kitchen, so’s I only have to tell me story once!’

Lying rolled up in her blankets on the floor by the kitchen fire that night, Linnet reviewed her day. It had been the best of days, and she could not imagine ever being more excited by a job than she had been as what Mrs Cobble called ‘me gofer’.

‘What’s that?’ Linnet had asked, and Mrs Cobble told her that it meant a sort of dogsbody, a do-everything, called a gofer because she would be told to ‘go for this and go for that’.

But the best part had been marching proudly into the kitchen whilst Roddy made a trumpet of his hands and blared triumphant music through them and Bert did wonderful things with a comb and a bit of paper.

‘Here comes the conquering ’ero!’ Freddy shrilled. ‘Wharrever ’ave you done, our Linnie, to make Roddy play ’is trumpets?’

‘She’s gorra job!’ Mrs Sullivan had hazarded. ‘Oh, queen, I couldn’t be ‘appier for you an’ it ain’t the money, neither. Wharra you doin’, eh? Clearin’ snow? They pay a bob a week some firms, to ’ave snow cleared away.’

‘No, Auntie Sullivan, it’s a real job,’ Linnet had said, her voice shrill with excitement. ‘I’m waiting on at the Cobble’s canny house, for ten bob a week and the leftovers.’

The hugs, the kisses, the excitement which followed! Mr Sullivan, who had a bad heart as well as crippled legs, gave her a big hug and told her she was a good girl and deserved some good luck. Mrs Sullivan danced her round the kitchen and promised to make her a nice apron to wear for work just as soon as she could get some sewing done. The younger boys were delighted with the news and enjoyed the cake to the full and Roddy, of course, was more pleased than anyone except Linnet herself.

‘You’re a good kid, our Linnie,’ he said affectionately when the fire had been banked down and everyone was going off to bed. ‘Now you won’t need to worry that you stayin’ ’ere ain’t fair on me mam.’

‘Well, it isn’t,’ Linnet said. She was spreading her blankets out preparatory to rolling up in them. All she did when she went to bed at night was to take off her skirt, jumper and shoes. Her neat cotton nightgowns had disappeared with the horrid Mrs Roberts and though Mrs Sullivan had bought her a second skirt and some cheap shoes, she was still very short of clothing. ‘I shouldn’t expect your mam to let me sleep on her kitchen floor for ever; and though I try ever so hard, I do take up room, Roddy. Your mam used to spread the washing out here at nights so it would dry in the fire’s warmth, but now she can’t, and that isn’t fair either. As soon as I can afford it, I’ll have to move out.’

Upstairs, the boys were already asleep and Mr and Mrs Sullivan were settling down, their voices rumbling slower and slower. Roddy caught hold of both of Linnet’s hands, then drew her towards him.

‘Our Linnie, I want you to stay ’ere for always,’ he said hoarsely. ‘You’re the best thing what ever ‘appened to me, honest to God you are! We all love ’avin’ you in our ’ouse, me most of all, so don’t you talk about movin’ out, ’cos we’d miss you somethin’ cruel.’

‘I won’t go far, Roddy,’ Linnet promised. She felt rather uneasy as Roddy pulled her hard against his chest. ‘Do stop it, you’re squashing me!’

‘No I ain’t, I’m cuddlin’ you,’ Roddy said and put both arms round her tightly. He gave a sort of moan under his breath and then he began to kiss any bit of her face which he could reach despite Linnet squiggling away like mad – and giggling, as well, for this was not how she thought of Roddy at all, he was usually so sensible. ‘Oh Linnet, Linnet, you don’t know ’ow I feel about you, you’re just the best, the prettiest . . .’

‘Roddy, your mam . . .’ Linnet was beginning, when the kitchen door opened. Mrs Sullivan stood there.

‘Ah, Roddy, I were just about to call down to you to bring me up that bit o’ darnin’ I were doin’ before supper. But I’ll fetch it meself, now I’m ’ere.’

Roddy, scarlet as a lobster, had let Linnet go as soon as he saw his mother standing there, and now, shifting from foot to foot, he said loudly, ‘I’m sorry, Mam. I were just – just showin’ our Linnie ’ow pleased I am she’s gorra job.’

‘I daresay. But there’s other ways of showin’ you’re pleased about a job, without pullin’ the gel about,’ Mrs Sullivan said severely. ‘You didn’t oughter stay down ’ere after we’s gone up, Roddy. It ain’t decent.’

‘But Mam, I weren’t doin’ nothin’ . . .’ Roddy began, to be firmly interrupted.

‘I should think not, indeed, when Linnie’s in your mam’s care! Off wit’ you, son, we’ll talk in the morning.’

She smiled at Linnet, tipped her a wink, and followed her son out of the room and Linnet removed her outer clothing and rolled herself up in her blankets. And now she was thinking over her day and wondering how long it would take her to save a decent sum.

Because no matter what Roddy said she knew she would have to go. She was sixteen, Roddy eighteen, and when Roddy had squeezed her just now there had only been a part of her complaining and giggling. The other part, the part which was conscious of a burgeoning figure and her increasing interest in young men, had known a strange, guilty excitement, a desire for his caresses to continue, to take her further along that road which led to womanhood.

So I’d best flit when I can manage it, Linnet told herself half sadly. I can get a cheap room when I’m settled at Cobble’s – and that won’t stop me coming back as often as possible, because there’s no family I love more than the Sullivans, and no place I’ve been happier than Peel Square.

‘My life’s going back to normal so it is, after months and months of being strange,’ Lucy said joyfully to Caitlin as they walked across Barry’s Bridge, heading for school. ‘We got a letter from Maeve yesterday and she’s coming home and bringing that feller, Caleb, with her. She’s sad because she’s given up; she doesn’t think she’ll ever find me sister, but I don’t mind that because I never knew her. So she’s coming back to us, Cait, and aren’t I glad? That Clodagh’s very nearly driven me mad with her “do this, do that”, and never even a thank you from her.’

‘She’ll be back just in time to see you leave school,’ Caitlin said rather gloomily. ‘Then you’ll be after gettin’ a job, unless you stay on the farm, of course. Are you goin’ to tell Maeve what you really want to do, Luceen?’

‘What? Acting on the stage, you mean? Well, it might upset her,’ Lucy said thoughtfully. ‘When I mentioned it to Grandad he was so cross I pretended I was only teasing, but Maeve’s not like that. Still, I won’t say anything yet.’

‘When I said how good you were in the school play my mam said you’d get ideas like your mam, Evie, did, and look what come o’ that,’ Caitlin said. ‘You never said your mam was an actress, Lu.’

‘I didn’t know she was until Grandad said, when I talked about the play,’ Lucy admitted. ‘And anyway, from what I’ve managed to find out she wasn’t ever an actress, precisely.’

Caitlin smiled and patted her hair which had recently been cut in a bob. The new hairstyle suited Caitlin very much better than Lucy had imagined it would, and sometimes Lucy looked at Caitlin’s shining dark cap of hair which was cut to show the nice shape of her head and which complimented her round, rosy face, and wished that she, too, might have a bob or a shingle. But if she was really going to be an actress she might need her long hair, so she kept the scissors in their place and did not even try to cut herself a fringe, tempting though it was.

‘If your mam wasn’t an actress, but she was on the stage, what was she?’ Caitlin asked now. She stopped to lean over the bridge and Lucy knew she was trying to see her reflection in the smoothly rushing water below. ‘Was she a stage manager or something?’

‘No, not really. She danced and sang, she didn’t act,’ Lucy said rather shortly. She did not want Caitlin, or indeed anyone, to know that during Maeve’s long absence she had done a very sneaky thing.

If it hadn’t rained and rained and kept her indoors, she told herself defensively now, she might never have gone wandering into Maeve’s room and pulled open the bottom drawer of the big old chest which stood against the sloping eaves. Once it had been full of sheets and pillowcases, with Maeve’s initials embroidered in the corners, jostling for position with six lacy nightgowns, six pairs of silk knickers, petticoats, bust bodices, all the paraphernalia of a girl’s bottom drawer, her trousseau, carefully stitched so that she did not go empty-handed to her bridegroom.

But over the years the other girls had married and Maeve had not and Maeve’s generous spirit had refused to hoard all the beautiful things she had so lovingly made. So she had given away the bedding, the clothing, everything the drawer had once contained. Now it contained some material, the last pair of embroidered sheets which Lucy knew without having to think about it would be given to her when she married, and, right at the bottom, where the lavender bags and the pot pourri of rose petals were kept, letters.

They were not love letters, she knew that. Maeve didn’t receive love letters. Besides, they weren’t wrapped in pink ribbon and they didn’t have flowers pressed between the pages, two things which, Lucy knew, were obligatory in love letters. They were just kept in big brown paper bags, and when she looked at the signature on the first one and saw it was her own mother . . . well, surely it was her right to read on?

Reading them, starting with little Evie’s very first letter home, had been a pleasurable business at first. Her mother had been interested in baby Lucy, had talked about her Career – always with a capital initial letter – and her other child, the oddly named Linnet. She had touched on the beautiful rooms over the fine emporium on a street convenient to the theatre, on her social life, which was apparently lively and very much of the champagne-in-slipper variety, and on her admirers, who were many and various and all, it seemed, rich and adoring. But as she read on, even Lucy noticed the change in little Evie’s attitude. There was defiance, a repeatedly reiterated conviction that Stardom and Acceptance (more capitals) were just around the corner, were kept from Evie by a malignant fate, by ill-luck, by the sheer vindictiveness of others. There were opportunities missed by a hair’s breadth, evil acts by fellow Thespians which had caused her apparent downfall, misunderstandings galore. In short, Evie had not succeeded and did not intend to let those at home believe she was in any way to blame.