The Mersey Girls (21 page)

And, of course, it also came out, in those rather ingenuous letters, that little Evie posed on stage clad in nothing but feathers, or fans, or a large hat strategically wafted, that she sang songs and danced exotically, but that she had never acted a part.

And, inevitably, Lucy concluded, as just by reading on she began to build up a picture of her mother, the letters got shorter and shorter, the intervals between their arrival at the farm longer and longer. Very soon they were scarcely more than notes, particularly after little Evie had reached New York, though there was one letter where she spoke of her wonderful admirer, Mr Fuego, who was going to see her a ‘Star’ at any cost.

‘He’s crazy for me, Maeve me darling,’ she had written exultantly. ‘Nothing’s too good for your little Evie – you should see the apartment he’s bought for me, the view over the river alone must be worth thousands of dollars.’

Only after that there was no more mention of Mr Fuego – and neither, Lucy slowly began to realise, of the other child. Well, there were mentions, but they were what you might call off-hand, almost as though – almost as though Linnet wasn’t with little Evie after all.

I do believe, Lucy told herself incredulously as she tucked the last letter guiltily back into its big brown envelope, I do believe that the reason why Maeve hasn’t found Linnet is because she’s not in America at all. I think little Evie left her in Liverpool all those years ago and simply dared not confess it to Maeve!

But it was guesswork, so she didn’t tell anyone, not Caitlin, not Granny Mogg, not Finn. Why should I? she thought. I’m not really interested in that other girl, it doesn’t matter to me whether she’s in New York or – or Timbuktu for that matter. But if Maeve really wants to find Linnet I suppose I’ll have to admit I read the letters, and then perhaps I ought to tell her what I think. And if Maeve agrees and thinks it’s important then I suppose the two of us could go over to Liverpool together and find the girl with the silly name.

But despite herself the letters had, at last, stirred a degree of interest in this sister that she could not remember. A girl a year or two older than me, but maybe very like me, she thought. A girl who’s lived with the theatre all her life, who must have met most of the great actors and actresses, played in their dressing rooms, run about on the stage whilst they rehearsed! Knowing her might be quite useful if I do decide I want to be an actress, she decided; she could give me all sorts of tips and advice. Probably she would know just how one would go about getting a job on the stage. Think of that, Lucy Murphy, think of that!

Linnet guessed that Mrs Sullivan had had words with Roddy because the next day she received an incoherent and mumbled apology from a young gentleman very red about the gills.

‘Mam said it weren’t fair, I put you in an awkward position,’ he muttered, staring fixedly at the table, for he had chosen to make his apology in his dinner break whilst Linnet, naturally, was at her busiest, flying round the small room sliding platefuls of scouse and dumplings, apple pie and steak pudding, before the customers. ‘I din’t think, Linnie, I din’t mean no ’arm. Only you’re me pal, an . . .’

‘It’s all right, Roddy, honest to God it is,’ Linnet said distractedly, trying to move on to the next table without seeming rude, but Roddy had drawn her attention by grabbing her apron and he still held a corner of it, crumpled up in one large fist. ‘Look, what do you want to eat?’

‘Oh . . .’ Roddy looked round vaguely as though he would find a plateful of something nice on the floor or the walls. ‘Oh . . . anything, you choose.’

‘Right, scouse and dumplings,’ Linnet said briskly. ‘Let go me pinny, there’s a good feller.’

‘Oh . . . sorry, I didn’t know I were still ‘angin’ on,’ Roddy said. ‘Linnie, can I meet you after work?’

‘Course you can; we’re still pals, our Roddy,’ Linnet said, moving to the next table. ‘Why, you’re like a brother to me and I wouldn’t stop meeting me brother because of a bit of a tiff, like, would I?’

Roddy scowled but made no comment and Linnet continued with her work but the whole episode had made her think. She loved living in the square with the Sullivans but she knew she would have to move out and it looked as though sooner might be better than later. The trouble was she couldn’t possibly afford a room, or even a bit of a room, on ten bob a week.

And later that evening, when Roddy, after a significant glare from his mother, had gone off up to bed muttering about gettin’ an early night, she and Mrs Sullivan sat down and talked it through.

‘We loves ’avin’ you, queen, not only for yourself but because I ain’t never ’ad a daughter an’ I’ve always wanted one,’ Mrs Sullivan said frankly. ‘But Roddy’s mortal fond o’ you, an’ he’s growin’ up, same’s you are for that matter. An’ we’re bleedin’ short o’ space so you don’t get no privacy. An’ you’re a sight too young for marryin’, an’ besides that would only solve one o’ the problems.’

Linnet, who had no intention of marrying anyway, let alone at the tender age of sixteen, did not understand at all what problem marrying would solve but she did not like to say so. ‘If I could earn a bit extra in the evenings . . .’ she said hopefully. ‘I’m free by eight most nights. Isn’t there someone round here with daughters who might let me have a mattress on the floor?’

Mrs Sullivan threw both hands in the air. ‘Well, you’ve an ’ead on your shoulders, Linnet Murphy, why din’t I think o’ that?’ she declared. ‘Me cousin Myrtle’s gorra daughter an’ they’re always short of the readies. They live a ways from ’ere, but you’d manage. It’s a back to back up on Lawrence Street. Want me to ’ave a word?’

‘I suppose you’d better,’ Linnet said sadly. ‘Oh Auntie Sullivan, I’ll miss you, and the others, something cruel, but I know you’re right and it’s only fair. What’s your cousin Myrtle’s daughter called?’

‘Bessie. Bessie Brinton. She’s a year or so older’n you but you’ll gerron together. A nice gel, Bessie.’

They got on and Linnet, handing over eight bob a week to the Brinton family, was grateful for a roof over her head and cheerful company, but wished, wistfully, that Mrs Sullivan had managed to pass on to her feckless cousin Myrtle some tips about housekeeping in general and cleanliness in particular.

The Brintons had bed bugs and accepted them as a fact of life, whereas the Sullivans, who also had bed bugs, fought them with fire and brimstone, soap and water, much boiling of sheets and hanging out of mattresses. And fleas marched off Tammy Brinton’s four large, half-witted mongrel dogs when they grew tired of eating nothing but dog and had many a good meal on poor Linnet’s white skin.

‘I don’t mind for meself so much,’ Linnnet told Roddy, scratching furtively as they sat in the cinema watching Agnes Ayres rolling her eyes and pouting at her leading man. ‘It’s passing them on I hate – and if Ma Cobble were to see a fleabite on me neck, what d’you suppose she’d think?’

‘Norra lot,’ Roddy said rather gloomily. In a moment of cinematic passion he had tried, personally, to mark Linnet’s neck and had received an eyewatering clout on the nose for his pains. She did not know what he was up to she had informed him crossly, but she didn’t fancy trying to explain to Mrs Cobble that she had been attacked by a leech. ‘Everyone ’as fleas, chuck. We does our best, but in summer they’re everywhere.’

‘The Brintons’ fleas are as big as their bed bugs,’ Linnet said. ‘You know I’m doing shorthand and typewriting in me evening classes, Roddy? Well, one day I’m going to get an office job and I tell you, people in offices don’t like fleas one little bit.’

‘Well, the answer’s there awright – move back in wi’ us,’ Roddy said joyfully. Linnet giggled and dug him in the ribs.

‘So you can sneak down in the night and bite me neck and make ’em think I’m living with Dracula?’ she said derisively. ‘I should just say so, Roddy Sullivan!’

Linnet’s job with Mrs Cobble lasted a year, until the delinquent Millie’s child was old enough to be left with Millie’s mam.

‘I’m that sorry to lose ye, chuck,’ Mrs Cobble told Linnet when she explained that Millie was returning. ‘But you’ll do well, I’ll give ye a good reference, tell anyone what asks that they couldn’t tek on a better gel. Honest, ‘ard-working, clean . . .’

‘I do understand, really I do, Mrs Cobble,’ Linnet assured her fat and friendly little employer. ‘And I’ll never forget you because you’ve been so good to me. But you know I’ve been doing night-classes? Well, I’m a fast typist now, and me shorthand’s not bad either. I think I’ll go for an office job, if I can get one – and there’s one advertised in the
Echo
this very week.’

And within a few days, before she had really digested the information that she would be out of work the following week, Roddy had called for her after work, taken her arm, and suggested a trip to the cinema to see her all-time favourite, Gary Cooper, who was starring in a film called
Lilac Time
.

‘Because I miss you, now you don’t live at our ’ouse no more,’ he told her, only half teasingly. ‘We can sit an’ ’old ’ands an’ ’ave a bit of a cuddle, eh?’

‘Can’t, it’s night-school,’ Linnet told him, tucking her hand into his arm nevertheless and walking along beside him. ‘But I’m out of Cobble’s as from Monday. Millie’s coming back.’

Roddy stared down at her, lively dismay changing, abruptly, to hope. ‘You’ll move back in wi’ us, of course?’ he said ingenuously. ‘I won’t muck about like when I kissed you in the kitchen an’ me mam walked in, but it ’ud be nice to ’ave you near, again.’

But Linnet, who was happy enough with the Brintons, apart from the bugs, made noncommittal noises. Though she had missed the Sullivans and Peel Square horribly at first, she knew that when the time came for her to move on it would not be to return to the Sullivans, much though she loved them. She was beginning to realise that independence, once gained, is important and not to be willingly given up. And though there were drawbacks in Lawrence Street, at least the Brintons never asked her where she was going or who with. Linnet, who had accepted an invitation from an Irish fish porter to go to the Rotunda with him, knew that she would never have got away with the outing had she been living in Peely. It hadn’t been a particularly good evening – the smell of fish had seen to that – but at least she had gone, discovered that the fish porter wasn’t her Mr Right, and returned to Lawrence Street with no one the wiser. The fact that Mrs Sullivan would have worried in case she was taken advantage of she dismissed with the insouciance of youth. Linnet Murphy could take care of herself!

‘Well, if you’ve got no gelt, queen, I don’t see as you’ve much choice,’ Roddy said presently. ‘Wish you an’ me could ’ave a place between us . . . but full-time butcherin’ ain’t all that well-paid and me mam needs wharrever I can spare.’ He sighed deeply. ‘If you ever feel like makin’ an honest feller of me, our Linnie, you’ve only gorra say the word.’

Linnet laughed. ‘It ‘ud take more than me to make an honest feller out of you, Roddy Sullivan! But what I meant to tell you was that I’ve got an interview for a job – an office job! It’s in one of the big insurance offices on Exchange Flags and it’s for an office girl with good prospects for advancement the advertisement says. What about that?’

‘You won’t want to go around wi’ a butcher’s boy when you’re in an office,’ Roddy muttered after a moment. ‘I ’ates butcherin’, but what else is there? You get a couple o’ hundred fellers after every bleedin’ job what comes up, what chance ’ave I got? At one time I used to think I’d leave the Pool, go down south, but it’s as bad there as ’ere, so they say. I dunno, queen, I’m sure.’

‘You’re me best friend, our Roddy, and I wouldn’t want to go out with anyone else. Well, not unless you count Gary Cooper or Mr Miles Guest, that lovely man who stars at the Playhouse when they do dramas.’

Roddy snorted. ‘Bleedin’ fillum stars! Well, if they’re the only fellers you’ve got an eye to I guess I’m awright for a bit. But if you get that job, an’ I’m sure I ‘ope you will, then you’ll be off wi’ some bleedin’ insurance clerk or other an’ not a glance for a butcher’s boy, I tell you.’

‘Then don’t stay a butcher’s boy,’ Linnet shouted, losing patience and jerking her arm out of his. ‘You do talk so big, Roddy Sullivan, but you’ve not applied for a job for ages, so how d’you know you can’t get one? Look, you’d best push off now, ’cos I’m going to me class and it’s all I can do not to fall asleep at me desk without you upsetting me. See you tomorrow.’

‘I’ll walk to the school with you,’ Roddy began, but Linnet shook her head impatiently.

‘No point, we’re nearly there and you’ve not had your tea yet. Get off home there’s a good feller – I’ll see you tomorrow, all right?’

Roddy sighed. ‘All right,’ he agreed resignedly. ‘See you tomorrer, then. Same time, same place?’

‘That’s it. And by then I’ll know whether I’ve got the job, because the interview’s in the morning.’ Linnet paused in her onward flight and turned her face towards him. ‘Wish me luck, our Roddy!’

‘Oh, dammit, good luck, our Linnie,’ Roddy called back. ‘Good luck for the mornin’.’

Roddy watched her out of sight and then turned back towards Peel Square. She was the loveliest thing, his Linnet, but he was so scared of losing her! The trouble was, they’d known each other for too long so she took him for granted, never thought of him as a man but only as the boy who had teased her and taken care of her, alternately bullied and spoilt her. But he didn’t know how to change things, that was the rub. His mam, bless her, was always giving him advice, mostly on the lines that Linnet would take him seriously one day, when there was a bit of distance between them.

So what to do? Linnet made no secret of the fact that she hated his butchering, the smell which hung round him, his whole job, in fact. She had as good as told him to do something different today and of course she was absolutely right, he’d not tried for a job for a year or more. Never, in fact, since Sampson the butcher had taken him on, agreed to train him as a proper, time-served butcher, and begun to pay him a halfway decent wage.

And there were jobs. His father had been a seaman and his reputation had been good. More than once Da had said, almost wistfully, that his lads could do worse than follow in his footsteps. And they always wanted seamen – stokers, deckhands, all sorts – but he’d not looked in that direction because he was afraid of leaving Linnet even for a few weeks, afraid of what he might find when he came back.