The Mersey Girls (3 page)

‘She’ll come back, Da, when she discovers that life isn’t as easy as she thinks,’ Maeve said next morning, expertly frying bacon and eggs in the big black pan whilst her father and the farmhands, Tom Flanagan and his son Kellach, sat with their big mugs of dark tea at the breakfast table. ‘Inside six months she’ll be back home, I’m sure.’

‘She’ll not be welcome here,’ Padraig said at once. ‘A wicked girl she is, and a bad example to her sisters. She’s gone, now she can stay away.’

Clodagh, cutting bread at one end of the table, smiled at her sister, Éanna, who was making the bread into sandwiches and packing them into two lunch-tins. Both girls were tall, buxom and blonde. Clodagh taught at the local school and Éanna worked behind the counter in the town’s only drapery shop, so they usually walked into town together, though Clodagh finished at four while Éanna was not finished until six or later. They were good friends, only a year separating them in age, and Maeve used to wonder whether the twins would be like them when they were older, for the twins, too, were fair-haired.

‘If little Evie does come home she can come to my place, alanna, when Niall and I are wed,’ Clodagh said, cutting a thick slice and handing it to Maeve for frying. ‘Will she come back for the weddin’, I wonder? She could be me attendant and welcome.’

‘She’ll not be welcome here,’ Padraig repeated obstinately. ‘At your own house, Clodagh, I shall have no say, but I won’t have her here.’

‘That’s all right, Father,’ Clodagh said peaceably. She smiled across at Éanna and her sister smiled back. They were placid, pleasant girls, much sought after by the young men of Cahersiveen. Whilst neither was strictly beautiful, as Evie was, the two girls nearest to Maeve in age were acknowledged to be pretty and sweet-natured, and both were engaged to be married to neighbouring farmers’ sons.

‘If she writes with her address, you must tell her to come back for our weddings, Maeve,’ Éanna said comfortably. ‘Sure and I wouldn’t have little Evie missed out for the world.’

Padraig ground his teeth and Tom, drinking tea, looked from one girl to the other over the top of his mug and grinned.

‘Sure an’ you’ll never get the better of a woman, Paddy,’ he said, eyes twinkling. ‘Your Evie’ll be back home in a twelvemonth, mark me words.’

Kellach was a big, quiet young man of about Maeve’s age. He had admired her once, walking her home from school, stopping to chat with her as she worked around the house, but her steadfast refusal to go out with him whilst her sisters needed her had resulted in his looking elsewhere and now it was commonly believed that he had an understanding with a widow who lived six miles away, on the other side of the town. She was ten years older than Kellach if she was a day, but she had a decent farm and at thirty-eight she probably still needed a man. Maeve knew one day she would be sorry that she had not snapped Kellach up whilst she had the chance, but that day was not yet. First it was Clodagh and Éanna who needed her, then Nora and Evie; now she had Lucy to think of. There was simply no time in her busy life to worry about men.

Maeve dished up the breakfasts and watched her father eating with the speed he always showed. He shovelled the food in, packing his mouth with bacon until the grease ran down his chin, wiping spilt yolk with a slice of bread, drinking his tea in big gulps between mouthfuls. The pity of it was, she reflected, that though he was a good farmer, none better, he was always rushing, hurrying to get on. So he seldom praised her meals, though perhaps as the bacon came from the pigs he reared, the eggs from the poultry strutting in the yard outside, even the bread from their own wheat, he might think that to say that the food was good was a form of self-appreciation.

It would have been nice to have been appreciated by her father, but to Padraig Murphy, Maeve was simply a work-horse. A good one, yes, but not valued as she ought to be. It isn’t really fair, because if I were pretty then I’d marry and leave and he wouldn’t like that, Maeve told herself, putting a piece of fried bread and an egg onto her own plate and taking it to her place at the end of the table. Her father was ashamed of her because she had no man sniffing after her, yet he resented the men who came calling after Clodagh, Éanna and Nora, was continually critical of them and obviously more than a little jealous.

‘More tea, Maeve.’

She had only just sat down; Kellach made a half-move, but Clodagh was quicker. She took her father’s mug without a word, refilled it, put it down before him. Once again, Padraig showed by neither word nor gesture that he had been given the tea he had demanded.

‘Get the honey.’

This time Maeve reached the jar down from the dresser without having to move from her chair and stood it with a crack on the table before him. He reached for it, dug his knife into the smooth, amber sweetness, spread it thickly on a round of buttered bread.

‘Lovely manners, Daddy,’ Nora said. She had come into the kitchen softly and reached round her sister for the teapot. ‘Don’t worry, Maeve, I’m not eating breakfast this morning, I’ll just have me a nice, hot cup of tea. Oh, and some bread and honey because I mustn’t be fainting behind the till.’

Nora worked in the town’s only dining rooms and was already clad in her working uniform – a black dress with white collar and cuffs, a rustling white apron and neat low-heeled black shoes. She was golden-haired, like three of her four sisters, and was currently walking out with the schoolmaster, a pleasant, scholarly man in his forties who had never been married and who probably never would be, unless Nora nudged him a little.

Padraig looked up and gave Nora a half-grin; she was his favourite daughter, now that Evie had fallen from favour with such a crash. I was never a favourite, nor ever will be, Maeve thought sadly, though I’m the only one that works at home, slaving to keep the place halfway decent. Still, I’ve no charm, no pretty ways. How can I expect to be anyone’s favourite?

But then she remembered Lucy, sleeping in the cradle upstairs, and a smile curved her lips. Her sisters were lovely and beloved, but she – she had a baby who was as good as her own. She would see that Lucy got the best of everything and when Evie came back, or grew famous, there would be the four of them, closer than friends, staying together for the rest of their lives.

Me Da can be as grumpy as he pleases, and Kellach can court his old widow and go and live in her rich little farm, she told herself, eating her fried bread. The girls can marry their young men and Nora can flirt with the schoolmaster and get prettier and more sought-after by the day together. But what does it matter to us Murphy girls, Maeve and Evie, Lucy and Linnet? We’ll manage fine so we shall, Maeve told herself blissfully. And did not even hear her father’s voice as it ordered her to cut more bread and look lively, woman, we men have got work to do even if you haven’t!

‘Hey, watch out, watch out! Gerrout me wa-a-a-ay!’

Linnet, who had been walking carefully down the snowy pavement on Havelock Street, clutching her messages and thinking wistfully of the hot cup of tea which would await her on her return home, was unwise enough to turn round to see who was shouting, which was how she came to find herself travelling, very fast, along the pavement with a pair of arms clutching her and her bum slithering at incredible speed along the steeply sloping snow-covered flagstones.

The unexpected trip finished with equal suddenness. One moment she and her assailant and a small tin tea-tray were hurtling down Havelock Street, the next they had burst into Netherfield Road and were trying to untangle themselves from a lamp-post whilst a small boy sat on the pavement howling and clutching his knees and a very fat woman belaboured them indiscriminately with a large umbrella.

‘Bleedin’ gipsies!’ the woman shouted, swishing the umbrella in a half-circle and catching Linnet and the would-be tobogganer around their unprotected shoulders. ‘’Ow dare youse ruffians come into a decent neighbourhood like this, a-playin’ your wicked games! As if it ain’t bad enough living ‘alfway up Havelock Street, which is a rare danger in this sorta weather, without bein’ knocked off our feet by kids on bleedin’ tea-trays!’

‘Sorry, missus,’ the boy said, trying to get away from the flailing umbrella. ‘We din’t do it on purpose, it were an accident, we’re hurt, too, me and the little gal, we din’t mean to . . . ouch!’

Linnet struggled to her feet as the woman gave her companion one last, valedictory thump with the umbrella and began to cluck over her small son, leading him up the steep street which she and her companion had just left. Bleakly, Linnet surveyed her string bag and its mangled contents. She had come all this way because Mammy had told her to fetch the new frock Miss Spelman, the dressmaker, had just completed for her, and now look at it! The brown paper was torn and beneath it, the tissue which Miss Spelman had carefully wrapped around it was torn, too, and wet. And she had visited Mammy’s favourite confectionery shop first because the owner had promised to obtain for them some rather special crystallised fruit – Mammy loved crystallised fruit – and now the pretty white package tied with pink ribbon was looking decidedly the worse for wear.

‘Oh me darling, whatever has happened to my parcels?’ Mammy would say, examining the dirty wrapping paper. ‘Did you fall over now in all this miserable snow and slush? I scarcely know how to bear the weather we’ve been having lately, I’m truly tempted to take my friend up on his invitation and go to Paris in the spring, just to get away from Liverpool snow and fogs.’

Mammy never shouted when it wasn’t your fault, that was one good thing. And they were really flush at the moment because Mammy had a good part in the pantomime and her latest admirer, Mr Jackie Osborne, liked to buy special treats and to take Mammy out to dinner after the show. So perhaps it wasn’t terribly serious that the messages had got a little snow and slush on them – by the time she got home the wrapping paper would, in all probability, have dried out and be as good as ever.

So there was no point in standing here wondering what Mammy would say. The fat woman and her son were labouring up Havelock Street now, the woman heaving herself along by clutching at the house-walls whilst the child’s howls had turned to hiccups, but the boy with the tea-tray stood there still, rubbing a scarlet ear and scowling after his attacker.

‘Well, as if I meant to do it!’ he muttered crossly, turning to Linnet. ‘As for you, you wasn’t even on the bloody tray, was you? I should think your knickers is probably ripped to shreds though, comin’ down Havey at that speed.’

Linnet frowned at him. It was rude to talk about knickers, a boy his age should know better. He looked quite a bit older than she, he must be twelve or thirteen she supposed, so he could not pretend that knickers were a suitable subject of conversation between them.

‘I was just walking down the road with my messages,’ she pointed out coldly, ‘when you knocked me off my feet. You could have spoiled my Mammy’s new dress and squashed her crystallised fruit. I think I’d better go now, before anything else happens.’

‘Where d’you live?’ The boy said, falling companionably into step beside her and ignoring her critical tone. ‘I think I might have seen you before somewhere . . . live round these parts, do you?’

Linnet turned her head and surveyed him carefully. Mammy had said not to fall into conversation with strangers, but she had not meant
boys,
surely? Linnet went to a small private school run by the nuns, but boys were everywhere, as common and numerous as the raindrops which spotted the flagstones or the snowflakes which had made all this nasty slush. You could no more avoid boys than you could the rain or the snow, and when one actually spoke to you, you could scarcely pretend not to have heard. That would be rude and Mammy did not like rudeness.

‘Well, will you know me again?’ the boy said, but not nastily, because he was grinning at her as he spoke. He had a nice face, not clean or handsome or anything like that, just nice. He was thin and brown, with a wide grin and grey eyes and there was something about him, some quality of friendliness and concern for others – he had apologised to the woman and had not tried to blame Linnet for the accident, something a less honest boy might well have done – which made Linnet decide to forgive him for knocking her down and muddying her messages.

‘Yes, I’ll know you again,’ she said seriously. ‘I don’t live round here, though. I live on Juvenal Street, in rooms over a shop opposite the back of the fruit market. My name’s Linnet Murphy, what’s yours?’

‘I’m Roddy Sullivan,’ the boy said readily. He stuck out a grimy hand. ‘Well, we’re neighbours, Linnet, ’cos I live in Peel Square; that’s off Cazneau and right near Juvenal. So we’ll walk back together, shall us? Come on, lemme give you a hand with them messages.’

‘It’s all right, I can manage,’ Linnet said, clutching her string bag defensively close. He seemed nice, but you never let a stranger get his hands on your possessions, no matter how friendly he was; she already knew
that
much. ‘Where did you get that tray from, though, and what were you doing coming down Havey like that?’

Havelock Street was famous for its steep slope; the elderly and infirm heaved themselves up it with great difficulty, clutching the walls as they went, but Linnet always felt sorry for coalmen’s horses, who had no hands to help them along and had to risk a tumble and broken knees every time they delivered on Havelock Street.

‘I were sledging, of course, and the tray’s me mam’s . . . well, she works for James Blackledge, on Derby Road, and the tray comes from there . . . an’ Havey’s steeper’n it oughter be when you’re on a tray,’ Roddy explained a trifle defensively. ‘Good thing you and the old woman was there, come to think, or I’d ha’ charged straight out into the middle of the carriageway. Why, I could of been killed stone dead!’

‘It was a mad thing to do,’ Linnet pointed out primly. ‘I daresay you might have been killed, but you might have killed us and all – me, the old lady and the little lad. What’ud you have done then, eh?’

‘I’d’ve run like the divil,’ Roddy said cheerfully. He delved into the pocket of his ragged trousers. ‘Here, want a licky stick?’