The Mersey Girls (43 page)

‘Yes, and because of that I’d never go off and leave you,’ Linnet promised. ‘Not for good, I mean. Ah, I hear a knock – that’ll be my sister.’

‘Good Lord, gel, you never tole me ’er name,’ Mrs Sullivan shouted as Linnet headed for the front door. ‘She ain’t Maeve, is she?’

‘No, Maeve’s our eldest aunt. My sister’s Lucy, Mrs Sullivan, Lucy Murphy, and I love her already. And you’re going to love her, too.’

After her sister had disappeared into Peel Square, Lucy wandered up the street, going from window to window, relaxing at last after the nerve-racking search for Linnet. She had found her sister and, contrary to her expectations, they had really liked each other almost on sight. Linnet, she thought, was grand, just the sort of sister she would have chosen had she had a choice in the matter. Sharing Ivy Farm with some people would have been next to impossible, but sharing with Linnet would be fun, she was sure of it.

Not that she believed Linnet would want to share the farm, because Linnet had already said, in the sweet, shy way which Lucy so admired, that farming was something which neither she nor her feller had ever considered.

‘But there must be a way to divide it so we’re all doing what we want,’ Lucy had said reassuringly. ‘There has to be a way!’

But it was not going to be easy. Before she even left Cahersiveen, Lucy had realised that this very question was likely to arise, so she had closeted herself with her grandfather’s man of business and they had discussed it at length. Mr Eamonnn was a round and cheery little man with a great deal of common sense, and he had told her at once that the farm simply could not afford to pay out half its value to her sister.

‘Farming’s not what it was,’ he said seriously. ‘As ye know, m’dear, there’s a depression on, and it affects farmers worse, in many ways, than other folks. The Murphys have been all right because you feed yourselves from what you produce and sell what’s left over locally, in Caher. Dear old Padraig wasn’t afraid to take a chance, either. You’ve good acreage put down to things not every other farmer produces – your grandaddy grew what would sell – and he wasn’t scared to change things around, to have a go with sheep when everyone else was still fattening cattle. But bigger spreads are havin’ troubles, so they are, because of the competition from the vast farmlands in the United States and the poor wages in other parts of the world. Grain prices have plummeted, but you’ve been growing corn to make your own bread, not trying to export it. Why, in England they can’t sell farmland at any price, but even if you sold, which you’d not find easy, then where would your living come from? For the matter of that, where would you live? I’ve done me best to think of a solution, alanna, but I have to tell you selling up may be the only answer.’

‘If I married Peder I could mebbe take half the land . . .’ Lucy had said without much hope. But Mr Eamonnn was shaking his head.

‘That wouldn’t do, m’dear. Your sister, who knows nothing about farming, would be left with insufficient acreage to live on. She’d still have to employ workers, you see, and the land wouldn’t support ’em. And no one in their right minds would buy half a farm for the same reason. No, you can’t chop Ivy Farm in half wit’out it bleeds to death.’

Lucy had shuddered involuntarily. She could not bear that the place where she had been born and bred should bleed to death.

‘It’s like that Egyptian feller when the two women both said the baby was hers, and he said the only way to settle it was to chop the little baby in half,’ she said. ‘Well, Mr Eamonnn, I’ll prove meself the true mother of me land – I’ll not divide it, I love it too well. I’d rather me sister had it all than let it come to ruin. Have you no suggestions for what the pair of us should do?’

‘You could pay your sister a small yearly income, until the value of her half of the farm was paid off,’ Mr Eamonn said. He sounded doubtful. ‘It wouldn’t be much, at first, because it will take you a while to recover from me old friend Padraig’s death, but if prices pull up, who knows? You might be rid of the debt in twenty years or so.’

‘Twenty years! Well, if that’s the only way . . . thanks for your help, Mr Eamonnn, I’ll bear in mind what you’ve said.’

So now, strolling down Cazneau Street in the bright May sunshine, Lucy had to face facts. She had meant to puzzle over the dividing of the property whilst searching for her sister, but instead she had simply put it right out of her mind. And even now, when she should have been racking her brains for a solution, all she kept thinking was, ‘We’ll get round it somehow,’ and letting her mind go back to the cheerful fact that Linnet was coming to Ireland with her, would see the farm, meet her friends and relatives and would, surely, find a solution to their problem.

Presently, in her wanderings, she found the bookshop and browsed there for a little. She bought some books, tucked them into her string shopping bag, and then continued to walk along, staring in every window as she passed, keeping to the area but not minding which streets she visited. And presently she found a little sweet shop with the legend Kettles’ Confectionery over the door, and hovered in the doorway. She had meant to buy buns but wouldn’t it be a much nicer gesture now, and more appreciated by the young’uns, if she bought some sweeties for the Sullivan children?

The shop was small and dim and behind the counter, squatting on a very tiny stool, was an enormous woman with a pair of spectacles perched on her button nose and a tiny, hard bun of grey hair, lanced with many hairpins, on top of her head. She was reading a newspaper but put it down when Linnet entered and surged to her feet, leaning over the counter and beaming at her customer.

‘Well now, missie, what can I get you? Is it for yourself or for a pal, eh? We’ve gorra good range o’ fancy choc’lit all done up in boxes, but o’ course I allus tell folk to buy ’omemade ’ere, to get the best value.’ She waved an expansive hand at the tall jars on the shelves behind her. ‘Lickrish, annyseed, taffy . . . we makes it all in our boilin’ kitchen we does, an’ you’d go far before you gorrany-thing better.’

‘I’d like two pounds of taffy, please,’ Lucy said recklessly. ‘And could you divide it into six bags?’

‘Oh, aye, course I could.’ The old woman lifted a huge jar of toffee off the shelf and banged it aggressively on the counter; the pieces, which had been firmly stuck together, began to jump apart. The old woman continued to thump the jar on the counter as she spoke until the pieces within were all separated. ‘Aye, this is me best taffy, this. You’ll not gerrany better in the ’ole of Liverpool. Oh aye, an’ you won’t spend a fortune, either, ’cos it’s not ’spensive. Poor but honest, us Kettles, that’s what I always say. Poor but honest.’

She tipped a rattling stream of toffee chunks into her scale pan, then put two one pound weights on the scale and adjusted the flow of toffee until the two hung equal. Then she turned to the shelf behind her, replaced the toffee-jar, and began to tip the pieces, a few at a time, into six conical brown bags.

‘There y’are, queen,’ she said at last. ‘If you gi’ me one and eight we’ll part friends.’ She chuckled again, beaming at Lucy. ‘An’ you won’t get better,’ she added. ‘Poor but honest, us Kettles.’

‘There’s a piece of toffee still on the scale pan,’ Linnet remarked, feeling guilty because the poor old girl plainly had not realised. ‘If you could put it in the last bag . . .’

‘Lor, ’ow could I ’ave missed it?’ the old woman marvelled. She shook her head over her own stupidity and then looked past Lucy to the doorway. ‘Ah, another customer!’

Linnet glanced round but the would-be customer must have walked past and by the time she looked back Mrs Kettle – if indeed the old woman was Mrs Kettle – was carefully placing all the small brown bags in a big brown bag and handing it across the counter. Linnet counted out one and eightpence, thanked the sweetmaker, and left the little shop. She did wonder about trying the toffee, but decided, instead, to make her way to the Lewis Cann tearooms and try their cream cakes.

The cream cakes – and the coffee which accompanied them – were delicious and when she left the tearooms, with a large bag of sugar buns for the Sullivan boys as well as the taffy, she went into Turner’s the Florists and selected some purple, red and white lilac for Mrs Sullivan. The girl in the shop wrapped the stems in pretty paper and charged Lucy what she thought an exorbitant sum, but the scent alone, as the sun fell on the blossom, was worth it. Ivy Farm and the old barn against which the lilac trees bloomed came into her mind so strongly that it was like a visit home and she thought again that the farm was the most important thing in her life, that she could never leave it, not even for Linnet. But if there was no other choice, if they simply had to sell up in order to get a bit of money each, then she supposed that marrying Peder and moving five miles further inland, to Culnagap Farm, would be a good deal better than starving at her own home, or moving far away.

She didn’t remember Mr Sullivan until she happened to pass a tobacconist but then she went inside and bought an ounce of pipe tobacco. Laden, she turned at last towards Peel Square. Imagine living here, she thought as she walked along the crowded pavement of Cazneau Street. Imagine what my sister has had to put up with for all these years . . . it’s lucky I am that I have a choice in the matter, that I can go home to Ireland . . . that a good man wants to marry me for that matter, and has offered me the shelter of his roof.

She dived under the archway into Peel Square. Children covered the paving stones, sat on doorsteps, ran and shouted. They were dirty, badly dressed, underfed, yet Lucy found herself smiling at them. Happiness shone out of their bright, hungry eyes and was clear from every movement as they shouted, chased, shrieked. My sister was right when she said this wasn’t a bad place, Lucy thought as she approached the door of No 16. There’s love here, and a sort of – togetherness. These kids would stick up for each other, fight for each other, if it came to the crunch. There are worse places than Peel Square, very much worse.

Mrs Sullivan was completely won over as soon as Lucy stepped through the doorway with her arms full of lilac, the scent preceding her, warm and strong and full of sunshine.

‘Flowers, for me? Oh, bless me, the scent of ’em! Oh, miss, you don’t know what it means to ’ave flowers, and such lovely colours, so many . . . the smell of ’em . . .’ Mrs Sullivan’s eyes were brimming, she clutched the flowers to her flat bosom, then buried her nose in them. ‘I’ve not ’ad flowers since me weddin’, an’ that’s a few months gone I tell you.’ Still clutching the lilac she hurried over to the sink. ‘They’ve gorra go in deep, cold water, then they’ll keep longer,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Oh, miss, what they must ’ave cost – you shouldn’t ’ave! But I’m that grateful – ain’t they beautiful?’

‘Don’t call her miss, Mrs Sullivan, she’s Lucy,’ Linnet said when she could get a word in edgeways. ‘She’s brought sweets for the boys, too, and some baccy for Mr Sullivan – isn’t she kind?’

‘No I’m not,’ Lucy said at once. ‘It’s making sure of me welcome I am . . . you’re me sister’s favourite person, Mrs Sullivan, and that’s good enough for me so it is.’

Mrs Sullivan turned from the sink. She had put one of the buckets of water on the draining board and had plunged the lilac into it. She smiled from one girl to the other, her cheeks very pink, her eyes bright now and no longer tear-filled.

‘You’re two of a kind, you Murphy gels,’ she said. ‘Or as I said to Linnet, you Mersey girls! Now, let’s ’ave a cuppa whiles you tell me what you’re plannin’. Because you ain’t gettin’ away from ’ere till I knows just when you’re off to Ireland – and when you’re a-comin’ back!’

‘You really did like Mrs Sullivan, didn’t you?’ Linnet said, when the two of them stood on the landing in their boarding house just before making their separate ways to bed. ‘You weren’t just saying it? She was so good to me when Mammy left me. If there is any money, I’m going to see she gets a share. Mr Sullivan’s a nice enough feller, but he was hurt bad in an accident years ago and can’t do much. She does it all, honest to God, she runs that family.’

‘She’s a dear, I really liked her enormously,’ Lucy said reassuringly. ‘I just hope you’ll like our people as well when you meet them. So we’ll buy you a ticket tomorrow, alanna, and we’ll be back in Ireland the day after!’

‘Back in Ireland . . . yes, I suppose it’ll be going back for me, too,’ Linnet mused. ‘Though I wasn’t very old when I left last time! I wish I could have met Grandad – you were very fond of him, weren’t you. And Granny, of course.’

‘I never knew Granny myself,’ Lucy said, rather puzzled. ‘She died before we were born . . . oh, you mean Granny Mogg!’ she laughed. ‘Aye, she was a grand old girl, you’d have liked her. But she wasn’t a relative, alanna, just a tinker who was old and not strong enough to travel the roads any more. I told you about her dying, but I didn’t say much about her living . . . well, she lived in an ancient, ruined castle about half, three-quarters of a mile from Ivy Farm, and Caitlin and I took care of her when – when no one else could. Tinkers don’t like roofs, nor they don’t like buffers – that’s us, Linnet – but Granny Mogg grew fond of Cait and me. And a roof was a necessity, because she’d been terrible ill with a badness in her chest. But there, she lived to a good age and she died in her sleep.’

‘Like our grandad,’ Linnet said contentedly. ‘I’m glad he didn’t suffer, but I still wish I’d known him. Never mind, though, I know you, and I’m going to meet Caitlin, Clodagh, Kellach, Éanna . . . heaps of new people.’

‘And Peder; I’m going to introduce you to Peder,’ Lucy said with a touch of shyness in her voice. ‘I will maybe marry him one of these days. He’s a nice feller, Peder, we’ve known each other for always. It’s may be not a bad thing to marry a feller who tipped tadpoles into your midday milk and tied a live mouse to your plait.’

‘The horror! He sounds like Roddy, my feller, so I ought to be able to tell you if marrying him’s the right thing for you to do. I’m going to write to Roddy when I get into bed and I’ll post it in the morning. Mrs Sullivan thinks he’ll take a voyage out and come over to Ireland, to Cahersiveen, and meet you. And then we’ll talk over what we’re going to do about the farm. But Lucy, dear Lucy, I won’t have you selling up or doing anything like that because I don’t think we need half the farm. Just a tiny bit of cash would be nice, especially if I don’t get a job too quick when I come back here, but I don’t need half the farm.’