A Liverpool Lass (30 page)

By the time she reached the shop the queue stretched across the front of the pawnshop next door but she joined it anyway, accustomed to having to wait to buy food. She whiled away the time by planning what food she would eat if she could have anything she liked and by talking to Lizzie, a girl who lived a couple of doors down from her in the court. The two of them discussed school, jobs and the other girls, but eventually they
reached the doorway, then found themselves actually inside the shop at last.

‘Mornin’, Missie,’ Reggie said as she reached the head of the queue at last and padded across the thick sawdust on the floor towards the big wooden chopping block at one end of the counter. ‘How’s Mrs Threadwell today? Better?’

‘Much better thanks, Mr Foulkes. She’s comin’ home tomorrow,’ Lilac said. ‘Any chance of some stewing meat? She needs building up they say at the ’ospital.’

‘Have you got your D.7? Any coupons left?’ Mr Foulkes said jovially. ‘Give us de card, chuck.’

Lilac handed over the two meat ration cards; because meat was so short and so expensive, she and Auntie seldom used their coupons so there were some left. Mr Foulkes nodded and clipped, then handed the cards back.

‘Right y’are, me dear. Dere’s a grand marrow-bone for you, and a nice big chunk of skirt ... know ’ow to cook it?’

‘Yes. For ages, with carrots, onions and a turnip, if I can get one,’ Lilac said promptly. ‘And water, of course.’

‘Don’t forget the salt, chuck,’ the woman behind her said. She licked her lips. She was short and jolly and came from Cazneau Street. She kept a small sweet shop there; Lilac knew her well though she had not frequented the shop much since Nellie went abroad. ‘Eh, that’ll mek a meal fit for a queen that will.’

‘Aye; and ’ancock’s is sellin’ carrots to kids,’ another would-be meat buyer pointed out. ‘’e’s a good bloke, old ’ancock. Says dere ain’t no oranges for de kids no more, so dey can ’ave de carrots. Nip along dere, chuck ... and don’t forgit de spuds.’

Lilac had more than once taken a ha’penny down to
Hancock’s on Byrom Street and bought a couple of bright, freshly scrubbed new carrots from the proprietor. They were wonderful, tasty and crisp, a real treat when you seldom saw fruit. Apples would be in later, hopefully, but with the war entering its fifth year people were beginning to believe it would never end, so folk tended to hoard food. Most of the apples, Lilac thought wistfully, would be dried or bottled by provident housewives and Aunt Ada had never pretended to be that good a housekeeper.

‘Thanks very much, Mr Foulkes,’ Lilac said politely, as her newspaper-wrapped parcel was handed over. ‘I’ll go to Hancock’s now, then.’

She was lucky at Hancock’s, too. She was given four fine big carrots and a small turnip for her money, though Mrs Hancock had no onions for her.

‘Try William Jones, on Great Homer Street,’ a customer whispered as Lilac turned away. ‘They ’ad onions, earlier. And they’ll likely ’ave spuds an’ all.’

Wearily, Lilac retraced her steps and dived down Wilbraham Street, emerging quite near the greengrocer’s shop. The afternoon was wearing on, and she had not yet made herself anything to eat ... should she take Art’s mother up on the invitation to eat there, this evening? After all, it was not the same as staying there overnight; surely Stuart would quite see that after a busy day shopping and cleaning, it would be better for her to eat with the O’Briens?

She queued again and secured four large potatoes and two onions and was about to leave the shop when it occurred to her that it might be a nice gesture to take Mrs O’Brien something. Not the stew ingredients which she had so carefully bought, but something. She looked around her. The man behind the counter, in his grey overall with a stained apron over it, looked at her
impatiently. The queue was long and no doubt he wanted his tea. It would have been nice to take Mrs O’Brien some potatoes but she had already had all she was entitled to in that line; what should it be? Finally, she asked the man behind the counter.

‘This is for my aunt’s dinner tomorrow, is there anything I can ’ave for tonight? Me mate’s mam is givin’ me a meal.’

The man cast round him and seized a big, rather nibbled looking cabbage.

‘This’ll do; tuppence,’ he said briefly.

Lilac handed over the pennies and hooked the cabbage under one arm. Auntie’s shopping sack was already too full and besides, there were caterpillars clearly visible on the outer leaves of the cabbage. Lilac did did not want them in her bag, burrowing into her lovely clean carrots.

She hurried back along Wilbraham Street and then into the Scotland Road. The sack was heavy and the cabbage seemed to weigh a ton. She was very relieved when she saw Art idling along the flagstones ahead of her.

‘Hoy! Art, gi’s a hand,’ she shouted.

Art turned, then grinned.

‘Wotcher, wack,’ he said. ‘Cor, what’ve you got there?’

‘Shopping,’ Lilac said briefly, and then, as Art took the sack from her, she added, ‘The cabbage is for your mam; is it all right if I come to tea?’

‘Course,’ Art said. ‘She’ll like the cabbage. Want to stay over?’

Lilac shook her head. Stuart had been adamant that she should spend this one night alone, though he was quite will-ing for her to get Sukey round, or even Lizzie, if she was nervous.

‘No, it’s all right, Art. I’m goin’ to get the place redded up for Auntie.’

Art accepted this and presently, helped her to unload her sack of food into the rickety sideboard in the living room, then watched as Lilac brushed her hair, rinsed the cabbage and potato stains from her hands and finally, turned towards the court once more.

‘Me mam don’t set much store by washin’,’ he said as they crossed the flags. ‘But your Nellie does, don’t she?’

‘Yes, she does. And Aunt Ada,’ Lilac said.

‘Hmm. You looks better for it,’ Art admitted. ‘Wish our Etty ’ud try it.’

‘I expect she will, when she’s older,’ Lilac said. Ethel was Art’s ten-year-old sister. In a neighbourhood not renowned for the cleanliness of its children she was known as ‘mucky Etty’, and Lilac had observed on occasion that the child’s hands were so black that she could have been wearing gloves. To say nothing of the tiny movements in her thick, greasy mop of hair, nor the fleabites on her skinny arms. ‘Girls care more, when they get on a bit.’

‘Mebbe.’ Art moved ahead of her, to push open the half-shut door of his home. ‘Mam, we’ve gorra visitor!’

Mrs O’Brien was sitting in a collapsed chair, her legs spread so that her skirt formed a basket. She was engaged in pulling to pieces what looked like tiny white cylinders and putting the contents into her lap, then tossing the dismembered cylinders onto the floor at her side.

‘She’s fag-endin’,’ Art said, seeing Lilac’s surprised look. ‘You can git a bob for a decent pile of ’bacca, eh, Mam?’

He sounded proud of his mother’s foresight and economic ways.

‘Aye, that’s right, chuck,’ Mrs O’Brien said absently. She looked up at Lilac, her gaze flat and uninterested, then she caught sight of the cabbage. ‘Well, now, what’ve you got there?’

‘It’s a cabbage, for you,’ Lilac said, holding it out. ‘Art said I could come over for me tea, so I thought ...’

Mrs O’Brien heaved herself to her feet and reached for the cabbage. She smiled at Lilac, showing small and surprisingly white teeth, though there were several gaps through which Lilac could see the fat scarlet cushion of her tongue.

‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘I gorra pot of water on the stove now; I’ll put this in, with the spuds.’

She picked up a large, rusty knife from beside the hearth, dealt the cabbage a blow which split it neatly in two, and then before Lilac could say a word, popped it into the blackened pot on the stove and reached for a lid.

‘Oh, Mrs O’Brien, there was caterpillars ...’ Lilac began, but Mrs O’Brien had returned to her task of retrieving tobacco from the fag-ends and did not look up.

‘Caterpillars? Oh well, the ’ot water’ll kill ’em orf,’ she said placidly. ‘Get the pots on the table, Art.’

Art obeyed and Lilac helped, casting occasional looks around the room as she did so.

Mucky Etty was already sitting up to the table, feeding a fat, dirty baby with what looked like bread and milk. She grinned cheerfully at Lilac when she saw her looking, then shovelled another spoonful of food into the baby’s mouth.

‘Just givin’ Freddy ’is pobs,’ she announced cheerfully. ‘Wotcher, Li. You goin’ to sleep over ’ere tonight, then?’

Lilac shook her head, trying not to glance disparagingly at the flyblown living room, the naked toddler under the table playing with Art’s collection of
bottletops, the baby perched on Mucky Etty’s inadequate knee grizzling for more food.

‘No, there’s too much still to do at ’ome, before Auntie can come back. But Art asked me to tea ... I brought a cabbage.’

‘You’re sleepin’ there alone, then, tonight? That feller of Nellie’s gone, ’as ’e?’

That was Mrs O’Brien. Lilac opened her mouth to answer but Art, standing nearby, gave her arm a sharp pinch.

‘Stuart, d’you mean?’ Art said. His tone was casual, as though what he said hardly mattered at all. ‘Sailin’ tomorrer, on the tide.’

‘Ah, I see. And I daresay Miz Threadwell’s comin’ ’ome tomorrer, too?’

‘That’s it,’ Art said. ‘Come on, Lilac, you put round the eatin’ irons.’

It was an odd meal. Lilac could not make out why Art had lied, but she realised he knew his mother – and the rest of the family – a good deal better than she did. So she went along with the fiction that Stuart would be returning to No. 11 later that evening and ate her tea, caterpillars and all, with as much enthusiasm as she could muster. Which, since the cabbage was by far the largest single item in the stew and water the main ingredient, was quite hard work.

What was more, she was disturbed by the way Mrs O’Brien kept looking at her. Speculatively, as though she thought ... what exactly did she think, anyway? That Lilac might have lied about Stuart? Well, she had, but it couldn’t be that. She looks, Lilac finally decided, as though she thinks I could do something for her, but isn’t sure I will.

The children were friendly, though. The little boys clambered all over her and asked for stories and Mucky Etty said wistfully that if Lilac ever grew out of that nice skirt and blouse ...

Lilac, who was wearing her oldest things because lugging a heavy sack of provisions did not do much for your clothes, widened her eyes a little but assured Etty that when she was done with them she would pass them on.

Etty looked round the room like a hunted convict, evidently saw that her mother was safely out of earshot and leaned closer to Lilac. A strong, ammoniac smell made Lilac’s eyes water, but she smiled encouragingly at the younger girl.

‘What is it m ... Etty?’

‘Don’t tell ’er when you’ve done with ’em, else she’ll ’ave them off me and down to Uncle’s before you can say knife. Just tip me the wink, see?’

‘Right,’ Lilac agreed, nodding. It was true that Aunt Ada, when she had been desperate for drink, popped the clock, her own best coat, a variety of hats and even once a sack of coal that Lilac had painfully gleaned, but to pawn the poor, patched clothes on a child’s back? For the first time it occurred to Lilac that perhaps it wasn’t entirely Etty’s fault that she was so mucky. Lilac had noticed, when she and Etty washed up the pots after their inadequate meal, that there was very little hot water and no soap or scouring material. And the children, even Art, had eaten the tasteless mess doled out onto their plates as though it was food fit for a king.

‘Oh, Lilac!’ Etty’s filthy little face shone. ‘Oh, you are kind – no wonder our Art finks you’re the cat’s whiskers!’

The conversation had to finish there as Mrs O’Brien came back from visiting the privy in the yard. Lilac hastily got to her feet.

‘I better go, now,’ she said rather awkwardly. ‘Thanks for the tea, Mrs O’Brien.’

‘No need to go yet, chuck,’ Mrs O’Brien said. ‘Best wait for Stuart.’

‘She can’t. Gawd knows what time ’e’ll get back,’ Art said stoutly. ‘C’mon, gal, I’ll see you ’ome.’

They walked side by side but in silence across the court until they reached number eleven, then Lilac opened the door and peered rather anxiously inside. She did not know what she feared, she just felt that she did not want to be left alone in the dark, or semi-dark, of the low-ceilinged little room.

‘Art ... can you come in for a bit, just while I light the lamp?’ she said hopefully. ‘I’ll be fine once it’s lit, honest to God.’

‘Course,’ Art said, following her in. ‘Here, I’ll light it if you show me where the matches are.’

‘On the mantel,’ Lilac said. ‘There’s a candle somewhere ... ah, got ’em!’

Triumphantly she handed Art a stump of candle and one of the fat, red-tipped sulphur matches which Aunt Ada always kept behind the clock. ‘Can you manage?’

‘Course,’ Art said again. He scraped the match briskly along the roughness of the black-leaded grate and quickly applied the flame to the candle. Then he held the candle out to Lilac.

‘Hold this whiles I do the lamp,’ he said. ‘Is there oil in it awready?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ Lilac said. ‘I’m sure Stuart would have filled it before he went. Art, why did you ... ?’

‘I thought it best,’ Art said, understanding at once, without further explanation, just what Lilac meant. ‘Me mam ... she can be funny, sometimes. I ’eard ’er talkin’ to Miz Butterworth from the back-to-backs on
Chaucer Street. Seemed to me you’re best in your own place.’

‘She doesn’t like me much, I know,’ Lilac began, but was swiftly interrupted.

‘Like? Like’s just what she
do
do, that’s the trouble. I reckon she’d tek advantage of you, chuck. Still, Ada’s back tomorrer, eh?’

‘Yes, tomorrow,’ Lilac echoed. She looked around her, at the room already growing cosy in the lamplight. It no longer seemed cold or sinister, it seemed like home. ‘Well, I’ll go up now, I reckon. I’ll take the lamp with me and tomorrow, early, I’ll light the fire for Auntie.’

‘You do that. Tell you what, I’ll come over an’ give you an ’and,’ Art said. ‘Mam’ll be busy with the kids, she won’t miss me.’

‘And tomorrow you must have tea with me an’ Auntie,’ Lilac said. For the first time, perhaps, she looked closely at Art. He had grown tall without her noticing, and lean, too. Did he get enough to eat? It seemed unlikely, after her experience earlier that evening in the O’Brien household. ‘We’ve gorra beef stew!’