A Liverpool Lass (6 page)

Miss Flora Hicks, who taught the nine-year-olds, stood in front of the class, a piece of chalk in her right hand, a switch in her left, and glared at Lilac Larkin – who glared right back, standing defiantly up in her seat, her eyes sparkling.

‘I won’t tek the ribbon off! It’s
my
ribbon, Nellie give it me, it’s to keep my pigtail tidy!’

Miss Hicks tightened her mouth, then crossed the room in three or four long strides. She looked downright dangerous, Lilac thought apprehensively, with her mean face blotched with red and her mouth turned down at the corners and tight as a trap, yet why should she, Lilac, be afraid of her teacher? She had done nothing wrong, it was just because she was new to the class that old Hicksy was picking on her. And she’d tell Nellie, that she would, and then old Hicksy would be sorry!

Right now, however, Miss Hicks did not look sorry for anything – not even for her small victim. She grabbed Lilac by the brown serge shoulder and shook her briskly, then snatched the offending pink ribbon from the end of the child’s long, red-gold plait, scrumpling up the smooth satin and shoving it viciously into the pocket of her long black skirt.

‘You’ll wear brown ribbon, the same as everyone
else,’ she said grimly. ‘I might have known – it all started when you gadded off to a wedding with that servant-girl, and her no better than she should be – I might have guessed it would mean trouble, defiance, lack of respect. And after the wedding it was “can she come here, can I take her there,” until you got thoroughly above yourself. Well you might have got away with behaviour like that in Miss Maria’s class, but not here, Miss. It’ll be no tea for you tonight, and early bed.’

Lilac didn’t care about her tea, which was always uninspiring bread and thinly spread rhubarb jam, nor about going early to bed, but she cared about her ribbon. She steeled herself for trouble.

‘I didn’t know I wasn’t to wear it,’ she said. She had meant to sound apologetic but the words somehow came out defiant. ‘I want my ribbon back, now, then I’ll put it in
my
pocket.’

Above her, the teacher smiled nastily. From her lowly position Lilac could see straight up the woman’s large, cutaway nostrils. It was not a pretty sight and nor was the curl of her lip when she heard Lilac’s words.

‘Oh, you will, will you? Well that’s where you’re wrong, you stuck-up little brat!’ She gave Lilac a hard shove. ‘Get back to your seat and put your hands on your head. Stay there until I tell you to move.’

Commonsense and self-preservation told Lilac to do as she was told. Unfortunately, she did not listen to either, since she was now in a furious rage herself. She had done her best for a whole term to learn to live with Miss Hicks and to fit in with the rest of the class, but it was so different from life lived in the infants, with kind Miss Maria and Nellie always on hand! She liked reading and doing sums, but she did not like being bullied and shouted at and reviled day after day, and
Miss Hicks was about to find out just how little she liked it.

Stumbling back to her seat she sat down, put her hands on her head and then said clearly, ‘Please may I have my ribbon back, Miss Hicks?’

‘No. You won’t see that again,’ Miss Hicks said calmly, but with a gloating note in her voice. ‘Don’t let me hear another word about the ribbon, Lilac, or you shall get six strokes of the cane on either hand.’

‘If you don’t give it back,’ Lilac said, voice trembling, ‘then you’re a thief.’

It had been quiet in the room whilst the altercation went on, but for a moment you could have heard a pin drop. No one, Lilac was sure, so much as drew breath. And then Miss Hicks flew across the room, her black skirt flapping round her skinny ankles, her big feet in their stout and sensible boots clumping hard on the floor, and dragged Lilac out of her chair. She tried to turn her over the desk but Lilac, divining her intention, squiggled and wriggled and fought, and in the end took the cane wherever Miss Hicks could place it, which was in vicious cuts across her arms, legs and one cheek whilst Lilac tried to snatch the piece of ribbon she could see just showing in the teacher’s skirt pocket.

It was a good deal more than a dozen strokes later that the woman thrust her pupil back into her seat and moved away from her.

‘May that be a lesson to you,’ she said in a thick, shaking voice. ‘Children, get on with your work.’

Nellie was setting the tables for tea and singing softly to herself as she did so. The work at the Culler Orphan Asylum was hard, but towards teatime there came a lull when tables were laid, bread cut, jam served out
into dishes and milk and water in tall jugs placed at the head of each long table. Nellie enjoyed setting tea, knowing that very soon Lilac would be out of her class and on her way through for the meal. Of course it had been nicer when Lilac had still been in the infants, but when she left it and came into the school proper there had been no particular objection to Nellie’s insistence that she, too, should move on.

‘You’ve been a great help with the little ones,’ Miss Maria had said wistfully. ‘I always hoped you’d stay ... you’re such a hard worker, Nellie my dear. But I mustn’t be selfish.’

Nor had she been. She had told Mrs Ransom that Nellie McDowell was a pearl beyond price and advised the matron to keep her at all costs, even if it did mean a change around whenever Lilac Larkin was moved up the school.

Mrs Ransom was not a sympathetic or an understanding woman, but she did know upon which side her bread was buttered. Nellie had taken considerable pains with herself this last year, ever since she and Lilac had gone home to Coronation Court for Charlie McDowell’s wedding. She spoke more carefully and seemed anxious to tone down the nasal Liverpudlian accent which she had heard – and indeed, used – almost all her life.

It had occurred to Mrs Ransom that Nellie would make a considerable impression on anyone who might be thinking of endowing the orphan asylum. To produce a servant girl who was pretty and fresh looking, who worked harder than any other member of the staff and who had a pleasant speaking voice ... well, Mrs Ransom was sure Nellie could charm a good deal of money out of benefactors’ pockets, if only she could be prevailed upon to talk to the people who mattered.

And Nellie could be prevailed upon to do just that, in return for what amounted to a promise that she might remain with Lilac until the younger girl was old enough to leave the Culler. Indeed, at a recent board meeting Nellie had served the tea and Henry Harrison, a very important member, had praised her pleasant manners and stumped up a money-order to buy much-needed text books for the younger children.

So here was Nellie, setting the tea and singing
Danny Boy
and telling herself that she was thinking of Lilac and how they would read together before bed, while all the time she was really thinking about Davy Evans and the
Moelfre Maid
.

A year had passed since that memorable night when Davy had lifted her through the kitchen window and she had only seen him three times since, but they wrote letters whenever they could and she thought about him almost all the while. He was cleverer than she, as clever, possibly, as she believed Lilac would become – what other child of seven could read as well as a nine-year-old and do sums that baffled even older children? – and he spoke two languages, Welsh and English, and was learning French in his spare time, what there was of it.

She knew so much about him now! He was the son of elderly parents, his father was bedridden and his mother was a saint. She must be, to cope with his father and also with his brother Dickie, who had been born to Mrs Evans when she was fifty years old. Dickie was slow, Davy told her. Simple. He needed a good deal of help just to get through each day, but they loved him very much and he was so loving back that it was a pleasure to do things for him.

Davy and Nellie were courting, of course, though no one knew. Well, perhaps Lilac guessed, because she
was a shrewd little creature, but no one else had any idea. Even Hal, who knew Davy liked to come into Liverpool so he could visit a lady-friend, did not know precisely who the lady-friend was.

It wasn’t that they tried to keep it a secret, either. But for now they were neither of them in any position to marry, Davy with his family and Nellie with her Lilac, so they must be content to get to know one another, and very pleasant they found it, strolling by the river in the autumn dusk and then walking inland, arms entwined, with the smell of roasting chestnuts in the air and a frost nipping at your nose and sending the bright leaves tumbling down from the trees in St John’s gardens.

Because she was writing to Davy, who wrote in a fine, sloping hand, Nellie began to pay more attention to her own handwriting. She and Lilac worked together, evenings, to make their writing better, and Nellie found that, in reading stories to Lilac and reading Davy’s letters to herself, her reading improved, too. And then there was that first exciting meeting, to be relived in bed at night, when it was growing cold in her attic and the bed trembled to her shivers until she managed to get some warmth out of her thin blanket. Later, when the cold became almost unendurable, she and Lilac would share Nellie’s truckle bed with all the blankets piled on top of them and that was lovely and snug, with their arms round each other and the child’s sweet breath on her face.

The only trouble was that it was strictly forbidden, so Nellie had to sneak Lilac out of her dormitory and up to the attic, and then down again next morning, when she got up in the chilly pre-dawn dark, but though the other children certainly knew, no one told. They all had their little secrets, Nellie supposed, and
were content to allow others to make the best of things so far as they were able.

Nellie’s second meeting with Davy had been just before Christmas. They wandered round Lewis’s, a wonderland of coloured lights, tinsel and Christmas trees with cottonwool snow, and bought each other a gift: socks for Davy, gloves for Nell. He called her Nell, said Nellie wasn’t right for her, kissed her beneath the mistletoe, cuddled her up warm against his rough serge dufflecoat and told her about his family Christmas. A goose, cooked to a crackling golden brown, a pudding all aflame, after dinner a walk along the shore to pick up driftwood for the fire, then home for tea – ham from the family pig slaughtered at the backend of each year, baked apples stuffed with sultanas, and a fruit cake, rich and soggy. Games round the fire, an aunt playing the piano whilst the family sang the old songs until it was time for bed.

Just being loved by Davy had made her Christmas marvellously merry; she thought of the Evans in their cottage and knew Davy would rather be with her – had he not said so? She and Lilac laughed about everything: the non-existent presents for the children, save for coloured texts handed out by the board of governors, the meagre dinner with a tiny slice of overcooked bird and the thin gravy, the pudding which was nearly all bread and suet.

Besides, after that they went back to Coronation Court and had their tea with the family, and Charlie’s Bessie felt queasy when the pudding came round and Charlie blushed and they all made jokes and even Nellie realised at last that Bessie was pregnant, and promised to knit a nice woolly coat for Baby McDowell.

Thinking of Christmas and the kiss under the mistletoe made Nellie think about Davy’s last visit, an
April visit when he had brought Lilac a beautiful hoop and taught her to bowl it along the pavement with a little stick; how the three of them had laughed over the antics of that hoop with Lilac in charge, how it had reeled like a drunk, dizzying slowly along the pavement until it tipped into the gutter, spinning round slower and slower until it dropped with a clatter.

Davy had been in Liverpool for two whole days, and each evening she had managed to see him. They had watched the Punch & Judy outside the St George’s Hall, shouting encouragement to the Toby dog, the Crocodile, anyone. They had gone to the Gem, Nellie’s first visit to a picture house, and watched Mary Pick-ford and Owen Moore in a film called
Caprice
, whilst holding hands in the dark. After a while Davy put his arm round Nellie and she leaned her cheek on his shoulder. In the interval they ate cream ices and bought salted peanuts to take home to Lilac, who was denied the treat because she was too young, Miss Maria thought, for evening outings.

And now it was summer again, the July weather proving warm and pleasant. And Davy would surely be docking in Liverpool soon, to load his coaster, and they would meet, and kiss ... her whole body shivered with delighted anticipation. How she loved him, how she longed for his presence, that slow, delightful smile, the way his hair curled tightly, the nice shape of his head ...

A bell rang sharply somewhere and Nellie, abruptly restored to the present, made for the kitchen to collect the last jug of watered milk. Tonight, she thought, Lilac and me will practise our times-tables and then I’ll read to her from
Simple Susan
and we can do a bit of writing if I can find some spare paper, somewhere. Tomorrow I must be nice to the postman, just in case there’s a letter, and smile at the paper boy, because he
sometimes finds us scraps of newsprint without writing on. And at the weekend we’ll go back home, me and Lilac, to see if Bessie’s had the baby yet ... I’ll take my knitting ... oh goodness, school’s out ... run, Nellie!

‘Mrs Ransom, I’m real worried; Lilac never come for her tea and one of the girls said Miss Hicks had kept her late for ... well, for something she done wrong. So I went to the classroom, only to see, like, but there was no sign of Lilac. When I found Miss Hicks she said she’d sent her to bed, but young Mary Bliss said as how Miss Hicks had laid into Lilac with her stick, marked her right across her poor little face, and the child’s disappeared, Mrs R, really she has. I told Miss Maria and we’ve searched high and low, but she’s not in the house!’

Nellie heard her own words tumbling one over the other in her haste and worry, heard her accent thickening, and was simply past caring. She just knew that something awful had happened to Lilac and all because she, Nellie, had been too busy mooning over a young man to take immediate alarm when Lilac had not appeared at tea-time! She might love Davy Evans – well, she thought she did – but she could not love anyone more than she loved Lilac and now the child was missing! But Mrs Ransom’s large face did not reflect the worry that Nellie assumed she would feel.