The Girl From Barefoot House (2 page)

‘But you saw his photo,’ Josie prompted.

‘So I did, Petal.’ Mam grinned. ‘You remember this word for word, don’t you? Yes, his photo was on the mantelpiece in Machin Street.’

‘And he was very handsome?’

‘Very handsome indeed, my Petal. Tall, well built, with brown hair same as yours and mine and the same dark blue eyes. Not that I could tell the colours from the photo, like, but that’s what me poor mam told me.’

‘Poor Mam died of a broken heart,’ Josie said sadly.

‘More or less.’ Mam shrugged. ‘She was Irish, too, from the same village, and she’d known him all her life. Six years afterwards, she went to meet her maker. Our Ivy was eighteen by then, and it was her that brought me up. She was more like a mother than me real one. Until she married Vincent Adams, that is. I were twelve by then. Here’s your cocoa, luv. Mind you don’t spill it.’ Mam’s blue eyes glittered angrily. ‘Three years later, she chucked me out, though she’d no right. It was a bought house, and every bit as much mine as hers. It was the only bought house in Machin Street, and the first to have electricity,’ she went on grandly. ‘All the rest were rented.’

‘Why did she chuck you out, Mam?’ Josie asked curiously. The story always got rather vague at about this time.

‘She thought I’d done something wrong, but I hadn’t. Someone else had done the wrong, but I was the one who got the blame. I was the one who wandered the streets, looking for a place to live, getting chucked out over and over once they realised me condition.’

‘It was then you found Maude downstairs.’

‘No, luv, it was Maude downstairs who found me. I’d collapsed in a back entry not far from here, and was waiting for a miracle to happen. It was Maude who brought me to her room downstairs so the miracle could happen somewhere nice and warm.’

‘
Me
was the miracle,’ Josie said contentedly.

‘The miracle of miracles, that’s my Petal, and it’s “I”, not “me”. Now, if you’ve finished your cocoa, it’s time we lay down and went to sleep. That party downstairs sounds as if it’s going on all night. Do you want to use the po first?’

‘No, ta, Mam. I used it just before you came in.’

‘Well, I do.’ Mam got out of bed and pulled the po from underneath. ‘I hope Teddy’s got his eyes closed. It’s not done for a gentleman to see a lady using the chamber pot.’

‘He’s fast asleep, but I’ll put me hand over his face, like, just to make sure.’

‘Ta, Petal, but be careful not to smother him, mind.’

Mam snuffed out the candle and got into bed. ‘Turn over, luv. Sit on me knee, like. It’s the comfortablest way.’

They lay like that for quite a while, and Josie felt as if they’d become one person as Mam’s heart beat against her own, and she could feel the warm breath on her neck. She could tell that Mam was still awake.

‘Mam?’ she whispered.

‘Yes, luv?’

‘Another miracle’s going to happen one day, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right,’ Mam murmured huskily. ‘Like I said, by the time you’re ready for school, Mam’ll be off the drink, I swear it. I’ll get a proper job, and we’ll get a proper little house between us. You and me will stay together nights, not like now. I’m glad it was Maude who found
me in that entry, not some sanctimonious snob like our Ivy who would have had you taken away. But Maude wasn’t exactly a good influence on a girl of fifteen. She got me this room and set me on a road I would never have followed otherwise, the only road she knew. Still, I’m not sorry about the way things turned out.’ The voice got huskier, became a sob. Josie felt Mam’s arm tighten around her waist. ‘Well, not sorry much.’

Blackler’s basement was an Aladdin’s cave of dazzling and exceedingly tempting bargains. Mam was greatly taken with a flowered china teapot with a slightly misshapen lid and a hand-embroidered Irish linen tablecloth with nothing obviously wrong with it at all. The cheapest tray they found was brown Bakelite and rather ugly, but only elevenpence ha’penny. Mam said she’d cut a rose out of her flower book and glue it in the middle. ‘Then it’ll look dead pretty.’ She was fond of decorating things with flowers from her book.

‘You know, Petal,’ she said thoughtfully as she paused in front of the cutlery, ‘a new bread-knife wouldn’t come amiss. Our one’s so blunt it makes the bread all crumbly. They’re only a tanner, ’cos the handles have got a chip out the wood.’ She picked up several lethal-looking knives until she found the one with the least chipped handle. ‘You can hardly count this as an extravagance.’

The shop assistant put the goods in a paper bag, and they were quickly making their way towards the exit because Mam was worried she’d spend money she hadn’t got when a voice said, ‘Why, if it isn’t Mabel Flynn.’

Mam went very red and nearly dropped the tray. ‘Mrs Kavanagh. Hello,’ she said awkwardly.

‘You’re looking well, luv.’

‘Ta,’ Mam gulped.

Mrs Kavanagh seemed exceptionally nice, and Josie couldn’t understand why Mam was so embarrassed. She was small and plump, with a round, kind face, pink, cushiony cheeks and brown eyes that shone with good humour. Her blue coat was extremely smart. It had a fur collar and fur buttons, and she wore a little blue veiled hat made from the same material as the coat tipped precariously over her right eye. Her hair was brown and tightly waved. Josie waited to be introduced. It was the first thing Mam did when they met someone new. ‘This is Josie, me little girl,’ she would say proudly. Today, though, Mam said nothing.

‘How’s the job going, girl?’ Mrs Kavanagh asked kindly.

‘The job?’ Mam faltered. She was holding Josie’s hand so hard it hurt. ‘All right, I suppose.’

‘I was surprised to hear you’d given up Bailey’s Chemists – wasn’t Mrs Bailey teaching you to dispense the prescriptions? – to become a live-in nanny, but according to your Ivy you love it there. Where is it over the water, luv? I forget now.’

‘Er, Greasby.’

‘And I suppose this is one of your little charges.’ The woman beamed at Josie.

‘Yes. Oh, yes. This is Josie.’

‘You’re very pretty, Josie.’ She bent down and took Josie’s hand. ‘How old are you?’

‘I’ll be four in May.’

‘I’ve got a little girl who’ll be four next week. Her name is Lily, and she should be standing right beside me, except she’s wandered off, as usual. Lily,’ she called. ‘Lily, where are you?’

Mam seemed to have found her voice. ‘I didn’t know you’d had another baby, Mrs Kavanagh.’

‘Well, five’s an uneven number, luv. Me and Eddie decided to make it six, but that’s our lot. I’d’ve thought your Ivy would’ve told you on one of her visits. Oh, here she is, our Lily. Come on, luv, say hello to Josie here.’

A girl came bouncing up, a mite smaller than Josie. She was very like her mam, with bright pink cheeks and sparkling eyes. Her slightly darker hair fell to her waist in a mass of tiny waves. To Josie’s surprise, her coat was exactly the same as her mother’s – blue with fur buttons and collar. She wore a different sort of hat, a bonnet tied under her chin.

‘Hello, Josie,’ the girl said obediently. Her face was alive with mischief.

‘Hello.’ Josie twisted her body shyly. She wasn’t used to children, and had never had a friend. Mam had been the only friend she’d ever wanted, but she would have quite liked to get to know Lily Kavanagh.

However, that was not to be, because Mam said in a rush, ‘We’d better be getting back to Greasby. I only came over to do a bit of shopping, seeing as it was such a nice day, like. Come on, Josie.’

Mrs Kavanagh looked disappointed. ‘I thought we could have a little natter over a cup of tea and a scone. I’ve missed you in the street, Mabel. Everyone has.’

‘That would have been the gear, Mrs Kavanagh, but I really must get back.’

‘Oh, well, some other time, then. Tara, luv. Tara, Josie. Where’s your manners, our Lily? Say tara.’

Lily’s eyes gleamed impishly at Josie. ‘Tara.’

‘It’s not fair. Oh, it’s not fair a bit,’ Mam raged as they
walked quickly out of Blackler’s into the bright spring sunshine. Her face was very red. Josie had to run to keep up, and kept bumping into people on the crowded pavements. A shopping basket nearly sent her flying. ‘As if I’d’ve given up me good job in Bailey’s to be a nanny, for God’s sake. But I suppose our poor Ivy had to come up with something to explain why I wasn’t there no more. After all, I was forced to think up all sorts of lies meself, else the truth might have killed the poor woman. Mind you, I never thought she’d turn against me the way she did. She’s me sister, after all. I thought she’d stick by me.’

‘Mam!’ Josie panted. She had a stitch in her side, and felt confused. What on earth was Mam on about? Which poor woman might the truth have killed?

‘I’m sorry, Petal. Am I going too fast for you? I’m the worst mam in the whole world.’ She slowed down considerably, but remained just as angry. ‘I’m glad we were all done up in our best gear and I had me beret on, not that horrible brown thing. Did you see the lovely coats they had on? Mollie will have made them, as well as them dead smart hats. She makes all the kids’ clothes, including the boys’. Mr Kavanagh – Eddie, that is – owns the haberdashers by Woolworths in Penny Lane, so she gets the material cheap, like. She was ever such a good friend when I was little. I used to have me tea in their house until our Ivy came home from work. Their Stanley’s only three years younger than me.’ She stopped dead in the middle of the street. ‘I would have liked a cup of tea and a natter, I really would, but I was scared she’d guess what’s what.’

‘What is what, Mam?’

‘Never mind.’ Mam sighed. ‘You should be wearing coats like Lily’s, not other kids’ cast-offs from Paddy’s
market. There was money left, hundreds of pounds, and half of it were mine. Mollie Kavanagh made the frock for me first Holy Communion, something you’ll be needing yourself in the not too distant future, and where are we going to get
that
from, I’d like to know?’

Josie had no idea. Nor did she know why the day, which she had anticipated being so enjoyable, should have turned so sour, all because they’d met nice Mrs Kavanagh and her daughter, Lily.

Then the day became even worse. Mam noticed they were standing outside a pub. She said, ‘Hang on a minute, Petal. If I don’t down something quick to calm me nerves, I’m likely to bust a blood vessel. Sit on the step, luv. I’ll be out again in the twinkling of an eye.’

True to her word, Mam was only a short while in the pub, and when she came out she looked much calmer. But she had claimed that drinking was a curse, that she was determined to stop altogether so she could get a job and a little house. This was the first time Josie had known her to drink during the day.

Josie had been at Our Lady of Mount Carmel elementary school a year when Britain declared war on Germany, and everyone began to make a desperate fuss about things. But apart from food rationing and people having to wear gas masks over their shoulders, war made little difference to their lives as far as Josie could see. All the windows had crisscross tape to protect against bomb damage – not that anyone thought there was the remotest chance that bombs would fall. Tall Kate and fat Liz had ‘pulled themselves together’ and gone down
south to work in a factory making parts for aeroplanes. But Josie and her mam remained in Huskisson Street, where these days there were always a few bottles of stout kept in the sideboard cupboard, and the little house hadn’t been mentioned in a long while.

Josie didn’t mind, not very much. They still went to Princes Park and for rides on the ferry. She liked school, and could read quite well. Night-times, when Mam was out – and she was out longer and longer these days – she looked through books with Teddy and taught him the words she knew.

After the war started, Mam’s visitors were mainly young men in uniform – some gave Josie a penny, or even a threepenny bit, as they were leaving. She put the money in a cocoa tin to save up for a house.

On the last day of the summer term, the children were allowed home early. They whooped out of the gates, blissfully excited at the thought of no more school for six long weeks. Josie ran all the way home, burst into the house and was halfway up the first flight of stairs when Irish Rose emerged from her ground-floor room. She was a tiny woman – ‘petite’ Mam called her – with lovely ginger hair, and would have been dead pretty if she hadn’t had such a dreadful squint.

‘Josie,’ she called urgently. ‘Come in with me a minute, luv. Your mam’s got someone with her. She wasn’t expecting you just yet.’

‘Why can’t I wait on the stairs, like always?’ Josie hadn’t realised Mam had visitors while she was at school.

‘I think your mam would prefer it if you waited with me. It might take a while. Come on, luv,’ Rose coaxed in her soft, lilting voice. ‘The kettle’s on, and I got half a
pound of broken biscuits this morning – most of ’em are cream.’

At the mention of the biscuits, Josie returned downstairs. She loved Rose’s big room, with its fancy net curtains and red silk tasselled lampshade. Rose had spent several days sticking tape to the tall windows in a highly complicated pattern. The linoleum was purple with a pattern of trailing vines, and the red and blue striped wallpaper, with its sprinkling of embossed gold flowers, was a relic of the importer of rare spices – faded, torn in places, but still incredibly grand. During the summer, the marble fireplace was filled, as now, with tissue flowers that Rose had made herself. A patchwork quilt covered the single bed, and the sideboard was packed with statues, holy pictures and photos of Rose’s numerous sisters and brothers and other relatives back in Ireland, who would all ‘drop stone dead’ for some reason if they knew what their Rose was up to on the mainland.

The kettle was already simmering on the hob, the tea was quickly made and the broken biscuits emptied on to a plate.

‘You can dip your bicky in your tea if you want, luv,’ Rose said kindly, before proceeding daintily to dip her own. Rose was always dressed up to the nines from early morning. Today, she wore a lovely maroon crêpe dress with sequins on the bodice. Her cheeks and lips had been painted the same colour as the dress, and her lashes were two rows of stiff flies’ legs. She regarded Josie searchingly with her good eye. ‘And what did you get up to at school today?’