A Liverpool Lass (31 page)

Art licked his lips and swallowed. He also reddened a little and pushed back the obstinate cowlick of hair which would fall forward over his eyes.

‘Well, I will,’ he said. ‘Tara for now, chuck.’

‘She’s coming now, dear. I’ve written out a list of what she may eat, how she may behave, just until she’s herself again. But she’s very much better, as you can see.’

Lilac and the nurse were standing in the corridor, watching Aunt Ada walking towards them. Her aunt
looked much better, Lilac considered. Her hair was neatly combed into a bun, her face had filled out a little and the lavender blue jacket and grey skirt suited her.

‘Stuart bought me the clothes in yesterday,’ Aunt Ada had told Lilac earlier that morning, as she prepared to leave the hospital at last. ‘That’s a good lad our Nellie’s found for ’erself, queen.’

Lilac had nodded and smiled, but she had to bite back the words, ‘He’s mine, not Nellie’s!’ because she knew Aunt Ada would never understand. Or not yet, at any rate. For now she must allow the fiction to continue that Stuart was Nellie’s beau.

But right now Aunt Ada, carrying her dark coat over her arm, was coming quietly towards her, smiling.

‘Eh, luv, it’s good to be on me feet again,’ she said as Lilac took the bag from the nurse and bade Aunt Ada ‘lean on me.’ ‘Now I’ve come through it I’ll be sensible, you see.’

It was the nearest she was likely to come, Lilac supposed, to a promise not to drink again, but it was enough for her.

‘It near killed you,’ she said sombrely however, as she and her aunt went out through that imposing entrance once more and onto Leeds Street. ‘I was that frightened, Aunt Ada – but I’ll tek good care of you, like I told Stuart I would.’

‘You’re a good gairl,’ Aunt Ada said. She stopped for a moment and leaned against the wall, a hand to her breast. ‘Eh, I’m not so fit as I thought I was ... let me get me breath!’

‘I’ve got a cab; Stuart gave me the cash,’ Lilac said importantly. ‘He’s there ... see?’

She half expected Aunt Ada to reproach her for wasting money, but after only a few steps her aunt was well aware that she was tiring.

‘You’re a good gairl,’ she said again. ‘’elp me in, then, chuck.’

Lilac had never driven in a cab before and enjoyed the experience; they whisked through the streets like lightning, much faster than a tram and so much quieter! Looking at her aunt’s gaunt face and closed eyes as she leaned back against the cracked leather, Lilac thought that it was a good job they hadn’t tried to get a tram. The din of metal wheels on metal track, the shouts of driver to conductor, the occasional sharp crackling as the overhead arm picked up a sudden surge of electricity, all combined to make the tram a noisy ride. This, Lilac told herself, gazing through the clean windowpane, was luxury indeed, nipping quietly down side streets and across intersections, free as a bird on the roadway with nothing save the driver’s whim to choose your route.

Presently, however, they turned onto Vauxhall Road and got held up by a queue of traffic caused by three trams, nose to tail ahead of them. The driver slowed and stopped and Aunt Ada leaned towards Lilac.

‘D’you remember me sayin’ as I were never the worse for drink, our Lilac?’

Lilac nodded, one eye on the driver, but he was cut off from them by a glass panel and in any case his attention was on the road ahead.

‘Yes, Auntie, I remember.’

‘Well, it weren’t true. Now and agin, I’ve had a drop more’n I should. I were lonely, see? No Charlie, no Bessie, me daughters gone, the boys abroad ... even Nellie far away. So I took a dram or two, to cheer meself up.’

Lilac nodded uncomfortably. Why could grownups not just leave things alone? If it was over, let it be over.
No sense in talking about it. But Aunt Ada clearly felt differently.

‘But no more, chuck. That’s it, I’m on the waggon for the rest of me life, that I am. I’m rare ashamed of the way I be’aved, but they told me, in ’ospital, that if I wanted to see sixty I must mend me ways, so I mean to do just that. Not another drop shall pass me lips, our Lilac!’

‘Good,’ Lilac mumbled, very embarrassed. ‘School starts tomorrow though, Auntie. D’you want me to have a day or so off?’

‘No indeed, chuck. You go back to school and I’ll start a-mekin’ an ’ome for you again and before we know it the war’ll be over and our Nellie will be back ... and that Stuart feller. And the others – Matt, Hal, Bertie, Cha ... well, no, not Charlie, ’e’s in the Lake District with our Bessie an’ the littl’uns, but the rest’ll be back. Till then we’ll manage, you an’ me.’

The trams ahead gave a jerk and the cab began to move forward. Lilac patted her aunt’s knee.

‘And until then, we’ll tek care of each other,’ she declared. ‘Art’ll help an’ all.’

After that they chatted inconsequentially of other things until the cab drew up in the court. Very grown up now, Lilac paid the cabbie, carried her aunt’s case into the living room, then came back and helped Aunt Ada in as well. Her aunt gazed round the room, tears coming to her eyes.

‘Oh, Lilac, luv, you’ve lit a grand fire, an’ the clock’s back on the mantel and that dinner smells so good,’ she declared. ‘Eh, and I’ve been a bad auntie to you ... I’m that touched!’

She sank down on the horsehair sofa and looked round her, then leaned back with a happy sigh.

‘Eh, there’s no place like ’ome, they say, and ’ow true
it is! What do you say to a cuppa tea? I could drink the well dry!’

‘The kettle’s on,’ Lilac said happily, pulling it over the fire. ‘I’ll wet the pot presently ... I found the pawn ticket and got the clock out when Matt’s money came. Stuart paid the rent and gave me money for food, but I said we’d pay him back when the war’s over. I made a cake, too – fancy a slice?’

Presently neighbours began to trickle in to congratulate Mrs Threadwell on her narrow escape from death, for the influenza was killing hundreds. They were poor people but each one brought something – a few pieces of coal for the fire, a handful of potatoes, a bit of greenery, an egg for the invalid’s breakfast.

Mrs O’Brien did not come but Art did. He looked self-conscious and slightly uneasy, too.

‘Me mam sent this,’ he said, plonking a shop-bought spongecake on the table. ‘Sorry she can’t come ’erself, it’s ’er day for gettin’ the fag-ends from the Rialto, but she’ll pop in tomorrer.’

‘That cake come from Art, not from ’is mam,’ Aunt Ada declared when the boy had gone. ‘Bless me if he ain’t sweet on you, our Lilac!’

‘Yes, he is,’ Lilac said with no false modesty whatsoever. ‘But he’s only a boy, Aunt Ada.’

Aunt Ada chuckled and reached out for her cup of tea. She held it to her lips and sipped noisily, then stood it down and wiped her mouth.

‘Oh aye, and you’re only a gairl, chuck! When’ll we ’ave our tea, eh? That stew smells right good!’

For a whole week everything went very well indeed. Rather to Lilac’s surprise, Mrs O’Brien did come round to see Auntie, and made herself very pleasant and
useful, too. She did shopping whilst Lilac was at school and put the dinner on the fire and once trudged down to the coal merchant’s with Aunt Ada’s old pram and came back with a sack of coal.

Lilac guessed that she helped herself to the odd lump of coal and a few potatoes or a handful of rice or flour, but the main thing was, she stopped Aunt Ada from overreaching herself. Lilac, working away hard now because the chances were she wouldn’t be in school all that much longer, thought that she had been unduly critical about Mrs O’Brien and that the other woman had a kind heart under her dirty and hardbitten exterior. What was more, she had seen how the O’Briens lived. If it made life easier for the kids, if it meant that Art and Etty and the others got a bit more to eat, then why shouldn’t Mrs O’Brien have a few spuds or some coal for fetching and carrying?

After a week, Aunt Ada was supposed to go up to Brougham Terrace to see the free doctor there, and since the tram journey was a long one they set off early – too early, as it turned out. They caught a tram already full of people making their way to work and although the passengers shunted further along the slatted wooden seat so that Aunt Ada might sit down, for she soon began to sway when on her feet for long, Lilac stood all the way. The tram rattled and roared down the Scotland Road, getting first hot, when the door was closed, and then cold, when passengers alighted or boarded. As it swayed along William Brown Street Lilac peeped out at the Free Library and decided she must walk up this way some time and see whether they would lend books to someone of thirteen. She had long exhausted the small school library and seldom got up to St John’s market, where she might have bought secondhand.

Brougham Terrace was off the West Derby Road, a district that Lilac did not know very well, but the conductor shouted ‘Brougham, Brougham Terrace!’ and several people began to queue to disembark. Tenderly, Lilac helped Aunt Ada to her feet, then down from the tram’s high step. They reached the clinic before it was open and, in company with a great many other would-be patients, had to wait about outside on the pavement, which was all right until a misty, chilly rain began to fall. Aunt Ada grew pale and silent and Lilac wished they had paid their money and gone to the regular doctor, or even got him to call at the house, but it was no use regretting their action now. So they waited, Aunt Ada looking worse with every minute that passed, until someone suggested she sat on the step, which restored her colour a trifle.

At last a stout young woman in a dark green overall with a white apron over her arm came along and opened up and everyone surged inside, Aunt Ada leaning heavily on Lilac’s shoulder. The old shawlie who had suggested that Ada sit on the step nudged Lilac.

‘Which doctor d’you want to see, chuck?’ she whispered. ‘Find ’is name on the door, then sit outside of it, close as you can get ... there’s benches. Go on, ’ustle!’

The new patients were milling around, waiting to be told what to do, so Lilac manoeuvred her aunt onto the bench directly outside the door with the name ‘Doctor Aloysius Jones’ written on a card above it. Thus they were the first to be seen when the doctor eventually arrived. Lilac had not met Dr Jones before but he had looked after Ada in hospital and greeted her with a friendly smile.

‘Ah, Mrs Threadwell, how well you are looking! And feeling, I trust?’

‘I feel quite fit, thanks, doctor. I can’t stand for long, mind, but I’m gettin’ stronger by the hour,’ Auntie Ada said. ‘Our Lilac – that’s me niece – treats me like a queen, an’ never a bad word between us.’

‘Good, good. Now let’s take a look at you.’

After the examination the doctor pronounced himself satisfied, though he gave Aunt Ada an evil-looking tonic, to be taken after meals.

‘See she has nourishing food, gets plenty of rest, and spends time in the fresh air as she grows stronger,’ he told Lilac. ‘Keep her spirits up, don’t let her get depressed, and before you know it she’ll be her old self again.’

‘I’ll be better than me old self,’ Aunt Ada whispered as they made their way out of the clinic, smiling their thanks to the old shawlie who was still waiting, puffing away at an ancient, curly pipe and grinning at them toothlessly round the stem. ‘I’ll be like I was when Charlie was ’ome!’

On the way to the tram-stop though, a uniformed man approached them. He was grey-haired and worried looking and he asked Lilac’s name and demanded to know why she was not in school.

‘I’ve been taking my aunt to the clinic at Brougham Terrace,’ Lilac said with dignity. She was annoyed that this man, clearly a school attendance officer, should think she was sagging when she had asked the teacher’s permission to accompany her aunt. ‘I’m Lilac Larkin from Miss Rudd’s class at Penrhyn Street School and if you don’t believe me you can ask her; she’ll tell you I don’t sag from school!’

The man smiled almost apologetically.

‘Sorry, luv, but we ’ave to be careful. There’s too many kids skippin’ classes ’cos they’ve found a way to earn a bob or two.’

‘A bob or two,’ Lilac said scornfully when their tram
had come and they had boarded it. ‘I’ll only be in school another year, then I’ll be out earnin’, quick as you like. Anyway, if I were saggin’ I wouldn’t take me aunt along, would I?’

‘Oh, you!’ Aunt Ada said affectionately. ‘When we’ve had our dinner, queen, you can write to letter to our Nellie for me, tell ’er I’m ever so much better, the doctor says so!’

‘Right,’ Lilac said, still simmering over the injustice of being accused of sagging when on a perfectly legitimate excursion. ‘I’ll go back to school tomorrow, then – unless you need me, of course. And I suppose the next time you come to Brougham Terrace, you won’t want to take me along, for fear I’ll be in trouble at school.’

‘Don’t worry, luv,’ Aunt Ada said. ‘I ’aven’t got to go for another coupla weeks, if I’m more meself by then I’ll probably manage without you.’

Lilac sniffed. She was beginning to enjoy looking after her aunt, and could see why Nellie liked being a nurse, but it was a fact that school examinations were fast approaching and time lost would probably affect her results. The attendance officer had not frightened her, but he had made her realise that she had best stick to her books whilst she could, or risk failure.

‘We’ll see,’ she said darkly, however. ‘You aren’t strugglin’ alone to that place, Aunt Ada!’

‘It’s over! Nellie, wake up, I’m telling you it’s over! The war’s over!’

Nellie could hear the voice and she knew, vaguely, what it was saying, but she was tired, too tired to try to make sense of it, far less believe it. She turned her head into the pillow, its roughness softer than thistledown after the past twenty-four hours.

‘Go away,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t believe it.’

‘What can I do to convince you? Nell, darling Nell, can’t you hear the bells?’

She must have been hearing them even in her sleep, but now she listened consciously. Sweet and far away, the chimes rang out over the countryside. And it was not only the sound of the bells, there was a dearth of other sounds. Slowly, groggily, Nellie sat up in bed. She could not hear the guns!

‘Nell? It’s true, honest to God, the war’s over, they’ve signed an armistice and we’re at peace. At peace, Nell! We can go home!’