A Liverpool Lass (49 page)

Lilac! It had to be she, and if he could find Lilac then Nellie was only seconds away from him!

He plunged down the stairs, pushing between couples, dodging round the elderly, hurrying through the crowd. The red-gold head was a yard away, a foot ... he put his hand on her shoulder, half-swung her round towards him.

‘Lilac, I’ve searched all over for you ...’

The red-gold head turned. It was not Lilac but a much older woman. She stared, narrowing large, dark-blue eyes, then smiled invitingly.

‘Hello, young man; can I help you?’

Stammering, disclaiming, Stuart apologised, moved away, almost ran through the crowd. What a fool he had made of himself, he really must be more careful ... tomorrow he would go to the other hospitals, he would try the schools, he might even pop in to the Culler since he would be only a street away this very afternoon.

He caught a tram and got off on Leece Street. He was
visiting friends on Pilgrim Street so he thought he would pay his call there first, and get rid of the heavy bag of gifts, then he would just pop in to the Culler.

He was greeted rapturously on Pilgrim Street and spent some time there, talking about old times, telling his war stories, asking for old friends. They wanted him to stay but he pleaded a prior engagement and left, hurrying along beneath the hissing gas lamps, glad of their light to show him the way now that he was on less familiar territory.

He knocked at the door of the Culler and asked to see the matron. Her name was Mrs Simpson and she was plump and smiling with a gentle expression and softly waving dark hair. Stuart thought her a friendly person even after she had said that she knew neither Nellie McDowell or Lilac Larkin.

‘But I’ve only been here two years,’ she explained. ‘I’m so sorry I can’t help you, Mr Gallagher.’

Stuart thanked her politely, touched his hat and left, thinking how much pleasanter she seemed than the awful old witch who had ruled here for so long ... what was her name? Hansom? Transom? He ran lightly down the steps of the orphan asylum and set off into the windy darkness. He was thinking of Nellie, remembering her. He had loved her, he believed, from the very first moment he saw her, a thin, rather pathetic little figure, draggle-haired, nervous, dressed in that awful brown uniform ...

Someone was standing on the doorstep of a house not a dozen doors from the Culler. She was small and thin and she wore a drooping, rain-darkened cloak just like the one the Culler girls wore, but he could see that she was grown up and anyway it was unlikely that a Culler girl would be attempting to gain entrance to one of the smarter houses on Rodney Street.

He drew level with her ... and gave a shout.

‘Nellie! My God, by all that’s wonderful, it’s Nellie! Oh my dearest girl ...’

She was down the steps and in his arms in a second; they were rocking together, clutching, kissing, and she was as familiar to his arms, as dear, as though they had known one another always and had never known the agony of separation.

‘Nellie, what on earth ... ? Oh come out of it, my darling, let’s get away from here before they open that door!’

They ran like kids, like naughty schoolchildren, down the road, around the corner and out of sight.

‘Was that the bell?’

‘Oh Lilac, you lazy cat, you know very well it was. Isn’t that sister of yourn coming for you this evening? Well, old Polly isn’t gettin’ off of ’er perch to let your visitors in, Lady Muck. Go on, do, afore she rings again.’

The girls were in the kitchen, roasting chestnuts over the fire. Mrs Jenkins had gone to her own room, cook was asleep in a chair, but Lilac, Polly and Madge squatted on the hearthrug and fished the hot nuts out of the fire with the tongs and knocked the burnt shells off them, squeaking and laughing.

‘Oh all right, in a minute,’ Lilac said, getting to her feet and sucking her burnt fingertips. ‘Save me some nuts ... I’m going to take Nell up to the small sitting room for a bit, but she’ll want to meet everyone so we’ll come down and have a cup of tea, later. Shan’t be long.’

She left them. Madge blew on a nut, then gingerly popped it into her mouth. She hissed in her breath, then began to chew.

‘What ’appened to our Lilac at the Allans’ party the
other day?’ she said, eyeing Polly. ‘She went ’ome early, but she was ever so pleased with ’erself next day, you’d ha’ thought she’d found a sovereign!’

‘Dunno,’ Polly said. ‘She was pleased with ’erself awright, but she wouldn’t say nothin’. Just kept gigglin’ and huggin’ herself an’ sayin’ she’d got a nice secret. But I reckon it ’ad to do with this Nellie, ’cos they fell out a while back an’ Lilac weren’t ’appy about it.’

‘But now she is?’

‘Now she is,’ Polly confirmed just as the door opened. ‘Hey up, Lilac, weren’t it your Nellie, then?’

‘No, there was no one there,’ Lilac said, looking very cast down. ‘Oh, and I was that sure it was her! Never mind though, I suppose she was on a late shift. Perhaps she’ll come tomorrow.’

‘No one at all? Or just no one for you?’ Madge said suspiciously. She knew how singleminded Lilac could be. ‘Bells don’t ring of theirselves, chuck.’

‘There was no one at all, just the wind and the dark, and the rain blowing almost horizontal,’ Lilac assured them, round-eyed. ‘The street was empty. Whoever rang was long gone.’

It was ridiculous, stupid, but they could not bear to let go of one another. All down the street they clung, right to the tram stop on the corner. They climbed on the first tram which came along and Stuart propelled Nellie carefully up to the top deck. They neither knew nor cared where it was, all they wanted was the chance to talk – and to be alone.

‘Why didn’t you write?’ Stuart said as soon as they were seated. They were the only passengers on the top deck and the tram swayed as the wind caught it. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d moved out?’

‘I did write. Truly. I thought it was you who hadn’t written.’

‘Your letter must have gone astray, or arrived after I’d left Berlin for New Delhi. But I’ve written at least a dozen times and probably more from India, telling you all about it. Oh, Nellie, how sweet you are, how soft and cuddly ... how dreadfully I’ve missed you.’

‘I’ve missed you as well, only I kept telling myself we were almost strangers ... do you realise, Stuart, that you knew Lilac as well as you knew me?’ Her hand flew to her mouth. ‘Oh lor’, I was supposed to visit Lilac this evening, we’d agreed that I’d go round to the Mattesons, meet her employer and her friends ...’

‘Really? Then just what were you doing in Rodney Street?’

Nellie smiled and touched his mouth with soft fingers.

‘Lilac lives there now. She’s in service with a family there. She’s personal maid to Mrs Matteson, a doctor’s wife. Oh Stuart, I don’t feel that you’re a stranger at all, I feel as if I’ve known you always.’

‘Well, you’ve known me for quite a while,’ Stuart said. He put his arm round her and drew her head down to rest in the hollow of his shoulder. ‘It must be fifteen years.’

‘Never! I met you for the first time out in France, when you were convalescing near the hospital where I was nursing,’ Nellie reminded him. ‘What do you mean, fifteen years? You aren’t saying it feels that long, I hope!’

‘Well, it does, because it is. I guessed you’d not recognised me that time and somehow I was always too busy to say. We met on Christmas Day as I recall and you were in church, with a baby, I suppose it was Lilac, in your arms. I gave you my chocolate bar;
now
do you remember me?’

Nellie was frowning up at him, then the frown cleared and she gave a little crow of delight.

‘Oh Stuart, don’t tell me you were the boy with the oily! The Dunn’s devil who was playing ollies in church!’

‘Didn’t you recognise me, in France? Thought not, but I knew you at once,’ Stuart said in a hurt voice. ‘You’d got a lot prettier and curvier, but you were still my little love, because when I looked at you snatching up my olly that Christmas Day and keeping it safe for me, I thought,
She’s the girl for me
, I thought. And wasn’t I right?’

‘I can’t
believe
it,’ Nellie said in a stunned voice. ‘I can’t believe you were that boy! You never said you were a Dunn’s devil, Stuart!’

‘You never said you were a Culler girl, only I knew, of course,’ Stuart said. ‘We never needed many words then, Nell, and we shan’t need many now. Are you going to give me a kiss or am I going to take one?’

There was a short silence whilst their faces gradually drew closer. Nellie began to smile, then his lips touched hers and she moaned softly against his mouth. She had been so alone, she had felt cast off by everyone, and now ... now ...

‘Tickets, please. Where d’you wanna get down, chucks?’

They flew apart, Nellie at least with burning cheeks. But Stuart fished nonchalantly into his pocket and handed the conductor a sovereign.

‘As far as you like and back again,’ he said grandly. ‘Only don’t let any other passengers up here, there’s a pal. Keep the change, wack!’

‘Now I know you’re truly a Dunn’s devil,’ Nellie murmured as the conductor, chuckling, descended the stairs once more. ‘Oh Stuart, I thought you were so nice
when you were just a scruffy kid, but I like you even more now.’

‘Likewise,’ Stuart said, tightening his grip round her and turning her so that their faces were close. ‘Likewise, my dearest Nell.’

ALSO AVAILABLE IN ARROW

Orphans of the Storm

Katie Flynn

Jess and Nancy, girls from very different backgrounds, are nursing in France during the Great War. They have much in common for both have lost their lovers in the trenches, so when the war is over and they return to nurse in Liverpool, their future seems bleak.

Very soon, however, their paths diverge. Nancy marries an Australian stockman and goes to live on a cattle station in the Outback, while Jess marries a Liverpudlian. Both have children; Nancy’s eldest is Pete, and Jess has a daughter, Debbie, yet their lives couldn’t be more different.

When the Second World War is declared, Pete joins the Royal Air Force and comes to England, promising his mother that he will visit her old friend. In the thick of the May blitz, with half of Liverpool demolished and thousands dead, Pete arrives in the city to find Jess’s home destroyed and her daughter missing. Pete decides that whatever the cost, he must find her ...

From the rigours of the Australian Outback to war-ravaged Liverpool, Debbie and Pete are drawn together ... and torn apart ...

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