A Liverpool Lass (7 page)

‘She’ll have hid away somewhere, to lick her wounds,’ she said. ‘What do the other children say?’

‘They think she’s run off,’ Nellie said. ‘Miss Hicks hits awful hard, Mrs Ransom; I should know!’

‘She’s nowhere to run,’ Mrs Ransom observed with unconscious cruelty. ‘She won’t have gone far.’

‘She might have ... I’m going to look,’ Nellie said. Her hands flew to the strings of her apron and she
began untying them and then heaved the garment over her head. ‘It’s warm out, I won’t need a coat.’

‘Check the cloakroom,’ Mrs Ransom said suddenly. ‘See if her coat’s there. If it’s gone I suppose you’d better search.’

Nellie nodded and left the room, but she ignored the long corridor down which the cloakroom was to be found and made instead for the front door. She knew Lilac wasn’t in the house and she knew, also, that if the child had run away there was somewhere she could run. To Coronation Court. Oh, the authorities were always on about the scandal and disgrace that the courts brought to the city, saying they should be pulled down because they bred disease and pestilence and encouraged ignorance and unnatural practices. But they seemed not to notice how warmly the people of the courts felt for one another, how closely they clung!

Lilac had noticed, though, and remarked on it. Hand in hand with Nellie, as they made their way back to the orphan asylum after Nellie’s Sunday afternoon off, Lilac chattered wistfully about the place and the people they had left, as though Coronation Court was infinitely superior to Rodney Street. Nellie had tried to tell her that at least she was getting a good education from the teachers at Culler’s, but Lilac had said she’d sooner go to a ragged school, like Matt and Fred, especially if it meant she could live in the court.

As she was about to go out of the front door, Nellie heard her name called. She turned and saw Lilac’s friend Emmy waving to her. Emmy was a placid child with a long ginger pigtail and right now she was putting her finger to her lips and beckoning Nellie.

‘What is it?’ Nellie said rather sharply as soon as she was close enough. ‘I’m off out to see if I can find Lilac.’

‘She ran down the street, she were bawlin’ her eyes out,’ Emmy said plaintively. ‘She mighta took me ... I wouldn’t mind a-going outa here. I’d like to go to sea an’ all.’

‘To sea? She said she was going to
sea
? Why on earth ... except that I’ve promised to take her there one day, only somehow time’s so short and I do like to go back home when I get a few hours off ... thanks very much, chuck, now you’d better go to the playroom or you’ll be in trouble with your group leader.’

‘Shan’t, we’re all in the same group,’ Emmy said.’ Tell Lilac we’re on her side when you see her.’

‘Of course,’ Nellie said, comforted by the younger girl’s words. It was nice to know that Lilac was popular, despite being in a class with girls who were mostly a year older than she, and some nearer two. ‘See you soon, Emmy.’

Coatless, she slipped out of the front door and began her search.

When Lilac had slipped out of that same door an hour earlier she had been all but blinded by tears and positively seething with humiliation and rage. That Miss Hicks had hit her ... she had been smacked often enough, smacked across the legs and arms, occasionally across the face, by members of staff who were impatient or spiteful or just plain careless, hitting any child to stop them in their tracks. But she had never been attacked with a cane and felt the real pain of it searing through her soft flesh. She looked down at the raised pink weals on her legs, then fingered her cheek and felt the wetness of what she imagined to be blood. She speedily realised that it was just her tears, however, and gulped back the sobs, feeding her fury
instead by telling herself that she would find a policeman and tell him to arrest Miss Hicks and put her in prison for hitting little girls!

And all the time she was thinking, she was walking, stumbling along in the hateful brown uniform with her long, red-gold tail of hair lacking a ribbon and coming unplaited with every step. And presently she stopped short and looked around her and realised that almost without meaning to do so, she was already well on her way to being a truant. She was in a strange street, one she could never recall walking down before.

She had not been walking particularly fast, but she had been paying no attention whatsoever to her surroundings. Now she slowed even more and looked curiously about her. On the opposite side of the road was a large, municipal building; she read the legend ‘Public Baths’ over the door and as she walked slowly along the pavement, smelt soap, hot water and – regrettably – people’s unclean feet. Next came a big, grassy graveyard, with the stones in the older part all atilt and blackened by time and the church to which all this grass belonged looking benign in the late afternoon sunshine. At the place where her road met a wider one down which trams and motor cars roared, she looked up at the plate on the end house and saw she was in Cornwallis Street. Which way, which way? She had told Emmy she would run away to sea, but she had really meant ... just what had she meant? To run to Coronation Court and Matt, who would be kind to her and would come back and hit Miss Hicks on her behalf?

Perhaps. Or perhaps she had just meant to frighten everyone, give them something to think about. Mr Hayman, who was the most powerful person in Lilac’s small universe, was always going on about sparing the rod and spoiling the child, but Lilac was quite sure that
he would not be at all pleased if she ran away and she rather hoped that his displeasure might take the form of hitting Miss Hicks very hard with the ivory handled cane he always carried. She spent several pleasant moments picturing Miss Hicks, with her skirt kilted up, running madly down the road, leaping and roaring every time Mr Hayman’s cane struck home. Which was how she came to cross the busy main street, because she saw a gap in the traffic and dived for it, without even considering whether this was the way she wanted to go.

And having crossed over, it seemed only sensible to continue in the same direction, along Blundell Street, with a lovely smell of trains which Lilac immediately recognised from her encounters with Lime Street station coming from the goods yard to her right, whilst very soon another strange smell assailed her nostrils, first a really horrible stench and then a sweeter one. A factory? Yes, but manufacturing what? There was a navy blue sign above the rooftop with writing on ...
Queen’s Soap Works
, it said. Why should soap stink though, Lilac asked herself, wandering on.

But presently she saw that it behoved her to walk briskly, as though she knew exactly where she was going, for a large boy of ten or so in ragged clothes with the filthiest bare feet Lilac had ever seen came up to her and addressed her with a horrid leer.

‘Ello lickle judy; does your muvver know you’re out? Wharrer you doin’ in vese parts, hey?’

Deep inside Lilac, a little warning bell sounded. She drew herself up and looked at the boy with as much hauteur as she could muster.

‘I’m going to see my Auntie Ada, and you’d better look out, or I’ll call a copper,’ she said briskly. ‘My Uncle Billy’s a pleeceman, so just you slope off!’

The boy laughed but he obeyed her injunction and Lilac, her heart beating a little faster, continued to walk along Blundell Street until she came out on a wider road yet and was about to continue further when, above her head, she heard a fearful racket. Looking up, she saw the overhead railway which Charlie had called the docker’s umbrella. The train and its carriages came crashing and clanking along and went off into the distance ... all the way to Seaforth, Lilac told herself, remembering Nellie’s words, and there are children on board no older than me – oh, aren’t they the lucky ones?

Having gazed her fill at the overhead railway she walked along until she saw, on her left, some tall gates. They were open and without intending to go where she was not allowed, yet doing so anyway, Lilac wandered through them when the gatekeeper’s attention was elsewhere and found herself – wonder of wonders! – gazing at her very first dock. She saw, right opposite her, water, hundreds of water, she told herself rapturously, water which licked against the brick walls and the ships’ sides and the mooring posts, water which sparkled and chuckled and purred as it moved ... it must be the sea, Lilac thought, devouring it with her eyes. Oh, this must be the sea, and she had run away to it, just as she had threatened!

By now her hair had come mostly unplaited, so Lilac finished the job off with her fingers, smelling the strange salt smell of the sea and feeling the wind tugging at her hair, filling her with a sense of adventure, of her own smallness in this great universe that she had so recently discovered. She decided that she would live here always, sleeping under the docker’s umbrella, begging or stealing food from one of the shops or cafés she had passed, possibly even working for someone –
Charlie was a docker, perhaps he needed someone to give him a hand?

Sitting on a bollard, however, she began to feel rather lonely, and when a young man came and sat on the bollard beside her she smiled at him and asked him whether he was a sailor or a docker?

‘I’m a seaman from the
SS Ocean Queen
,’ the young man said. ‘What the ’ell are you doing ’ere, luv? I know they ’ave funny little ways in Liverpool, but ain’t you a bit young to be on the game?’

‘What game? I’m not playing anything,’ Lilac said indignantly. ‘I was going to see my aunt only I lost my way and then I saw the railway – my brother Charlie calls it the dockers’ umbrella – and then I saw the sea and I came over to have a look ... you don’t have any pennies, do you? I haven’t had my tea.’

The young man looked closely at her and Lilac looked closely back; he was seeing a small girl in a dull brown dress with a calico pinafore over it and tangled red-gold hair streaming down her back. If he had been a regular scouser he would probably have recognised the Culler orphan asylum uniform but fortunately, Lilac realised, he was from away. His voice was sharp and clear with a sort of whine to it and he made the word game sound like gyme. In her turn Lilac stared at him, seeing a sturdy young man in seamen’s clothing – a dark blue jersey and trousers – sitting on the bollard with his legs drawn up a little so she could see a neat patch on one navy knee. He was looking at her curiously and Lilac saw that he had a round, humorous face with blue-grey eyes and a wispy moustache. When they had both taken each other in he grinned at her and raised his mousy eyebrows comically. Lilac grinned back.

‘Know me again, gel?’

Lilac laughed.

‘Oh yes, anywhere,’ she said joyfully. ‘Do you have any pennies? I could pay you back perhaps, one day.’

‘That’s good, because you don’t look like a beggar’s brat,’ the young man said. He slithered down from the bollard and dug in the pockets of his narrow trousers, producing a handful of small coins. ‘Want some fried fish and taters? I was goin’ to git meself some; we can share.’

‘Yes please,’ Lilac said ardently. She trotted beside him as he strolled out of the fascinating dock area, taking his hand to cross the wide and busy stretch of the main road. ‘Oh, I do love fried fish!’

‘Me too, though you’d think, bein’ at sea so much, I’d git sick of fish. Now did I tell you my name? I’m Joey Prescott and I’m from London, in case you ’adn’t guessed. I ’ails from the Isle o’ Dogs.’

‘I’m Lilac Larkin. I’m from Rodney Street, right here in Liverpool,’ Lilac said readily. ‘Where’s the shop for the fish? Is it far?’

‘Nah, not far, Lilac. That dress what you got on – looks like some kinda uniform.’

Lilac shot him a suspicious glance, but he smiled blandly back and because she liked him she nodded, sure he meant her no harm.

‘Yes, that’s right. It’s the Culler. That’s an orphan asylum, but I’m not an orphan, not really. My brother Charlie says I’ve got a mam and a da all right, it’s just that I dunno where they are right now.’

‘There you are, then. And just where’s this orphing asylum when it’s at ’ome?’

‘I
told
you: in Rodney Street,’ Lilac said with what patience she could muster. This young man was obviously none too bright! ‘Where’s the fried fish shop?’

‘In Canning Place. Fact is, sweet’eart, I dunno where
Rodney Street is – d’you know Canning Place, or South Castle Street or South John Street? Are they near Rodney Street? If so, we might walk rahnd there, take a look at this orphing asylum.’

‘No. Well, that’s to say I don’t know, because I don’t know where any of those places are, I only know the Scottie and Rodney Street,’ Lilac said rather untruthfully, since she knew the way between the two quite well. ‘And I don’t want to take a look at the Culler; I’ve run away from it, you see. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather stay with you.’

‘That’s all very well, but what abaht when the old
Queen
sails? What’ll you do then, eh?’

‘I could come on board with you, help you to ... to do whatever you have to do,’ Lilac said hopefully. ‘I’d like that.’

‘Ho, would you? But the crew’s men, not gels!’

‘We could cut off my hair and you could buy me some trousers. Then they wouldn’t know I was a girl ... I could be your cabin boy,’ Lilac said, with vague memories of the stories Nellie read her and the tales Charlie and Hal told jostling together in her tired brain. Because she was tired, a part of her quite wanted to give in, let Joey take her back to Rodney Street. After the fried fish, though, not before.

‘No, it won’t do,’ Joey said, after a pause during which they recrossed the busy street and slowed by a tram stop at which several people waited. ‘We’ll ride on a tram I think, littl’un. Give our legs a bit of a rest.’

So Lilac sat proudly in the tram with her new friend, chattering away as though she had known him all her life, and rode in style past a great many of the huge, fortress-like docks – Wapping, Salthouse, Canning – before alighting alongside a huge and imposing building which Joey told her was the Custom House.

‘The fried fish shop’s really on South Castle Street,’ Joey said, taking her hand as they crossed the pavement. ‘But it’s only a step from here: can you smell it?’