Laceys of Liverpool (8 page)

‘When are we having our dinner?’ Orla wanted to know.

‘Four o’clock. I told you before it would be late today.
Go home if you want. You too, Maeve. Your grandad will be here in a minute to distemper the ceiling.’

‘Oh, Mam!’ Fion cried from the other room. ‘I wanted to do the ceiling.’

‘You can do the walls, luv. A ceiling needs an expert hand. I did our kitchen ceiling once and I ended up covered in distemper and looking like a ghost.’

Maeve went home to read a book, but Orla decided to stay when she realised Grandad was coming. They stopped and finished off the sandwiches, and Alice made tea in the amazingly clean kitchen. ‘You’ve done a wonderful job with this stove,’ she told Fion. ‘It looks like new.’

‘Can I do the walls now?’

‘Not yet, luv,’ Alice said patiently. ‘But I tell you what you can do, go upstairs and look for some old sheets to spread around while the ceiling’s being done. We don’t want paint spilling everywhere.’

‘What are you going to do about upstairs, Ally?’ Bernadette enquired.

‘What d’you mean?’ Alice looked at her vacantly.

‘Well, it’s a flat, isn’t it, soft girl. You can let it, make a few extra bob a week. Once it’s cleaned up it’d be nice and cosy up there. It might . . .’ She paused.

‘It might what?’

Bernadette glanced sidelong at Fion and waited until the girl had left the room before continuing. ‘It might do for the person who give you
that
!’ She nodded at the bruise on her friend’s cheek that was gradually turning from purple to yellow.

‘Bernie!’ Alice gasped, shocked to the core.

‘I loved my Bob to bits, but he’d have been out the door like a shot if he’d so much as laid a finger on me.’ Bernadette folded her arms and regarded her sternly. ‘Say he hits you again or lashes out at one of the kids?’

‘He’d never hit the kids!’

‘This time last year would it have crossed your mind he’d hit you?’

‘Well, no,’ Alice said soberly.

‘It’s not right, Alice. No woman should be expected to put up with violence from her husband.’

Alice was trying to think of what to say in reply when the bell on the door gave its rusty ring and her dad came in. He climbed into a pair of greasy overalls and proceeded to paint the drab ceiling a lovely sparkling white.

Bernadette had turned bright pink and seemed to have lost the power of speech, Alice noticed with amusement – she’d had a crush on Danny Mitchell since she was eight.

At last Fion got her hands on a paintbrush and started on the walls. Alice began to rip up the tatty linoleum, aided by Cormac and Orla – a man was coming at eight o’clock in the morning to fit the lino she’d bought on tick yesterday in Stanley Road: black, with a faint cream marble effect, the sort she wouldn’t have wanted in her house, but that was perfect for a hairdressers.

She’d got a length of white lace curtaining and two lampshades at the same time, which she’d put up when the distemper was dry. She felt a tingle of excitement. Everywhere was going to look dead smart when it was finished.

Bernadette and Danny came back to Amber Street for their dinner. For once, John’s glowering face wasn’t allowed to dampen the atmosphere during the meal. Everyone was too full of the hairdresser’s and what they had achieved.

‘What are you going to call it, Mam?’ Maeve enquired.

‘Why Myrtle’s, luv. I wasn’t thinking of changing the name.’

‘I think you should,’ said Bernadette.

Danny nodded. ‘So do I.’

‘Why don’t you call it Alice’s,’ suggested Orla.

Alice thought that sounded a bit clumsy and wondered how anyone could be as stupid as she was; fancy not thinking about a new name and not realising the upstairs flat was included in the lease! ‘You’re as thick as two short planks, Alice Lacey,’ she told herself.

‘You could call it Lacey’s,’ said Fion.

‘That has a nice ring to it.’ Bernadette nodded her approval.

Danny said it sounded classy, Maeve thought it perfect, Cormac remarked it would go with the lacy curtains, Alice looked pleased, John merely scowled and Orla pulled a face, cross that Fionnuala’s suggestion had been taken up, not hers.

And Fion glowed. She had actually christened a hairdresser’s and felt very proud of herself.

After the table had been cleared and the dishes washed, Bernadette announced she was going home. Danny offered to walk with her as far as Irlam Road.

‘There’s no need.’ Bernadette went all pink again. She never knew what to say to Danny Mitchell.

‘Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you,’ Danny said when they were outside. ‘Where did that bruise come from on our Alice’s face? She claimed to have walked into a door, but I’m not sure if I believe her.’

‘John did it.’ Bernadette had no intention of protecting John Lacey from his father-in-law’s wrath. She was slightly disappointed that Danny was only walking her home because he’d wanted to ask about Alice. ‘It was on
Thursday night, when Alice came back with the cheque.’

Danny swore under his breath. ‘I’ll be after having a word with him as soon as I get the opportunity.’ Later that night, maybe. Alice had said something about going back to the hairdresser’s to put up the curtains so there was a good chance John would be alone.

Thinking she was being helpful, Bernadette told him about the flat over Myrtle’s. ‘I said it would do for John, but Alice wouldn’t hear of it.’

‘Quite right, too.’ He sounded even more shocked by the idea than his daughter had. ‘You can’t chuck a man out of his own home, no matter what he’s done,’ he said, outraged.

‘Huh! No matter if he’d put your Alice in hospital or done the same to one of the kids?’ She forgot her awe of him and lost her temper. Men! The world would be a far better place without them. There’d only been one good one and he’d been killed in the war.

‘It’s not the way things are done,’ Danny said testily. He was beginning to wish he hadn’t offered to take her home. He’d always thought her a rather quiet little thing. He wasn’t used to women arguing with him. They usually agreed with his every word.

‘Well, it’s about time it was. Are you suggesting women are born to be punchbags?’

He was flummoxed. What could he say to that? ‘I’m suggesting nothing of the kind.’

‘Yes, you are. You’re saying a woman can be knocked to bits and nothing should be done about it.’

‘She can always leave.’ He regretted the words as soon as they’d left his mouth, because the quiet little thing burst into sarcastic laughter.

‘In that case, if John hits your Alice again, I’ll suggest she ups with the four kids and parks herself on you.’

Both seething, they walked the rest of the way to Irlam Road in silence.

Alice finished hanging the white lace curtains and imagined the reaction of the customers tomorrow when they saw the changes that had been made to Myrtle’s – she corrected herself –
Lacey’s
. She must get a signwriter to change the name over the window and pushed to the back of her mind the knowledge that there’d been a time when John would willingly have done it.

There were other things she must do – buy new towels, for instance, mauve if you could get them. And she needed a clock, a little cheap one – how on earth had Myrtle managed without a clock for all those years? And she’d have price lists printed on little cards, like wedding invitations.

She rubbed her hands together excitedly. She’d have to engage an assistant, someone to do the same things she’d been taken on for herself. A woman with school-aged kids would be ideal because Fionnuala was only too willing to come and help when she finished school, as well as on Saturdays.

All the pictures of the beautiful, dead smart coiffures that Myrtle couldn’t have managed in a month of Sundays had been removed from the wall so it could be painted. Alice began to put them back with the drawing pins she’d saved, along with the adverts for various shampoos, setting lotions and hairdressings – she liked the one for Rowland’s Macassar Oil the best. Her arms were aching. But it wasn’t just the hard work she’d put in today, but that she’d been sleeping on the settee in the parlour since Thursday and it was extremely uncomfortable, much too short and much too hard.

Things couldn’t continue at home the way they were, but once again Alice refused to think about them.
Instead, she sat under the dryer and regarded Myrtle’s –
Lacey’s
– with satisfaction. Tomorrow it would look even nicer with the lino laid.

Across the street, well away from the street lamp, a dark figure stood watching the woman at her various tasks. He saw her sit in the centre of the three dryers, saw the way her face glowed when she glanced around the salon, which he had to concede had improved out of all proportion for the better.

John Lacey felt sick with love for the woman who was his wife, along with stirrings of anger and jealousy, never far away these days. The bloody salon had taken
his
place in Alice’s heart, but then he only had himself to blame for that.

For the first time in his life he felt the urge to get drunk, to get totally inebriated, forget everything. He’d only been that drunk once before – at a mate’s wedding when he was eighteen. It hadn’t been a very pleasant experience, but right now the idea of forgetting everything was infinitely appealing.

Where to go to achieve this agreeable state of mind? Not a pub where he was known, or a quiet, respectable place where they’d stare at his face. One of those rowdy ale houses on the Dock Road would be ideal. They were usually packed to the gills with foreign seamen and prostitutes. No one would take a blind bit of notice of him.

John took a final look at Alice, turned up the collar of his coat, pulled his hat down over his scarred face and hurried in the direction of the Docky.

Hours later Danny Mitchell, on his way to have a stern word with his son-in-law, was still seething over the conversation he’d had with Bernadette. If she were
older, she’d probably have been one of them damned, stupid suffragettes, chaining herself to railings so women could have the vote.

A little worm of reason penetrated his stubborn brain. It wasn’t exactly fair that women
shouldn’t
have the vote. After all, whatever those fools of politicians got up to affected them just as much as it did men. And they’d been worth their weight in gold during the war. And if a man knocked a woman about, was she supposed just to stand there and let him?

Danny squirmed uncomfortably. It niggled him that the little girl who’d been his daughter’s best friend for as long as he could remember had caused him to have such disturbing thoughts. He felt like a traitor to his sex and tried to concentrate on his meeting later with Phyllis Henderson. Phyllis would butter him up no end, restore his equilibrium, as it were.

To his surprise, when he entered his daughter’s house the light was on, but it appeared to be empty. ‘Is anyone home?’ he called.

‘Only me, Grandad,’ Cormac shouted from upstairs.

‘Surely you haven’t been left all on your own!’ Danny exclaimed on his way up to the boxroom where his grandson slept.

‘Dad said Mam or the girls’d be back soon.’ Cormac was sitting up in bed, his slightly too big wincyette pyjamas buttoned neatly to the neck. He put down the book he was reading when his grandad came in.

‘Your mam’ll be dead cross if she finds you all by yourself. I’ll stay till someone comes.’ Danny sat on the edge of the narrow bed. ‘What’s that you’re reading, son?’

‘I’m not ’xactly
reading
it, Grandad,’ Cormac explained gravely. ‘I’m trying to do the sums.’

Danny gaped. The lad, only five years old, was
actually studying an
arithmetic
book. His heart swelled with pride. Wait till he told Phyllis and his mates in the pub! ‘Need any help, son?’ he enquired, though beyond the twelve times table he needed help himself.

‘What’s that word?’ Cormac turned the page and pointed to the heading.

‘Multiplication. It means . . .’

‘I know what it means, Grandad. It means “times”. I didn’t know how it was said. The next page is “long” something. I don’t know how that’s said either.’

‘Long division, son.’ He was beginning to think his grandson was a genius. ‘Can you do all these things – the long division and the times?’

‘Only with little figures,’ Cormac confessed sadly.

‘Can the whole class do them?’ Danny asked.

Cormac shook his fair head. ‘Acshully, Grandad, school’s a bit fed-upping. I wish it weren’t so dead easy.’

He should be moved up to a higher class, Danny thought indignantly. He’d have a word with Alice when she came in.

Not far away in Irlam Road, Bernadette Moynihan also felt indignant. To think that all these years she’d been sweet on such a rampant misogynist! Even when she’d been married to her darling Bob she had continued to find Danny Mitchell slightly disturbing.

It had started when his wife died and Danny had appeared so devastated. She was eight, same as Alice, and had resolved to marry him, take care of him, when she grew up. He was only twenty-nine and, as Bernadette grew older – became twelve, sixteen, twenty – in her eyes Danny remained the same. One of these days she’d catch up with him, he’d notice her and ask for her hand in marriage. She had spent many happy hours imagining
what it would be like being Danny Mitchell’s wife. This was one of the few dreams she hadn’t confided to Alice, who might not care to have her best friend as a stepmother.

Then Bernadette had met Bob Moynihan and all thoughts of Danny Mitchell had fled from her mind – except when she met him in the flesh, when her knees were still inclined to grow weak and her cheeks to turn pink. She used to pray Bob wouldn’t notice and he never had.

But now! Now she had completely gone off him. ‘You can’t chuck a man out of his own home no matter what he’s done,’ he’d actually said. Oh, really! She’d have flattened John Lacey with a frying pan if she’d been in Alice’s shoes, then dragged him outside and had the locks changed so he couldn’t get back in.

She hated men, every single one of them, and she hated Danny Mitchell the most.

At the next table a black man had pulled a girl on to his knee and was touching her breasts beneath her green jumper.