Liverpool Taffy (16 page)

They had trawled the North Sea for herring and taken a liking to a couple of the local lasses with their fresh complexions and broad Lincolnshire accents. He and Greasy had been contented enough with their fat, Grimsby landlady in her crowded boarding house on Victoria Street, within shouting distance of the Alexandra Dock. They found the Scots fishergirls rough company, but liked them, too, for the way they could drink, swear and kiss.

But Dai’s intention to sign on a distant-water trawler never wavered and Greasy, though he never said much, felt the same. It was time they got away from the shores of Britain, saw other seas, experienced other climes. And the Arctic attracted them both as being sufficiently dangerous – and the work sufficiently well-paid – for a first step to their exploration of the sea.

So the beginning of January saw them aboard the trawler
Greenland Bess
as she nosed her way carefully from her berth out into the tide-race. Dai went about his work, but he could not resist a quick glance behind them as they slipped out into the open sea … at Grimsby, the gaslights showing as circles of gold in the blue-black, pre-dawn dark of mid-winter, at the roof tops, red and black, at the narrow, shadowy streets which, in daytime, resounded to all the noise and bustle of any busy port.

He would miss Grimsby, and Susie Lawler, and his mates off the
Girl Sally
, but he would soon make friends with his present shipmates, and anyway Greasy was aboard.

The gulls were aboard too, standing along the ship’s rail with their feathers ruffling as she came head to wind. The sea was nothing much yet, they were still sheltered by land on both sides, for Grimsby lies snug against the Lincolnshire coast with the Yorkshire coast throwing a protective arm around the mouth of the Humber, with the Spurn Head lighthouse on its final extremity, winking away cheerfully in the darkness. But with a freshening wind and the
Bess
already butting her way through the increasing swell, they would soon begin to feel the motion.

Dai stared out at the sea for a while longer, then he turned and went down the companionway to the fo’c’sle. He was not on watch for another three and a half hours, he might as well get a meal and some rest. The ship’s cook was an unknown quantity, he would test him out, and besides, he would be on watch quite soon enough.

Below, men lounged on the hard benches, some with plates before them laden with bacon, eggs and fried potatoes, whilst thick white mugs of strong tea waited for their attention. Others had eaten and leaned back, reading books, playing cards, talking idly about anything but the work on hand.

Dai went over to the galley and announced his presence and watched as the galley boy slapped bacon, eggs and potatoes onto a chipped plate. He took the plate and waited for his tea, then walked back to the mess table.

Greasy ducked his head as he came into the lamplit room. He grinned across at Dai; they were on the same watch, so they were both free for a bit. ‘Gerrin’ your grub in, Taff? Looks good! I’ll ’ave some o’ that.’

In his turn he went over to the galley whilst Dai sat down and reached for the sauce bottle.

This, he knew, was just the beginning. The journey out to the fishing grounds was mostly boring, rarely either particularly exciting or particularly dangerous. And it tooks days to reach Arctic waters, where the big fish could be found. But it would give him and Greasy time to sort themselves out, to get used to the different types of work they would be expected to tackle. He grinned to himself. He’d have something to put in his next letter to Sîan, that was for sure!

With Christmas over and the new year celebrations only a memory, Biddy and Ellen settled down to the serious business of earning their living. Biddy, it is true, was more serious about it than Ellen, since she knew herself to be entirely alone, without the support of parents or family. Ellen, though she did not often visit her mother’s home, did go there from time to time. She had spent Christmas there, taking Biddy with her despite her friend’s strenuous objections, and they had a real family day, with lots to eat, a few small presents, and plenty of good company as more and more members of the Bradley family returned to spend at least part of the day with ‘Mam an’ the littl’ uns’.

No one asked difficult questions about Ellen’s flat, so Biddy surmised that, though they might not approve, they most certainly understood. And seeing the cheerful poverty of the tiny house, crammed to the eyebrows with people and very short on possessions, she could understand both Mrs Bradley’s silence and Ellen’s absence.

In addition to the Bradley family themselves, all eleven of them, there lived in the small house both grandmothers and a grandfather, Ellen’s Auntie Edie, a cousin of five whose mother had died and whose father was mostly at sea, and a couple of well-fed cats.

‘We used to ’ave rats,’ Ellen said briefly, when Biddy commented on the cats’ gleaming coats and well-rounded sides. ‘Mam gives ’em a lick o’ milk now an’ then, but not much else. They keep us clear o’ vermin, an’
the neighbours don’t ’ave no more trouble either.’

Biddy looked at the cats with more respect after that.

January, however, seemed like the longest month in the history of the world. Biddy continued with her deliveries, but tips were rarer now, in what Ma Kettle had called the hungry months. And it snowed – how it snowed! It wasn’t too bad in the city centre, where traffic and the feet of those working and shopping there kept the carriageways clear and the pavements at least passable. The street sweepers did a good job too, but once you got out a bit, then Biddy soon discovered it was not always possible to use the bicycle.

‘I’m scared of comin’ a cropper and ruining a parcel,’ she explained nervously to Miss Whitney, one morning when the snow was blowing horizontal and piling up by the roadside, as the traffic crept slowly through the white streets. ‘What’s more, I can’t get along at any sort of speed on the old bike while the snow’s so thick. I was wonderin’ whether it might be better if I caught a tram?’

‘You’d best walk,’ Miss Whitney said crossly. She had come back to work after Christmas very sharp and critical. Miss Harborough said it was because her mother was ill again, and cranky with the cold, but Biddy, who bore the brunt of the other woman’s displeasure, felt this was no excuse.

Now, she looked resignedly at Miss Whitney. ‘I don’t mind walking, but it’s going to take me all my time just to get to Mrs Bland’s place and back again. And there are three customer deliveries to be done, all in different parts of the city; shall I start by going to Richy and then come back here and see how I’ve got on?’

Miss Whitney pulled a sour face and rolled her eyes ceilingwards. ‘As if I’ve not got enough to do,’ she said crossly. ‘I suppose you’d best catch a tram. But don’t linger, if you please.’

‘I never linger,’ Biddy said rather sharply. She was absolutely sick of being found fault with and thought Miss Whitney was being very unfair. ‘Apart from anything else I’m too cold to hang about.’

Miss Whitney pulled a disbelieving face but she got some money out of the till, counted it, and then handed it to Biddy. ‘There you are, that should be sufficient for all the deliveries, if you walk between the last two. In fact there should be no need for you to come back here until you’ve finished, so you can do all four.’

‘Oh! Well, I suppose I can eat my carry-out in the tram,’ Biddy said, rather dismayed. After tramping the snowy streets all morning she would be aching for a
sit-down and something hot, but she did not like to say so to an obviously bad-tempered Miss Whitney. Instead, she put her coat, scarf and gloves on, shoved her carry-out into the deep pocket of her coat, and headed for the doorway into the shop.

Miss Harborough was sitting behind the counter filling in the stock book. She was writing very slowly and carefully, with the tip of her tongue protruding from the side of her mouth, but she made a face and jerked a thumb at the back room when she saw Biddy glancing in her direction. ‘Disappointed in love,’ she hissed, with a quick glance over her shoulder to the back room, where the senior sales lady hovered. ‘That nice Mr Mickleburgh has got tired of waiting; he took a younger lady to the Temperence meeting, I believe.’

‘Oh, no wonder she’s ratty; I’m sorry I didn’t sympathise more,’ said the soft-hearted Biddy, hurrying towards the outer door. ‘But she shouldn’t take it out on us, should she?’

‘No, but who else is there?’ Miss Harborough said simply. ‘You can’t altogether blame her; she can scarcely get nasty with her Mam, she’s well into her eighties.’

Biddy murmured something and slid through the door into the storm. It was blowing a hurricane and snowing like fury. When she looked up, the flakes whirled down so fast that they made her dizzy, grey goose-feathers against the lowering white clouds. But you’ve got a good coat, Biddy, and your lovely warm scarf and gloves, she reminded herself. She was wearing rubber boots, too, and though her feet got cold, at least they were unlikely to get wet as well. The rubber boots had been Ellen’s Christmas present, and she valued her friend’s good sense more every time she put them on.

At first, her journeying went well. Mrs Bland asked her in for a cup of tea, and though Biddy had to gulp it down so hot that she scalded her tongue, at least it gave her courage to go out into the storm once more and battle her way back to the main road and the tram stop. She walked on top of the snow down Great Richmond Street, turned into Cazneau Street and walked down it as far as Richmond Row, where there was a tram-stop at which several damp, cross-looking people already stood.

‘Have we got long to wait?’ Biddy asked her neighbour, a spotty girl of about her own age carrying an armful of what looked like legal documents. The girl sighed and shrugged.

‘Oo knows? I been waitin’ twenty minutes … one should be along any time now.’

‘They’ll come in a bunch when they does come, like bleedin’ sheep,’ a fat little man with a pipe and a filthy black coat remarked. He sucked vigorously at his
pipe, making horrible gurglings. ‘Aw, it’s gone an’ died on me – anyone got a light?’

Someone had and presently, when the trams did indeed come sheepishly along in line astern, everyone in the queue joined in an ironical cheer.

‘Mine’s second in line,’ the girl with the legal documents said. ‘Which one’s yours, chuck?’

‘Any. I’m going to Old Haymarket, I’ll change there,’ Biddy said, getting aboard the same tram as the spotty girl since the one in front fairly bulged with passengers. ‘If this snow goes on it’ll be over my boots before evening.’

‘At least you’ve got boots,’ the spotty one said as they sat down on the nearest wooden seat. ‘My boss sends me miles, knowin’ full well I’m delicate, in these ’ere papery shoes. Still an’ all, it’s nobbut a step from the tram stop now.’

‘I’m a delivery girl,’ Biddy explained, indicating the increasingly soggy parcels in her arms. ‘I’m off out to Brownlow Hill next, then over to Canning Street, and since the senior sales lady said I wasn’t to go back to the shop I suppose I’ll have to eat my carry-out as I leg it over to Hartington Road.’

‘I dunno where ’alf of them are,’ the spotty one said gloomily. ‘Still, you’ve got the boots for it.’

‘That’s true,’ Biddy agreed, and they both lapsed into silence until the Haymarket was reached, when Biddy jumped down, waved to her new acquaintance and set off, crossly it must be admitted, to find the tram which would take her to the bottom of Brownlow Hill.

Despite the weather, though, she did well enough, doing the delivery in Brownlow Hill in good time and apologising in such heartfelt tones for he soggy state of the parcel that a kind-hearted housekeeper gave her a sixpence and sent her on her way with a screw of blue paper containing sultanas. ‘The scones ain’t ready yet, queen, but you mi’ as well suck on these,’ she said, handing them over. ‘What a day, eh? Real brass monkey weather.’

Biddy smiled and agreed, then set off to walk through to Canning Street.

It was a long, wet trek and by the time she delivered the third parcel the fourth was looking very poorly indeed and in her pocket her carry-out was oozing all over the place, bread and jam having become almost a part of the paper they were wrapped in.

‘Well I declare!’ Biddy said aloud, almost in tears as she contemplated the ruin of the only meal she would
get until six or seven that evening. ‘I can’t eat this, and I’m freezing cold and terribly hungry. Shall I spend that sixpence on chips? Oh no, I’ve a
much
better idea!’

For it had occurred to her that she was not all that far from the flat in Shaw’s Alley, and no one would blame her – indeed, no one would know – if she nipped back there now, changed out of her wet things, dried them out before the gas fire and got herself a cup of tea and a bun.

As well as that, she could dry out the brown paper of her final parcel, which might mean that at least the garment within would arrive at its destination not actually soaked.

So Biddy trudged past St James’s cemetery and the new cathedral, along Upper Duke Street, and turned down Cornwallis Street. Once there, it was straight onto St James’s until she reached Sparling Street. And then it was no time at all before she was fumbling for her key, inserting it in the lock, and letting herself into the flat, almost sobbing from cold and looking like a snowman, for she was caked in the stuff from head to foot.

She went up the stairs wearily, leaving a mixture of mud and snow on every step, and unlocked the door to the flat itself. No fire had been lit but even so it felt gloriously warm to Biddy.

I’ll put on the gas fire and hang my wet things in front of it, and then I’ll boil a kettle and have a hot wash, she promised herself gleefully. It would serve Miss Whitney right if I didn’t go out at all any more today, but just stayed here, in the warm. She would get really worried around five and serve her right, miserable old slave-driver.

But she would not do it, of course, because she liked her job, though she could not wait for spring to arrive.

Biddy bustled round the kitchen, preparing herself some dry sandwiches – she threw the soggy ones out of the window for the birds, poor things – and getting a drink of hot cocoa, a real luxury in the middle of the day. She spooned conny onny into her cup, added cocoa powder from the tin, and when the kettle boiled she poured the water carefully on top of the milk and powder, stirring fast as she did so to prevent lumps forming.