Rainbow's End (15 page)

‘For Christ’s sake stop batterin’ that child,’ moaned a voice from the nearest dwelling. ‘Or I’ll come an’ batter you, so I will. I’m workin’ nights at the brewery this week. Can I not have a moment’s peace?’

‘That’s Mr Feeny,’ Ellen remarked. ‘He’s tryin’ to get some sleep before his shift starts. Will you shut up, Deirdre, or will I shut you up wi’ a chunk of carbolic in the gob?’

‘I hate carbolic,’ Deirdre grumbled. ‘Why can’t we have Pears? The little girl in the advertisement likes it, I can tell.’

‘She doesn’t eat it,’ Ellen pointed out, working up a fine lather between her two hands and slamming them, palms down, on to Deirdre’s defenceless face. ‘Keep your eyes shut or it’ll sting, ’cos soap does, whether it’s called carbolic or Pears!’

‘Ellen,’ Donal said as he was treated similarly. ‘Ouch! Ellen, I’m tryin’ to ax you . . .’

‘Right. Rinsing,’ Ellen said, ignoring her little brother’s frantic attempts to speak with a mouthful of suds. ‘Here it comes . . . close your eyes and hold your breath or it’s drowned you’ll be for certain sure.’

The bucket swung, the long loop of water encompassed both shivering twins, then Ellen stood it down and passed each child a small and grubby piece of towelling. ‘There! Now give yourselves a good rub and tek a run round the court. Mam will be home soon, so I’ll go back indoors and put the spuds on to boil. And you two can come wi’ me, an’ when you’re dry and ‘spectable, you can lay the table, butter the bread . . . stuff like that.’

‘All right, Ellie,’ Donal said peaceably. He tucked his small hand into hers. ‘You know you talked about Mr Feeny just now . . .’

‘Well, I didn’t talk about him, I said he was doin’ nights, that was why he shouted at Dee for screamin’,’ Ellen said, pattering up the steps and in through the doorway. ‘Why, Donal? D’you know the Feeny kids? I know there’s a lot of ’em, but I’ve not spoke to any of ’em, only Mrs Feeny.’

‘We’ve gorra pal, he’s quite old, he’s searchin’ for someone called Feeney,’ Donal said. His twin, wrapped in her towel, tried to kick out at him, to warn him to shut up, but Donal saw no reason why he should take any notice of Deirdre. Hadn’t taking notice of her always got him into trouble, now, and didn’t he share the blame with her equally, even though it was almost always she who did bad things?

‘Well, it’s a common enough name,’ Ellen said. She pointed to the horsehair sofa. ‘Sit!’

‘We aren’t dogs,’ Deirdre grumbled, but she sat down as Ellen fussed around, getting them clean clothes and throwing their dirty things into the low stone sink in one corner. ‘When’s tea?’

‘When it’s cooked,’ Ellen said. ‘Now. Just what have you been up to?’

‘Nothin’,’ Deirdre said at once. It was her firm belief that if you denied everything you might well get away with something.

‘You didn’t get that dirty playin’ hopscotch, or cherry wobs,’ Ellen said firmly. ‘Oh, Deirdre, you’ve not been down by the floatin’ road?’ She pulled a clean and much darned smock down over Deirdre’s head and handed her a pair of flannel drawers. ‘Put them on, chuck, while I get Donal sorted.’

‘Where’s the floatin’ road?’ Donal asked eagerly. A floating road sounded good sport, and it had to be a mucky place where a kid could find mud. Donal, diligently digging, had kept going because if there was a game he loved it was mud pies, and when they had found enough soil for the garden they wanted in No. 17a, he fully intended to make mud pies with any soil left over.

‘Never you mind,’ Ellen said, however. ‘No, you wouldn’t have gone down there, you’ve only got little legs. You know half the time I forget you’re only five and not even in school yet. I wonder what poor Mam will do wi’ the pair of you when I get a job?’

‘She won’t scrub an’ slap,’ Deirdre said hopefully. ‘Mam loves us, don’t she, Donny?’

‘Yes,’ Donny replied with total conviction. ‘But you won’t gerra job till we’re in school will you, Ellie?’

‘Probably not,’ Ellen said. ‘Probably I’ll stay in the blee . . . I mean I’ll stay in the house until I’m fifty, the rate I’m goin’. Mam earns more’n I can, that’s the trouble, an’ someone’s gorra keep an eye on you kids. Now once an’ for all, Donal, what were you doin’ this afternoon to gerrin such a filthy state?’

‘Playin’,’ Donny said promptly. ‘Hopscotch, kickin’ the can, relievio . . .’

‘What, just the two of you? Oh, come on, Donal, pull the other one!’

‘All right, Ellen, it was mud pies,’ Deirdre said. ‘We was shopkeepers, we took it in turns, an’ we sold mud pies. Everyone does it.’

‘But everyone don’t gerrin that state,’ Ellen told them. ‘What did you do,
eat
the perishin’ things? I tell you, I’ll give you mud pies if you come in like that again. I’ll be washin’ every stitch on your backs afore I go to bed tonight, an’ I’ve better things to do, I tell you straight.’

‘Sorry, Ellen,’ Deirdre said and heard Donal echo her words. ‘I’ll lay the table, shall I?’

‘Yes, queen, if you wouldn’t mind,’ Ellen said, and Deirdre smiled lovingly at her elder sister and thought that Ellen was really nice most of the time and only cross occasionally. When we deserve it, Deirdre thought, and trotted over to the dresser for the cutlery, astonished at her own frankness.

Ellen made the twins their tea and packed them off to bed, though she was resigned to them scampering downstairs again the moment they heard their mother and the boys come in from work. But at least it meant they were ready for bed, so she could eat with Mam and the boys, then she and Mam could tell each other all about their day. Though I’m still not at all sure what them divils were up to, Ellen reminded herself. Mud pies, indeed! If it had really been mud pies, then why in the name of heaven hadn’t Donal told her so first go off? No, it was worse than mud pies, though she couldn’t for the life of her imagine what it could have been. It isn’t as if we’ve gorra yard, or a piece of ground of our own at all, Ellen thought, humping the kettle over to the sink and pouring boiling water over the twins’ plates and mugs. Oh, well, at least they’re safe in bed now.

There was a nice piece of mutton and some vegetables stewing in a pot over the fire and her mother had made the bread last night. Ellen wasn’t bad at it, but she didn’t have her mother’s touch, so Ada usually made the bread, then Ellen took it down to Samples and they baked it. A couple of hours later Ellen would go down with her mother’s big basket and collect it, sweet-smelling and wholesome, and pay the few pence the baker charged for the service. Sometimes Ada made currant bread . . . Ellen’s mouth watered at the thought . . . and then they feasted, because with more money coming in, food was easier to obtain and more interesting too. And the boys really enjoyed having meat once or twice a week, instead of cheap fish or blind scouse.

Ellen lifted the lid and prodded the neck end of mutton and shifted the pot sideways, so that it wasn’t getting the full heat. It was done; now it could simmer until the family were ready to eat. Then she cleared away the remains of the twins’ tea – bread and jam and rice pudding – and staggered over to the sink with the pan of potatoes. She drained them, then left them, still in the pan, on the draining board to finish cooking so that they would be dry and floury by the time the boys and Mam were in.

Next, Ellen went for the big pitcher of milk and poured some into the small enamel pan kept specially for the purpose. She would boil Toby’s milk and stand it in a bowl of water to cool, then she would make bread and milk for Sammy and wake him up and let him sit on her lap whilst she spooned it into his eager mouth. Going up the stairs and bringing Sammy, heavy and rosy with sleep, down on her hip, Ellen decided, not for the first time, that her mother, working all day with the flowers in Clayton Square or spending the early evening trudging round the theatres with a basket of fruit, was to be envied, even though she knew that Ada worked long hours and that sometimes the game wasn’t worth the candle. In the hungry months of January and February, when flowers were scarce and expensive and fruit was the same, Ada sometimes came home as dusk fell with such a heavy step and such a pale face that Ellen got quite frightened, but as the evenings lengthened and flowers became more plentiful so her mother smiled once more and seemed happier.

She didn’t take Toby on her evening excursions, though. She left him with Ellen and the boys . . . not that the boys would have lifted a finger to help had the house been afire, Ellen thought bitterly. They had their own ploys and certainly did not intend to get lumbered with a baby brother. It was Ellen’s job, they pointed out if she complained or asked for help. They did their jobs, let her do hers!

But oh, lucky Shirl, Ellen thought often. Shirl had a job! She was the eldest girl but not the only one in the family, as Ellen was (you couldn’t count Deirdre, who was a holy terror rather than a girl), so when Shirl found work in Gaddishes Dairy her mother had simply deputed Lizzie, Shirl’s younger sister, to ‘tek on the fambly’, as Shirley put it, and Liz had no choice but to obey.

So, though both Shirl and Ellen knew that working in a shop was hard, they also realised it was a lot easier and pleasanter than running a family as large as either the O’Connors or the Dochertys. It isn’t as if the damned boys leave home, Ellen thought bitterly now as she mashed the potatoes with milk and butter. Look at ’em! Dick was twenty-one and courting Nellie Hardy; he had a decent job now, but he seemed to have no thoughts of leaving home as yet. Ozzie worked as a porter on Lime Street Station as Dick had done, Fred was at the brewery and even Bertie, a badly paid clerk in the Royal Liver Insurance down on the Strand, took it for granted that they would live at home.

Money-wise, therefore, the Dochertys were much better off than they had been – better off than most of their neighbours. Though there had been some grumbles, lately, from the boys about the cramped little house and the shared lavatory and single cold-water tap.

‘We could afford somewhere better,’ Dick told his mother over a cooked tea, made by Ellen, of pigs’ trotters, cabbage and potatoes mashed with butter and liberally peppered. ‘Everyone in this family is earnin’, apart from Ellen, the twins an’ the littl’uns. Other families move house, Mam, when their circumstances change.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Ada had said. ‘But you’re right, Dickie, we are a bit cramped here. And houses are always comin’ up for rent. Yes, I’ll think about it.’

But so far as Ellen knew, thinking about it was all she had done. The trouble was, of course, that Mick was home so seldom and Ada liked to consult him about everything. Come to think of it, Ellen reminded herself, it’s been a while since Mick came home . . . he’d not seen the new baby, Toby, since the kid was about three weeks old and Toby was five months, now. Ellen liked her stepfather, but she couldn’t help thinking, wistfully, that she would like him even better if he didn’t give her mam any more babies. She was still a trifle vague as to what part Mick played in their arrival – he was never around by the time the babies were born – but she knew well enough that women without husbands didn’t have babies and women with husbands did.

Not that I’d wish Mick a scrap of harm, she reminded God hurriedly, in case He was listenin’ in, like. He’s a grand feller, is Mick. Only if Mam keeps on having babies I’ll never get free of the house, I’ll never get a job! And when Dick and Ozzie leave home we’ll be strugglin’ again, if the babies keep coming and coming.

But Shirl seemed to think that babies would stop coming quite soon, of their own accord. ‘Your mam’s past forty,’ she said. ‘Women don’t catch so easy once they’re past forty.’

She made it sound as though having measles and having babies were more or less the same, but even so, it was hopeful.

‘More, more,’ Sammy said, as Ellen popped the last spoonful of bread and milk into his mouth. ‘More, Eyyie, more!’

‘You’ll end up fat as a pig, Sammy,’ Ellen said. ‘I know, you can have some of the twins’ rice puddin’. Here we are – ain’t you a lucky feller?’

She put Sammy on the floor and went and filled his empty bowl with rice pudding. Sammy, who had never to Ellen’s knowledge turned down any food, promptly devoured the rice pudding and looked round hopefully. ‘More, Eyyie?’ he said. ‘More?’

Ellen was just about to tell him he’d had enough when the door opened and her mother came into the room. Her big basket was empty, save for a couple of tired-looking bunches of Canterbury bells, and she had popped baby Toby into it. He was asleep and her mother, Ellen was glad to see, was smiling.

‘Well, here we are again,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Done well today, I have. Wharrabout you, queen? Kids been good?’

‘Sammy’s all right, but the twins got filthy,’ Ellen said. ‘I’ll just make a pot of tea, Mam.’

She put Sammy down on the ground again and he heaved himself up by the nearest chair and waddled over to his mother.

‘Mammama . . .’ he said adoringly, attaching himself to Ada’s long black skirt like a small limpet. ‘Mammamama . . .’

‘Yes, you’re a good little lad,’ Ada said. ‘See the baby, Sammy? He’s a good lad too, isn’t he?’

Sammy peered into the basket and made cooing noises, then grabbed a bunch of Canterbury bells and tried to ram them into his mouth.

‘That ’un would eat the cat if it sat still long enough,’ Ellen said. ‘Can baby go straight up, Mam? I’ve boiled his milk an’ cooled it; the bottle’s standin’ on the drainin’ board.’

‘You dish up, I’ll get the pair of ’em settled,’ Ada said. ‘You’re a good gel, Ellie. And when I come down I’ve got some news for you.’

Ellen watched her mother disappear up the stairs rather uneasily. What sort of news would it be? Oh,
not
another baby, she thought hopelessly. If there’s another baby I’ll never get free, never!

But at that point the door banged open again and the boys came in, Dick and Ozzie first, then Fred, with Bert last of all. They made the kitchen seem very small indeed, but by the time they’d taken it in turns to wash at the sink (Bertie always said he shouldn’t have to wash because he was an office worker, but since he managed to get himself smothered in ink that didn’t seem a very good excuse to Ellen) the food was on the table and Ada was coming wearily downstairs.