Rose of Tralee (6 page)

‘As long as you want me to,’ her father said from the doorway. ‘Mary’s a nice name, sure enough, but we liked the name Rose, it suited you. Now goodnight, my very own Rose of Tralee; sleep well.’

‘You sleep well too,’ Rosie mumbled, but once he had gone she lay awake for a little longer, listening to the familiar sounds of her parents in the rooms below: quiet talking, the scrape of a chair, the rustle as her mother pulled the kitchen curtains across. Then, when her mother had washed up and put away the dishes, she imagined them down there in the kitchen, carrying out their usual before-bed tasks. Her mam, who was fair-haired and pretty, with a round, rosy face and quick, neat movements, would be bustling about the room doing all the things she did every night. Turning off the cooking stove, making sure
that Socks, next door’s tabby cat, who sometimes came indoors when her owners were out, had not got shut in by mistake, checking the washing to be sure that anything needed for the morning had been ironed and was ready. And Daddy would be relaxing after his day’s work, sitting back in his easy chair with the
Echo
spread out on his knee, sometimes reading a piece out to his Lily, sometimes chuckling, tutting, exclaiming over a headline.

And presently, Rosie knew, her parents would come up to bed and would pop in, ‘just to make sure’, and she would pretend to be asleep, eyes closed, ignoring her mother’s fussing round the room, straightening the sheet, picking a book off the floor with a gentle murmur of dismay; books must be treated with respect, she would have said if she had known Rosie was awake.

And tomorrow was Saturday, so there would be no school and she would have a whole lovely day to play in. Oh, she would do her chores first; even an only child in a moderately comfortable house had work to do. Rosie would make her bed and tidy her room, then go down to see if her mother had any messages for her to run. There was usually a bit of shopping to be done locally, then, if it was a fine day they might go out somewhere – to the big shops in the city centre, or to Stanley Park, or even out on the overhead railway to Seaforth, perhaps, if her mother was in a good mood. Lily Ryder was a thrifty housewife and always had a store of money in the old pewter teapot on the mantel. She said it was for emergencies, but she often used it for little treats. . . . Lying snug in bed, Rosie hugged herself at the thought of all those little extras. It might be ices at the park, or some new hair ribbons, or a trip into the country and cream tea at a
farmhouse. Of course, there were other good ways of spending a Saturday, she knew that. Sometimes she and Peggy went to the cinema, to the special children’s shows, but enjoyable though that was, it wasn’t as good as going out with Mam.

Once more, before she slept, Rosie repeated the poem. It came easily now, one word following another as though she had known it all her life. Satisfied, Rosie slept.

Lily Ryder had heard the shouts from her place by the cooker, and sighed and smiled, knowing very well that it was no use telling Jack to have his meal, then go up and see the child. For one thing, Rose would have fallen asleep and for another Jack would not have enjoyed his meal knowing that, upstairs, his daughter waited.

Lily and Jack had married when she had been twenty and he twenty-seven, and she had fallen for Rose at once. They had wanted a child, Jack especially, but neither had ever bewailed the fact that since Rose’s birth there had never been a sign of any more children. The war had intervened, and in any case it was clearly easier to stay solvent when you had one child than if you had ten, Jack often said. They wanted the best for their girl, and the best would not have been possible had they produced a string of other children.

But there was no doubt about it, Rose was spoiled. She was a real tomboy, preferring boys as companions to girls, enjoying boys’ games and pastimes, and though Lily sighed over her daughter’s torn clothing and frequent scraped knees and ruined boots, she knew that Jack was delighted with his boyish girl.

‘We’ve gorra lad, for all we’ve only gorra girl, Lily me love,’ her husband would say bracingly sometimes, when Lily looked wistfully at a sturdy little boy, playing up at the park or on the sands. ‘Not everyone can say that, you know.’

‘Oh, you think Rosie’s perfect,’ Lily was apt to reply. ‘What’ll you do when she grows up a bit, an’ wants pretty frocks an’ silk stockin’s an’ such?’

‘That’s diff’rent; I like a young lady to be a young lady,’ Jack had assured his wife with a grin. ‘I don’t recall expectin’ you to play cricket or to come swimmin’ in the Scaldy when we met up first.’

Lily laughed. ‘You’d have had to want,’ she had informed him. ‘I weren’t a tomboy even when I were a kid. Me mam brought me up proper strict, no street cricket or Kick the Can for little Lily Roberts! Come to think of it, Jack love, you’d not ha’ wanted to marry me if I’d not been a bit of a homemaker by then. So I really think we should insist that Rose learns more than how to tidy her room an’ make her bed neatly. She’ll be the only girl in the neighbourhood who can’t peel a spud or cook a meal at this rate.’

‘She’ll learn in good time,’ Jack had said comfortably. ‘She’ll change as she grows older an’ begins to see fellers in a different light. And then she’ll want to learn how to mek an apple pie an’ to sew a straight seam, as well as all the other things, like how to curl her hair, an’ look cool an’ pretty even in a heatwave.’

Lily had snorted sceptically, but in her heart she believed that he was probably right and besides, she had no wish to alienate their daughter’s affections by insisting that she did household tasks which she hated and which were not really necessary, since Lily herself did not work.

So now, standing by the cooker ready to serve up
his dinner as soon as he appeared downstairs again, she let her mind go back, nostalgically, to those magical courting days, when she had worked behind the counter in a small drapery shop in Scotland Road and had first seen Jack Ryder strolling along the street, gazing into the windows as he passed them.

She had been just sixteen, then, for their courtship had taken all of four years. Lily, youngest of eleven children, had had a dependent mother on her hands at the time and though old Mrs Roberts had died a couple of years after Lily and Jack had met, Jack did not want his wife to work once they were married, which meant that they must have enough savings so that Lily’s wage would not be missed.

But of course she had known nothing of the shared future that was to be theirs as she stood on the top step of the wobbly old step-ladder, cleaning the shop’s big, slightly bowed window. All she was aware of was that there was a handsome young man coming along the pavement . . . and she was up a ladder, with her skirts kilted round her calves, and her legs on view in very old, darned woollen stockings.

She had been half-way down the ladder when the heel of her shoe caught in a piece of uneven wood and she took a nose-dive for the pavement.

Jack had bounded forward and caught her. ‘Bloody ’ell,’ the young man had said breathlessly, with Lily Roberts in his arms, feeling the most almighty fool as she clutched at the strongly muscled shoulders. ‘Strange things ’appen on the Scottie, that I do know, but since when did they tek on women window-cleaners? I know I’m a lovely feller, but it ain’t every day that a beautiful young girl dives nose first into me arms!’

He stood Lily down on the pavement as he spoke but did not let go of her and Lily, blushing and laughing, had bidden him ‘Let me go!’ without, it must be admitted, meaning a word of it. She could see her aunt glaring at her through the glass, however, and because she knew it would annoy that lady to see her in such a compromising position she had not pulled away. The chore of window-cleaning, which was hers whenever the shop was quiet, was a bone of contention between herself and Aunt Em anyway. Other shop girls did not clean the windows, the shop owners employed a proper window-cleaner, but Aunt Em was mean and moaned all the time about the amount of money she paid her niece.

So now Lily gazed up at her rescuer, taking in his appearance. She liked the brightness of the blue eyes in his tanned face, the cowlick of brown hair which overhung his brow, and the humour and gentleness in the line of his mouth. ‘It’s me aunt’s shop; I work there as a counter-hand,’ she informed him. ‘She meks me clean the windows, though – too perishin’ mean to employ a feller and that’s the truth.’

He smiled lazily down at her. ‘And you go on workin’ here, when she uses you as slave labour?’ he said mockingly. ‘Where’s your pride, queen? You want to tell ’er where she gets off.... Me cousin Alice works on Great Homer Street an’ she was tellin’ me that there’s a job goin’ there in a drapery. She wanted to apply ’cos the money’s good, but she’s in ironmongery an’ they want someone wi’ drapery experience. Why don’t you have a go, eh?’

In one moment of knowing Jack, it seemed, he intended to change her life. ‘I will,’ she said without giving the matter any further consideration. ‘What’s the name of the place?’

He told her, and suggested that she go into the shop now and tell her aunt that she’d met an old friend and wanted to go along with him and have a word with his mother, or invent some other excuse for leaving off work right away. ‘I can tek you along to Great Homer Street meself, to the very door,’ he promised. ‘Then, when you’ve got the job, we can get ourselves a bite of tea. We might go to the picture house, an’ all – d’you like the flickers?’

Lily realised that this was all going a good deal too fast, but she wanted to leave her aunt’s shop and try for the other job. She knew herself to be undervalued and underpaid, too, and had been keeping a look-out for a better opening for some time. She loved the cinema, what was more, and already felt instinctively that she would be safe with this pleasant, tanned young man whose arms had held her so safely and who smelled of fresh air and sunshine. But first, there was one question he must answer, if she was to go off with him right now. ‘I love the flickers, but I don’t know your name an’ you don’t know mine,’ she pointed out. ‘What’s more, I don’t know what you do with yourself – what’s your job, that you can stroll along the Scottie as if you’d all the time in the world?’

‘Me? Eh, sorry, queen, I never thought.’ He sketched a bow. ‘Jack Ryder at your service, an’ I’m a seaman on the SS
Maria-Louise
, when I’m not livin’ in Netherfield Road. And you?’

Her father had been a sailor and he had been drowned. She had told her mother she would never go out with a sailor so she should have backed off at that point and invented an excuse not to continue the acquaintance. Instead, she told him that she was Lily Roberts, that she was the youngest of eleven children and lived with her widowed mother in Eastbourne
Street. And after that she went into her aunt’s shop and said she’d met a friend and wanted the rest of the afternoon off.

Aunt Em was mean. She said, tartly, that if her niece took the rest of the afternoon off her pay-packet would be short on Saturday night. Equally tartly, Lily told her that since it would be her last one, it didn’t really make all that difference. And walked out, whilst her aunt was still expostulating, and took Jack’s arm and walked away with him up the road in the direction of Great Homer Street.

She had never regretted that moment, never looked back. Jack, informed of her feelings about marrying a sailor, had applied to be taken on at the tram depot, and within three months was driving the big trams all around the city though when the war came he had joined the Navy, ending up decorated for valour. It had been a worrying time, but they had got through it somehow and the small Rose had flourished despite shortages and adored her father more, perhaps, because he was not always on hand.

And now here they were, married a dozen years and as happy, Lily often thought, as anyone could be. She might pretend that she wanted a dainty little girl interested in dresses and playing with dolls, but she would not have changed Rose for all the tea in China and she knew that Jack felt the same.

Lily was still standing by the cooker, reliving the past, when she heard the clatter of Jack’s shoes on the stairs and hastily produced the warmed plate from the bottom of the oven and placed tenderly upon it the pork chops and the onions, fried brown, the thick gravy and the mashed potatoes which were to be tonight’s dinner.

The plate was being stood down on the kitchen
table as Jack entered. ‘Me favourite!’ he declared, taking a seat and pulling the food towards him. ‘Have you eaten, Lil?’

When he was going to be late she usually ate with Rose and tonight was no exception. ‘Aye, me an Rose had ours earlier, when she came home from school. But I’ve not had me puddin’, so we’ll share that. It’s a nice treacle duff; I got the suet from the butcher’s on Netherfield Road when I bought the pork chops. Our gal settled down, has she?’

‘Aye. I gave her a bit of a tune an’ she stuck her thumb in her mouth ... she’ll be asleep well before we go up, luv.’

‘Good,’ Lily said, sitting down opposite him and getting her knitting out of the pocket of her wraparound overall. ‘I thought I might tek her out tomorrer when she’s finished her chores. If the weather’s as fine as it’s been today, that is. ’Cos it’ll be winter soon enough, wi’ no chance of goin’ to the park or the seaside,’ she finished.

‘That’s it. You go off an’ have fun,’ Jack said at once. ‘We might go somewhere Sunday, after church, but the chances are it’ll rain. Why not go to Seaforth? Rosie loves the sea.’

‘No, we’ll leave that for when we’re all together,’ Lily said comfortably. ‘We’ll likely tek a tram to Sefton Park; our Rose loves the aviary, an’ we can tek a boat on the lake an’ have our tea there.’

‘Sounds good,’ Jack said. He scraped his plate clean, then sat back with a sigh of contentment. ‘That were good, our Lil! Bring on the puddin’!’

Lily got up and fetched the duff, steaming hot still, from its nook at the back of the oven. ‘Here we are,’ she said, cutting off two slices, one large for Jack and a smaller one for herself. ‘Want extra syrup?’

‘I’ll be so fat I won’t be able to squeeze into me tram,’ Jack protested as his wife put the tin of golden syrup on the table before him. ‘No, luv, this is plenty sweet enough for me.’