Rose of Tralee (8 page)

‘So that’s your Aunt Daisy,’ Ricky said thoughtfully as the two of them crouched beside the cardboard box full of patchwork-coloured kittens. ‘She ain’t much like your mam, chuck.’

‘She’s ten year older,’ Rose explained. ‘An’ her old feller left her years back. Her gal’s growed up, an’ all.’

‘Your mam took your aunt cakes an’ that,’ Ricky said after a moment. ‘Don’t she have much gelt, queen?’

‘Yes, she’s gorra job an’ so’s her daughter what
lives wi’ her, me cousin Mona. But me aunt don’t bake,’ Rose said briefly. No lover of Aunt Daisy herself, she did not much fancy having to explain her to Ricky, particularly as she did not really understand Aunt Daisy herself, so she strove to change the subject. ‘If you could have one of ’em, which would you choose?’ She pointed to the kittens.

‘Dunno. Kittens is grand, but they grows into cats awful quick,’ Ricky observed. ‘An’ we’ve gorra cat – two, in fact. Ain’t you gorra cat, Rosie?’

‘No. Next door have got one called Socks – I like Socks all right, I wish she was ours. Though I’d like a dog, really. But a kitten would be next best,’ Rose said. ‘But these ones are too little to leave their mam, ain’t they?’

‘Yeah. The lady said another couple o’ weeks,’ Ricky reminded her. ‘I like the one what’s gorra black patch over his eye. An’ the one that’s nearly all white ain’t bad. But I tell you, Rosie, cats ain’t no fun. Try an’ mek em play an’ they either stick their bleedin’ claws into you or stalks off wi’ their noses in the air, honest to God they do. But a dog, now ... if I could have a choice I’d go for a dog every time.’

‘Oh, well, perhaps you’re right,’ Rose said, standing up. She knew, really, that she was unlikely to get a dog or a cat just yet. She had assured her parents that if she had a dog she would take him walking after school each day, but her parents did not seem to believe that she would and, in her heart of hearts, Rose thought they might be right. She did so love playing out, and though a dog would be great fun, it might not think that games of Kick the Can and Relievio were as good as a nice, long walk. And Mam said that she didn’t intend to squander her precious housekeeping money on feeding a dog and if they
had one Rose would have to use her pocket money to buy dog’s meat and biscuits. Rose had a number of uses already for her Saturday pennies and thought she might love the dog less if it meant no more Saturday flicks or bags of sweeties. ‘We’d best go back to me aunt’s, Ricky, or Mam will get going on another cuppa an’ we’ll never shift her.’

‘Right you is,’ Ricky said, standing up as well. He called out: ‘Thanks, missus, they’re grand kittens,’ and got an answering shout from the back kitchen before setting off for the jigger and Aunt Daisy’s house once more. ‘Your aunt’s not wearin’ no shoes!’

He sounded shocked, as well he might, Rose thought crossly. She had heard her father calling Aunt a slut and saying he couldn’t make out why Lily didn’t have a word with her about her appearance, but Rose understood only too well. A sister who was older than you by ten years must be nearly like your mother, and you wouldn’t tell your mother to wash and put her shoes on, would you?

‘Me . . . me aunt’s a bit careless, like’ she said apologetically now. ‘Mam says when a woman loses her husband she sometimes gets a bit that way.’ She knew it was a mistake as soon as the words were out of her mouth because in a neighbourhood like theirs, everyone knew everyone else’s business, and several women living in their area had lost husbands one way and another and they hadn’t turned ‘careless like’. And Ricky was on it like a ton of bricks – he would be. Rose was beginning to regret asking him to come to the park – but she never would have done so had she realised that a visit to Aunt Daisy was part of the trip.

‘Mrs Johnson’s a widder – you do mean that your aunt’s a widder, don’t you, Rosie? – an’ she wears
shoes . . . she’s smart, is Mrs Johnson. Doesn’t your aunt work? You said she wasn’t short of a bob or two.’

‘She ain’t. Oh
dear
, Ricky, why must you ask so many bleedin’ questions?’ Rose said, deciding that honesty was the best policy. ‘Me da says me aunt’s a lazy slut, but she’s me mam’s sister, so I can’t say what ... ay-up, here comes me mam, better leave it.’

‘Right,’ said Ricky and began to talk enthusiastically about the kittens.

‘Nice, were they?’ Mam said as they made their way towards the park. ‘I wouldn’t mind a cat – less trouble than a dog.’

‘Ricky says they’re no fun once they’s growed, though,’ Rose pointed out, skipping along beside her mother. ‘What’ll we do first, Mam, when we get to the park? Go on the boats or have us sarnies?’

‘Have our sarnies, you mean,’ her mother said, then bit her lip. She tried not to correct Rose’s speech before other children, since she knew it was important to sound like them and not to be pointed out, jeeringly, as ’the posh one’, or ’the kid what purron airs’. Besides, she was well aware that Rose would not speak carelessly in her own home. ‘Which ’ud you rather, queen?’

‘Boats,’ both children replied in chorus and Ricky added, ‘We gets to eat sarnies every day, mostly, Miz Ryder, but I ain’t never been on the boats in Seffy.’

‘Right, then boats first it is,’ Mrs Ryder said. ‘I’m fair parched an’ longin’ for a nice cup o’ tea, but I agree, we’ll go on the boats first – or rather you two will. I shall sit on a seat an’ watch.’

‘I thought you had tea wi’ Aunt Daisy,’ Rose said. ‘You telled her to put the kettle over the flame.’

‘Aye, but she doesn’t have milk, only conny-onny,
so I had it black an’ it don’t quench me thirst the same,’ her mother explained. ‘Look – there’s the park gates! First one there gets a penny!’

Jack Ryder was driving his tram past Lime Street station when he saw Mona. She would, he reflected wryly, have been difficult to miss. She was wearing a bright scarlet coat, a small green hat and very high-heeled shoes, and her skirt was so short that he could see her knees. She was standing at the tram stop and as his vehicle approached she raised her eyes and saw him. For a moment she looked startled, then she gave him a practised smile and a small wave and, as he stopped, moved casually away, as though she had not been waiting for a tram at all.

But she had, Jack knew that. She was with a middle-aged gent in a bowler hat and a dark overcoat. A businessman of some sort, Jack presumed. Years older than herself, of course ... oh Gawd, why had he noticed her? He was pretty sure, after a number of such encounters with Mona, always accompanied by a different feller, that his niece was no better than she should be, but while he could shut his eyes to it he would. He couldn’t understand why she did it, either. Street-walking was dangerous, as well as against the law, and Mona had a job which brought in regular, if not good, money each week.

Daisy had spoiled her when she was a kid, Jack remembered that all too well. Fancy clothes, lots of trips out, pictures whenever she wanted to go. Sometimes he wondered how Daisy had managed that... if Mona’s present behaviour was ‘like mother, like daughter’, whether Daisy had gone with sailors to make a bit extra after her husband had left her, but naturally, he could not voice the thought aloud. Lily,
he knew, would be outraged and terribly upset with him, and even if he proved himself right she would be dreadully hurt.

But it was why he didn’t like her taking the kid round there. Children weren’t stupid and his Rose was as bright as a button. If she twigged what Mona was up to... well, suppose she thought that since her mam took her round to Daisy’s place and let her chatter to Mona such behaviour was acceptable? She was his heart’s darling, was Rosie, he wouldn’t have her getting the wrong idea, not even if, in the end, it meant that he had to put his foot down over Daisy, tell Lily what he believed and make her see that, for their daughter’s sake, they would have to steer clear of both Daisy and Mona.

The trouble was, Jack liked a quiet life and he liked the people he loved to be comfortable. Lily behaved towards Daisy as though she were the elder, he sometimes thought. She was forever going round there with food she had baked, she spent time with her sister even when she was busy herself, she gave her presents. Sometimes it was a pretty blouse which she would have toiled over for nights and nights, at others a pair of thick woollen stockings for winter wear, or some embroidered pillowcases, or a thick, soft towel to take to the bath-house. Not that Daisy ever visited the bath-house so far as Jack knew; she always looked unwashed to him.

An elderly woman tottered across the tram’s path and Jack, who had not been going fast anyway, moved the handle to cut the power and slow them down, then gradually built up speed once more as the road cleared. Daisy Mullins had been a thorn in his flesh ever since he and Lily had first met, and her disapproval of him – and his of her – had not become
less with the years. But he had no right – or reason – to grumble, because he rarely saw Daisy now. She had grown lazier and lazier with the years, and for a long time now it had been too much trouble for her to come to Cornwall Street, and because of his work – and his feelings – Jack never went round to Prince Edwin Lane, either.

Yet it still made him uneasy when Lily took their daughter to visit the Mullinses, which was absurd, really. Rose didn’t even like her aunt and the age difference was too great for her to have had much to do with Mona.

‘Rotunda!’ Jack was jerked out of his thoughts by his conductor’s shout combined with the ringing of the bell and he turned the wheel which applied the brake, at the same time reducing the power, and drew to a halt by the queue which waited to embark.

It was a pleasant afternoon and Jack looked kindly at the throng outside the theatre. Some must have been to the matinée performance, others had been shopping, others still simply enjoying a stroll in the sunshine with the fresh breeze from the Mersey bringing the river and sea smells to their nostrils. Lily and Rose, he reflected, would be at Sefton Park by now, perhaps even on the boating lake. He imagined that Rose would be trying to row whilst Lily lay back in the boat and laughed at her daughter’s efforts. Not with the greatest effort of the imagination could he put Daisy into the scene and this cheered him. He told himself that she wasn’t a bad woman, just idle and feckless, and that probably Mona wasn’t a bad girl, either. She just liked male company and because she was a pretty girl and spent all her money on pretty clothes, she got male company. But the feller she’d been with when he’d seen her earlier wasn’t a
young blade, he was a stolid, middle-aged, middle-class office worker, by the look of him. He had looked . . . married, Jack decided uneasily. And he had been holding Mona’s arm ... as though ... as though . . . well, as though he had just bought her and was anxious to hang on to his bargain.

I’ll have a word with Lily this evening when I get home, Jack decided abruptly. There’s something very odd going on and I don’t like it. If Mona is going with men for money – even in his own mind he would not use the words which would utterly condemn his niece – then it’s time Daisy had a word with her daughter. And since he had to assume that Daisy did not know what her child was up to it was time that Lily asked a few questions and told her older sister a thing or two.

Having made up his mind to act, Jack was able to concentrate on his job once more and was happy to do so. At the next stop he pulled out the heavy metal pocket-watch, which helped him to keep pace with his schedule, and consulted it. When they reached Hopwood Street he would have a pull at his bottle of tea, because the heat would get at him, else. He glanced back over his shoulder and old Georgie Allen, his conductor, made a gesture as of one drinking. Jack grinned back and nodded; if he was hot sitting out here in the open, with the breeze of his going helping to cool him down, then poor Georgie, wedged in the middle of a large crowd of sweaty passengers, trying to collect their fares and hand them the correct tickets, must be parboiled. And since they were five minutes early they could have a break at Hopwood Street and share his cold tea.

‘Hopwood!’ shouted Georgie, fighting his way to the back of the vehicle and tugging on the leather
strap to ring the bell. ‘Come along, folks, there’s no room for them outside to gerron till you’re off, y’know, so move along the car please!’

Once the descending passengers were out of the way and the new ones aboard, Georgie came round and hopped up onto Jack’s running board. The two men had been working together for long enough to know the ropes when a short stop was indicated and Georgie had brought both their tea-bottles with him as well as a couple of cheese and pickle barms which they had brought with them.

‘Cor, wack, I wouldn’t mind bein’ a driver in this weather,’ Georgie said, mopping his brow with a large red spotted handkerchief. ‘It’s ’ellish ’ot inside, I’m tellin’ yez.’

‘Oh, you conductors are never satisfied,’ Jack said with a chuckle. ‘You din’t like it when we ’ad open trams, you said it were cold, now you don’t like the nice glass winders! Think back to January, ole feller; I don’t recall you envyin’ me then.’

‘I can’t think o’ nothin’ but the bleedin’ ’eat. It’s like bein’ a loaf in one o’ Sample’s ovens,’ Georgie groaned. ‘Still an’ all, it’s better out ’ere. An’ the wust o’ the sunshine’ll be over soon. Where’s your tiddler, then? Gone to the seaside, I dessay?’

‘No, they gone boatin’ at Sefton Park,’ Jack told his mate. ‘Gi’s a swig from the bottle, ole feller!’

‘Boatin’!’ Georgie sighed, handing the bottle over and wiping his mouth on his sleeve. ‘I wouldn’t mind that either, Jack. But be the time this shift ends all I’ll want will be me bed. Oh well, at least I’ll be cooler there.’

‘And tomorrer you can tek your Nellie down to New Brighton on the train,’ Jack reminded him. ‘Or into the park, if you’ve a mind.’

‘Ha! Nellie’s mam an’ dad’s comin’ for their dinners to our place,’ Georgie said gloomily. ‘Allus the way, ain’t it? When it rains we’s free as birds, but the moment the sun shines the old folk decide to mek our day an’ come visitin’. You don’t know ’ow lucky you are, ole man, that your Lil’s the youngest an’ ain’t got no parents livin’.’

‘She’s gorra sister,’ Jack said gloomily. He glanced at Georgie. He and the older man had worked together now for ten years and trusted one another absolutely. I’ve gorra problem there, if the truth were known.’