Strawberry Fields (23 page)
However, she had been deserted, which meant, so far as Sara could see, that she need never go back to the Aigburth Road house again. I’ll live with Gran for ever now, and make something of my life, she told herself. I don’t want Father’s money or Mother’s lifestyle, I just want to live with Gran and lead a useful sort of life. I’ll get a job, and catch a tram to work each day and Gran and I will have holidays by the seaside sometimes, and sit and talk by the fire . . .
But she had forgotten; Gran had Miss Boote, now. For a second she just stood stock still whilst dismay and misery washed over her. Gran had a lodger! Miss Boote was very nice, a sensible, down-to-earth sort of woman, Gran was very fond of her, but it had not hitherto struck Sara that Miss Boote must be sleeping in the little front room, the room that Sara had, quite unconsciously, always considered her very own!
So what to do? For tonight, in an emergency, she could sleep on the sofa, she supposed. And perhaps there was some way . . . she could not share Gran’s bed, that would not be fair, but there must be someone, somewhere, who wanted a lodger, as Gran had? Someone who would give her a room?
She had no money, of course. This would mean she could not afford to become a lodger until she got work of some sort, and she doubted she would get work without an address. But this was no time for such sombre thoughts, such foolish apprehension. She would make her way to Snowdrop Street and ask Gran to let her sleep on the sofa just for a night or two, and then, together, they would work out some plan for Sara’s future which did not include a return to Aigburth Road.
Satisfied that she was doing the best thing, Sara began doggedly to walk once more.
Peader had been on a late shift. He trudged home rather than walked, because he was tired and because he no longer lived right on top of his work.
When he was given the job of safety man and began to earn better money he decided to change his lodgings and now he had a slip of a room all to himself in the home of an elderly couple in Salop Street, just off the Walton Road.
Peader liked it very much. Walton Road was lively; a positive hive of activity in fact, so that he felt he was at the centre of things once more as he had been in Dublin. And he liked the situation of his new home, too. Behind the jigger which ran along the back of all the small houses in Salop Street was the Co-op bakery and the smell of fresh bread which permeated the area was a lot nicer, to Peader’s way of thinking, than the smell of railway engines, oil and soot, which he lived with all day long. Then there was the Queen’s Arms public house on the very corner of Salop Street. It was lively, too, but in a good-natured sort of way and Peader, who had never been a heavy drinker, soon took to going there for half an hour of an evening. Sometimes he played dominoes, or pitch and toss, but usually he just sat in a corner and yarned with one or two other quiet men, like himself.
After the pub came a building contractor’s yard, then a couple of houses, and then the Salvation Army Barracks, which amused Peader because next to that was the Queen’s Cinema . . . everything you wanted, he told Deirdre in his letters home. Mammon, which was the pub, God, which was the Barracks, and entertainment, which was the cinema. Of course for him, God wasn’t really represented by the Barracks; his faith needed the warmth of the Catholic Church, but he knew Deirdre would appreciate the joke.
And after Mass on a Sunday, Peader had taken to cinema-going, joining the long queue which stretched right across the front of the Barracks sometimes, and was glad that the government had not yet succeeded in stopping ‘Sunday flicks’.
He missed Brogan, though, and had been very pleased when, shortly after their return from their Irish holiday, Brogan wrote to say he was coming to Liverpool to sit an examination and could his daddy possibly let him share his room for a couple of nights? Naturally Peader wrote back at once saying ‘yes’, so Brogan would be along in a day or two, to sit this exam at the Gordon Institute, where he had studied when he first came to England.
Now, Peader was crossing Stanley Street though, still a long way from home, and it was midnight and past and a frosty one, at that. Still, it was better than fog – anything was better than fog.
As a safety man he dreaded fog because his gangs couldn’t work – it was far too dangerous – and without the safety man the trains couldn’t run, either. And Liverpool is a foggy city, what with the Mersey, and the coal fires and the industry. So when it was foggy Peader was sent off up the line with a supply of detonators, to warn approaching trains that they were near a station and must begin to apply their brakes.
‘What’s a safety man, Daddy?’ Polly had asked when he had last been home, sitting on his knee and stroking what she called his ‘rustly’ chin, because he’d not shaved for a day or so. ‘What does a safety man do?’
She was delighted when he told her that he watched out for his gang, warning them of approaching trains and thus preventing accidents, and mystified her when he said that when it was foggy he did it by putting detonators on the lines, because detonators were explosives, and she thought that it was very wrong to lay explosives on a railway line, someone had said it was wrong . . . people did it in the Troubles, and it was a naughty thing so it was.
But Peader had explained; the detonators were put on the rails and when the train ran over them they exploded, making a lot of noise and creating quite a display of sparks but doing no damage whatsoever.
‘Then what’s the use of them?’ Polly the practical asked. ‘I thought you meant they stopped the train dead, blew it up,
pow, pow
, like that!’
pow, pow
, like that!’
‘You’re a horror so you are,’ Peader told her, laughing. ‘The bangs tell the engine driver that he’s getting near a station and must begin to apply his brakes, for it takes a big engine quite a distance to get to stopping.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Polly had said, scrambling off his knee. ‘I’ll be a safety man when I grow up – I like bangs so I do.’
But tonight Peader and his gang had just been doing their usual job, checking that their length of line was safe, that the points were in the right position for the next train, that there were no little landslips, that the troughs were full of water so the moving train could extend its scoop and replenish its water tank as it passed . . . and having done their duty, they had dispersed to their several homes where they would stay until their next shift in two days’ time.
What made Peader pause when he saw the girl he could not imagine, except that it was so very late, so very cold, and she looked so very forlorn. But she didn’t look like a street girl. Peader steered clear of the Liverpool street girls. They weren’t like the unfortunates of the Dublin slums, they were pert, sleazy, foul-mouthed girls, who swore and shrieked and laughed and sold their favours to anyone who could pay their price. And they didn’t just hang about the streets looking pathetic, either. They accosted, teased, accused. No, Peader would not have paused had he thought the girl a Liverpool whore.
The girl didn’t see him. She was wearing a thin, shiny-looking coat which she hugged about herself, and a long skirt which swished against the paving stones as she walked . . . and she wasn’t walking either, not really, she was more stumbling along, as though every step was a pain to her.
Peader turned towards her, uncertain. Suppose he scared her? But she had stopped and was leaning against a shop-front, her hand to her heart. She looked pale and sickly, but that was probably the gaslight.
Making up his mind, he walked over to her, stopping when he was well short of her. It would be too bad if she shrieked out when all he intended was to ask her if she was all right, needed help.
‘Are you all right, ma’am?’ he said, therefore. ‘It’s awful cold and late for a young lady like yourself to be on the street. And not too safe, either,’ he added, remembering tales he had heard of men taking to burglary, robbery, all sorts, when they were out of work and down on their luck.
‘Oh . . . hello. Thank you for asking . . . it’s these shoes,’ the girl said. ‘They’re no good for walking, I can assure you. But I’ve not got far to go, now, – I’m heading for Snowdrop Street.’
‘Oh aye? I know it; I used to lodge near there. But I’m on Walton Road now so I’ve quite a step still.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘Will you reach Snowdrop Street though, ma’am? You look wore out. I could give you me arm for the rest of the way if it ’ud help. It’s no distance, really.’
‘Well, I am tired . . . and I’m cold, too,’ the girl admitted. ‘But it’s not fair to take you out of your way. I’ll manage, but thanks, anyway.’
Peader looked at her more closely still. She was even younger than he had thought, probably in her mid to late teens, and very much a little lady. And now that he was so close he could see she was wearing evening dress, and the thinnest coat imaginable, as well as downright silly shoes. One heel was already turning over – they weren’t up to walking, that was plain.
‘It’s no bother,’ he said, therefore. ‘I’ll walk you to Snowdrop Street, for I’ve a daughter of me own and I’d not like her to be out on the street so late at night and in such flimsy clothing. Take my arm.’
After a moment’s hesitation the girl sighed, pulled herself away from the wall and took his proffered arm.
‘Well, I will, and thank you very much indeed,’ she said. ‘It’s really awfully good of you, because I’ve been very frightened as well as very tired, and I’m so cold I can’t even feel my hands or feet. And now I’m beginning to wonder what on earth I’ll do if I can’t make my granny hear when I knock the door. She isn’t expecting me, you see, and she sleeps in the back, not the front.’
‘She isn’t expecting you?’ Peader said gently. ‘You’ve not run away from home, alanna? Because if so, perhaps you should t’ink again. Your mammy is probably half mad wit’ worry.’
The girl laughed rather bitterly. ‘Half mad with worry? I think not. And anyway, I haven’t run away from home, I’ve been turned out. Or rather, I’ve been abandoned, left.’
‘In that dress?’ Peader said. ‘You’d best tell me the whole tale – my name’s Peader O’Brady, by the way. I’m safety man for a gang of navvies on the railway there.’ Her jerked his head, indicating the distant yards. ‘What’s your name, alanna, or would you rather not say?’
He half expected this pretty girl to deny him her name but the girl stopped walking for a moment to stare at him incredulously and then she began to laugh, softly but with real mirth.
‘My goodness, this is so incredible, Mr O’Brady, that it’s almost like a theatrical farce. My name is Sara Cordwainer, and I believe I know your son, Brogan.’
After that, of course, he had to hear the whole story. Sara poured it out, keeping nothing back. The harvest supper, the rage of her parents, the abandoning of her in the dark square. She told Peader how she had discovered that the woman she had been told was her old nanny was really her grandmother, how her parents had tried to keep her from that same grandmother, and how desperate she had felt when she had recently realised that there was now no spare room at number three Snowdrop Street.
‘But your ould one has a whole house to herself, bar one room for the lodger,’ Peader pointed out. ‘Sure and she’ll find a spot for a granddaughter, so she will. Can you doubt it, alanna, if she loves you?’
‘Oh, you’re right, she’ll try to fit me in, but it won’t be fair to disturb her and upset Miss Boote,’ Sara said, distressed at the mere thought of causing more trouble, more unhappiness. She acknowledged to herself that her parents would be unhappy, if only because they felt she had made fools of them. ‘It’s a tiny house, truly, Mr O’Brady.’
‘Well, I don’t think you should worry, because I’m sure you’ll be all right,’ Peader said. ‘As for your gran not hearing you knock – have you ever heard an Irishman shout?’
It made Sara laugh, and that was good for her. She was even beginning to feel warmer, with Peader at her side. And presently, when they reached Snowdrop Street, he proved his point. When polite knocking with the dolphin knocker produced no response he took her elbow and steered her to the jigger.
‘The back way’s often the best,’ he whispered. ‘Come on, I can unlock the gate – if it’s locked, which I doubt.’
There were no street lamps in the jigger but the moon was still bright enough to guide them to the right back yard. Peader stood under Mrs Prescott’s bedroom window and threw a handful of gravel at it. It sounded like pistol shots in the dark of the night, but when Sara called ‘Gran? Are you there? It’s me, Sara!’ it was only a moment before the curtains were drawn back, the window slid up, and Gran’s face appeared in the gap.
‘Sara? My dear child, what on earth . . . wait, I’ll come down.’
‘I’ll leave you now,’ Peader said diplomatically. ‘You’ll have a lot to tell your gran so you will and I’ve a way to walk.’ He took her hand and shook it. ‘When me boy comes over here to take his exams in a day or so, maybe we’ll walk round, pay you a visit.’
‘Oh, I
wish
you would,’ Sara said eagerly. ‘I’ve not seen or spoken to Brogan for three years. And in a way it was his fault that I was shipped off to Switzerland . . . oh, I can hear Gran at the door, do come in for a moment, you’ve been so kind!’
wish
you would,’ Sara said eagerly. ‘I’ve not seen or spoken to Brogan for three years. And in a way it was his fault that I was shipped off to Switzerland . . . oh, I can hear Gran at the door, do come in for a moment, you’ve been so kind!’
But this Peader refused to do and in fact by the time Mrs Prescott had unlocked and unbolted her back door and creaked it open, he was probably already on Stanley Road and heading, fast, for home.
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