The Girl From Barefoot House (8 page)

‘Ta.’ It was a relief to know that another person knew the truth.

‘Oh, and another thing, luv. You won’t have met your Uncle Vince yet, but you’ll find he’s a real Prince Charming.’

‘Will I?’ Josie felt even more relieved. Mam hadn’t talked much about Uncle Vince, but she’d had the feeling he’d done something bad. If Mrs Kavanagh thought so highly of him, then she must have got the wrong end of the stick. Who, she wondered was ‘His Lordship’, the person who had to be given his marching before Mam moved back in?

Lily offered to come with her when she realised she was leaving. ‘In case you’ve forgotten your house, like.’

‘’Course I haven’t forgotten,’ Josie said scornfully. ‘It’s seventy-six.’

‘Still, I’ll come with you all the same.’

To her surprise, when they were outside Lily linked arms, and Josie didn’t know whether to be pleased or
annoyed. Since she’d got to know her, she wasn’t sure if she liked Lily all that much. She was far too bossy and sure of herself.

‘Ma said you’re starting St Joseph’s on Monday. Our Marigold left last term – she’s gone to commercial college – but there’s still four of us Kavanaghs left. I’ll call for you, shall I?’

‘If you like.’

‘Pity we won’t be in the same class, else I’d have told Tommy Atherton to shove off and you could have sat beside me.’

Josie wriggled her shoulders and didn’t answer. Aunt Ivy had been in touch with the school and would have told them she was five, which meant she’d have to go through the whole first year again, learn to read and write and do sums when she could already do them. She was wondering how this could be avoided when Lily said, ‘I think our Ben’s stuck on you.’

‘What?’

‘Our Ben, he’s got a crush on you. He didn’t say a word during tea, just kept looking at you sideways, sort’a thing. Mind you, he’s a soppy lad, our Ben. I wouldn’t be all that flattered if I were you.’

‘Don’t worry, I’m not,’ Josie snapped.

They had arrived at Aunt Ivy’s, who opened the door to Josie’s knock, her face like thunder. ‘And where the hell d’you think you’ve been, miss? I’ve …’ Her voice became a simper and she gave a sickly smile when she saw Lily. ‘Oh, hello, luv. I should have known she’d be in your house. Your mam, she’s all heart.’

‘She’s a living saint, Mrs Adams,’ Lily said in sepulchral tones. Josie realised she was making fun of her aunt, and warmed to her new friend. ‘And she said Josie can come
to ours for tea every night. “Another mouth at the table won’t make much difference,” as she said to me da’.’

Josie couldn’t remember Mrs Kavanagh saying any such thing, but didn’t argue. Aunt Ivy began to mutter something about if she was being fed regularly she’d have to take along some rations, and Lily said, ‘God bless you, Mrs Adams.’ She nudged Josie playfully in the ribs, and went home.

It was hard not to think of the Kavanaghs’ happy, noisy house when the door closed and she was left alone with Aunt Ivy, who remarked spitefully, ‘If you hadn’t been at the Kavanaghs’, miss, you’d have gone to bed early. I was dead worried when I got in and you weren’t here.’

‘I’d like to go to bed early, please.’

Her aunt shrugged. ‘Suit yourself. You’ll find a nightie on the bed. I got it in Lewis’s on me way home from work.’

‘Ta.’ She was halfway upstairs, already feeling tearful, longing to be alone so she could think about Mam which she’d hardly done at all over the last few hours, when Aunt Ivy called, ‘Don’t forget to draw the blackout curtains.’

‘No.’

‘Are you all right?’

Josie turned, taken aback by this unexpected expression of concern. ‘I’m okay, ta.’ Her aunt was standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up. Her face was odd, all screwed up, as if she were about to cry.

‘I suppose, well, as that woman said this morning, you’ve had a shock. It’ll take a while to get over that business with your mam. I was dead upset when me own mam died, but I got over it eventually. You’ll find the same.’

‘Ta,’ Josie said again. Perhaps Aunt Ivy was sorry about the way she’d behaved earlier and would be nicer in future, but this turned out not to be the case.

It wasn’t until Saturday, at breakfast, that Josie met Uncle Vince. When she went into the dining room he was tucking into a plate of bacon and fried bread, a small, slight figure wearing a shirt without a collar and a hand-knitted Fair Isle waistcoat. Aunt Ivy, her back to Josie, was pouring tea. She glanced at her niece and didn’t speak.

‘Hello there, luv.’ Uncle Vince turned round and chucked her under the chin. He smiled. ‘You’re a lovely big girl for six.’

‘Five,’ Aunt Ivy snapped.

‘Oh, yes, five.’ He winked at Josie from behind his wife’s back, and she risked a little smile back.

As Mrs Kavanagh had said, he was a genuine Prince Charming, with thick, straight hair a lovely golden colour, blue eyes as pale as a misty sky at dawn, and a dead straight nose. Had his chin been firmer, he would have been perfect, but it sloped away under his mouth, making him look weak. He must have been weak, Josie thought, the way he let Aunt Ivy boss him around. Yet the funny thing was, she was mad about him.

She had still been awake last night at half ten when Uncle Vince came home from his job as a quality control inspector at the Royal Ordnance factory in Fazakerley. As he ate his tea, she could hear Aunt Ivy telling him to sit up straight, not put his elbows on the table and eat up quickly before the food got cold, but all said in a fond,
dopey voice, as if Vince were a little boy, not her husband.

‘My Vince’ was how her aunt referred to him when she spoke to the neighbours who’d called to see ‘Mabel’s little girl’ for themselves, and remark in amazement at how incredibly tall she was for five.

‘My Vince is on afternoons this week,’ Aunt Ivy would say in the same dopey voice, and with an equally dopey smile, or, ‘My Vince can’t stand that awful dried milk.’ ‘My Vince would have joined the army like a shot if it hadn’t been for his dicky heart.’

When Lily called, Josie was not long home from a shopping trip to Penny Lane where Aunt Ivy had sourly bought her a grey pleated skirt, two white blouses, a navy blue cardigan, shoes, socks, underwear and a drab brown frock with long sleeves that was dead cheap but would do for church and to wear around the house until Mrs Kavanagh ran up something nicer.

‘You can chuck that rag away when we get home.’ Aunt Ivy nodded at the red gingham frock. ‘I’d have thought Mabel would have decked up her kid a bit smarter. I made sure she was dressed nice when she was your age.’

Josie thought about the blue velvet frock from Paddy’s market. A picture flashed through her mind, of Mam ironing the frock. It seemed like an eternity ago. ‘There, that’s everything done,’ she’d said. Later, they’d waltzed around the room.

‘Come
on
.’ Her reverie was rudely interrupted by Aunt Ivy pinching her arm. ‘It’s time we made tracks. My Vince will be dying for a cuppa.’

They hadn’t been in five minutes when Lily knocked. ‘Me ma thought Josie would like to see the fairy glen in Sefton Park,’ she said sweetly to Aunt Ivy.

Josie was upstairs, changing into the brown frock. ‘I’m sure she would, luv,’ Aunt Ivy said in a grovelling voice.

When she came down, Lily was in the parlour chattering away to Uncle Vince about football. He had a pools coupon on his knee, the wireless was on and he was waiting for the results.

‘You won’t win much,’ Lily warned. ‘Even if you get eight draws, you’ll only get about fifteen hundred pounds, least so me da’ says. Since the war, people have stopped doing the pools.’

‘Fifteen hundred quid would do me fine, luv,’ Uncle Vince replied.

Aunt Ivy ruffled his golden hair. ‘I thought I told you to put your collar on, Vince,’ she said fondly. ‘It looks bad when people come.’

‘Oh, sorry, luv. I forgot. I’ll do it in a minute.’

‘You better had.’

‘That’s a horrible dress,’ Lily said the minute they were outside. ‘It’s the sort of thing they wear in the workhouse.’ Before Josie could think of an equally rude reply, Lily put her arm through Josie’s and said, ‘I see you’ve met My Vince.’

‘He’s very nice,’ Josie said defensively. She was convinced Vince would be even friendlier if it wasn’t for his wife.

‘Oh, he’s dead lovely, My Vince.’ Lily giggled. ‘Our Marigold’s madly in love with him, but me da’ said Ivy would kill her stone dead if she found out. He doesn’t like either of ’em.’

‘Your da’ doesn’t like your Marigold?’ Josie gasped.

‘No, silly. He can’t stand My Vince or your Auntie Ivy. He said
she’s
besotted, though I don’t know what that means, and
he’s
a ponce. I don’t know what that
means either. Me da’ thinks he only married her ’cos she had a house. It’s usually the fella that supplies the house. And, according to me da’, your auntie’s not short of a few bob. She
bought
his services, he said. When I asked for an explanation, I was told to mind me own business. He wasn’t talking to me, but to me ma.

‘“Look at the clothes she’s always buying him,” he said before he realised I was listening. “He’s got four suits.” Me poor da’s only got two, one for best and one for every day. Ma says he’s jealous, because she doesn’t wait on him hand and foot, like Ivy does My Vince, and he’s not nearly so good-looking.’

They had reached Sefton Park, and Lily showed her the fairy glen, a small clearing where the surrounding trees were turning bronze, and a few leathery leaves had already fallen on to the emerald grass, dotted with buttercups and daisies. The sun shone through the trees, making yellow patterns underneath. A slight breeze shook the branches, and the patterns shivered.

Josie was instantly enraptured. They were the only ones there, and the atmosphere was magical, like something out of a book. She half expected a fairy or an elf to come dancing towards her as she wandered down the sloping bank towards a stream, where goldfish, all different sizes, swam lazily in the tinkling, silvery water. If only she could stay for ever, never see Aunt Ivy again, but hide herself in the dark, rocky place where the stream disappeared and the trees joined thickly together to make an arch.

Two ducks came paddling towards her in their ungainly way, quacking angrily. Josie backed away. Perhaps living here wasn’t such a good idea.

‘They won’t hurt you.’ Lily was standing beside her. She must have sensed that Josie was awesomely
impressed by the fairy glen. Her expression was smug, as if she owned the place, had planted the trees herself and had supplied the fish and the ducks and the frog that suddenly leapt from the water on to the bank.

‘Have you seen trees before?’ she asked patronisingly.

‘’Course I have,’ Josie snapped. ‘Mam used to take me to Princes Park.’

‘What was your mam like?’

‘Beautiful.’

‘I bet she wasn’t as beautiful as mine.’

It seemed a futile argument. Josie didn’t bother to reply. She watched the frog, which kept leaping and pausing, leaping and pausing, until it disappeared from sight.

There was silence, which she already realised was unusual when in the company of Lily Kavanagh. Then Lily said in a careful voice, ‘Do you like me?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Josie said honestly.

‘I’d like you to like me.’

‘We’ll just have to see.’

‘You can come to the pics with us tonight,’ Lily said in a coaxing voice, as if this might help Josie make up her mind.

‘The pics?’

‘The pictures, to see a film. Me ma’s taking me and our Ben to see Deanna Durbin in
Spring Parade
. Have you never been to the pictures, Josie?’

‘No. But me Auntie Ivy mightn’t let me.’

‘She will if I ask. She’ll do anything to keep in with the Kavanaghs.’ Lily puffed out her chest conceitedly. ‘We’re the most important family in the street. Me da’s a councillor on the corpy, as well as chairman of the Conservative Party, and me ma runs the Townswomen’s
Guild. Our Stanley and Marigold are the Amateur Junior Waltz Champions of the North East of England.’

Lily hesitated and looked less sure of herself. ‘Or it might be the North West. They don’t do it so much nowadays. They used to go with a crowd in a big charabanc to places like Manchester and Blackpool, but now there isn’t the petrol. You can come with us to the Grafton ballroom next time there’s an exhibition. Our Stanley’s got an evening suit, a proper one, and Marigold’s got seven spangly frocks me ma made. You should be dead pleased that I like you and want you for a friend.’

‘Oh, I am,’ Josie said sarcastically. Privately, she was impressed, particularly with the waltzing bit. The sarcasm was wasted on Lily, who greeted the reply with a complacent smile.

‘Anyroad,’ she said, ‘your auntie will be pleased if you go out tonight. Sat’days, her and My Vince go to the pics in town. She wears her fur coat, and he gets dolled up to the nines. Me da’ ses he looks like one of them dummies in Burton’s shop window.’

St Joseph’s was already three days into the autumn term when Josie started on Monday. She noticed she was taller than all the girls in class
I
and most of the boys. When the teacher, Miss Simms, called the register, she answered clearly in a loud voice. Not normally given to pushing herself forward, she showed off outrageously, putting up her hand at every opportunity when the class was asked a question. At break time, Miss Simms asked her to remain behind.

‘Would you like to read this page for me, Josie?’

The page was composed of short sentences of mostly
three-letter words. The cat sat on the mat. The man had a gun. The dog lay by the log.

Josie read the entire page without a pause. Miss Simms was impressed. ‘Who taught you to read, dear?’

‘Me mam,’ Josie said in a rush. After all, Aunt Ivy considered it all right to tell lies. ‘She taught me to do sums, an’ all. I can do add up and take away.
And
I’ve learnt some of the Catechism. I know the Pope cannot err, but I don’t know what err means. Do you, miss?’

Miss Simms laughed. ‘It means he can’t make a mistake, and it’s clever of you to ask. But I think
I
might be erring if I kept you in this class. I’d better have a word with Mr Leonard, the headmaster.’