The Girl From Penny Lane (28 page)

‘Darling Hortensia, we had an agreement . . .’

‘Pig! I say you are a pig and a liar! An agreement . . . poh-poh! I spit on our agreement!’ she spat. ‘You told me you loved me, you said one day . . .’

She started on the saucepans. Art, who had bought them and had chosen cast-iron knowing it to be the heaviest and longest-lasting of materials, began to duck in earnest.

Lilac had had a really awful day. The hotel had been fully booked but she had been approached by a regular customer who wanted a bed for a couple of nights. She had juggled and moved people around and at last managed to persuade two ladies that they would be better off sharing a room rather than paying twice as much for a room each. The regular customer was grateful, but the chef, a man of great talent but uncertain temperament, was not.

‘I have no spare salmon; it is all very well, Miss Larkin, to say that one can always fit someone else into the dining room, but food can only be stretched so far. First it was thirty-eight, then forty, then forty-four. But forty-five people, if they all mean to have the salmon, will all go a little hungry and will blame me – me, who does the marketing, prepares the food, plans the menus . . .’

‘I’m sorry, Monsieur Arrat,’ Lilac said sincerely. ’Can you not serve one person with melon in place of smoked salmon?’

‘I have no melon,’ Monsieur Arrat said sulkily. ‘There was none in the market this morning, it will have to be tinned grapefruit, and no guest would choose tinned grapefruit when he could have my smoked salmon nestling in a bed of scrambled egg. Since it is all your fault you had best go and purchase some more salmon before all the shops shut.’

So Lilac, who should have been heading homeward, had to make her way to Byrom Street, to a fishmonger highly regarded by Monsieur Arrat. She bought smoked salmon, added half a dozen fresh eggs so that she might make herself an omelette when she finally reached home, and set off for the hotel once more.

She arrived to more chaos. The chef was satisfied with the extra salmon but the housekeeper had counted the sheets back from the laundry and found two missing. She had sent a kitchen maid round to Chung’s Chinese laundry on Smithdown Road because her chambermaids, who should rightly have gone, finished work at four. So Lilac’s first task was to face Monsieur Arrat once again when he discovered that his favourite peeler of potatoes, who should have been hard at work on the next day’s supply, was missing from the scullery.

By the time she had sorted everyone out, forced the housekeeper, a bad-tempered old woman who should have been retired years ago, to apologise to the chef, gone into the kitchen herself and arranged the wafer-thin slices of smoked salmon in curls, ready for the creamy scrambled egg, she was almost as inclined to scream as the chef had been. And far from going home and throwing herself on to her bed to rest, she was due down at the Academy in . . . gracious, in an
hour
, to take her turn at teaching the latest craze to cross the Atlantic, the Black Bottom.

So when Mrs Brierson called to her as she was crossing the front hall she very nearly pretended to be deaf and continued on her way.

Nearly, but not quite. After all, it was scarcely her employer’s fault if things had not gone right. Lilac smiled and turned towards the desk.

‘Yes, Mrs Brierson?’

‘A letter for you, Miss Larkin. It came care of the hotel, but I think it’s personal. Here you are.’

An ordinary brown envelope with handwriting on it. Lilac took it, glanced at it as she went to pop it into her handbag – and froze. She stared down at the well-remembered writing like a bird stares at a snake. It was Art – Art writing to her, after all this time! It had been years, without a word, and now a letter – what could it mean? Good news . . . or bad? Suppose he was writing to her to tell her he was married, with children? If so, she would rather not open the envelope, would sooner stay in ignorance for the rest of her life . . .

No. That wasn’t true; not knowing had been the worst part. Very soon she would know and either way, she guessed it would be a relief.

‘Miss Larkin? My dear, you’ve gone quite white! Does the letter contain bad news, perhaps?’

‘Bad news? No, indeed. It’s a letter from an old friend, a friend I’ve waited to hear from for these past two years. It’s good just to see his writing again to tell you the truth, though I was . . . am . . . surprised that he’s got in touch after so long.’

Lilac continued with the movement of pushing the envelope down into her handbag. She smiled up at Mrs Brierson and her employer, clearly relieved by her words, smiled back.

‘Well, that’s good news, as you say. Good night, Miss Larkin.’

‘Good night, Mrs Brierson,’ Lilac said, her voice lifting. She hurried out of the hotel and, in the road outside, looked at her handbag longingly. Should she stop and open it now? But the March evening was chilly and besides, she wanted her own room, her own company, when she opened the precious envelope and read the letter she had waited so long to receive. She hurried on her way, suddenly realising that she’d not so much as looked at the stamp or the postmark, all she’d done was stare at the handwriting. He might be anywhere – he might be in this very city!

But by the time she reached her flat common sense had reasserted itself. If he was in Liverpool he would scarcely have written, he would have called round. No, he must be away somewhere . . . but she would know soon enough.

She reached the hallway, climbed the stairs, unlocked her door. She loved her little flat, took a great deal of pride in it, but this evening her eye flicked heedlessly across the potted fern by the front door, the arrangement of daffodils and narcissus in the tall white vase, the pictures in their gilded frames, the soft, Welsh wool rugs. All she wanted was to get the lamp lit so that she might settle down in her chair and read her letter.

She lit the lamp, threw off her coat, plumped down on the scarlet velvet cushion laid negligently on the seat of her chair. She took out the letter, slit the envelope with a trembling finger, and drew out the two lined sheets of paper. For a moment she simply checked that she had not made a mistake, that it really was from Art. She found that she remembered in greatest detail everything about his writing, how he dotted each
i
and crossed each
t
. Yes, she knew it was he, without reading a word. She sighed deeply, happily. Then began to read.

Lilac read the letter through three times, very slowly. The first two times her hands were trembling so much that the paper fluttered like a leaf in the wind, but by the third read she had got a hold of herself and she simply let the flooding, overwhelming joy take charge. She hugged herself, she kissed the letter, she thanked God, Tippy Huggett, Art, even the ship which had brought the letter, the postman who had delivered it. Then she jumped up and went over to the kettle standing on the ring and lit the gas beneath it. She felt absolutely certain that at long last things were starting to go right. She clutched the letter, her magic talisman, her good fortune, and kissed it again, noticing that she had, at some stage, shed tears all over it, which was not the sort of thing she usually did, being a sensible and down-to-earth young woman.

But I’m not sensible or down-to-earth, not where Art’s concerned, she told herself giddily. I’m in love, I’m in love, I’m in love!

Presently the kettle boiled and she made herself a cup of tea and read the letter again. And again.

Then she sat down and wrote a reply.

Kitty and Johnny stayed in the Wrexham area for a while, then left, their search a failure.

‘Askin’ for a feller called Jones is like askin’ for a fish in the sea,’ Johnny said disconsolately. ‘Everyone’s called Jones, jest about. And everyone shops in Wrexham on Beast-market day, every blamed one. We aren’t agoin’ to find ’im, so we’d best search for t’other un.’

‘Yes, awright,’ Kitty agreed, not without some reluctance. She no longer feared her parents – she doubted if they would recognise her if they met in the street, nor she them – but she was afraid of the city. Even when she was full-grown with a job and money in her pocket she thought she would never forget the miserable conditions at her home in the Court, nor the hunger which had gnawed at her morning and night, a hunger deliberately fostered, she had come to believe, by her mother. And not only did she remember the hunger, she would never forget the complete lack of love, the hatred even, which her parents had shown towards her.

But then she remembered the other Liverpool, the one of her summer wanderings, when the city had taken her to its warm and generous heart. Liverpool had sheltered her beneath its posh doorsteps, fed her from its rubbish bins and its vegetable gardens, shown her its parks and gardens, its beauty at dawn and sunset, its miles of glorious waterfront. And it was not just the city, it was the people, many of whom had been kind to her. Best and first was Mrs O’Rourke of course; Mrs O’Rourke had quite simply given her a reason for living. Then there was the girl from Penny Lane, the stop-me-and-buy-one boy, the people who gave her pennies for carrying their parcels or food because they saw she was hungry. There were others; a scuffer, telling her off for loitering in the park because a rich old woman had complained, and slipping her tuppence when no one was looking; coming back next day with a pair of clogs and a grey woollen cardigan. She’d lost the clogs to a bigger child and popped the cardigan one day when food was scarce, but they’d been given from kindness and she had appreciated it.

And Johnny. When he was scarcely more than a kid himself he’d taken her under his wing, cleaned her up, chopped off her verminous hair, destroyed her filthy rags and given her some self-pride. And he was a Liverpudlian, just like her.

Yet still, when Johnny announced that they would go home now, cross the Mersey, she felt a stab of fear, of very real reluctance. She put a hand on Patch’s collar, gaining comfort from the dog’s closeness; Patch would not desert her, no matter what. Suppose her mam had set the scuffers on her? Suppose her dad was home and recognised her, beat her up? But it was pretty unlikely; only a ninny would worry about things like that and she was no ninny, she was Johnny’s chosen companion, she had all but been the owner of half a farm – and might be again if they could track John James O’Hare down!

‘So will we hoof it, or travel like lords?’ Kitty asked Johnny as they came out from the barn where they had spent the night. ‘Weather ain’t up to much.’

Johnny looked up at the sky and sniffed suspiciously. The wind was getting up and the clouds overhead were moving fast. Even as he looked, a faint, misty rain began to fall.

‘Hmm . . . what’ll it cost on a train, eh?’

They enquired and Johnny shook his head, half sadly but half gladly too, Kitty was sure.

‘Nah, we aren’t partin’ wi’ that much gelt! ‘Sides, they wouldn’t be too keen on lettin’ Patch ride, I daresay. We’ll do it on foot in a couple o’ days.’

‘Right. I like to hoof it,’ Kitty said loyally. ‘And we ain’t in that much of an ’urry, eh, Johnny?’

‘We’ll tek it easy,’ Johnny promised, and indeed they both enjoyed the walk.

It was evening on the third day when they reached Birkenhead. They caught a ferry, Patch squeezing between the two of them as unobtrusively as possible, and stood silently at the rail watching the port gradually approach, then disembarked with the other passengers.

‘We aren’t sleepin’ rough in the streets, we’ll go to a lodgin’ house,’ Johnny said authoritatively as they began to move uphill. ‘There’s doss ’ouses for sailors along the waterfront, we’ll go there.’

‘I can’t, not a doss ’ouse for sailors,’ Kitty reminded him. ‘Don’t be silly, Johnny.’