The Girl From Penny Lane (36 page)

‘Well, goin’ wi’ a feller’s agin the law, but you can write teachin’ French so long as they don’t b’lieve you,’ Marigold said generously. ‘I don’t want no fellers wi’ brains in their ’eads a-bangin’ on me door.’ She giggled. ‘If you see what I mean,’ she finished.

‘Look, I can’t do a good job standin’ ’ere,’ Kitty said presently. Trying to write with a stub of pencil on the thin paper, with the pad balanced on her rather inadequate knee, just wasn’t possible. ‘You go orf, Marigold, an’ I’ll bring ’em round later. When does you move into Grayson Street?’

‘Move, whaddyer mean?’

‘Well, when do you start to live there?’

‘Live there? I ain’t goin’ to live there, chuck, I’m just a-goin’ to carry on me business there,’ Marigold explained. ‘So I’ll be at number twelve if you want me.’

‘Oh! Right,’ Kitty said. She waited until Marigold had gone into her own house, then closed the door thoughtfully. She now had a well-paid job for a short while; she must make the most of it and decide what to do when it finished because she was icily determined not to simply give in and stay at the Court with Sary and Betty.

‘I’ll do me best by ’em both,’ she told Patch as the dog sat at her feet, watching her pencil copy out page after page of Marigold’s message. ‘But I won’t give up me life to ’em, it ain’t fair and I won’t do it.’

Patch sighed and laid her head gently on Kitty’s knee; Kitty smoothed the silky fur and sighed too.

‘It ain’t fair on you either, Patchie,’ she murmured. ‘But we’ll be all right; there’s gorra be a way out, there’s jest gorra be!’

The job was all right, though tiring and slightly risky. It turned out that she often had to conduct the customers to Grayson Street, since sailors in need of a woman in a strange port aren’t prepared to buy street maps. They would sooner pick up some floosie actually on the spot, even if she didn’t have much more to offer than a cheap five-minute gallop and a wall to lean against.

However, Patch lessened the risk considerably. Some men she liked, in which case she trotted quietly at Kitty’s heels through the darkening streets, never needing more than a word now and then. But some men she disliked, and Kitty soon grew to realise that Patch was a far better judge of character than she was herself. A smart young man with well-brushed clothing and hair Brylcreemed flat to his scalp might be the very one to take a grab at Kitty, thinking to save his money and get what he wanted by stealing it – Kitty was still not at all sure what went on between Marigold and her customers, but she did know it wasn’t for her – but Patch soon put a stop to any such thoughts, let alone actions. She would get between Kitty and the man and her hackles would rise up all along her back until she looked the way Kitty imagined an angry wolf would look. And she kept up the most ominous grumbling growl all the time, too, only ceasing when they reached number 20. The only man to decide she couldn’t hurt him had been badly bitten, far too badly to want to continue to defy the growling, stiff-legged Patch, so Kitty thought that her personal safety was assured whilst she and the dog were together.

The money she earned from Marigold was good and Mrs Fletcher, a woman as good-natured and easy-going as her daughters, had agreed to keep an eye on Sary whilst Betty and Kitty were out, so things began to improve a little for the Drinkwaters. Food was more plentiful, Sary’s health began to improve, Betty positively blossomed.

Spring came and Kitty saved her money and bought herself a cotton skirt and jacket and her mother a lightweight shawl. Betty had a new dress and Kitty got a neighbour to mend the door of number 8 and spray the walls and floor with disinfectant. Sary cooked for them sometimes and Betty attended school now and then.

‘I can see the day when I can leave ’em to their own devices ain’t that far off,’ Kitty told Patch, as the two of them paraded up and down the waterfront with their papers. Kitty, having been eyed askance by both senior officers and policemen on several occasions, had taken what Marigold thought was a really brilliant step. She had gone to the Shamrock Café, where she was still a customer from time to time, and asked them if they would like advertising leaflets drawn up and handed out down at the docks, since she was already performing this service for a young gentleman who gave lessons on the ukelele. The proprietress, who had noticed Kitty as a decent young girl who though plainly dressed always paid her bill promptly, agreed, so now Kitty was paid twice over for her services and if questioned by authority, could always show the Shamrock’s menu, innocently printed on pretty pink paper.

She had begun to make good money from her two jobs, and was saving up so she could leave Bet and Sary with some money. She was planning this one day when she went to eat her carry-out, sitting on a bollard by Wapping Dock, and discovered that she wasn’t hungry.

This was a rarity. Kitty stared at the bacon sandwich and the apple and then at Patch, who was watching her hopefully.

‘You’re welcome to it, old gel,’ Kitty said, breaking the sandwich into pieces and feeding them to the dog. ‘Now as I come to notice, me throat’s awful painful, it don’t feel a bit like swallerin’ food. I could do wi’ a drink though.’

She got herself water from a dock-tap, then resumed her slow saunter alongside the shipping, but as the day progressed, so did her feeling that all was not well with her. The sore throat was bad enough but presently she became aware that while other people were buttoning their coats against the wind, she felt so hot that she had removed her own jacket and tied it round her waist by its arms. That wasn’t natural, not even on a mild March day – I reckon you’re gettin’ a cold, Kitty Drinkwater, she told herself accusingly. Well, you can’t afford to be ill, not wi’ Mam comin’ on well an’ Marigold doin’ so nicely. She’ll get someone else to find fellers for ’er, and then where will us be?

She got herself home and into the pile of rags; her mother had proper bedding now, decent stuff, but she and Betty were saving their money. Kitty was still hoping she would be on the road before too long so spending money on bedding would be a waste.

Next morning she didn’t know how to get up; her throat was raw, it hurt her to breathe, and her eyes felt as though someone had cooked them overnight for a joke. She staggered downstairs, saw Betty off to carry parcels from Paddy’s Market to the buyer’s homes, made her mother tea and porridge, watched her eat it and somehow got herself over to the Fletcher’s.

‘You look flushed, dearie,’ Mrs Fletcher said. ‘Ow’s your mam?’

‘Think I gorra cold comin’, but me mam’s grand,’ Kitty said with satisfaction. ‘She’s beginnin’ to look more like herself. Still . . . keep an eye on ’er, Mrs F.’

‘Be in there as soon’s I’ve ’ad me breakfuss,’ Mrs Fletcher promised. ‘See you later, Kit.’

Kitty went to Marigold’s room first, as she always did. Marigold answered the door in a rather dirty dressing-gown with her beautiful golden curls done up in papers and her face as red as a beetroot. ‘Don’t bring no one back today, chuck,’ she said hoarsely. ‘I ain’t quite meself; I feels rare bad.’

‘Me too,’ Kitty said ruefully. ‘Reckon we’ve both got ’ead-colds.’

She decided to go round to the Shamrock for some more menus but she never reached it. She began to feel odder and odder; the sky kept dipping and dancing above her head, the tall buildings shrank one minute and grew like grass the next. She sat on the kerb and put her head on Patch’s shoulder and had a little weep because she felt so poorly, then she tried to get up and move along. Someone was telling her to move along, she could hear a voice but she could see nothing, only a sort of patchy red and black.

Presently the patchiness turned black altogether and she slumped forward into the road, unconscious.

Frantically, Patch grabbed her by the sleeve and tried to drag her back to safety, then she barked and barked and barked. Someone came along, saw Patch and the girl in the gutter, leaned down and stroked the dog. Patch sniffed cautiously. This was a good girl, a nice girl, a girl she could trust with her beloved Kitty. Patch wagged her tail and sat down, handing over responsibility. And the nice, good girl took one look at the hot and feverish little face, pulled Kitty clear of the roadway, then telephoned the nearest hospital.

‘A young girl’s collapsed on Preesons Row, just outside the Shamrock Café, opposite the Victoria Memorial,’ she said crisply. ‘Please send an ambulance at once; I’ll wait with her.’

And very soon the ambulance came clattering round the corner and the young lady got into the vehicle, then jumped out again. ‘Can you not take the dog? It’s our only hope of identifying her,’ she said to the ambulance men. ‘If not, I’d better stay with it and make my way to the ward on foot.’

‘We’ll tek the bloody dog,’ the driver said as the other men stared at one another. ‘Why not? It won’t be aboard for more’n a few minutes.’

So the ambulance rattled off to the Isolation Hospital, because the ambulance men knew scarlet fever when they saw it, and Lilac Larkin sat by the swaying bed and stroked Kitty Drinkwater’s hot, dry little hand and held onto the dog’s collar so it wouldn’t be flung about by the motion of the ambulance and wondered just what she had let herself in for this time.

‘You shouldn’t oughter ’old ’er ’and, Miss,’ the ambulance man said presently. ‘Scarlet fever’s infectious; a killer, if you don’t mind me sayin’ so, Miss.’

‘I’m not worried,’ Lilac said, and the ambulance man assumed that she had had the disease and did not fear a recurrence. It did not occur to him that such a pretty, well-dressed young lady simply might not care if she lived or died.

Chapter Thirteen

They tried really hard, at the isolation hospital, to find out who Kitty was so that they could get in touch with her relatives, but Kitty put them completely on the wrong track by telling them, when she was at her worst, that her name was Kitty Drinkwater and she and Patch came from a farm a few miles from Corwen.

‘Can you give us the name of the farm, or the village, even?’ the ward sister said persuasively. ‘We need to get in touch with your people, dear, so that we can try to prevent the disease from spreading through your family. And it would help us if we knew how you’d contracted the illness.’

She was rather taken-aback when Kitty announced that she’d doubtless got it from a sailor. And then Lilac, without meaning to, cast fresh confusion on Kitty’s story.

‘She may have come from a farm in Wales once, but now she hands out leaflets for the Shamrock Café,’ Lilac explained, laughing at the nurse’s bemused expression, and showed the older woman a menu which she had found in the pocket of Kitty’s light jacket. Perhaps fortunately Lilac knew nothing about the other leaflets, the ones advertising the services of Marigold, and Kitty, even in the darkest days of her fever, said nothing to give anyone a clue.

Patch was not allowed in the hospital, though. Not even Lilac’s most persuasive arguments could work that particular magic. ‘She’ll respond to her dog,’ Lilac said hopefully. The ward sister sniffed. ‘She’ll come round and speak to it, the way mothers do for their babies,’ Lilac stated. The ward sister sniffed louder.

So Patch lived in Lilac’s room when she was in it, and behind the reception desk at the Delamere when she wasn’t, and fretted for her little mistress, though she was sufficiently sagacious to know, somewhere in her mind, that Kitty was being taken care of. She knew partly because she was an intelligent animal and partly because, when Lilac returned from hospital visiting, she often used Kitty’s name over and over, whilst looking deeply into Patch’s worried eyes. So Patch was satisfied that, if she stuck close to Lilac, she would end up reunited with Kitty.

Lilac spent all her spare time at the hospital. Not actually on the ward because that was not allowed, the disease being extremely infectious, but on the other side of a broad pane of glass, through which she could see and even speak to, the small patient. From the moment she had seen Kitty lying in the road a chord had been struck somewhere within her – a sense of fellowship, perhaps, or a vague recollection? She had looked at the small, hot face, the abundant red-brown hair, and felt that she had seen Kitty before. What was more, Kitty needed her – needed her as badly as, several months ago now, that other little girl, Lucy, had needed Art O’Brien. Art had risked his life for a child and lost; she was scarcely risking her life, but at least she was doing something for the kid, doing her best, in fact. And since no one else had come forward, her best would have to do.

So whenever she wasn’t working, Lilac sat and talked to Kitty through the pane of glass until one day, one wonderful day, Kitty’s heavy lids lifted and the fever-bright eyes stared straight into Lilac’s. Lilac saw Kitty’s lips move, but could not make out, through the glass, what the other girl was saying. She ran for the nurse, who went into the room, but came back shaking her head and saying that the child was talking gibberish.

‘She said something about the girl from Penny Lane . . . you don’t come from Penny Lane, do you, Miss?’

‘No-oo. But I did, once, or rather my sister did,’ Lilac said thoughtfully. ‘Now I wonder . . . I thought I knew her, there’s something just at the back of my mind where I can’t reach it . . .’

‘Never mind, at least she’s spoken,’ the nurse said. ‘Likely she’ll pull through after all.’

And that was Lilac’s first intimation that the staff had previously thought Kitty a lost cause.

It was wonderful to come round to white sheets, cleanliness, sweet air and no responsibility, but to glance sideways and see the face she had so longed to see within feet of her – that really did make Kitty wonder if she had died and gone to heaven! But presently a nurse came in with some foul medicine which she tipped ruthlessly down Kitty’s protesting throat and Kitty realised she had been ill, was still ill, and must have imagined that face, for when she looked sideways at the pane of glass it was empty; only the reflection of the nurse with the medicine, the bed and Kitty herself rewarded her glance.