The Girl From Penny Lane (6 page)

‘I suppose I could give the agency a try,’ Lilac said reluctantly. ‘The only thing is, being a lady’s maid and companion is all I know, and I’ve often thought it would be fun to work for a younger lady, with more interest in fashion. It’s a pity Stuart’s salary doesn’t run to a lady’s maid, dearest Nell, or you could employ me and we could all be happy.’

‘I’d hate to have a maid, it would make me feel useless, although Stuart’s doing awfully well,’ Nellie said. She was lining a large earthenware pudding basin with pastry, working quickly and methodically, as was her wont. Having completed the task she took the steak and kidney which she had already cooked and tipped it into the basin, then topped it with a circle of pastry, nipped it together, tied a clean piece of cloth over the top and went over to the stove. She lowered the basin into the pan of water already boiling over the gas, then went back to the sink and rinsed her floury hands. She picked up a striped towel and began to dry them, moving slowly across the kitchen as she did so, her glance abstracted. Lilac, who knew the older girl better than most, was instantly alert.

‘Nell? What is it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Something’s happened,’ Lilac said positively. ‘Something you aren’t too sure I’ll be pleased about. I can read you like a book, our Nellie!’

‘Oh, Li, you’re right, I’ve been meaning to talk to you for weeks, only . . . then Mrs Matteson was taken ill, and Stu said it wasn’t likely to happen for a bit anyway . . .’

‘Nell, you aren’t frightened of telling me your news, surely? Don’t say that something bad’s happened? Tell me at once, before I invent some awful sorrow for us and make us both needlessly miserable.’

Nellie smiled but shook her head.

‘No indeed, not an awful sorrow at all, just an upset. Li, love, Stuart’s been offered an excellent job with very good prospects.’

‘An upset? But Nell, that’s marvellous news! I always knew he was undervalued, now . . .’

‘Now he’s been offered the chief crime reporter’s job with the
London Evening Telegraph
,’ Nellie said. ‘But it will mean moving down to London, you see, and we hadn’t meant to do that until you were settled.’

Lilac shook her head sadly at her sister’s worried frown. ‘You mean you didn’t intend to go
ever
?’ she said with mock incredulity. ‘Because I may never settle, not in the sense you mean. Nellie, I’m going on nineteen years of age; when you were that old you were taking care of me, earning your living in miserable circumstances at the Culler, working in your spare time . . . you weren’t much older than that when you went off to France to nurse the soldiers, risking your life every day, working your fingers to the bone, and happy to be doing both. Why, compared to you I’ve had no life at all, yet! I’ve got all sorts to do before I “settle down” as you call it, so you and Stuart mustn’t think twice, he’s got to take this new job – think of the baby, chuck.’

‘We do think of the baby, of course, and of Stu’s future,’ Nellie admitted. ‘This is a lovely house, so new and modern, and we’ve been awfully happy here, but we’d both like a garden and Stu says we won’t live right in London but in the suburbs, so we can have a bit of space around us. Why, Stu wants me to learn to drive a motor car, Li, so that the baby and I will have some independence whilst he’s at work!’

‘Cor!’ Lilac said inelegantly. ‘Nell, you’re a lucky lass, you are indeed. And why shouldn’t I get a job in London, eh? I’m told there’s plenty of jobs down there.’

‘And leave . . . all your friends?’ Nellie said tactfully. ‘You wouldn’t want to do that, chuck! You’ve a good many admirers, not just Art O’Brien, and when I saw Polly last she said she had helped out waiting on some party or other where you were much admired by ever such a handsome young man. I know you’re sensible, but handsome young men at posh parties don’t always mean well by young girls. Of course I don’t know who he was, he might have been someone you knew from school, but it wasn’t Art, Polly said; she knows Art.’

‘Oh, Nell, that young officer was only being polite, and he was fun, not dangerous or anything. Anyway, I’ve more sense than to be taken in. I wouldn’t meet him, after. He says he’ll write, though I daresay he won’t. But you’re still hoping I’ll settle for Art O’Brien, aren’t you? Well, you can forget it, same as Art can! We was pals as kids, I don’t deny it, and we had some fun together, but now he’s a ploddin’ young bank clerk an’ I can do better’n
that
.’

‘How you drop your fancy accent when Art’s name is mentioned,’ Nellie said teasingly. ‘You go broad scouse, chuck! But Art’s a good lad and a good friend to us all, so I can’t help hoping. This officer of yours is probably a good lad as well, but as Stu said when we were discussing Art . . .’

‘I don’t want to hear Stu’s opinion of Art, not one bit I don’t,’ Lilac said crossly. ‘I’ve told Art a hundred times I’m not gettin’ tied up yet and I’m prepared to tell him the same a hundred more. And now I’d better go or Mrs Matteson will wonder what’s happened to me.’

‘Oh Lilac, love, don’t go off in a huff just because I mentioned Art – and anyway you can scarcely call it mentioning him to say it
wasn’t
Art you were with at the posh party! There’s no need to be horrid about him either, queen, because he’s been a good friend to all of us, not just you. But I understand how you feel – you want to make up your own mind who you’ll marry, you don’t want us deciding for you, and you want to have a choice, even if you decide – sorry, sorry, I nearly put me foot in it again! So sit down and I’ll make our tea and we’ll have it early, before Stu gets home, so’s you won’t be leaving Mrs Matteson alone for too long.’

‘She won’t be alone, exactly,’ Lilac admitted. She had taken her jacket off the hook behind the back door but now she hung it up again, then walked over to the pantry and got out a loaf of bread and some butter. ‘All right, I’m silly to be huffy with you, dearest. I’ll stay to tea, I won’t be missed for a bit. Shall I slice this loaf and butter it?’

‘Please. And I’ll tell you what, why don’t you get a job for now and then come and stay with us in London once we’re settled? Then, if you like it, you can try for work down there.’

‘I might,’ Lilac said, slicing bread. ‘Nell, this move . . .’

‘I know what you’re going to say. Is it for ever, that’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it? No, love, of course it isn’t, but Stu knows it’s important for him to work on a London paper as well as a provincial. He’s been a foreign correspondent, but never on the staff of a big daily. As for staying away, I don’t think either of us could settle far from the Pool for long. Our life is here, all my relatives, you . . . but Stuart needs the experience, needs to get away for a bit. Then he can put in for Mr Mullins’ job when the old feller retires, and get to be editor, which is what he’s aiming for, eventually. So his plan is to get the necessary experience in London in order to be able to apply to the
Post
or the
Echo
when a first-rate job comes up here.’

‘I can see that,’ Lilac said, buttering bread. ‘So there really wouldn’t be much point in me moving to London, would there?’

Nellie pressed a fist into the small of her back and then sat down in one of the fireside chairs.

‘That’s better – I’ve been on me feet all day, just about! You’re a shrewd one, our Lilac, that’s just what Stu said. No point in her settling down there and us moving back, he said. Better let her get on with her own life. Because I won’t deny that when he first told me I said I wanted to take you with us or I didn’t want to go.’

‘Oh Nell, you are kind,’ Lilac said. ‘But I’ve got to stand on me own two feet, Stuart’s right about that, at least, and as you say, all my friends are here. I’ll visit you, though . . . come to think of it, if I get a job in a shop or a factory I’ll get set holidays, won’t I? Domestics get half a day here and a day there, and though the Mattesons were very good they still expected me to take a holiday when they did, even if it wasn’t very convenient. So I’ll start looking in the next few days. All right?’

‘I suppose so. When will the Mattesons be moving out to Southport, then?’

‘Within a month,’ Lilac said rather guardedly. ‘When are you going to London, Nell – the truth, now!’

‘We-ell, Stuart’s going in a fortnight,’ Nellie admitted, pink-cheeked. ‘I said I wouldn’t go until you were settled, love, but it does go against the grain to stay here when he leaves, so if you really can manage, I’ll go when Stu does.’

‘Of course I can manage,’ Lilac said stoutly, though her heart sank a little. ‘But that means you won’t have the baby before you go!’

‘No. My little lad or lass will be born in London, though he or she will be Lancashire through and through, ’cos Stu and me are both Liverpool born and bred.’

‘I shan’t see it until I can get down to London to stay with you, then,’ Lilac observed rather sadly. ‘Still, these things happen and must be faced. I’ll get on a train and come down as soon as I possibly can, just to take a peep. After all, he’s me only nephew.’

‘Or niece,’ Nellie observed, heaving herself out of the chair. ‘You’re as bad as Stu, he always talks as if I’m bound to have a boy. But for my part, I think a girl is likelier. Boys lie high, this one . . .’

‘Oh? Who says?’

‘Everyone says,’ Nellie insisted. She walked over to the pantry and began to lay the table for the main meal of the day, always taken in the evening when Stuart was home. ‘Girls lie low, like this one, and boys lie high. Wait and see if I’m not right, anyway.’

‘I don’t have much choice,’ Lilac pointed out. ‘Shall I put the kettle on now, our Nellie? That steak and kidney pudding isn’t for tea tonight, is it? Because meat puds take hours to cook and I’ve got to get back before Mrs Matteson’s bedtime.’

‘No, it’s for tomorrow. Tonight it’s casseroled mutton – can’t you smell it, cooking away with thyme and rosemary and nice little new potatoes – with apple pie and custard for afters. You feeling hungry already, then?’

‘I am. But I do love steak and kidney pudding,’ Lilac confessed. ‘Can I come back to tea tomorrow, our Nell?’

Nellie pretended to consider, head tilted, whilst her eyes twinkled at the thought of Lilac actually asking for an invitation to tea instead of just announcing that she would be attending the meal.

‘We-ell, the mayor will be poppin’ in, and Stu said he’d asked Lord Liverpool, being as how steak and kidney’s his favourite pudding too, but I daresay there’ll be room at the table for a littl’un. Yes, our Li, you come along. When you pull the kettle over the flame, just stand the pot to warm, would you?’

Lilac complied and the two girls began the final preparations for the meal, bustling round Nellie’s neat, modern kitchen. Lilac, even as she bustled, found herself looking wistfully round her. She had known some very happy moments in this room – indeed, in this house. It didn’t belong to Stuart and Nellie, of course, only the rich owned their homes, everyone else rented, but they had rented it when they married two years earlier, and Lilac had helped to hang the dark red damask curtains in the sitting room, had gone with Nellie to choose the square of pink carpet, had picked the wallpaper for the little front bedroom where she slept when she stayed over, and had varnished the chest of drawers and the small wardrobe which Stuart had bought at Paddy’s Market and carted home on a coal wagon, or so he claimed when the stuff arrived.

‘What’ll happen to the house, Nell?’ Lilac asked at last, when the table was laid, the tea made and the bread and butter tastefully arranged on Nellie’s best china cake plate. ‘Who’ll have it, d’you suppose?’

‘Well, Stu and me were wondering whether you’d like to have a couple of friends in and share it,’ Nellie said hesitantly, astonishing Lilac totally. ‘Working girls sometimes share houses and flats in London, Stuart said, so if you and a friend or two want to take over the rent – it isn’t expensive, not between three or four.’

‘Oo-ooh!’ Lilac squeaked. ‘I never thought of doing that, but it’s a really clever idea, our Nell! Surely we could afford it, if we got enough of us? Why, Polly left the Mattesons two months ago, she’s working in a factory, and Liza’s in Lewis’s, selling wedding gowns, and then there’s Blanche who was at school with me – ’member Blanche, she was the one with bright red hair? – and there must be heaps of girls who leave the Culler and don’t stay in domestic service, even if they start out there.’

‘We’ve got the three bedrooms, so if two of you shared the double and you had one each in the singles, that would be four of you sharing the rent,’ Nellie said. Lilac could see how/enthusiasm and excitement were lighting Nellie from within, taking the anxiety out of her expression and curving her mouth into a happy and hopeful smile. So Nellie was not really as easy in her mind at the thought of leaving me to my own devices as she pretends, Lilac thought. Their lives had been too closely interwoven for too long for either to contemplate losing the other without a good deal of pain. Lilac felt a warm glow at the realisation that even now, with her own husband and a baby on the way, Nellie still thought a lot of her adopted sister. She’s been mother and father to me for too long to let me go my own way and not worry a bit, Lilac told herself, and was happy that it was so.

‘Then there’s the sitting room, and the little room Stu calls his study . . . you could have a couple more of you downstairs if you wanted,’ Nellie went on, still planning how Lilac could best manage when she and Stuart had left the city. ‘It ’ud take a weight off me mind, our Lilac, if I thought you were with pals.’

‘I’ll have a word, tomorrow,’ Lilac promised. ‘Oh, but would the landlord mind? I mean with you and Stu living here he knows everything’ll be seen to and done right, but with a parcel of girls . . .’

‘Stuart’s already had a word with Mr Ellis,’ Nellie said. She went a little pink. ‘Truth is, Stuart said he’d still keep it in his name and see to things . . . we’re bound to want to come back one day so you could say you were keeping the house warm for us. And it’ll be nice for us to have somewhere to stay when we pop back for a day or so, just to see how you’re getting on, like. So when we come back Stu says he’ll tackle anything you can’t manage.’