The Mersey Girls (17 page)

‘You’re pretty, clever and well-dressed,’ Roddy said, rubbing a dirty hand across his sweaty face. ‘You’ll gerra job awright, chuck. But I dunno whether it’ll run to payin’ Mrs Roberts’ rent, ’cos she charges your mam a deal o’ money, from what you’ve said. I think you’ll have to move, Linnie.’

Linnet stared. ‘Move? But what about all me mammy’s lovely things?’

‘You’ll be eatin’ them,’ Roddy said. ‘Linnet Murphy, you’ve lived amongst us for the past two or three years an’ you still ’aven’t learned, ’ave you? Folk like us can’t afford pretty china wozzits an’ nice furniture. Think on, our Linnie.’

Linnet thought. Mrs Sullivan was grand, she worked very hard for her kids and her husband worked hard, too, when he could get the work, that was. But they had almost no furniture save for the big kitchen table and some broken-down chairs, they slept on straw mattresses on the floor, and with six kids to feed Mrs Sullivan thought herself lucky to have fuel for the fire – it never occurred to her that a mantelshelf might have contained ornaments or a clock, so long as there was a bit of coal and some kindling sticks she was well satisfied.

Thinking back now, Linnet remembered that when she’d first known the Sullivans Roddy’s mother had worked for Blackledge’s, the baker on Derby Road, and Roddy’s father had been at sea. But then he’d had an accident – he’d been below, fastening a couple of loose barrels during a storm when a whole ruck of them had broken loose and crushed both his legs. Now he walked oddly, a bit like one of the little yellowy crabs which lurked in the thick, smooth black mud down by the Pier Head, and they wouldn’t let him go to sea any more. Instead, he did bits and pieces of work when he could get someone to employ him, and for the rest they survived on what the kids and Mrs Sullivan could earn and on what Linnet’s mother paid for her keep during the school holidays.

‘Have you thought, queen?’

That was Roddy, massaging the arm which had been carrying the basket, looking thoughtfully into the window behind them with its brilliant and tempting display of something which, surely, few of the shoppers thronging the street could possibly afford to buy? Flowers, Linnet found herself thinking defensively, are even more useless than china – you can’t eat them and you can’t look at them for long, either, because they die. Was that why Roddy had chosen to stop outside the florist’s, to prove something? But if so, she was no nearer understanding, not really. Except that she was a bit like one of those roses or lilies herself – she didn’t work, she just looked pretty, and what good was that when the odds were against her? Precious little, it seemed. And poor Mrs Sullivan had scarcely said anything when Linnet had mumbled that the money still hadn’t come, she’d gone on feeding one extra. I’ve been horribly selfish, Linnet thought humbly, but all that’s over. I’ll do just what Roddy says and at least I’ll be able to pay his mam for all the food I’ve eaten these past couple of months. She turned to Roddy.

‘Yes, I’ve thought. What I’ll do, I’ll sell some of the little things and pay the last month’s rent and your mam as soon as I get enough money. Then I’ll sell something like a picture, or that small green velvet chair, and look round for somewhere cheaper.’ She hesitated. ‘I suppose your mam wouldn’t like a lodger, Roddy?’

‘She’d like one, but where’d we put you?’ Roddy said with all his usual frankness. ‘There’s too many of us crammed into the ’ouse already and you wouldn’t want four inches o’ straw mattress an’ young Freddy an’ little Toddy breathin’ into your face all night, would you? ’Cos Mam wouldn’t want you sharin’ wi’ us big lads!’

‘There wouldn’t be room, not with the four of you all fighting for space,’ Linnet said. The thought had given her her first smile that morning and now she seized the handle of the big, heavy basket. ‘All right, now let’s get this lot delivered, then I’ll go home and start taking stuff out – are you sure Uncle’s the best one to go to, though?’

‘If you think your mam might want to buy the stuff back one day a pawnbroker’s the only place what’ll hang onto it for ’er,’ Roddy said, taking the basket firmly away from her. ‘Just keep your tickets somewhere safe. But if you think your mam will just buy new, then you’d get a better price, I guess, from a shop what sells such things. We’ll go round and ask when I’ve done me deliveries. Now let’s ‘urry, queen, or I’ll get into trouble for bein’ too late for their Sat’day dinner.’

The plan worked well for the first week. It might have gone on working well, too, but for one of those wretched, silly little accidents which can happen to anyone. Linnet discovered a kind man in a shop on Church Street, a very smart area of the city, who remembered little Evie and was happy to give her daughter a fair price for ornaments which had been lovingly dusted daily and washed in soap and warm water weekly, so that they looked as good as new.

Linnet took sufficient to pay Mrs Roberts the rent owed, pretending to have received a letter whilst her landlady was otherwise engaged. She sold a few more china shepherdesses, goose girls and a child with an apron full of chicks and paid Mrs Sullivan, too. And then she decided to take the picture next.

There were lots of pictures, but the one over the mantelpiece, with its rich, dark colours and the elaborate gilded frame, seemed likeliest to raise a decent sum, so Linnet waited until the Robertses were eating their midday dinner and then stole carefully down the stairs, with the picture none too well concealed in the folds of her winter coat. And halfway down the flight, the door to the basement where the Robertses lived shot open and Mrs Roberts emerged into the small, dark hallway, saying at the top of her voice that she’d heard that dratted boy rattlin’ on the front door again and she’d give him sauce.

Linnet dropped the picture. Mrs Roberts looked up. There was a moment of ghastly silence before Linnet said, ‘I’m taking it to be cleaned, I do hope dropping it didn’t do much damage. You startled me, Mrs Roberts.’

Mrs Roberts said nothing. She simply stared very hard at the picture, and then at Linnet, whilst you could almost see the rusty wheels inside her head start to whirr until the answer she sought finally clicked into place.

‘I . . . see . . .’ she said at last, in a menacing sort of voice. ‘Ho, yes, I see indeed!’

Linnet shot down the rest of the stairs, across the hall and out of the door but as she told Roddy later, she feared she’d given the game away. Now the old girl would be watching her all the time.

But she was wrong. Mrs Roberts did not bother to watch her at all. When Linnet got back that night, rather later than usual in the hope of not having to explain anything to Mrs Roberts, she found the lock on her door had been changed. She tried her key again and again, but it would not turn. Finally she had no choice but to go downstairs and confront Mrs Roberts.

‘You was goin’ to do a moonlight, owin’ me a small fortune in unpaid rent,’ Mrs Roberts said coldly, her mean eyes gleaming in the gaslight. ‘So I’ve took your stuff in lieu of rent and you’re out, madam. Don’t you come botherin’ me again or I’ll ’ave the scuffers round ’ere before you can say knife.’

‘But I paid your rent, every penny,’ Linnet said indignantly. ‘The furniture in the flat belongs to me mam and to me, too. You can’t take it, that’s stealing!’

At the mention of stealing, Mrs Roberts’ face went a dark and ugly shade of red and she shot out a hand, gripped Linnet’s shoulder, and shook her vigorously. ‘That’s done it! I might ’ave felt sorry for you before, let you ’ave a bed for the night, but not any more, not now you’ve accused me of stealin’ your stuff when it’s mine by right. Gerrout of this place, you saucy little bleeder, an’ don’t you never come back no more!’

‘I’m going to the police station in the morning,’ Linnet said when she went round to Peel Square to tell Roddy and give him a hand with his deliveries. Roddy’s job was badly paid but at least the money was regular and Roddy was delighted to be a wage-earner, though it cut down his time with Linnet. ‘I’ll tell them what’s happened and they’ll put Mrs Roberts in prison, I’m sure they will.’

‘Ye-es . . . but suppose they put you in one of them orphan asylums?’ Roddy said uneasily. ‘Or even the work-’ouse, chuck? You wouldn’t want that, would you?’

‘You can kip down on our kitchen floor if you can gerra blanket from the market,’ Mrs Sullivan said. ‘Just till you get somewhere of your own, like. I’ll come wi’ you to the cop-shop tomorrow, ’ow’s that?’

Linnet was delighted and, the next day, trotted down to the police station beside Mrs Sullivan feeling that at last she was to be vindicated. The policeman was a fatherly man who listened seriously to her story, wrote in his little notebook, and promised her that they would all visit Mrs Roberts together, right now, and find out just what she was playing at.

‘When I see you at teatime we’ll have sorted it all out, and I’ll have me mam’s stuff, if not the flat,’ Linnet told Roddy joyously. ‘I can’t wait to see her face.’

Over the teatable, Linnet gnawed on her disappointment like a dog with a bone, scarcely able to eat for her rage against Mrs Roberts.

‘She’d cleared the whole place,’ she said furiously, whilst the Sullivans listened and ate boiled spuds and scrag end of mutton. Mrs Sullivan, almost as upset as Linnet, was in the kitchen, boiling the kettle for a fresh pot of tea. ‘Not a single ornament was left, not a carpet, not a rag of curtain. The sergeant was ever so nice, too, I never knew a scuffer could be so kind. But there weren’t anything he could do, only say he was sorry to me and warn Mrs Roberts that if she’d lied to him she’d find herself in big trouble.’

‘What did she say, Linnie?’ little Freddy piped up, taking a pull at his weak tea and then putting his mug down on the table with a bang. ‘She must ha’ telled lies, o’ course.’

‘She did,’ Linnet said heavily, fighting back tears. She toyed with the food on her plate, pushing a boiled potato round and round until it collapsed into the gravy. ‘She said I’d sold everything in the flat meself and that and she’d got proof . . . she’d found a couple of receipts or whatever they call them under the clock. The sergeant said sure I’d sold a few ornaments, and hadn’t I already told him so indeed? And then she produced a receipt for the chair to prove I’d sold it as well as all the other things. She’d only got a bob for it – a bob for me mam’s lovely antique chair – and she’d sold it to the little feller in Paddy’s market, a blackhearted little bugger the sergeant called him. She said he’d swear he’d bought it from a small, fair-haired girl and the sergeant said Finkel – that’s his name, Jeremiah Finkel – would swear black was white if someone paid him, and Mrs Roberts said she wasn’t the only one who wanted to watch what they said and that there was a law of libel whether you was a scuffer or just a poor woman trying to make ends meet. Honest to God, I do hate that old woman!’

‘So you should,’ Roddy said, but he didn’t look anywhere near as miserable as Linnet felt. ‘So tomorrer, queen, we’ll go lookin’ for a job for you, right? For tonight you can lend me blanket, it’s a warm night, I’ll be awright with me coat.’

‘She sold all me clothes, too,’ Linnet said broodingly. ‘Oh, I’ll get back on her one of these days, you see if I don’t.’ She turned to Roddy. ‘Your mam’s the best person in the world, next to me own mam,’ she said. ‘That scuffer really liked her, he said she had a heart of gold and I was all right whilst I had Janice on my side. And he give me two lovely thick blankets and another pair of shoes, so at least I’ll look respectable enough when I try the shops for work tomorrow.’

‘Letter for you, Maeve,’ Lucy said, coming into the kitchen and throwing the envelope down on the table. She and Grandad had been taking the milk churns down to the gate for the lorry to collect and she had spotted the postman coming up the lane just as her grandfather had turned the cart round to return to the farm. ‘It’s probably from
her;
it’s a foreign stamp, anyroad.’

‘If you mean your mother, you should say so,’ Maeve said mildly, but Lucy didn’t bother to answer. What sort of a mother just went off, taking your sister and turning you into an only child, and then scarcely ever wrote? ‘No, it isn’t from Evie, it’s . . .’

‘What’s the matter, girl?’ Grandad said, pausing with a forkful of bacon halfway to his mouth. ‘What’s happened?’

Maeve looked up at him but Lucy did not think she saw either the old man or indeed the farm kitchen, for her eyes had a dazed, faraway look. But she suddenly gave herself a little shake and spoke.

‘Oh, Daddy, it’s from a feller in New York – our little Evie . . . she died ten days ago. He – the feller – didn’t ever know her, he says, but he took her room over after she – she left, and found a letter for me and guessed we’d not been told. He’s enclosed the letter, if you can call it that – it’s just a couple of lines. All she says is:
Maeve, love, take care of Linnet, I’ve been a bad mammy to her
. . .’ Maeve’s voice broke and she laid the sheets of paper carefully down on the kitchen table and turned her face away from them, looking out across the yard.

‘Evie, dead? But she was the youngest of you . . . there must be some mistake, you say the feller didn’t know her . . . we must bring her home, Maeve, she can’t stay out there! I’d go meself, though I’d be no use, no use at all, but at least we’ve got the money so’s you can go for me, alanna. At least we’ve got money in the bank.’

Maeve nodded, swallowed, then turned back to the table. ‘And there’s the child, Linnet, alone in New York . . . you’re right, Daddy, I must go to her. I’ll fetch Clodagh back before I leave, though, to keep house whilst I’m gone – she has no children, she could manage it – and for the rest, you’ve grand, reliable workers who’ll give an eye to things if you need them.’ Maeve turned to Lucy. ‘You’ll be a good girl whilst I’m gone, Lu? You’ll help Auntie Clo in the house and do your usual work on the farm, won’t you? And think how nice it will be for you, to have your sister living back here again.’

‘I don’t know her,’ Lucy said slowly. ‘Is she nice? I wish I could come with you, Maeve, and see New York for meself, but of course I’ll take care of Grandad for you,’ she smiled across at her grandfather. ‘We’ll take care of each other, won’t we, Gramps?’