The Mersey Girls (24 page)

‘I said nothing, except that his letters were in my “out” tray,’ Linnet said firmly. ‘As for offering . . .’

Miss Harper cut in at once, and Linnet saw that her cheeks were faintly flushed. ‘No, that was badly put. Anyway, you’d best pack your personal belongings; you’re leaving us.’

‘Today? Without working out any notice? But I don’t understand, I’ve done nothing wrong, there have been no complaints . . .’

‘Yes, you’re leaving us. But only, you little simpleton, to move up to the second floor as Mr Cowan’s secretary. As if you didn’t know!’ Miss Harper hissed, her eyes narrowing. ‘Why, you must think I was born yesterday!’

A dozen retorts, all of them unkind, danced into Linnet’s head, but she banished them firmly. This was a good job, and a secretarial job was beyond her wildest dreams. She would not put it past Miss Harper to be saying all this as some form of nasty practical joke, but just in case . . .

‘Thank you, Miss Harper,’ she said, instead. ‘I’ll go and get my things together.’ And before the older woman could say another word she had turned and left the room.

Back in the typing pool, it was a nine days’ wonder, of course. Only Miss Everett said that she had known all along and that wasn’t Miss Murphy a dark horse?

‘Come back and see us,’ the girls begged as she emptied her desk drawers and filled the large paper sack which Miss Elphinstone had given her. ‘Don’t go all snobby on us, come back and have your sandwiches with us now and then.’

‘Of course I will,’ Linnet said stoutly. ‘Besides, I probably won’t be a secretary for long, not once they realise I’ve never been one before and don’t know the ropes. Oh, I’ll be back in the pool before you can say knife, see if I’m not.’

And she might have been, but for two people.

Mr Cowan was the first, and he was on her side from the start. He made it plain that he had chosen her out of the typing pool because he thought she would suit him, and suit him she did. He explained, slowly and carefully, what he wanted her to do and was always quick to congratulate her when she got things right – a very different attitude from that of Miss Harper, who took rightness for granted and grew furiously angry over the tiniest mistake.

The other was Miss Beasley, whose room she shared, for even someone as important as Mr Cowan did not have a private room for his secretary. Miss Beasley was twenty-four, engaged to be married to a successful plumber called Joseph Cartwright, and very elegant. She was tall and slim, with white-blonde hair and large light-blue eyes. She dressed in impeccable dark suits and crisp light-coloured blouses and had a pleasant manner though rather a strident voice. She talked in a very posh way when her boss, Mr Griseworth, was about, and with a local accent when she and Linnet were by themselves. And she was the epitome of secretarial efficiency. She told Linnet she was, using those very words, and when Linnet said, half-laughing, that she didn’t know what an epitome was, she threw over a worn copy of Nuttalls’s Dictionary and told her new colleague to look it up.

‘You’ve gorra be good at your work, queen,’ she said on Linnet’s first day, “cos if you get sent back to the pool old Harps’ll make your life a misery. Still, I reckon you must be good or old Cowie wouldn’t have got you to work for him, but there’s good an’ good, if you understand me. This job ain’t just shorthand an’ typing, not once they make you a secretary it ain’t. It’s book his ticket on the train, get seats at the theatre, take his best suit in for cleaning, buy flowers for his wife on her birthday – remember her birthday come to that, when sure as eggs he’s clean forgot. Oh aye, you’ll be mam and dad to the feller, you’ll all but wipe his bum for him, and if he thanks you a couple of times a year you’ll be walking on air, ready to lay down your life for the bugger.’

The bad language, coming from such an unlikely source, made Linnet giggle. ‘Is that all true, or are you kidding me?’ she asked incredulously. ‘I wouldn’t know where to start – I’ve never even used a telephone, you know, and the thought of doing that scares me, let alone booking tickets.’

‘Stick with me, honey,’ Miss Beasley said, imitating the latest American star to hit the silver screen. ‘And you won’t go far wrong. By the way, I’m Rose. You?’

‘Oh . . . I’m Linnet. Hello, Rose.’

‘Hello, Linnet. First names are friendlier, I always say, but we’ll only use them when we’re by ourselves or out o’ the office, because it sounds unbusinesslike. Now come over here and I’ll show you how to make a telephone call.’

Linnet was perched on the windowsill in the communal kitchen of No 8, eating toast and looking out at the backyard criss-crossed with laden washing lines, when the door burst open and one of the other residents came in, backwards, having opened the door by butting it with her bottom. She was carrying a heavily laden tray.

‘Morning, Margaret; what’ve you got there?’ Linnet asked, eyeing her fellow resident as Margaret thumped the tray down on the wooden draining board. ‘It looks like a year’s washing up to me.’

‘Cheeky mare – it’s only a week’s,’ Margaret said. She was a square, muscular girl of Linnet’s own age, clad, today, in a black skirt with stains down the front and a faded gingham blouse. Her substantial legs were bare and she wore down-at-heel pumps on her feet. ‘I don’t see the point of washin’ up while there’s a clean cup in the ’ouse. Ain’t it a grand day, though? You’re workin’ this morning, I suppose, but I’m catchin’ the tram an’ goin’ up to the market. Anything I can get you whiles I’m there?’

‘Oh, Margaret, you’re a pal – Rose and I thought we might go out this afternoon as it’s so sunny so I shan’t get a chance to do me shopping. I could do wi’ some veggies – spuds and a cabbage would be grand, though if they’re selling something nicer, like peas, I wouldn’t mind a pound of ’em. And a bit of meat, enough for two, in case I have a visitor.’

‘Oh, aye? Roddy in port, then?’ Margaret tried to look arch but only succeeded in looking nosy, her black eyes glittering with curiosity and a hopeful smile curving her mouth. She did like to be first with the news did Margaret!

‘No. Not for another week.’

‘Oh? Then who might you be cookin’ for, come Sunday?’

‘Honestly Margaret, it could be anyone, I know enough people! There’s Roddy’s mum, she pops round from time to time, and then there’s me friend Rose from work, and Anita, me old school pal . . .’

‘Which? Which one will you be entertainin’, come Sunday?’

‘None of ’em, so far as I know. It’s just that a bit of meat for two can be eaten cold on Monday, or, if I
do
have an unexpected visitor . . . see what I’m getting at?’

‘You’re tellin’ me loud ones, that’s what,’ Margaret said with unimpaired cheerfulness. ‘Makin’ me think you was entertainin’ someone! I thought it might be the feller you work for – I’d be made up if I could just set eyes on him – but no, you was havin’ me on. So it’s peas if they’ve gorrem, cabbage if they ain’t, an’ a bit o’ meat for two. Want some wet nellies for your afters?’

‘I don’t think they’d keep all that well,’ Linnet said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Get me some fruit for a pie, would you, chuck? Anything they’re selling.’

‘Right. Where’s your chink?’

‘Oh, hang on.’ Linnet slid off the windowsill and went over to her handbag hanging on the back of the door with her jacket; there was no point in climbing the stairs more than you had to each day, so she usually left for work as soon as she’d eaten her breakfast. She fished around in the bag and produced a shilling. ‘Will this do?’

‘That’ll do,’ Margaret allowed. She took the money and slid it into her apron pocket. ‘If you’re out when I get back I’ll hang onto the stuff, awright?’

‘Grand. Thanks, love,’ Linnet said as Margaret disappeared, slamming the door behind her. She liked most of the other residents in the big, once-grand old house, and Margaret was no exception, though some of the other girls said she was no better than she ought to be and that the young men she brought home were not, as she claimed, cousins but customers. It could have been true; Margaret was sloppy to the point of sluttishness in the house but dressed up to the nines just to walk down to the corner shop. But whatever her occupation, Margaret was kind, generous when able to be so and good company, and who could ask for more?

Not me, certainly, Linnet thought now, washing up her cup and plate and standing them on the stained dresser beside the rest of her kitchen utensils. Again, with a kitchen on the ground floor and a flat under the eaves there was little point in lugging pots, pans and cutlery up and down and everyone in the house did the same so things rarely went missing.

I don’t mind Auntie Sullivan and Roddy coming round, Linnet told herself now, automatically tidying the kitchen and rinsing out the tea-towel before hanging it on the piece of string which the girls had looped across the sink for just that purpose. But I wouldn’t like Rose to come. She is so nice, but she wouldn’t think much of it, though she would have liked Mammy’s rooms.

The thought of little Evie brought a lump to her daughter’s throat, for the previous year she had at long last had definite proof of her mother’s death. A friend of Mr Sullivan’s, a seaman on the Atlantic run, had volunteered to make some enquiries next time he docked at Staten Island and had come home with an old newspaper cutting telling of the death of Evie Murphy, whom theatre-goers might remember as the little Evie of a few years back.

He had even bought flowers and put them on the grave, and had refused Linnet’s offer of payment.

‘I remember little Evie when she played at the Royal Court,’ he said gruffly. ‘Mebbe you’ll go over yourself, one day. Put the money towards that.’

Linnet thanked him, but she knew she would never go to New York herself. She had been left, more or less forgotten, and though she bore little Evie no grudge, neither was she foolishly sentimental. She had loved her mammy and her mammy, she believed, had loved her, but with little Evie’s death Linnet had been cast even more on her own resources and now it took her all her time and energy just to keep herself respectable and fed with a roof over her head. And no one would blame me for not missing someone who I’d not seen for so long, Linnet told herself a trifle defensively. Our lives were running on different tracks long before Mammy died.

She picked up the mop and went swiftly over the floor, then glanced up at the clock which had been Roddy’s gift when he came ashore for his first leave. She had put it in the kitchen because they all needed a reminder of the time down here and there was simply no space in her tiny room. But there was no hurry, it was still only half past seven in the morning. She and the other girls got up very early in the summer because the attic rooms in particular grew both warm and airless as the day went on. So they did their housework whilst it was still quite cool and then, when they returned from work, they could sit outside on the strip of grass between them and the road, play games, call out, and relax until darkness fell and their rooms were losing their heat once more.

Time for one more quick cup of tea, then I really must get going, Linnet told herself, bustling across to her teapot and testing the side of it with the backs of her fingers. It was still hot enough for one more cup. She poured the tea and then sat on the windowsill once more, dreaming away to herself and sipping lukewarm tea carefully; it would not do to have a teastain on her cream-coloured blouse nor on the green cotton skirt which was so elegantly long that it brushed her ankles as she walked.

She had to be smart for work. Rose said it was important and anyway, what was the point in having some decent clothes if they were only worn once in a blue moon? Roddy took her out when he was home but the SS
Mary Rose
had a quick turn-round and he sometimes said jokingly that their lips barely met in their first kiss before they were wrenched apart again and he was off once more.

And Linnet was beginning to suspect that Roddy really enjoyed the life, that he would be a seaman, from choice, for ever if he could. Oh he kept declaring that he wanted to marry her and settle down, but settling down meant, presumably, getting a shore-job, and there was so much unemployment in Liverpool that no one with any sense would advise him to do anything so risky. Especially when he was good at what he did now and enjoyed it and had thoroughly disliked butchery.

But she must stop dreaming and get ready for work. Linnet rinsed her cup, emptied her teapot, then stood back and checked her reflection in the window pane. It wasn’t ideal but she could at least see if she had a droopy hem or a bad mark on her blouse. But the most careful check did not reveal anything particularly wrong, and since she and Rose intended to go on the overhead railway right along to Seaforth Sands, she would do her best to look neat and pretty – Rose certainly would. In the summer months Rose favoured cotton skirts and tops or well cut summer dresses with white piping at neck and hem. She had a real flair for clothes and Linnet was happy to take her advice when buying a new garment of any description. Rose had been with her when she chose her green cotton skirt and she had great faith in its ability to make her look nice.

Having checked her appearance Linnet reached for her long cream linen jacket and handbag, slid her feet into her sensible walking shoes, cast a last glance around the room and set off. Her step was light and she felt like singing as she crossed the rather dingy hallway. She let herself out into the morning and saw Mr Proud, from next door, tapping his way along the pavement. He would be on his way to the tram stop and since he was blind Linnet hurried to give him a hand. Not in an obvious sort of way, of course, since Mr Proud had his pride, ha ha, but unobtrusively, to ensure he wasn’t pushed or jostled at the stop and that he got a seat when the tram arrived.

‘Morning, Mr Proud,’ Linnet said rather breathlessly when she reached him. He walked fast despite his disability. ‘You don’t work on a Saturday morning, do you?’

Mr Proud was a piano tuner in one of the biggest music shops in the city; Linnet, who had learned to play to a fair standard on her mother’s little upright, often talked wistfully to him of how she had enjoyed using the instrument, and he had promised to find her a good, cheap secondhand model when she had saved up. She knew she could not have it whilst she remained in her tiny room at No 8, but Linnet was an optimist. One day, she told herself, she would get a better job and move to a room where, if she wished, she might entertain a guest now and then, or even swing a cat! But now Mr Proud turned towards her, smiling.