The Mersey Girls (26 page)

Linnet tasted it; it was absolutely delicious and the little bubbles fizzed pleasantly on her tongue. What was more, when she told Mr Cowan that it was really very nice he poured her a proper glass, and when she finished that the waiter, who had been hovering, brought a whole fresh bottle to the table and poured a little into a fresh glass. Mr Cowan tasted it and nodded, then told the waiter to pour his guest another glass.

‘I don’t think I’d better,’ Linnet said regretfully. She had concluded that the beautiful glow and the warm self-confidence which had enveloped her might well be the work of the wine. Heaven knew what she might do if she drank yet more of the exciting beverage. ‘Oh, do look at the trolley, Mr Cowan! What wonderful jellies and trifles and cakes!’

He smiled at her indulgently, fondly almost. ‘I like to see you enjoying your food with such gusto,’ he murmured. ‘So many girls just pick at their plates – I hate that.’

‘I’m greedy,’ Linnet said, regretfully but without shame. ‘I do so like nice food!’

‘So do I,’ Mr Cowan agreed. ‘Ah, here comes the trolley – now you may choose whatever pudding you like best. And I’ll have a nice cup of coffee and some cheese and biscuits.’

‘I’ll have . . . that one, please,’ Linnet said, pointing to a concoction in which cream, strawberries and meringues seemed to play a large part. ‘No thank you, I don’t think I’ll need any extra cream. And I’d like a coffee, too, please.’

As she dug her spoon into her pudding, Linnet reflected that, if her mother could have seen her now, she would have been most impressed. It had taken Linnet quite a long time, but eventually she had realised that the admirers and impresarios who had thronged little Evie’s life had, in fact, been her mother’s lovers. They had bought both little Evie and her daughter nice presents and had taken them out for meals very similar to this one – had given them a gay old time, in fact. Yet I, Linnet thought complacently, have got all this not by agreeing to go to bed with Mr Cowan, but by typing his letters nicely! It seemed a far better bargain than Evie’s, to Evie’s practical daughter.

On Monday morning, Rose was all agog to hear how her friend had got on with Mr Cowan. Linnet would have liked to keep her in suspense for a little, but since she was dying to talk about it and Rose was dying to listen, they very soon settled down to a good gossip, though they waited until their lunch-hour, since both spent busy mornings taking dictation and typing up the resultant letters.

‘Well?’ Rose said at last, as the two of them set off for the Nelson memorial where, on sunny days, they liked to sit to eat their sandwiches. ‘Come on, what happened? Where did he take you?’

‘We went to the Albany and had a lovely dinner – lunch, I mean; then we caught a taxi and went right to the other side of the city, to Mr Cowan’s house. He lives in the most beautiful street, it’s called Sunnyside, and the gardens all have trees and grass and that. The house is awfully smart and huge, Rose, bigger than any house I’ve ever been in before. And I met Mollie, that’s his daughter, and Nanny Peters, and then Nanny Peters went off for the weekend and Mr Cowan and I took Mollie to the park and we fed the ducks and Mollie went on the swings. And then we had a delicious tea with buttered toast first and then cream cakes at ever such a nice little café on Smithdown Road, and after that Mr Cowan took me home in his huge car – I bet you didn’t know he had a motor, did you, Rose? – and took me right to my front door. I was afraid he might suggest coming in with me, but he didn’t, so I waved him off and trotted upstairs . . . it was a lovely day, honest to God it was.’

‘And what did he want to talk to you about?’ Rose enquired archly as they trotted down Exchange Passage and headed for the memorial. ‘You’ve not mentioned that, I notice!’

‘I don’t actually know,’ Linnet said slowly. ‘I’ve just realised, he never asked my advice about anything, anything at all. We just had a really nice time, honest to God we did.’

‘Perhaps it was a ruse to get you to go out with him,’ Rose said shrewdly. ‘He’s got a private income, you know, as well as his salary. He may be afraid a girl is after his money, but he’d like to know you weren’t like that. Besides he’s really quite shy when he’s not talking about insurance, wouldn’t you say? Perhaps he just wanted to meet you outside the office and didn’t know how else to persuade you.’

‘He was nice, and we had a nice time,’ Linnet repeated thoughtfully. ‘And Mollie is a darling. There was only one thing which seemed odd . . .’

‘What? Was it about the kid or about Mr Cowan?’ Rose asked at once. ‘Let’s sit down quickly, though, queen. I spy a group of tatty ’eaded office clerks headin’ for our favourite seat.’

They hurried across to the statue and got to the seats before the young men, who pretended they had never wanted to sit down anyway, and started to throw bits of bread at the pigeons whilst covertly eyeing the two girls sitting on the seat with their heads close.

‘Any minute now one of ’em will come across and ask if we’ve got a light, or the time, or some such,’ Rose said gloomily. ‘Go on then, chuck. What was odd?’

‘Well, it was Mollie. I don’t know an awful lot about kids, any more than you do, Rose, but I’ve helped Roddy’s mam with his little brothers, and I don’t think any kid should be as good as Mollie was. She’s only just two and a half but she stood by her father and threw bread when he handed her a piece, never shouted out or tried to get near the ducks, never went near the water, even. I thought I’d better hold her skirt, but there was no need. She stayed where she was told to stand.’

‘Isn’t that good?’ Rose said doubtfully. ‘I’d ha’ thought it were.’

‘Oh, it’s good, all right, it just isn’t natural,’ Linnet said. ‘And it was the same at teatime. Mr Cowan lifted her onto a chair and there she sat. She drank milk out of a mug, no slopping it around, and then she ate a shortbread biscuit. There were lovely cakes but she never asked for one or reached out, even. I took a little round cake with marzipan leaves and a yellow flower on top and offered it to her and she looked scared . . . she put her hand out a little way, then snatched it back, then looked up at her daddy so – so doubtfully. And when I said, go on love, you take it, she didn’t attempt to do so until he’d said the same.’

‘Hmm. Do you think he’s cruel to her? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘I don’t think so. I don’t know him very well, except in the office, but he seems proud of her, and I think he’d be affectionate to her if he knew how, but he doesn’t seem to. To tell you the truth, Rose, I didn’t take to Nanny Peters, good though she may be.’

‘Ah ha, I thought there must be a snag somewhere,’ Rose said with a smirk. ‘How old is she?’

‘Oh, young. In her early twenties, I should think. And pretty, too. But . . . there was something about her . . .’

‘Do you think Mr Cowan was angling for her and asked you over to show her that he had other female friends?’ Rose asked after a moment, when Linnet had done nothing but stare into space. ‘Was that what it was?’

‘Oh, Rose, all you ever think about is
that
,’ Linnet said, not bothering to elaborate further. ‘I don’t think it was that, though I suppose it’s perfectly possible. Nanny Peters didn’t like me; I could tell And I’m not sure she likes Mollie much either, for all she made a great fuss of her and kept tweaking her curls and straightening her skirts.’

‘I see. Well, there’s nothin’ you can do about it, queen, unless he asks you to go round there again, of course.’

‘No, but . . .’

‘Excuse me, but has either of you young ladies got such a t’ing as a match about you? Me pal an’ I are dyin’ for a fag but neither of us thought to bring a box o’ matches out wi’ us.’

The girls had finished their sandwiches. Rose got to her feet and Linnet followed suit. ‘No, we’ve not got matches, nor don’t we know the time,’ Rose said, bestowing a false and treacly smile upon the hapless youth. ‘Come on, Miss Murphy, these fellers is only after our seats.’

This proved an unfortunate remark leading to many guffaws and a number of rude innuendoes, but the girls had to be back in their office dead on the hour so they ignored the young men and hurried back to the enormous Eagle and General building and their desks.

But all the way back to the office, Linnet was wondering just why Mollie was so extremely – unnaturally – quiet and good, and what she ought to do about it.

The warm and summery days passed pleasantly now for Linnet. Roddy came home and they had a couple of days out. They went off on the ferry, caught a bus at Woodside and picnicked in a wood where Linnet paddled in a stream and Roddy lay on his back on the grassy bank and slept – and snored, too. Roddy still insisted that she was his girl, but Linnet could not stop treating him like a brother which, in a way, she felt he was. This led to several hot arguments and once to a fight because Roddy tried to get amorous when they emerged from the cinema, where they had watched Greta Garbo in
Anna Christie.
Linnet, suddenly finding herself in a doorway with her friend Roddy horribly transformed into a hugging, grabbing octopus with eight hands, most of which were in places she preferred to keep to herself, fought back so successfully that Roddy nursed a hacked shin, trampled feet and the beginnings of a black eye for a week.

Roddy said he was sorry for frightening her, but he said it unconvincingly, with a martyred air, and Linnet, who had really been very scared, moved back from him a little. People, she felt, should stick to their roles in life and since she had cast Roddy as her friend and brother, her friend and brother he should remain. If he wanted to behave like the octopus she had called him – and that had been easily the most polite of the many descriptions she had used – then he should choose as a partner someone who liked that sort of behaviour, someone who did not think of him as a friend and a brother, in short.

So there was a certain coolness between Roddy and Linnet which might have made her very unhappy, had it not been for her steadily growing friendship with her boss. At work, Mr Cowan was much easier with Linnet and she with him. He began to take her around quite a lot, without once trying to hold her hand, let alone do anything more intimate. They went all over the place in Mr Cowan’s lovely motor, though he did not take it to work but preferred to use a taxi or even the tram. So it was in a car, the very first one she had ridden in, that Linnet saw the Wirral, Lancashire, and even the Welsh countryside. Mr Cowan was a pleasant and undemanding companion – unlike Roddy, Linnet thought crossly – and seemed content just to have her with him so that he could enjoy her enjoyment as much as her company.

And naturally, when they went out in the car, they took Mollie with them. Mollie would sit on the back seat on a pile of cushions, holding onto the strap and watching the passing scene. When they stopped she would slide down from her throne and get into her push-chair, or sometimes she would walk between them, and she would scarcely ever speak and seldom did any expression other than solemn wonder, cross her small, rosy face. And somehow, no matter how she tried to tell herself that Mollie was simply an unusually good child, this worried Linnet more and more.

On one particular occasion, Nanny Peters had gone out for her afternoon off and the planned trip, to see the shops in Chester, came to nothing because the car sprang a puncture as they were going down the drive. So Mollie and Linnet went to the park to feed the ducks and dabble in the lake whilst Mr Cowan dealt with the puncture and the housekeeper, Mrs Eddis, prepared tea at home.

‘We’ll have it in the garden,’ Mr Cowan had instructed her. ‘The raspberries are ripe so perhaps we could have some of them, with some cream? I don’t suppose Mollie’s ever tasted raspberries.’

And since they were alone, Linnet really put herself out to put Mollie at her ease. She persuaded the child to play ring o’ roses, and when they came to the end and they both fell down she made a great fuss, saying, ‘Oh, Linnet went bump and now look at her skirt! Did Mollie go bump? Up we get, Mollie-Pollie, let’s have a race to the big flower-bed. Racing each other means running to see who goes fastest.’

Mollie looked frightened. ‘Mustn’t,’ she murmured. ‘Mustn’t run. Mollie sit quiet.’

‘Yes, Mollie is very good, but now isn’t the time for being good, now’s the time for play,’ Linnet said encouragingly. ‘More ring o’ roses, then, Mollie?’

Mollie glanced back at the house. Her eyes went very big and dark when she looked at the house. Then she looked up at Linnet. ‘Play? Mollie play?’

‘That’s right. Now take my hands and we’ll dance in a ring until we get to the tishoo bit, and then what do you do?’

Mollie thought about it, and then smiled. She wasn’t a particularly fetching child but when she smiled . . . oh, poor baby, Linnet thought, to smile so rarely when she has so much! ‘Mollie falls down,’ she said. ‘Linnet falls down too – bump!’

And then, just when Mollie was pink-cheeked, breathless, laughing, Nanny Peters came out of the house. She stood for one moment on the terrace, watching them, and then in a voice which cracked like a whiplash she said, ‘Mollie! Here!’

‘The kid might have been a dog,’ Linnet said afterwards, telling Rose about the incident. ‘And she didn’t hesitate, or glance at me or anything. She put her head down and walked very quickly up to the terrace and stood by Nanny Peters. And when I went up too and said Mollie and I were just playing a game until tea, Miss Peters said, “Mollie doesn’t like rough games. Her skirt’s got grass stains on, we can’t have that,” and she took hold of Mollie’s shoulder and the two of them disappeared into the house.’

‘What did her father say?’ Rose asked, clearly fascinated. ‘Did he not ask for Mollie when he came back?’

‘Yes. And I said Nanny Peters had taken her away and he gave me a very odd, hunted sort of look and said he supposed that was all right then. But neither of us had much appetite for tea.’

‘And what’ll you do?’ Rose asked. ‘Surely you ought to do something, Linnie? You’re fond of the kid, I can tell.’

It was one thing to be fond of the child, though, and another to interfere, particularly as all she had to go on was Mollie’s extraordinary goodness. It was not natural and she knew it, but she also realised that, unless Mr Cowan said something about it, she had no right whatsoever to do anything other than mention it from time to time. She and Rose talked it over constantly, worrying over it like dogs with a bone, but although Nanny Peters continued to treat poor Mollie with a degree of firmness which worried Linnet whenever Mr Cowan was not present, that was scarcely something about which she could complain. The children of the wealthy, Linnet knew, were brought up to be seen and not heard and her worries over the child seemed trivial when you considered that Mollie was prettily behaved, well nourished, had a wonderful home and a loving father. In short, she was living in the lap of luxury and was a very fortunate little girl when compared with many that Linnet saw in the streets each day.