A Liverpool Lass (3 page)

The boy was near her, Nellie sensed his closeness, saw out of the corner of her eye his thin, intelligent face. He was at her elbow and for a moment she was afraid he would make some sign which would be seen – and correctly interpreted – by the dreaded Miss Hicks. But she wronged her new friend. He jostled carelessly past her, and she felt his hand slide under the shawl whilst he still feigned ignorance of her nearness. Coolly and carefully, Nellie slid the blood alley into his hand. For a moment their fingers mingled, hers small, cool and hesitant, his lean and calloused, probably dirty, certainly warm and self-assured. And as the marble changed hands something was pressed into Nellie’s palm, something hard and oblong and wrapped in shiny paper. Nellie knew without looking that it was the boy’s chocolate bar. Without thinking she turned towards him, meaning to say there was no need, that he must take it back, but he had gone, melting into the throng of Dunn’s devils, just another member of that alien race, boys.

She and Lilac shared the chocolate after dinner, the baby chumbling on the tiny piece that Nellie held for her. And then, for the first time, she smiled straight up into Nellie’s face an innocent and gummy beam, as though to reward her for her generosity.

Nellie’s heart turned over. Lilac was the little sister she had never had, and Nellie would make sure that no one ever sent Lilac away to live amongst strangers. What was more, Lilac should never want, not whilst Nellie was there to see she was treated right.

And that boy, that Dunn’s devil, had warmed Nellie’s heart by his kindness in giving her his chocolate when there was no need, she’d been glad to rescue the marble. She had liked his face, too, liked the way he grinned and the quick, neat way he had taken the marble from her. Now that it was too late she wished she had asked his name, but it didn’t really matter. She would keep her eyes open and perhaps she would see him again, some time, and thank him properly for the chocolate.

It had made Nellie’s Christmas just perfect, though: Lilac’s first smile and the exciting affair, known to her ever afterwards as the Boy and the Marble, to say nothing of two whole bars of chocolate! She was in a good mood all day and sang about her work, even though the longed-for visitors from Coronation Court had not arrived by bedtime.

She dreamed of them, though. In her dreams Charlie, Hal, Bertie, Fred and Matt trooped through the front door of the Culler, their arms laden with small gifts for her and Lilac. And always, hovering nearby, was a dark-haired, bright-eyed lad with a marble grasped in one grimy paw ... and no bar of chocolate of his own.

1912

Nellie was twenty and Lilac six when Nellie first took the younger girl back to Coronation Court where she herself had spent the first half-dozen years of her life. She was fiercely proud of Lilac, knowing she was prettier, cleverer and more loving than other children of her age, but when she took her home and watched her mixing with children who were not orphans, she discovered that Lilac had a will of her own and a great deal of determination, too.

It all started when Nellie decided to take Lilac to her brother Charlie’s wedding. Nellie was earning a little money now, for she was properly employed by the orphan asylum, though her wages were tiny compared with what she might have earned working at one of the factories or even in domestic service, had she risen to the lordly position of parlourmaid. But working at the Culler meant she was still with Lilac, and that suited Nellie just fine. What was more, having money of her own meant not only that she could see Lilac was treated right, but could also afford a wedding present for Charlie and Bess, so that Lilac could join in the pleasure of giving. And she was on good terms with the present cook – cooks at Culler’s seldom stayed long owing to Mrs Ransom’s meanness – who had promised her what she described as ‘some bits of ham and mebbe a lickle cake or two’, so her own popularity, and that of Lilac, was assured. Aunt Ada had never reproached her for not bringing her wages home – she could
scarcely do so when she had turned Nellie over to the asylum all those years ago – but she did appreciate a small gift, especially of food. Her husband, Uncle Billy, had been ill with consumption for as long as Nellie could remember, and had been unable to work in a real job for years, though he was a clever wood-carver and made beautiful little stools, chairs and small toys; anything, in fact, which could be carved on his lap.

So now the two of them set off, both equally full of anticipation. For the first time in her short life, Lilac had a dress which was not made of brown serge and covered in a coarse white pinafore. Nellie had been grimly determined that the child should not have to wear the Culler uniform for the wedding and by buying cheap and working hard on the garment herself she had managed to do Lilac proud. It was clear that the child regarded the pink silk dress which Nellie had saved so hard for as almost too good to wear, and walking along the street now her free hand stroked the skirt continually. She kept touching the white lace collar too, as though to make sure it had not disappeared, and every now and then she bent down to straighten her white stockings – which were perfectly straight – showing her pleasure so openly that Nellie was downright glad she had chosen to dress her Lilac fine. She had skimped on her own outfit, though the grey and white striped skirt, the lavender-coloured blouse and the neat black boots were better than most managed in these difficult days. She knew that the rest of the family would have had to save hard to get themselves geared up for the wedding. Aunt Ada worked in a local grocer’s shop, long hours for small pay, and helped to run a stall in Great Homer Street market on a Saturday night, but she got damaged goods cheap and was clever with her needle so she and
Uncle Billy would look pretty smart. Uncle Billy would get his good suit out of pawn and Aunt Ada’s Sunday hat would be redeemed at the same time, and trimmed with fresh flowers so that everyone would believe it was new. Shirt collars would be chalked to hide the wear, socks would be darned, shoes relined with cardboard, and the McDowell family would show a brave face to the world. Aunt Ada’s two daughters were both working now, Jessie married to a clerk in a shipping office and Lou engaged to a sailor on the New York run. Both lived away from home, Jessie with her husband of course and Lou in the big house where she worked as a kitchen maid.

Charlie worked at the docks as a holdsman, a trusted member of his gang. When unloading a ship he had to bring the cargo up and fasten the winches securely, making sure that each load was properly stacked. When they were lading he had to stow the goods neatly, using the space economically and making sure that, when unloading commenced, the easier stuff was available to be moved first. When he had a ship his pay was good, and because he knew his job and his gang were all seasoned dockers he was usually in work. Indeed, even when ships were scarce and half the dockers unemployed, Charlie usually managed to find himself a job of sorts. He would walk to the smart suburbs – Everton, Crosby, Seaforth – and dig gardens or muck out stables, clean windows or strip down engines, for he was a keen amateur mechanic and was saving up for a motorbike. A tall, tough young man who could hold his own in any company, he was popular with workmates and employers alike, and dearly loved by Aunt Ada and Uncle Billy, but once he and his Bessie were married they would move out of Coronation Court and get a room of their own. Aunt
Ada would miss his sturdy, commonsense companionship, and she would miss the money he brought in so regularly.

Hal was a seaman when he was in work. At various times he’d shipped as assistant cook, deckhand and stoker on a steamer, but he was unemployed at the moment and waiting for a berth. He’d done a few days at the docks, working alongside Charlie in the holds, but he preferred the more reliable pay of a seaman. Bertie was a porter at Lime Street station, sometimes with money to spare because of his tips, at other times talking bitterly of emigrating to America and making his fortune, because a feller couldn’t hope to make enough to marry on as a porter. Nellie knew that her aunt was glad Bertie couldn’t marry his young lady, a ‘mary ellen’ called Unity who sold fruit from a stall in Great Homer Street. Bertie said she was a good girl – she was certainly very pretty, with waistlength reddish brown hair and eyes which exactly matched – but it was rumoured that mary ellens were no better than they should be and it was true that Charlie said he’d seen Unity down at the docks more than once, with a different feller each time. But that didn’t mean she was bad, surely? Nellie hoped not, since she was sure that Bertie would be broken-hearted if he and Unity never wed.

So when the Saturday of the wedding actually arrived Nellie and Lilac set off hand in hand in their nice new clothes with the July sun on their shoulders, Lilac swinging on Nellie’s hand and chattering nineteen to the dozen, for the smaller children rarely left the orphan asylum save for the walks to and from church on a Sunday, and a wedding was a most tremendous treat. Lilac, in her wedding finery with their present – a brass-handled hearth brush – safely stowed
away in Nellie’s bag, danced along the pavement without a care in the world, all lit up with excitement and with a thousand questions on her lips.

‘What’s that? What’s them?’ she kept demanding as they made their way through the streets, and Nellie was delighted to inform her when she could. And besides, it helped Lilac’s short legs to cover the distance when they were talking and laughing.

‘That’s Lime Street Station, where Bertie works,’ Nellie told the child. ‘Cor, you should see the trains in there, Li! Great big old puffers ... one day us’ll get aboard one and go off, shall us?’

‘Can we go now?’ Lilac said wistfully. They still had a long way to walk and already she would have liked a bit of a rest. She wished they could have taken a tram, she knew Nellie caught one occasionally, but she also knew it cost a lot so she didn’t mention it and when Nellie said no, they couldn’t go on a train today because they didn’t want to be late for the wedding, did they, she walked on stoically, only reminding Nellie that she had been promised a look at the sea the next time they had an outing.

‘When you’re bigger we’ll go down to the docks, tek a look at the big ships,’ Nellie promised recklessly. ‘We could catch the ferry and go over the water to Woodside, it’s ever so pretty there. Why, we could even go to New Brighton, to the real sea, chuck!’

Considering the amount of persuasion Nellie had had to employ to get Miss Maria, the infant teacher, to let her take Lilac to the wedding, she shuddered at the thought of the struggle which would be necessary before anyone would allow her to take the child on the ferry across the Mersey, but she knew that Lilac was worth struggling for. The little girl was so bright and intelligent, she could not bear to see her become dull
and easily led, as some of the orphans were. Sometimes Nellie thought the children might have been better off left to live in poverty and to die young rather than to be transplanted to the artificial life lived in the orphan asylum with no one to love you, no one to care about you. But then she remembered that some orphans made good, and decided that Lilac would be one of them, so that was all right.

‘When will I be bigger? Tomorrow? Next Sunday?’

Nellie laughed and squeezed the small hand so confidingly placed in her own.

‘Not as soon as that but sooner than Christmas,’ she promised. ‘We’ll cut through St John’s Gardens, shall we? Ever so nice them are, specially in spring, and even now there’ll be flowers and trees and that, and then we’re in Byrom Street and that’s ever so near the Scottie.’

They cut through the gardens, enjoying the scent of roses as the sun fell warmly on the open blossoms, and soon enough they were walking up Scotland Road and Nellie was beginning to see people she knew, landmarks she recognised, not just from her recent trips but from when she had lived here as of right. She had been coming home now for four years, ever since she had been considered old enough to undertake the journey alone, but this would be Lilac’s first visit.

‘What’s that, Nellie? Up them steps.’

‘That’s Paddy’s Market, where your dress came from.’ Nellie did not add that the dress, in its early days, had lacked the lace collar she had carefully stitched onto it and had been big enough to contain two orphans. But she had spent long evenings up in her small attic room cutting and stitching and altering, adding the lace, the ribbons, the tiny pearl buttons which fastened the bodice. ‘No time to tek a look now, queen, but some day ...’

They did look, though, as they passed. Barefoot ten-year-olds dressed in rags sat on the steps selling newspapers. A big black man in seafaring clothes pushed cheerfully past the boys, his arms full of chamber pots, some floral, some plain, one with ‘Milton Hotel’ printed in blue on its bulging white side. A woman, elderly, black-clad, draped in a shawl, climbed the steps, her shopping basket crammed with what looked like cabbages. Even out in the street you could hear the noise of bargaining, shouting, laughter, smell the food being served in Scouse Alley, where you could sit up to a scrubbed white table and get a full roast dinner for a tanner and a wet-nelly – a barm-cake drenched in warm treacle – for a ha’penny. Lilac sniffed approvingly and pointed out that she was hungry but Nellie just shook her head, smiling down at her.

‘Hungry? You don’t know wharrit means, chuck! At least you’re fed at the Culler, even if it’s mainly plain stuff.’

Lilac thought this over, then announced: ‘I’m hungry for something which isn’t plain, then. I’m hungry for something sweet and sticky and – and bad for me.’

The poor little sod’s spent six years eating borin’ food which she’s been told is good for her, Nellie reminded herself. It was hard on the foundlings, though the Culler’s Orphan Asylum was all they knew, but Nellie could still recall her mother’s scrag-end stews and treacle pudding, and her famous conny onny butties, with the condensed milk spread thick on the bread, a promise of which brought good behaviour from all her kids under the most trying circumstances.