A Liverpool Lass (34 page)

Lilac was so relieved that she actually smiled at the man and moved forward again.

‘Phew, you gave me a scare,’ she said, just for a moment very much a child again. ‘I couldn’t make out what you meant, Mr Jackson ... but it’s all right, I’ll do right by you. I’ll pay the rent same’s Auntie did, the money will be with Mrs Lennox every Friday. And I’ll keep the place tidy and that.’

‘Oh, you will, will you? Well, that’s very nice ... but I shall be puttin’ the rent up in a week or two – what will you do then?’

‘Pay it, so long as I can,’ Lilac said stoutly. ‘So will everyone else, I guess.’

‘We’ll see,’ Mr Jackson said. ‘Now how about showin’ me you’re grateful? How about a nice cuppa?’

‘Of course,’ Lilac said readily, though her heart sank a little at the prospect of having him in the house for any longer than she had to. ‘Sit down, Mr Jackson. The sofa’s quite comfortable.’

He sat. She saw him shrugging out of his coat, unwinding his muffler, then she went into the back for the teapot. The kettle was already singing by the hob, now she pulled it over the flame and heard it begin to purr. She had poured the hot water in and picked up the pot, ready to carry it back to the table, when she felt him just behind her.

Startled, she tried to turn and the pot tipped. Hot tea splashed her wrist. She said a bad word beneath her breath and went to set the pot down ... and felt hands take her by both small breasts.

The shock was so great that she almost forgot the teapot, but she set it down quickly on the table, and
then shot an elbow backwards, into the yielding softness of flesh.

‘Stop that!’ she said loudly. ‘Let go or I’ll scream!’

‘What? And I thought you was going to show me some gratitude? Look, all I’m asking for is a bit of friendliness, a kiss, a cuddle ...’

He was thin but wiry and strong. Lilac kicked out and struggled and he lifted her off her feet, panting, breathless. Then he sat down on the sofa, with Lilac still uncomfortably imprisoned in his arms.

‘Now come on, my dear,’ he said in a nasty, wheedling sort of voice. ‘Why can’t I take a look at your pretty ...’

He was wrenching at the neck of her blouse, buttons were popping off. Lilac, who hated sewing, felt, above the fear and disgust, a surge of pure rage. How dare he make more work for her!

She bit. Blessing her excellent teeth she sank them into his hateful, freckly wrist. She felt the bone, tasted blood ... and he gave a high shriek, like a woman’s, and let go; indeed, he almost threw her from him. He began to moan, holding his wrist, and Lilac saw that he had somehow undone the front part of his trousers so that something nasty bulged beneath the dangling shirt-front.

Lilac had landed on the floor. She was struggling to her feet when he came at her again, this time looking the very epitome of evil, his lips drawn back from his teeth in a horrible grimace, those odd, light-coloured eyes glowing with an emotion which terrified her.

‘A child of spirit! I like a child of spirit,’ he said breathlessly. He leapt at her, treading brutally and deliberately on her bare foot, then his hand swept round, hitting her so hard across the head that she fell to the floor, seeing stars. He dragged her to her knees
and put both hands beneath her armpits, propping her against the table as though she were a rag doll, and hit her again, across the face this time. A double blow, first on the right cheek, then the left. Lilac felt her teeth rattle in her head and screamed, trying to fight back. She felt another punishing blow, this time in the stomach, and she folded up, groaning. He seized her and threw her down and she was flat on her face on the flagstones, one arm bent up behind her. She knew he was kneeling over her, breathing heavily, she felt the air cool on her as he fumbled with her clothing ...

She whimpered, but he grabbed her by the hair, lifted her face clear of the floor, and then slammed her viciously on the back of the head. There was no avoiding the impact. Lilac felt a fierce pain in brow and cheekbone, then she knew no more.

She could not have been out for long, yet when she came round everything was different. She was on the sofa, for one thing, and someone was trying to cover her up, not undress her. A voice she knew murmured her name, someone was talking to her, gently, persuasively.

‘C’mon, flower, I’ve sent ’im packin’, open your eyes, Lilac, I made you some tea ...’

It was Art. Lilac opened her eyes and looked fearfully round her.

The door gaped, open to the darkness of the court. There was something lying just beyond the doorway, a pile of clothing, perhaps?

Lilac raised her head and looked. The pile of clothing moved, moaned. Art followed her gaze.

‘Well, he’ll be gone in a moment,’ he said. ‘What an animal though, Li – I ’ad to belt ’im with all me strength to get ’im to let you alone.’

‘He’ll come back,’ Lilac said weakly. ‘Suppose he comes back, Art? He’s a man grown ... he’ll come back and ...’

Art stood up. For the first time, Lilac saw he was taller than she had realised. Taller than Charlie, taller even than Stuart! And though he was skinny, she could see he was also strong, and not a bit afraid of Rudolph Jackson, either. He went over to the door and grabbed the bundle of clothes, heaving it to its feet. Mr Jackson’s venomous face was sickly pale now, almost green in fact. He shied away from Art as though Art was a big beefy coal-heaver instead of a fourteen-year-old lad.

‘I’m going, I’m going,’ he whined. ‘Where’s me hat? Don’t you try to steal me hat!’

‘Here; shove it on your bleedin’ ’ead,’ Art said roughly. He picked the hat off the cobbles and jammed it down on Mr Jackson’s red hair. It went right down to his eyebrows, crookedly, and Lilac, remembering the extreme flatness of his ears, thought he was lucky it had not continued on until the jut of his nose stopped it, so hard had Art pushed it on. ‘Now git goin’.’

‘I’ll ’ave the pleece on you,’ Mr Jackson shouted from the safety of the court entrance. ‘I’ll go straight round to Dale Street and lodge a complaint.’

Lilac got off the sofa and tottered palely to the door. She hugged her torn blouse round her, and the shawl Art had swathed her in.

‘Oh, yeah?’ she shrieked. ‘I’ll go down Dale Street, that I will, and I’ll tell ’em all about you ... child-beater! Filthy little toe-rag! And don’t you ever come back, do you hear me? Else I’ll rip out your guts and use ’em for garters.’

Art, sniggering, pulled her back indoors and shut the door firmly. Then he went into the scullery and came back with two chipped white mugs.

‘I’ll pour us both a cuppa,’ he said. ‘Well, our Lilac, you tek the biscuit! Most gals would be weepin’ and wailin’ for their mams, not talking about the pleece and makin’ threats. I say, you’re a mass of bruises.’

Lilac looked down at herself. Her arms were already turning purpley-blue and her feet were almost black with dirt and abrasions. She knew one eye was half-closed and her lip felt like a great, throbbing cushion and a cautious hand to her face informed her that there was a big cut on her forehead and blood had trickled from it down one cheek and into the hollow of her throat. What was more her blouse had two buttons intact instead of its original eight, her skirt was crumpled and rucked and she ached as though she had been through a mangle - which was not far from the truth.

‘Yes. He hit as hard as he knew how,’ she said wearily. ‘I hope you’ve broken lots of his bones, Art, for I’m sure he’s bust most of mine. Oh ... tea ... I was so thirsty!’

She sank onto the sofa but Art drew a chair up to the table, picked up her pencil and a sheet of paper, and began, laboriously, to write.

‘What are you doing?’ Lilac asked presently, when the worst of her thirst had been satisfied. ‘Is that to the police, Art?’

‘No. To Nellie,’ Art said briefly. He folded the page, put it in one of Lilac’s envelopes and sealed it down. Then he began to address it. ‘She’ll have to come ’ome, chuck. You can’t stay here alone.’

‘You think he’ll come back,’ Lilac said. ‘Oh ... I’ll move in with you and your Mam then, Art. No need to worry Nellie.’

Art, still writing, shook his head.

‘No use, queen. Who d’you think tipped ole Jackson off that your Auntie was dead?’

‘Oh, Art ... not your mam?’ Lilac gasped after a moment’s stunned silence.

He looked up then. His eyes were very bright; if Lilac had not known that tough lads never cry she would honestly have thought Art was crying.

‘Fraid so, queen. So you’ll have to get right away. Or get Nellie back, of course, which is what I ’opes I’ve done.’ He jerked his head at the small brown envelope on the table covered in his square, practical writing.

Lilac had done her best to be brave and sensible ever since her aunt had died. She had run her small home, paid her rent from the contents of the envelopes which Nellie and the boys had sent, kept herself clean and her clothes neat and mended. She had gone to school, done her shopping economically, continued with her Saturday job. She had longed for Nellie’s return, but she had soldiered on without her because she knew it was her duty. And now, suddenly, she was betrayed. Mrs O’Brien had pretended to be her friend, had taken offered food and clothing, had given advice and said she admired Lilac’s housekeeping.

And now Lilac knew she was a traitor and a wicked woman.

It was all too much.

‘Wh-why?’ she croaked, through the tears that wanted so badly to be shed. ‘Wh-why, Art?’

Art looked up at her for a moment, then down at his work once more.

‘For money, chuck,’ he said quietly. ‘For money.’

When the latest bunch of letters reached her, Nellie left the hospital and walked along the quiet, flat road which led to the beach. She sat down on a sand dune above the cold North Sea with a pale and wintry sun trying to struggle, now and then, through the thick, lowering snow clouds and spread the letters out in her lap.

She had come away from the hospital because she felt she simply must get some fresh air and escape, for a moment, from illness and death. No one, she supposed now, with the half-dozen letters still in their envelopes and her long grey cloak wrapped round her against the cold, had really thought about the end of the war. What would happen to all the nurses, and to their patients. She was still here, though the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month of 1918 was long gone and Christmas was fast approaching, nursing seriously injured men who could not be moved. There were gas victims who coughed half the night and vomited if you couldn’t get the oxygen cylinders to them quickly enough, who stank of the mustard gas they had inhaled. And men with shellshock who thought they were still in the trenches – one tried to strangle a nurse holding a hypodermic syringe who appeared, to him, to be a Hun with a fixed bayonet, come to kill. And still they were nursing hundreds of men with Spanish ’flu, though the staff thought it was easing, now.

Nellie stayed because she was needed, and because
she had not come to France until early in 1917 so she did not feel she could just go home when others, who had been here longer, stayed. And she stayed because Lilac’s letters told her that her girl was happy, working with Aunt Ada to keep their home nice, studying hard at school, settling down nicely. And because Stuart was still in Egypt and not expecting to get home for a while. So what was the point in leaving people in the lurch when they needed her?

Lucy was with her, and Sarah, Emma, but others had gone when their leave-time arrived. Those who remained had been promised that in another six weeks, four, two, they would be sent home but somehow, when you saw the sick and wounded and the strained faces of the doctors you had come to admire, you hung on, said you’d stay another week ... two ... four.

Conditions were a bit better. They no longer slept in tents but were billeted in a country house not far from the hospital. Food improved slightly; they even had fruit sometimes, and the tea was strong enough to taste. Shifts were still long, but at least when a man left, to be shipped home to Blighty, he was not immediately replaced by another. You felt, Nellie concluded, gazing out towards the horizon which hid England, home and Lilac, that you were slowly but surely winning.

One of the letters was from Stuart, one from Aunt Ada, one had handwriting she did not recognise and the rest were from Lilac. It was tempting to save Stuart’s until last – or to read it first – but Nellie was always strict with herself. She read them as nearly as she could in date order, that way it was a bit like one long, continuous chat with a friend.

The first letter had been written not long before Armistice Day. It was from Aunt Ada and her uneven,
ill-spelt message seemed to be that she and Lilac were enjoying life. Lilac had kept her job with the Coppners and they treated her well. Aunt Ada had given Nellie’s old blue coat to Mrs O’Brien, who was turning out to be a good neighbour for all her sluttish appearance.

The next letter was from Lilac. Brief. To the point. Aunt Ada had died during the street party to celebrate the Armistice. Lilac’s employers, the Coppners, had done all the funeral arrangements, she was sad and rather lonely, but managing.

Nellie put the letter down whilst the news sank in. Poor Aunt Ada, who had taken the boys in when they needed a friend, and she had taken Nellie herself in, too, when the Culler had done its work. And now she was dead. It was terribly sad, but so many people died ... only they weren’t all her relatives, they weren’t all the nearest thing to a mother Nellie had ever known.

She sat and stared at the horizon until it blurred, then she blew her nose, wiped her eyes and tore open the next letter.

Lilac again. Managing. Doing well. Art being a good friend, Mrs O’Brien being neighbourly. It all sounded satisfactory.

Next. Nellie slit open the small brown envelope with cold fingers, for the pale sun had given up its fight and the clouds were supreme, now. She read how well Lilac was doing at school, how clever she had grown at housekeeping, how she knew that Nellie would come when she could and in the meantime she was seeing to everything. ‘Perhaps you might come for Christmas?’ the letter ended hopefully. And was signed, ‘Ever yours, dearest Nellie, Lilac.’