A Liverpool Lass (35 page)

The wind was getting up. Only two letters left, one from Stuart and one from the stranger. The postmarks
were indecipherable in the faint, greyish light. Nellie succumbed to temptation and opened Stuart’s.

He was fine, hoping to be home for Christmas, trusting that she would be back then, too. He intended to go round to Coronation Court anyway, but would be bitterly disappointed if she was not there. Had he ever mentioned how he felt about her? That she was the one thing on which he pinned his faith for the future, the only person who truly mattered to him? He believed he had, once or twice – he could not wait to tell her again, in person, to hold her in his arms.

With a sigh of contentment, Nellie lay down Stuart’s missive on the thin, crackly blue paper and picked up the one addressed in a strange hand. She opened it, her eyes flicking briefly from the salute –
Dear Nellie
– to the signature –
Art O’Brien
. Good lord, whatever was Art doing, writing to her?

It was quite a short letter, but it shocked her more even than the news of Aunt Ada’s death had done.

‘You better come home, Nell
,’ Art had written.
‘Your Lilac’s been in a bit of bother ... the landlord come and tried it on. I reckon she do need you, whatever she may think. First time it happened I come in and knocked him cold, but I reckon he’ll come back
.’

She was reading it for the second time when the storm struck. A cold and steady wind started it, then the snow began. Nellie got to her feet, bundled her letters into her apron pocket, for she was in uniform under the cloak, and began to scramble down the sand dune. It let her get halfway, then collapsed on her so she slid, fell, was covered in wet and soggy sand.

Scrambling to her feet, Nellie made for the road. Despite the force of the blizzard all she could think about was poor little Lilac. Ada dead, and that awful landlord, Jackson wasn’t it, actually daring to try to
molest the kid! She was in a fever to get back to the hospital, to tell Sister, see Matron, and try to get herself back home ... what on earth should she do? She was too far away for immediate action ... she closed her eyes against the snow and began to pray; God take care of her for me, God help me to get home!

But presently she began to realise she had walked a long way and still there was no sign of the hospital. She could scarcely see more than a foot or two through the thickly whirling flakes, and the cloak was no barrier against such weather, but if she had been going in the right direction, surely she would have seen something by now? Soon her front was iced up, her hair soaking, her hands and feet so cold she scarcely knew how to bear them. She stumbled on, longing desperately for the warmth of her billets, wishing she had waited for Lucy or Sarah to accompany her, remembering – too late – that the nurses were not supposed to leave the hospital grounds unless they were accompanied.

She finally acknowledged she really was lost, must have taken a wrong turning, when she blundered into something concrete and hard which smelled of sacking and petroleum. It was an old gun emplacement overlooking the Channel and right now it was at least a shelter from the blizzard raging outside. She crouched in it, low to avoid the wind howling through the embrazures which had once held guns and huddled her cloak round her and tried to work out just where she was.

Finally, she decided that she had not noticed the spot where, usually, she would have turned off to the left, but must have clung so close to the straggly verge that she had actually turned right without noticing. With the snow so thick and the wind howling like a banshee and buffeting great clouds of snow across the path, it would have been an easy mistake to make.

Encouraged by the feeling that she now knew where she had gone wrong, Nellie unfolded herself from her crouching position and left the gun emplacement. The snow was still just as thick, the wind as vicious, but this time she took care. She watched through the whirling flakes and saw the road bend to the left, knew that she should now go straight ahead. And presently she fell in with a soldier, wrapped in his British warm and with a great, striped scarf round his neck. He hailed her gleefully, told her she looked like a pillar of salt and no doubt felt like one too, and advised her to ‘hang on to me, Sister’.

Nellie was glad to obey and presently found herself safe in the hospital again, though very wet indeed, as well as shuddering with cold.

She went up to the ward and explained that she had been caught by the snowstorm and soaked on her way back from her billet. Sister raised a brow and Nellie admitted she had just walked down to the coast for a moment’s quiet.

‘I’ll get Nurse Mayberry to take you back to your billet and see you into a warm bed,’ Sister said. ‘Don’t do such a silly thing again, Nurse.’

‘Oh, but I want to tell you ... to show you one of my letters ...’ Nellie began, but was kindly but firmly shushed.

‘Not now; you’re perished with cold. Go to bed, get someone to make you a hot drink and a hot bottle, and come and see me in the morning. No matter what your letter may say, I know you need your bed after a drenching like that. You don’t want to make yourself ill, do you?’

From bitter experience both Lilac and Art knew that
letters sent do not always arrive and if they do, it is generally a lot later than either the sender or the receiver wish. So the day after Mr Jackson’s unexpected and unwanted visit, Lilac took herself off to the clinic. She had a splitting headache and although she had been half-teasing when she told Art that the landlord had bust her bones she was in a good deal of discomfort and wanted to make sure that she really was all in one piece.

She went and saw Sukey and arranged for her friend to explain to the teacher that she had gone to the doctor, then she set off. She was sadly remembering her last trip on this particular tram route, with Aunt Ada sitting on the wooden bench and chatting to her, when the vehicle clattered up the steepest part of William Brown Street, between the back of the St George’s Hall on one side and the beautiful stone buildings which were the museum and the free library on her left. Lilac remembered her vow to come up here and see if she might borrow some books; she had never done it, of course. Perhaps she might do so today, when she had seen the doctor.

She got off the tram at the same stop and walked to the clinic. She would have liked to see the doctor who had been so kind to Aunt Ada, but his name was not above any of the doors, so she simply chose the shortest queue. A smiling, grey-haired man examined her and gave a disbelieving grunt when she said she’d fallen.

‘Who did it, m’dear?’ he said, looking at her over the top of his little gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘This is a matter for the police.’

‘Well, it was the landlord, because I didn’t like him squeezing me,’ Lilac mumbled, looking fixedly at the bruises on her thin white legs. ‘My friend Art came in
and knocked him down though ... but my aunt died and I’m scared he – Mr Jackson – might come back.’

‘Have you no parents? No brothers or sisters? A young girl of your age can scarcely live alone!’

‘Well, I do, since me auntie died,’ Lilac admitted. ‘She died on Armistice Day. She’d been ill for a while though, so I’m used to looking after meself.’

‘And the
landlord
did this to you? My dear child, it’s only by a miracle – and the fact that you’ve green young bones – that you aren’t using crutches right now. The man’s a brute, he should be handed over to the police. They’d put him inside where he could harm no one.’

Lilac liked the two large policemen who walked up and down the Scottie and came into the courts as though they knew each inhabitant personally, but she knew that with money, most things could be bought. Mr Jackson had money and she and Art had none. If Mr Jackson chose to lie, it might be Art who ended up inside.

‘I’ll think about it,’ she said gruffly, however. ‘I’ve got a sister, Nellie McDowell, who’s nursing in France. We’ve writ her to come home.’

‘And until then, you think this fellow might come back?’ The doctor looked worriedly across at his nurse, who pursed her lips but still managed to look kindly at the bruised and battered patient. ‘You won’t go to the police, will you? And upon reflection, I don’t blame you. Such things can complicate life almost unbearably, especially for those ... ah, I do have an idea. Will you go outside and wait, Lilac? It may be a longish wait, but I think it might be worth your while. The nurse will come out and fetch you in again when I’m ready for you.’

Lilac went and sat outside, on one of the empty
benches, for time had passed and the queues of patients were shrinking. She looked round her, at the scuffed and peeling brown paint, at the dusty floor and the rough wooden benches. The windows were dirty, even the rooms where the doctors worked were pretty grim, for all they put clean sheets on the examination couch and kept the instruments sparkling clean. The doctors had an ordinary kitchen chair to sit on and wrote their notes sitting at a plain deal table – not exactly the sort of furniture to which they were accustomed.

And yet these doctors gave their time here free, so that people who could not afford a doctor could still see someone. That was a good thing to do, it meant these doctors were good men. So it followed that whatever her new friend was going to suggest, she should try to go along with it.

She had been sitting outside for a couple of minutes when the doctor’s door opened and the nurse came out. Lilac got ready to jump to her feet but the woman gave her a quick smile and walked right past her and out of the building. After much longer – possibly an hour, though Lilac could not see a clock – the nurse came back again. She carried a white envelope in one hand and this time she winked at Lilac as she passed. Lilac waited again and after perhaps half a minute the nurse came to the door again, smiled and beckoned her in. Lilac got slowly to her feet – she was stiffening up after all the punishment she had received – and went back into the consulting room. The doctor smiled at her. The white envelope lay opened on the desk and the doctor held a thick, expensive-looking piece of notepaper in one hand.

‘Lilac, I have thought of a solution, of sorts. I’ll tell you and you can see what you think. You’ve been looking after your aunt, right?’

‘That’s right,’ Lilac said, nodding.

‘And keeping house for her?’

‘Yes, I done that, too.’

‘So it follows that you’re no stranger to domestic work?’

Lilac nodded. What was he getting at?

‘Well, my dear, although the war is over there is still a great shortage of people to do various jobs of work. Many have been killed and wounded, and even more are sick with this new type of influenza which is sweeping the country. And last evening my friend and colleague, Dr Matteson, told me that his maid had left him to go and nurse her mother, who has the ’flu. They have other staff, but I know they are elderly and could do with a younger person to run up and down stairs and so on. Now Dr Matteson has a surgery not far from here, so my nurse very kindly took a note round, and brought back a reply. If you would like it, Dr Matteson is willing for you to take his maid’s place just for a few weeks. You’d be well away from your landlord, but you could leave your rent money with a neighbour and just say you’d gone to stay with friends.’

‘Oh, that would be wonderful,’ Lilac gasped. ‘But I’m still at school ... what’ud I do about that, sir?’

The doctor smiled. His eyes behind his glasses twinkled down at her.

‘What a good girl you are, Lilac. Provided you do your work, which is mainly straightforward house cleaning, Dr Matteson quite understands that you must continue to attend school. I said you were not yet fourteen.’

‘And school holidays start in a couple of days,’ the nurse said affably. ‘Dr Matteson’s ever so nice, dear, and his wife’s nice, too. You’ll like them and they’ll like you, just you see.’

‘So if you would like to give it a try I’ll write you a note which you can take round, a sort of introduction,’ the doctor said. ‘The Mattesons live in Rodney Street – do you know that area of the city at all?’

‘Quite well,’ Lilac murmured. ‘We lived there, once. Oh thank you so much, sir, you’re ever so kind.’

The doctor scribbled on a piece of paper, then looked up at her.

‘Want to hear what I’ve said?’

‘Yes please,’ Lilac nodded vigorously. She had not wanted to open the letter, it seemed sly, but she knew she would have done so had he not told her what the note contained.

‘Right. I’ve said, this is to introduce Lilac Larkin, who would like to try the job of housemaid for a few weeks, until her circumstances improve. All my best to you both. Alex.’ He smiled at Lilac. ‘I’m Alex Jacobs ... Dr Jacobs to you, of course.’

‘I hope I can do the work all right,’ Lilac said, gingerly taking the note and putting it into her coat pocket. ‘Let me see, Rodney Street ... had I best go home first, sir, and make my arrangements? Then I can catch the tram back to Leece Street and walk through.’

‘Excellent,’ the doctor said heartily. He held out a large, clean hand. ‘Goodbye, Lilac, and take good care of yourself. No more fist fights with men twice your weight!’

‘I’ll be careful,’ Lilac said. ‘And thank you very,
very
much!’

Lilac came out of the clinic and the sun was shining. It seemed like an omen. She caught the tram home, changed into her best things, packed a small bag and
locked the door behind her. She would have to come back each week of course, to pick up her letters and pay the rent, but other than that she could forget the Corry for a bit.

But not Art. He might not be her one love, that was Stuart, but he was still her good friend. She went along the Scotland Road with her bag weighing heavier and heavier as the bruises and abrasions stiffened and ached, and hung about in Newsham Street by his school until he came out, hair on end, a bag of books slung carelessly over one shoulder. He saw her and his eyes lit up, then he grinned.

‘Puddin’ face,’ he said. ‘Poor ole Lilac, I bet you’re sore. What’s ’appened?’

He knew her well enough to guess from her expression that something was up, Lilac realised.