Liverpool Taffy (25 page)

‘Best wait afore we buy a bird, in case Mam’s got somethin’, but you’re right, they’ll enjoy some meat. Now lemme think … I gorrit … sausages! There’s a pork butcher on the corner up ’ere …’

They were heading for the pork butcher when, ahead of them, a fight started on the pavement. At least, it sounded like a fight; sharp cries, a woman’s shriek and then the thud and slap of flesh on flesh had Dai and Greasy, already heavily laden, in two minds whether to turn aside or go and take a look.

‘We’d best get back,’ Dai said. ‘No point in us sticking our noses in; one look at a seaman’s jersey and some people …’

‘We’ve gorra go that way, that’s where the butcher is,’ Greasy pointed out. ‘Besides, wharrever it is’ll be over by the time we get there.’

They pushed their way through the crowd thronging the pavement and discovered the most extraordinary scene. A big, burly man and a very much smaller person seemed to be disputing the ownership of a tattered carpet bag. The burly man was shouting that he was being robbed whilst the other said nothing, being too busy simply hanging on whilst the burly man hit out wildly and shook the bag – and the young person who held it – as a terrier shakes a rat.

Dai stepped forward. ‘Stow that,’ he said sharply, grabbing the big man by the shoulder. ‘No need to hit him, you’re twice his size. Anyroad, it’s easy to settle this particular argument. What’s in the bag, mister?’

The man stopped slapping but he continued to try to tug the bag out of the other’s hands. Dai glanced at his opponent and realised all in a moment that it wasn’t a lad, as he had assumed, but a young girl. He caught a glimpse of tangled dark curls, large, furiously flashing blue eyes, and a mouth shut as tightly and as determinedly as a trap, before the burly man made another attempt to take the bag and, when the girl hung on, he swung his fist at her, catching her a glancing blow on the side of the head.

The girl winced, but hung on – actually came back to the attack. She kicked out, hard, and the man kicked right back so that she had to dodge, which she managed to do without once releasing her hold on the bag.

Dai, however, was having no more of this; other bystanders might think it amusing, but he did not intend to stand by whilst a very large man beat a very small girl.

‘One more move from you and I’ll flatten you, boyo,’ he growled, grabbing the man’s wrists in an iron grip. ‘Where was you dragged up, eh? Hitting a lady!’

‘Some lady – thievin’ bitch, more like,’ the burly one growled. His big, beefy hands were still clamped round the handles of the carpet bag. ‘Mind your own business, you bloody nosy taff.’

All Dai’s chivalrous instincts were aroused by this piece of nastiness. He gave a growl and transferred one hand to the burly one’s nose whilst still retaining his hold on the other man’s thick wrists. He tweaked it savagely so that the man shouted. The small girl, still hanging onto the carpet bag, gave a tiny, breathless giggle.

‘Manners,’ Dai said breathlessly. ‘Now tell the lady you’re sorry for using language before her.’

The man, mindful of Dai’s grip on his nose, muttered something which could have been an apology and Greasy, who was standing guard over the shopping and personal possessions which Dai had dropped when he grabbed the man, leaned forward at this point and put his oar in.

‘You wanna pick on someone your own size, matie! ‘Sides, it’s simple to solve the problem, as me bezzie said – what’s in the bag, eh? You say first, ’ardclock, an’ the lady says next.’

The big man began to bluster, but the two young seamen were determined and Dai’s grip on his wrists was not to be denied. Dai had not spent a year hauling a trawl to stand any nonsense from a blubbery, cowardly sneak-thief, which, he had decided after one glance from the girl’s blue eyes, was an accurate description of the burly one.

‘Why should I say, eh? Wha’ business is it of yourn?’

The girl, still clinging onto the bag, spoke out then. She had a clear, unaccented voice and she spoke with confidence, though her face was grimed with dirt and streaked with tears. ‘I can tell you what’s in it, since I packed it this morning! There’s a change of underwear, a pillow, a blanket, six pennies and three ha’pence, a heel of bread, a bit of cheese, and a rag doll. That’s all.’

‘Them’s … them’s me old woman’s clothes … me little daughter’s stuff,’ the man began, but as he did so he loosed his hold on the carpet bag for an instant.

It was sufficient. The small girl wrenched her property out of the man’s hands, turned like lightning, and wiggled away through the crowd. Dai tried to follow her and tripped over his bedroll and Greasy thrust the shopping into his arms and told him, crisply, that he’d done his bit
and now they’d best stop being unpaid scuffers and get into the butcher’s before they closed.

‘Yes, but we got to find that girl, mun,’ Dai protested, pushing his way through the dispersing crowd. ‘She’s no guttersnipe, no sneak-thief – why did she run away from us? We were trying to help her!’

Greasy shook his head pityingly. ‘She din’t look like a thief, but she run away, so she may ’ave been,’ he said sagely. ‘She’ll be awright, Taff – look at the way she ‘ammered that feller’s shins wit’ ’er boots. Anyone what can kick like that can tek care o’ theirselves.’

‘But she only had a few pennies, I was going to give her enough for a hot meal … it’s a cold night, she must be sleeping rough or she wouldn’t carry a pillow and blanket round with her. Look, I feel responsible. Find her I must and will!’

‘Taff, you don’t know this area an’ I do,’ Greasy said positively. ‘There’s a million sidestreets, two million courts, there’s the docks, the railway stations, the ware’ouses … she could be in any one of ’em. If she don’t wanna be found, an’ she don’t, or she wouldn’t ha’ legged it, she won’t be found. So we’ll buy them sossies an’ get back to ’Oratio Street; right?’

Dai heaved a sigh and looked desperately about him. There were faces all around, but none of them were crowned by tumbled black curls or owned a pair of big, scared blue eyes. ‘Yeah, all right,’ he agreed reluctantly. ‘But ’ave a look round first thing in the morning I will though; might catch her in a doorway or something.’

‘An’ you might not,’ Greasy pointed out. ‘’Ere’s me Mam’s favourite butcher’s … shall we say two pounds o’ best pork?’

Dai, following his friend into the sawdust-strewn shop, agreed that two pounds of best pork sausages sounded just about right, but he spoke absently; his mind was still fretting at his problem. He really must find that girl, it was his duty to find her.

All the way back to Horatio Street, all the time he was meeting the family, eating fried sausages with doorsteps of bread, laying out his bedroll on the back-bedroom floor, he thought about her. Quite a small girl, with a dark coat and a dirty face, stout boots and a great deal of determination. He did not know her name or her age or anything about her, save that she owned an old carpet bag with all her worldly possessions neatly packed away in it. He knew she would pack neatly; even in her present miserable circumstances she would be as neat as possible, he was sure of it.

When he was wrapped up in his blanket and preparing for sleep, the picture of her as she had looked up at him popped back into his mind. She was pretty, but he had seen prettier. She had courage, but girls who had grit and determination abounded. His Mam must have looked like that when she, too, had been just a girl. But in Wales, small, Celtic-looking girls with black hair and blue eyes abound. So what was it, then? Why did he have this conviction that she was special to him, that he must not lose her?

But though he fretted away at the problem for several moments it refused to be solved. Something in him had reached out to something in her, and from that moment on he had known he must find her again. Fate? Fellow-feeling? He had no idea.

But what did it matter, after all? I will find her, he told himself, settling down. I’ll find her again if it takes me the rest of my life.

And on the thought, he slept.

Biddy, with her carpet bag firmly clutched to her bosom and her heart pumping like a traction engine in her chest, flew along the pavement, not having to push or shove since she was small and slim enough to get between the people fairly easily.

That awful, frightening old man! He had almost got her bag, the only thing left now between her and destitution! She wished she could have stayed to thank the seaman who had rescued her … she had heard him calling after her and had felt she was acting shabbily in running away from him as well as from the burly one, but she had little choice. She dared not risk losing anything more.

Her beautiful, hand-knitted woollen blanket had gone two nights previously, prigged whilst actually cuddled round her person. A young man with a wolfish face and a foreign accent had snatched it and gone … she had been happy to see him go, even with her blanket tucked under his arm. He had a really evil face, and he was flourishing a long, narrow-bladed knife which she was convinced he would have used without compunction had she tried to resist the theft.

The streets were a dangerous place indeed – now she knew the truth of the oft-repeated warning. She could have had her throat slit just for the possession of her blanket – that man just now had been prepared to beat her in front of a great many people and to lie boldly, just to get his hands on a bag containing he knew not what.

So Biddy, still clutching her bag, made her way rapidly along Great Homer Street and did not look back. She had found a safe place and she intended to go there and stay there until morning.

The ‘safe place’ was a shed in which a market trader kept his barrow, his awning and some of his unsold goods. Biddy had found the shed earlier in the day – found, too,
the boards at the back which were loose and could be wriggled aside to let a small person slip in. She had spent the previous night here very cosily, bedding down on the gaily striped awning, and had only left the shed, in fact, to go and get herself some food.

Now, Biddy let herself into the shed, put the boards up again, and glanced contentedly around her. Some wrinkled apples would help out the bread and the cheese, and she had filled her ginger-beer bottle with water earlier, so she would have a drink as well. It was scarcely stealing, she told herself, biting into a small and wrinkled apple, to take market fades, especially such poor ones. And she had to live. Besides, the man who had stolen her blanket had not done so to fill his stomach but probably so that he could sell it. She, at least, stole from an urgent desire to keep body and soul together.

Kneeling on the awning, she opened her bag, got out her remaining blanket, her pillow and Dolly. She made up the bed, then sat back on her heels and fished bread and cheese out of the bag. The bottle full of water had been left under a fold in the awning – it was still there, she got it out and stood it handy – so now her evening meal was complete.

She ate quickly, for she was hungry, and as she ate she allowed her mind to go back to the incident on Great Homer Street earlier in the evening.

He had been awfully kind, that young seaman. Nice looking, too. She could see his face in her mind’s eye clear as clear – the bunched up dark curls, the square-jawed, determined face, the dark and peaceful eyes. Yes, he was very nice looking, and she had hated running away from him – I felt more like running towards him, she remembered ruefully, more like just throwing myself into his arms and saying ‘Look after me, because I’m so tired out with trying to look after myself!’

But you couldn’t do things like that, of course, or only in your dreams. A young man would scarcely respect a girl who did that, the very first time they laid eyes on each other.

And yet … there had been something in those liquid dark eyes when they met her own, some message of familiarity and affection, as though they had known one another long ago and far away.

Bridget O’Shaughnessy, you are a sentimental little fool and you read too many of those stories in Peg’s Paper, Biddy told herself. Love at first sight is just one of those silly, romantic stories which never happen in real life – I mean how could it? How could you just to look at a man and know he’s the one for you? He could be married and a wife-beater, he could be an active white-slaver, he could be the sort of sailor who has a wife in every port! Forget him, she advised herself as she finished her food and began to pull her blanket about her. Forget him and start thinking how you will spend tomorrow. The young man is nothing to you and never will be, so put him right out of your head.

If it had been left to her sensible, practical mind, she would probably have obeyed and forgotten him, but her far from sensible and very susceptible heart had been touched, and refused to allow Biddy to forget that strong, calm face, the tanned hands which had rescued her, the logic which had proved who owned the carpet bag beyond doubt. He would always be special to her, it would be a long time before she stopped hoping to glimpse him again as she roamed the Liverpool Streets.

But only so I can thank him, of course, she told herself primly just before she fell asleep. I owe him my thanks, at least.

Oh,
what a little liar
, her heart remarked conversationally, when she was on the very edge of slumber.
You don’t want to thank him and walk away, you want to be with him, get to know him … love him
.

And since Biddy’s sensible mind had already fallen asleep, her heart continued to insert the seaman’s sturdy figure and beautiful, dark-eyed face into her dreams all the night long.

It was strange, because when she woke next morning Biddy could not remember any of her dreams, though the face of her rescuer was indelibly printed on her mind, but something had definitely come over her. The sense of worthlessness, the conviction that she would never get a job, was a nuisance to friend and foe alike and might just as well be dead, had completely disappeared. Instead, she woke feeling positive, energetic and determined. She would stop being so foolish this very day! She would go to the Bradley house in Samson Court, off Paul Street, and explain that things had gone very wrong for her. She would ask permission to have a good wash, would borrow a clean skirt and jumper off Ellen, and would then go out, job-hunting. And, she told herself firmly, you will find a job and a good one too, because you’re worthy of work. Everyone who has employed you in the past has been pleased with you, even horrible Miss Whitney had only sacked her because she slept in the shop doorway and Miss Whitney had a nephew who needed a job.