Love Changes Everything (6 page)

She'd obviously being going to say much more but they were interrupted by Jake arriving home from work. Although much taller than Ivy he had the same jet-black hair. As he shook hands with her and his gaze held hers, Trixie felt quite mesmerised by the vividness of his blue eyes.

It was the first time Trixie had met him and she liked him right away. He had the same friendly manner as his mother and she felt at ease talking to him.

He greeted Cilla by picking her up and holding her high in the air so that her head was almost touching the ceiling. Trixie thought Cilla would be frightened, but to her surprise she gave a happy laugh as if she was thoroughly enjoying it. When Jake put her back down on the floor again she clung on to him and insisted on sitting on his knee while he drank the cup of tea his mother had poured out for him.

Ivy took advantage of the convivial atmosphere to ask her mother about them borrowing the pushchair to take Cilla out.

‘Of course you can use it! It will need a good clean and polish up, though. When do you want it?'

‘We thought of taking her out in it tomorow afternoon if it's a nice day,' Ivy told her.

‘Then I'll get on and do it the minute we've finished our cuppa,' Ella promised. ‘It's got a bit of a squeak,' she warned them. ‘Do you think you can do anything about that, Jake?'

‘I'll have a look at it. Probably all it needs is a spot of oil on the wheels or the brakes to sort it out.'

‘Well, you'd better get on and do that first,' his mother told him. ‘I don't want you getting oily finger marks all over it after I've finished putting a shine on it. While you're doing that I'll go upstairs and see if I have a nice little cushion to put in it for her, and I'm sure I've still got a warm blanket to put round her legs tucked away somewhere.'

‘There you are, I told you she'd be happy to let us use it.' Ivy smiled after her mother went out of the room to search upstairs for the things she'd promised them.

‘I'd better go and do my bit, then.' Jake grinned as he passed Cilla back to Trixie and went out whistling.

‘It's awfully good of your mum and Jake to take so much trouble,' Trixie told Ivy when they were on their own. ‘It means so much to me that they both really seemed to take to Cilla and were happy to have her around.'

‘Why shouldn't they be? Cilla's a lovely little girl and she's always as good as gold when we take her out.'

‘I know, but because she's so slow and is a bit backward and doesn't walk very well, a lot of people treat her as if she is some sort of freak. There's an awful lot who don't want to have anything to do with her.'

Ivy shook her head as if she couldn't understand it. ‘They're dafter than her, then. In fact,' she corrected herself quickly, ‘I wouldn't say she was daft at all, and if you hadn't mentioned it then I'd probably never have noticed.'

‘I hope my bringing her round to your place hasn't brought back too many sad memories for your mum,' Trixie murmured.

‘I think Mum enjoyed seeing her and I could tell that Jake did. I think he misses Nelly more than I do. Being the eldest he was the one left in charge while Mum was at work. I used to get fed up of playing with Nelly and start reading a comic or something but he never did; he'd amuse her for hours. Jake was always the one who comforted her if she fell over and hurt herself or if she wasn't feeling well.'

‘It must have been wonderful having a brother to share things with,' Trixie said dreamily.

‘I had a brother but no dad; you had a dad,' Ivy reminded her.

‘Your brother is so nice and understanding that I can't help wishing it had been the other way round,' Trixie said wistfully.

Chapter Five

The first time Trixie and Ivy took Cilla out in the pushchair she was so scared that even though she was safely strapped in she clutched hold of the sides and whimpered as if she was afraid of falling out of it.

‘Why don't you walk by her side and hold her hand and I'll push it,' Ivy suggested.

It only took one more outing for her to get used to the pushchair and after that Cilla hated being in her big pram so they only used it if it was raining, although Maggie still had to use it, of course, if she took her out when Trixie was at work.

Cilla loved seeing Ella and Jake and their regular visits on Saturday and Sunday afternoons to collect the pushchair became one of the highlights of her week.

Ella was very patient with her and encouraged her to talk; she knew a variety of little rhyming ditties, as well as all the usual nursery rhymes, and she would repeat them over and over, quietly waiting for Cilla to say the words after her.

Whenever Jake was there and joined in as well Cilla's face would light up and her grey eyes would shine with enthusiasm the moment he and Ella started chanting one of the little verses along with her. As soon as she was singing away with them they would stop and wait to see if she could remember all the words on her own. She usually managed to do so and when she'd finished both Jake and Ella would clap their hands, praising her and telling her what a clever girl she was.

When she was at home Cilla would sit repeating the rhymes and verses over and over again and having something to occupy her mind meant that she was less fractious.

Being able to entertain herself meant she rarely screamed for attention any longer.

In the afternoons, when she was strapped into her high chair, Maggie would give her a big wooden spoon before she left home so that she could bang on the table attached to her high chair in time to the song she was singing.

However, if Sam returned home before Trixie, the first thing he'd do would be to grab the spoon away from her which usually resulted in Cilla bursting into tears and she'd still be sobbing when Trixie arrived home.

Trixie tried to reason with him. ‘If you took more notice of Cilla and picked her up when you came in, or even talked to her, Dad, then she'd stop her singing and making such a noise with the spoon,' she pointed out.

Sam rarely answered or took any notice, but if he was in a particularly bad mood it often resulted in Trixie getting a backhander across the mouth unless she was quick enough to move out of his reach.

‘It's a complete waste of time you trying to get your dad to take any notice of Cilla,' her mother warned her, ‘so stop trying. As long as you pick her up and see to her as soon as you get in she won't come to much harm.'

Although neither Trixie nor Ivy had more than a few pence pocket money each week after handing over the bulk of their pay-packets, they made the most of it by going somewhere different with Cilla every weekend.

‘We won't want to do this very often when the weather starts getting colder,' Trixie laughed as, on the last Saturday in September, they squared up to the brisk early autumn breeze that whipped the grey Mersey to a foaming froth as they boarded
The Royal Daffodil
to go across to New Brighton.

‘Why not? The fresh air is so lovely and bracing that it will do us both good after being shut up in that horrible factory all week! A good sharp walk along the promenade when we get off the boat on the other side will get rid of all our cobwebs.'

‘As long as we don't all get blown away!' Trixie laughed. ‘It's a good job Cilla is in the pushchair because I don't think she'd be able to stand up to this wind if she had to walk.'

As they left the ferry boat at New Brighton and made their way along the Ham and Egg Parade and carried on walking towards the far end of the promenade, which was usually less crowded with day trippers, their talk inevitably turned to what had gone on at the factory the previous week.

The way Fred Linacre continued to pick on Trixie was always the main topic of their conversation.

‘He's always telling Dora to move me to another place on the assembly line and making out that I'm not doing the job properly,' Trixie moaned.

‘I know,' Ivy commiserated, ‘but even though I've tried to get some of the other women to protest along with me about the way he treats you, and to take your side, none of them will risk doing it in case they lose their jobs.'

‘I can understand that,' Trixie agreed. ‘The one thing that worries me is that one of these days he'll sack me and then there will be all hell to pay when my father finds out.'

‘Not if you tell him about the way Fred picks on you and finds fault with everything you do all the time.'

‘It won't make any difference what I say because he'll believe whatever yarn Fred spins him and you can bet your boots he'll make out it's something I've done wrong,' Trixie told her as they stopped to buy some ice cream cornets.

‘I was telling Jake about it,' Ivy told her as she waited while Trixie tied a bib around Cilla and helped her hold her cornet. ‘He said that if we belonged to a Trade Union, then Fred wouldn't be able to pick on you like he does. You'd be able to report it and if you could prove he was picking on you for no reason at all, then the Union would support you in your fight and take it up with the bosses on your behalf. If they weren't able to get them to agree to sort it out then they'd call a strike and everyone would stop work till it was dealt with by an arbitrator.'

‘Really?' Trixie's eyes widened.

‘Yes,' Ivy laughed, ‘and Jake also said that the bosses at the factory would be so angry that they'd sack the lot of us if we tried to do anything like that so the best thing we could do would be to find ourselves another job.'

‘If I could find another job away from Fred Linacre I'd take it tomorrow,' Trixie agreed as they began to walk on again. ‘There's not much chance of that happening, though, because, as my dad is forever telling me when he's laying down the law, here in Liverpool there's a dozen after every job that comes vacant.'

‘Yes,' Ivy sighed. ‘I suppose the only thing we can do is put up with Fred Linacre and ignore the way he rants and raves as much as we can.'

‘At least we get a bag of broken biscuits to bring home at the end of the week.'

‘True and that was something that didn't happen at the tin-can factory,' Ivy agreed with a grin.

‘And we always have something to talk about when we go out together,' Trixie added.

‘What we can't change we have to put up with, I suppose.' Ivy shrugged. ‘Anyway, let's get the next boat back and talk about something else; something much more exciting.'

Trixie looked puzzled. ‘Like what?'

‘Like going dancing? Do you think that you can get your mum to put Cilla to bed and so on so that we can do that?' Ivy asked quickly.

‘Of course she will, but I can't dance.'

‘Rubbish. Anybody can dance. Once you hear the music then your feet will know what to do.'

‘Yours might, because you're Irish,' Trixie laughed. ‘Are you going to teach me?'

‘There's no time because it's next Saturday. Don't worry about it, though, because Jake will be your partner and he's a smashing dancer and he'll teach you in no time.'

‘Jake?' Trixie's face lit up. ‘You mean he's coming with us?'

‘My mum wouldn't let me go to a dance on my own, even though I'm seventeen,' Ivy laughed. ‘This is special. There's a group of us all going together: Jake, his best friend Andrew, Sid, another boy they knew at school, and Sid's sister Katy; it's her twenty-first birthday.'

‘It sounds as though it will be good fun, but I've never been to a dance so I've nothing to wear.'

‘None of my things will fit you,' Ivy frowned, ‘hasn't your mum got a dress you can borrow?'

Trixie shook her head. ‘I shouldn't think she's ever been to a dance in her life either.'

‘Hazel's party dress would fit you,' Ivy said thoughtfully. ‘Mum made one for her and one for me just before Hazel left home. In one of her rash moments she'd bought these two dresses from an old clothes stall in Paddy's Market because they were so lovely. She altered them to fit us but we hardly ever wear them because they looked so posh.

‘Won't your sister mind me borrowing it? It seems a bit of a cheek since she's never even met me.'

‘Our Hazel isn't likely to mind; she left it behind when she left home and now she's married and living in Canada,' Ivy laughed. ‘Don't worry, I'll ask my mum first,' she promised when she saw Trixie looking indecisive.

‘You get all ready except for putting on your dress and then come round to our place and I'll help you to put it on and make sure it looks all right on you,' Ivy told her.

It all sounded so wonderful and the thought of dancing with Jake so exciting that Trixie couldn't wait to get home and ask her mother if it was all right for her to go with them.

‘You'd better wait and see if this dress that Ivy is lending you fits you before you make up your mind,' her mother cautioned. ‘If it doesn't, then there's nothing else you can wear.'

The dress, which was sleeveless, was in green taffeta with a pattern of white spots on it and had a round neckline and reached to her mid-calf. Much to Trixie's delight it fitted her better than any of her own clothes did and made her feel very grown-up.

Ivy's dress was also sleeveless and in blue crêpe-de-Chine, the same colour as her eyes, and the neckline was edged with a lighter blue grosgrain ribbon.

‘You both look lovely,' Ella told them. ‘Now promise you will stay together,' she said anxiously.

The evening was a revelation to Trixie. The lights, the music, so much noise and so many people made her head whirl. As she looked at all the pretty dresses and smartly dressed men she was able to feel that she was as well dressed as any of them and felt grateful to Ivy for all her help.