The Girl From Barefoot House (36 page)

‘
Dinah
!’ The tiny body felt cold when she picked it up. She pressed her daughter against her breast, her cheek against the pale one. Dinah stirred and uttered a little sigh, the most welcome sound Josie had ever heard. ‘Dinah, oh, darling, I thought you were dead.’ She sat on the bed and rocked to and fro, her child clutched in her arms. ‘I love you, darling. Mummy loves you more than
words can say.’ She was trembling, and rocking like a mad woman. ‘I love you, I love you,’ she said in a hoarse, shaky voice, over and over again.

She moved her arm so that they faced each other, and her eyes met the light blue, almost lavender-coloured eyes of her daughter. There was something about her mouth she’d never noticed before, something determinedly serious, almost wilful, about the small pink lips. ‘You’re going to be a little madam when you grow up,’ Josie said, and could have sworn that Dinah smiled.

‘It was bound to happen some time, Jose,’ Daisy said that night. ‘Having Dinah happened too soon, while you were still grieving for Laura. If the circumstances had been different, it would have been best to wait a year or so before you had another child.’

‘I’ll never stop grieving for Laura,’ Josie said quickly. ‘Dinah’s just blunted the edges a bit, that’s all.’

‘I know, luv. But it’s not as intense as it used to be, I’ll bet. I didn’t want to go on living when Ralph jilted me and I lost me baby in the space of a few weeks. It took a while before I realised the world hadn’t ended, that life was still there to be lived and I could still enjoy meself, as it were. The world would be a miserable place, Josie, if everyone gave up the ghost when someone dear to them died.’

‘I feel terrible.’ Josie glanced at the cot, where Dinah was peacefully sleeping. ‘I hope she doesn’t grow up with the feeling I don’t properly love her.’

‘You’ve always loved her, Josie. It just took a while for it to sink in, that’s all.’

The sun continued to shine the next day. It was shining at one’clock when Josie’s doorbell rang. She hoped it was Lily with Samantha, and they could take the babies for a walk in Princes Park.

A strange, elderly woman was standing on the step. She wore a fur coat and too much jewellery, and her stiffly permed hair was the colour of iron. She’s pressed the wrong bell, Josie thought. It’s someone else she wants.

‘Hello, Josie,’ the woman said, however, and there was something terribly sad, terribly lost about the dark eyes in the yellow face when Josie’s face showed no sign of recognition.

‘I’m afraid—’ Josie began, but the woman interrupted with, ‘It’s Ivy, luv.’

Her last contact with Aunt Ivy had been in the holiday camp, when she’d sent a note more or less telling her to get lost. What was she supposed to say? How was she supposed to act? ‘Hello,’ she said stiffly. After a long pause, when Aunt Ivy showed no sign of going away, she muttered, ‘You’d better come in.’

It was horrible, really horrible, watching the blunt yellow fingers pick up Dinah from the cot and Aunt Ivy stroke the pale cheeks of her great-niece. ‘I think that’s what she is. And I’m her great-aunt.’ Josie prayed Dinah would cry, so she’d have an excuse to snatch her away, but Dinah sat uncomplainingly on Aunt Ivy’s knee, letting the horrible woman maul her.

‘She’s the image of me mam.’ Ivy looked up, beaming. ‘There’s a wedding photo on the mantelpiece in the parlour. Do you remember, luv? I’ll bring it round next time I come,’ she said when Josie shook her head.

She intended coming again! Not if I can help it, Josie vowed. She wouldn’t let her in. No way did she want Aunt Ivy back in her life, the woman who had betrayed her own sister, then her sister’s child.

Aunt Ivy sighed. She gently put Dinah in her cot, and glanced at Josie. ‘I’m not exactly welcome, am I, luv?’

Josie didn’t answer. Aunt Ivy sighed again, and there was that same sad, lost look in her eyes. ‘I don’t blame you. I let you down more than once. Trouble with me, I’ve never been much of a judge of character. I turn the good people away, and welcome the bad ones with open arms.’

Still Josie didn’t answer. What else could she do but agree?

‘Do you mind if I take me coat off, luv? It’s hot in here.’

‘Of course not.’ She mustered every charitable bone in her body and said, ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’ Anyroad, she longed for one herself.

‘I’d love one.’ Aunt Ivy removed her coat and came and sat on the settee. She glanced around the room. ‘It’s nice, this place, but a bit cramped for a baby.’

‘I signed the lease before I realised I was pregnant, didn’t I?’ Josie said shortly. ‘I’m looking for a house.’

‘Daisy Kavanagh said you’d been given notice to quit.’

‘Yes.’

Aunt Ivy raised her yellow hands for the tea. Josie took hers to the table and sat on a wooden chair. Her aunt looked at her almost slyly. Josie remembered the look well from her first years in Machin Street, and her stomach curled again. ‘I can help with the house,’ Ivy said. Her voice was surprisingly timid.

‘You know where there’s one to let?’ Her spirits rose. ‘I can only afford a dead cheap place.’

‘No, but there’s plenty around that you can buy.’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She made no effort to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

‘I said I can help.’ Aunt Ivy put her tea on the floor and reached for her handbag. ‘I’ve just been to the bank. I told the manager weeks ago that I wanted to take
everything out. You’ve got to give notice with long-term investments – they don’t just hand the cash over at the drop of a hat.’ She reached into the bag, drew out a cheque and handed it to Josie. ‘This is for you and Dinah.’

Josie ignored the cheque. It was pathetic. Ivy was trying to buy her way back into her affections, not that she’d ever truly been there. But Aunt Ivy had always been pathetic. ‘I don’t want your money, thanks all the same.’

‘But it’s
your
money,’ Ivy said eagerly. ‘When Mam died, there was over six hundred pounds in the bank. Half belonged to Mabel, as well as half the house. The way things went, well …’ a spasm of pain crossed her face ‘… she never got it, did she?’

‘No, she didn’t.’

It were a bought house, and half of it were mine. And there was money, too, hundreds of pounds …

‘You know I got married again, don’t you, luv?’

‘Lily told me, years ago.’

‘I knew from the start Alf only married me to get a roof over the head of him and his kids. I didn’t mind. I only married him for the company, so I reckon that makes us equal. We don’t get on too bad.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘He was a copper, see, and about to retire, which meant he’d lose his nice police house. Trouble is, Alf’s rather keen on the horses, so his pension goes up in smoke, which leaves me the only one working. I’m still in the same place, you know,’ she said proudly.

‘I thought his grown-up children lived with you?’

‘Oh, they do, but they’re in and out of jobs by the minute, and more often out than in. I often come home and find one or other of the nice things me dad brought from abroad have disappeared to the pawn shop. I don’t
mind, not much.’ She looked anxiously at Josie, and gave the cheque a little shake. ‘Alf knows nothing about this, luv. It’d be gone with the wind if he found out. I’ve made a will, leaving the house to him and the kids. In the meantime, you and Dinah can have the money. That seems only fair, doesn’t it, luv?’

‘I suppose it does.’ After all, it was
Mam’s
money. ‘Thank you very much, Aunt Ivy,’ Josie said politely, ‘though I’m afraid six hundred pounds wouldn’t buy a house.’

‘For goodness’ sake, girl,’ Aunt Ivy cried. ‘I told you, it’s been invested since before the war, moved from one account to another to earn higher interest.’ She puffed out her chest conceitedly. ‘I even had some shares once in this big electrical company that went bust, but not before I sold the shares at a profit. This cheque’s for over five thousand pounds.’

The house was at the end of a row of five, dead in the centre of Woolton, once a little village on its own but now very much part of Liverpool. The tiny houses were invisible from the busy main street less than a hundred yards away. They were reached down a narrow gravel path called Baker’s Row, which ran between a shoe shop and a greengrocer’s, and had been built almost two centuries before the shops and the main street existed.

Josie’s house was the only one not modernised. The others had had their kitchens extended, bathrooms added. They had pretty latticed or bow windows, shutters, wrought-iron gates, glazed front doors. Josie’s front door hadn’t seen a lick of paint in years, and the wooden gate only had one hinge. The gardens, front and back, were a wilderness of overgrown grass and weeds. Her kitchen still had a deep, brown earthenware sink.
The only attempt at modernisation was that the wash-house and outside lavatory had been knocked into one and made into a bathroom which was accessed from the kitchen.

When she tried to scrape the wallpaper off the walls, she discovered five thick layers, each pattern more hideous than the one before. Sid Spencer said soaking the paper with warm water would help, and loaned her Little Sid to give a hand.

The house was the cheapest she could find in a place she liked. It had cost fifteen hunded of the five thousand pounds from Aunt Ivy. It would have been easy to buy a place much grander, but Josie wanted to conserve as much as possible. Sadly, she was too far from Spencer & Sons to do their typing, and she needed money to live on. She felt a bit guilty when she bought a television and washing machine, and resolved that as soon as Dinah went to school she would look for a part-time job.

Josie felt very odd, slightly depressed, the day she moved in with the things she had acquired for the attic room. There were times when she was scared she didn’t know who she was. The woman she should have been had died with Laura and when Jack had gone away. That woman would never return – only her shell remained.

She would never love another man the way she had loved Jack. She had his child, his little girl, so different from Laura. She loved Dinah, but suspected that Laura would always have first place in her heart.

At twenty-seven, she had many years ahead of her, at least she prayed so for Dinah’s sake. But what did those years hold, now that the adventures were all over and the romance had gone?

‘Eh, Jose. I wish you’d get a phone.’ Lily came puffing into the house with Gillian on her reins. Lily’s plans had gone madly awry a second time. It had taken three years for her to pluck up the courage to have another baby, to be blessed with pretty, roly-poly Gillian instead of Troy. She blamed Neil.

‘I can’t afford one, can I?’

‘I thought you were going to get a job when Dinah went to school?’ Lily said crossly.

‘Give us a chance, Lil.’ Josie went to put the kettle on. ‘She’s only been gone a week. Anyroad, I’m waiting to hear from the accountants round the corner. They want a part-time shorthand-typist, though I’m useless at figures. Anyroad,’ she shouted, ‘why is it suddenly so important that I have a phone?’

‘It’s always been important.’ Lily looked at her irritably. ‘I don’t know how anybody can
live
without a phone. Look at this morning. I had to take our Samantha to school, and she screamed blue murder. She hates it, not like your Dinah. I reckon it’s because she’s more sensitive. Then I had to race over to me ma’s for the letter, bring it here and I’ll have to drive you back to ours to make the phone call. You’re a terrible nuisance, Jose.
You’ve really mucked up me schedule. Tuesday’s the day I clean the fridge and vacuum upstairs.’

‘What letter? What phone call? What are you on about?’

Lily took an envelope from her bag. ‘Some firm in California has written to me ma and da’ wanting to know where you are. Your whereabouts, they call it. Hang on a mo, I’ll read it out.’

‘“Dear Mr & Mrs Kavanagh,’” Lily read out a touch pompously, ‘“I am anxious to trace the whereabouts of Mrs Josephine Coltrane (née Flynn), and have been given to understand you may be able to help. Should this be the case, I would appreciate any information you are able to provide with all possible speed. It may even be that Mrs Coltrane herself is in a position to respond. In the case of a telephoned response, please reverse the charges. I look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely, Dick Schneider.”’

‘It’s from Crosby, Buckmaster & Littlebrown – Jaysus, what a mouthful. I wonder if the Crosby’s any relation to Bing? Their address is 17 South Park Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, USA. They’re lawyers. Fancy a lawyer calling himself Dick. If it were me, I’d call meself Richard in me letters, wouldn’t you, Jose?’

Josie’s blood had got colder and colder as she listened to the letter. She burst into tears. ‘Jack’s dead!’

‘Don’t be morbid, Josie,’ Lily said impatiently. ‘Anyroad, it beats me why on earth you should give a fig if the bugger’s dead or alive. You haven’t seen him in years, and who’d have given them our address if he’s dead?’ The kettle boiled and she went to make the tea. ‘Come back to ours and you can phone from there. Though make sure you reverse the charges.’

‘But what on earth can it be about, Lil?’ Josie cried
frantically. Perhaps he was dying, and wanted to see her one last time. Or he just wondered how she was, might even want to come and visit. But if that was the case, there was nothing to stop him from writing to the Kavanaghs himself.

They drank the tea hurriedly, Lily just as eager to know why a firm of Californian lawyers wished to contact her friend as Josie herself was.

Josie sat on the stairs of the Baxters’ smart new house in Woolton Park, less than a mile from her own. Lily found the code for the international operator in the book and told her what to dial. ‘Don’t forget to reverse the charges.’

‘You’ve already said that half a dozen times.’ Josie raised her eyebrows. ‘I wouldn’t mind some privacy,’ she said, when Lily looked set to stay.

‘I know when I’m not wanted.’ She picked up Gillian and flounced into the kitchen. The letter from America on her knee, Josie dialled the operator …

Ten minutes later Lily crept into the hall and found Josie in exactly the same position at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I didn’t realise you’d finished. Why didn’t you say? I’ve made tea. You look a bit sick, Jose. What’s happened?’