The Girl From Penny Lane (12 page)

I needn’t have told him anything, she reminded herself sometimes. I could have kept it to myself, same as I have with everyone else. But everyone has their own set of rules, and Nellie’s rules said that you didn’t hold back, not with someone as important to you as Stuart was to her. She could not be totally frank and tell him everything, because it wasn’t just her secret, but she’d done her best. Besides, if he had wanted to back out, not to marry her, he’d had his chance, and he’d not taken it. So why should he keep dwelling on it now, when she needed his love and support as never before?

Nellie was Liverpool born and bred. In the poverty-stricken court off the Scotland Road where she had been born, the air she had breathed for the first twenty years of her existence had held the whiff of Mersey mud and the rolling fog which came in from the Irish Sea, and was dyed yellow and sulphurous by the fumes from the factories. She had travelled to France during the war and been kept going by the accents of her home city all around her, as Liverpool girls clung together and did their best to save lives. The city was her home and she loved it; when the war ended she had come home and vowed never to leave again. But that was before Stuart had been offered a job in London, of course. A wife must support her man; she had agreed unhesitatingly to go with him. Far from home she would go, far from friends, far from Lilac, too, who was more than a sister, dearer than any friend.

But she would do it all, for Stuart. She would even consent to her child being born in the soft south, picking up heaven knows what horrible habits and accents and affectations amongst those effete Londoners who had never eaten scouse or conny onny butties, wouldn’t know a stirring cart if it ran over their feet, and probably thought a scuffer was a doormat.

And how did Stuart treat this selfless devotion to duty, this denial of her natural wish to be in her own place, to bear her child amongst friends? Why, with grim glances, a downturned mouth, a secret grudging of her one dreadful mistake – she had loved too well, and as it turned out, very unwisely. Was she to suffer for it for the rest of her days?

She had crossed the little hallway and now saw Stuart asleep in his chair. Her heart, hardened by what she imagined Stuart had been thinking, softened at the sight of him. Brown curly hair flopping over his forehead, the worry lines smoothed out, mouth open, dark eyes closed . . . he did work hard, poor Stu, and anyway she supposed that he was right; it was wicked to make a baby with a man before you married, she had done it and suffered the consequences. Perhaps she should take Stuart’s disapproval on board, along with all the rest – her guilt over leaving Richart, lying to Davy’s parents, deceiving her relatives and friends.

She moved softly across the room, her simple dress rustling over its petticoat. Stuart stirred and opened his eyes. For a moment he stared up at her, looking puzzled, then his eyes lit up with the most loving and tender glance.

‘Nell! I was dreaming . . . such a nice dream . . .’

‘Stu, we’ve got to walk our Lilac to the tram now, but when we get home, I want to talk.’

He frowned. Not crossly, but as though she had puzzled him.

‘We talk all the time, sweetheart,’ he said gently. ‘What’s different about talking later this evening?’

‘I want to talk about – about what you were thinking, at supper tonight. Thinking so hard, love, that you forgot to eat.’

‘Oh.’ He looked stricken, then guilty. ‘Nell, I try not to even let it cross my mind, I try to tell myself it never happened. But . . .’

‘I know. I’m the same in a way. We’ll talk about it though; right?’

He smiled, nodding a bit, and then rubbed his eyes like a child.

‘Right,’ he said.

Lilac climbed to the top deck of the tram and took the vacant front seat. Then she turned round to wave to Nellie and Stuart, already setting off for home.

Lucky them! So happy together, so . . . so
complete
, somehow. Small, slender Nell – slender from the back, anyhow – walking with her arm round tall, dark Stuart’s waist, whilst his arm encircled her and their heads drew close. They were made for each other, Lilac decided, fishing in her handbag for her fare. Absolutely made for each other. The two of them would face the move, the new job, the strangeness of London, and come out happily smiling, glad to be together. Perhaps it would even be a relief to them not to have Lilac forever on their doorstep, forever popping in for a meal or a chat.

But she didn’t believe the last bit, not really. She knew herself to be loved and valued. So she smiled sunnily at the conductor when he came round, and presently, when Suzie, who had worked with her a year or so earlier, climbed up to the top deck, she hailed her to come and share her seat and they gossiped all the way back to Rodney Street.

Despite her resolve to find Penny Lane, Kitty speedily realised that it was not practicable to set off tonight. She had no idea where it was and though the commercial streets would still be buzzing with people for some time yet, the quieter, residential streets were not. It would be hard to find someone to give her directions once she got out of the main city, and she had a feeling that Penny Lane was a residential district which at this time of night would be deserted save for the odd householder returning from the pub or walking a dog. Accordingly, she made her way round the backs of the houses, searching for a gap in the hedge or a wall she could climb, and sure enough soon found one.

Long ago she had learned to climb walls, using her bare toes with great cunning to find every tiny crack in the brickwork, and throwing any garment available over the broken glass set into wall-tops by provident householders. Lacking a jacket or even a pair of knickers to throw over the broken glass, she now resigned herself to scratches at best and a few deep cuts at worst, but luckily the householder she chose was either less canny or more trusting than his fellows, for the wall was merely topped by a single piece of barbed wire. Kitty got over without a mark on her and dropped down into the garden as quietly and lightly as a cat.

Once there, she looked consideringly round her. Rows of vegetables and some fruit bushes met her eyes, with a patch of lawn beyond and the house itself beyond that. Up against the back door there were dustbins – she could dig about in them – and a door in the wall which was swinging open. It’s their privy, Kitty thought, pleased with her own perspicacity. She had heard that grand houses had their privies indoors and had only half-believed it, which was as well since she could now see with her own eyes that it had been a lie. She stole up the garden, a shadow amongst shadows, and sneaked into the privy. It was a proper flush one, a real lavvy, not a stinking enamelled bowl with a wooden seat on top shared by all thirty people in one of the courts off Upper Burlington Street. Kitty enthroned herself, used the lavvy as nature had intended, found a neat little box of toilet paper and used some for the proper purpose and stuck the rest down the front of her shirt in case she needed paper some time. She might want to send another note. Then she climbed down, not daring to pull the porcelain pear hanging from its chain in case she woke the whole house, and set off to explore.

There was a coal house, but it was summer so there wasn’t much in it and anyway she had no need of coal: you could neither eat it nor sleep under it. There was a garden shed, however, and though she could not see much through the tiny, dusty window she thought it might be worth investigating. She was right. The door was locked but the key was still in it. Carelessness brought its own punishment, Kitty thought smugly, nipping inside and pinching two wonderfully warm sacks, which had once held seed potatoes and would very soon hold Kitty Drinkwater. She found a lovely big ball of string but took only a few yards, since it was a bulky thing and would be difficult, she imagined, to either use or sell. She was terribly tempted by a little fork, the sort of fork some people used in their window-boxes, but decided against it. I can always come back another night, she told herself, conveniently forgetting that she was bound for Penny Lane, and in any case she could scarcely make her fortune by prigging forks from garden sheds.

Having decided that the shed held nothing else of interest, Kitty abandoned it, not bothering to shut or lock the door again since if she tried it would probably squeak and bring someone down on her. But she did get herself a long, satisfying drink from the rainwater barrel – she thought the water tasted interestingly different and imagined that the householders probably preferred it to the dull stuff which came out of pumps – and also took a duster which someone must have forgotten to take in off the line earlier in the evening. I can wash me face wi’ that, Kitty thought, stowing it down her shirt-front.

Next was the vegetable patch. In the dark it was difficult to differentiate between what was edible and what was not, but Kitty went back for the little fork, dug up a root of potatoes with it, and ate them raw, though after the first two she washed the rest in the water butt because the grit got in her teeth. Then she dug up another root for breakfast and found that the pea-pods were full, so she picked a score or so, flitting busily up and down the rows, thoroughly enjoying herself. Finally, she filled her shirt-front – already bulging, and most certainly not with Kitty – and set off for the wall once more.

She was tired now, but still managed the climb all right, avoided the barbed wire, and was about to drop down into the entry when something made her glance to her right. Someone was standing there, very still, against the wall. Someone big and dark, almost invisible save for the whiteness of face and hands.

A scuffer! A bobby, a busy, a bloomin’ peeler, a policeman! Kitty had heard them called all sorts, but right now she didn’t care what this one was called, she just wanted him to clear off. Heart thumping so loudly that she feared he might hear it, Kitty peered cautiously towards the man. She didn’t think he had seen her because his face was in profile, but she dared not move and draw his attention . . . she could never get off the wall and run faster than he, not with her shirt full of her ill-gotten gains.

After a few seconds, though, she wondered why he was standing so still – and, what was more, facing the wall. Then she heard a gentle swishing sound and understood his choice of this dark and private entry. In the darkness, Kitty grinned. Even scuffers were human, he’d been taken short and was having a widdle, so it wouldn’t be all that long before he took himself off and left her to make her escape.

And she was right. A few more moments passed whilst Kitty kept her head down and scarcely breathed and the policeman attended to his trouser buttons. Then, with majestic tread, the officer of the law walked slowly down the entry, turned left and disappeared. As relieved as the policeman, Kitty nipped down off the wall, slid along close to the bricks until she reached the pavement, then peered cautiously out. Nothing. Not even a broad back. The policeman had gone on his way and she, Kitty Drinkwater, could find her nice warm nook and settle down for the night.

Back on Rodney Street she identified her chosen doorstep easily, for the lamplighter had been and the soft glow of the gas made identification simple. She spread out her sacks, one to lie on, one to pull over her in lieu of a blanket, arranged her booty right at the back, where the cement wall divided her steps from next door’s, and lay down. She ate a few peas, not deigning to take them out of the pods but crunching down the whole works with an eager appetite. They were sweet and young and sweetness was something that Kitty frequently craved. Then she pulled the second sack over her shoulders. Within five minutes her breathing had deepened; Kitty slept.

Chapter Five

Kitty had thought it would be easy to find Penny Lane, but she had reckoned without the city dweller’s reluctance to stray far from his roots.

‘If it ain’t on a leccy route, queen, I won’t know it,’ a tram-driver said, when asked which way she should go.

‘Penny Lane? Sure an’ haven’t I hord folk mention it over ’n over? But whether tes out Aigburth way, or over to Bootle, or a bit past Everton, that I couldn’t tell ye, love,’ said a knife-grinder, stopping his hissing, sparking machine to answer her query.

And what was more, because she was alone and more than a little afraid, she found she did not fancy moving far from her doorstep home in Rodney Street. During the day it was far too busy a spot for her, since the house above it was inhabited by a number of doctors, who appeared to have divided the whole house into consulting rooms. Caretakers, a very old man and his very old wife, lived in the basement in decrepit squalor, but they were both deaf and half-blind and never knew they had another tenant who slept each night under the front steps and always picked up her bed and walked by sunrise.

After a couple of weeks of searching the streets within half a day’s tramp of Rodney Street, Kitty began to lose heart. Just what would she say when she caught up with the girl from Penny Lane anyway? Kitty looked down at herself, at her shirt, which no longer even looked like a shirt but more like a filthy scrap of rag, at her limbs, stained to a rich brown with outdoor living and dirt. She carried a sack over one shoulder with all her worldly possessions in and would have defended it, had anyone tried to snatch it, to the death. She had given up on her hair though she still attacked her little visitors by dipping her head into the water barrel from time to time. Givin’ me nits a swimmin’ lesson, she always thought as she ducked her hair and rubbed vigorously, though she was wryly aware that though she might lose a few in the water the rest would cling on and survive. The nit nurse had a painful steel comb, paraffin, and other smelly, efficient douches; water alone could never do the trick.

Thinking about the nit nurse made her think about school, and that made her wonder what she would do come September, when school started again and the dreaded attendance officers would be out, scouring the streets for kids sagging off school. She liked school all right, but the teachers would take one look at her and realise something had happened . . . even Sary would have sniffed and found her some sort of dress for school had she seen the state of Kitty’s present garment.