The Girl From Penny Lane (14 page)

‘Most of the people in the courts are grand: clean and hardworking,’ Nellie said quickly, guiltily. Lilac knew that Nell tried very hard not to be ashamed of her background. ‘But there’s the bugs . . . you’d not want to tackle them, chuck, having been away from it for a bit. Aunt Ada used to say it was one long battle . . . oh do try for a nice little place.’

Lilac nodded rather impatiently. She could remember summers in the Court when all the cleaning in the world could not entirely get rid of the fat grey bugs which came out of the walls and made themselves at home, fastening on to your flesh so nimbly that you scarcely noticed until they had sucked your blood and gone, leaving the swollen, itchy spots which were their trademark. And then there were the fleas, hopping ceiling-high on their long legs, driving you mad if they got a hold. And the nits which bred in your hair, and cockroaches and rats . . . She would have to be very desperate indeed to take that lot on again!

‘Honest to God, our Nell, I wouldn’t dream of living somewhere which wasn’t clean and decent,’ Lilac said, shaking her head sadly at her sister’s lack of faith. She picked up Nellie’s best teapot and began to swathe it in newspaper. ‘There’s respectable houses letting rooms, you know, as well as slum-dwellings. Polly and I will share one room between us and Liza will probably get Marie to share another, now that Marie’s sister’s had the twins.’

Overcrowding in the courts was always a problem. With rents high, even for property which should have been condemned and torn down years ago, people tended to double up when children were born or times were hard, and most houses in the city tenements contained three generations – grandparents, parents and children, often with a widowed cousin and her family thrown in.

‘Aye, I know you’re sensible. But what am I doing, letting you wrap up me teapot, which will be on the go until the removal men come and after?’ Nellie took the pot from Lilac and unwrapped it, then looked round the room, already cleared of everything but the furniture. ‘Honest to God, me mind’s going, I swear it. Don’t say I’ve been and gone and packed all me cups and saucers away?’

‘I’ll get the kettle out,’ Lilac said tactfully. ‘You root for the cups; don’t bother with saucers for heaven’s sake, our Nell.’

She could see that Nellie was disturbed at having to leave her without lodgings, but apart from promising to be careful in her choice, there was very little she could do about it. She guessed that Nellie would want to take a look at whatever she chose, but since she would be leaving the city in forty-eight hours, there was no chance of that.

‘Bless you, chuck. Lor’, I’m tired . . . if I sit down for a moment, can you make a brew and take a cup through to Stuart? He’s packing the books in his study, that’ll take him most of the day I reckon.’

Two days later Lilac came over on the tram, walked through Sefton Park in a drizzling rain, and watched rather mournfully as Nellie and Stuart saw the removal van off with all their worldly possessions aboard.

‘We’ve got a cab coming,’ Nellie gulped. She had been crying for hours if you could judge by her red eyes and swollen nose. ‘Can you come with us to Lime Street, our Lilac? Wave us off, like?’

‘Of course I will,’ Lilac said gently. ‘Cheer up, Nellie love, you’re not going to the ends of the earth, flower!’

‘And I’m going with you,’ Stuart said, putting his arm round Nellie’s bulging waist. ‘Poor old lady, she’s been up half the night with backache and indigestion and now this!’

‘Why indigestion?’ Lilac said, hoping to lighten the mood. ‘I always thought you’d a digestion like an ostrich!’

‘I f-fancied p-pears and custard. We had ’em for supper, only I didn’t f-fancy them then,’ Nellie stammered tearfully. ‘So when I c-couldn’t sleep I came down and ate ’em cold, acourse. It must’a been around two o’clock in the morning and they sat on me chest and kept trying to get out . . . oh, Stu, I don’t want to go! Can’t we change our minds?’

‘If you’re unhappy we’ll come back,’ Stuart said soothingly. Lilac saw his thin, brown fingers cross behind his back and smiled to herself. ‘Don’t worry, queen, just give it a go, eh? For me and the littl’un.’

Nellie’s tear-garbled reply was lost as a taxi-cab screeched to a halt beside them.

‘Gallagher? For Lime Street? ’Op in then, or you won’t mek it afore your train leaves.’

This galvanised Nellie into action. She seized her lightest case and heaved it on the step beside the driver, watched whilst Stuart put the rest of their luggage on top, then climbed awkwardly into the cab.

‘Come on, our Li,’ she urged. She looked happier, to Lilac’s relief. ‘You heard what the driver said, we’ve no time to lose.’

It’s odd the way Nellie blows hot and cold now, Lilac thought to herself. Once, she was so calm and sensible but now everything upsets her and she doesn’t like anything for long. I suppose it’s all part of having a baby, though . . . fancying pears and custard at two o’clock in the morning indeed!

‘Move over, love,’ Stuart said, getting in beside them. ‘I’ll drop you a line in a couple of days, Lilac, to tell you how we’ve settled in. Where’s the string bag? It’s got our carry-out in it, and the flask.’

‘It’s on my lap,’ Nellie said. ‘Have you got my knitting, Stu? I might as well knit – better than sitting on the train staring out of the window and feeling miserable.’

‘I’ve got
everything
,’ Stuart said forcefully. ‘Every hand-hemmed handkerchief, every nappy, every safety pin, every . . . oh my God!’

‘What?’

‘We left the kitchen sink! I bet you never thought to pack that, our Nell!’

And Nellie laughed and slapped Stuart and Lilac laughed and hugged him, and the three of them tried not to look out through the window at the city speeding by, the city which two of them were to leave and one was to find a lonely place, without her Nellie.

Kitty knocked half-a-dozen doors that first evening without success and the woman in the last house she tried set the dog on her. To be sure it was a very small dog, but it had sharp white teeth and when they buried themselves in Kitty’s ankle they hurt, and she kicked out so that the dog went sailing back up the garden path.

‘I’ll ’ave the law on you, kickin’ me little Mitzi,’ the old woman who had set her dog on Kitty shrieked as her pet, uttering an undoglike scream, sailed backwards towards the front door. ‘Oh, you dirty little slut, knockin’ doors in the dark an’ kickin’ me only friend!’

Kitty felt guilty; it was getting dark and she supposed the old woman had a right to be wary, but even so the bite hurt. Her ankle was throbbing something awful and she could feel tears only just behind her eyes. ‘Sorry missus,’ she called. ‘But the dawg’s gorra lump out of me ankle, honest to God.’

‘Clear orf, clear orf,’ the octogenarian shrieked, shaking a tiny fist as wrinkled and brown as an old walnut. ‘There’s a copper lives down the road a ways, get outa here or I’ll set the law on you!’

‘Well, I reckon the girl from Penny Lane don’t live there, any road,’ Kitty mumbled to herself as she set off along the pavement once more. ‘She wouldn’t ha’ looked so purty an’ ’appy if she’d lived wi’ an old witch like that ’un. So what’ll I try next?’

She eyed the nearby houses uneasily, for she had seen several curtains twitch during the fracas and though she suspected that the old woman was lying, policemen, she supposed, lived in ordinary houses when they weren’t hounding homeless children. It had not occurred to her before but she’d be in real trouble if she knocked a door and a scuffer answered it! It was dark now, seeming even darker than it really was because of the streetlamps with their circles of hazy gold and it was time she settled for the night because although she’d had two ice-creams and there was half a cabbage in her sack, she really ought to have a drink and something solid inside her, or sleep would be courted in vain. She looked hopefully up and down the road but there were no dustbins standing out and she found, suddenly, that she was far too tired to think about climbing walls and prigging herself a meal.

What was more, she had remembered the palm house.

Earlier, in Sefton Park, she had noticed the palm house admiringly, not consciously considering it as a place to sleep. But now,
in extremis
, she was pretty sure that she could kip down on one of the benches, with her sacks around her and the cabbage to gnaw on until she fell asleep. If she chose a west facing seat, what was more, she would not be woken by the sun in her eyes.

The park was locked, of course, but railings, though not easy, were meant to be conquered. With the aid of her sacks and her rope-belt, Kitty was over the railings and back inside the park in seconds. She found she was very disorientated by the darkness, and by the fact that she had not entered the park the way she had left it, but after scouting around for a bit her eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light and she began to recognise landmarks. She remembered that the palm house was surrounded by trees and had a flagstaff nearby, and in a remarkably short space of time she was there, selecting her bench, spreading her sacks, and curling up. She thought about the cabbage, but since she was resting her head on it and had got comfortable she thought she would save it for breakfast. Besides, all the walking and the excitement had tired her out. Within five minutes of settling down on the bench Kitty was sleeping the sleep of the totally exhausted.

She woke when someone coughed nearby. It was a deep, rasping cough and whoever had coughed also rustled. Kitty pulled her sack up a bit higher and shivered. Who was it? Some old tramp, waiting to murder her in her bed for the half cabbage? Or a park attendant, patrolling the grounds, eager to throw out any kid who might have planted themselves on a bench by the palm house? Grown wise in the ways of sleeping rough though, Kitty did not sit up, she merely kept as still as she could, opened her eyes wide, and stared around her.

Nothing. No one. Only the trees, their branches moving slightly in the wind, and the palm house behind her, its glass still reflecting warmth from the day’s sunshine. And the bench beneath her.

Someone cleared their throat, sighed and rustled again.

Whoever it is, they’ve settled down for a sleep so they probably don’t know I’m ’ere, Kitty told herself thankfully. Now all I’ve gorra do is wake up first, in the morning. And with this comforting thought she closed her eyes again and immediately plunged into a lively dream in which she was playing cricket with a cone for a bat whilst the stop-me-and-buy-one bowled at her with a cabbage and Mitzi rushed around yapping and biting ankles.

She woke the second time to broad daylight. During the night she had managed to roll onto her stomach so the first thing she saw were the wooden slats of the seat on which she lay. The second thing she should have seen, of course, was the ground beneath the seat, but instead, between the seat and the ground, she saw a pale face topped by rough, hay-coloured hair.

Whoever had coughed during the night was now curled up asleep under her bench, with old newspapers below and above, which was why he had rustled as well as coughed. It was a lad, age uncertain, temper equally so, for Kitty knew lads were only men not yet grown and as likely to clout as pass the time of day with the likes of her.

Very gently, so as not to disturb the sleeper, Kitty moved a bit, so she could see how much lad there was under the seat and judge his dangerousness, for she saw lads, all lads, as the enemy. Mostly the lads who lived rough were bigger than her, stronger than her and very much nastier than her; they could make mincemeat of her if she crossed them so she tried very hard to steer clear. This one was quite tall, taller than she, and bony. But having looked long and hard at his sleeping face, Kitty decided he did not look dangerous. His eyes were closed of course so she did not know how the expression in them might change if he woke and caught her staring, but he had a mouth which looked as though it smiled a lot and an unlined, though exceedingly dirty, brow.

However, there was no sense in courting trouble. Kitty sat up and started to get off the seat, to go through the preparations for the day ahead – and then stopped short, staring.

The palm house was surrounded by gravel, then trees, and then miles and miles of glorious grass. But if she had not remembered this from the day before she would never have known, for now the grass was invisible beneath a smooth, soft blanket of white mist, which twisted and swayed between the tree-trunks and even sent a few tentative smoky tendrils curling across the gravel, whilst the sun, suddenly appearing between the trees, dyed the top layer of mist goldy-red, turned the trees’ tall trunks to glowing flame, and gilded the edge of every leaf, every tiny twig.

Kitty knew very little about natural beauty, but she recognised this sunrise as beauty unparalleled and gave it the attention it deserved – an open-mouthed, wide-eyed attention which not even her desire to be gone before the lad woke could break. So she was still sitting there, with unexplained and unwanted tears suddenly filling her eyes and blurring her vision, when a voice behind her exclaimed: ‘Christ A’mighty, ain’t that suffin? Wharrer sight, eh?’

Kitty turned. The boy had crawled out from under the seat and was kneeling on the gravel, staring as she was at the mist, the sunrise, the edges of the grass gradually coming into view, every blade topped by a diamond drop.

‘Yeah, it’s pretty,’ she said inadequately, having glanced round and made sure it was she that the lad was addressing. ‘I never seen the sun come up in the country, afore, though I’ve read about it in books.’

‘I ’ave, but not so . . . oh, I dunno.’ The lad heaved a deep sigh and then looked properly at Kitty for the first time. ‘So you read books, does you? What’ve you read?’

‘Lot’s an’ lots,’ Kitty said promptly. ‘Well, one a week since I was seven, an’ I’m twelve now.’

‘Get on! I’m fourteen, but I reckon I ain’t read many more’n you. What’s your name, kiddo?’