The Girl From Penny Lane (2 page)

After she had cried all her tears away and was at the sad, hiccuping, snuffling stage, a quiet voice spoke to her from out of the increasing dusk. ‘Now what do we have here? Well, if it isn’t little Kitty Drinkwater, a-lyin’ on the flags an’ bitin’ great chunks out of ’em, very like! Sit up, lovie, an’ tell me what’s caused you grief.’

Kitty sat up, knuckled her eyes and looked around her. Mrs O’Rourke was standing on her neatly whitened doorstep looking down at Kitty. She was wearing a blue serge coat with shiny buttons over what looked like a navy wool skirt and she had sensible lace-up shoes on her feet. Her thick grey hair was neatly parted in the middle and drawn back behind her ears and she wore a tiny pair of spectacles perched on her fat little nose. Behind the spectacles twinkled a pair of shrewd grey eyes.

‘Well, darlin’?’ she said now in her soft, Irish voice. ‘What’s caused you grief? Is it hurt you are? Knocked your knee?’

‘Mam shut me out; she snatched me cabbage an’ then banged the door in me face,’ Kitty said, the words bringing her tears to the surface again. ‘It was ’eavy, that c-cabbage, it m-med me late, it waren’t my fault!’

‘Shut out, are ye? Did you give de door a bit of a knock, then? Or a bit of a shove?’

Kitty shook her head. She found herself reluctant to describe the conflicting emotions which made her accept her dismissal, since it would also entail admitting that if she did go indoors she would probably be in more trouble, though for what she could not be certain. She knew, without understanding why, that the mere sight of her could put Sary in a rage and though, by and large, she accepted this unwelcome fact and did her best to keep out of her mother’s way when she was in a mood, she was still baffled by the violence which could descend on her head simply because Sary had forgotten to buy the bread, or even because a younger brother or sister had been difficult.

‘No, ye wouldn’t, of course,’ Mrs O’Rourke said, having given the suggestion of Kitty knocking the door some thought. ‘Well, how would ye like to ’ave tea with me, chuck? There’s soda bread, sardines an’ a fruit cake for afters. ’Ow about it?’

Kitty scrambled to her feet, all thoughts of unfairness and grief forgotten. The food sounded weird and wonderful, but what she valued most was the invitation. To get beyond that whited doorstep and to see the wonders within! It was rumoured that not only did Mrs O’Rourke’s house have all its floorboards still intact, it had carpets as well, and linoleum in the kitchen to cover the bricks. And there were embroidered squares on the chair-backs so your greasy head didn’t mark her covers and pictures on the walls, to say nothing of refinements such as wallpaper and a sideboard with polish on.

And now Mrs O’Rourke had opened her front door – a wonder in itself, painted a lovely deep green with the panels picked out in cream and the doorhandle and door knocker not only present, but made of well-polished brass – and was ushering Kitty inside.

Kitty stopped on the doormat to stare. All the rumours were true, in fact they weren’t the half of it! A broad mantelpiece supported a ticking clock, some beautiful ornaments, and two vases each containing three pink roses. There was marvellous carpet on the floor, a very pale creamy brown colour with wreaths of pink and red roses scattered over it. Because it was summer there was no fire in the grate, but where in winter flames would blossom now Mrs O’Rourke had a big blue vase filled with bulrushes.

Kitty’s eyes travelled slowly over the wonders. White net curtains across the lower half of the window panes, and a red baize curtain by the front door though this was pulled back in deference to the warmth of the July day. And the chairs! They had pictures on the seats and backs and the couch had half-a-dozen cushions thrown casually down upon it, whilst against one wall was a little bookcase crammed with books, and against another a dresser with gleaming china – all roses and arbors – laid out carefully to best advantage. Against the third stood a small upright piano made of some reddish coloured wood, with a picture above it of a wistful lady leaning on a sun-dial with a sheet of music in one hand and her mouth open, so you guessed she was singing.

‘Sit down, chuck, while I put the kettle on,’ Mrs O’Rourke said hospitably. ‘It’s on the hob in the back kitchen, so I shan’t be two minutes. Can you read?’

Kitty had attended school sporadically for two years and could read better than most children of her age but she nodded rather doubtfully. ‘I can read from readin’ books,’ she said. ‘Them Rainbow Readers . . . stuff like that.’

‘If you can read them you can read anything,’ Mrs O’Rourke assured her. ‘Take a look at the book on the little table by the fire – it’s what they calls a magazine – it’s got pictures of the King and Queen in there it has.’

Kitty sat down, suddenly conscious of the state of her clothes and the smell of them. All she wore was a shirt, but it had never been washed – never been off her back since her mother had slung it at her a couple of months earlier. She had seen Mrs O’Rourke going to and from the hospital where she worked and was sure her hostess changed her clothes, probably as frequently as once a month! But she would be very careful with the magazine . . . she put out a grubby hand to pick it up, then pulled it back. She would look with her eyes, there was no need for hands to be involved; that way the magazine would stay clean.

And fortunately Mrs O’Rourke was as quick as she had promised, so she had only looked at the shiny cover of the magazine, wondering which of the people illustrated thereon were the King and Queen since everyone was dressed, so far as she could see, in perfectly ordinary clothes with not a crown nor a coronet in sight, when Mrs O’Rourke wheeled a trolley into the room. It held a teapot under a knitted cosy, two white china cups, two plates and the promised food. Kitty wouldn’t have known that the object was a trolley – she thought it looked a bit like a miniature tram in fact – except that Mrs O’Rourke referred to it as such. Sitting herself heavily down on the sofa she leaned forward and took the cosy off the teapot.

‘A trolley’s a deal lighter than a tray, to be sure,’ she observed, tapping the side of the round white teapot approvingly. ‘And it’ll hold more . . . do you like tea, chuck, or would you rather have a cup of milk?’

Kitty had never tasted milk, so the choice was agonising. She screwed up her face, praying for guidance – this chance might never come again – which would she prefer?

‘You’d like the milk,’ Mrs O’Rourke said, deciding for her. ‘Better for you . . . put some flesh on those bones.’ She poured herself a cup of tea, then poured milk for Kitty. The jug was small and white with a frill round the rim, and the cups proved to have a full-blown rose on either side. She handed a cup of milk to Kitty and Kitty tasted it. It was lovely, though somehow unexpected – she had thought it would be thicker, had not imagined it would slide down so easily, quenching thirst.

‘Now . . . here’s some buttered soda bread and a sardine . . . you squash the sardine flat on the bread, see, like this, with a speck or two of salt. I’m rare fond of sardines so I am.’

Kitty decided after a mouthful that she, too, was rare fond of sardines. She wished she could have a little sardine squashed up on a piece of soda bread every day of the week – and then Mrs O’Rourke cut the cake.

That cake was the nicest thing Kitty had ever tasted or ever hoped to taste, for that matter. Mrs O’Rourke, handing her a crumbling slice, explained that the fruit was in fact sultanas, currants and mixed peel and not fades from the market, as she had at first supposed. It was made with eggs and flour and milk, butter and dried fruit, and it was moistened, as Mrs O’Rourke put it, with brown sugar . . . it was a prince, nay a king, amongst cakes.

And while she ate, filling her starved and empty belly, Mrs O’Rourke filled her achingly lonely mind.

‘Your Mam give you a clat round th’ear, is that right?’

Nod, nod, went Kitty’s head as her mouth dealt with mashed sardine and soda bread.

‘For bein’ home late, is that it?’

‘I brung ’er a big cabbage,’ Kitty said thickly. ‘She bawled at me an’ slammed the door in me face.’

‘And you don’t know why, eh, queen? Because she ain’t so rough with the other kids – that about the size of it?’

Nod, nod,
nod
, went Kitty’s head again, emphasising that it was very much the size of it.

‘Ah. Well, you’s different, queen. Always has been, always will be. There’s nowt wrong wi’ being different mind, but your Mam had a rare bad time givin’ birth to you. It’s often that way wi’ a first child. And . . . I don’t know if you knew, you was born th’ wrong side o’ the blanket, which sometimes meks a woman more fond an’ sometimes meks her uncommon grudging.’

Kitty swallowed her mouthful, cleared her throat, and said what was in her heart.

‘Was it my fault, that I was born the wrong way round, like? Was it suffin’ I did?’

Mrs O’Rourke took a sup of her tea and wagged her head at Kitty. Her grey eyes looked kindly, as though she really did sympathise.

‘No, chuck, it were more . . . but ne’er mind that. You’ve got an ’ard cross to bear, that’s for sure, but it’s nothin’ you done, it’s more what you are . . . can you understand that?’

Kitty nodded again, not because she understood – she had not the faintest idea what Mrs O’Rourke was talking about – but because she wanted to please this wonderful warm, motherly woman who had taken her in and been kind to her.

‘You do?’ Mrs O’Rourke looked doubtful, then smiled. ‘Oh well, tell you what, chuck, you come an’ see me when things get too much for you, and we’ll ’ave a nice cuppa an’ a nice chin-wag. ’Ow about that, eh?’

And Kitty, full of delicious food and with a white milk-moustache round her upper lip, agreed with starry eyes that she would come and see Mrs O’Rourke often. And by the time she left, her small belly as hard and full as a new-laid egg and her mind warmed from the attention and kindness she had received, she was almost reconciled to her lot. It no longer seemed so important that her mother hated her and her father despised her. Indeed, over the days that followed she somehow managed to convince herself that what Mrs O’Rourke had actually said to her, what she had really meant, was that Kitty was not a Drinkwater at all, but someone different. Someone finer, more intelligent and sensitive than any Drinkwater could possibly be.

However, right now, with the round hat-box clasped in her arms, it was hard to remember that first meeting and the ones that had followed without also remembering where Mrs O’Rourke was now.

Dead. And it had been Kitty who had found her.

Walking as fast as she could, which was not particularly fast as the box was both heavy and awkward, Kitty cast her mind back to that December more than two years ago, when she and Mrs O’Rourke had had their last tea together. It had been a cold, miserable day: with Christmas only days away and Hector Drinkwater home from sea and nasty-drunk most of the time Kitty had been outside her house more than she had been in, so the sight of Mrs O’Rourke gesturing to her in her doorway had been more than usually welcome.

‘I bought’s a pair of bloaters,’ Mrs O’Rourke said, when she had closed the door safely behind Kitty. Sary Drinkwater had early shown belligerent fury that her daughter should be asked in to a neighbour’s house, so by unspoken consent the visits had become a secret between the two of them, with Mrs O’Rourke beckoning from her window and Kitty, like as not, sneaking in under cover of darkness. ‘And I made one of those treacle tarts you like.’

Ecstatically, after their tea, the two of them talked: about books, because Mrs O’Rourke had joined Kitty and herself up at the big library over on William Brown Street; about sewing and knitting, because Mrs O’Rourke was teaching Kitty to do both; and about Father Riordan, because Kitty went to Mass with Mrs O’Rourke if she could get away, a couple of times a month.

Kitty had been reading
Her Benny
and wanted to discuss it with her friend, whilst Mrs O’Rourke was rather anxious to discuss the recent disappearance, from the shop shelves, of tins of red salmon. Between the two of them their tongues had never stopped until, at close to midnight, Kitty decided it would be safe to go home.

She kissed Mrs O’Rourke goodnight, said she’d come round again before Christmas and sneaked into her own home. By moonlight, she joined her small sisters and the twins in the fusty little back bedroom, diving into the big pile of rags which constituted their bed. She had slept soundly with a full stomach and a happy mind, for Christmas meant a present from Mrs O’Rourke and Kitty had saved some pennies to buy her friend a gift in return. She intended to shop for it in the morning.

But next day the knife-grinder, meeting Kitty as she hurried off on an errand for her mother, told her he’d not been able to get an answer from Mrs O’Rourke’s place and he had a pair of scissors for her, well-sharpened, and would Kitty like to take them and hand them over when her friend was in?

‘Well, she’s in today,’ Kitty said. ‘She don’t go out much, mornings, an’ she said last night she’d be workin’ on her knittin’, today.’

You couldn’t peer through Mrs O’Rourke’s windows because of the net curtains, but the door wasn’t locked. Kitty went in, worried that her friend might be ill, and found her, dead and cold, sitting in her fireside chair with the jumper she had been knitting still in her lap.

Relatives who had never bothered with her in life came to the hooley after the funeral. Father Riordan preached a lovely sermon and everyone cried, even if only Kitty meant it. The lovely, clean house which Mrs O’Rourke had worked so hard to keep decent was let to a young married couple, and within a couple of years the man lost his job, the girl had two babies, and the floorboards came up to light a fire during a hard winter. The house, Kitty knew without ever setting foot in it, would be very similar to the Drinkwater establishment soon. And she averted her eyes from it as she passed and planned how, one day, she would run away and find her real parents, the Duke and Duchess, or Prince and Princess, and live happily ever after.