The Girl From Penny Lane (7 page)

‘Nellie, love, if you’re thinking about climbing ladders and carting loads you don’t want to worry about that sort of thing, not if we get Polly, Liza, Blanche and me all living here. I don’t want to sound swelled-headed, but there’ll be fellers queuein’ up to give us a hand, four girls living alone, to say nothing of Polly’s young man, who won’t be far off. Not that we’d need help, not after having been in service, because we’ve all done our share of lifting and carrying.’

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ Nellie admitted, ‘I got pretty strong nursing, I suppose I’m inclined to forget the cans of hot water and the buckets of coal you heave up and down stairs without a second thought when you work in a private house.’

‘That’s it. Water up, slops down, empty chamber pots, fill ewers, get a laden breakfast tray from the basement to the furthest bedroom on the first floor and don’t spill a crumb or a drop,’ Lilac said wryly. ‘Then there’s coal for the bedroom fires, carrying down the ash-cans . . . domestic service may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but it keeps your muscles in trim.’

‘Well then, I shan’t need to worry about you at all,’ Nellie said cheerfully. ‘Is that Stuart’s key I hear in the lock? Mash the tea, our Lilac!’

After weeping dolorously for ten minutes or so, Kitty scrubbed her eyes dry with the backs of her hands, blew her nose into her fingers, and scrambled to her feet. Kitty Drinkwater, you’ve bin a-tellin’ yourself these past two years that you’d leave, one of these ’ere days, she told herself fiercely. Well, now’s your chanst, girl! If you poke the gelt through the ’ole in the door when they’re all asleep, with a note to say what ’appened and who took the trimmin’s, then probably Mam won’t set the scuffers on to you. What’s more, since you’ll be far away by then, she won’t be able to mek you go back to get ’em yourself. Kitty had no illusions about her mother; if there was a choice between never seeing her trimmings again or having her daughter’s throat slit from ear to ear but regaining her property, she was sure Sary would have plumped for her trimmings without a thought.

Unfortunately, however, she didn’t have a stub of pencil or a chalk on her, which made the writing of a note difficult, to say the least. And she was too near to Paradise Court; at any moment her mother or a brother or sister might stumble out to see what was taking her so long – at the thought of the explanations, the blows, Kitty turned pale all over. Best clear off until the early hours, then return with the note written on the envelope. If she wandered down the Scottie, she was almost bound to see a friend who might lend her a writing implement of some description, particularly if she looked in on Paddy’s Market. They stayed open late and someone there, a stallholder or a customer even, might have the necessary pencil or chalk.

Despite the lateness of the hour it was still not dark and the air, after the sunny day, was warm and pleasant. Kitty began walking rather gloomily along the pavement despite this, but very soon the good humour of the women shopping and the men lounging in front of the pubs lifted her spirits and she began to look about her and take more notice.

Scotland Road was a wide thoroughfare, and most of the shops didn’t close until very late, so that goods and lights spilled in a prodigal fashion out across the pavement. Shopkeepers shouted their wares, housewives shouted back, bargains were struck and baskets piled. Kitty was not usually out so late, since Sary tended to shout the kids to bed early in order that she could go off out, and the brightness and intensity of this side of the city’s night-life intrigued her. Who’d ’a thought it, she marvelled, all these folk wanderin’ the streets when us is abed! Oh, there’s Wally Mick – wonder if ’e’s got a pencil on ’im?

Wally Mick was in school with Kitty and lived a bit further along the court but since he was older than she they rarely exchanged more than the most casual of greetings. But Wally Mick’s sister Dora was one of Kitty’s cronies, which meant that they were on quite good terms, since Wally Mick was a fond brother and Kitty had long admired his kindness to his sister as well as his fair, cheeky face. Asked for the loan of a pencil, however, Wally Mick could not help. He had no pencil right now, he was helping the greengrocer. But later, when the shop closed, he would get given any fades that were going besides a bob for his pains.

‘Waddyer want wi a pencil?’ he asked rather plaintively, rubbing a filthy hand across his spiky fair hair. Kitty thought it was Wally’s yellow head and round blue eyes which had got him his job – he looked so trustable, somehow. ‘Most kids is after a plum or a handful o’ cherries, which I can manage, now an’ then.’

‘I want to write a note; just a little one,’ Kitty said persuasively. ‘I only want to
borrer
it, it ain’t for keeps.’

She had noticed that the greengrocer, a strapping fellow with bright ginger hair, had a well-sharpened pencil tucked behind one ear. Now she directed her gaze meaningfully at the older man.

‘That’s for addin’ up wiv,’ Wally Mick said doubtfully. ’E can’t borrer you that one. ‘Ere, wait on.’

He disappeared into the darkness of the small shop at the back of the mounds of fruit and vegetables and came back a moment later, breathing rather heavily, with a tiny, blunt stump of pencil.

‘Bring it back,’ he muttered, pushing it into her hand. ‘Don’t be long, either; we shuts in ’alf an hour.’

‘I will, and thanks, Wally,’ Kitty said fervently. ‘You’re a pal, you are. Dora’s real lucky, wish our twins was like you.’

‘Oh, Amy an’ Bob’s awright,’ Wally Mick said awkwardly. ‘They’s only kids, an’ your mam’s a real frightener.’

‘I knows it,’ Kitty agreed fervently. ‘I’ll bring the pencil back awright, you see.’

She would have returned it under any circumstances, but the thought that Wally Mick might act as messenger and put the envelope through the door for her was an attractive one. On the other hand, there was money in the envelope and Wally might be less trustable than his round blue eyes and yellow hair seemed to suggest.

Considering the problem, Kitty found a quiet corner by a knife-grinder’s cart and settled herself, back to the wall, knees up. She spread out the envelope, pondering deeply. There wasn’t a great deal of room – what should she say for the best? Sitting there, it was suddenly not quite so easy to explain, but she must do her best or have to contend with the police on her trail as well as the other dangers of the streets.

After five minutes of fruitless wondering she began.

Mam
. No point in trying for a pleasanter tone when your pencil was old and blunt and your paper just a small and dirty envelope.
Mam. Here is the muney from the Hat Lady. Them boys at Harraps Fish stowl the Trimmens off me. Kitty Drin

At this point she ran out of envelope and pencil simultaneously, the one being filled with her uneven writing, the other now reduced to the scatching of bare wood.

Still. It was readable, even in the flickering light of the gas lamps, and it said what needed saying. As for the half signature, if anyone knew her name it should be her mother, so that was all right. She had said nothing about her future plans, but why should she? Sary Drinkwater would not care, she would say good riddance to bad rubbish, until she next needed an errand running or a head to clack. And by then, Kitty thought gleefully, scrambling to her feet and shaking her head to clear it of the desire to sleep which kept creeping insidiously over her, by then I’ll be far, far away!

Chapter Three

Deciding to run away was all very well, but when, in the early hours of the morning, Kitty crept cautiously back to Paradise Court, number eight looked almost inviting. Darkness and quiet brought their own beauty to a place singularly lacking in attraction, and the moon, high in the clear night sky, even managed to make the house look as though it might possibly be more comfortable than a cold doorstep.

Kitty knew well that this was an illusion, but just for a moment she toyed with the idea of stealing silently up the two filthy steps and pushing open the creaky wooden door with the missing panel, through which the naughtier of the neighbours’ children watched the Punch and Judy fights, rows and beatings in which Sary and Hector Drinkwater specialised. Facing Kitty then as she stepped through the doorway would be the Drop, a gaping hole in the floorboards into which generations of tenants had tipped the ash from their fires. It was really dangerous now that Sary was in the habit of ripping up floorboards whenever her need for a fire became urgent, because an unwary step could mean death by choking as you sank over your head in ash five or six feet deep.

But Kitty, used to the Drop though rightly terrified of it, would walk carefully round the sinister, coffin-shaped hole and up the shallow wooden stairs. At the top she would turn right into the slit-like room where the children slept on old newspapers, rags and anything else they could scratch together. Although it was a balmy night, Kitty thought wistfully of that heaped-up bed. In sleep there were no animosities, no tale-bearing, no snatching. They would all cuddle up close, like puppies in a pet-shop window, and for a few hours the illusion of loving togetherness would envelop them all, even Kitty.

But then morning would come, and discovery. She would have to tell her story . . . her flesh crept at the thought . . . and take whatever punishment her mother meted out. And it was bound to be something dreadful, really bad, for a girl who had lost a whole box of trimmings.

Once, Sary in one of her real furies had threatened to hang Kitty with a length of orange-box rope from the top bannister, cutting her loose before she was quite strangled so that she might drop into the ash below and die of asphyxiation. Kitty had fled the house then – she had been only seven – and taken refuge under Houghton Bridge by the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. She had been driven back on the second night by a tramp who had coveted her bed and threatened to drown her if she didn’t git, an’ quick. Kitty had been as much frightened by his hissing, bubbling voice, the result, someone told her later, of being gassed in the trenches, as by his threats. She had stumbled off home, sobbing drearily, but when she went downstairs next morning her mother had been too preoccupied with the fact that she wanted some coal nicking from the railway depot to even comment on her absence, let alone ask where she had been.

Might that happen again, perhaps? Might it be safe to join her brothers and sisters in their warm and smelly nest? But she knew it was no good, not really. The small Kitty had annoyed Sary by some tiny misdeed; she had not lost a fortune in trimmings. And that first time Kitty had been away almost two days and nights . . . perhaps if I’m away for a week this time, Kitty told herself hopefully, turning away. Or a fortnight, or a month . . .

But it was silly to start regretting anything or planning to come back. Once I’m gone I’m gone, Kitty told herself grimly. She crossed the Court, climbed the steps and applied an eye to the hole in the door. Darkness. Nothing stirred, nobody creaked up or down the stairs. Nobody snored in the front room, which meant that Sary had got herself up the stairs and into bed. She must have decided that Kitty would be a while, having to walk such a distance so heavily burdened.

Kitty raised the envelope to push it through the hole, then hesitated. If she tore the envelope just a little, perhaps she might abstract a coin or two, just to see her on her way? After all, Sary owed her a good deal one way and another, even if you only judged what she would have had to pay a neighbour’s child to trek right across the city for her trimmings. She don’t even feed me, not like she feeds the others, Kitty reminded herself. She glanced across at Mrs O’Rourke’s house. In her mind’s eye she could see the elderly woman with her head tilted thoughtfully as she gave the matter her full attention. Then she smiled at Kitty and nodded slowly.
Aye, lass
, she seemed to be saying,
you’re owed it a dozen times over; no harm to pay yourself a few pence for your trouble
.

Trembling a bit, Kitty turned her back on the door and sat down on the step. She put a finger under the flap and opened the envelope, just a tiddy bit. Then she opened it a bit further. Coins, big ones. Two half-crowns, round and silver and heavy, then notes. Nothing smaller.

Oh ’eck, Kitty thought, dismayed. She turned, in her mind, to Mrs O’Rourke’s benign shade. Wharrer we goin’ to do me old pal? There ain’t no kick, not even a bob, only the ’alf dollar. Can I tek so much? But I’s scared to ’ave no gelt at all and that’s gospel truth.

In her mind’s eye, Mrs O’Rourke thought, then nodded, so Kitty put the half-crown into her lap and turned her attention to the envelope. She had torn so carefully that it had parted right along the fold. With a bit of luck, Mam would snatch it up from the floor, rip it open, and not even notice anyone had been before her. As for the sum within, it was a fortune, so surely she would not bother her head about a missing half-crown? Indeed, from what her mother had let drop from time to time, her payments did vary and she was often at a loss to understand why.

Kitty stood up and put her hand, with the envelope clasped between her fingers, through the hole. With the skill born of long practice she lobbed the envelope gently to the right, heard it clunk softly down on the odds and ends of materials which Sary thriftily saved to use on the trimmings, and then, with the half-crown rapidly growing warm in the palm of her hand, she gave one last, valedictory glance at her home and set off at a determined trot in the direction of Houghton Bridge.

The canal might not be very far from home, the bridge might not offer much shelter in case of rain or prowling policemen on their beats, but at least it was somewhere definite to stay until morning. Another night, when she had more strength in her legs, she might make her way up to Exchange Station and try to kip down in the subway which ran from Pall Mall to St Paul’s Square, but for now the bridge would have to do.

Padding barefoot along the pavement she passed the Black Dog, where her mother liked to drink of an evening. It gaped blankly at her, doors and windows locked and barred, deserted for once by the revellers who usually crowded the benches and spilled out onto the pavement. She crossed Vauxhall Road, strangely quiet without the hum and clank of trams or the clatter of horse-drawn carts, the thunder of motorized vehicles. Only the moon looked down on the shiny tram lines and the open-air swimming baths and the looming bulk of the Tate & Lyle sugar refinery beyond the strong curve of the girders of Houghton Bridge. Only the moon looks down on me, Kitty thought, as she climbed nimbly around the side of the bridge and dropped down onto the canal path below. And let’s hope the moon tells no tales, because I don’t want no humping great scuffer disturbin’ what’s left of the night for me!