The Girl From Seaforth Sands (8 page)

Paddy, who knew very well how his mother would behave when either depressed or elated, nodded and went through to give a bang on Aunt Dolly’s door. ‘Grub up, Aunty Dot,’ he shouted cheerfully. ‘Me mam’s brought in a leg o’ mutton.’ There was an answering squeak from within the room and presently Aunt Dolly emerged and made a beeline for her place at table. She was a tiny, mouselike woman, bent into a ‘C’ by rheumatism, so that Paddy often thought that the heavy crucifix which hung on the rosary round her neck might easily trip her up. But despite her disabilities she liked her food. She watched keenly as Gran served potatoes and cabbage, then glanced round the room. ‘Where’s the gal?’ she demanded. ‘Ain’t she home yet?’

‘No, not yet, Aunty Dolly,’ Paddy said, since his gran was still serving the food. ‘She’s after a new job, Gran says.’

Aunt Dolly gave a sniff and delved into the pocket of her shabby black skirt, producing a gleaming set of dentures, which she scrunched into her mouth before beginning to tackle the meal. ‘She’ll turn up again, like a bad penny,’ she mumbled through a mouthful of potato. ‘She’s no better than she should be, your mam.’

‘Mam’s all right,’ Paddy said defensively, beginning to eat his own food. The mutton was delicious. ‘She has to earn for all of us, Aunt Dolly, or we’d likely starve.’

‘Aye, but she thieved this ’ere mutton an’ well you know it,’ Aunt Dolly said. ‘She were never taught right from wrong. She was spoilt rotten as a kid.’

Gran, beginning to eat her own meal, shot her older sister an accusing look. ‘If you’re so high and mighty, Dolly Pringle, you’d best not eat the mutton,’ she said. ‘Otherwise the sin’s on you as much as on our Suzie.’

It was the right thing to say. Dolly gave her sister a malevolent glare, but she continued to eat the mutton, and presently Paddy told the old ladies about his day on the beach with the other kids and about Philip’s wonderful lunch basket. This turned the talk away from morality and mutton into safer channels, and by the time the meal was finished all three were in good charity with one another, and Aunt Dolly washed the dishes and sang hymns as she did so, always a sign that she was happy with life.

Suzie had still not returned from her job search by the time Paddy went to bed but this did not worry her son in the slightest. If Mam had got bar work she would not return anyway until after closing time for she would be required to clean down, wash glasses and make all respectable for the next day. But, Paddy thought drowsily to himself as he curled up under his ragged blanket, Mam being out late was a good sign; it meant she had almost certainly got work of some description. Money therefore would
continue to enter the Keagan house for longer at least.

On this happy thought, Paddy slept.

Amy was standing in front of the sink, scrubbing potatoes, when the back door burst open and Albert, lugging a heavy shopping basket, entered the room. He went over to the table and piled the contents of the basket upon it, giving vent to a relieved whistle as he put his burden down. ‘Phew! Them’s heavy,’ he said, as Amy turned away from the sink to grin at him. ‘Me arms is as long as a gorilla’s. How come the older I am the heavier the shopping gets? Do you think it’s ’cos we eats more as we get older, queen?’

‘Well, you bleedin’ well eat more, I can vouch for that,’ Amy said. ‘I never knew how hard our Mary worked till she left school and went into service.’ Mary had gone to what their mother had described as ‘a good family’, who lived in Manchester but had had connections with Seaforth and so had advertised for members of staff locally. ‘Now that I’m doing what she used to do I’m fair wore out, honest to God I am. You don’t know you’re born, our Albert. You want to give our mam a hand with the fish stall, or go from door to door with bags of shrimps, before you moan about a few messages.’

‘That’s women’s work,’ Albert pointed out, throwing himself on to one of the hard kitchen chairs and reaching into a bag from which he produced a large purple plum. He saw Amy looking at him and hastily bit into the fruit. ‘It’s all right, Mr Evans give it me, seeing as I bought up half the bleedin’ shop,’
he said, holding out the remains of the fruit to his sister. ‘Halves is fair, though, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Thanks, Albert.’ Amy bit gratefully into the sweet flesh. He wasn’t a bad boy, she concluded. It wasn’t his fault that Mammy worked her so hard and seemed to expect more of her than she ever had of Mary. The truth was, Amy knew, that Isobel had grown used to Amy’s habit of doing a bunk whenever the opportunity occurred, almost always when work was in the offing. Consequently she worked Amy twice as hard, in the certain knowledge that Amy would do her best to get out of at least half the tasks she was set. What Isobel did not appear to realise was that, with Mary gone, there was no one else to do the work. If Amy only delivered half the shrimps she was given to sell, then only half the money would arrive home when evening came and since Mary was no longer able to finish off the selling for her sister, Amy’s slackness would be immediately discovered – and punished.

Albert, on the other hand, was still treated as someone who would one day have to earn his own living at that toughest of all trades, inshore fishing. Therefore, as with her other sons, Isobel seemed to think that his childhood should be relatively untrammelled except, of course, when he went to sea with his father to help with the fishing, which he did from time to time.

Amy finished the plum and threw the stone into the rubbish pail under the sink. Then she went over to the table and began to unpack the shopping, since Albert, with his feet up on another chair, was reading an elderly copy of the
Echo
, which had been wrapped round a couple of fine cabbages, and seemed to have no intention of finishing the work.

‘Do you know what we were doing a year ago today?’ she asked, carrying some of the groceries over to the pantry. It wasn’t a proper pantry, it was a cupboard which was floored and shelved with slabs of slate, and because the outer wall had a northern aspect it was the easiest part of the kitchen to keep cold. ‘Or can’t you remember that far back, puddin’ head?’

‘A year ago today?’ Albert said vaguely, not looking up from the paper. ‘How the devil should I know? Trust a bleedin’ girl to ask a bleedin’ silly question like that!’

‘It’s not a stupid question at all,’ Amy protested indignantly. She carried the last of the shopping into the pantry and slammed the door shut, turning back to Albert. ‘I called you puddin’ head but I should think even a puddin’ has more brains than you,’ she went on derisively. ‘What’s the date, you stupid clunch?’

‘Dunno. This is an old newspaper.’ Albert grinned at his own wit. ‘I think it’s yesterday’s, or tomorrer’s, I ain’t sure which.’

Amy heaved a deep, dramatic sigh and returned to the sink. ‘It’s the ninth of bloody August,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything to you, puddin’ head?’

By way of answer, a plum stone whizzed passed her ear and disappeared through the open kitchen window. ‘I knew all the time, eejit,’ Albert said breezily – and untruthfully, Amy guessed. ‘It were the coronation, o’ course, and we went fishin’ on the shore wi’ Philip and Paddy. You and Mary come along too, as I remember. Eh, we had a grand day! Us fellers got a grosh of fish.’ He laughed raucously.
‘And you gals got soaked to the skin and sent to bed early, as I recall.’

‘It was a lovely day.’ Amy ignored the slur on her good name. She distinctly remembered hurrying up the stairs and changing her clothing before her mother had had a chance to comment upon the state of her. Supper, she recalled, had been liver and onions, followed by marmalade pudding; a feast which had been eaten in the King’s and Queen’s honour. But it was no good reminding Albert of that; he’d likely say she’d made it up. ‘Do you remember, Albert, how the sun shone and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky? The King had a grand day for his crowning, Mam said, and the pictures were prime. I know the King’s children aren’t kids any more, but they all looked pretty happy. Well, it must be a bit of all right to have a king and queen for your mam and dad, wouldn’t you say?’

‘Not bad,’ Albert said. He leaned back in his chair so that it stood on its hind legs, like a rearing horse, then lifted up his feet so that the chair crashed to the ground once more. ‘What’s for supper, eh?’

‘Belly on legs,’ Amy muttered. ‘We’re having white fish, boiled spuds – I’ve just finished scrubbing them, I’ll put them over the fire presently – and some of those carrots you got from Mr Evans. Mam’s upstairs; when she’s ready I’ll go up and change.’ She looked down at her fish-stained apron and the skirt, draggly from pushing the handcart through the dust of the warm August day. ‘I don’t envy Mary being in service, doing someone else’s housework and so on all day, but it must be grand not to smell of fish. Coming home, a feller shouted out as he passed me, “Two penn’orth o’ cod, miss – and go easy on the bluebottles.” I could have died it was so
humiliating. Why, even when I’m working on the market stall and could afford a tramride home I usually walk, on account of the pong. It’s awful when folk move away from you on the tram, or young women give up their seats just to get away from the smell.’

‘I don’t see why it bothers you.’ Albert returned to his perusal of the paper. ‘After all, it ain’t as though you can smell it yourself . . . and when you wash it goes.’

‘Ye-es, but I hate people shouting at me in the street. I don’t know how our Mary stood it, honest to God I don’t.’

‘She never helped Mam wi’ the gutting,’ Albert said briefly. ‘She just sold the stuff. But I’m sure I remember her saying there was a sink at the fish market and she sluiced herself down there before she came home. And didn’t she keep a fresh apron there, too? I suppose that’s how she got rid of the pong.’

‘Did she? Well, I’ll ask Mam if I can do the same, then.’ Amy brightened. She had put the cleaned potatoes into a large pot and now staggered with it over to the fire. As she passed Albert she kicked him neatly on the ankle. ‘Cor, this bloody thing weighs a ton; if you were a real gentleman, Albert Logan, you’d offer to lug it across for me. Fellers are meant to help ladies with the heavy work.’

‘If you were a lady I might,’ Albert said, prudently removing himself out of Amy’s range, however. ‘Where
is
Mam anyroad? She’s usually in here by now, getting the supper ready.’

‘Oh, she’s having a bit of a lie-down,’ Amy informed him. ‘I dare say it’s the heat, but she’s ever so tired. And we didn’t do as well as we might have,
what with Dad bringing back a record catch yesterday. We sold all the shrimps, mind; the ones left over from the door-to-door went like hot cakes on the stall. But we had some plaice left over and a few haddock as well, and you know Mam. She won’t put them on ice for tomorrow; she says our reputation is for fresh fish and she won’t jeop . . . jeopa . . . oh, well, she won’t put it at risk by using ice.’

‘She’s right,’ Albert said authoritatively. He might not work on the stall nor sell shrimps door to door, but he did go out in the fishing boat,
Mersey Maid
, and knew how important it was to bring the catch in and sell it as soon as possible. ‘Well, since I’ve done the messages, I might as well take the scraps round to the Keagans and then go and see if Dad wants any cleaning up done. How long to supper, our Amy?’

‘Say half an hour.’ Amy had glanced up at the big clock over the mantel. ‘I’m going to take a cuppa up to our mam. It’s not often she has a lie-down and I thought she looked downright peaked by the time we’d walked home. She could have caught the tram,’ she added, ‘but it was that hot she said she’d rather walk.’

‘Half an hour it is, then,’ Albert said, crossing the kitchen and throwing open the back door. ‘And don’t you be late, because us fellers’ll be rare hungry by then.’

Amy snorted. She was busy filling one of the enamel mugs with tea and, after a moment’s thought, added a spoonful of sugar. Isobel only took sugar in her tea when she was feeling what she usually described as ‘a bit cagged, like’, but Amy knew she was not the only person to notice her mother’s unusual pallor that day. Mrs O’Brien, who was a regular customer, and Mrs Kelly, who usually
visited the market late in order to buy as cheaply as possible for her large family, had both remarked that Mrs Logan looked poorly and ought to rest more, now she’d a daughter earning and another helping out.

Rather to Amy’s surprise, her mother had seemed more embarrassed than pleased by the attention and interest in her health. She had said gruffly that she was just tired, that it took some getting used to having Mary gone, that the heat got her down. And on the walk home, when Amy had tried to ask her mother what was the matter, she had been quite short. ‘I said, didn’t I?’ she had asked crossly, putting a hand up to her head as though it ached, then changing the action to push back the fringe of grey-blonde hair which curled crisply across her forehead. ‘I’m just pulled by the heat, nothing more.’

But now, when Amy entered her bedroom with the mug of tea and a cut off the fruit cake which she kept in a tin in the pantry, Isobel looked up and actually smiled at the sight of the tea and the round tin plate with the slice of cake on it. ‘Well, isn’t this nice?’ She hauled herself upright so that she was propped against her pillows. ‘My daughter’s looking after me – aren’t I the lucky one? I thought Mary was the best of daughters, but you’re running her close, young Amy. Before I know it you’ll be as useful as our Mary was.’

The somewhat sideways compliment made Amy blush with pleasure, however, for it was a sign that she and her mother were getting on better. Before Mary started work, Amy had received plenty of slaps and very few kisses from her strict and strait-laced mother, but now it appeared that there was a softening and this thrilled Amy. Everyone wants to
be liked, she told herself, putting the cake down on her mother’s knees and holding out the mug of tea. If Mam is going to try to like me the way she likes Mary, then I’ll work my fingers to the bone for her, so I will. It’s just when she criticises and finds fault no matter how hard I try that I get to think I can’t do right, so I’ll stop making the effort. She handed her mother the mug of tea and perched on the side of the bed. ‘I’m glad you think I’m a bit useful, Mam,’ she said earnestly as her mother took the first sip from the mug. ‘I do try – but I’m not naturally good, neither can I cook and clean like our Mary.’