The Liverpool Rose (51 page)

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The rest of the journey to Leeds, though wet, was fairly uneventful and when they reached the wool wharf, they found that
The Pride of the
‘
Pool
was there before them and that at least one of their problems had been solved. Alf and Freddie had brought Hal down from the stabling as soon as they had seen
The Liverpool Rose
in the distance and, amidst much rejoicing, Clem and Lizzie had swapped the horses over, filling Hal’s nosebag with good things, and making much of him, though it seemed that the Trelawney brothers had looked after the great horse as well as they were able. As soon as this was done, they begged Alf to tell them what had been happening, and he was glad to do so. It seemed that Reuben, ugly drunk after emptying a barrel of rum which he had swapped for a dozen good fleeces, had laid about him with a boat hook when Alf and Freddie had gone down to Nat Shipley’s yard to reclaim their property. Someone had called the police, and though the crew of the
Pride of the
‘
Pool
had not wanted to lay information about the theft against the Trelawney brothers, they had been forced to do so. Alf, who now nursed a fractured wrist and had a huge bump on his head and a black eye from Reuben’s attack, admitted that he was not as reluctant to see his fellow boatmen in clink as he had been before his injuries.

‘I feel sorry for poor old Abe, but if he can’t control his brother then he’ll have to pay the price, even if it’s six months in quod,’ Alf said as the crew of
The Liverpool Rose
gathered round him. ‘Where’s Jake and Priddy? I’d have thought they’d have been as keen to know what was happening as you two youngsters.’

‘Jake had a run in with the Trelawneys, same as
you did, and got a wicked blow on the head,’ Clem told him. ‘Priddy’s taken him up to the Infirmary to have one of these here X-ray things. She says they can look inside his noddle and tell what’s what, ’cos he’s not been right since the fracas with the Trelawneys.’

‘Is that why you’re on crutches, lass?’ Alf said, sounding much shocked. ‘I’d not ha’ thought even Reuben would attack a young gel.’

Lizzie, who had definitely thought Reuben meant to attack her, nevertheless assured him that her injuries were the result of an accident. ‘Though if it hadn’t been for Reuben, I wouldn’t have been trying to escape into the hills,’ she told him, and between them, she and Clem related the whole story, not forgetting Brutus’s part in her rescue.

As they made their way back to
The Liverpool Rose,
Clem admitted that he felt a good deal happier knowing that the Trelawneys were both under lock and key and were going to have to pay for their crimes. ‘It’s all very well to say boat people should stick together,’ he observed, ‘but a feller who can’t take his drink and gets violent, and another who will steal from a fellow boatman, shouldn’t be protected by the people they rob and misuse. I’m downright glad they’re paying the penalty because after a spell in clink I guess they’ll think twice before stealing or beating people up again.’

Lizzie hoped he was right, but thought privately that leopards don’t change their spots; a real bad ’un like Reuben would need more than some time behind bars to make him change his ways.

She said as much to Clem when they were aboard
The Liverpool Rose
once more but he said that you never knew. For a shore man, a spell in prison only curtailed his activity for a while; for someone used to
the freedom and fresh air aboard a canal boat, it would be purgatory.

‘But right now, I think we ought to leave a message for Priddy and Jake that we’ve taken the
Rose
along to the grain wharf to land our cargo,’ he said. ‘They’re taking an awful long time, but you know what hospitals are like. I daresay they may be away all day and the feller who wants this grain won’t thank us if we hang about here when we could be unloading.’

Accordingly, the two of them took both boats along to the grain wharf, duly saw their cargo unloaded and were paid by the manager of the granary, stowing the notes away in the little cupboard where Priddy kept all her paperwork. Clem wondered aloud whether they should look out for another cargo going to Liverpool, but Lizzie thought they would do better to wait for Priddy and Jake’s return. ‘You know how organised Priddy is,’ she observed, ‘she may well have arranged for a return load which we know nothing about. Honestly, Clem, they’ll be back before nightfall and one day lost isn’t going to hurt us.’

When Priddy did return later that evening, however, it was without Jake. She came heavily into the small cabin and sat herself down in her little cushioned chair by the fire, sniffing approvingly at the stewpot suspended over the embers. ‘Smells good,’ she remarked, but in so lugubrious a voice that she could have been complaining that the food had burned to a crisp. ‘They’ve kept Jake in the Infirmary and want him to stay for a few days whiles they sort him out. Clem, lad, I doesn’t know what to do for the best. The doctors up there say he needs rest and ’vestigations – wharrever that may mean – but I’d arranged for a return load of textiles to be taken straight down to Stanley Dock. They’re to go aboard
the
SS Ludovic
. She’ll dock in ten or twelve days and I wouldn’t want to let ’em down. Yet how can I abandon Jake in a strange city? I telled the doctors he could rest as well aboard
The Liverpool Rose
as he could in any old Infirmary – better, probably – but it seems they didn’t agree. It’s these ‘vestigations, I think. He’s gorra be there so’s they can ‘vestigate properly.’ She looked helplessly from Clem to Lizzie, and the girl saw that tears trembled in her eyes. ‘I dunno what to do for the best,’ she repeated.

Clem, however, appeared to have no such doubts. ‘You must stay with him while Lizzie and meself work
The Liverpool Rose
through to the Stanley Dock,’ he said firmly. ‘Why, if they released Jake from the Infirmary and he was on his own in a strange city, things could go badly for him. But as it is, you can get a lodging where he can be comfortable until we – and the
Rose
– return in three weeks or so. It wouldn’t do to keep the boat hanging about here because it’s a lot easier to lose your good name than to regain it, and folk knows the Pridmores are reliable and never let anyone down.’

Priddy’s face had lightened at these words. She nodded slowly. ‘But can you do it?’ she enquired. ‘Lizzie’s still on them sticks so Gawd knows how you’ll manage wi’ the two boats in the locks.’

‘I can walk without me sticks, pretty well,’ Lizzie said eagerly. ‘Honest, Priddy, thanks to you my ankle’s as good as ever it was. I know it’ll be hard work, but I’ve never been afraid of
that,
and once the floods go down there’ll be kids hanging round most of the long rises, eager to earn a few pence by giving a hand. So I think you can trust us to get the textiles safely to the Stanley Dock. Unloading won’t be a problem, there’s always fellers looking for work down at the docks.’

‘If you can manage that, it’ll be just grand,’ Priddy was beginning, when another thought struck her. ‘Oh, but . . . there’ll be talk, just the two of you, a young feller and a gal wi’out no older person to see you don’t . . .’

Lizzie looked baffled but Clem, who knew more about the strict morals of most of the canal folk than she did, nodded understandingly, though Lizzie saw his colour heighten. ‘Yes, I know what you mean, though the last thing you need worry about is that I’d overstep the mark,’ he mumbled. ‘How about if I hired a little lad? He and me could sleep in the butty boat and Lizzie could have Brutus in the living cabin. Or I daresay we could hire a girl, only she wouldn’t be so useful, I don’t imagine.’

‘Hey, I’ve had a thought,’ Lizzie said suddenly. ‘Why don’t you ask the scuffers if you can live aboard
The Singing Lark
while Jake’s in the Infirmary? And when he comes out, for that matter, instead of having to waste your money on lodgings? I should think the authorities would be glad enough to have someone living aboard to keep an eye on the boat, and it would save a deal of money, probably more than we’d have to pay a lad for his three weeks’ stint.’

Priddy seized on this idea with enthusiasm and within a remarkably short space of time it was all arranged. A fourteen-year-old lad called Geordie was signed on for his keep and a few pence a day, Priddy settled herself aboard
The Singing Lark,
and
The Liverpool Rose
took her new cargo aboard and set out once more in the direction of Liverpool, with her young crew anxious to prove themselves to be as capable as the Pridmores had always been.

Despite knowing that she had already told her story, Lizzie could not help feeling a little apprehensive
as
The Liverpool Rose
began the journey which would end in Liverpool. It would be painful to return to the courts where Aunt Annie no longer held sway, and she knew she would feel afraid every time she turned a corner, in case she came face to face with Uncle Perce. But she also realised that this had to be tackled sooner or later, and knew she would feel a good deal braver with Clem and Brutus beside her than she would have felt on her own. So she went about her many tasks as cheerfully as she could and tried not to let anyone see how she dreaded the moment when they reached Liverpool once more.

Lizzie walked up Burlington Street towards Cranberry Court, glancing round her at the familiar shops and houses as she did so. When she had left here at Christmas the weather had been terribly cold and though she had been back once or twice since then, this was the first time she had re-visited Burlington Street in bright sunshine.

As she turned into Cranberry Court, she felt a tiny clutch of fear, though she knew very well that she was not going to meet her uncle. When she had returned from her first voyage aboard
The Liverpool Rose,
no one had known what had happened to him or where he had gone, but Geoff, clever imaginative Geoff, had managed to find out. He had come across Flossie when working in another branch of his bank which had been short-handed due to sickness amongst the staff. Flossie had been working for a fishmonger in the St John’s fish market and had popped in to get change for a pound note. She had not recognised Geoff, but he had known her at once.

‘Morning, Mrs Sharpe,’ he had said, genially. ‘I wonder if you could help me? I’m interested in the whereabouts of a feller I believe you used to know, a Percy Grey?’

On the other side of the counter Flossie’s eyes sharpened and she stepped back, but since Geoff had her pound note and had not yet handed over the change, she clearly could not bolt from the bank but
stood her ground, saying truculently: ‘What’s it to you? I s’pose it were you what telled the scuffers I’d been seein’ the feller so they thought I’d had some hand in bumpin’ off his old woman?’ She snorted derisively. ‘As if I’d have had owt to do wi’ a villain like that – why, a feller what’ll kill one woman will kill another. Now gimme me money or I’ll see the manager and tell him what sort o’ bank clerks he’s employin’ . . . blackmailin’, that’s what’s on your mind.’

Geoff had smiled pleasantly but retained his hold on both coins and note. ‘All I did was ask a simple question, Mrs Sharpe,’ he said reproachfully. ‘I’m just anxious to know if Mr Grey is still in the country, though my own feeling is that he’s fled abroad – at least, he has if he’s got any sense. You see, I’m friendly with his niece and though she no longer lives in the city, she’d feel a deal safer if she knew her uncle was out of it.’ Flossie made to turn away and Geoff raised his voice slightly, holding the note to his nose as he did so and sniffing. ‘Well, well, well, Mrs Sharpe, since this note smells strongly of haddock, I reckon you’re working at the St John’s fish market! I suppose if you refuse to answer my question, I’ll find you there any time?’

As he told Lizzie afterwards, Geoff had guessed this would make Flossie see the impracticability of just walking away, and he also guessed that she had not found it easy to get another job since she would have had only bad references from folk who knew her. He was soon proved right. Flossie turned back towards him, her face reddening angrily.

‘Quite the little detective, aren’t you?’ she hissed malevolently through the grille which separated them. ‘Well, since you’re interested, I see no harm in
tellin’ you. He took off aboard the
SS Clarabella Maria,
bound for Brazil, and I doubt very much he’ll be with her when she returns to Liverpool for her next cargo.’

With that, she had almost snatched the change from Geoff’s hand and then turned and left the bank.

He had thought that Flossie was probably right in her guess that Perce Grey would not willingly return to Britain where, he must realise, he would have to stand trial for murder, but Flossie had been more right than she knew. That evening, when Geoff and Reggie had been walking back to the YMCA, Geoff told his pal the whole story, feeling very pleased with himself for discovering so much with so little effort. But it seemed he was to discover even more. For when he had finished telling the tale, Reggie gave a low whistle. ‘The
SS Clarabella Maria
did you say?’ he asked, incredulously. ‘Don’t that name ring a bell with you, old feller?’

‘Well, no, but I ain’t in shipping,’ Geoff had said. Reggie now worked in the Liver Buildings for a company who specialised in shipping insurance. ‘Why? What should it mean to me, then?’

‘No, of course you wouldn’t know, not being in marine insurance,’ Reggie said. ‘The
SS Clarabella Maria
sailed despite that terrible blizzard we had at Christmas. She foundered off the Irish coast . . . I think it were between Cape Clear and Mizen Head . . . and there were no survivors, but wreckage from the ship came ashore in Roaring Water Bay a couple o’ days later.’ He grinned at Geoff. ‘So I think your guess that you won’t be seein’ Lizzie’s Uncle Perce again were spot on, old feller.’

Geoff had duly relayed this information to Sally, who had passed it on to Lizzie. She had gone once
more to the police, who were gratifyingly interested this time.

The policeman had said they would confirm the story and did so, assuring Lizzie that her uncle had indeed signed on, and had sailed – and sunk – with the ship.