The Mersey Girls (40 page)

‘It wouldn’t be, but you’re wrong, chuck,’ Mrs Sullivan said, stopping to peer at a display of silk blouses in a draper’s window. ‘I like that pink ‘un, don’t you? Pink used to suit me when I were young. Yes, you’re wrong about quarrelling more if you were married than if you weren’t. Waitin’ for what they want ain’t good for fellers, it’s against their natural instincts to keep sayin’ no to their – well, their desires, like.’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ Linnet agreed. Roddy’s parting shot when last they quarrelled had been that if Linnet wouldn’t, then he knew a girl who would. At the time she had been furious, jealous, distraught, but later, when she cooled down, she had also felt more than a twinge of guilt. She was very fond of Roddy and certainly wanted his lovemaking, could not prevent herself from responding hotly to his kisses and caresses. But then, when he tried to go further, she stopped him short. She did not want to make the mistake her mother had made, she wanted marriage and then babies, not babies first to complicate her life.

Now, she turned appealingly to her companion. ‘But, Mrs Sullivan, you wouldn’t want me to . . . you wouldn’t expect me to let Roddy . . .’

‘No, indeed,’ Mrs Sullivan said hastily. ‘But if you was married, chuck, then it wouldn’t arise. In a manner of speaking. I mean you wouldn’t feel bound to push ’im back, would you?’

‘No,’ Linnet said rather doubtfully. There were definitely times when she wondered whether married life wasn’t all a bit nasty, somehow, a bit crude. ‘Only it – it worries me, rather. Roddy gets – gets quite rough.’

Mrs Sullivan laughed. ‘Aye, men do,’ she agreed. ‘But it’ll be all right, our Linnie, I promise you. Just marry the lad, an’ let nature tek its course.’

‘Right away? But we haven’t got a place of our own yet and Mr Cowan needs me still, he says so every time . . .’

She broke the sentence off short. Mrs Sullivan raised quizzical brows. ‘Every time you say you’d like to leave? That ain’t fair, Linnet, an’ well you know it. What’s ’e playin’ at, eh? You can’t stay there for ever while poor Roddy goes wild for you, queen.’

‘No, I know. But you see I’m not sure about – about Roddy and me and Mr Cowan’s sensible and kind and – and what he’s proposed . . .’

‘Proposed? Linnet, you don’t mean to tell me ’e’s asked you to be ’is wife?’

‘I didn’t mean that, but . . . yes, he has,’ Linnet said slowly. ‘I like him very much but I don’t love him at all, only . . . only when Roddy and I quarrel, and when Roddy says awful things and storms off, then Mr Cowan seems so quiet and sensible that I can’t help thinking perhaps that’s what I want and not – not all that love stuff.’

They were walking slowly along the crowded pavement, arm in arm, heads close. Mrs Sullivan gave Linnet’s arm a squeeze.

‘I dunno ’ow to say this, queen, but
all that love stuff
, it’s what life’s about, y’know. Love makes the world go round they say, and I tell you straight, wi’out love a marriage ain’t worth tuppence. It wouldn’t be fair to say as ’ow I think Roddy’s the feller for you, bein’ as ’e’s me son, but I’m certain-sure that a bloke ’oo’s quiet an’ sensible ain’t a bloke in love, whatever ’e may say. Love – love ’urts when things go wrong, it wrenches your guts, but when things go right . . . oh, then love’s the crash o’drums an’ trumpets, ’ot sunshine full in your face, the scent o’ lilac when there’s really only kippers. What are you laughin’ at, young Linnet?’

‘You were doing fine till you got to kippers,’ Linnet wailed, mopping her streaming eyes. ‘But I do understand what you mean, Mrs Sullivan. And I believe you’re right. Roddy and I usually fight after we’ve been . . . well, you know.’

‘I know,’ Mrs Sullivan said. ‘Here’s Candwell’s; time for a cuppa an’ a pastry, eh?’

‘Definitely,’ Linnet said, following her friend into the refreshment rooms. ‘I love Mrs Annie’s sugar buns!’

They were shown to a window table and ordered a pot of tea for two and a selection of fancy pastries from the cheerful little waitress. Linnet began to chatter but she soon realised that Mrs Sullivan was not happy; the older woman kept starting sentences and then breaking off to stare broodingly at the pink and yellow rosebuds on the dainty china cups. Linnet leaned across the table and took Mrs Sullivan’s work-worn hand in hers.

‘What’s the matter, Mrs S?’ she said gently. ‘You’ve gone very quiet on me!’

‘I were just thinkin’. If you married that feller, that Cowan, I doubt I’d ever clap eyes on you again.’

‘That’s nonsense; of course you would, I’d come round just as often as I do now – more, probably,’ Linnet said, but even as she spoke the words she knew she lied. Mr Cowan did not approve of what he called ‘your past’ and would make sure she had no time to keep popping round to Peel Square. And besides, it would be awkward, because although Mrs Sullivan was dear to Linnet she was dearer to Roddy, and Roddy and Linnet would avoid one another, it stood to reason. ‘But anyway it doesn’t matter, because I’m not going to marry Mr Cowan,’ she added cheerfully. ‘I’ll promise not to, if you like. And now do choose another cake because all this talking has made me terribly hungry!’

‘She’s my twin,’ Lucy said to everyone she came across. ‘So she’ll be very like me. Our mam was called little Evie and she was an actress at the theatre here.’

But although as a description it was good enough, no one seemed to know Linnet. And finally Lucy worked her way up to the theatre and asked the lady booking seats whether she knew a Miss Linnet Murphy, daughter of an actress called little Evie.

‘You mean the exotic dancer,’ the woman said. ‘Oh aye, I remember little Evie. But she’s not been here for years – went to the States wi’ an American feller.’

‘Yes, I know. But she left her daughter behind, didn’t she?’ Lucy said. ‘So far as we know she’s still in Liverpool somewhere – Linnet I mean – and I’m trying to find her. She’s inherited some – some money from her grandfather so we have to find her.’

‘Oh aye? Tell you who might know, Topsy Page. I ’member she lodged with Evie’s daughter one time.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful! Is she here? Can I see her?’ Lucy said eagerly. It really seemed as though her quest was about to end at last.

‘She’s in tonight,’ the woman said. ‘Come round when the show’s over, at about ten. Bring her a box of chocolates, she’s mortal fond of sweets, and likely she’ll ask you in. She’s a nice enough girl.’

‘Right,’ Lucy said joyfully. ‘A box of chocolates; I won’t forget.’

Topsy Page remembered Linnet and was able to give Lucy the whereabouts of the rooms in Juvenal Street, but there, for the time at least, the trail ended. No one in Juvie, as it was called, could tell Lucy where the Murphy girl had gone though one young lad told her to try Peel Square.

‘She were thick wi’ a feller what lived there,’ he said. ‘I b’lieve, when ’er mam were out, she stayed wi’ someone there. Or you could try the convent school. They’d know.’

Lucy tried to find Peel Square and when she did she was shocked; all those tiny, overcrowded houses built round a paved courtyard which never saw the sun, filled now with scruffy, down-at-heel kids. How could anyone live here? So she did not try very hard to run her sister to earth in this particular place.

‘Lorra gairls around ’ere, chuck,’ a fat woman in a droopy grey skirt and brown blouse told her at the first house she visited. ‘Never know ‘alf the names of ’em. Waste o’ time anyroad, ’cos she ain’t ’ere now. I’d know if she were.’

At the second house a man lurched out and tried to persuade her that he had Linnet tucked away in his kitchen. He caught hold of her arm and Lucy, really frightened, tore herself free and ran out of the court, telling herself that no sister of hers would have stayed in such a horrid place amongst such rough and dreadful people.

It had taken her most of the day to find Peel Square, so she went back to Brownlow Hill and ate a good dinner, determining to spend the next day at the convent school.

‘The nuns’ll know,’ her landlady said comfortably, serving stewed apples and custard. ‘They keep a track o’ their pupils, the sisters do. You’ll be lucky tomorrer, chuck.’

‘A job in an insurance office on Exchange Flags,’ Lucy murmured to herself as she left the convent the following afternoon. The sisters had been great, they remembered Linnet well enough though it had been years since they had taught her. But they couldn’t tell Lucy which insurance company, so she would have to do some more foot-slogging.

It’ll be tomorrow I find her, Lucy told herself, returning to her boarding house once more. ‘Tomorrow will be my lucky day!’

There were a great many insurance offices on Exchange Flags and Lucy visited each one of them. And finally, at the Eagle and General, she struck gold.

‘That’s right, she worked here,’ an elegant young lady said thoughtfully. ‘She and Rose Beasley shared an office. Rose moved on six months ago – she and her feller got wed – but Miss Murphy went a while before that. Now, I wonder where she went? Not into another insurance office I don’t think . . . want me to ask around?’

‘Oh, please,’ Lucy said gratefully. ‘When shall I come back?’

The elegant one looked at her fob watch, then tapped her teeth with her pencil. ‘Well, I’ll put the word around – how about the day after tomorrow? Only it’s a big firm, it may take me a while, and I do have a job to do as well!’

‘That’ll be fine,’ Lucy said, though with sinking heart. She had been here nearly a week and if she didn’t turn something up soon . . . and when I find her, I’ve got to persuade her to come back to Ireland with me, she remembered gloomily. If I were her I’d jump at the chance, but I’m not her. We’ve been brought up so differently that we probably don’t even like the same things. She probably loves this city whereas to me its just miles of pavements and people who talk so fast I can’t understand a word and live in terrible conditions. Oh, I do want Cahersiveen!

She trudged back through the streets to her boarding house but over dinner that night her thoughts took a different direction, thanks to Mr Harrigan.

Mr Harrigan was what Mrs Cordiner called ‘a commercial’, which was short, apparently, for commercial traveller. He proved to be a short, bald man in his fifties who travelled, he told Lucy, in patent medicines for a large pharmaceutical company. He was Irish, but no longer lived in that country since the market for his product was not so good ‘over the water’, but he was an enthusiast for the city of Liverpool.

‘You don’t like it, alanna?’ he said incredulously when Lucy told him how homesick she was. ‘You don’t like this most beautiful of cities? Ah, but how much have ye seen of it? Have ye taken the ferry across the great River Mersey and seen it from the Woodside shore? Have you visited the art gallery, the museum, St George’s Hall, the great lending library? And the theatres! Sure, the theatres of Liverpool are second only to the theatres of London – if they are second to them, which I doubt. My dear Miss Murphy, you must give the city a chance to prove itself!’

‘I haven’t had much time,’ Lucy admitted. ‘I’ve been trying to find my sister. But as it happens I am free tomorrow – how would you suggest I spend the day?’

‘Take the ferry from the Pier Head to Woodside; once there, you’ll see the most beautiful and impressive waterfront in the world, so you will. Then come back – you needn’t go ashore, you can stay aboard – and get on the overhead railway and go along to Seaforth Sands. If you’ve missed your sea lough you ought to enjoy that. Then take a tram back to the city and get off at St George’s Hall. Take a good, long look at it – magnificent architecture! Then you can do the museum and the art gallery because they’re only just across the road so they are. And if you’ve got any strength left, sit in St John’s garden and contemplate life for half an hour, to recover yourself. Will ye do that for me, Miss Murphy? Your soul will be refreshed, I promise you.’

‘Yes, I will,’ Lucy said. She was sick and tired of city streets and city faces, she would enjoy a river trip. A thought struck her, however. ‘The ferry – does it bounce around much? Sick as a dog I was on the ferry from Dun Laoghaire.’

Mr Harrigan laughed. ‘Flat as a mill-pond it will be, and us with summer truly upon us. Have a good day, Miss Murphy.’

The following day started cloudy but by the time Lucy had eaten her breakfast and set out to walk to the Pier Head the sun was peeping from behind the clouds, and as she joined the crowd shuffling along the floating road to get aboard the ferry the sky was clearing fast.

I do believe I really shall enjoy today, Lucy told herself as she stood in line to buy her ticket. I don’t intend to worry, or think about Linnet, or do anything other than relax today.

Having purchased a return she went and joined the other would-be passengers who stood in little groups, waiting whilst the ferry backed into its berth. She watched idly, but presently her attention was drawn to a young woman of about her own age, standing by the railings, with her back to Lucy, looking pensively out across the water. The young woman was thin, with straight, light-brown hair. She was wearing a navy blue jacket and skirt and sensible black shoes and she was clearly waiting for the ferry, as Lucy was. I wish I knew her, Lucy thought. She looks rather nice, though since I can’t see her face I don’t really see why I should think that. But some people you do like instinctively, and your instincts are usually right.

She was wondering whether she could go across and strike up an acquaintance when the ferry jostled itself into position, the gang-plank came down with a crash and people began to pour ashore. Lucy moved over against the railings herself so that she wouldn’t get in the way, and by the time the crowds had passed and passengers for Woodside were being allowed aboard, she had forgotten all about the girl in the navy suit.

She remembered her again aboard the ferry, though, because she decided to take a quick look at the saloons and then return to the deck; even the slight movement of the deck beneath her feet reminded her all too sharply of her recent ghastly experience on the voyage from Ireland. As she came out of the saloon and regained the deck the girl in the navy suit came towards her, clearly about to go below. Lucy moved aside and then their eyes met and they exchanged smiles. The girl in the navy suit was slim and slightly built with fawny-brown hair which swung, rain-straight, down to her shoulders and her smile was friendly, forthcoming. Lucy spoke first.