The September Girls (12 page)

The carriage had been acquired yesterday from Oliphant’s pawnshop in Upper Parliament Street. Faily Oliphant had been asking ten bob, but Brenna had flirted with him madly and he’d let it go for seven and sixpence, the pillow and little quilted coverlet included. It had seemed a terrible extravagance, but Brenna had been finding it increasingly difficult to carry a baby
and
the shopping and it would be ages before Cara could walk properly and she and Colm might have more children and the carriage would be used again and again - or so she reasoned while she flirted with Faily Oliphant and considered parting with such a monstrous sum. The stake money was still kept hidden in the mattress in the spare room, very much reduced since the day they’d found it. And if they didn’t have more children, why the carriage could always be sold, possibly at a profit, she’d thought that night, after she’d polished it all over and Colm had rubbed the rusting spokes with emery paper and they’d come up sparkling.

So, as she proudly pushed Cara through Princes Park on a sunny March afternoon with a brisk wind blowing that was neither warm nor cold, and with St Patrick’s Day only forty-eight hours away and Katie MacBride willing to look after the children so she and Colm could go to a ceilidh at the Irish Club to which Brenna was greatly looking forward, she felt cross with herself for feeling so out of sorts, so sour, when almost everything was going so well. Only
almost
. If it hadn’t been for Eleanor Allardyce, life would have been perfect.

Brenna felt she was losing Fergus. Since the night Anthony had stayed in Shaw Street, the two boys had become inseparable. Fergus spent every weekend in the house in Parliament Terrace - he would have gone every day if she hadn’t put her foot down. He slept between the finest sheets, ate the finest food and Eleanor had actually bought him a
suit
!

‘I thought he’d feel more comfortable when we all went out together,’ she’d said.

‘Out where?’ Brenna gritted her teeth at the implication that her son wasn’t fit to be seen in Anthony’s company in the clothes
she
provided.

‘Shopping, to see a film,’ Eleanor said airily. ‘We went to Blackpool in the car on Saturday. I took them in the lift to the top of the tower.’

Brenna already knew this and wondered why she’d bothered to ask. She insisted the suit be kept at the Allardyces’ otherwise Tyrone might feel jealous and want one.

She would have put her foot down even harder and stopped the relationship altogether, but it would have hurt Anthony and he was a sweet little boy. It wasn’t his fault that his mother was a selfish bitch intent on stealing another woman’s child.

Colm and Nancy thought she was unreasonable to complain. ‘You sound awfully bitter, Bren,’ Colm said reprovingly when she’d said she couldn’t see why the lads didn’t spend every other weekend in Shaw Street. It would be fairer. ‘Fairness doesn’t come into it. We couldn’t take them to Blackpool in a dead posh car, could we? Eleanor’s even got a chauffeur.’

Brenna didn’t say they could walk down to the Pier Head: him, Tyrone and Cara included, and watch the ferries sail to and fro across the Mersey and the big liners leave for foreign shores, or play football in the park. Eleanor hadn’t suggested they take turns in each other’s houses, taking for granted that Fergus would far prefer Anthony’s to his.

‘Anthony’s never had a friend before,’ Nancy told her. It was Nancy, the non-believer, who took Fergus to Mass on Sunday mornings. ‘Fergus has really brought him out of himself - and it’s doing Fergus good an’ all. He’s not nearly so quiet and shy as he used to be.’

Perhaps she
was
being unreasonable, Brenna thought miserably, but would Eleanor be so accommodating if it was Fergus who was so much in need of Anthony’s company? She somehow doubted it.

She manoeuvred the pram down steps, ducking her head to avoid the branches of a tree that bore a covering of tiny green buds. The sight made her heart lift. During the months ahead, the buds would turn into leaves, blossom would appear, by which time she would be pushing the pram along the same path in the summer sunshine and thinking about autumn when the leaves would turn gold.

Brenna smiled. Life was too short and too precious to let her personal feelings get in the way of her son’s happiness. Just because she loathed Eleanor Allardyce, it was no reason to stop Fergus and Anthony from seeing each other. She vowed never to complain about it again, at least, not out loud. From now on, she’d keep her feelings to herself.

She felt in a much better mood and was singing under her breath when she left the park by Devonshire Road and walked past Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the school that the lads attended. She was about to turn right and make her way back to Shaw Street, but turned left instead and into Toxteth Street where Colm worked for Cyril Phelan in his builders’ yard. Cyril was a hard taskmaster, but surely wouldn’t object to Brenna exchanging a few words with her husband. She’d never done it before, but wanted Colm to see her smiling again before she went home. Even if they just waved to each other, it would be enough.

The yard was situated behind a thick wooden fence and she stopped by the open gates and peered inside at the heaps of gravel and sand, neat piles of bricks, lengths of pipe of all different sizes, ladders, blue-grey slates stacked carefully against the wall at the back of the Phelans’ end-terrace house - it was no bigger than their own house, Brenna noted with a sense of satisfaction. A man was shovelling sand into a wheelbarrow, but there was no sign of Colm. She edged the pram a few feet inside and glanced down a path between the stacks of timber, but he was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he’d taken the handcart to deliver something, in which case she was wasting her time.

She was in the course of turning the pram around, when the Phelans’ back door opened and Colm emerged, accompanied by a desperately smart young woman a few years younger than herself. Her black hair was short and glossy and framed her neat little face like one of those hats Eleanor sometimes wore - a cloche, Brenna remembered it was called. She wore a grey suit with a bloused top, a straight skirt that finished at her calves and black shoes with incredibly high heels and pompoms on the toes. Brenna, in her shawl and old frock and still wearing Colm’s worn-down boots - new shoes seemed even more an extravagance than a baby carriage - felt horribly drab in comparison.

She became aware that Colm and this fashionable young woman seemed very friendly. She actually had her hand on his arm and they were laughing over something. What? she wondered. The woman stepped back into the house, closed the door and Colm came whistling into the yard, stopping abruptly when he saw Brenna. Was it just her imagination that he looked slightly annoyed?

‘Who was that?’ she asked coldly, forgetting that she’d only come so that he could see her smiling again.

‘Elizabeth Phelan, Cyril’s daughter,’ he replied, just as coldly. ‘She made me a cup of tea.’

‘I didn’t think either of the daughters lived at home.’

‘They don’t. Lizzie only came to see how her mother is.’ Mrs Phelan had recently had an operation to remove gallstones.

‘Is she married?’ Brenna prayed that the answer would be ‘yes’. There was something about the way Elizabeth Phelan had put her hand on Colm’s arm that had made her feel uneasy. She told herself she was being daft. Colm was the most faithful of husbands and hadn’t given her an ounce of worry in all the years they’d been married, despite all the tempting looks that came his way when they were in female company.

‘No, Bren, she’s single,’ he replied. ‘She belongs to the same organization as Nancy, the Women’s Social and Political Union. Look, luv, Cyril will be back any minute and I’d sooner he didn’t find you here. I’ll see you tonight.’ He put his arm around her waist and ushered Brenna and the baby carriage outside.

 

‘Hello, pet,’ Nancy said, surprised. It wasn’t often Brenna visited during working hours.

‘Are you in the middle of something?’

‘Only me afternoon cuppa. I’ll be starting on the dinner soon. Come in.’ Cara had woken the minute she’d been lifted up and Nancy tickled her under the chin, as if she were a cat. ‘I’d swear this child gets bigger and bonnier every time I see her.’

Brenna didn’t waste time beating about the bush. As soon as they were seated, she said, ‘What do you know about a woman called Elizabeth Phelan?’

Nancy blinked. ‘How on earth do you know her?’

‘I don’t, but Colm does. I’ve only seen her. She’s Cyril Phelan’s daughter.’

‘Is she now? I never knew that. I’ve met Lizzie loads of times, but she’s more an acquaintance than a friend.’ She looked at Brenna curiously. ‘What’s this all about, pet?’

Brenna was beginning to wish she’d never gone near the yard, never set eyes on Elizabeth Phelan. She’d decided to stop worrying about Fergus, but now had Colm to worry about instead. ‘She looked so interesting,’ she said casually. ‘I wondered what she did for a living, that’s all.’

‘She’s a secretary,’ Nancy replied.

Brenna had never heard the word before. ‘What’s a secretary?’

‘The sort of job that’s usually been done by men. It’s only recently that women have been taken on. Lizzie works in a bank. She’s ever such a clever girl and can type and do shorthand and is studying for some accountancy qualification. During the war, when she was barely sixteen, she went to France with the Red Cross, spent two whole years there. If I tell you something,’ Nancy said in a low voice, as if people were outside, ears pressed against the door, ‘will you promise not to breathe a word to a soul?’

‘Cross me heart,’ Brenna promised. Nancy’s description of what a secretary did had left her no wiser. She had no idea what shorthand was or accountancy.

‘When she came back from France, Lizzie didn’t go back home, but moved into a flat of her own in Mount Pleasant where she lives quite openly with some fella. They’re not married.’

‘Never!’ Brenna pursed her lips primly, shocked to the core. ‘That’s disgusting.’

Nancy chuckled. ‘I admire her, although I wouldn’t have the nerve to do it meself. Not everyone finds a scrap of official paper necessary before they settle down with a chap. Mind you, the last I heard, she’d chucked him out. Didn’t come up to expectations maybe.’ She chuckled again. ‘She’s probably on the lookout for a replacement. A very liberated young woman is Miss Elizabeth Phelan.’

 

‘Eleanor! Eleanor Allardyce! How lovely to see you! It’s ages and ages since we met: years, in fact. How are you, darling? Do you mind if I sit down a minute?’

‘Please do.’ Eleanor removed her bag from the chair to make way for Lily Mayer with whom she’d been at the Gladstone Academy for Young Ladies in Rodney Street and had met occasionally since at parties and in places like the Philharmonic Hall or Frederick & Hughes, where she was now having afternoon tea with Anthony and Fergus on a beautiful afternoon in June. She felt as if she had been trapped inside a cloud of expensive scent as Lily slid on to the chair in her wide-brimmed straw hat and cream silk frock with fringes of amber beads at the neck and cuffs. ‘I love your frock,’ she said.

‘Chanel!’ Lily cried. ‘Bought in this very shop only last week, although it’s much more fun popping over to Paris. We live mostly in London nowadays and Paris is easily reached on the night train. Liverpool is so deadly dull.’ The Mayer fortune had been made from the slave trade then, once this was abolished, from importing alcohol from the West Indies. ‘Now, who are these dear little boys? They can’t both be yours, surely.’

The boys were staring at Lily, round-eyed. Eleanor introduced them. ‘The fair-haired one is Anthony and he’s mine. The other is Fergus. He’s the son ofa - a friend,’ she lied. She felt the same dislike for Brenna as Brenna obviously felt for her. ‘I have a little girl too, Sybil, nine months old. She’s at home with the nurse. Darlings, this is Lily Mayer. She and I were at school together.’

‘What on earth are they doing?’ Lily asked in astonishment as the two boys began to make signs at each other with their hands.

‘Anthony is deaf and Fergus is translating what I just said into sign language.’

‘How charming, how
touching
,’ Lily gasped.

‘Isn’t it?’ Eleanor said drily. Although she couldn’t be more pleased that Anthony was able to communicate at last, she wished it was with her and other members of the household, not just Fergus, who seemed able to pick up sign language far quicker than anyone else. She was trying valiantly to remember how to form words, but it was taking an awfully long time. Daniel Vaizey, Anthony’s tutor, said the boys were constructing a language of their own, but it didn’t matter terribly.

‘Anthony has a quick brain. He’ll soon pick up the right signs once the boys are separated,’ he’d said.

‘Should they be separated now?’ Eleanor had asked, alarmed.

‘Not for a while yet. Just now, Fergus is important to Anthony’s well-being. He’d be lost without him,’ Daniel assured her.

‘Well, darling, I must go.’ Lily got to her feet. ‘Oh, I forgot to ask: how is that incredibly handsome husband of yours? I was at your wedding, remember?’

‘He’s very well, thank you. I see you’re not married yet.’ The third finger of Lily’s left hand was bare.

‘I’m having far too good a time to settle down and burden myself with a husband and children. I have loads of men friends and shall marry when I’m thirty. Bye, darling. Bye, boys.’ With a wave, Lily was gone.

Eleanor asked the children if they would like another cream cake. Fergus nodded furiously and Anthony, watching, did the same. She signalled to the waitress and ordered the cakes, more lemonade and another pot of tea for one.

‘Anthony wants to pee,’ Fergus said.

Eleanor glanced at the neighbouring tables to see if anyone had heard, but it seemed not. ‘Say “use the lavatory”, darling. It sounds so much better.’ Fergus looked at her blankly. At least he had an attractive Irish accent, so much nicer than the nasal Liverpool brogue. ‘Perhaps you could take him. You’ll be quite all right by yourselves.’