The September Girls (50 page)

‘I got the impression your dad was at work and I persuaded Tyrone to lie down for a while. Fielding’s gone to tuck him in. Oh, and the water’s back on, there’s still no gas, but I remembered there was a paraffin stove in the cellar, so I’ve made a pot of tea. Would you like some.’ It was hard to believe Nancy had had so little sleep. She looked calm and capable, as if she was in charge of a minor military operation.

‘I wondered what the horrible smell was. I’d love some tea, Nancy, ta.’ Cara undid the buttons on the front of her frock and attached the frantic baby to her breast. Kitty seized it like a clam and began to suck audibly. ‘Greedy little thing,’ Cara murmured affectionately.

‘How’s your mam taking things?’ Nancy asked as she poured two cups of tea, one for Cara, one for her.

‘Really bad. Our Fergus is with her.’

‘In a minute, I’ll make some tea in that little aluminium pot, wrap it in towels, and take it round. I know how much she loves her tea and it’s ages since I saw her, what with all the excitement going on here.’

‘She’d really appreciate that, Nancy.’

Kitty fed, the tea drunk, Cara went up to the study, the baby in her arms. First, she telephoned Littlewoods on Fergus’s behalf, then rang her father. A woman answered and said she’d fetch him. ‘He’s on the shop floor somewhere.’

‘Cara,’ Dad said breathlessly when he came. ‘How are you, luv?’

‘Tired, Dad, but so is everyone. Why haven’t you been home?’ she asked accusingly. ‘Mam’s in a terrible state wondering where you are.’

‘I’ll explain everything soon, luv. I’m dead sorry to hear the news about Maria and Mike, but it’s you and Kitty I’m concerned about at the moment,’ he said urgently. ‘I don’t want you staying in Liverpool if there’s going to be another raid like last night’s. You’re to catch a train to Kirkby Station - the trains are running, I checked - and close by you’ll find the Westminster Bank, it’s only a little branch, no bigger than a shop. Round the back, you’ll see a staircase that leads to the flat upstairs. The door isn’t locked and you’ll find plenty of food. Stay there, Cara, and don’t leave until it’s safe, d’you hear?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Cara said meekly. ‘Can I take Fielding with me?’

‘If you like. Look, I have to go now, someone wants me. I might see you tonight. Tara, luv.’

‘Tara, Dad.’

 

Kirkby was on the outskirts of Liverpool, yet could have been on another planet, Cara thought when she got off the train and pushed the pram up the slope towards the road. The only sound she could hear was the twittering of birds in the trees. The air smelled fresh with a hint of flowers. There was a pub across the road, the Railway Arms, and half a dozen customers were lounging outside enjoying the sunshine.

A few yards along she found the Westminster Bank - closed for lunch - and the iron staircase at the back her father had described. Washing was pegged to a line in the overgrown garden. Lifting a cooing, smiling Kitty out of her pram, she climbed the staircase and entered a small kitchen with red-and-white gingham curtains, a sink full of dirty dishes, and a door leading to a white-painted sitting room with two large armchairs covered in red linen. The shelves on each side of the fireplace were crammed with books and under the window at the side there was a round table with two chairs and a typewriter on the floor underneath.

‘I wonder who lives here?’ she asked Kitty when she opened a door at the far end of the room and found a pretty bedroom with an unmade double bed and a dressing table littered with make-up. The room smelled strongly of perfume. ‘It’s obviously a woman Dad must know who’s had to go away somewhere. I must say she’s made it look very nice. I wouldn’t mind some curtains like that meself.’ The frilly lilac drapes hid the ugly blackout tucked behind.

She laid Kitty on the bed and returned to the kitchen to investigate the food. What she had thought was a larder turned out to be a minuscule bathroom and lavatory, and the food was kept in a cupboard on the wall; lots of tins, half a loaf, some funny-coloured butter in a glass dish that, on investigation, turned out to be Spam - tinned meat from America that was delicious fried or cold with salad. After washing the dishes, she made a Spam sandwich and ate it sitting in one of the red chairs, pleased to discover Kitty had gone to sleep. A sheet of paper with writing on had been dropped on the hearth and she wondered what it said. She found the occupant of the flat intriguing and was interested to know who and where she was.

Cara felt even more intrigued. Lizzie obviously lived in the flat and had gone to have a baby. The note had been left for someone, presumably her husband, but where was he? Why wasn’t he sleeping there while his wife was away?

Suddenly, tiredness overcame her curiosity and she joined Kitty on the bed where she slept soundly for more than two hours and woke up feeling completely refreshed and ready for a walk in the countryside. She fed Kitty, changed her nappy, washed the old one and hung it outside to dry, as she didn’t want to return to Liverpool with a bagful of dirty nappies.

She was putting Kitty in the pram when a smiling young woman formally dressed in white blouse and black skirt appeared. Her hair was coiled, most unattractively, in plaits around her head. ‘Hello, I thought I heard footsteps upstairs and wondered if it was Lizzie back after another false alarm - I work in the bank,’ she explained. ‘It must’ve been third time lucky - for Lizzie, that is. I might phone the hospital later and see what she had. But perhaps you already know. Are you a friend of Lizzie’s?’

‘No, we’ve never met.’

‘Then you must know Colm, her husband?’

Cara caught her breath. ‘A bit,’ she stammered.

‘How old is your baby?’ The girl came and looked into the pram. ‘Oh, isn’t she a smasher? What’s she called?’

‘Kitty, she’s three and a half months.’

‘Lizzie was hoping for a girl. Oh, well, I’d better get back to work or Mr Miller, me boss, will get a cob on. Tara - I don’t know your name. I’m Mary.’

‘Cara.’

‘Tara, Cara.’

‘Tara, Mary.’

The girl disappeared and Cara was left to face the fact that Colm, the husband Mary had mentioned, could only be her father, inconceivable though that may be. It was too much of a coincidence to be otherwise. She felt her blood run cold. Dad had been having an affair with this Lizzie woman and it was
his
baby that was about to be born when the note was written - had almost certainly been born by now.

Kitty looked quite happy in the pram. Cara half raised the hood to shield her from the sun, and went back into the flat, leaving the door open in case she cried. She was glad now that Fielding hadn’t come with her.

‘I’d sooner stay with Nancy, if you don’t mind,’ she’d said when Cara had told her about the flat in Kirkby where they’d be safe if there was another heavy raid that night.

‘Of course I don’t mind,’ Cara had said, although she had. Fielding was supposed to be her friend and she would have welcomed her presence in this strange place, but now she far preferred to be alone with her thoughts. What would this do to Mam? As if she hadn’t been through enough over the last year - much of it Cara’s fault.

She began to search the flat, unsure what she was looking for: clues, confirmation that Lizzie’s ‘husband’ was definitely her dad. The first thing she saw was a head-and-shoulders photo in a silver frame on a little corner table she hadn’t noticed before. It showed an attractive young woman with doe eyes, a cupid mouth and a long dark fringe. She studied it carefully. The woman was smiling slightly as she stared into space, not vacuously, but as if she was thinking deeply about something very important.

If this was Lizzie, then Mam, with her middle-aged spread and rapidly greying hair, didn’t stand a chance. Yet, in Cara’s eyes, her mam and dad belonged together. She couldn’t imagine one living without the other until death did them part, but her next discovery merely provided proof of what she was searching for - a photo taken in the untidy garden of the pretty, doe-eyed women in the arms of a tall, exceptionally handsome man, both looking, not at the camera, but at each other, in the same way that Kit and Cara had once done. She sighed. She’d forgotten how good-looking her father was, yet it came as an embarrassment to discover he was in love with another woman.

She decided not to pry any more and take Kitty for a walk, although hardly noticed the snow-white May blossom adorning the hedgerows, and the dandelions, buttercups, daisies and other wild flowers, whose names she didn’t know, spurting in their hundreds and thousands from underneath. Even the silvery stream she passed over, only inches deep, which seemed to be playing a tune as the water rushed and bubbled along its bed of white stones, didn’t stop her from worrying what would happen when Mam found out Dad had been having an affair. Did he intend leaving her for Lizzie and the new baby? If it hadn’t been for Kitty, she would have gone back to Parliament Terrace and tried not to think about it, hang tonight’s raid - but if it hadn’t been for Kitty, she wouldn’t have come in the first place.

Back in the flat, she searched for clean bedding and found sheets and pillowslips in the bottom wardrobe drawer, all professionally laundered. She visualized her mother struggling with mountains of washing every Monday morning in a kitchen full of steam, and wanted to cry. If Mam were as rich as Croesus, she would still insist on doing the washing herself. She felt angry with her father yet, at the same time, was able to understand the appeal Lizzie held for him. Perhaps she, his daughter, was more like him than she’d thought. Not every woman, no matter how much in love she might be, would have agreed to marry a man she hardly knew in a foreign country without telling anyone at home. Dad had taken a risk with Lizzie, as she had intended to do with Kit, and to hell with the consequences.

 

‘I suppose you’ve guessed,’ Dad said when he turned up at about half past five looking so weary that Cara immediately felt sorry for him. Kitty lay on a blanket on the floor examining her toes.

‘I didn’t have to,’ she replied levelly. ‘A girl from the bank, Mary, told me someone called Lizzie was having a baby and her husband’s name was Colm.’

‘I’ve been meaning to tell your mam for months, luv, but I just couldn’t bring meself to hurt her.’ He closed his eyes and sighed deeply. ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of the row that would follow either. I’m too much of a coward.’

‘You can’t tell her now, Dad. I went to see her this morning and she’s really cut up about Maria and Mike.’

‘I know, luv.’ He sighed again. ‘I’ll leave it a while until she’s stronger.’

‘How is Lizzie?’ she asked. It was an awkward question to ask. ‘Has she had the baby?’

‘Yes, it was a boy - Bernard - but Lizzie had a hard time. She’s forty-three and it was her first.’ Dad’s face softened. ‘It took all night. I stayed with her in the hospital, holding her hand.’ He blushed slightly and Cara did the same.

‘Have you known her long?’ she enquired, surprised to hear that Lizzie was only three years younger than her mother.

‘We first met twenty years ago. She’s Cyril Phelan’s girl, the chap who owned the building yard where I used to work. We only met up again about a year ago when she applied to stand for Toxteth and Dingle after Ignatius Herlihy died.’

Cara’s eyes widened. ‘She wanted to be a politician? She must be clever, Dad.’

‘It doesn’t automatically follow that politicians are clever, luv,’ her father said dryly. ‘I reckon more than half are as thick as two short planks. They see it as a job where you don’t have to work very hard in return for a hefty salary. Lizzie’s different, she cares, not that it helped any when she tried for the seat. She was rejected in favour of a man, although she was the best candidate by a mile. Well,’ he pushed himself tiredly to his feet, ‘I’d better be going. It’s time I had a few words with our Tyrone after the poor lad losing his wife and one of his kids, not to mention letting your mother know I’m still alive, if not exactly kicking. And I’ve been neglecting me ARP duties over the last few days, what with Lizzie due to have the baby any minute and living in this place on her own.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘Tara, luv. I’ll try and call in again tomorrer - that’s if you want to see me like. After this, you might not want to have anything to do with your dad again.’

‘Don’t be silly.’ She caught his hand and pressed it against her face. ‘You’ve been a wonderful dad and I’ll always love you.’

 

Cara stayed in Lizzie Phelan’s flat for five days while the raids over Liverpool continued unabated. Every morning, she telephoned Parliament Terrace to make sure Nancy and Fielding were all right, and Fergus, who was spending his nights in Shaw Street and neglecting Jessie Clifford, rang from work to report that her mother and Joey were safe, although he was worried about Tyrone, who was insane with grief: ‘He seems to blame himself for some reason.’ Each evening, her father came to see her and, although they’d always been close, they seemed to grow closer with each visit as he tried to convey to her the reasons why he’d fallen in love with Lizzie Phelan.

‘Vanity, I suppose,’ he said thoughtfully one night. ‘I was flattered that she liked me. She made me feel young, whereas your mam made me feel old. Lizzie manages to convince me there’s nothing in the world I can’t do. When the war’s over, we’re going to America.’

After her father had gone, Cara would turn on the wireless for
Band Wagon
,
Garrison Theatre
, or
The Old Town Hall
, listen to the nine o’clock news, then switch to the forces network for the songs that reminded her of Kit and Malta.