Two Penn'orth of Sky (13 page)

‘Mammy!’ Diana flew across Beryl’s kitchen and cast herself into her mother’s arms. ‘Oh, you’ve been gone ages. I would have been upset only Aunty Beryl said that were a good sign. What happened, Mammy? Did you get the job?’

Beryl, peeling potatoes at the sink, turned and grinned. ‘One look at your mammy’s face tells me she’s now a waitress,’ she announced. ‘I tek it he were pleased with you, chuck? And by the grin on your face, I reckon you took to it like a duck to water. Am I right?’

‘You are,’ Emmy said, sinking on to a kitchen chair and arching her back, rubbing vigorously at it as she did so. ‘It’s awful hard work, you were right there, but I really enjoyed it, and the money’s good, especially when you think of the tips. Why, I only waited on for a couple of hours – actually, it were only an hour by myself – and I took three and seven in tips, can you believe it?’

Beryl nodded. ‘I can. You’re a pretty girl, chuck, and you’ve got nice ways. I thought you’d do well, waiting on. So long as it ain’t too much for you, of course. Fancy a cuppa?’

‘I’d love one,’ Emmy said eagerly. ‘I had a cup before I left Mac’s, but that seems a long time ago now.’

‘When do you start? An’ wharrabout uniform?’ Beryl asked, dropping the peeled potatoes into a large pan of water and carrying it over to the stove. ‘D’you have to provide your own?’

‘I start first thing Monday morning, on the early shift, so I have to be up at the crack of dawn,’ Emmy told her. ‘But mornings are a lot quieter, so Mr McCullough – I mean Mr Mac, he said to call him that – likes to start new staff on earlies to get them used to it gradually, like. As for uniform, I have to provide two plain black dresses and they give me white collars and cuffs, a frilly white apron and a cap. I hand in my whites, as they call them, when I finish my shift and get clean ones next day.’

‘Do you have two black dresses?’ Beryl asked curiously. ‘If not, we’ll go down to Paddy’s Market tomorrow and get you a couple o’ second-hand ones. You can rinse them out on Sunday and they’ll be fine for work on Monday.’

‘It’s all right. I’ve got several black dresses which will do,’ Emmy said hastily; she did not fancy wearing a second-hand dress, no matter how carefully it had been rinsed. She indicated the bag on the floor. ‘I’ve bought fish and chips for Di and me to celebrate, but I’ll shove ’em in the oven when I get home and warm them through. To tell the truth, I’m far too tired and excited to turn round and start cooking.’

Diana, who had been diligently drawing pictures on a piece of old brown wrapping paper, looked up. ‘Oh, Mammy, fish ’n’ chips is me favourite food! Will we have it always when you’re workin’ at – at that place?’

Emmy laughed but shook her head. ‘No, darling, not every night. When I’m on earlies, I’ll be home well before you come out of school, so I’ll have time to cook you something nice.’ She turned back to Beryl. ‘My mam never did teach me to cook, and when she died I always had Lucy to do it,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But Mr Mac explained that part of the job would be helping the kitchen staff when they’re busy and the restaurant isn’t. And he says they’ll teach me to cook.’

She beamed at Beryl, who laughed and shook her head. ‘Some folk land on their feet every time, like cats,’ she observed. ‘But I’m real glad you got the job, queen, because it’ll solve a good few of your problems, see if it don’t.’

Later that evening, when Emmy was putting Diana
to bed, it occurred to her to wonder out loud why Beryl had not applied for such a job herself. After all, at the moment, Beryl worked extremely hard and did not get particularly well paid for her labours. Diana, pulling on her white cotton nightgown, eyed her parent with astonishment. ‘Who’d look after the kids if Aunty Beryl went to be a waitress in a smart dining rooms?’ she asked incredulously. ‘Granny Pritchard can’t help, now that she’s bedridden. In fact she needs looking after herself. And anyway, Mammy, Aunty Beryl’s fat and . . . well, she isn’t like you, is she?’

‘She’s a lot more efficient than I am,’ Emmy said severely, but even as she spoke, a picture of Beryl rose before her mind’s eye and she was forced to acknowledge that her small daughter had hit the nail on the head. It wasn’t that Beryl was fat so much as, well, sort of saggy, Emmy concluded. Once, her friend’s thick brown curls had been fashionably cut and regularly brushed. Now it looked as though Beryl cut them herself with blunt scissors. After the birth of her youngest child, Beryl had developed bad varicose veins and now she walked with a limp, trying to spare her left leg where the veins were worst. Although she was always clean and as neat as possible, all her clothing was old and darned, and her down-at-heel shoes, the only pair she possessed, Emmy thought, were cracked and broken.

Emmy said goodnight to Diana and went downstairs. She remembered Beryl on her wedding day, looking so happy and pretty. She remembered her after Charlie’s birth, showing her baby off, wearing a floral print and white sandals. But now, with four children and a multitude of small jobs, she was beginning to resemble a good many of the other women
in the court. If she pulled herself together, Emmy began to think, then remembered Bobby. It was no use Beryl’s pulling herself together, not until Bobby was old enough to be left with the other children. And then she remembered something else Diana had said. She had said that Beryl was fat. Emmy’s hands flew to her mouth as realisation dawned. Beryl wasn’t fat, she was expecting again!

For a moment, Emmy was tempted to rush round to her friend, to ask if it were true, but what good would that do? She remembered Peter saying, when they first got married, that too many children made women old before their time and forced men to work for miserably small wages because they dared not leave a job and try for a better one in case they found themselves without work, struggling to bring up a family on the dole. She had been lucky that Peter had known all about birth control and had ‘taken precautions’, but he was an intelligent man. Beryl’s Wally was kind-hearted and sweet-tempered, but Beryl would be the first to admit that he was not at all clever. It probably never occurred to him that life would be easier if babies didn’t arrive with such appalling regularity. And Beryl, of course, would not dream of discussing such intimate things, not even with her best friend.

But I’m not so squeamish, Emmy told herself, sitting down before the kitchen fire. I’ll go over there first thing tomorrow and get her to come out with me, and we’ll have a good talk. It’s about time I did something for Beryl instead of the other way round.

Diana came out of school at a run so that no one should see she was crying. It was mid-October, but the sun was still warm on her back and Diana, though still upset, was glad that at least it was not raining. She knew her mother would have told her to wait for Lenny and Charlie, but Diana, sniffing dolefully, did not intend to let anyone see her with her eyes all tear-blubbered and a runny nose. However, she was well ahead of the rest of the school, so she set off at a trot in the direction of the court. With a bit of luck she would get home, wash her face and tidy herself before anyone saw her.

Hurrying along, she fished in her knicker leg for a handkerchief and then remembered, crossly, that she had been in such a hurry this morning that she had neglected to take one out of her drawer. And if it hadn’t been for that hateful Hilda Bridges and her pal Maureen she wouldn’t have needed a handkerchief, she reminded herself. Hilda and Maureen, both more than a year older and a good deal stronger than Diana, took sadistic pleasure in making her life a misery – and for why? Because Diana, who was only five and a new girl, had been put up a whole year as she was streets ahead of the other five-year-olds in the school. So now she was in Standard II with big girls of six, or even seven, being taught reading, writing and sums by Miss Lovett, and being bullied by Hilda and Maureen.

They were far too clever to try to ill-treat her when anyone else was about, but this afternoon she had been sent to fetch a couple of new dusters from another classroom. As she passed the cloakroom on her way back to Miss Lovett’s, the two girls had pounced on her, wrestled her to the floor, and smacked and kicked her, tearing her new grey tunic in the process, before hurrying off, sniggering, to get back to their classroom whilst Miss Lovett was still absent, for it appeared she had been called away only minutes after despatching Diana on her errand.

So now, reaching the court, Diana rushed towards her own front door, still with her head down and tears blurring her vision, which was how she came to run into someone. The someone caught at her shoulders and a laughing voice said chidingly: ‘Where’s you off to in such a hurry, kiddo? You damned near knocked me over. Hey, youse crying! Wharrever is the matter? Here, is your mam at home? I’ll fetch her if you like.’

Diana cleared her eyes of tears with both fists and stared at the other girl. It was Wendy, the girl who had taught her to skip, the girl of whom Mammy disapproved. ‘She’s the dirtiest ragamuffin in the whole of Liverpool, I should think,’ her mother had said disparagingly. ‘She’s a real menace, that one. All the respectable people in the court avoid Mrs Telford.
Missus!
Don’t make me laugh. That one never saw a wedding ring, let alone a wedding.’

‘But I like Wendy; she’s kind,’ Diana had said, bewildered by her mother’s animosity. ‘It isn’t her fault that she don’t have nice clothes; it isn’t her fault that she’s dirty, either.’

Her mother had pounced on this. ‘Yes it is, because soap and water’s free,’ she had said. ‘What’s more,
her hair’s full of nits and if there’s one thing I can do without, it’s having to comb nits out of your hair every single blessed night. Look, darling, there are heaps of children living in Nightingale Court who want to be friends. Pick one of them.’

But now here was Wendy, offering to fetch her mother, clearly realising that something was wrong and doing her best to help. Diana pushed the hair out of her eyes and turned to face the older girl. ‘Me mam isn’t in,’ she said huskily. ‘But I want to get cleaned up afore the Fishers see me. I – I don’t want ’em to know I’ve been cryin’.’

‘Right. I’ll come in wi’ you an’ whiles you tidy up you can tell me what’s been goin’ on,’ Wendy said. She led the way to Diana’s front door, pulling the key up on its string and unlocking, as though she did it every day of her life. ‘Come on in then,’ she said, as hospitably as if it had been her home and not Diana’s. ‘You needn’t tell me you’re being bullied by older girls; I can guess what happened. I used to get it myself afore I learned a trick or two worth more than anything they could come up with.’ The two children had entered the kitchen and Wendy looked curiously about her. ‘Ain’t it nice, though?’ she said in a wondering tone. ‘Coo, you’d never think it were the same as our kitchen – same size an’ shape, I mean. What’s that?’

She was pointing to the gas stove which Emmy had had installed as soon as she was able to afford it. Diana told her, then trotted over to the sink and began to fill the big black kettle on the draining board from the bucket which her mother had filled earlier. She said, conversationally, as she did so, ‘I’m not allowed to boil the kettle when I’m here by meself but I dare say it’s all right when you’re with me. Are
you allowed to use matches, Wendy? I’m not, ’cos Mammy says I’ll burn the house down, but if you light the gas I can wash in warm water.’

She looked enquiringly at her guest and saw the older girl’s cheeks turn pink. ‘Course I can use matches, but I ain’t a-goin’ to,’ Wendy said. ‘You wash in cold, queen, like the rest of us do. Now, if you’d asked me to boil the kettle for a cuppa, that would have been different . . . an’ where’s your ’airbrush?’

Diana, obediently slopping cold water into a basin and beginning to wash, thought that Wendy was probably right. Her mammy did not approve of Wendy, so she would not want the other girl using her stove or making tea in her teapot. In fact, Diana realised belatedly, her mother would not approve of Wendy’s presence in the kitchen in the first place, let alone anything else. ‘The hairbrush is in the top drawer of the dresser,’ she said.

Wendy fished it out, and as soon as Diana had dried her face and hands she plied the brush vigorously on the younger girl’s tousled locks. Then she stepped back to admire her work. ‘There you are, Di; you look good as new, just about,’ she said approvingly. ‘It’s a shame your skirt got tore, but apart from that, no one ’ud ever know you’d been in the wars. Now tell me how it happened.’

Diana took a deep breath. She had told no one how she had been suffering in her new class, but now she realised what a relief it would be to do so. After all, there was no point in pretending that everything was fine because Wendy had seen her crying fit to bust and knew, from her own experience, that she had been knocked about by someone. She stared across at Wendy, then spoke with decision. ‘All right, I will tell you, but do you promise not to mention it
to anyone else? Only I don’t want them to know because they’ll think I’m a real ninny. Lots of the kids at this school don’t like it ’cos Mammy keeps me so neat ’n’clean – they call me goody two shoes – an’ now I’ve been put up into the big girls’ class, they say I’m teacher’s pet.’

‘See this wet, see this dry, cut my throat if I dare to lie,’ Wendy said promptly, drawing a dirty finger across an even dirtier neck. ‘Whose class you in? I bet it’s Luvvy Duvvy’s – she’s ever so nice but she can’t keep order, an’ she’s old, so the kids in her class gerraway wi’ murder. Go on then, tell me how it is. And begin at the beginnin’, not jus wi’ what went on this afternoon.’

Diana began, and, as she talked, found it easier and easier to explain. She even saw, in a way, why Hilda and Maureen picked on her. Neither girl was bright – Hilda was almost eight and still in Standard II – and neither was popular with the other girls in the class, nor with the teacher. To have Diana thrust amongst them, more than two years younger than they, yet able to gain the teacher’s approval without effort, must have been a horrid experience for them both. The fact that they took it out on her at every opportunity was almost understandable – almost, but not quite.