Luckpenny Land

by Freda Lightfoot

  They celebrated that night with a thick slice of fried macon and potatoes, followed by creamy rice pudding with a touch of homemade raspberry jam that Sally Ann had brought. Meg, who had never gone short of food in her entire life before, thought a king could not have eaten better. Effie knew it for a fact.

  They fell into an easy routine. Meg found she could cope with the work so much better now that she wasn’t troubled by the nagging pangs of hunger.

  Effie worked hard in the garden, digging and weeding. ‘Next spring we could grow onions and turnips and carrots,’ she said, getting carried away with newfound enthusiasm.

  Monday was to be her first day at school and she was not looking forward to it.

  ‘You’ll love it, just you see,’ Meg assured her as they sat beside the fire together going over the day’s events, as they so enjoyed doing. ‘You’ll make lots of new friends.’

  ‘I dun’t bloody want to go.’

  ‘Effie! What have I told you about your language?’

  She muttered a sulky apology. ‘Who’ll help you? Who’ll make the dinner while I’m gone?’ she protested.

  ‘We’ll make it together in the evening. It’ll be all right, you’ll see. You’ll love school. I did. Miss Shaw taught me and you’ll love her too, I promise.’

  Effie looked astounded. ‘Is she that old?’

  ‘Go on, you cheeky tyke. For that, you can make the cocoa this evening.’

  Without rancour, Effie happily obliged. Oh, yes, life was good. If only Jack were here, Meg thought, it would be perfect. A real family. Later, when she tucked Effie up, she sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the sheets beneath the child’s chin with a tender hand. She was growing at last, her cheeks were plumping out a little and glowing with the good food and fresh air she was enjoying. The purple bruises on her body were almost gone, showing as no more than yellow stains on the pale flesh. Meg felt she had achieved wonders in such a short time but there was still room for improvement.

  ‘Do you need me to come with you on your first day? Only I’m pretty busy and...’

  Effie made a scornful sound in her throat. ‘I’m not daft.’

  ‘Well, you can find the school yourself, can’t you, now that I’ve shown you where it is? You won’t get lost?’ She meant, you won’t run away, and they both knew it.

  Effie shook her head very solemnly, then grinned her sudden, impish grin. ‘You won’t let my half of the bed to someone else, while I’m gone?’

  ‘No, I won’t do that.’ They exchanged happy smiles.

  Meg hoped that the discipline of school and regular contact with the other children would be good for Effie. She’d succumbed to regular washing, agreed to sit up to the table and hardly ever resorted to her more colourful words and phrases these days. But Meg had so little time to spend teaching her that she hoped some of the other children’s finer points would rub off.

  ‘I think it’s all a waste of time,’ said Effie, as if reading her thoughts. ‘They’ll never manage to teach me owt.’ Secretly, the prospect excited her. Perhaps this was the start of her new life, her destiny. She might learn so much that one day she could get a job and earn real money of her own. Eeh, that would be grand. Then she could send some home to her mam.

  Meg read her the The Tales of Ivanhoe, and Effie let her eyelids droop, enjoying the rhythm of Meg’s voice while she played out her mother’s joy and amazement in her mind.

  Meg’s mind too was elsewhere as she read. Oh, Jack, if only you could see how happy we are here at Broombank. She would write to him in a minute and tell him of all the improvements she’d made already, and about the generosity of her neighbours. She wondered when his embarkation leave would come. It seemed almost sinful to be so happy when he was waiting to be posted overseas.

  The postman had brought her a postcard the other day. It showed a picture of the Liver building. It seemed so far away it might as well have been on the moon. The thought of Jack going even further away filled her with cold fear, when all she wanted him to do was write and say he was coming home so that they could be married.

  When Effie was asleep Meg sat on by the fire, feeling very alone. Effie was good company but still a child. Sometimes Meg ached for another adult about the place. For Kath. What was she doing? Why hadn’t she written? Too busy enjoying her new life no doubt. Oh, but it would be lovely to see her. Kath always helped put things into perspective.

  I wonder what you’re up to, lass? Some mischief I’ll be bound.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Kath was having a hard time too, though in a different way, and Tam O’Cleary was her only friend. Had she not felt so very unwell and unlike herself she might have been tempted to take it beyond friendship for he was a good looking man. But this was not the moment, nor Southport the place.

  Already preparations for war were encroaching upon life, making it less comfortable. The horses rarely galloped along the sands now and men in uniform shouted at her sometimes when she walked along it, as if they expected Hitler to arrive in a boat at any minute and kill them all. Kath ignored them and took no notice of the sandbagging that was starting in earnest along the front, the barbed wire that was being unrolled. She didn’t want to think about the war.

  She had plans. As soon as the baby was born she would move on. When, how and where were still undecided for she knew it was not going to be easy. Aunt Ruby continued to watch her like a hawk. Kath told Tam as much one day as they sat in the sand dunes.

  ‘You always think you’re being watched.’ His reply, as usual, was light hearted.

  ‘You would too if you lived with that dragon. She sounds such a sweet dear, till you get to know her. Inside she’s like a wire pan scrub just waiting to scratch you. Why my mother imagined it would be a rest cure staying with her sister, I can’t imagine.’

  ‘And what would you be doing here then, might a fellow ask? Why should a fine healthy girl such as yourself be in need of a rest cure?’

  Kath met his shrewd, velvet gaze. ‘Some people ask too many questions.’

  Tam merely quirked his brow and looked out to sea, pretending to have lost interest. Kath let the silence hang till she could bear it no more.

  ‘All right then, I’ll tell you. I have to tell someone or I’ll burst. I’m pregnant. There. What do you think of that?’

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I hadn’t noticed the glow about you that pregnant women are supposed to have. More a sense of tension. I take it you have no husband and no intention of getting one?’

  ‘You take it correctly. I don’t want to talk about it. All right?’

  ‘All right by me.’ Once more Tam O’Cleary addressed his full attention to the sea. It was miles out, no more than a thin line of silver on the horizon. They huddled deep in the sand dunes, trying to avoid the chill wind blowing through the marram grass. Kath shivered.

  Is that all you’re going to say? Aren’t you going to give me a lecture?’

  ‘Nope.’

  She fell into a thoughtful silence and after a while slanted a look at him. She hadn’t known Thomas O’Cleary long but she had learned that he was an eminently unfussy person. Quiet, patient, usually keeping his opinions to himself. She liked that. Nor did he make any demands upon her. He hadn’t even tried to hold her hand when they’d gone to the pictures the other night. She couldn’t imagine that he didn’t fancy her. He was simply a man a woman could trust. Not like Jack Lawson who had not bothered to turn up when she’d asked him to, nor written to say why.

  ‘I can’t stay at my aunt’s for ever. I swear she’s getting suspicious. I might move into a flat, if I could find a job.’

  ‘Difficult to keep a job with a baby on the way, I would think. Unless you find someone sympathetic.’ They both knew the impossibility of that.

  Kath sighed. ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘What about your family? Can’t they help?’ Silence again.

  ‘I take it you haven’t
yet informed them of this joyous news?’ Kath was on her feet in a second. ‘If you’re just going to take the mickey...

  Tam grabbed her ankle to stop her running off. ‘Don’t fly off the handle. All right, it’s got naught to do with me. But since you’ve told me the worst, I thought I might be allowed one or two questions.’

  Kath sat down again but remained stubbornly mute.

  ‘I’ll start by telling you about myself, shall I? You know me name. I’m what you might call rootless. I came from Ireland originally and America more recently. I’ll work for the British even if I won’t fight for them. I’ll turn me hand to anything but I prefer working on the land. In the summer I did vegetable picking in Ormskirk, and now I’m working at a local yard. Though heaven knows what the war will do to racing. I muck out mainly, but they’re starting to trust me with the horses every once in a while, if not as often as I would like. There now, that wasn’t so difficult. Now it’s your turn.’

  ‘Some things can’t be talked of,’ Kath said at last, in a very small voice. ‘I just thought, there’s a war coming, we could all be dead next year, so what the hell?’

  ‘Did you love him?’

  Kath paused a moment. ‘I don’t think so. Not sure I could love anybody. Mummy says I’m too selfish.’ She smiled, rather ruefully.

  He grinned at her. ‘I cannot believe that to be true.’

  ‘You don’t know me. As for my family... Let’s just say that they would not approve. Bringing home an illegitimate baby would result in the "don’t darken my door" routine. Mummy could never take the scandal. It would ruin her reputation at the Ladies’ Circle.’

  ‘And what about your reputation?’

  Kath laughed. ‘That’s ruined already. I’ll tell you about my best friend, Meg, instead.’

  And so she did. About Meg and her young brother Charlie. About Ashlea and Broombank, Sally Ann and Dan. About swimming in Brockbarrow Tam and picnics on Kidsty Pike. She made no mention of Jack.

  ‘Katherine Ellis, these sheets have not been ironed.’

  Kath lifted her eyes to the ceiling at sound of the shocked tones and whispered a silent oath. Caught out, she turned to face her aunt’s fury with her most winning smile. ‘I’ve smoothed them well enough. No one will notice.’

  ‘Don’t try cutting corners with me, girl, I always notice.’

  You would, you sharp-eyed old cow. ‘I’m sure Mr Wilson won’t. He very rarely sleeps in these days. He spends more time at his fiancée’s house.’ There was light hearted mischief in her tone but Aunt Ruby did not respond to it, putting on her shocked expression.

  ‘I hope you are not judging my guests by your own standards?’

  Kath became very still. ‘What do you mean by that?’

  Ruby sniffed and fingered the glass beads over her flat chest. ‘You must know, my dear, that I have only your best interests at heart. Your mama would expect it of me. But I have to admit that I’ve seen you, walking along Lord Street with your young man.’

  If Kath hadn’t felt so annoyed at being very likely followed on her afternoon off, she might have laughed at her aunt’s quaint way of speaking. She sounded very like a Victorian novel.

  ‘He is not my young man.’

  ‘Whatever he is, dear, you know nothing about him, now do you?’ No man had ever looked twice at Ruby Nelson. Rosemary had been the pretty one with boys falling over themselves for her attention. It had rankled then and it still rankled now that some girls found it so easy to find a man. ‘You have surely no wish to be accused of being...’ Ruby coughed delicately. ‘Loose is the word that springs to mind. That sort of behaviour does your reputation no good at all. Take my word for it.’

  Kath’s cheeks went pink. ‘I’m not at all - loose, as you call it. And he isn’t my young man. He’s a friend. The only one I have here as a matter of fact.’

  ‘You should find yourself a decent girl friend from a respectable family.’ Ruby frowned. ‘I’ll speak to my neighbours. They may know of someone suitable.’

  Kath stiffened. ‘There’s no need. I’m perfectly capable of choosing my own friends, thanks very much.’

  ‘But are you?’ Ruby wagged a finger at her niece, a chiding smile upon her face as if she were talking to a child with half a brain. ‘Mark my words, such lewd behaviour will bring you to no good.’

  Kath’s cheeks burned with indignation. ‘Lewd? Walking along a main shopping street?’

  ‘People jump to conclusions.’

  ‘Then they shouldn’t.’

  ‘All I am asking is that you behave with a little more discretion.’

  What would the old cow say if she discovered Kath had already come to no good, or fallen, as she would no doubt call it? Having a child out of wedlock would be a sin beyond redemption in Ruby Nelson’s eyes.

  ‘I’ll bear your advice in mind,’ Kath said coldly, and wondered why she’d ever agreed to come to Southport.

  ‘Splendid. Now strip those sheets off, like a good girl, and iron them properly before you put them back. Don’t think I won’t notice. Nothing slips past Madam Ruby, mark my words.’

  If ironing sheets was a trial, washing them was worse. Kath had nightmares about the mangle. An old fashioned, turn-the-handle-if you-had-the-strength variety, Kath hated it with a venom.

  Mummy had a new electric washing machine, a vacuum cleaner and a maid to operate these modern delights. Aunt Ruby, for all she had more sheets to wash, stuck to a dolly tub and posser. The mangle, with its vicious set of rollers, either stuck fast and chewed the sheets to ribbons or took your fingers with them. Every time Kath operated this equipment she felt exhausted for hours afterwards, and anxious over whether the effort would harm the baby. She might not want to keep the little mite herself but she wished it no harm.

  Kath eased her aching back and suggested, quite politely, that Ruby might care to enter the twentieth century and buy a washing machine.

  ‘It’d be much easier to manage than this old dolly tub.’

  She saw at once that this small criticism of the way things were done at Southview Villas did not go down at all well.

  ‘Electric washing machines are no substitute for good scrubbing, that’s what I say.’

  Since you don’t have to do the scrubbing, , but Kath wisely kept that thought to herself. ‘Come to think of it, you could send all the linen to the laundry. That would save hours of work.’ Particularly for me.

  ‘It would cost a small fortune. Trouble with you young people today is you don’t know when you’re well off. I sometimes wonder why you stay, miss, since you seem to dislike it so much.’

  There was a small silence, Kath for once at a loss for words. She couldn’t tell the truth. Ruby would inform her mother without delay. She had recognised a malevolent streak in her aunt during the weeks she’d been here. She called it ‘keeping up standards’. Kath recognised it as plain bloody mindedness.

  ‘I like the sea air, and there are things going on here, at the Winter Gardens and the pictures. Then there’s Liverpool quite close by. Westmorland is too boring for words.’

  ‘Hm.’ Ruby gravely considered her niece. ‘Feeling better, are you then?’

  ‘Better?’

  ‘Your tummy upset passed?’

  ‘Oh, y-yes. I’m fine.’ Kath decided it would be politic to make no further complaints at present and started to fold the next sheet ready for the mangle. But Ruby was not one for letting things pass.

  ‘You’d tell me if there was something wrong, wouldn’t you, dear?’

  ‘What could be wrong?’ Hazel eyes opened wide with feigned innocence.

  ‘I owe it my sister, your dear mother, to see that you are properly taken care of. You are young yet, Katherine, and could easily fall prey to all manner of unspeakable sins.’

  Kath sucked in her cheeks. ‘I’ll do my best to manage not to.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it. And should there be anything, anything at all on your mind, you must feel perfectly free to come and speak t
o me about it.’

  Perhaps in view of this tricky conversation it was a touch reckless to allow herself to be lulled into saying what she did. But Kath had never been one to guard her tongue. She pushed back a damp lock of hair with a tired hand. ‘If you want to know, I think it’s time we had a bit more help around here. I don’t see you doing much these days.’

  ‘I beg your pardon? I am the proprietress.’

  ‘I know, Aunt Ruby. But it’s not fair to leave everything to me. The washing, the cleaning and the bed making. Even most of the cooking. I can’t cope. Perhaps a young girl? Strong. Willing. I won’t be able to manage this job much longer on my own.’

  Glassy eyes surveyed her unblinkingly.

  ‘I think we’ve had enough of willing girls around here.’ And with this enigmatic statement, Aunt Ruby left the scullery.

  The following Saturday Kath and Tam arrived back later than usual, having taken a bus into Liverpool to a dance. Tam had insisted on walking her home from the bus station.

  ‘I don’t want you accosted in the blackout, or falling down any holes. I heard tell of one man who rode his bike straight into a tree. He thought he was on the road, d’you see, but the pavements are so wide here in Southport, he was riding on the pavement instead. He bounced up so high he landed on a branch and it was morning before anyone found him and brought him down.’

  Kath was holding her sides with laughter. ‘What whoppers you do tell. It’s true about Irishmen and the blarney stone.’

  Since it was pleasant to be mildly cosseted by a man, even one who hadn’t laid a finger on you, Kath was happy to let him walk her right to the door. They were still laughing, swinging along arm in arm as they rounded the corner, feeling young and happy, till Kath saw the lace curtain twitch in the front parlour window and the face of her aunt peering out.

  Before she had time to lift the brass knocker the door was flung open. ‘As I thought. This is what you get up to, is it, miss?’