by Maureen Lee
‘Me mam took them to the pawn shop.’
‘I bet she took your train set, too.’
Dicky nodded. ‘I’m glad you’re home, Freda.’ Freda would look after him at school and make sure he got fed from time to time. She was good at wheedling scraps from the fish and chip shop or the baker’s, or pinching bars of chocolate out of Woolworths.
‘I’m not staying,’ Freda said sharply. ‘I’m only waiting for Vivien to come and take me back.’
Dicky’s face fell. He felt his whole body droop with misery. To his amazement, tears began to roll down his grubby cheeks. Neither of the children had cried much in the past. There seemed little point.
Freda regarded the tears coldly, then turned to look out of the window. But as she looked, she thought about her little brother. He’d scarcely crossed her mind the last few months, but seeing him now, such a scraggy little mass of bruised humanity, she felt a tightening of emotion in her throat. Poor Dicky!
‘Have you missed me?’ she demanded.
‘Yes,’ he sniffed.
‘Perhaps, when I go back to Southport, you could come and see us every Sunday? Vivien wouldn’t mind.’
He nodded eagerly. It was better than nothing. ‘As long as I come back to me mam.’
‘Are you hungry?’
He hunched his shoulders. ‘I’m starving.’
‘So’m I. If I give you some money, will you go and buy some food?’
‘Chips?’
‘No, they’re bad for you. Vivien never made chips. Buy some apples.’ Freda took her purse out of the grey lizardskin bag Vivien had bought for her eleventh birthday.
‘You’ve got money of your own!’ gasped Dicky, impressed.
‘Vivien put money in me new handbag,’ Freda said boastfully, adding warningly, ‘But don’t tell our mam, or I’ll bloody kill you.’
‘I won’t,’ promised Dicky.
Freda wasn’t sure how many days she sat by the window waiting for Vivien, leaving only to go to the lavatory at the bottom of the yard, her purse tucked safely in her pocket out of her mother’s reach. She didn’t even remove her clothes, but slept fully dressed, using the suitcase as a pillow, sending Dicky out for food. Gladys, aware her daughter must have money and thinking of all the gin it would buy, came up from time to time to demand it off her, sometimes wheedling, sometimes belligerent, but Freda adamantly refused.
‘Sod off!’ she said contemptuously. ‘You’re not getting a penny,’ and Gladys would reel away, confused and shocked. She even went next door to complain to Mrs Costello, but her neighbour was impatient and refused to help. In fact, she seemed more concerned about Freda than Gladys. ‘How’s the poor little lamb settling in?’ she asked.
One day, when Freda could stand it no longer, she went out to telephone Vivien, convinced something was wrong. If Vivien couldn’t come, she would have written. Vivien would never, never let her down.
Freda could use a telephone, having frequently made calls on Vivien’s behalf, though one with slots for coins was strange to her. She read the instructions carefully, put her pennies in the box, then, when Mrs Critchley gave the number, pressed the top button.
‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Waterton,’ she said in her most ladylike voice.
‘Who’s speaking?’
‘A friend,’ said Freda. She and Mrs Critchley had never got on and she had no intention of revealing who she was. The woman might well be awkward and refuse to fetch Vivien if she knew it was Freda calling.
‘I’m afraid Mrs Waterton passed away from a heart attack last Monday. The funeral was yesterday.’
Freda felt as if her body had turned into a block of ice. She dropped the receiver and, as if from far away, heard it swing to and fro like a pendulum against the sides of the box. She began to wail and beat her fists on the glass.
At the other end of the line, Mrs Critchley listened to the almost inhuman cries. It was that girl, she’d suspected as much.
Clive Waterton came into the room. ‘Who is it?’ he asked listlessly.
The noise had ceased. The girl must have gone.
Mrs Critchley replaced the receiver. ‘I think it was Freda,’ she said expressionlessly. She’d always loathed the girl. But that noise! She must be heartbroken.
Freda!
Clive threw himself into a chair as Mrs Critchley left the room to get on with her work. The doctor reckoned Vivien must have died within an hour of Freda leaving and, at first, Clive felt nothing but hate for the girl. But in his heart of hearts he recognised it was unreasonable to blame Freda, who would have wanted to stay as much as Vivien wanted to keep her. He recalled the day she’d arrived with her brother. The pair had looked like something out of a Dickens novel. He’d never taken to either of them himself, and even now, although he tried, he couldn’t raise the remotest feeling of affection for Freda. All his love had been centred on his lovely, diminutive wife. Vivien had been the only child he ever wanted. He clenched his fists and felt the nails bite into the palms of his hands. She’d gone! He would never see her again. No-one in the world would ever know how much he missed her.
Except, perhaps, Freda.
He knew that Vivien would want him to make sure she was all right. No, dammit, more than all right. He jumped to his feet. Vivien would want him to take care of her. To send her to school, raise her into womanhood, as she would have done herself. He went over to his desk and began to search through the papers, looking for Freda’s address.
Eileen Costello’s heart sank when she found Gladys Tutty outside her door yet again. ‘What is it now, Gladys?’
‘There’s a man come, and I think he wants to buy our Freda!’
‘What?’
‘Come and have a word with him, Mrs Costello. I don’t understand what he’s on about.’
Dragging her pinny over her head, Eileen hurried next door.
Gladys must have had some vague notion that guests were taken into the parlour, for Eileen found Clive Waterton standing in the middle of the room where Gladys slept, because most nights climbing stairs was quite beyond her. The bed was a heap of tattered, grey blankets and there was no cover on the striped bolster, nor any sheets. The brass bedhead was as black as if it had been made that way. The man’s nose was wrinkled, as well it might be, for the bed stank of urine and the stains were visible for all to see.
Clive Waterton had never believed until now that people lived this way. A conveyancing solicitor, he dealt with nice detached residences in their own grounds, or bungalows in Birkenhead or Formby. Occasionally, the deeds of smaller properties passed through his hands; neat little semi-detached homes in Southport. But these houses! They were no bigger than rabbit warrens. How on earth could people exist in such a confined space?
As for Gladys Tutty! The inside of her home was beyond belief, as was the woman herself. She stared at him drunkenly at first, though he noticed her eyes gleam when he mentioned money. He stood by the window, itching, convinced he’d been bitten by a flea or a bug of some sort, waiting for Mrs Tutty to return with her neighbour.
He recognised the woman when she came in. It was the one who’d turned up in Southport. She stared around the room for a moment, before shuddering slightly, as if she found the room as repellent as he did himself.
‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind explaining what you’ve come for?’ she said pleasantly. ‘Gladys seems to have got it in her head that you want to buy Freda.’
He shook his head irritably. ‘I would like the girl to come back to Southport, but insist on Mrs Tutty signing a paper putting her into my care. If she does, then I am willing to pay a hundred pounds compensation.’ He knew darned well the paper would never stand up in court, but was willing to take a risk on the women’s ignorance.
‘See, Mrs Costello, I told you!’ Gladys shook Eileen’s arm gleefully.
‘You mean to say you go along with this, Gladys?’ Eileen said, gaping.
Gladys frowned. All she could think of was the money. One hundred pounds! S
he hadn’t understood about signing a paper. She’d take the money, then get Mrs Costello to write another letter and demand Freda back. ‘I don’t see what harm it would do,’ she muttered. The expression on her neighbour’s face made her feel slightly uneasy.
‘Then I don’t know why you bothered asking me in,’ Eileen Costello said coldly. She felt as if she was taking part in a bizarre sort of pantomime.
‘I have the paper here.’ Clive Waterton drew a folded sheet out of the breast pocket of his black overcoat.
‘Have you got the money?’ Gladys asked eagerly.
He nodded. ‘I went to the bank on the way.’
Gladys imagined a bag bursting with threepenny bits and sixpences and shillings, and hoped he hadn’t left it in his car, where someone might pinch it.
‘I take it your wife approves?’ Eileen remembered the funny little woman who seemed to think the world of Freda.
Clive Waterton didn’t answer immediately. ‘She does,’ he said eventually in clipped tones. Sensing the neighbour’s disapproval, he was somewhat relieved when she shrugged and turned as if to leave.
Eileen was glad for Freda, glad she was going to where she wanted to be, but she found the idea of buying and selling a child totally repugnant.
‘I don’t suppose,’ a voice said cuttingly, ‘anybody thought of asking me what I want?’
Freda came into the room, still in her velvet coat, though looking creased and dishevelled. ‘I don’t want to go to Southport, not with Vivien dead,’ she said, eyes blazing.
Eileen Costello looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You heard. Vivien’s dead.’
For once, Clive Waterton found himself disconcerted. He’d never dreamt the girl would refuse. ‘It’s what Vivien would have wanted,’ he stammered.
Freda tossed her head proudly, ‘Vivien would have wanted what was best for me. I want to stay and look after Dicky.’
‘But, Freda …’ Eileen began helplessly, it was getting beyond her, but Freda silenced her with a sharp, ‘Shurrup!’
Now that Vivien had gone, the only person left to love was Dicky, Freda had concluded earlier. She’d no intention of slipping back into the old ways, of getting dirtier and dirtier, until she returned to being an object of contempt. Vivien had shown her she was pretty and clever, and Freda intended staying that way. She owed Vivien that much. Somehow, in some way, she vowed, she’d stay clean and go to school and make sure Dicky did, too. Now Clive had turned up, and she knew how it could be done.
‘I want you to give me the money,’ she said flatly to Clive.
Clive hadn’t thought it possible, so soon after Vivien’s death, but he almost laughed. The nerve of the girl!
‘What for?’
With a disdainful glance around the room, Freda said, ‘To clean this place up. To buy curtains and furniture and proper dishes and clothes for Dicky. To feed us, because it’s no use expecting me mam to do it.’ She glared at Gladys, then turned the glare on Clive, daring him to refuse.
He was looking at her, slightly puzzled. Eleven years old, but she was tougher than old boots, he thought admiringly. He’d never noticed before, but she had more character in her little finger than most people had in their entire bodies.
‘It’s what Vivien would have wanted,’ Freda added slyly.
Of course, she was right. ‘Will it be safe? The money, I mean?’
‘Of course it will,’ Gladys said heartily. Gladys had been watching the proceedings, trying to fathom what was going on. One minute, it seemed Freda was leaving and a hundred pounds was within her grasp, next, Freda was staying and the money had slipped out of her fingers. Now it seemed as if she was going to get it after all.
Freda turned reluctantly to Eileen Costello. She hated asking for a favour. ‘Will you look after the money for me?’ She couldn’t take it to school with her, and her mam would tear the house apart looking for it whilst she was gone.
‘Of course I will, luv, for the time being, but you’d better start a Post Office account.’
‘I will,’ Freda said in a hard, determined voice. ‘Don’t worry, I will.’
On Saturday morning, Eileen Costello and Annie Poulson descended on Number 14 with buckets of hot water, scrubbing brushes, scouring powder and several pints of disinfectant. Freda would have liked to refuse their help, but she recognised the job would be done much quicker with a few extra pairs of hands. When Aggie Donovan saw what they were up to, she came too, if only because she liked to see the inside of other people’s houses, particularly the Tuttys’, where she clucked with disapproval at everything – though she was a good, thorough worker, and by midday, the walls and the ceilings had been cleaned, the skirtings, the floors and the stairs scrubbed, and the windows sparkled. The furniture had been piled in the yard for the rag and bone man to take, except for the double brass bedstead, which Aggie Donovan said would be a shame to throw away and could be brought up to look like new with a bit of Brasso.
At one o’clock, a van arrived with several rolls of patterned lino which Freda had bought the day before, and the women got to work laying it, to be joined by Dai Evans and Jack Doyle. Dicky was despatched for a box of tacks to keep the lino down in the corners.
‘This won’t last five minutes,’ whispered Annie, cutting out a piece for round the fireplace. ‘It’s no better than cardboard. It must be the cheapest you can buy.’
‘Shush!’ Eileen pressed her arm. ‘It’s what Freda wants.’
‘I’ll never get the smell of disinfectant off before I meet Barney tonight,’ Annie grumbled. ‘He’ll think he’s out with a lavatory brush.’
‘Are you going out with him again? I thought you were playing hard to get?’
‘It’ll only be the third time. I’m not exactly throwing meself at him, am I?’ Annie said tartly.
It was just gone three when another van came with the furniture, all secondhand; a kitchen table and a set of wooden chairs, a couple of armchairs, a leatherette three-piece, an elaborately carved sideboard, a bedroom suite and a single bed. Freda had driven a hard bargain in the shop and bought the lot for almost half the asking price.
‘Where are these to go, luv?’ the delivery man asked, and Freda instructed him in which rooms to put the furniture.
Freda was in her element, though no-one would have guessed from her stern, unsmiling little face. She doubted if the Queen got more pleasure out of furnishing Buckingham Palace than she got that day. She just wished all these people would finish and go away. Once they’d gone, she’d light a fire in the living room, where the chimney had been swept early that morning, and sit in one of the new chairs and, later on, eat a proper meal off the table.
Poor Gladys hovered in the background, ignored whilst all this was going on. The neighbours who invaded her house that Saturday deferred only to Freda.
‘Where d’you want this, luv?’
‘Freda, which curtains do you fancy in the parlour over the blackout?’
The curtains, the dishes, the ornaments, had begun to arrive in the afternoon. Once the people in Pearl Street realised what was going on, that Number 14 was going through a transformation, they cleared out their box-rooms and their cupboards and came over with odds and ends of cutlery and crockery and faded, threadbare curtains, put away ‘just in case’. Someone even bought a full size tin bath and a painting of reindeer standing gloomily in a forest.
Freda resented being the object of such charity; in fact, she hated it. She let Mrs Costello answer the door, take the stuff and say ‘thank you’. On the other hand, she conceded privately, the more she was given, the less she’d need to spend and the longer she and Dicky would be able to live on Clive Waterton’s hundred pounds. She never included her mam in her calculations.
The only person she vaguely liked was a new woman, Mrs Fleming, who’d come to live over the road, only because she reminded her a bit of Vivien. She was much taller and fatter, but she wore a pretty dress and her nails were painted red and she
smelt of perfume, the way Vivien had always done. Mrs Fleming brought over a pair of beautiful curtains that even Freda had to admire. They were gold in one light and green in another. She also bought a little cherry-coloured rug for in front of the fire. Even so, Freda disappeared into the yard when she came so she wouldn’t have to thank her.
By six o’clock, everyone had gone. Freda drew the faded cotton curtains across the black cardboard sheet pinned to the window, lit the fire in the range and moved the kettle on its hob over the flames. The gas mantle behind its cracked glass shade gave off a bright orange glow. It was the first time she could remember it being lit, only because it was the first time there was money in the meter. Gladys had used candles for illumination in the past.
‘I’ll make something to eat in a minute,’ she said to Dicky. The pair sat stiff and upright in the armchairs. Dicky’s legs scarcely touched the red rug on the floor.
‘You can’t cook,’ exclaimed Dicky, then, frowning, ‘Can you?’
Thinking of the miracles wrought by his sister over the last few days, if she’d announced she could fly he would have believed her.
‘Of course, I can. I used to help Vivien make the meals at the weekend when Mrs Critchley wasn’t there.’
Dicky sighed, reckoning he was going to hear about Vivien non-stop for the rest of his life. ‘Couldn’t we have chips from the chippy?’ he asked longingly. He was starving, as usual, and chips were his favourite meal.
‘Well,’ Freda began reluctantly. ‘Oh, I suppose so, just for once. Get a piece of cod as well, and we’ll have half each.’ She was worn out and, anyroad, there hadn’t been time to get in much in the way of food.
‘Shall I get some for me mam?’
‘Where is she?’ Freda glanced around the room, as if Gladys might be hiding in a corner or under the new table.
‘I dunno. She went out ages ago.’
‘There’s not much point, then, is there?’ Freda said disdainfully. ‘She’ll be in the pub by now. Here’s a shilling for the fish and chips, and bring every penny of the change back safe, now.’
Dicky wouldn’t have dared not to. As he was about to leave, Freda called him back. ‘Where’s the overcoat I bought the other day?’ She’d got the tweed overcoat from the pawnshop. It was at least two sizes too big, but thick and warm. ‘You’re not to go out without your overcoat again,’ she ‘warned him sternly.