The Seven Streets of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  ‘I don’t know. I know some other people in Pearl Street; I might go there.’ Her dad would die of embarrassment if she turned up at number 22 wanting to live with him. His only daughter; his only child, with an illegitimate baby. He’d let her stay, but would feel it necessary to change his habits and go to a different pub, for instance, where he wasn’t known.

  ‘What’s your name?’ Phyllis asked. She seemed to be doing all the talking.

  ‘It’s Kitty, Kitty Quigley.’

  ‘I’m Phyllis Taylor.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Phyllis?’ Asking questions and listening to the answers would give her time to think about what to do next. ‘You’re not from Liverpool, are you?’

  ‘No, I was born in Beverley, near Hull,’ Phyllis explained. She spoke with a faint Yorkshire accent. ‘My dad’s a naval architect and was transferred to Bootle on a work order in 1940 to work in a laboratory testing wave power. He must have got caught up in those terrible air raids Liverpool had, as we’ve never heard from him since.’ She transferred Rosie to her other arm and both she and the baby gave a sigh of pleasure.

  ‘Surely someone would have written and told you if he’d died?’

  ‘That’s what we thought too – me and Mum – except no one did. Mum wrote to people like the police and the hospitals, but they couldn’t tell her anything. Then one night not long ago we went to see a film called Random Harvest, in which this chap loses his memory after an accident, and now Mum’s convinced that that’s what happened to Dad: that he’s lost his memory.’

  ‘And he’s still somewhere in Bootle and doesn’t know who he is?’

  Phyllis made a face. ‘More or less, yes. I suppose it’s possible.’

  Despite her tiredness and the fact that this precocious young woman seemed to have taken over her baby, Kitty was fascinated by the tale. ‘How do you expect to find him?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, Mum had to get a job so we’d have something to live on, which was easy seeing as she was a nurse before she married Dad. She works in Bootle hospital. I have a voluntary job helping out at local infants’ schools, but they’re on holiday at the moment. In our free time we hang about outside public houses and that cinema in Marsh Lane and go to football grounds when there’s a match and look for him. Other times we just wander round the shops hoping we’ll set eyes on him one of these days. We’ve been here over a year, but there’s no sign of him yet. He’s very handsome and looks a bit like Cary Grant. I thought that might have helped a bit, but so far it hasn’t.’

  ‘What happens if he doesn’t recognise you – he won’t if he’s lost his memory, will he?’

  Phyllis rolled her eyes. ‘We’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it, won’t we? Knowing Mum, she’ll soon convince him who he is. Look’ – the girl seemed a tiny bit embarrassed – ‘Mum works on the late shift and she’ll be home any minute. You’ve got a lovely baby, Kitty, but you’re not wearing a wedding ring. If Mum comes in and guesses you’re not married, she’ll have a fit. She’s awfully strait-laced. Me, I don’t give a hoot what people get up to as long as they don’t murder each other.’

  Kitty nodded. Although the words were kind, they made her want to cry. She was nothing more than a pariah; people didn’t want her in their homes, even really nice people like Phyllis. She took Rosie from the girl’s arms. Her suitcase was in the hall.

  Phyllis said, ‘You go first, and I’ll bring the case. Where is it you want to go?’

  ‘Number twenty-five.’

  ‘Brenda Mahon’s house! She’s making me a frock for Christmas. It’s dark green with an embroidered collar. I’m sick of wearing black – it was Mum’s idea. It’s a sort of mourning, just in case Dad isn’t alive.’

  Outside, the street was pitch black. Kitty had no idea where she was. She felt sick. Somewhere a door opened and closed, but she couldn’t see a thing.

  Phyllis obviously could. She said, ‘Hello, Mrs Newton. I’ve brought a visitor for Mrs Mahon.’

  ‘She’s got two customers in there, they’ve only just arrived,’ the invisible woman said. ‘That’s why I left. I’m on my way home.’

  ‘I’d best wait a while,’ Kitty said. She wasn’t too sure what sort of reception she would get from Brenda, despite the fact that they’d been friends since they’d started school together, along with Sheila Doyle who was now Sheila Reilly.

  ‘Oh, but you can’t wait outside with the baby, Kitty. I can smell a fog coming. Come on back to our house. You never know, my mum might be late for once.’

  The invisible woman spoke. ‘Whoever it is out here with a baby must come home with me this minute. I’ll take you along to Brenda’s when her customers have gone.’

  ‘It’s a lady called Kitty, Mrs Newton.’

  ‘Come along with me, Kitty dear. I live upstairs in the end house that used to be the dairy.’

  Kitty remembered that the dairy had closed down. ‘Thank you,’ she croaked.

  ‘I’ll bring the suitcase,’ Phyllis offered.

  ‘And I’ll take the baby,’ said Mrs Newton.

  ‘Call me Lena,’ Mrs Newton said as soon as they were inside her flat. She had lit the gas mantle and switched on the fire, while still holding on to Rosie.

  ‘I’m Kitty Quigley.’ Kitty’s head was swimming with tiredness.

  ‘I’ve heard Brenda and Sheila go on about their friend Kitty who was on a hospital ship,’ Lena said. ‘But they didn’t say you had a baby.’

  ‘That’s because they don’t know,’ Kitty said bluntly. She may as well be honest right from the start. If Lena Newton wanted to throw her out, then let her do it now, before Kitty had a chance to settle in this comfortable chair and fall asleep, leaving the woman with the terribly kind face to look after Rosie.

  ‘They don’t know?’ Lena looked puzzled for a few seconds, then her expression cleared. ‘Oh, you poor thing. Something awful’s obviously happened. Where have you been living? Have you been through all this on your own?’

  Kitty nodded. The sympathetic tone had the effect of making her burst into tears.

  Lena disappeared into another room and returned without Rosie. ‘I’ve put her in my bed,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I’ll go and make you some tea; the kitchen’s downstairs.’

  ‘She’ll need a clean nappy. They’re in my suitcase.’ The napkins were merely old towels torn into squares.

  ‘I’ll see to that when I’ve made the tea.’

  Quarter of an hour later, Kitty had drunk the tea and was fast asleep in the chair, while Rosie had been fitted with a clean napkin and was just as fast asleep in Lena’s bed. Lena herself was feeling somewhat dazed at the drama taking place around her. She had never in all her life known a woman who had had an illegitimate baby, yet now she had one – and the baby – under her very own roof. And Kitty seemed quite normal; quite nice, in fact, not at all the blatantly immoral type of woman that she’d imagined the mother of an illegitimate baby would be.

  Lena was ruminating on this when downstairs the front door opened and a woman shouted, ‘It’s only me.’

  Brenda Mahon had arrived. ‘Me customers had just gone when that girl from across the road, Phyllis, came and told me that Kitty Quigley was here with a baby,’ she panted when she reached the top of the stairs.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ Lena whispered. ‘The baby’s in my bed. She’s a dear little thing.’

  ‘She’s lost loads of weight.’ Brenda regarded her old friend asleep in the chair. ‘Can I see the baby? Phyllis didn’t say it was a girl.’

  ‘Yes, her name’s Rosie. Come and look.’

  The two women crept into the room where Rosie was sleeping. Lena closed the door behind them. The little girl looked unnaturally tiny in the middle of the double bed.

  Brenda sat down on the corner. ‘Aah!’ she breathed. She watched Rosie but didn’t touch her. ‘She’s beautiful, and although Kitty might look a wreck right now, she’s beautiful too, with the most lovely hair. And that boyfriend of hers, Dale
, the American, was dead gorgeous.’

  Lena swallowed. ‘The father’s an American?’ The situation could not possibly become more dramatic, romantic even.

  ‘Yes.’ Brenda nodded. ‘He wasn’t very nice, though. He fooled Kitty into thinking they’d get married one day.’

  ‘Poor Kitty.’

  ‘Yes, poor Kitty,’ Brenda echoed.

  Kitty woke in the middle of the night. She hadn’t the faintest idea where she was, other than in a room she couldn’t remember having been in before, and there was no sign of her baby.

  She got to her feet, frightened, and must have made a noise because a woman in a nightdress came in and said in a gentle voice, ‘I’m Lena Newton, Kitty. Your baby is fast asleep in my bedroom. Your friend Brenda fed her earlier. She found the bottle in your suitcase and used fresh milk. I put Rosie in one of the dressing table drawers just in case I fell asleep and smothered her. I heard of that happening once back in Birmingham. Come and see.’ She went back into the bedroom.

  Kitty followed and saw Rosie fast asleep in a drawer on top of the bed. It all felt like a dream. ‘Would you like to join her in the bed, dear?’ the woman said. ‘I’ll take the chair.’

  ‘But I can’t possibly let you do that!’ Kitty had aches and pains all over from sleeping in the chair.

  ‘It’ll just be for tonight. Tomorrow your friend Brenda is coming to sort you out.’

  ‘We’ll fix you up downstairs,’ Brenda said next morning, brisk and efficient. She had Kitty’s life for the next few weeks all sorted out, as if she’d been thinking about it all night. They were in Lena’s flat, Lena having gone to work, and it was raining outside. ‘There’s a room behind the shop which is quite respectable, and Lena’s agreed for you to share her kitchen. She’ll help with Rosie – when she’s home, like. She’s got a job as a secretary at some place on the Docky. I’ve got a single bed in the box room which me and Lena will fetch along later when it’s dark – we’ll use the back entry, not the street, so no one’ll see. I know a woman who’ll let us borrow her pram so you can take Rosie for walks, though you’ll have to do that in the dark an’ all. Have you got a headscarf? Well I’ll make you one this avvy out of a spare bit of material,’ she said when Kitty shook her head. ‘Me, I’ve never taken to headscarves, but then I’m a woman who can make her own hats.’

  Kitty agreed meekly to everything and Brenda continued. ‘You can’t go on like this for ever, Kit. It can only be for a few weeks, at the very most a couple of months, before you’ll have to decide what to do – live with your dad in Pearl Street and let the whole of Bootle know you’ve had a baby on the wrong side of the blanket, or go away somewhere, get a job and make arrangements for someone to look after Kitty. Or get married,’ she added as an afterthought. ‘Did you meet any decent fellas over the last year?’

  ‘Not a single one, Bren.’

  Brenda sat back in the chair and let out a noisy breath, as if she’d been wound up and had been practising what to say for hours. ‘How on earth did you manage to get yourself in this mess, Kit?’

  ‘You know how.’ Kitty shrugged. ‘I fell in love. And I thought Dale was taking precautions – well, he was taking precautions until that very last time. It was after he’d told me he was married,’ she said bitterly. ‘He must have forgotten to use something and I was too upset to notice – he was upset too. We never saw each other again.’

  ‘Men!’ Brenda spat. ‘They’re a race apart.’

  ‘When will I see Sheila?’ Kitty asked.

  ‘I don’t think it’s such a good idea to tell Sheila you’re here, Kit. She’s dead religious and not as broad-minded as I am – she could well disapprove of what you’ve been up to. She wasn’t exactly sympathetic when their Eileen met her Nick when she was still married.’

  ‘I don’t think I was either,’ Kitty recalled with a dry smile.

  The arrangement worked well. It helped that Phyllis Taylor considered herself to be part of the plot to keep Kitty and Rosie’s presence a secret. She kept Kitty company during the day, did her shopping, borrowed books for her from the library, even took the baby for walks, pushing the pram up and down back entries before emerging on the busy dock road, where she was unlikely to be seen by anyone from Pearl Street or the nearby streets.

  She had only just left school when she and her mother came to Liverpool, she told Kitty. ‘I passed the School Certificate with flying colours,’ she said in a matter-of-fact way, not at all boastfully. ‘I want to become a nurse, like Mum, but not if I have to leave when I get married like Mum did.’ Her voice rose indignantly and her brown eyes shone. ‘When you consider all the things women have done for the war – working in factories, driving buses, joining the forces, doing men’s jobs – surely we’ll be treated more equally once it’s over.’

  If it wasn’t over by the time she reached eighteen, she intended to join the Royal Navy and become a Wren. ‘And they can train me to become a nurse, like you.’

  ‘I wasn’t a proper nurse,’ Kitty hastened to assure her. ‘I was an auxiliary and didn’t have any training at all.’

  Freda Tutty was cross. So cross that sometimes she felt she just had to kick something. She had hurt her foot twice, badly; the first time on the leg of her desk, and at home on the bedroom door.

  At school, the autumn term had started and Sister Bernadette had asked Freda for the name and address of the man who was writing the book about the history of Liverpool. Shortly afterwards, a letter had arrived for Tom Chance at the Tuttys’ house in Pearl Street signed by the nun – it was the first letter he’d received since he’d lived there.

  He showed it to Freda. ‘This is from one of your teachers,’ he said, looking quite pleased. ‘She wants me to walk the Upper Sixth Form around the Seven Streets later in the month.’

  ‘And will you do it?’ Freda’s chest burnt with jealousy and other despicable feelings.

  ‘Of course. I’m flattered to be asked.’

  Perhaps Sister Bernadette would ask Freda too. Perhaps Freda should automatically expect to be included. Perhaps what she should do was present herself in the Upper Sixth classroom as soon as she got to school on the day. Or perhaps she wasn’t expected to do any such thing. She was being ignored.

  What was even worse, it turned out that it wouldn’t be Sister Bernadette who would be walking the girls from the Upper Sixth around the Seven Streets, but Miss Bell, who’d only started in January and was the first woman in England to obtain a first-class degree in history from some posh university down south. She was small and neat, with jet-black hair that shone so brightly it could have been polished.

  What was more, her first name was Linda. Linda Bell! So much nicer and easier on the tongue than Freda Tutty. The flame in Freda’s chest burnt even hotter. She hated everyone in the world except Tom Chance, who was being manipulated by all these people.

  When the day did come, she was unable to concentrate on her work in class for thinking about Miss Bell and Tom Chance leading a group of seventeen- and eighteen-year-old girls around the centre of Liverpool. All of them, Miss Bell included, would fall in love with him. It wasn’t fair. He belonged to her.

  Anyroad, the day passed and to Freda’s relief that appeared to be that, until she arrived home from school one Wednesday, when the shops closed early, to find that her mother had laid a new white cloth on the table, as well as some pretty crockery – white patterned with little pink roses – and their meagre cutlery had been polished to death. There was even a tiny vase in the centre of the table holding a bunch of purple pansies.

  ‘What’s this?’ Freda demanded. How dare her mother take a decision without discussing it with her first?

  ‘Tom asked me to do it,’ Gladys said proudly. ‘He paid for the cloth and the nice new dishes. He’s bringing someone home to tea.’

  ‘Tea!’

  ‘Tea,’ Gladys confirmed. ‘I’ve got ham, tomatoes and pickle in the kitchen, and a trifle in the yard with a plate on top. I’m having trouble
making the jelly set.’

  ‘You can’t make a jelly set, Mam,’ Freda said sarcastically. ‘It’ll set when it wants to and not before.’

  ‘Of course you can, Miss Know-All,’ her mother replied, just as sarcastically. ‘Jellies set more easily when it’s cold, so I put the bowl in a bigger bowl of cold water that I’ve been changing regularly since I got home from the shop. It’ll probably be set by the time we’re ready to eat. Tom said that him and his young lady will be here at five o’clock.’

  ‘Young lady!’ squeaked Freda.

  ‘Young lady,’ her mother confirmed. ‘She’s something to do with your school.’

  Miss Bell! It could only be Miss Linda Bell. Freda resisted the urge to howl her head off. If only there was a magic spell available that would make her older! Make her age another four or five years within the next hour.

  ‘Why did Tom ask you to make the tea?’ she croaked. Why hadn’t she known about this?

  Gladys tossed her head. ‘Because I’m the mistress of this house,’ she retorted. ‘Tom said so. I’m your mam, not your bloody servant.’

  ‘Did he?’ Freda said weakly.

  Her mother’s voice softened. ‘He thinks you’re too young to be bearing so much responsibility. You’re missing your childhood. They were his very words. I know I’ve been a terrible mam in the past,’ she said abjectly, ‘getting hung up on the gin and that, but I’m over it now, luv. And it’s all due to you.’ She smiled and patted Freda’s head.

  Freda jerked her head away. ‘Let us alone,’ she snarled.

  Tom Chance arrived on the dot of five, not with Miss Bell, but an attractive young woman Freda had never seen before. She wore a pale blue pleated skirt and a short-sleeved Fair Isle jumper knitted in a dead complicated pattern. She turned out to be Sister Bernadette’s cousin, Evelyn Jones, who had recently finished university and had offered to help Tom with his book.