The Girl From Barefoot House

by Maureen Lee

  ‘This is for me.’ Josie surveyed the long room that ran the length of the house. The peaked ceiling sloped down to walls no more than four feet high. ‘I bet this is the cheapest,’ she said aloud. There were kitchen units, a cooker and a sink at the front end, and a small square portion had been sectioned off with hardboard at the back. She opened the door and found a shower room, with a lavatory and small sink.

  ‘It wouldn’t need a carpet, just a few cheap rugs. I could get a bed and a settee on hire purchase.’ She closed her eyes and tried to imagine the room furnished, but felt herself go dizzy. Perhaps it was the empty house, the silence, the echoes, or that she was alone, properly alone, for the first time since she’d come back to Liverpool, but her brain suddenly went into free fall, as if she were in a lift in a New York skyscraper and the mechanism no longer worked. Downwards, downwards, she zoomed, until she could no longer stand. She fell down on all fours. There was an explosion in her brain, and Josie went completely insane.

  Laura was dead, Jack had gone!

  Josie screamed. Why should she care where she lived when ahead there was only a living death because she had lost her husband and her child? She screamed and beat the floor with her fists. ‘Laura, come back!’ she groaned, and raised her arms skywards, as if God had the power to restore her daughter to her arms. She beat the floor again when Laura didn’t come, because she was dead, and Josie had been at the funeral and seen with her own eyes the tiny coffin being lowered into the ground, leaving her with no reason to go on living. She cursed God, using words, foul words, that had never crossed her lips before, for being so cruel as to have first taken Mam, and now Laura.

  Suddenly there were arms around her, and a soft, vaguely familiar voice was murmuring, ‘Let it all go, luv. That’s right, let it all go. Cry all you like. I’m here now.’ Josie pressed herself against the unknown breast and sobbed until her heart felt as if it were breaking, and the voice kept murmuring, ‘There, there, luv. Cry all day if you want. It’ll do you good. There, there.’

  Her chest and ribs were sore, and still Josie cried, while the soft voice continued to make soothing little noises. A hand lightly stroked her hair. Eventually, when she could cry no more, because she felt completely dry, empty, Josie stopped. She was exhausted and, for the first time in weeks, longed for sleep. If a bed had been available, she was sure she could have slept peacefully for hours.

  ‘Better now?’ enquired the voice.

  Josie realised she was still dinging to the owner of the voice, and that she had no idea who it was. She moved away from the strange arms, and found herself staring into the soft gentle eyes and serene face of Daisy Kavanagh, looking like a Christmas card in white fur earmuffs and a fluffy scarlet coat. She stroked Josie’s swollen, tear-stained face. ‘Better now, Josie, luv?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Josie croaked. ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘You left the door unlatched. I called in the yard to invite you to lunch, it’s me half-day off, see. A very nice young man told me where you’d be, so I decided to keep you company, like.’ She smiled sweetly. ‘Mind you, I thought you were being murdered when I first came in.’

  ‘I’m sorry if I gave you a fright.’ She felt embarrassed that her outburst had been witnessed, even if it had been by Daisy Kavanagh, so kind and understanding. ‘You always seem to be around when I’m in a state.’

  ‘It’s only been the twice, luv.’ They were sitting cross-legged on the floor now, facing each other in the big empty room. Daisy took both Josie’s hands in hers. ‘It’ll have done you good to get if off your chest, well, some of it. I don’t doubt you’ll cry again.’ She glanced around the room. ‘It’s nice here. Are you going to take it?’

  With an effort Josie switched her mind from the tragedy of the past to the practicality of the present, which had perhaps been Daisy’s intention. She sighed. ‘If I can afford the rent. I’ll need all sorts of furniture.’

  ‘We’ve got bits of stuff in Machin Street you can have. Eunice is always saying the place is over-furnished.’

  ‘Ta.’

  Daisy released her hands and scrambled to her feet. ‘Lunch is still on offer, Jose. My treat. We’ll go somewhere with a licence so you can have a drink. I reckon a double whisky would do you the world of good.’

  Sid Spencer contacted the company that owned the house in Princes Avenue to ask about the rent for the top-floor flat. It was just within Josie’s means. ‘They’re being dead official. You can move in the first of March, but you have to sign a year’s lease.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ Josie said easily.

  ‘It means you can go home for your dinner.’ He regarded her with a fatherly eye. ‘I don’t like the idea of you sitting in this place all day without a break.’

  ‘It’s too cold for a walk, and too far to get to Childwall.’

  ‘I know. Princes Avenue is just right.’ He looked pleased.

  Mrs Kavanagh understood completely that Josie would prefer to be on her own. She came with Lily to see the flat the day the stair carpets were being laid. Josie had signed the lease the day before.

  Lily was five months pregnant and beginning to show. She was wearing a voluminous maternity frock, as if she wanted the whole world to know she was expecting. ‘It’s very pleasant,’ she conceded, walking the length of the room, jutting out her stomach as far as it would go, ‘but you can’t compare it to a house. There’s no privacy.’

  ‘Honestly, Lily!’ Her mother rolled her eyes impatiently. ‘I sometimes wonder if you’re dead from the neck up.’

  ‘I don’t need privacy, do I?’ Josie said with a wry smile. ‘I’ll be living on me own.’

  ‘It’d be a job lugging a baby up them narrow stairs.’

  ‘Lily!’ Mrs Kavanagh snapped.

  ‘I meant when I bring Troy to see Josie, that’s all.’ Lily patted her stomach and looked hurt. ‘Can I christen the lavatory, Jose? I’m aching to go.’

  ‘Of course.’

  The door to the lavatory closed. Josie looked out of the small window at the front. It was strange, but the other side of Princes Avenue was called Princes Road. She wondered if the postman ever got confused.

  ‘Lily doesn’t mean anything, luv, but she was back of the queue when the good Lord handed out tact.’

  ‘I don’t take any notice.’ The hairs were tingling on Josie’s neck. It was the mention of lugging a baby up the stairs that had done it, made something click in her weary brain. She’d been too wrapped up in misery to notice that she hadn’t had a period since December, and she knew, more surely than she had ever known anything before, that she was pregnant. It had happened on the last night with Jack, just as Laura had been conceived on the first. Her body shuddered with revulsion. She didn’t want this child.

  2

  ‘Daisy,’ Josie cried hysterically. ‘Oh, Daise, hold me hand, there’s another contraction coming.’

  ‘There, luv.’ Daisy gripped her hand. ‘It’ll soon pass. It’ll soon be all over and done with.’

  ‘I didn’t have pains like this when I was having Laura.’ Josie gasped as the contraction mounted and swelled, reaching a pitch that was barely tolerable, before gradually fading. She tried to relax, impossible when she was dreading the next pain, knowing it would be worse.

  ‘You didn’t have backache with Laura either,’ Daisy said in her light, sweet voice. She looked coolly beautiful in a sage green costume and tiny matching hat. ‘Or veins in your legs, or swollen feet. Having Laura was as easy as pie, or so you keep saying, but all babies are different, Josie, before they’re born and after.’

  ‘Your Lily’s terrified of having another baby.’ It helped to fill the gaps between the pains with conversation. ‘She was going to show everyone how easy it was. Instead, she yelled her head off when the time came.’

  ‘I know, Jose. I was there, unfortunately. It was dead embarrassing. Not only that, she was outraged when Samantha appeared and it should have been Troy. We all thought she was going to tell
the midwife there’d been a mistake. Neil was delighted, but he’s delighted with everything Lily does.’

  ‘I hope I have a boy, Daise.’

  ‘I know, luv.’ Daisy stroked her brow.

  It was ten past two in the morning, and they were in Liverpool Maternity Hospital, in a side ward. The main light was off, and a small lamp with a green shade gave off a ghostly glow, making the room, with its cream and green walls and green window-blind, seem dismal and depressing.

  The contractions had started six hours ago, eight days before the baby was due. Josie was lying on the settee, reading, when it gave the first sign it was on its way, a very strong sign, but this was only the beginning – the contractions could go on for hours. She made tea and tried to drink it calmly, pretending to admire how the late evening sunshine added a light golden lustre to the attic room, lingering on the pale coffee walls, turning the vase of plastic sunflowers on the table into yellow flames.

  The table, like everything except the bed, was second hand, other people’s cast-offs. Nothing matched – the chintz-covered settee clashed with the curtains, which clashed with the faded patchwork quilt – but the room looked pretty, almost striking, with the addition of loads of plastic flowers and statues bought for coppers which she’d painted bright red. She’d had more satisfaction from making the room look nice than she’d had from furnishing Bingham Mews when money had been no object, though she often thought wistfully about the television that had been left behind, as well as the twin-tub washing machine and the steam iron. She could have really done with those things now.

  The cot beside the bed she would have sooner done without. The white-painted bars made her think of a prison – for herself, not the baby it would shortly hold.

  Another contraction started. She gasped and looked at her watch – twenty minutes since the first one. Adding a hairbrush and some make-up to the suitcase that had been packed for days, she caught a bus to the hospital. She was still pretending to be calm. The pregnancy hadn’t been easy, and she was glad the time had come. Working for Sid, which she’d done almost to the end, had helped to occupy her mind.

  When she reached the hospital she phoned Daisie Kavanagh. Eunice answered and said Daisy was round at Childwall and she would phone her there.

  ‘Don’t tell Mrs Kavanagh, will you? Daisy’s the one I want. She knows why.’

  ‘I understand, luv. She’ll be along in a flash.’

  Eunice wished her good luck. Josie hoped she hadn’t sounded rude but, much to the chagrin of Lily who regarded it as a betrayal of friendship, she’d grown close to Daisy over the last few months. She was the only person who knew how unwelcome the baby was. Everyone else regarded it as a miracle, a replacement sent by God for her darling Laura, when Josie regarded it as a trespasser, an intruder in her life. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was a boy, but a girl …

  Daisy didn’t judge her harsh, muddled emotions, didn’t criticise, just seemed to understand.

  A nurse popped her head around the door. ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘I don’t think it will be long now,’ Daisy said.

  The door closed, busy footsteps sounded in the corridor, babies cried, there was a muffled scream. Someone else was going through the ordeal of giving birth.

  ‘Don’t ever have a baby, Daisy,’ Josie groaned.

  ‘I nearly did, once.’ The soft lips twitched in amusement at the sight of Josie’s shocked, astonished face.

  ‘When?’ Josie briefly forgot her own discomfiture. ‘How? What do you mean by nearly?’

  ‘I had a miscarriage,’ Daisy said placidly. ‘The father’s name was Ralph. He was an assistant librarian where I worked. I knew he had a wife, but I was too much in love to care. I was only twenty, and I suppose you could say he seduced me. I believed him when he swore he loved me. I thought we’d get married one day. I didn’t care if it wouldn’t be a church wedding because Catholics aren’t allowed to marry divorcees.’

  ‘What happened?’ It was hard to imagine tranquil Daisy Kavanagh being passionately in love, having sex with a married man.

  Daisy smiled a touch sardonically. ‘Oh, he dropped me like a hot brick when he discovered I was pregnant. It turned out I was just a girl in a whole line of girls.’ Her grip on Josie’s hand tightened slightly. ‘His poor wife was going out of her mind. She came round to Machin Street to have it out with me. Fortunately, it was the time Ma and Da were moving to Childwall so they were round at the new house. Unfortunately, perhaps it was the shock of being jilted, the shock of the wife turning up, but I suddenly had these dreadful pains, just like you’re having now, Jose, and my dear little baby was flushed down the lavatory.’

  ‘You mean, while the wife was there?’ Josie gasped. There was another muffled scream from outside, followed by a sharp, triumphant shout, then a baby’s angry wail.

  ‘Yes, but she was a brick. She held me in her arms, comforted me, and we called the father every name under the sun.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you calling anyone names.’

  ‘Still waters run deep, Jose.’ Daisy gave an enigmatic smile. ‘Me and Eunice spent many a happy hour planning Ralph’s murder, but we were too scared of being caught so we gave up on the idea.’

  ‘Eunice! You mean …’

  ‘Yes, I mean Eunice. When the family moved, I stayed in Machin Street and Eunice left Ralph and came to live with me.’ She chuckled. ‘I know some people, our lily for one, think there’s something odd about it – well, I suppose there is, but it’s not what they think. Anyroad, Jose, you are now privy to one of the best kept secrets in the world, and I trust you’ll keep it to yourself. I only told you so you’d know how much I’d like to be in your shoes at the moment.’

  ‘Oh, Daisy!’ Josie was about to say something else, but another contraction started that seemed to go on for ever, and Daisy called the nurse.

  The midwife was black, brusque and efficient. ‘It’s a girl,’ she announced, holding up an ugly, red, baby-shaped object for Josie to see. ‘What are you going to call her?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Josie ached all over and wanted to be sick. She had intended to call it Liam if it was a boy, but couldn’t bring herself to consider girls’ names. ‘What’s your name?’

  The midwife frowned unbelievingly. ‘Dinah.’

  ‘Then Dinah it is.’

  ‘Me mother’s called Shelomith. I bet you wouldn’t have latched on to that quite so quick.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Josie closed her eyes. ‘I really don’t care.’

  She had loads of visitors, so different from when she’d had Laura and there’d only been Jack. Mr and Mrs Kavanagh, Marigold and a moidered and extremely cross Lily, who complained that Neil wasn’t doing his share with the new baby. She had to get up and feed Samantha twice a night.

  ‘Are you still breast-feeding?’ Josie asked.

  ‘Of course I am. Mother’s milk is best for baby.’ Lily spoke as if she was quoting from a book.

  ‘Then what on earth do you expect Neil to do – grow breasts?’

  ‘He could at least wake up and talk to me.’

  Chrissie and Sid Spencer arrived with flowers, and presents from Colin, Terry and Little Sid. Daisy came every night. Charlotte Ward-Pierce had kept the Kavanaghs’ telephone number, and had called months ago to see how Josie was when she didn’t write. Mrs Kavanagh must have rung to tell her about Dinah, because there were cards from her and Neville, and Elsie Forrest.

  ‘I’m so happy for you, Josie,’ Elsie wrote. ‘It’s a miracle, another little daughter, and so soon. How I wish that I could see her. Does Jack know? Has he been in touch?’

  Jack knew where the Kavanaghs lived. He could easily have got in touch. But he hadn’t. He would never know he had a new daughter, and she wondered how he would feel if he did. She thought about him more than usual the day Elsie’s card arrived. The time in New York, the years in Cypress Terrace and Bingham Mews seemed to belong to a different world altogether from the one she lived in n
ow, but she still longed to see him.

  The evening visitors poured into the ward, the new fathers stiffly formal in their best suits, a few awkwardly bearing flowers. Josie’s attention was drawn to one man who stood out from the rest. He wore a trenchcoat with the belt tightly buckled, and a black trilby perched precariously on the back of his head. He was chewing gum, and his hands were stuffed mutinously in his pockets, as if he wouldn’t be seen dead carrying flowers or a bag of fruit. She thought he looked vaguely familiar. Their eyes met when he passed the foot of her bed and they stared at each other. Then the man grinned broadly, and said out of the corner of his mouth, ‘Well, if it isn’t Josie Flynn!’

  ‘Francie O’Leary!’

  He came and sat on the edge of the bed, which was strictly forbidden. Visitors were supposed to use the chairs. ‘What are you doing here, luv?’

  ‘What do you think? It’s a maternity hospital, Francie.’ He was still the handsome rat she remembered from the Saturdays when they’d sorted out the world over a cup of coffee, and she was really pleased to see him. He carried with him the aura of that carefree time when she’d got on well with Aunt Ivy and was going to marry Ben.

  He seemed equally pleased to see her. ‘Someone told me you lived in America, or was it London?’

  ‘Both, but now I’m back in Liverpool for good.’

  ‘You’ve had a baby?’

  Josie smiled. ‘They wouldn’t have let me in if I hadn’t.’

  To her surprise, he picked up her hand and kissed it. ‘Congratulations, Jose. Where’s the proud father? He’s a writer, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. He’s back in America. It …’ She shrugged. ‘It didn’t work out. What about you? Are congratulations due?’

  His small eyes widened in amusement. ‘Jaysus, no, luv. I’m not married. It’s our Pauline who’s had the baby. She’s over there with me Mam and the doting husband.’ He winked. ‘I’ll get an ear-bashing for not fetching in a bunch of grapes.’

  ‘Are you still working in the same place?’ she asked conversationally, reluctant to let him go. He’d worked as a clerk for a shipping company on the Dock Road.