‘That lot there…’ The lady indicated the crowds who’d gathered three deep at the deck rails. They were waving – their caps raised high in the air, their white handkerchiefs fluttering – to friends, loved ones and relatives on the dockside, solemn or tearful, or simply bidding farewell to Dublin itself. ‘In two minutes, they’ll be thundering down the stairs and taking the best seats, so come on, come with me. I’m an old hand, I’ll show you the way. You’re going to be on this ferry all day, so you may as well make yourself comfortable.’
Mary Kate looked back and wondered if Declan would still be standing on the dock watching the boat sail away, trying to catch sight of her. She knew he would be and she felt a moment of guilt, a sting of pain.
‘Come along,’ said the lady. And Mary Kate, still under the influence of Sister Magdalena and unable to disobey an order issued by an older woman, followed her, the birdcage and oversized carpetbag down a spiral staircase made of wrought iron and painted dark green.
The steps were wet and looked precarious and Mary Kate clung to the handrail for dear life as the soles of their shoes clattered out their descent, the noise echoing loudly across the scrubbed wooden deck. At the bottom they crossed an exposed section of the lower deck, where the screech of seagulls following the boat was almost deafening, and entered a cavernous room full of wooden benches riveted to the floor. A line of salt-stained portholes afforded no view of the shrinking Dublin coastline and the room was filled with steam from a simmering urn on a counter in the corner. A man in a sailor’s cap leant casually up against the wall behind the counter, reading a newspaper and smoking a cigarette. He didn’t look up as they walked in.
‘Here we go. Put your bags down there,’ said the lady as she placed hers firmly on the end of a front bench. ‘I’ll put Bluey on the other end, here.’ She lifted the cloth of the cage to reveal a very blue budgie, who bobbed up and down in greeting.
Mary Kate did exactly as she was told and sat on the bench, in the middle.
The lady straightened her back and, scooping up a purse out of her bag, folded her arms. ‘Now, don’t tell me, this is your first time, isn’t it?’
Mary Kate nodded and smiled. ‘It is. Is it obvious?’
The lady threw her head back and laughed. ‘You’re a dead giveaway, my dear. Let me tell you why: you have a letter clutched tight in your hand that you won’t let go of for love nor money, and you haven’t taken your cotton gloves off. You can put your bag on the bench next to you, it doesn’t have to stay on your knee – it isn’t going to fly away. I can barely see you over the top. And for goodness’ sake, don’t look so scared.’
Mary Kate warmed to her instantly.
‘Now, my name is Mrs O’Keefe, and I’m going to get a nice cuppa and a chocolate biscuit. It’s the only thing I look forward to on this journey. You’re lucky, the sea’s calm today. Some of that lot’ – she raised her eyes heavenwards, towards the upper deck – ‘will head straight to the canteen. They’ll eat a hearty breakfast and then feed it to the fishes long before we reach Liverpool. Shall I bring you one back?’
‘Oh, please, let me get you the money.’ Mary Kate tried awkwardly to scrabble around for her purse.
‘No, you look after my Bluey and my bag while I’m gone and we’ll sort that out later.’
Mary Kate took her bag-minding responsibility very seriously. She stretched out her arms and rested one hand on her own bag and the other on Bluey’s cage. He bobbed along his perch to take an inquisitive peck at her fingers.
As she turned to look through the porthole, she noticed a dishevelled young man lying along the full length of the wooden bench beneath it. He raised his head slightly and his eyes met hers before his head flopped back down. His hat was on the floor next to the bench and it was obvious to Mary Kate, having seen enough men following a night in Paddy’s bar in Tarabeg, that he was worse for drink. Something about his eyes made her uncomfortable and her skin prickled as she looked away.
A few moments later Mrs O’Keefe was back with a pot of tea on a wooden tray and a plate of biscuits. ‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Budge up and I’ll put the tray between us. It’s a calm crossing today. If you keep that down, you can try a sandwich at lunchtime, but don’t have the spam. Made me ill for a week once, that did.’
Mary Kate exhaled. She could relax. She had done it. So far, she was safe and well, and she’d already made a friend. The rhythmic bumping of the waves against the boat was telling her that she was free, sailing away on the crest of her dreams.
Within minutes, Mrs O’Keefe had extracted from Mary Kate every detail of her escape from Tarabeg with Declan and her plans for Liverpool. ‘God, your family will be out of their minds and sick with worry,’ she said as she lifted up the small blue milk jug and poured some more into Mary Kate’s cup. ‘You will make sure to let them know as soon as you arrive, won’t you? Liverpool is a big city. Nothing like Galway or your Tarabeg. Not everyone is friendly there like they are back home. Be on your guard, won’t you? There are some right scallywags about.’
She inclined her head towards the bench where the drunken young man was now snoring. ‘You know, the sailor in the kitchen was telling me that some of them don’t get spotted, so they sleep it off until they’re halfway back to Dublin on the night sailing out of Liverpool and get off the boat exactly where they got on. Money spent, and they land up back on their mammy’s doorstep.’ She tittered with laughter.
‘Oh, I will be on my guard, of course I will,’ said Mary Kate, having no idea what a scallywag was. ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after meself. I’ve been helping Daddy run the shop since I could walk. You don’t need to be worrying about me. I have a good education and I won’t have any trouble finding work.’ She sat upright and proud and her eyes held Mrs O’Keefe’s, who resisted a smile.
Mrs O’Keefe decided not to say any more. Mary Kate had enough on her plate for one day.
The lower deck area had filled up and Mary Kate had pulled her bag a little closer to allow someone to squeeze onto the far end of their bench. She looked about the room, which was now filled with trilby hats, the blue haze of cigarette smoke, men in sailors’ uniforms and women clutching the hands of small children.
‘They’re all leaving for the work,’ Mrs O’Keefe confided. ‘There’s plenty to be had in Liverpool. That’s how I met my husband, God rest his soul. Came to Liverpool for work, met me and spent the rest of his days married to a Scouser. He only came for six months, but he stayed forty years. He’s buried back in Dublin though, his dying wish, and that’s where we’ve been, isn’t it, Bluey? We go once a month to the grave and spend the day there. I give him all the news – you know, the football results and the like. I write the scores of the matches down so that I don’t forget when I tell him. He loved Bluey – more than me, I reckon – that’s why I take him along. I stay for the night at his sister’s and then come back on the morning boat.’
By the time they were several hours into their crossing, Mary Kate felt that there was nothing of importance about her life that Mrs O’Keefe didn’t now know, and vice versa.
Eventually, the sound of the engine altered and appeared to slow and there was a lot of shouting and clanging of chains.
‘Ah, twenty minutes to go,’ Mrs O’Keefe said. ‘Now, let me see the address of where you’re going, love.’ She held out her hand to take the letter, which Mary Kate was still gripping tightly. ‘Oh, God, it’s on the dock streets. Be careful down there, won’t you. It’s not far, but if you can afford it, I’d be getting a cab if I were you. You’ll hear the klaxon go when the dockers are knocking off and I wouldn’t want you to be on the street then, not a girl from a convent school. No, that wouldn’t be right. You won’t understand half the things they’ll shout at a good-looking girl like you. I’m off on the bus in the opposite direction. I have to be back at the house for three thirty to meet my sister, Lizzie. She’ll be on the phone to the police if I’m late. Hates me going to the grave, she does. Thi
nks it’s all a nonsense.’
They had chatted for a full twenty minutes about how successful Lizzie was at running her own business, an agency supplying housekeepers, domestic helps and the like to Liverpool’s wealthier homes. Mrs O’Keefe was proud of her.
‘You could get the bus too, but that will drop you at the top of the Dockers’ Steps and that’s just where you don’t want to be. You’re dressed far too nicely to pass unnoticed. And they say the people from the bogs are the ruffians! Wait until you see some of the kids on the dock streets. No, get a cab just this once – do you have enough money?’
‘Oh yes. Daedio gave me twenty pounds for my birthday, and then he gave me a lot more yesterday.’ Mary Kate stopped speaking – had it been only yesterday?
‘Sshh, girl.’ Mrs O’Keefe put her finger to her lips and frantically looked about her. ‘Don’t go telling that to anyone else, do you hear me? That’s a lot of money. Keep what you have tight in your purse and keep your purse on you at all times. God in heaven, you innocents from the bogs, you are a gift to the conmen around the Pier Head. And, believe me, most of them have an Irish accent, so don’t be trusting anyone just because you think they’re from home, do you hear me? The stories I’ve heard. Promise me you’ll go straight to your aunty’s house and nowhere else first.’
‘I promise.’ The purse Mary Kate had placed in her coat pocket weighed heavy against her leg.
They parted at the foot of the landing stage and Mrs O’Keefe pointed towards the taxi rank. ‘See over there, that wooden hut, that’s where the Crosville buses go from. The taxis are right next to that hut. I can see one now – can you?’
Mary Kate placed her hands over her eyes and squinted at where Mrs O’Keefe was pointing. ‘I can see it,’ she said, her voice rising with the excitement of being in Liverpool.
‘Here, love.’ Mrs O’Keefe waved her handkerchief in the air and the taxi driver acknowledged her by putting his arm out of the window and waving back.
‘Here’s my corpy bus. The taxi will only cost a few bob. Get your money out now and then put your purse away. I’ll stand with you.’
Mary Kate did as she was told and extracted the twenty-pound note from her purse.
‘Jesus, is that the smallest you have?’
Mary Kate nodded, dismayed. ‘Will they not take it?’
‘Well, you can ask him first, but it’s a lot. It’s more than a fortnight’s wages for some.’
Mary Kate decided not to tell her that the dollars Daedio had given her amounted to the equivalent of fifty English pounds.
‘Go on then, off you go.’
Mary Kate kept the note and her purse in her hand, ready.
‘I feel like I should give you a hug,’ said Mrs O’Keefe. ‘Here, let me write my address down for you. When my husband was alive, God rest his soul, we had lots of girls coming straight from the boat to us from Dublin. We’ve set more of them up in jobs in Liverpool than I can think, thanks to Lizzie’s agency. Hard to believe, but there are more women in Liverpool who employ someone to wash their smalls than you can poke a stick at, and I’m one of them, I’m afraid. Now, take my address in case you should ever need it.’
Mary Kate thought of Declan’s words. ‘Honestly, I’m much sharper than I look,’ she said. ‘No one will pull the wool over my eyes. I told you, my da runs a shop.’
‘He runs a shop in a village,’ said Mrs O’Keefe, her voice loaded with doubt before heading on her way. Mary Kate gave the appearance of being almost too trusting, too friendly, too nice. That was the trouble with the Irish – they thought everyone was a relative, and in a way they were. The generations had crisscrossed over hundreds of years – linked up, got broken, been reconnected, one village, one town, one name to another – which instilled a sense of family and belonging like nowhere else in the world.
The cab driver saw Mary Kate approaching and threw his cigarette butt out of the window. He wasn’t sure if the man following behind was with her or not. He folded his newspaper, shoved it down the inside of the car door and jumped out.
‘Where to, queen?’
‘Waterloo Street, please. Number twenty-seven.’
He took Mary Kate’s case in his hand. ‘Right, well, that’s not far then. Coming for work, are you?’ He’d met them all before. The student nurses arriving from Dublin, the navvies, the cleaners, the barmaids, and the prostitutes too. Half of Liverpool was Irish and he prided himself on being able to tell one regional accent from another. He could divide Cavan from Donegal, Galway from Sligo. ‘Mayo, is it?’ he asked with a smile.
‘Yes, it is. Tarabeg.’ Mary Kate was loving Liverpool already. Everyone was so kind and friendly. Mrs O’Keefe must have been a very over-cautious type. ‘I only have a twenty-pound note – can you change it, please?’
The cab driver whistled and pushed up the brim of his cap. ‘No, I can’t, queen. I don’t get many notes, and if I had to change that, it would clear me out. Tell you what, you wait here, keep hold of the note, and I’ll nip over to the cashier in the Crosville hut and ask him if he’ll change some of my notes. If not, we can call into the post office on the Dock Road on the way. You will need that changing. You can’t buy a bag of chips with a twenty-pound note, queen – you’ll starve to death. Let me put your bag in the boot first to keep it safe.’
Mary Kate smiled. Another problem solved. ‘Is the cashier far?’ she asked.
‘No, he’s just in the wooden hut there, or I wouldn’t be offering, would I – you might run off with me cab and then what would I do?’
They were both laughing as the cabbie moved round to the back of his car with Mary Kate’s luggage in his hand. He pulled open the boot and pushed her case to the back, drew the rug he kept in there over it, closed the lid and came back round to the side of the car. It had taken him all of ninety seconds, but he was too late. Mary Kate was lying on the ground beside the cab, groaning. Her legs were splayed out behind her, her face was a deathly shade of white, and blood was trickling from her temple. She tried to scramble to her knees, had no idea what had happened, but collapsed back down. One minute she’d been standing there smiling, watching the cabbie with her bag, the next she was on the floor with a painful wound on the side of her neck. The twenty-pound note and her purse were gone, and her letter from Bee was flapping on the ground next to her, the wind lifting its corners, threatening to steal that too.
‘Oi, you! Stop!’ The cab driver saw that the man who’d been following Mary Kate was running away and he gave chase.
Mary Kate flopped against the side of the cab, her back propped up against the door. She recognised the thief – it was the young man who’d been asleep on the boat, lying on the bench behind her. She could see her purse in his hand, but despite his dishevelled state, he was running twice as fast as the cabbie. A whistle pierced the air as a policeman came out of a small wooden hut and also gave chase, but he was even slower on his feet than the taxi driver.
The thief ran out across the tramlines. A tram horn blasted and cars beeped. In a flash he was gone up Church Street, swallowed up by the crowds of shoppers heading one way and travellers the other. Both men knew they’d lost him. They stopped, bent over, placed their hands on their knees and gasped for breath.
The reality of her situation hit Mary Kate in a wave of despair. She was a stranger in a huge city and she’d been robbed. She was penniless. Everything Daedio had given her was gone. Tears filled her eyes, her heart thumped, and she began to tremble.
‘Welcome to Liverpool,’ said a man who’d been passing and had hurried over to her. ‘Here, let me help you. You’ve taken a bit of a knock, haven’t you.’
Mary Kate felt swamped with dismay. Shocked by the violence she’d just been subjected to, her instinctive reaction was to mistrust this stranger. She pulled back.
‘Don’t worry about me, I’m here to help you,’ the man said. ‘Besides, you’ve got nothing left, so there’s no point in robbing you now, is there?’ He grinned as he removed his long,
grey overcoat, folded it and placed it behind her back.
She felt as though the cobbles were about to open up and devour her. This was as bad as it could be. Every penny she owned in the world had been taken. ‘No one can pull the wool over my eyes,’ she’d said to Mrs O’Keefe. ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after meself.’ And here she was, in Liverpool and already caught off guard and attacked and robbed. And Mrs O’Keefe, a woman she didn’t even know, had left her not five minutes since. Thank God she still had her case and Aunty Bee’s address. She’d been told it wasn’t that far on foot. She could still make it, and Aunty Bee would know what to do.
A woman had trotted over to join them and she squatted down beside Mary Kate. ‘Are you all right, love?’ she asked. ‘I saw him from my office window, just over there – I sell the ferry tickets. It happens all the bloody time, it does, that’s why they put the police hut just there, near the bottom of the landing. Honest to God, and it’s still going on. I’ll get you a tea. Do you think she needs a check-up at St Angelus? That’s a nasty mark on her neck, and look, she’s bleeding.’
The woman glanced up at the man who’d stopped to help. He had already taken Mary Kate’s pulse, and from the pocket of the overcoat folded behind Mary Kate’s head he was now removing a stethoscope.
‘I’m Dr Marcus,’ he said. ‘From the Princess Avenue surgery. I was on my way to St Angelus. I can check her over right here. If you could kindly fetch her some strong sweet tea, and I will fetch my car and my bag.’
The woman almost dropped a curtsey. ‘Of course, Doctor. I’ll go right now. Won’t be long, love,’ she said to Mary Kate with a sympathetic frown. She scurried away and returned minutes later with the tea and the waitress from the Pier Head café, who carried the pot handle in one hand and the spout in the other.
Mary Kate was bemused to see a crowd gathering. The policeman was back by her side and had taken out his notebook, and the cab driver was next to him, rolling a cigarette. ‘I’m right out of puff,’ he said. ‘I need this to breathe. Do you want one, love, to calm your nerves?’
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