‘Leave him here.’ Mary Kate hitched little Mikey up onto her lap. ‘I’ll say I asked. Go on.’
He grinned and ran up the stairs to the others.
Debbie and Betty came out of the scullery, each carrying one handle of a large basket of dirty clothes, which they set down by the back door.
‘Thanks, girls,’ said Cat. ‘Go on now, loves, up you go. Say goodnight to Mary Kate.’
‘Night, Mary Kate. I’m glad you’re feeling better,’ said Betty.
Debbie still didn’t speak. She sucked her thumb, her dark brown hair tied back into a severe plait, her brown eyes twinkling mischievously.
Mary Kate wanted to scoop her up too and hold her tight. She needed that more than anything: a hug. Instead, she whispered, ‘Goodnight, Betty. Goodnight, Debbie.’
Betty handed her the large, heavy overcoat she’d carried in. ‘It’s a bit itchy,’ she said. ‘It was our dad’s in the war. He’s dead now.’
Debbie looked sad, briefly threw her arms around Cat’s waist and followed the others upstairs.
‘What’s our Mikey doing there?’ said Cat, waiting for the door to the stairs to close and making sure the final set of footsteps had reached the top before she spoke. ‘That lot, they’ll be asleep in minutes, they will. They run up and down the streets all day long, and when bedtime comes I swear to God they’re all out cold before Betty switches the light off.’ She looked down at her youngest, already fast asleep in Mary Kate’s arms. ‘Look at him…’
‘Do you mind if he stays with me?’ asked Mary Kate.
Cat lifted a packet of cigarettes off the mantelpiece and lit one. ‘Mind? God, no. There’s hardly room for a mouse to fit between our kids upstairs. He comes in with me usually.’ She inhaled deeply, then let the smoke exhale at a slow rate, her head back, eyes closed. ‘That’s better. I don’t smoke as much as Linda. I can’t afford to on my money – it’s just a small pension from the Docks and Harbour Board.’ She flopped onto the bouclé chair next to the sofa. ‘So, Mary Kate, tell me, what are you doing here, just a day after your Bee left? Did you not write? Do you know what, I’ve heard your Bee talk about you that much, I feel like I know you, but why did you never come for a visit?’
Mary Kate instinctively knew she shouldn’t mention that Bee and Captain Bob weren’t married. She swallowed hard. She would have to lie to this lovely lady who had taken her in as if she was one of her own. ‘I was away at school,’ she stammered.
‘I know that – she told me. But there was holidays, and they never took them, you know, her or Captain Bob. Never had a day off, he didn’t. See all this furniture? That was theirs. Ours was falling to bits, we hardly had a chair to sit on. She said she’d ordered new things to arrive in Tarabeg for when she got home.’
Mary Kate stroked the top of little Mikey’s head. Her nose filled with the freshly washed smell of him. She was recovered, her mind was working, she was making a plan.
‘So, go on, tell me – what happened? Hang on, wait there.’ Cat jumped to her feet. ‘I’ve got a drop of sherry in the cupboard left over from Christmas – we’ll finish it off, you and me. I’ve got a feeling this is going to be good.’
At the end of her tale of woe, Mary Kate took a pause and a long sip of the sherry, and announced, ‘And I’m not going back. I am not going to fail. I will stay in Liverpool, earn the money back that was stolen, and more, before I go home. I won’t be able to hold my head up if I don’t.’ She took another sip of the sherry and began to choke.
‘That’s your mam up there – she’s telling you off and saying, “Get on that boat, Mary Kate.”’ Cat laughed. ‘Not used to it, eh? It’s all Guinness over there, isn’t it? So, what are you going to do then? What kind of work do you want?’
Mary Kate took the piece of paper Mrs O’Keefe had given her with her details. She’d already told Cat about her. ‘She told me she’d helped to get lots of Irish girls onto their feet – do you think she’ll mind if I give her a call?’
Cat reached out and took the piece of paper. ‘Nice address, Duke’s Avenue, off Fullmore Park. Swanky. No, she won’t mind, queen. I tell you what, she’ll probably put you onto her sister’s agency. There are quite a few big houses off the Aigburth Road that still have servants and I’d say around Fullmore Park would be some of the biggest. You could get a job and stay here, but I could only offer you the sofa. One of those agencies might get you a live-in job, and with your schooling, you might get taken on as a governess or something – they still have those too. Would you mind that?’
Mary Kate shook her head. ‘No, I’ll do anything to start with, to earn money and tide me over until I decide what I can do. I just need an angel to give me a bit of help.’
Cat ran the kitchen tap and washed the glasses. It occurred to Mary Kate that she’d been surrounded by angels all day: Mrs O’Keefe, the doctor, Cat, Linda. She didn’t let her mind dwell on the mugger. Cat was talking, but her voice was fading as Mary Kate struggled to fight off the effects of the sherry. Pulling little Mikey into her, she rolled onto her side, closed her eyes and slipped down through the folds of sleep; as she did so, the face of the doctor refused to leave her thoughts.
Five minutes later, when she had finished her nightly chores and had damped down the fire, Cat pulled up the old army coat and laid it over Mary Kate and little Mikey. ‘Poor love,’ she said as she tucked it around them both.
The back door opened. Taking in the scene, Linda whispered, ‘Can I have some of that sugar from Edith’s?’
Cat handed her the cup.
‘Has she decided what she’s doing?’
‘Yes. She’s not going back. She wants to stay. I’m going to take her to the pub tomorrow morning to the phone so that she can call some woman she met on the boat. We think she might have some contacts with an agency or something. Wants to earn all the money back that was stolen before she goes home, and a bit more too.’
Linda let out a long, soft whistle. ‘Well, whatever job she manages to get, it will be far from easy and even further from well paid. She’d be lucky to get seven pound a week.’
‘I know. But I’m guessing it’s best if she finds that out for herself.’
Linda turned back to the dark yard. ‘She needs a knight in shining armour, but, pretty as she is, there aren’t too many of those riding up and down the Dock Road, are there. Are you going to write to Bee?’
‘Of course I am.’ Cat leant against the doorframe and folded her arms. ‘I was going to do that in the morning anyway. Funny day today, eh, Lin?’
‘Just shows you, doesn’t it. One day the same as the other and then you walk outside and find a Mary Kate fainting on the street. You see, you never know, Cat, what’s around the corner. Are you alright, queen, having the house turned upside down like that?’
‘Oh God, yeah. She’s lovely, she is. Breath of fresh air and I wouldn’t wish what’s befallen her to happen to me worst enemy, but she’s brightened up our day, in a funny kind of way.’
‘Looks like she’ll be hanging around too. Be sure to tell Bee, in case they’re worrying about Mary Kate back home.’
Cat smiled and as Linda made her way down the yard, she looked up at the sky. A million stars winked down at her and she was overcome with a sense of anticipation, excitement. A shooting star shot across the summer night sky and a breeze brushed her face.
‘Look at that, Lin! I reckon something is happening,’ she said.
But Linda was already gone.
10
Mrs O’Keefe laid down four sheets of newspaper on the floor, one on top of the other, in the shape of a cross, and, sliding out the tray from the bottom of Bluey’s cage, emptied the sand onto the paper.
‘Well, that’s a right mess you made for me there, isn’t it, my lad,’ she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste as she folded over the paper into a tight parcel. She emptied fresh sand from a brown-paper bag onto the tray. ‘There, isn’t that better.’
Bluey fluttered to the end of his perch
and rang his bell in reply.
Mrs O’Keefe and Bluey lived in a tall Victorian house situated halfway down Duke’s Avenue, a long, leafy road in one of Liverpool’s best areas. Her neighbours were sea merchants, doctors and bankers, and ‘businessmen’, most of whom marched down the avenue at 7 a.m. wearing bowler hats and long overcoats, carrying umbrellas and with heads bent as they made their way to one of the grand offices facing the river. The avenue had a rhythm of its own, which she’d come to know well over the years. She had never fitted in – there were no other builders on the avenue; her Pat had been the only one. ‘Not one of them is any better than we are, Eileen,’ Pat would chastise her when he asked her why she spent so much time alone. But how could she tell him? To join the groups of young mothers, she needed a baby, and to join the ladies that lunched, she needed to be free of her Liverpool accent. Neither option was available to her.
Grabbing hold of the chair arm for support, she rose from her knees and groaned. ‘Blimey, how do I get back down for that now?’ she muttered, looking at the newspaper parcel with dismay. She lifted Bluey’s cage by its ring and walked over to hang it back on the stand. ‘There you are, fit to be seen in public.’
Folding her arms, she gazed out of the bay window. A young woman strode past with two little boys holding her hands, one each side of her. Across the road, another young woman marched briskly along, pushing a shiny black Silver Cross pram that bounced up and down as she went.
The avenue was lined on both sides with trees and was wide enough to afford plenty of privacy from prying neighbours opposite. The wrought-iron gates to Fullmore Park stood directly across from the end of the road and it was to there that the avenue’s second parade of the day always headed. By ten thirty there would be a procession of gleaming prams, pristine babies and young women wearing hats and smiles strolling around the lake, veering off around the bandstand and then back to the lake again. Watchful eyes hovered over toddlers, stopping to gossip about the new houses being erected off Aigburth Road, about how bonny the royal toddler, Prince Andrew, was and about the travelling salesman who’d been inside number seventeen for a whole hour the previous day – just like the one the previous week, who’d been selling window-scrapers from a suitcase.
Eileen O’Keefe saw them all. Sometimes she ventured into the park and overheard the snippets of conversation.
‘She eats them for breakfast – it’s an absolute disgrace, and her Maurice, he’s been in the bank for fifteen years now, she could ruin it all for him if someone found out. It would make the Echo, it would.’
‘I don’t know where they find the energy,’ said the woman she was talking to, who was leaning over her pram and straightening the covers. ‘I mean, they walk from door to door all day, carting those big suitcases around. I’m sure Duke’s Avenue isn’t the only place they get the occasional overly warm welcome.’
Eileen often heard the best conversations when she sat on the bench by the lake.
‘The park will be ruined when those new houses are built,’ she’d heard one of the mothers say the previous week.
‘Yes, and there will be Irish navvies everywhere,’ her friend replied.
Eileen O’Keefe’s face had burnt and her temper had risen – not something that happened very often. She’d got to her feet, had wanted to say something in protest, had almost said something, it was on the tip of her tongue, but both women looked over and their eyes had met hers, questioning. She failed and, feeling foolish, had turned on her heel and left.
‘What was up with her?’ she’d heard one of them ask.
That had been just before she left for Dublin. Her Pat would have been wounded by such comments, had he been alive.
Through her bay window she could hear the leaves rustling in the summer breeze and her heart ached. This was just the sort of day for a picnic in the park, on one of the benches by the lake, but what fun was a picnic when you were on your own? Who was there to point out the huge, vibrant rhododendrons to or to laugh with when the ducks got cheeky and forceful and mobbed you for your sandwiches? No one. The duck-pond gang, Pat used to call them. ‘Come on then, let’s go and be mugged for our butties,’ he would say on a sunny Sunday morning when he got back from Mass.
Now there was no one, so she would eat her lunch on a tray in the sitting room, just as she always did. Her Pat was gone and had left her with a big house, a healthy bank balance and a permanent sense that she no longer belonged – not to a place, and now not to a person either.
There was a tap on the door and she turned from the window.
Deidra peeped her head round. ‘Would I take the paper away, Mrs O’Keefe, would I?’
‘Yes, come on in. Why do you always look as though I’m going to bite your head off, Deidra? Have I ever done that?’
Deidra smiled. ‘No, Mrs O’Keefe.’ She hurried over to scoop up the newspaper, almost bent in two, her eyes fixed to the floor.
Eileen O’Keefe employed three servants, one fewer than most of her neighbours, and she still thought that a ridiculous number. She often argued with her sister Lizzie about it. Lizzie was the more business-minded of the two sisters. Pat had given her money to start her own agency many years ago and she’d gone from strength to strength ever since, paying Pat back long before he died. She had her own office over a shop in Bold Street, with a painted sign above the window. Sometimes there would be a queue outside, if the Irish boat came in early, of Dublin girls clutching her details, passed on to them in a letter from a girl who had already made the journey and had been placed by Lizzie and her ladies at the agency. They stood there with eyes bloodshot from the tears they’d shed at leaving home and from the homesickness that had already set in, waiting to see her when she opened.
‘Will you be wanting your coffee now, Mrs O’Keefe?’
It occurred to Eileen that Deidra only spoke in questions. Like many of the girls who arrived on the boat, she was shy, looked perpetually terrified and carried about her a sense of unworthiness. She was frightened of everything and spooked by everyone. They all were. It drove Eileen mad. ‘Having girls in the house will be company for you,’ Lizzie had said to her. ‘Everyone in Duke’s Avenue has servants. For goodness’ sake, you will be the talk of the avenue, only having three. Do you think your Pat worked every day God sent to leave you on your knees, scrubbing the step?’
Her eyes always clouded over at the mention of her Pat. He had arrived as a navvy and departed this world the sole owner of O’Keefe’s Builders. During the May Blitz on Liverpool, he’d taken his men down to the bombed-out streets once the air-raid sirens had ceased and helped people board up windows and doors and tried to get them safely back into their homes. At the time he died, his hands were all over the Anglican cathedral and she often wandered down to see how the building was coming along, so that she could give him all the details on her monthly trip to Dublin.
‘There’s more work to be done than men I can get over from home to do it,’ he used to say to her. He had even employed an agent to travel along Ireland’s west coast, holding meetings in pubs, seeking out men he could sign up for a life of work in Liverpool. Lizzie was right, her Pat had not worked six days a week putting Liverpool back together again, building up his business and the balance in the bank, for Eileen to have to work.
Sometimes she wished her Pat had seen her with the same eyes he’d viewed Lizzie. There was a sharpness to Lizzie that Eileen just didn’t possess. Lizzie had managed the business accounts and Pat had been grateful for it. ‘That’s the difference between me and all the rest,’ he would say to Eileen. ‘I have your Lizzie. You should hear her getting the best price for a job. All I have to do is the work with me hands, and the men do the same, knowing Lizzie takes care of everything else and they will all be paid at four o’clock on a Friday, on the dot. She has the brain and I have the brawn.’ He would laugh out loud at that and Eileen would laugh with him, even though he said it almost every day. The recipe was so good, they’d earned enough money to buy
the house on Duke’s Avenue only five years after the war was over. It had been bomb-damaged too. ‘’Tis a great opportunity,’ Pat had said, and it was. She had the best restored house on the avenue, and as Lizzie always said, ‘They would put your kitchen on the front of Woman’s Own if they could only see it.’
She was brought back from her reverie by the sound of a polite cough from Deidra. ‘Yes, I’ll have the coffee now, thanks very much, Deidra.’
‘And would you like a biscuit with it too?’
Another question. She smiled; it was an effort. ‘Yes, please. Why not. That would be very nice.’
The door closed with barely a sound. She looked around the room, smiled at Bluey and picked up the Daily Post from the table where Deidra had left it earlier that morning. The grandfather clock ticked the seconds by and began to chime the hour, the coals in the fire shifted and fell, and not for the first time she thought to herself that there was nothing quite as noisy as an empty house. If only the girls were more willing to chat, but Lizzie had warned her, ‘Don’t cross the boundaries. They know their place when you act like an employer. Start treating them like they’re your best friend and you’ll never know the last of it.’
She thought of the girl she’d met on the boat yesterday, Mary Kate, and smiled. She’d been like a breath of fresh air, had hardly stopped talking. ‘Oh, I’m really sorry,’ she’d said, ‘Roshine says that when I was born I must have been injected with a gramophone needle.’ Eileen hadn’t asked who Roshine was, but the constant stream of chatter had made the journey pass much quicker.
She sat by the fire, laid the newspaper on her knee and looked into the flames. It was a damp day, despite the time of year. What else did she have to do except wait until three thirty when Lizzie would arrive, as she always did, for afternoon tea. One day she might have the courage to ask Lizzie why, if she had her Deidra and extra help too, she was so terribly lonely.
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