The Narrowboat Girl

by Annie Murray

  Maryann tried to speak, shaking her head and making a strangled noise.

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I ’ave – come on. Just last week,’ she babbled as he released her. She yanked herself away from him. ‘You touch me again and I’ll scream. I’ll get my mom down ’ere and then she might believe what an evil, filthy bastard you are.’ She had her hand on the door to the stairs. ‘You’re never touching me again.’

  Norman lunged at her and Maryann opened her mouth and managed to force out a scream.

  ‘Shut it!’ He was ablaze with fury and frustrated lust. ‘Shut up that racket, yer little bitch.’

  He went to put his hand back over her mouth but she yanked the door open and screamed again. There came the sound of a door opening upstairs.

  ‘Norman?’ Flo Griffin’s voice was full of sleep. ‘What’s the noise? What’s going on?’

  Maryann fled up the stairs, not meeting her mother’s eye.

  ‘Nothing, love – just Maryann being silly. Now she’s gone and woken yer.’

  ‘I’m not working for you no more.’

  He was eating breakfast. She stood by the table, in front of all the family.

  ‘What’re you talking about?’ Flo turned on her at once. ‘You’ve only been there one day!’

  ‘I ain’t staying.’ She screwed up every ounce of self-possession and courage and looked into Norman’s eyes. I’m not scared of you, her expression said. She was, she was terrified, her hands were shaking, but she pressed them together. She wasn’t going to let him see. ‘I’m going to look for another job today.’

  ‘How dare you talk like that!’ Flo erupted. But Norman raised a hand to silence her.

  ‘I can’t say I’m not disappointed in yer, Maryann. It’ll cause me a lot of trouble ’aving to get someone else. But if yer not happy – I know some people don’t take to working with the dead. I don’t want anyone saying I’m not a reasonable man. And if you go in one of the factories you should get a decent wage.’

  ‘But, Norman!’ Flo protested. ‘You’re surely not just going to let ’er get away with this, the little minx?’

  ‘It’s awright, Flo. ’Er’s more hot-headed than our Sal. Let ’er go ’er own way. As long as you work out the rest of the week, Maryann, that’s all I ask.’

  ‘There,’ Flo cried. ‘See ’ow nice yer father’s being after all the trouble you’ve caused!’

  There was a long silence. Maryann felt Tony’s eyes on her face. She looked away across at the range where the kettle was starting to boil.

  She spoke quietly. ‘I’m finishing today.’

  ‘You’ll work the week out.’ She couldn’t look at him any more, couldn’t face the cold hatred in his eyes. She knew that beneath the calm exterior, Norman Griffin was seething with rage at being thwarted.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘Today.’

  She found a job at a jam factory, where she had to be in as the hooter went at ten to eight. Another went off at eight and work began. The girls all wore clogs, which were hard and blistered her feet. Fruit and sugar were brought on carts and the jam stirred in huge vats, its smell sweet and cloying. Maryann was in the labelling department, not an arduous job, but even if it had been, anything would have been better than working with Norman Griffin. She had some laughs with the other girls, biding her time. This wasn’t where she was going to be for ever. As soon as Sal got herself sorted out a bit she’d be off. She spent as little time as she could at home and at night she took to ramming her bed close up against the door so it couldn’t open. She wasn’t going to let him get at her, never again. When she heard him come up to bed the first time, and push at her door, she lay seething with hatred of him and fierce satisfaction.

  That’s stopped your game, she thought.

  As the summer passed and turned into autumn, she knew Norman, too, was biding his time. But she was at work all day, and she managed carefully to avoid being alone with him at any time. Her main worry was Sal. She couldn’t keep going over every day, especially as Sal often wasn’t there. She did try and go at least once a week. But after that time of closeness when Sal had cried in her arms and admitted how wretched she felt, she never let Maryann see her true state of mind again.

  Twice when Maryann went in August, Sal came home late and clearly the worse for drink.

  ‘What the hell’s kept yer?’ Maryann raged at her the first time, as Sal came staggering in after dark. She’d been waiting ages, cursing Sal, worrying about her. She felt as if things had reversed and she was the older sister now, having to keep an eye on Sal all the time. ‘You’re in a disgusting state. You’re going to have to pull yourself together or you’ll get thrown out – she’s already said she don’t like the way you carry on.’

  Sal lurched over to the bed. Her cheeks were grimy with sweat and face powder, she was dishevelled, hair all in a mess and she stank of drink.

  ‘I’m in a disgusting state!’ she repeated. She rocked back and forth as if thinking about this, then started laughing, a drunken, foolish laugh that made Maryann feel like slapping her. Instead she stood over her and shook her by the shoulders.

  ‘Who’ve yer been with? Who is it’s buying yer all this booze?’

  ‘Oh, mind your own bloody business,’ Sal sneered. Her face was grotesque in the candlelight, with its pencilled-in eyebrows. ‘I’ve got my own pals now, ta very much. I’ve got my big strong friend Bill, looks after me. Oh yes ’e does – ’e’s a big’un now, ’e is . . .’

  ‘You’re horrible—’ Maryann pushed her away. ‘You’re nearly as bad as Norman. Look at yourself, Sal. What’s going to become of you?’ She went to the door. ‘I’m not staying with you like this. There ain’t no point in talking to you.’

  ‘If you don’t want Norman on you,’ Sal called after her, ‘just tell ’im you’ve come on.’

  ‘I did,’ Maryann snapped back at her. ‘I ain’t stupid and nor’s he. He daint believe me. Don’t you worry about me – not that you were. I’ve got my own way of dealing with him.’

  A week later Sal was caught trying to smuggle a man up to her room and the landlady threw her out. She moved to another grim attic in a nearby street.

  Maryann felt desperate about her. She tried to talk to Flo about Sal again, but all Flo said was, ‘What can I do about ’er? ’Er’s the one walked out on us. If ’er’s going to the bad there ain’t nothing I can do about it. I washed my hands of ’er. Sal can go to hell ’er own way, that’s my way of looking at it.’

  Sal was the only thing keeping Maryann at home now. And she was dangerously close to giving up on Sal herself.

  Twenty-Three

  Another month had passed. It was October, the nights drawing in, leaves in the gutters and foggy mornings. Maryann had been loyally visiting Sal so far as she could manage it. Sometimes Sal was in when she got there; more often she wasn’t, and Maryann was fed up with waiting, anxious and hungry, in those dismal lodgings for her to come back. She kept thinking one day Sal would walk in and be the sister she had been before, bossy and hoity-toity, but kind and good for a laugh. But when she did come back, Sal was often rude and offhand.

  Maryann had confided about it to Nancy only the previous weekend, she had felt so heavy-hearted. The two of them sat at the table in the Blacks’ downstairs room, sipping lemon pop out of jam jars. Her mom and her dad were out and Nance was holding Lizzie on her lap and minding some of the younger ones who were running in and out. Nance hadn’t got her dream job at Kunzle’s and was working in a laundry, but she seemed cheerful enough about it.

  ‘Last time I went to see ’er,’ Maryann complained, ‘she come in – in the end – and says to me, “What’re you doing ’ere?” As if I was vermin or summat. She’s drinking ever such a lot, Nance. And the other night I was sat there and I ’eard ’er come in. There was giggling and shushing on the stairs – I could tell there was someone else with ’er. In they come – ’er and this bloke. Oh Nance, I swear to God ’e was the ’orriblest looking man I’v
e ever seen, broken nose, the lot, and ’e was ever so much older than ’er.

  ‘ “Who’s this then?” ’e says, swaggering about like one of them cowboys. Sal ’ad to shut ’im up talking so loud ’cause ’e weren’t meant to be there. “That’s just my baby sister,” she says. “And ’er’s just leaving, ain’t yer, Maryann?” She was all nasty and superior – didn’t care about me at all and that I’d been there waiting for ’er.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Nance said. She was biting at the nails of her right hand, which already looked red and work-worn. ‘Fancy your Sal carrying on like that. I mean our Charlie would’ve married ’er, you know, when they was old enough, if things’d’ve been different. He was ever so sweet on ’er. And when yer think what ’er used to be like!’

  ‘I was that upset – well, I was furious with ’er! But I could see they’d ’ad a few and I wasn’t going to start a shouting match or I’d’ve got ’er thrown out again. But, oh Nance, it made me feel so bad seeing ’er with that great ape of a bloke . . .’

  ‘So what did yer do?’

  ‘I went ’ome and left ’em to it.’

  Nance shook her head in a way that reminded Maryann of Cathleen. ‘What’s up with ’er then? I mean there’s you and ’er – had everything the same and there’s ’er going right off the rails.’

  Maryann quickly looked down. She couldn’t tell Nance. Blackie Black may have been a broken man and a drunk but he didn’t do those things, did he? Not like Norman Griffin, who had shut them off from everyone, alone with their sense of disgust.

  She’d delayed going back to Sal’s place in Hockley, putting it off after the way Sal had treated her. Why should I keep running after her if that’s how she goes on? Maryann thought, I’d be on the Esther Jane with Joel if it wasn’t for her. She dreaded going, wondering who she might find Sal with. She knew deep down that this wasn’t the real Sal, that her sister was broken and desperate inside, and it wrung her heart to see her behaving the way she was and not know what to do about it.

  That day, after work, she forced herself to go. When she got off the tram her heart started pounding and her legs turned shaky with misgiving.

  Don’t be so daft, she told herself. Sal won’t even be in yet – not this time of day.

  When she reached the house, the front door was half open. The usual fusty smells greeted her. She walked straight in and tiptoed up the stairs, holding her breath. When she reached the top, Maryann stood uncertainly outside. Should she knock? Just supposing Sal was in there with some man, she’d be livid with her and the last thing she wanted was to witness such a scene. Sal had never told her anything, not directly, but Maryann knew what Sal let those men do to her. She could see it in her sister’s eyes, she had seen the lust on the ape bloke’s face when he looked at Sal, drunken and lecherous.

  But surely it was too early for that. She leaned close to the door. Not a sound. The door opened with a squeak. She could tell immediately that the room wasn’t deserted after all. It had the feel of a person in it. It smelled stale. The bedclothes, such as they were, were pulled up over the hunched shape of a body lying face to the wall.

  ‘Sal?’ Maryann cried, alarmed. ‘What’s up? Are you bad?’ She yanked the blanket down. Sal seemed to be in a very deep sleep. Maryann nudged at her, pulled her so that she flopped over on to her back and at last Sal managed to prise her eyes open.

  ‘Sal! ’Ve you been lying there all day like this? What’s up?’

  Sal winced, laying an arm over her eyes to shut out the light.

  ‘Ooh,’ she groaned. ‘My head! What time is it?’

  ‘’Bout half past five, or later. Ain’t you been to work today?’

  ‘Nah.’ There was a silence, then, ‘They let me go – Monday. Said I weren’t no good to ’em.’

  ‘They didn’t! How’re you going to get by? You bin out to find summat else?’

  Sal pulled her arm away and attempted a smile, which emerged as a sly grimace. ‘There’s easier ways to earn money.’

  ‘Sal . . .’ Maryann stared at her. ‘Yer don’t mean . . .?’

  ‘Oh, pack in carrying on at me, will yer? My ’ead’s fit to split. Go down and see if yer can get a cuppa tea out of that skinflinty old cow down there, will yer? I gotta ’ave summat to ease it.’

  ‘Awright,’ Maryann agreed reluctantly. ‘But I can’t see ’er handing over a cuppa tea.’

  She went down the dim kitchen at the back of the house where a hairy Scots terrier, as corpulent as its mistress, was lying by the range. Without bothering to shift itself, it started up a shrill barking as soon as Maryann appeared. The lady of the house was slumped in a greasy old armchair close by, everything about her seeming to be drawn inexorably down towards the floor: her sludge-coloured hair, cheeks, chins, sagging breasts. She was drinking out of a cup and there was a jug on the table. Maryann could tell from the smell that it was ale.

  ‘Stop that yapping, will yer!’ the woman bawled at the dog. Looking round she spotted Maryann. ‘What’re you doing barging in ’ere, eh? Made me bloody jump.’

  ‘Can my sister ’ave a cuppa tea?’ Maryann asked as politely as she could. ‘Only she ain’t feeling well today.’

  The woman took a mouthful from her cup, which left froth on her top lip. ‘Kettle ain’t on,’ she said, turning away indifferently. ‘And it won’t be neither.’

  In the end, Maryann ran down the street to find a coffee house where she bought Sal a glass of tea and paid an extra penny to retrieve when she took the glass back. Sal was still lying staring at the ceiling. The light was going and the sight of her made Maryann feel so sad she almost started crying. Her emotion made her speak sharply.

  ‘Come on – get this down yer, sis, and pull yerself together.’

  Sal hauled herself, wincing, up to a sitting position and leaned forward, cradling her head in her hands. She still had her black dress on from the night before, rucked up round her waist.

  ‘Oh God, Maryann, I feel that bad, I do.’

  ‘Drink up,’ Maryann said, more gently. ‘It’s getting cold. I got it down the road – there’s plenty of sugar in it.’

  ‘Ta.’ But Sal still couldn’t seem to move. Her blonde hair was loose and hanging lank round her face. Maryann pulled it back over her shoulders and held the cup to Sal’s lips.

  ‘’Ere—’ Her voice was tender now. ‘’Ave a sip, Sal.’

  Sal leaned towards the glass and sipped. The sisters sat quietly together as Sal managed to get almost half the tall glass of tea down her. Maryann stroked her back.

  ‘You can’t go on with all this boozing,’ she said.

  But Sal stopped drinking and began to whimper. ‘I’m going to be sick, Maryann!’

  Maryann rushed across the room, ducked under the table for an old yellowed newspaper that was lying there and opened it in Sal’s lap just in time. A gush of tea and bile pooled in the newspaper. Sal retched miserably, and when she’d finished, Maryann folded the ends of the dripping paper into a bundle and dumped it by the door. Sal panted and then her gulping from being sick turned into gulping from her tears.

  ‘You don’t want to keep on like this, do yer?’ Maryann said, wrapping her arms round her. ‘Oh, sis, I hate to see you like this.’

  Sal cried even more, shaking her head. ‘I’m scared, Maryann. I’m so scared.’

  ‘What’re you scared of? You’re just feeling poorly, that’s all.’ But Maryann was scared too. ‘You need to get some food inside you and you’ll feel better. Shall I go out and see if I can get yer a couple of cobs from somewhere?’

  ‘No!’ Sal shook her head, then groaned and pressed her hands to each side of it to still the pain. ‘It ain’t only that, Maryann. It’s . . . I think I’m expecting.’

  ‘Expecting?’

  ‘A babby.’

  Maryann drew back, gaping at her. The thought had never crossed her mind. ‘Oh no – oh Sal! Whose babby?’

  Sal wouldn’t look at her. ‘I don’t know. God ’elp me, I don’t even kn
ow.’

  She just couldn’t tell her mom when she got home, not out with it, cold like that. It didn’t seem real to her. She only had the vaguest knowledge of the connection between what men and women did together and how babies came out of it. She knew her mom’d be livid and most likely go over there and give Sal a beating.

  ‘Well, what’s ailing ’er?’ Flo was demanding, standing over Maryann as she tried to force down some of a mutton chop and congealed gravy.

  Maryann looked up at her. ‘I’ve never seen ’er so bad, Mom. She ain’t ’erself, and she’s poorly. Will yer go and see ’er? Be a bit nice to ’er, like?’

  Flo put her hands to her waist in a defensive posture. ‘I don’t know why Sal can’t get ’erself over ’ere to see us. I mean, I’ve got quite enough going on, what with Billy and the house . . .’ She saw Maryann’s face. ‘Awright – I’ll try and get over to see ’er some time. She don’t deserve it though, everyone running at ’er beck and call, that she don’t!’

  Maryann knew she had to go over and see Sal the next day. Poor Sal would have been there all day on her own, with only her thoughts for company and hardly the strength or will to get herself any food to eat.

  She changed into her shoes and left the factory at the end of her shift, absent-mindedly calling goodbyes to her workmates as they all streamed out to the street, eager to get home. The light was fading and the air, foggy and full of smoke, stung her nostrils.

  The lamps were lit by the time she got to Sal’s lodgings and the pubs were already doing a brisk trade. This time she had to knock and it seemed ages before she heard the woman shuffling along the hall to open the door. The landlady peered out, suspiciously.

  ‘Ow, it’s you. I ain’t ’eard nothing out of ’er today.’

  Well, that ain’t any surprise, Maryann thought. When you’ve got your nose in a jug of ale all day long. She didn’t say anything, just went on up the stairs.

  ‘Sal?’ She tapped the door and went in. To her surprise the room was dark, and she felt a sudden rush of hope. Maybe Sal had been mistaken, had just had a fancy that there was a babby on the way because she was poorly. Maybe today she was feeling better and had gone out. Even Sal’s old habits seemed better at the moment than the plight of being in the family way.