by Maureen Lee
In the Golden Lamb Ruby Littlemore enquired, ‘How’s the digs, darlin’?’ Ruby was mildly drunk on Guinness. She had jet-black, tightly permed hair, purple-painted lips and too much mascara. She was young to be Elsa’s grandma, fifty-seven, but then Colin, Elsa’s dad, was only thirty-eight and looked young enough to be her brother.
‘Not so bad,’ said Fion. ‘The room’s a bit small and nowhere’s very clean, and I got tripe and onions for me tea, which I can’t stand. Mrs Napier looked a bit put out when I asked her not to give it me again, as if she doesn’t know how to cook anything else.’
‘She’ll think of something,’ Ruby said. ‘Blimey, you don’t need more than one set of brains to come up with sausage and mash. Are you hungry, darlin’?’ she asked in a concerned voice. ‘Come back to ours later and I’ll knock you up a plate of something.’
‘Thanks, but I bought a meat and potato pie on the way.’ It had been absolutely delicious.
‘Come round tomorrer for your dinner, anyway. Sat’days, I usually make a stew with all the leftovers. Elsa doesn’t work Sat’days. I don’t know if she told you.’
‘Yes, she’s taking me to Camden Market to buy some dead cheap clothes. I didn’t bring enough with me. We’re going dancing at the Hammersmith Palais tomorrer night. I’m cutting her hair before. And I’d like to come to dinner, ta.’ A midday meal wasn’t included in the thirty-five shillings a week Mrs Napier charged.
‘Elsa ses you’re starting work Monday.’ Colin Little-more, sitting on Fion’s other side, couldn’t possibly be described as handsome. He was desperately thin, with brown, haunted eyes, hollow cheeks and a soft, curvy mouth. Nevertheless, Fion thought him enormously attractive, far more so than Neil Greene, who hadn’t an ounce of character in his face. She thought it odd that she hadn’t noticed that before. During the war, Colin had been taken prisoner by the Japanese and put to work building a railway. He had managed to stay alive, but returned home an invalid, unable to work, his health in ruins. There was something wrong with his lungs, he couldn’t breathe properly and could only eat the tiniest of meals. He was sitting with an untouched glass of orange juice in front of him. His wife, Elsa’s mother, had been killed during the war when the factory in which she worked was bombed.
Fion said, ‘I saw a notice outside a factory just along the road. It said “Packers Wanted”. It’s called Pentonville Medical Supplies. I just walked in and they took me on straight away. I start Monday,’ she finished proudly. She had a job and somewhere to live in London, and it was as if Liverpool and her family had never existed.
Colin wrinkled his thin nose. ‘That company pays terrible rates.’
‘Four and six an hour, but I don’t care as long as it keeps me going.’
‘You should care. The labourer’s worthy of his hire. I knew a bloke who worked there once. He said they refused to recognise a union.’
Fion wasn’t interested in unions. No one had ever talked about unions or politics at home, mainly about hairdressing. She was reminded of the leaflet she’d been given in Hyde Park, which was still in her bag. She took it out and showed it to Colin.
‘Quite right, too,’ he said after he’d read it. ‘Equal pay for equal work; it makes sense.’
‘That’s what the woman said who gave it me. I suppose it does when you think about it; make sense, that is. Anyroad, I got really mad with the men who were trying to shout her down. I shouted them down instead.’
Colin smiled his gentle, boyish smile. ‘Good for you, darlin’. If more people lost their tempers when they thought something was unfair, then the world would be a much better place.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘What if Pentonville Medical Supplies are paying men more for doing the same job as women?’
‘Oh, gosh! I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I’ll get mad, like I did in Hyde Park.’
‘Let’s hope so.’ He suddenly got to his feet. ‘I’ll have to go.’ His voice was suddenly hoarse. ‘This smoke don’t do me lungs no favours.’ The smoke was rising towards the ceiling in white, wavy layers.
‘I wouldn’t mind an early night. I’ve had a busy week and I’m dead tired. I’ll come with you – that’s if you don’t mind.’
‘It’ll be a pleasure, darlin’.’
‘I’ll just say goodnight to Elsa.’
The pianist was playing ‘We’ll Meet Again’, when Fion and Colin Littlemore left the Golden Lamb and began to stroll down Pentonville Road. He was hardly as tall as her and as slight as a shadow. The tiny terraced house where he lived with his mother and his daughter was two streets along. Fion’s digs were down a street almost opposite.
It seemed entirely natural for Fion to link her arm in his thin one. She thought how nice and uncomplaining he was, compared with her own father who’d made the whole family suffer for the injury he’d received during the war, finally doing a bunk and completely disappearing out of their lives.
They walked in companionable silence until arriving at the street where Colin lived. ‘Would you like me to come in and make you a cup of tea?’ Fion asked.
‘I’d appreciate that, darlin’.’ Colin patted her hand. He didn’t think he’d ever met anyone so vulnerably innocent as Fionnuala Lacey. He remembered reading once that newly born chicks attached themselves to the first human being they clapped eyes on because they didn’t have a mother. Fion had left home and attached herself in the same way to Elsa, then to Elsa’s family, because she felt friendless and unbearably lonely. At the same time, he reckoned that if circumstances called for it, she could be quite tough.
‘I’ll send me mam a card tomorrer,’ Fion said as they turned the corner. ‘She’s probably dead worried.’
‘She’s more likely climbing the walls.’
‘I won’t give her me address, though. I’ll just say I’m all right.’
‘That’ll put her mind at rest. Actually, darlin’,’ he panted, ‘I think I’ll have to sit on the step a minute, get me breath back, before I go in the house.’
Fion sat on the step beside him. ‘Is there anything I can do? Rub your back, or something?’
‘No, but you can go in and put the kettle on. Here’s the key.’
‘Ta.’
He heard her run down the hall, anxious to help, then the rush of water in the kitchen, and thought she would make a good, caring mother – and a wonderful wife. With someone like Fion Lacey at his side, a man could conquer the world.
Colin smiled, then gave a little sigh. If only he were younger and in better health . . .
The young woman emerged from the art college into the grey drizzle of the late October day. She carried a large folder, the sides tied together with tape, underneath her arm. In her black and white striped slacks and baggy red jumper, and with her fair hair loose about her face, she looked like a teenager, but the man concealed in the doorway further down Hope Street knew that she was thirty and had three children, all old enough to be at school.
It was for this reason, to collect the children on time, that she was walking so swiftly and purposefully. He knew, because he had watched before, that she would walk all the way to Exchange Station rather than catch a bus somewhere more convenient like Skelhorne Street. A bus could get caught up in traffic and she might be late. She was a conscientious mother to her children.
More students came out of the college. One, a young man in his twenties, saw the young woman hurrying away. His face broke into a smile as he ran to catch her up. The woman smiled back, but didn’t pause in her stride. The watching man shrank into the doorway when they passed on the other side.
What were they talking about? Would the chap accompany her all the way to the station? They might even catch the train together. The man in the doorway took a deep, shuddering breath. He smelt danger.
Clare and the young man parted on the corner of Lime Street and he went to catch the train to Rock Ferry. She wondered if John was still watching. Had he followed her this far? Or was he racing back to the factory in the van preparing for tonight�
��s interrogation, starting with, ‘Did you talk to anyone today?’
‘Of course,’ she would say. ‘I couldn’t very well spend the entire day at art school without speaking to a soul.’
‘What about on the way home?’
As he’d seen her with Peter White, she’d have to concede that she had indeed spoken to someone on the way home. It was no good trying to laugh the questions away, because he would just persist and persist until he got an answer, even if it was an answer he didn’t want.
‘Yes, I spoke to someone on the way home. His name is Peter White, he lives in Rock Ferry and he’s twenty-one. His mam and dad are Quakers. Anything else? Would you like his chest measurements? What he has for breakfast? How often he has his hair cut?’
But she wouldn’t say all those things, because she’d done it before and John had called her ‘insolent’ and hit her. She would answer the question simply and leave it at that.
Passing St George’s Hall, two men whistled at her approach. She felt, rather than saw, them both turn and watch her walk away, and was aware of letting her hips swing more widely. It was more than a year since she’d had the operation and her perfectly mended face still gave her a thrill of delight when she caught sight of her reflection in a shop window or an unexpected mirror.
She would always be grateful to John, but he seemed to want more than gratitude and she didn’t know what it was – to cocoon her from life, to hide her away out of sight of other human beings. It had been like a red rag to a bull when she said she wanted to go to art school because she’d longed to learn to draw – properly, not the scrawly, amateur things she’d done before.
John had done his utmost to stop her: threatened, bullied, refused to give her the money for the fees. Hit her!
‘It’s either art school or I’ll get a job,’ Clare said coldly. ‘I’m not staying in the house by myself for the rest of my life.’ She was bored out of her mind, full of unusual energy, the urge to explore, get to know people. But it was as if she’d escaped from the prison of her deformity and found herself in another, private, prison with John the warder.
‘Meet anyone today?’ John asked casually that night when she came downstairs after reading the children their story.
‘I meet all sorts of people all day long.’
‘I meant anyone special, that is.’
‘I don’t know what you mean by “special”.’ She knew she was being awkward, but ‘special’ seemed a strange word to use. Perhaps it was the only one he could think of to describe the short walk she’d taken with Peter White.
She could tell he was struggling to think of another way to pose the question and felt sick to her soul at the idea of having to relate in detail the entirely innocuous things she’d said to Peter. She wondered what his reaction would be if he knew Peter had asked her out! Imagine telling him that!
‘I’m going to bed.’ She got up abruptly. ‘I feel very tired.’ It was only half past eight and she resented having to go so early, but it was the only way to escape further interrogation. She would have liked to practise her drawing.
‘I’ll be up in a minute. I’m fair worn out too.’
Don’t hurry, she wanted to say. Please don’t hurry. These days, she couldn’t stand him touching her. His eager, exploring fingers made her stomach turn. There was something so possessive about the way he made love. He made her feel like a thing, not a person.
This can’t go on, Clare thought as she pulled the bedclothes around her shoulders. I can’t put up with this much longer. I won’t put up with it. She’d cast out on her own before and would do it again, though this time she wouldn’t be on her own but would have three children. She thought of disappearing to another country, Canada or Australia, but the children had Lacey on their birth certificates and she didn’t have wedding lines to prove she was their mother. John’s authority would be required before they would be given passports and he mustn’t know they were leaving. She had the uneasy feeling he might kill her if he found out.
She would finish the art course first so it would be easier to get a job. And she would need money. Fortunately, John was generous with the housekeeping. She’d start putting a few pounds aside each week. It would take a while, but she already felt better, knowing there was a future in which John Lacey no longer figured. She would be free. ‘Our Fion? Oh, she’s living in London,’ Alice announced gaily. ‘She went weeks ago. She’s having the time of her life.’
‘Is she working in a hairdresser’s?’ the customer enquired.
Patsy O’Leary answered: ‘Yes, in this dead posh place in Knightsbridge, not far from Harrods, as it happens.’ Patsy was innocently relaying the lie Alice had told her to explain Fion’s sudden disappearence.
Alice went into the kitchen and the customer winked at Patsy. ‘I suppose she’ll be back in six or seven months and the population of the world will have increased by one.’
‘Oh, no,’ Patsy said, annoyed. ‘Not Fionnuala. She’s not a bit like that.’
The woman looked suitably chastened and changed the subject to one close to Patsy’s heart. ‘How’s your Daisy’s Marilyn?
‘Oh, she’s fine. You’ll never believe this, but she’s only nine months old and already walking . . .’
As Patsy had predicted, the customer didn’t believe a single word.
Orla only had to mention once to her father-in-law that she would very much like a typewriter for him to arrive at the house in Pearl Street within a week, bearing an old, battered Royal. He winked. ‘You’ll never guess where this came from!’
‘Oh, yes I do.’ Orla had known where it would come from when she’d asked him to get it. The backs of lorries proved a useful source of supply whenever they needed something they couldn’t afford. Lulu’s new bike had come the same way and several other of the children’s toys.
‘It works OK,’ Bert said. ‘I’ve tried it. Managed to type me own name, though it took a good ten minutes. Where would you like it, luv?’
‘In the parlour. Thanks, Bert.’
‘Any time, luv. All you have to do is ask.’
Orla was about to joke she wouldn’t have minded a mink coat, but held her tongue in case one appeared.
‘Now, you look here,’ she said sternly to the children that night. ‘This is not a toy to be played with. This is mine. Do you understand that?’ She spelt the word out carefully. ‘M – I – N – E. It belongs to your mum.’
‘Can you get toy ones?’ Lulu wanted to know.
‘I’m not sure. I’ll ask Grandad.’
‘What’s it for, luv?’ Micky asked when he came home. Maisie and Gary were attached to his legs, and he was holding baby Paul in his arms. Lulu, her arms resting on the table, was taking far too much thoughtful interest in the typewriter.
‘To make pastry with.’ Orla rolled her eyes. ‘What the hell d’you think it’s for, Micky Lavin? It’s to type on, you great oaf. People used to send little items of local news to the Crosby Star and I thought I’d do the same, as well as to the Bootle Times. I could even try and write articles. I wouldn’t make much from it, but every little helps.’
‘We’re not short of money, are we?’ Micky looked alarmed. Every week he handed over every penny of his wages and Orla gave him five bob back for himself. Otherwise, the housekeeping was a mystery to him.
‘We’re all right. Not exactly flush, so a bit extra’s useful. It means we might be able to afford a holiday. In a caravan, say, somewhere like Southport.’
Micky’s dark eyes brightened. ‘That would be the gear.’
‘Wouldn’t it!’ Their glances met and Orla’s insides did a somersault, though there was nothing remotely romantic about a caravan holiday in Southport. By now, Orla had expected to be living in Mayfair, interviewing famous people for a top newspaper or magazine. Instead, she was stuck in a little house in Bootle with a husband and four children. She didn’t know if she was happy or not.
The children, Micky and Orla collapsed together on to the settee
and hugged each other lavishly. Orla wasn’t sure if this was happiness, but it would do for now.
Alice was in the throes of buying the lease on a hairdresser’s in Strand Road that was closing down.
‘Why do you do it, Mam?’ Orla asked curiously. She had come round to see her mother one Sunday afternoon. Micky had taken the children to North Park and she felt bored on her own.
‘Do what, luv?’
‘Keep buying new hairdressers?’
‘For goodness sake, Orla. I took over Myrtle’s fourteen years ago. There’s only been Marsh Lane since then.’
‘You might soon have one in Strand Road. That’ll be three.’
Alice shrugged. ‘I’m not sure why. It’s not the money. I suppose I find it exciting. Anyroad, our Fion’s gone, and by this time next year Maeve will be married and Cormac at university. I need something to keep me busy, fill up me life, as it were.’
‘Oh, Mam!’ Orla cried. ‘That sounds really sad.’
‘Sometimes I feel really sad.’ Alice glanced around the room which still had the same furniture that Orla remembered from her childhood. ‘I sometimes wonder how things would have gone if your dad were still at home. If only he hadn’t had that accident.’
‘I’m fed up hearing about the stupid accident,’ Orla said hotly. ‘Anyroad, it wasn’t that that mucked everything up. It was the way he behaved afterwards. There was a girl at school whose dad lost both legs in the war, but he didn’t take it out on his family. People are funny . . .’ Orla paused.
‘Funny in what way, Orla?’
‘Things happen and it brings out the worst in people, or it brings out the best. If Dad hadn’t burnt his face, we would never have known he was capable of behaving the way he did, or that you were capable of running three hairdressers.’