The Leaving Of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  ‘What envelopes?’ For some reason Maggie went cold.

  ‘Well, you know I work on Ellis Island?’ Maggie didn’t know, but nodded all the same. ‘I’m a clerk there and tonight, just before I came home, a parcel of clothes was brought in that had been left unclaimed. There was a passport inside and some letters: they had your name and address written on the back. I would’ve brought them, but they wouldn’t let me. They’d been sent to a Mollie Kenny in County Kildare.’

  Maggie went even colder. ‘Whose name was on the passport? Did you look?’

  ‘Yes, it belonged to Annemarie Kenny. Mr Scarlatti, the supervisor, will be writing to you tomorrow. Is she a relative of yours, Miss Connelly?’

  ‘She’s my niece. Please excuse me, Mrs Tutty. It’s really nice of you to have called, but I need to go upstairs and think about this.’ She closed the door and stood with her back to it, breathing deeply, resisting the urge to scream at the top of her voice. First thing in the morning she’d send Francis Kenny a telegram demanding to know what was going on. In the meantime, she knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink that night.

  Levon Zarian opened the door of the apartment in Grammercy Park. ‘Tamara,’ he called softly. ‘I have a surprise for you.’

  ‘What is it, Lev?’ She came out of the bedroom, her face streaked with tears. It must have been one of the bad days for she was wearing the cream lace gown she’d had on when they’d found Larisa lying in a pool of her own blood. Tamara had screamed and knelt beside the body of her daughter and her skirt still bore the stains. She refused to throw the gown away.

  Levon pushed Anne Murray forward - she’d come quite willingly when he’d held out his hand. ‘Tamara, my love, I have brought you another daughter.’

  Chapter 3

  It hadn’t only been the sight of the Queen Maia sailing away with Annemarie on board that had made Mollie faint on that fateful afternoon. She’d been taken by ambulance to the Royal Hospital in Pembroke Place where it was discovered she was suffering from mild concussion as a result of the injury to her head.

  ‘I’d like to keep you in for a few days so I can keep an eye on you,’ the doctor said after he’d asked how many fingers he was holding up and she’d said two when there’d only been one. ‘Do your relatives know you’re here?’

  ‘I haven’t got any relatives in Liverpool,’ she told him.

  ‘You’re a bit young to be living here all on your own, aren’t you?’ His name was Dr Packer and he was a rotund, cheerful-looking individual with a bright-red face and mutton-chop whiskers.

  ‘I don’t live here.’ She ended up telling him the whole story, only missing out the reason she and her sister had left Ireland.

  He clucked sympathetically. ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Find somewhere to stay in Liverpool, then write to my aunt and ask her to send the money for another ticket.’ She’d find a cheap hotel, hoping they wouldn’t expect to be paid straight away and she could settle the bill when the money arrived.

  Three days later, she was discharged from the hospital. Her head still ached, and she knew the terrible mistake she’d made by allowing the Queen Maia to leave without her would haunt her for the rest of her days. She worried constantly about Annemarie, though comforted herself with the thought that Gertrude Strauss would look after her and make sure she had her drops. Dr Packer had said the ship’s doctor would have had digitalis, which only made Mollie feel stupid on top of everything else. Miss Strauss, or someone on the ship, would make sure her sister was safely delivered to Aunt Maggie, that’s if Aunt Maggie wasn’t there to meet her.

  According to Dr Packer, there were loads of small hotels close to the centre of the city and she’d find one easily. ‘Just go down London Road until you come to Lime Street, then ask someone, preferably a policeman.’

  London Road was packed with pedestrians; tramcars clanked their way along, cars hooted at the slow-moving horses and carts. Mollie felt disembodied, as if her spirit were elsewhere, and the heavy traffic sounded muted in her ears. She forced herself to stop and stare into the windows of the dozens of little shops she passed, to concentrate on the fashionable clothes, the shoes with high heels that she’d always wanted, a train set that Thaddy would have loved, the jack-in-the-box that would have amused Aidan. Oh, and earrings shaped like teardrops which were similar to ones Mammy had used to wear. Her eyes pricked with teardrops of her own: since Mammy died life had become too depressing for words. Yet even though being in Liverpool on her own made her feel as miserable as sin, it was better than living in Duneathly with the Doctor. She sniffed and wiped her eyes. If everything went well, in a few weeks she would be in New York with Annemarie and Aunt Maggie and feeling herself again.

  She arrived at Lime Street but, instead of asking the whereabouts of a small hotel, she stopped a woman pushing a baby in a giant pram and asked the way to Crosshall Street. She was badly in need of a friend right now.

  Agatha’s jaw dropped several inches when Mollie entered the chemist’s. She was in the middle of serving a male customer who couldn’t decide which ointment to buy. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she gasped when the man had gone. ‘I thought you’d be halfway across the Atlantic by now.’

  ‘So did I,’ Mollie answered, rolling her eyes. ‘At least, I did when I last saw you, but then didn’t I go and miss the boat?’

  ‘Flippin’ heck,’ Agatha snorted. ‘I thought you left in plenty of time.’

  ‘So did I, but it appears I got the time wrong.’

  Agatha looked even more stunned. ‘Where’s your sister?’ she enquired.

  ‘She’s halfway across the Atlantic.’ Mollie managed to raise the glimmer of a smile.

  ‘Jaysus! Where’ve you been for the last few days?’

  ‘In hospital. I’ve only just been let out. It seems I had concussion.’

  ‘Didn’t I say you should go to hospital with that bump on your head?’ She looked faintly smug at having been proven right.

  ‘You did indeed,’ Mollie agreed. ‘I hope you don’t mind me coming to see you.’ She and Agatha had hardly spoken to each other for more than half an hour and it seemed a bit of a cheek to seek her out as if she were a long-lost friend.

  ‘Mind!’ Agatha snorted again. ‘Of course I don’t mind. If you’d let me know before, I’d have visited you in the hospital.’ She came to the front of the counter. ‘Sit down so I can see what the bump’s like now.’ Mollie sat down and Agatha gently parted her hair so she could have a good look. ‘It’s shrunk,’ she announced. ‘The bump that is, not your head.’ She sat on the other chair. Behind her wire-rimmed glasses, her brown eyes shone with sympathy. ‘I suppose you’re feeling pretty fed up about things.’

  ‘More than fed up,’ Mollie said fervently. ‘I’m devastated.’

  ‘What are you going to do now?’

  ‘Look for a cheap hotel where I can stay until I hear back from my aunt in New York.’

  ‘You can stay with us,’ Agatha said instantly, ‘as long as you don’t mind sleeping on the sofa in the parlour. It mightn’t be as comfortable as a hotel, but it won’t cost you a penny.’

  The Brophys lived in Wavertree in a four-bedroom house with a big garden. Mrs Brophy could have moved somewhere cheaper when her husband had been killed in the Great War but, as Agatha explained, ‘she’s determined to hold on to the place, although it’s a struggle. According to her, it’s a matter of principle. She’d sooner we all went hungry than move. We get all our clothes from Paddy’s Market, though don’t mention that as she doesn’t want people to know. The way she looks at it, once all us girls are working, she can get a job herself and there’ll be plenty of money coming in and we can get rid of our creepy lodger.’

  Agatha had four younger sisters: Blanche, Cathy, Dora and Ellen, who were all as thin as herself. ‘I often wonder if they’d have gone through the entire alphabet if Dad had still been alive,’ Agatha mused. ‘I was only six when he volunteered. He and Mam had terrible rows ab
out it - our Ellen had only just been born - but he said it was his duty to fight for his country. Not long afterwards, he was killed in the Battle of the Somme. He’d had a really good job with a shipping company and worked in an office on the Dock Road, so Mam’s not used to being poor.’

  Mrs Brophy was small and dainty, and welcomed Mollie into her home with a warm kiss. ‘Aggie told us about you the other day. She was so envious of you going off to New York. It’s such a shame what happened.’

  Cathy, Dora and Ellen were still attending school. Blanche, who was fifteen and growing to be very tall, had wanted to become a mannequin and model clothes in one of the big London shops, but worked as a junior in an office down by the Pier Head.

  ‘I’m wasting me life,’ she grumbled on Mollie’s first night. ‘All I do is run round town with messages, do the filing, and make the tea. I’m nothing but a skivvy.’

  ‘You’re very lucky, having a nice clean job,’ Mrs Brophy told her. ‘If it hadn’t been for your father’s contacts, you could be a real skivvy. Then you’d have reason to complain.’

  Apparently, Mr Brophy’s contacts reached from beyond the grave. Agatha’s job in the chemist’s was also due to the manager having been a friend of her father’s.

  ‘I thought you worked there all by yourself?’ Mollie commented.

  ‘I do, but I’m not supposed to. Mr Gerard takes himself to the pub the minute it opens and doesn’t come back until it closes, so I’m there by meself most of the time.’

  Mrs Brophy was already in negotiation with another friend of her late husband to give thirteen-year-old Cathy a job in his restaurant in St John’s Street when she left school in the summer. Dora and Ellen wondered aloud what she had in mind for them.

  ‘We’ll just have to see, girls,’ their mother said enigmatically. ‘We’ll just have to see.’

  The lodger, Mr Wainscott, occupied the big bedroom at the front of the house. He sold Bibles door to door and read aloud a passage from his wares every night before he went to bed.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Mollie, if you hear a ghostly voice quoting Leviathan or Exodus at about eleven o’clock,’ Mrs Brophy warned her. ‘It’s just Mr Wainscott telling himself a bedtime story. He’s quite harmless, really. Always pays his rent on time, never complains about the food, and is mostly very quiet.’

  ‘He leaves a horrible smell in the lavatory, Mam,’ Dora complained, ‘and makes rude noises with his bottom.’

  ‘That’s because he has a problem with his bowels, love. Just ignore it; I do.’

  ‘You can’t just ignore a smell, Mam.’

  ‘Then hold your nose, Dora,’ her mother said sharply. ‘I do that as well.’

  All in all, despite her worries, Mollie quite enjoyed her stay with the Brophys, where the first thing she did was write to Aunt Maggie and Hazel. During the day, she helped with the housework and went on the occasional errand. Afternoons, she attached the buttons to gloves that Mrs Brophy had already painstakingly sewn together, a task for which she received sixpence for a dozen pairs.

  ‘It all helps, Mollie,’ she said serenely. ‘They come from an old friend of Robert’s. He always makes sure I receive the smallest sizes so there’s less sewing to do.’

  Since her husband had died, there’d been no chance of replacing the worn lino, the thinning carpets, curtains that were beginning to fray and wallpaper that had badly faded, so the house looked very shabby. Dinner consisted of the cheapest meat, which was minced in the big, cold kitchen and stewed with an enormous amount of vegetables, mostly potatoes. It tasted very watery and there was never a pudding. Yet Mollie admired Mrs Brophy for hanging on to her house. It would have been a simple matter to rent a smaller, cheaper one, but she had her standards and was determined to keep to them, even if it meant they ate like paupers and there was never a decent fire in the grate.

  On Wednesday, half-day closing, she met Agatha and they went to a matinée at the Palais de Luxe, a picture house in Lime Street where they saw Little Annie Rooney starring Mary Pickford. Seats down at the front only cost a penny. It was the first film Mollie had ever seen.

  ‘It was wonderful,’ she breathed ecstatically when it was over and they were strolling back to the tram stop.

  Agatha linked her arm. ‘I won’t half miss you when you’ve gone. I’ve got used to you living in our house.’

  ‘I’ll miss you, too,’ Mollie said sincerely. ‘But we can write to each other and perhaps one day you can come and see us.’

  ‘I’d love to, but it’ll be a long while before I have the opportunity,’ Agatha sighed.

  It would take weeks for her letter to reach Aunt Maggie and for her to answer, but Hazel’s reply came within just a few days, a long letter written in big, bold writing, just like Hazel herself. ‘Is your head better?’ she asked. ‘Oh, I bet you’d like to kick yourself, but it couldn’t be helped. If I weren’t nearly eight months pregnant, I’d come and see you. Finn’s as mad as hell: with you, with me, but especially his father. The family you’re staying with sound very nice . . . ’

  On the day the Queen Maia was due to dock in New York, Mollie thought about her sister constantly and prayed hard she would be all right. Annemarie was only thirteen. Surely she wouldn’t be left to look after herself.

  A few days later, Hazel wrote again. This time the letter was short and to the point: ‘Finn is coming to Liverpool on Saturday and wants you to meet him off the ferry. He should arrive at about ten o’clock.’

  On Saturday, Mollie went to meet her brother, wondering why on earth he was coming to Liverpool. She hoped it wasn’t to try to persuade her to go back to Duneathly. But she soon discovered that Finn was there for quite a different reason, something far more serious.

  It was two weeks and four days after the Queen Maia had set sail for New York when Finn Kenny arrived in Liverpool on the Irish boat. In that time, the weather had miraculously improved. It was still cold, but the sun shone brilliantly in a light-blue sky, making the River Mersey shimmer. Seagulls swooped over the water, crying mournfully in their vain search for food. Finn had enjoyed two earlier visits to the city, but wished this time that the reason for his trip wasn’t quite so grim.

  His sister, Mollie, met him off the boat, and they went to a little café with a lofty ceiling and bare, scrubbed tables, not far from the Pier Head. The delicious smell of frying bacon wafted from the kitchen. He ignored it and ordered a pot of tea for two. Apart from a bored-looking waitress and whoever was frying the bacon, they were the only people there. Neither spoke until the tea was brought.

  ‘Who’s this friend you’re staying with, Moll?’ he enquired.

  ‘Her name’s Agatha Brophy,’ Mollie replied. ‘We met in the chemist’s where I bought the digitalis for Annemarie. The family are Catholics and they’re very nice.’

  Finn frowned slightly, but otherwise felt satisfied with the answer. Mollie looked much thinner since he’d last seen her and he hoped the Brophys were feeding her properly, but, right how, it was his other sister he was most concerned about. ‘You know, Moll,’ he said sternly, ‘you should have told us about Dad the first time he . . . ’ He paused, not quite knowing how to put it. ‘The first time he did what he did. If you had, it would never have happened to Annemarie.’

  Mollie’s white cheeks went pink. ‘I know that now, don’t I, Finn?’ she said in a small voice. ‘But I didn’t want to cause any trouble. The first time wasn’t long after Mammy died. Everyone was already upset, and I didn’t want to make matters even worse.’

  ‘Our dad’s the only one who’d’ve been feeling worse once I’d sorted him out,’ Finn said hotly. He’d been shocked to the core when he’d discovered what had been happening in his own family and that he’d known nothing about it. He was an upright, virtuous young man and his father’s behaviour sickened him. ‘I’d’ve told him that if he touched you again I’d punch him into the middle of next week, dad or no dad.’ He quivered with anger. ‘The other day, I went to the house and had it out wit
h him - Hazel told me the whole story when she got your letter saying you’d missed the boat.’ They hadn’t stopped rowing about it since; with him wanting to know why she hadn’t told him before, and her saying she’d promised to keep it to herself. ‘Until then,’ he said to Mollie, ‘I’d been going mad with worry, wondering where the pair o’yis had gone.’

  ‘What did the Doctor have to say?’

  ‘That he’s sorry.’ But he hadn’t been all that sorry, not at first. He was simply surprised that it was him who’d driven his daughters away, though he had looked uncomfortable when his son had accused him of being a rapist and described the terrible effect it had had on Annemarie. Finn had never been all that fond of his father and his fingers had itched to punch the haughty, supercilious face. If it hadn’t been for his little brothers, he’d never have gone near the house again. ‘You don’t have to worry, Moll. He won’t dare touch you when you come home,’ he said now. Should he try, he’d have Finn to deal with, not to mention Hazel, who was threatening to report him to the peelers.

  ‘Oh, Finn, I’m not going home.’ Mollie shivered at the thought. ‘I never want to see Duneathly again. I want to go to New York and be with Annemarie. I wrote to Aunt Maggie at the same time as I wrote to Hazel and asked her to send the money for the fare to Agatha’s address. There’s thirty-six pounds in our suitcase. It’s what was left from Mammy’s inheritance after the tickets had been paid for. As soon as it arrives, I’ll be on the next boat to New York.’

  Finn reached for her hand and squeezed it, knowing he was about to relay some really horrifying news. ‘I’m sorry, Moll, but Annemarie never arrived at Aunt Maggie’s,’ he said gently. ‘Maggie sent a telegram the next day. Since then, she’s been searching for her everywhere, but hasn’t had any luck so far.’

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God!’ Mollie crossed herself and burst into tears, causing the waitress to stare. ‘Then what’s happened to her?’ she wailed.