by Maureen Lee
After it was established that she wanted a white hat, ‘preferably straw’, Mollie was commanded to fetch a series of white hats from the stock room at the back. ‘The cloche with the red silk flower, and the one with the lace insets - blue lace, Mrs Ashton. It’s terribly pretty. Oh, and bring that little boater with the petersham ribbon, dear.’
The shop quickly became a jumble of hats and round, candy-striped boxes. Mrs Ashton tried on all of them, had another glass of sherry, and eventually bought the pink organdie hat with a wired brim and a floppy rose on the side that Roberta had not long put in the window.
She departed, saying she would now have to buy an entirely new outfit to go with it, and Roberta collapsed in a chair. ‘It looked ghastly on her, but I couldn’t very well tell her that, could I?’ she said, looking pious.
‘Not really.’ The pink hat, Roberta had insisted, made Mrs Ashton look just like Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon who, not long ago, had married the Duke of York in Westminster Abbey. It was as big a lie as Ena Gerraghty claiming she stocked the latest Paris fashions in her shop in Duneathly.
The same performance was repeated four more times that morning, with only one woman managing to resist Roberta’s flowery compliments and leaving the shop hatless.
At one o’clock, dinner-time, Mollie made her way to Blackler’s, a big department store no distance from Clayton Square, where the hats were only a fraction of Roberta’s prices, not that it was a hat she was after. The weather was becoming increasingly warmer and she badly needed a couple of summer frocks: the one she was wearing was made of thick material and made her feel sticky and hot. She wondered what had happened to the ones in the suitcase that she’d been taking with her to New York. More importantly, what had happened to the money, the thirty-six pounds that Mammy had left her? It had seemed an enormous amount and to some people it was a small fortune, more than they would expect to earn in an entire year - if they had a job, that is. With thirty-six pounds, she could have had a really splendid wedding, but it wouldn’t have been so much fun. She’d enjoyed wandering around Paddy’s Market searching for a wedding dress and shoes, and it was lovely to know lots of people were contributing the food for the reception.
She looked through the frocks, trying to make up her mind which to buy - not easy for someone who’d always had every stitch of clothing made by an expert dressmaker. All she’d had to do at Sinead Larkin’s was look through a pattern book and pick whatever she fancied. Some frocks weren’t grand enough for Roberta’s, and others were too ostentatious for Turnpike Street but would do as a going-away outfit. The honeymoon was a long weekend in Blackpool.
‘I’ll think about it tonight and come back tomorrow,’ she said to herself, as she left Blackler’s and made her way to Crosshall Street to see Agatha.
The chemist’s was closed, so she knocked on the window and Agatha appeared from the back munching a sandwich. ‘Would you like one?’ she asked after she’d let Mollie in.
‘No, thanks, it looks horrible.’ She regarded the sandwich with distaste. ‘Why is the bread all pink?’
‘Because it’s got beetroot on, that’s why,’ Agatha replied, munching away. ‘It’s good for you, beetroot.’
‘Irene’s already made me sandwiches. I don’t know what’s on them, but the bread’ll be three times too thick. I have them when Roberta goes for her dinner, save wasting my own dinner-time eating.’
‘What happens if someone comes in to buy a hat?’
‘Then I stop eating, don’t I?’ Unlike Roberta, she didn’t shower the customers with false compliments, but still managed to sell quite a few hats.
They went into the back of the shop, where Agatha, who’d been expecting her, poured tea. ‘About me bridesmaid’s frock,’ Agatha began.
Mollie groaned. ‘I told you, you can wear anything you want: any colour, any style, I don’t care.’
‘What about plum?’
‘Plum’s fine.’
‘Plum with sequins?’
‘That’s fine, too.’
‘I was going to take the sequins off, but I removed one and it left a little mark, so I had to stick it back on.’
‘That’s still fine.’
‘I wish you’d express an opinion,’ Agatha said sulkily.
‘I’ve just expressed three opinions: fine, fine, and fine again.’
‘I don’t want to turn up looking a sight.’
‘Do you like plum, Aggie?’ Mollie raised her eyebrows questioningly.
‘It’s me favourite colour - and don’t call me Aggie, you know I hate it.’
‘I only called you Aggie because you’re getting on my nerves.’ She gave her friend a stern look. ‘Do you like sequins?’
‘I love them.’ Agatha clasped her hands together under her chin. ‘I’ve always wanted a frock with sequins, preferably plum.’
‘Then I shall be highly offended if you don’t wear your new frock to my wedding. Where did you buy it?’
‘Where d’you think? Paddy’s Market. The place where you got your wedding dress, where everyone buys their clothes if they want to look fashionable but haven’t got the money. I bought a tiara at the same time. It’s got two diamonds missing, but I don’t think anyone’ll notice.’
The girls grinned at each other, then began to laugh until their sides ached. When they’d finished, Agatha said, ‘I know I shouldn’t say this, Moll, but I’m not half glad you missed the boat to New York and stayed in Liverpool. I’ve never had a friend like you before.’
‘And I’ve never had one like you, either.’
‘We’ll still see each other when you’re married to Tom, won’t we?’ Agatha said anxiously.
‘Of course,’ Mollie assured her. ‘We’ll go the pictures once a week, like always, and you can come and visit when Tom’s working nights, so we can have a natter.’
‘That’s all right, then.’ Agatha gave a happy sigh.
She’d been desperately lucky, Mollie thought as she made her way back to Roberta’s. Her first few days in Liverpool had been truly horrible, but the Brophys had taken her to their hearts and made her feel one of the family. They would always be friends. Then she’d met Tom, and the Ryans had done the same. Tom made her feel very special in a way no one had since Mammy died. She wondered if God had had a hand in making her miss the boat, because Liverpool was the place where He had intended her to be and New York was the place for Annemarie.
At half past five, Roberta’s door opened and Tom came in, smartly dressed, hat in hand, looking well scrubbed and extremely handsome. Mollie’s heart gave a little leap - it had been happening a lot lately, the way her heart jumped whenever she saw him.
‘You look nice, luv,’ he remarked. He said the same thing every time they met.
Mollie replied, as she always did, ‘So do you.’ The shop seemed to have acquired a rosy glow since Tom had entered.
Roberta cried, ‘And where are you two lovebirds off to?’
‘To the Majestic to see Orphans of the Storm with Dorothy and Lillian Gish,’ Tom informed her. ‘It’s directed by D.W. Griffith, who’s a genius, in my humble opinion.’ It was also Tom’s humble opinion that, had he not become a policeman, he would have made an excellent film director, though not, he conceded with rare modesty, of quite the same calibre as D.W. Griffith.
‘Did you catch any criminals today?’ Mollie asked when they were outside.
‘Not exactly. Most criminals only come out of doors when it’s dark. There was this chap who was knocked down and killed by a motor car in Renshaw Street and I had to go and inform his missus.’
‘Oh, that must have been awful for you!’
‘It was even worse for his missus.’ Tom shuddered. Despite his brash, confident manner, inside he was an extremely sensitive young man. ‘She didn’t half cry, poor woman. Then I had words with some lad who was riding his bike on the pavement. He told me - well, I won’t repeat what he told me, but I had to march him to the station where Sarge gave him a good telling-off. Ot
herwise, I just plodded around, telling people the time or showing them the way to places. I keep hoping I’ll come across a villain holding up a bank. I always glance inside the doors, just in case, but no luck so far.’
‘Never mind,’ Mollie soothed, hiding a smile. ‘One of these days it might happen.’
‘I love being a copper, Moll.’
‘I know you do, Tom.’
‘And I love you an’ all.’ He paused in the middle of the street and kissed her on the lips. ‘I’ve been wanting to do that all day.’
‘And I’ve been wanting you to.’ Had she actually said that? Did she mean it? ‘I love you, Tom Ryan,’ she said, just to see how the words sounded.
‘I know, luv, I know.’ He put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed them. Mollie had no idea how he could have known: she hadn’t known herself until that very minute.
Levon’s thoughts were very dark as he drove the cab in the direction of Wall Street, the financial district of New York, where the skyscrapers blocked out the sun, leaving some of the streets in permanent shadow. It made him feel as if he were a tiny insect crawling along at the very bottom of the world.
His passenger, a young fellow wearing a business suit and a straw boater, was determined to talk. He’d already asked Levon where he was from, and confided his own folks had come from Russia almost a quarter of a century ago. ‘Our surname was unpronounceable: even I can’t remember how it was spelt. The Ellis Island inspectors changed it to Dymitrik, so Pop decided to keep it that way.’
‘What do you do?’ Levon enquired, just to be polite. Not all his passengers were as friendly as this young chap, who’d insisted on sitting next to him rather than in the back.
‘I’m a loans manager with Morgan’s Bank. Just think,’ he chuckled, ‘when Pop was my age, he was picking vegetables on a farm back in Vologda. Now, he’s got his own little place in Buffalo. I came to New York in the hope of making a few dollars, and I’m doing just fine. I’ve just been to Macy’s to buy my wife a new purse for her birthday, and I could actually afford to pay for a cab there and back.’ His homely face shone with pride and the sheer joy of being alive. ‘America’s the greatest place on earth and New York’s the greatest city. I bet you never dreamed you’d end up driving a cab here one day.’
‘That’s true,’ Levon conceded.
‘I can see a hold-up straight ahead. Drop me off here and I’ll walk the rest of the way. How much do I owe you, my friend?’
‘A dollar.’
‘Here’s two. I’m feeling lucky today and I’d like to share it.’ He doffed his hat and leapt out of the cab. Levon watched him walk jauntily away, hands in pockets. Had he been within earshot, he suspected he’d be whistling something: ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ or ‘Alexander’s Ragtime Band’.
There was a hot dog stand on the corner of the street. He parked, got out, and bought a black coffee in a cardboard cup. He leaned against the cab and sipped it slowly as his dark thoughts returned, though not perhaps quite as dark as before. His young passenger had reassured him that life had a lighter side, that it wasn’t all doom and gloom.
Some fiend had raped his darling Anne, but that was the past. Pretty soon a new baby would begin its life in the apartment in Grammercy Park. Tamara was excited about it, but Levon didn’t know what to feel. Anne had been present when the doctor had announced she was expecting a child, but either she hadn’t taken it in, or she’d rejected the idea altogether and refused to consider it. She turned away when Tamara tried to bring up the subject, flatly refusing to listen.
‘We’ll just have to play it by ear,’ Levon had said. It was an expression unknown in Armenia, but it made perfect sense. They would have to take things day by day and see what happened. Tamara was all of a flutter buying baby clothes, learning to knit, and translating old lullabies into English to sing to the baby.
He wished he could think and act as positively. America was the greatest country on earth, as his recent fare had so confidently asserted, and New York the greatest city. He was lucky to be here, lucky to have a wife like Tamara, lucky to have replaced their dear, dead Larisa with another daughter, just as pretty, just as enchanting.
As Anne herself would have said, he was desperately lucky. ‘Desperately’ was a word she used frequently, entirely out of context, in his opinion. He tucked one of the dollars he’d just been given in his breast pocket. From now on, he would regard it as his lucky dollar and it would never be spent.
Chapter 5
It had rained during the night and the cobbled surface of Turnpike Street was still wet when Mollie drew back the curtains on the morning of her wedding. The sky was a mass of grey clouds and there wasn’t even a gleam of sunshine.
In a few hours, at exactly eleven o’clock, she would marry Tom Ryan. The reality, the fact that she would shortly become a married woman, hadn’t properly sunk in until last night when she’d met her family in the George Hotel. Aunt Maggie was already there, having come straight to Liverpool from New York. At first, she hadn’t recognized her aunt with her shingled hair, smart green costume and high-heeled shoes, so different from the dowdy schoolteacher she remembered.
They embraced warmly, both close to tears, and sat, hand in hand, on a sofa, talking about old times and new times, Duneathly and New York, and, of course, Annemarie. ‘Sergeant McCluskey comes regularly to see me, but the police haven’t found a trace of her,’ Aunt Maggie said, blushing slightly for some reason. ‘They sent her description to other states, but no luck so far, I’m afraid.’
Barely an hour later, Finn, Hazel and Patrick had arrived from Ireland. It had been an emotional reunion. Hazel reminded her that the last time she’d set eyes on Mollie was when she’d waved goodbye as she and Annemarie set off for America on Jimmy Mullen’s cart.
‘And who in the whole wide world would’ve thought things would turn out the way they have?’ she cried.
Finn said Thaddy and Aidan were missing their big sisters dreadfully and Nanny sent her love. Fran Kincaid, who did the cleaning, had left and Nanny was doing her best, but the house was getting in a bit of a state. Nobody mentioned the Doctor.
Mollie nursed her first nephew, Patrick, a big pudding of a baby with a winsome smile that threatened to break hundreds of female hearts in what she prayed would be a long and happy life.
It was then that it dawned on her: these people had come all this way for her wedding. Aunt Maggie had bought a new outfit in New York. Sinead Larkin had made Hazel a lovely cream voile frock and a sailor suit for Patrick. It really was happening. Tomorrow, she would stand in front of the altar in the church of Our Lady of Reconciliation and become Mrs Thomas George Ryan. Never again would she be Mollie Kenny. Was she making an awful mistake? She hardly knew Tom - he hardly knew her. Was it too late to back out?
Hazel had nudged her. ‘You’re wondering what you’re about to let yourself in for, aren’t you, Moll? I can tell by your face. I felt the same before I married Finn. I’d like to bet most women do - and most men an’ all. It’s like taking a big leap into the dark, but it has to be done. If you don’t take a big leap now’n again, you’ll get nowhere in life.’
Later, they’d sat down to a big dinner, but Mollie couldn’t eat a thing and the mouthful of wine she’d drunk had made her feel nauseous. Even when Finn proposed a toast to her and Tom, it was an effort to smile when she felt like being sick.
She’d still felt sick on the tramcar home while nursing the velvet box containing a lovely pearl necklace and earring set that Aunt Maggie had given her for her birthday and, in her bag, two pounds for her and Tom to buy a wedding present. ‘You’ll know best what you’ll want for your new home,’ her aunt had said. Tom had been allocated a police house in Allerton.
Finn and Hazel were giving them a canteen of cutlery that Finn would bring tomorrow when he came in a taxi to take her to the church, and a bottle of scent called La Vie en Rose for her birthday.
Somewhere in town, Tom had gone for a drink with his mates. She
only hoped he wouldn’t end up feeling as sick as she did, or their marriage would get off to a really bad start.
Irene came into the bedroom the next morning with a cup of tea. ‘Ah, you’re up, girl. It’s not much of a day, is it? Still, there’s still plenty of time for the sun to show.’
Mollie got back into bed and accepted the tea, the last she would have in bed as a single woman. ‘I feel desperately odd, Irene,’ she confessed.
‘And what girl doesn’t feel odd on the morning of her wedding?’ Irene scoffed. ‘It’d be even odder if you didn’t. Oh, and Happy Birthday, luv.’ She’d already had Irene’s present: a pair of white gloves to wear with her going-away outfit, which was a blue and white polka-dotted frock and her white hat.
‘Ta. I never dreamed I’d be married when I was only seventeen. I hadn’t even had a boyfriend before I met your Tom.’
‘Well, he’s never had a girlfriend, so you’ll be learning things together.’ Irene sat on the edge of the bed. She wore a voluminous flannel nightdress that made her look like a child with an old woman’s face, a face that suddenly turned red with embarrassment. ‘You know about “things”, don’t you, luv? Like the things people do together once they’re married. Did your mammy tell you before she died?’
‘No, but I worked for the Doctor, didn’t I?’ Mollie felt equally embarrassed. ‘I know how babies are made.’
‘That’s good.’ Irene squeezed her foot through the bedclothes, clearly relieved to know Mollie was already fully aware of the facts of life. ‘It can come as a bit of a shock to a girl if she doesn’t know what to expect. Well, I’ll love you and leave you, Moll. The girls’ll be along in a minute to help you get dressed.’ By ‘girls’, she meant her daughters-in-law, although Mollie couldn’t understand why she should need three grown women to help her put on her wedding gown and do her hair.
She discovered the reason later when she found all her fingers had turned to thumbs and she couldn’t fasten her new brassiere. Lily had to do the hooks for her before she put on the long white petticoat that made a hissing noise as it fell to her feet. Gladys helped roll on the silk stockings Roberta had given her along with an extra week’s wages when she’d left the shop for good the day before, and Pauline folded her brown hair into something called a French pleat. ‘It’s a bit more sophisticated than a plait for your wedding day,’ she said. Mollie couldn’t have plaited her hair to save her life.