The Children of Lovely Lane

by Nadine Dorries

  Everyone in Clare Cottages had an opinion about Lily. She was too clever. Too proud. Too smart. Too put upon. Lily did not fit in.

  Every Friday night, when Lily handed over her pay packet, she was given back the five shillings she needed for the bus. Her mother wasn’t daft. No bus fare, no work, no money. If there was a way she could have kept it, she would.

  Lily’s mother hated Mrs McConaghy, Lily’s boss. It was a hatred that had taken root only weeks after Lily had begun working at the plant, on the day the letter about her clothes had arrived. The letter had been delivered by Sister Therese and she’d wanted to die with the shame of it.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Lancashire,’ Sister Therese had said, ‘I’ll have to read the letter to you. I promised that to Mrs McConaghy. She handed me the letter personally and I gave her my assurance. Lily is working in a proper job now and I have a sense of responsibility here. After all, ’tis I that recommended Lily for the job.’

  She pinned Lily’s mother to the wall using nothing but her eyes and began to read from the letter she had extracted from somewhere within her long black habit.

  ‘I demand that Lily be dressed in clothes appropriate for her workplace. She is expected to be in the view of people who will bring good business to McConaghy’s and, as a result, pay Lily’s wages. I don’t want anyone thinking I pay such bad wages that the girl who works in my office cannot afford decent clothes, shoes or a coat.’

  Lily felt that there could be nothing worse in the world than having to stand and listen to Sister Therese as she read out that letter. Her cheeks burnt red with embarrassment. But not as red as her furious mother’s.

  ‘Who does that woman think she is?’ Lily’s mother had roared as Sister Therese finished. She flounced to the door and, hanging up her apron, pulled a headscarf over her curlers and said, ‘Come on, you.’ She grabbed Lily by the arm. ‘If that woman wants her dressed all high and mighty for a job you got for her, Sister, then Father Brennan can provide the clothes.’

  Father Brennan came from the next-door neighbourhood to Lily’s mother’s in Ireland. He knew her father and grandfather, to whom her decision to marry an Englishman had come as a great disappointment. Mrs Lancashire, née O’Hallaghan, had arrived in Liverpool on the boat when she was fourteen. She sent letters home telling her parents she had married a good Irish boy from Dublin, so it was a blow when Father Brennan arrived and took up residence in the priest’s house not yards away from the entrance to Clare Cottages. Her good Irishman had left by the time Lily was four. Her pretence was up, and not a letter had been returned since the day her parents discovered she had since married an English Protestant. There was worse – she’d been pregnant at the time.

  ‘McConaghy wants you rigged out, does she?’ Lily’s mother muttered all the way along the landing.

  Mrs McGuffy threw a bucket of boiling water and disinfectant down the steps before them and the smell of scorched urine filled Lily’s nostrils. Not many children made it all the way to the toilet on the half landing or could endure the long queue before they had to relieve themselves.

  ‘Watch me bleedin’ legs,’ Mrs Lancashire snarled at Mrs McGuffy as they walked past her.

  There was no reply, just the sound of coarse bristles on concrete as Mrs McGuffy brushed the water down to the drain. As Lily came alongside her, she tried to smile, but her mother was holding tight to the arm of her cardigan and pinching her skin. It hurt. Mrs McGuffy gave her a kind look and smiled, squinting through the smoke from the dangling cigarette that appeared to be stuck to her bottom lip.

  ‘And no mention of a penny extra in the pay?’ Lily’s mother continued. ‘How am I supposed to feed the kids if I rig you out, eh?’

  Lily let the irony wash over her. It was she who fed the kids, not her mother. She trotted alongside her mother, racking her brains to think of a way she could stop her knocking on the door to the priest’s house. Her mother didn’t even go to Mass; Father Brennan would surely have no time for her.

  But her mother’s anger was unabated. ‘No, the fat cow doesn’t think of that, does she?’

  Lily stared at her feet as heads turned in the street to see what all the shouting was about. They turned back just as quickly. No one liked to make eye contact with Lily’s mother, as that was a quick way to a mouthful of abuse.

  ‘The state of her.’

  ‘The poor girl.’

  ‘A drunken slattern, her mother is.’

  The usual comments floated on the air as they passed by.

  Her mother marched her up to the door of the priest’s house and banged loudly until it was opened by the housekeeper.

  ‘Keep her in the hallway,’ said Father Brennan from the comfort of the chair in his study. ‘Make her wait for half an hour, that’ll see the back of her temper. I know the family. All hot-heads.’

  The housekeeper did as she was instructed and Lily’s mother seethed until dusk began to fall. After ten minutes, her need for a drink had increased as fast as her anger had faded. The door to Father Brennan’s office opened and her mother, transformed, flashed a rare smile and begged for clothes for Lily.

  Later that evening, Sister Therese turned up unannounced with a winter coat in her arms and a collection of boots and shoes. All previously worn, but each pair had some life in them yet. Lily’s eyes had filled with tears. ‘Here, some of them are just grand,’ Sister Therese said. ‘Would you look, a pair of stilettos, even. Won’t you look the fancy one in those.’ What Sister Therese didn’t say was that she had spent the last few hours knocking on the doors of some of the finer homes in Liverpool, blatantly selling places in heaven in order to acquire the clothes Lily needed.

  Lily was tearful with gratitude. She had almost died with worry and shame on her first few days at work because of the way she was dressed. Mrs McConaghy had noticed and wasted no time complaining.

  ‘Here, don’t cry so.’ Sister Therese presented her always-at-the-ready handkerchief to Lily. ‘’Tis my fault, I gave your mother too much credit. I just thought they would be so pleased and proud that you had a grand job and would want to help. God love you, I will do my best by you, Lily, always. I am proud of you. The best pupil I ever had, you are.’

  As she turned over in her hands and examined a pair of sturdy brown leather shoes, Lily knew that she would never in her life, no matter what befell her, fail in the eyes of Sister Therese. And nor would she let her down. A new anxiety washed through her. She would need to prevent her mother from selling the shoes at the pawn shop, the next time she was desperate for a drink. Owning something worth having would bring with it a whole new set of unfamiliar problems.

  7

  Maisie Tanner stood in her kitchen looking out through the window at the black night. She wiped a circle in the steamed-up window with a handkerchief she extracted from her cardigan sleeve. Snow had begun to fall yet again and she marvelled at the size of the flakes and how they melted the second they landed on the pane of glass. The range was pumping out the heat to cook the Yorkshire puddings, the last thing to go in. Balancing the heat on the range and allowing it to soar up to full temperature at the end of the roast was an art in itself, one she’d learnt from her mother and prided herself on having perfected.

  ‘This weather is never going to end,’ she said to her husband, Stan. ‘All that rubbish you give me about Liverpool being in the Gulf Stream and how it should always be warm. It’s bloody grim. Days of awful smog one minute, snow the next. I’m sure it can’t be like this in the rest of the country.’

  Stan opened the back door to flick his cigarette stub over the wall and into the entry running along the back of the house. Despite the heat from the range, an icy blast blew through the kitchen. Maisie popped her head out and pulled back the neck of her blouse to let the cold breeze waft across her breasts.

  ‘You feeling the heat, love?’ asked Stan. ‘Not like you, that.’

  Maisie took a long breath and sighed at the touch of the snowflakes melting against her burning
cheeks. She looked across the back-yard wall and her eyes rested on the chimneystacks atop the row of houses opposite, pumping smoke into the night sky. On some nights, snow or not, some of those chimneys stood cold and forlorn. Always the same houses, always the same families. War-widow homes, or those with ageing men not able to complete a full day down on the docks. But Sundays were special. There was always a roast and a fire in every home, and if there wasn’t, someone would help. Maisie had lost count of the times she’d seen a bleak chimney on a winter’s Sunday and sent Stan round to the same house with a bucket of coal. But tonight the dark kitchen windows on every house opposite were, just like Maisie’s, opaque from the steam lifting from three veg boiling on the range. Some houses would have meat to go with it, some wouldn’t.

  ‘You all right, love?’ Stan placed his arms around Maisie’s waist and hugged her to him. She hadn’t been herself of late. Quicker than usual to snap, unable to sleep.

  ‘I think it’s the change of life, Stan. It’s got me a bit early. I’m definitely going to lose me looks now, but at least we won’t have any more kids, eh?’

  Stan grinned. ‘Well, you know what they say, don’t you – every cloud has a silver lining.’

  ‘What, so you do think I’m losing my looks?’ Maisie sounded agitated. She was the most glamorous woman on Arthur Street and always had been.

  ‘No, I didn’t say that. You did. You will always be the most beautiful woman in the world to me, even when you’re sixty.’ It was time to change the subject. ‘Our Pammy looks well, doesn’t she, love? It’s nice to have her round on a Sunday, with her friends and all that. She’s doing all right for herself up at the hospital, now she’s put all that trouble behind her. Who would have thought that? With our Pammy being as gobby as she is.’

  ‘God, Stan, let’s not count our chickens, eh? She came that close to being thrown out, telling Matron where to ger off and kicking up a fuss about that aborted baby.’

  Stan chuckled. ‘Yes, she did. That’s our Pammy all right! But she was doing the right thing. And look who saved her, eh? Look who stuck up for her. Emily Haycock.’

  ‘Stan, d’you think it’s time I told our Pammy about Emily Haycock? About her being there when our Lorraine was born?’ She stood stock still for a moment, remembering that god-awful night in the air-raid shelter. ‘I still think that’s the reason Sister Haycock fought so hard to get our Pammy taken on as a nurse. Sure of it. Who would have thought that, me calling little Emily Haycock from George Street Sister?’

  ‘We’ve been through this a hundred times, love! There must be a reason Emily hasn’t told Pammy she knew her when she was a kid, or that her own family copped it in the George Street bomb. I reckon she wants our Pammy to think she got on to that course at St Angelus all on her own and not because there was once a connection between her and us. If Pammy knew who Emily was, she might begin to wonder whether that had anything to do with it, like. It might make her doubt herself, and none of us want that now, do we?’

  ‘I expect you’re right, Stan.’ She sniffed. ‘Must be the change. Keeps making me feel a bit sad. I wish me mam was still here, I don’t half miss her.’ She took her handkerchief out of her apron pocket and dabbed at her eyes, which had filled with tears.

  ‘Eh, eh, come here, love,’ Stan said and wrapped his arms around her. ‘Don’t cry. I know you miss your mam. God, we all miss her. She was a big part of this family. I would have fretted every single day of the war if I hadn’t known your mam was with you. I felt as safe as houses knowing she was looking after you all.’

  Stan felt uncomfortable. This was not a situation he was used to. He was out of his depth and it upset him to see his Maisie, who coped with everything life threw at her, so upset.

  Maisie rested her head on Stan’s shoulder as she spoke. ‘That was just it, though. The houses weren’t safe. Mam was never the same after ’41.’

  ‘Do you need any help, Mam?’ Pammy shouted in through the kitchen door.

  Maisie sniffed again and, extricating herself from Stan’s arms, tucked her handkerchief up the sleeve of her cardigan. ‘No thanks, love. I’ll be two minutes. You lot start helping yourself to the roasties. Lorraine, come and carry the gravy in. And Stan, put a shovel on the fire to keep us going, will you.’

  She patted Stan on the arm and he breathed a sigh of relief. This was more like it. His Maisie shouted out her orders all day long.

  ‘Lads, little Stan, have you all washed your hands?’

  The instructions fired out of the kitchen in rapid succession and hardly anyone answered with anything other than a ‘Yes, Mam’. Maisie was now smiling, her sadness wiped clean away by the fact that there was nothing she loved more than having the St Angelus nurses who Pammy worked and lived with over for a Sunday roast. It had become a tradition that whenever Pammy had a Sunday off, she almost always brought home whichever of her nurse friends also had a day off. It also gave Mrs Duffy the Lovely Lane housekeeper a break. Today, the girls were all together: Victoria Baker, Irish Dana Brogan and Beth Harper. It was the first weekend Beth had had off in almost an entire year, since she had first started on the wards as a probationer. But Beth never complained. Studious, diligent, committed, she dealt with whatever came her way, even if it meant missing Sunday lunch at the Tanners’ house.

  Stan had thrown the coal on the fire and popped back into the kitchen to rinse his hands under the tap. ‘The lads have done theirs under the outside tap on their way back from the outhouse,’ he said. ‘I watched them meself.’

  Routine, discipline and order were the key principles of life on Arthur Street. Big families needed hard-and-fast rules and hand-washing before meals was one of them.

  Maisie bent down to take the Yorkshire pudding out of the oven. ‘I’m worried about this fresh snow, Stan. These girls better eat up quick and get back to Lovely Lane in case it sticks. The last lot has only just melted. I’ve never known it so bad.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got a short memory, it’s nowhere near as bad as ’47. Anyway, it won’t stick, honest. It never sticks here, queen. We’re too close to the Mersey and the Gulf Stream. Liverpool is warmer than you think.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Stan, shut up about the Gulf Stream. Just because you went to a desert during the war. Here, make yourself useful now and carry these in.’ Stan took the salt cellar and a dish of apple sauce from Maisie. ‘Anyway, stranger things have happened than a settling of snow. Who would have said we’d have the daughter of a lord sat around our table! No one else in these streets would dream of having a Victoria Baker round for a Sunday roast, would they?’

  Stan looked into the front room and saw the girls laughing. ‘Victoria is teasing the boys.’ He smiled at Maisie as he spoke.

  ‘Well, to be fair, Victoria only has to look little Stan’s way and he’s a mess. He can’t speak and blushes as red as a beetroot.’

  ‘I think he’s in love,’ whispered Stan. ‘Ah, well, no teasing him. It’s a powerful thing, is a young boy’s first crush. I remember it well.’ He winked at Maisie, who had turned to the tap to rinse her hands. He came up behind her, circled his arms around her waist and nuzzled his face into the side of her neck. He felt like he wanted to protect her after her tears. It was the only way he knew how to make her feel better. He would make love to her later, he thought to himself. That always cheered her up.

  ‘Ger off, Stan!’ squealed Maisie as she wriggled out of his grasp. She only half meant it. She would have happily stayed in his arms all day; there was no better place.

  Stan had been away for the duration of the war. He was one of the first to sign up and they had both been shocked at the speed of his departure from Lime Street station, less than a week later. He had just one forty-eight-hour leave, which had resulted in the arrival of Pammy’s younger sister, Lorraine, nine months later. Not a day had passed in all the years he was away when Maisie hadn’t felt sick with worry. Telegrams came and went. Hearts stopped when the whistle on the telegraph boy’s bike rang do
wn the street, but it was never for Maisie. Although her heart broke for whoever it was who was about to receive the telegram they all dreaded, often about a boy she’d known from school or the streets, she thanked God every night it wasn’t her Stan.

  She turned and briefly kissed Stan on the lips. ‘Later,’ she whispered. ‘Later. We have our lot, Pammy’s friends and one Victoria Baker of Baker Hall to feed.’

  Stan patted Maisie on the bottom and winked. ‘Later’ was enough to make him the happiest man in Arthur Street. There wasn’t a night when he closed his eyes and a memory of his worst days didn’t flash before him. Back home now, the last thing he did every night before he fell asleep was reach out and touch the warm body of his wife and give thanks to God that he’d survived. His house and family had survived the Blitz. He was in their bed, her heart beat next to his, and they were alive.

  ‘Maisie, Lady Victoria is one of our Pammy’s friends. She’s a nurse like the rest of them, you don’t have to single her out for a special mention.’

  ‘I know that. I just can’t help meself bragging, though, every time she’s been here. You’ve got to admit, she’s lovely and, Stan, she says that when she’s qualified, she’s going to invite us to her wedding. Imagine that!’

  Stan couldn’t keep the grin from his face. When his Maisie became excited, she looked like the young girl he had married on the best day of his life.

  ‘I’ll make sure we buy you the nicest frock in Liverpool for that, queen. I still can’t understand a word she says, mind. When is she going to learn to speak like the rest of us?’

  ‘Don’t be ignorant, Stan, she just talks nice. I’m hoping our Lorraine picks it up from her. I don’t want to hear Victoria talking like us. I want our Lorraine to do well for herself, to get out of here and talk like a lady. I don’t want her growing up in Arthur Street. Look at the state of the place – bloody river rats and bomb rubble everywhere.’