A Liverpool Girl

by Elizabeth Morton

  ‘Yes, well you shouldn’t have blamed him for the Mouse turning up. Father had nothing to do with the trouble at the Boot and you dragged him into it by asking him to tell the Mouse he couldn’t come to Jack’s funeral. Poor man. Of course he wasn’t going to do that. You shouldn’t have made such a fuss. I still haven’t got over you falling drunk into the christening font and telling him that, if God was up to scratch, he wouldn’t have taken your Jack away. You should feel lucky they’re thinking about giving you a second chance.’

  ‘Lucky?’ said Violet, gloomily. ‘I hardly think so. Desperate, more like.’

  For a day and a half Violet opened kitchen drawers and straightened cutlery, then sideboard drawers and bedside drawers and wandered from room to room, rearranging furniture, repinning the lace antimacassars and, finally, checking the aspidistra plant to see if the soil was dry, and all the time wondering what she should do about Babby. Finally, she decided she had no choice but to take Pauline and Kathleen’s advice and go to see Father O’Casey at Saint Patrick’s. The priests and nuns would know what to do about her daughter. If there was any place that might help her, it would be there, she thought.

  Trudging down the path to the church, with the gravestones like snaggled teeth sticking out from the grass, she almost turned back.

  The large double doors were open but inside it was nearly empty, just a few old ladies kneeling in the side altars as they threaded rosary beads through their fingers and murmured Hail Marys, a young woman lighting a candle, and an altar server sorting through hymnals. It was quiet. Violet walked up the aisle and took a seat in one of the pews. She took some comfort in the sweet, heady smell of incense and the beautiful Jesus, with his strong and graceful limbs, nailed to a huge wooden crucifix suspended above the altar on steel wires. Were it not for the fact that her head had been full of Jack and the kids and not having enough money – or time – to even think, she might have come here more often.

  Candlelight from the hundred or so melting votives threw off heat and flickered across the faces of the stone statues of the twelve apostles. Violet could have sworn they shot curious glances in her direction. Is this completely ridiculous? she wondered. To go in there and say sorry and then hope they will just wipe the slate clean and help me with what’s happening to my daughter?

  She waited in the pew until the altar boy told her she was next. Opening the creaking, ornate door of the confessional with its carving of Jesus buckling under the weight of a crucifix, then kneeling in front of the grill, she gagged. Feeling claustrophobic, the sentimental thoughts that she had been having about this place flew away in an instant. The pungent aromatic smell that she couldn’t quite identify, mixed with the smells of damp and furniture polish, triggered other, uncomfortable, memories. She had never bothered much with Jesus. Collections for the poor, helping with the flower arranging, sewing and embroidering communion banners – all that had been for other more pious people – better people – than her. So why should Jesus bother with her now? The grill, the dark, and the musty curtains that muffled her voice, the panels pricked with woodworm, the cracked leather kneeler, frightened her. There was a short dry cough from behind the iron mesh.

  ‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been, oh … a-a few weeks … maybe a month … no, a year, actually, since my last confession.’

  There was a sigh, a pause. Violet really couldn’t think what to say next. So, for a second she just sat there, taking shallow breaths, gripped by a terrible fear that the faceless, shadowy figure behind the grill might follow her out and start shouting at her in front of everyone.

  ‘Are you still there?’ asked the priest.

  ‘Yes, sorry,’ she replied. ‘I-I am, Father,’ she stammered.

  ‘Speak up.’

  ‘Sorry, yes …’ She sensed the blurred shape behind the grill was becoming impatient and she could feel her palms sweating.

  ‘I wanted to confess. For not coming to church.’

  A rustle of starched linen and heavy breathing. It was becoming unbearable. She had been squeezing her interlocking fingers so tightly together she had given herself pins and needles. The priest was waiting for her to say something. She was sure he would smell the sin seeping from her pores. He cleared his throat again to tell her that he was waiting. And in a rush of words she said, ‘And also the thing is Father. I need your help – the church’s help – with my daughter. I’m sorry that I turned away from God and I beg forgiveness for that, but I believe you are looking for a girl to help with the nuns in Angelsey. Farm work, I think?’

  ‘Child, if you are ready to repent, God will look on you with mercy …Tell me about your daughter,’ said the disembodied voice.

  And though the tone was firm and censorious it gave her hope, and it was as if a burden had miraculously floated from her shoulders. She felt a cleansing energy coursing through her veins. Maybe, just maybe, she could try to start to be good again.

  ‘I can’t look after her any more. And I’ve heard – I’ve heard that you might be able to assist me …’

  ‘Sister Immaculata will talk to you to see if we can make the necessary arrangements if, indeed, that’s appropriate, but now an Act of Contrition.’

  ‘O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all my sins, because I dread the loss of Heaven and the pains of Hell, but most of all because they offend Thee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Thy grace to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.’

  ‘Penance, Two hundred Hail Marys and a Rosary each day for three months …’

  She would try her best. It seemed like a reasonable exchange.

  She noticed Sister Immaculata, a vague and cobwebby figure in the church porch, on her way out.

  ‘Violet. Come with me.’

  They went into the presbytery and the housekeeper, a nun with strands of salt-and-pepper hair escaping from under her veil, knocked and entered the room they sat in, pushing a stainless steel hostess trolley with tea and Garibaldi biscuits. The rattling of the china cups and the flip, flop, of the nun’s slippers as they hit the soles of her feet when she crossed the parquet floor, were the only sounds in a chasm of silence.

  ‘How can I help you?’ said Sister Immaculata, clearing a chair of a pile of prayer books so Violet could sit down.

  ‘Well, I believe you know that my Babby has run back home from S-Saint Hilda’s,’ she stuttered. ‘Pauline said you might have her for the job of farm help for some of your sisters in Anglesey.’ Violet wiped her glistening brow with the back of her hand. She expected the nun to laugh, and tell her Pauline had got it all wrong, taking in rebellious girls like Babby wasn’t the kind of thing they did at all, but she nodded kindly.

  ‘We certainly do need an extra pair of hands. As you know, Pauline has already been in touch through the Legion of Mary and your daughter sounds an excellent candidate. We’re here to help you, Violet, so don’t look so worried. This is all part of God’s plan. She’ll have a good education from us in return for working at the farm, which is owned by the convent. You know what the Jesuits say about giving us the child and we’ll give you back the man?’

  Violet knew all right. She just wasn’t sure what she felt about it. It felt a tendentious contract at its best.

  ‘We’ll take care of her, Violet, and we’ll make you proud of her. We wouldn’t want her ending up somewhere like Saint Judes, would we? Every mother’s nightmare, so it is.’

  Violet brushed away a tear as the nun gently placed a calming hand on her trembling knee.

  ‘My dear,’ she said. ‘You really have nothing to cry about. Have faith in God, and in us, and she’ll return home as innocent as she left you – and a good deal better besides. Come now. What mother would find fault in that?’

  Chapter Twelve

  A week passed, the conversations were exhausted, and Babby finally agreed to go – a combination of being allowed to take the accordion a
nd Violet becoming so bad tempered, what with worrying about so many other things, like Hannah, and keeping her new job at the glove factory, that it seemed pointless to try to put it off any longer.

  ‘Cheer up,’ Violet said to her. ‘Pauline has said you’ll love it, and you’ll feel a lot better when we get there.’

  The boat went from the Pier Head. Violet was anxious they were going to be late. There was a great deal of shouting to get a move on and complaining about hauling the accordion all the way to Anglesey, and whether it was really a good idea, but they finally set off in Kathleen’s car as she’d offered to drive them. In an attempt to lift the mood, Kathleen suddenly burst out with a verse of ‘We’re off, we’re off! We’re off in a motor car, sixty bobbies are after us, an’ we don’t know where we are!’ and urged everyone to join in. But they got no further than Scottie Road before they lost heart, and everyone went quiet.

  As they drove down the dock road, Violet told Kathleen to put her foot down. ‘Step on the gas!’ she cried.

  ‘Better to be Mrs Delaney, late, rather than the late Mrs Delaney,’ Kathleen said and Babby felt a tinge of sadness: the last time she had heard this expression was when her father had spoken it.

  Despite it being ten in the morning, the pubs were opening. ‘Knocking shops,’ said Violet. ‘Look at those two fellas with that woman. They’re coming out from the night before …’

  ‘She’s a prozzie, I bet,’ said Babby.

  ‘What’s a prozzie?’ asked Hannah, and they all shrieked when Kathleen took her hands off the steering wheel to turn around and tut and the car swerved across the road.

  The crossing from the Pier Head was clear. There was sunshine and white peaks of foam. Standing on the top deck, Babby turned to face the smudge on the horizon that was Anglesey. The lighthouse came into view first, then the fields became patches of green, and soon the houses and cottages in the harbour that fuzzed and wobbled in the heat took shape. Hannah, who had come along because she refused to be parted from Babby until the very last moment, clung to Babby’s skirts all the way. Babby drew her to her. How was she going to bear this? Pentraeth Farm, this strange place run by the nuns, full of waifs and strays, was to be her home and nobody would tell her exactly for how long. As the steamer tucked and tossed, as the engines sent vibrations through their fragile bodies, as they sailed towards the headland, Babby felt her stomach lurch, and the promises of trips home and visits from the family became ever more unlikely.

  When they arrived in the small harbour – Babby lugging her trunk along and Violet using her teetering heels as an excuse not to help – they were met by a smiling nun standing beside a battered Morris 1000.

  Behind her was another middle-aged, wide-hipped woman, wearing muddy wellington boots. This was Mrs Reilly, stout, ruddy and fair-haired, who looked like she was from farming stock, the kind of woman who had crescent moons of dirt permanently under her fingernails and matted hair. She was the owner of Pentraeth Farm, and it was she who first introduced herself as she stuck out a hand, beaming.

  ‘Don’t mind Threepence,’ she said, as a sniffing dog bounded around Babby’s feet, then jumped up and stuck its nose up her skirts.

  When they got back to the farmhouse after a bumpy ride, the car phutting and spluttering as it negotiated the potholes and sharp bends in the winding road, they were led into a squat, stubby building with gables and moss on the roof and a huge wisteria vine climbing up the gutters and strangling the crumbling chimney.

  ‘Oh Babby!’ sighed Violet. ‘I wish I was coming here.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Hannah, mournfully.

  Babby, feeling the strength of her sister’s sadness, pointed at the goat tethered to a long rope munching a clump of nettles on the gone-to-seed front lawn. ‘Look at the goat, Hannah. They’ll eat anything. Even Mum’s rock cakes, I bet,’ she said, trying to eke a smile out of her as they followed Mrs Reilly inside.

  ‘That’s the twins,’ said Mrs Reilly as two red-haired children, raced past them, to go outside. ‘Just here for a few months.’

  ‘Who else lives here?’ asked Violet. ‘Anyone Babby’s age?’

  Babby fixed her mother with a measuring gaze. Does she mean boys? she wondered. Please God, she doesn’t.

  ‘People come and go. At the moment, we have three teenagers from Manchester, all impoverished children from orphanages or broken homes, mostly of northern cities. But they’re good kids. Amazing what fresh air can do for a child. The only problem we have is that they’re always complaining that they’re starving.’

  ‘Where will Babby sleep?’ asked Violet.

  ‘In the attic. It’s a lot better than it sounds. Bit musty, but it’s clean … And you’ll have it all to yourself.’

  Violet smiled. ‘See, Babby, it’s not so bad. You’ve never had your own room, have you?’

  Babby shook her head.

  Two young men, about twenty and twenty-two, arrived wiping their boots, ducking their heads as they came in through the low door frame. Boys. But not like the Kapler Gang. Instead of sallow, pockmarked skin, they had colour in their rosy cheeks and glossy hair. Babby followed them with her eyes.

  ‘You’ll stay for supper, won’t you? asked Mrs Riley.

  ‘That would be lovely,’ replied Violet.

  ‘Do we have to go to church every day?’ asked Babby, suddenly. There was a silence. Violet looked to Mrs Riley, apologetically.

  ‘Of course not,’ she replied, with a smile. ‘This isn’t like your convent school. The nuns do an awful lot of praying up there in the house on the hill – that’s where they live, they just come here to teach, but I make the rules around here,’ she said with a wink.

  Babby was relieved to hear that she was obviously the one who ran things, and the nuns largely kept out of the way.

  ‘We do have a chapel, though. I’ll show you,’ said Mrs Reilly.

  She took them outside and down to the bottom of the garden where there was a small outhouse with a stone crucifix cemented into the top of the gable.

  ‘This has been here for years. They say that priests used to hide in it, that there’s a passage that goes all the way under it and into the house. Not that anyone has found it. Sometimes, if it all gets too much, it’s a good place to just sit and think. Would you like to see inside?’

  Babby really didn’t want to, but she could see Violet looking at her, willing her to answer politely.

  ‘Yes,’ said Babby. Mrs Reilly linked her arm and opened the door.

  The chapel smelled of damp. There was a chipped and peeling statue of the Sacred Heart that looked as though his bright carmine lips had been repainted and someone had stippled a beard on his chin, and gory paintings of the Stations of the Cross in murky colours, and pews with threadbare velvet kneelers and battered hymn books at each end. A beam of sunlight lit up glittering particles of dust. They stood there for a moment in the silence, with just the cawing of a bird in the distance.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mrs Reilly, seeing Babby’s nose wrinkle up with the smell. ‘You’ll like it here, I promise.’

  They could hear the sound of the dinner bell across the field. In the dining room, a large airy space with flaking whitewashed walls, trestle tables and benches running down either side, there was food waiting – fish paste sandwiches, crusty rolls spread with thick butter, creamy butterfly cakes, and steaming pots of tea.

  ‘Mrs Reilly can do magical things with butter and eggs and sugar,’ said the nun who was pouring out the tea into the pots from an urn on the sideboard. She introduced herself as Sister Benedict, one of the nuns who would be teaching Babby.

  Violet nudged Babby and said, ‘See? it might not be so awful after all.’

  It was only Hannah, a cake stuffed in her mouth, who looked at Babby, doleful and sad, her big eyes pools of worry.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Babby. ‘I made a promise to Dad and I will be back to take care of you. You have my word.’ Putting an arm around her sister’s shoulders, she felt a terrible
sense of sadness. Stooping to pull up a sock drooping around Hannah’s ankle, she said, ‘I’ll miss you.’

  A tear rolled down Hannah’s jam-smeared cheek, a single tear, but it was enough.

  ‘Chin up, Babby. You’ll have a grand time,’ said Violet. ‘Time for us to go, now.’

  Babby’s eyes filled with tears and anxiety washed over her in waves. Violet, turning quickly away, said, ‘Ta ra. We’ll see you soon, love.’

  ‘Mam …’ said Babby.

  ‘What love?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she replied.

  Some things were just too big to talk about.

  Chapter Thirteen

  1960

  ‘Happy Birthday to you! Blow, Babby! Come on!’

  Babby stooped to blow out the seventeen candles. The flames flickered and bent with the rush of wind that came in through the door.

  ‘Speech!’ cried Albie.

  ‘Speech?’ said Babby. ‘I’m not making any speeches.’

  ‘You do it, Mrs Reilly,’ said Albie.

  Mrs Reilly tapped the glass of elderflower wine she was holding with a teaspoon.

  The twins, holding hands, hoped from foot to foot, excitedly.

  ‘When Babby came here she was a slip of a girl, weren’t you, love? And now you’re seventeen.’

  One of the boys shoved two fingers in his mouth and whistled and everyone laughed.

  It was true; Babby had curves now, a pert nose, and hair that fell in waves down her back. And it showed in her face that she was happy and untroubled. She had even suggested the Union Jack bunting tied from the dresser to the curtain pole. That was something she had never thought possible, so vivid were the memories of her father’s death, forever threaded through with images of red, white and blue flags and the coronation.

  ‘Babby’s as good as any of them movie stars on me cigarette cards,’ said Albie. And everyone laughed again.