Daughters of Penny Lane

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Who closed them?’

  ‘Stalin. But he re-open as gulag. Fifty million in total are dying in Siberia. Communism is the people’s party.’ She laughed mirthlessly. ‘It is a party that kills people. That man in there who look for emeralds is broken in spirit. I sell. I give him money to find life, a home, food, a bed. Batya would say this my duty.’

  ‘Aye, I reckon he would. Come on, let’s go home.’

  ‘You go. I stay here with Yuri and sleep in armchair. Send home Vera and Harry. All they need know is that Yuri is my cousin. Will he walk tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why you standing there?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to leave you.’ Peter knew he had to go, since Olga’s back door and the gate had been damaged by a man who now slept like an untroubled baby. Comforting himself with the knowledge that the shop carried all the tools he might need, Peter kissed his fiancée goodnight.

  In the next room, he found Harry, Vera, Alice and Dan sitting round the edges of the double bed, while two dogs stretched out in the centre, both fast asleep. When fully extended, even Leo seemed unnecessarily long for a pup. ‘Olga knows the man,’ Peter explained. ‘He’s been in prison for years.’

  ‘And he needs to go back to jail,’ Vera snapped.

  ‘He’s not a criminal. Siberia is where they put him, and he’s lucky to be alive. Russia has killed more people in mines and prison camps than were lost in a world war. Yuri is not a communist, and that was his crime.’ Having managed to silence Vera, he allowed himself a slight smile. ‘Right. He’s asleep on your hospital bed, Dan, and Olga’s in the chair. Alice, take the dogs through to their beds in Dan’s room. Come on, Vera – I’ll see you through your front door.’

  With Harry acting as conductor and Alice playing leader of the orchestra, the emptying of the bedroom was achieved in minutes. She returned to collect the dogs and led them into Dan’s day room. There was no more growling. Leo occupied Frank’s outgrown puppy bed, while the larger boxer took the adult version. Alice brought a straight-backed chair and sat next to her friend. ‘Who is he?’ she whispered.

  Olga retold the story from start to finish.

  ‘So you will be rich when you sell them?’

  ‘Yes. Peter and I could buy all Penny Lane and half Liverpool with change to spare.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  Olga smiled.

  ‘Don’t you dare.’ Alice, too, was grinning.

  Olga chuckled quietly. ‘We won’t.’ She looked at the man in the bed. ‘He younger than I am,’ she mouthed softly. ‘But see all lines on face. This is what happen when someone like Stalin has knife in your back. Nearly twenty years, Yuri was in Siberia. He was never warm, even in sleep. All he wants is one small jewel stone to get place to live, food to eat. This I do for him, and I keep him near. He is my family. My daddy would want me to do this for him.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Olga studied her friend closely. ‘Things have been happening to you, I think. You have been rather quiet and shaky for some days.’

  It was Alice’s turn to begin her story about Muth and Miss Meadows, the otherness, Muth watching Marie’s house during the party, the power belonging to Callum. ‘I don’t know what he wants, Olga, but I think when he has accomplished whatever it is, my otherness will stop.’

  ‘He guides you, then?’

  ‘Yes. There’s a story. I think it belongs to him and my dad, but I can’t be sure. Callum leads me gently, even though he’s so powerful. It’s as if he loves me, but he doesn’t think much of my mother, because he hid me from her when she returned to Miss Meadows’s house.’

  ‘Good taste? Not liking your mother, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, he agrees with all of us.’

  Olga nodded wisely. ‘You had no brother?’

  Alice shook her head. ‘Seven girls. I’m the seventh. But whatever Callum is, he works through me, and my coming back to Penny Lane is part of his plan. Frank sees nothing; he’s seen nothing since that first day in your shop.’

  ‘What next, Alice?’

  ‘I find my mother. She is the enemy, and a person needs to know where enemies are, just to keep a step ahead. I think she’s near Marie. If she’s near Marie, she’ll be within walking distance of our Nellie’s daughters. She’s not right in her head, you see. My mother is the most important person in her own life. There’s no love in her except for herself.’

  ‘Not good.’

  ‘No. I’d better go to bed. Are you going to sit there all night?’

  ‘Of course. He found me, now I find him and I keep him. He is my friend from when we were children together, and I can help him now.’

  Alice jumped up and wrapped her arms round her friend. ‘We’ll be all right, love. We have to be.’

  Leaving Olga to her vigil, Alice returned to her ground-floor bedroom. Dan was fast asleep, his mouth slightly open and his breathing more laboured than usual. ‘How many whiskies did you have, lad?’ she whispered. ‘And how many bottles of Guinness?’ Feeling too alert for sleep, she closed the door quietly and went upstairs to work on Nellie’s new wardrobe. It was time to get Big Sis out of her old-fashioned, drab clothes and into something decent. Oh, and the corsets had to go.

  Dad was there. As soon as she entered the sewing room, she saw the ribbon of smoke and breathed in the scent of her father. ‘Hello, Dad,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t half miss you. I hope the smoke from your pipe doesn’t make our Nellie’s cloth smell. Remember how Muth went on about your pipe? And your Friday night pint and the darts team? There’s been no improvement.’

  She sat down near her sewing machine. And at that very moment, a piece of tailor’s chalk floated up and hung in the air. Without a shadow of a doubt, Alice knew that this was Callum’s doing. Dad was just a watcher, a supervisor; Callum was the one with the power and the childlike humour. For a start, he made folk disappear in broad daylight.

  The chalk floated downward until it touched some grey jersey material that was pinned together to make a skirt for Nellie. It wrote Mersey Road East followed by the number 57. So Muth was in Brighton-le-Sands, within easy reach of Marie and close to Nellie’s two daughters.

  Alice scribbled the address on an envelope and watched, almost mesmerized, as the chalked words and numbers disappeared. He was doing his magic tricks again, just like some cheap warm-up act down at the old Rotunda on Scotland Road. ‘You’re showing off, Callum.’ And for the first time, the baby who always cried burst into loud, gleeful laughter.

  ‘It’s lovely to hear you happy,’ she whispered.

  A breath caressed her face. ‘Alice.’

  ‘Yes, that’s me. You’re the grown-up baby.’

  ‘Am I?’

  She felt him leave, and was lonely without him.

  It wasn’t a difficult job. Once Elsie had introduced herself to the five residents, she found she had plenty of time on her hands during weekdays. Her brief from the boss was to make sure noise was kept down, especially at weekends, to check randomly for damage, and to keep hall, stairs and landings clean. Saturday and Sunday nights after nine she had to stay in and make sure nothing unsavoury walked into the house, but that was not a hardship. She had no nightmares, and that was the main thing.

  With time on her hands, she put it to good use by walking. The expeditions included cinema visits, a search for library books, shopping, and what she termed the march-past. Her pace increased every time she approached Marie’s house. Marie had been a difficult child, an impossible teenager, and had become a nasty, opinionated adult. She had run away from home before her twenty-first birthday, had married well, and Elsie had not been invited to the wedding.

  After the emigration of Theresa, with Constance, Judith and Sheila killed in the war, Elsie had been left with only Nellie, Marie and Alice. Why did she still need them? What did she want or expect from them? Bunting and a brass band? More like boiling oil, she mused.

  In Coronation Park, she sat on a bench in the rose garden.
Was it all her own fault? She’d been firm, yes, but children needed to know the rules. Girls especially wanted training, or they brought trouble to the door, the sort of trouble that wore little bonnets and shawls. Her three prettiest, Alice, Theresa and Marie, had been kept in the house when not at school or work. Nellie, a dull soul, had stayed in voluntarily until the appearance of Martin Browne, who had seemed a fair enough catch at the time, as he had been another dull soul. But even Martin had his limits, as did his girls. It was only a matter of learning to keep her mouth shut, she advised herself.

  ‘Yes, keep your gob shut, Elsie. And then there was Alice,’ she muttered under her breath after dismissing from her mind the three dead girls. Oh yes, then there was Alice, a tiny, shining star with looks, brains and the gift of second sight, a gift she refused to use. The girl could have made a fortune if she’d listened and put in a bit of effort. She’d wasted the sight.

  Elsie stood up and began the walk down Coronation Road towards Brighton-le-Sands. All mothers had been fierce back in those days, and she’d been no worse than any of the others. Chippy, her carpenter husband, had been taken in so easily by his daughters that Elsie had needed to keep an eye on him, too. Well, if she hadn’t supervised him, he would have let the girls get away with . . . She shivered; she didn’t want to even think that word. It was time to get back, because the stairs needed a lick and a promise, and she intended to keep her job. Some of the tenants were quite interesting; one was biddable . . .

  It was serious business, yet it was hilarious. A woman from the Moscow region of the Volga basin, plus a man from an inland Lancashire cotton town, were trying to do business with a Scottish bank manager. Behind the bank manager stood two heavies who looked as if they’d been poured from Sheffield furnaces into crucible moulds, because neither of them moved or blinked. In front of the bank manager, a desk wore a velvet skirt that touched the ground on all sides.

  ‘Why is the big peoples here with us?’ Olga whispered to Peter.

  ‘Security,’ he replied from the corner of his mouth that was nearer to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Security,’ he repeated.

  Olga studied the bank manager. A small man, he was blessed with an unruly tangle of ginger hair that seemed to obey no order to conform, as it shifted and resettled each time he moved his head. Small green eyes did little to improve his appearance, while overlarge ears stuck out at right angles like two carrying handles on a jug. But the main item of interest on his face was a bristly moustache on an upper lip too shallow for so abundant a display, and he curled the lip from time to time as if trying to rid himself of the carrot-coloured shrubbery. Olga must not giggle; repeatedly, she ordered her face to remain straight and in good order.

  With great reverence, the manager opened the lid of a box placed on the table by one of the iron men. He lifted out the suite of jewels and placed them carefully on the velvet. There were earrings, a bracelet, a huge necklace and a tiara that boasted glaring white diamonds among the vivid emeralds. Last to take the stage was a brooch made from one almost impossibly large emerald surrounded again by sizeable diamonds.

  Olga picked up an earring. ‘My mother was wear these when I was small. They are beautiful. She was beautiful woman, tall, elegant.’

  The bank manager said something. Olga stared at him blankly. ‘Sorry. I am not understanding you.’

  ‘Och well, let’s ask your man here.’

  Her man fixed his eyes on the moustache. ‘Yes, they must be worth a fortune, I suppose,’ Peter said.

  ‘Is this what he say? Worth fortune?’

  ‘Yes, love, I think so.’

  The manager dragged a hand through his hair, which now stood tall.

  Olga gave the manager a brilliant smile. ‘Putting back in box; I take home with me now and keep them next to my bed.’

  The red-haired miniature Scot shuddered. ‘Ye’ll dae nae such thing, Miss Konstantinov.’

  ‘What he say now, Peter?’

  ‘He says you can’t take them home.’ He looked at her; the right eyebrow was arched, so this little bank manager had better watch himself. When Olga arched a brow, it was time to head for the hills. She turned slightly and faced her intended target.

  ‘Take it easy, love,’ Peter begged.

  ‘Is these emeralds my property?’ she asked. ‘Also the diamonds what is with them?’

  ‘Yes, but––’

  ‘No yes butting with me, Mr McLeish. I take to London to sell.’

  ‘Nae such thing; London will come here to you, madam.’

  ‘Why?’ At last, she was getting the gist of his statements.

  Mr McLeish appealed to one of his unappealing guards. ‘Sid – explain, will you? Tell the lady how we go about things as important as this.’

  Sid was quite handsome when he switched his face on. ‘Miss Konstantinov?’ He bowed.

  ‘Mr Sid?’ She inclined her head in a dignified fashion.

  ‘There’s a lot of expensive jewellery on this table here.’

  ‘This I am know.’

  Peter suddenly found something interesting on the ceiling and raised his eyes to study it. One more minute of staring at the ginger-nut clown with standing-to-attention hair might have had him doubled up with laughter.

  ‘And you might lose it. Somebody could steal it. So Mr McLeish will put it back in the strong room and he will telephone a few people in Hatton Garden.’

  ‘Not in London?’

  Peter stopped studying cracked plaster. ‘Hatton Garden is part of London, love.’

  Sid plodded on. ‘They will buy them here. We sell only if they reach the reserve price. It’ll be like an auction, but with just jewellers here. Then, when somebody buys, they will own them, and it’s up to them to keep them safe. Your money will be here in the bank whenever you need it.’

  At last, she understood. ‘Just ring, then?’

  Mr McLeish passed a small leather box across the velvet. ‘There you are, Miss Konstantinov.’

  She stood up, so Peter and McLeish did the same.

  ‘Come, Peter, we go to see Leo Tolstoy, then to become engaged.’ She pinned her gaze to the bank manager. ‘Put those things of mine away now. Mr Sid, good man for explaining what foreign person said. Thanking you.’ She swept out.

  Peter winked at Sid. ‘She’s not bad, is she? For a Russian princess.’ He went to get engaged in a Liverpool pub to a noblewoman from Moscow with a diamond and emerald ring that had belonged to a tsar. Oh well. Just another day in the life of Peter Atherton, Olga Konstantinov and Leo Tolstoy. At least it wasn’t raining.

  ‘Stop it, Harry.’

  ‘I can’t. You’re driving me crazy.’

  Wearing her least attractive clothes with a headscarf as a turban, Alice was fitting Harry’s curtains. Vera’s lads were not here; they were living at home again with their mother. ‘Look, I can’t work if you keep interrupting and messing about. Keep your hands to yourself, please.’

  Alice had already climbed the ladder. He was making much of keeping her safe by steadying her legs, all the while stroking them and making small circles on her shins. What the hell was going to happen next? Rape? Would it be rape? She wanted him; she loved two men. No, she couldn’t say that she loved Harry, because the word wanted would be nearer the truth. What if she bore a child? How would she know which man had fathered the baby? No, no, she must get home.

  Dan had ceased to make her feel like this; she was eighteen again, excited, afraid of Harry, but mostly of herself.

  ‘Beautiful legs for a short-arse,’ he chuckled.

  When she had finished with the second curtain, she descended the steps with determination written into every line of her body. Oh, sugar – what sort of time was this to start going into an otherness? She shook it off and picked up her box of hooks. Was Harry part of some evil plot contained within the otherness? ‘I don’t feel well,’ she said, ‘so don’t take advantage.’

  ‘You look well to me – good enough to eat. I’m i
n love with you, Alice.’ He removed the scarf and gently rearranged the blonde curls it had been concealing. ‘Never felt like this before.’ Her hair was like satin; he was the original lovelorn loon, a rare animal with no sense and no control, native of south Liverpool, England. She was gorgeous.

  Her vocal cords and every muscle in her body had gone on strike, and she had to remind herself to take in some oxygen. ‘Please let me go home,’ she managed when the ability to make sound returned to her. ‘I’m confused. I love Dan, and we’re trying for a baby. I can’t do this, Harry.’

  He shunted her against a wall. ‘You want me, Alice Quigley.’

  Her last sensible thought was that the curtains were closed.

  Harry wasn’t like Dan; Harry worshipped her, treated her as if she were a queen. Like a programmed automaton or someone drugged, she simply responded with every ounce of animal in her body and her psyche. This wasn’t an otherness; she was simply a bad person having a wonderful experience. It was bliss, it was bad, it was wonderful, and she was a wicked woman. He covered her mouth with his own to muffle her moans. Would she shout for mercy or cry with joy when . . . when he . . . ? Dragging her mouth away, she ordered him to stop. ‘I don’t want this, Harry. I’m not doing it, I’m not, I’m not!’ She was going to be his within seconds if she didn’t put the brakes on. He was about to win the battle, and that couldn’t happen.

  When she finally managed to breathe properly, she looked into his eyes. ‘I feel like a bloody whore. Stop. I mean it, Harry. Go any further and I’ll scream rape – that’s a promise.’ She straightened her clothes hurriedly. ‘No, not a whore,’ she muttered, ‘I feel more like an animal.’

  ‘Do you, now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘An animal? Well, I’ve a couple of lamb chops doing not much in the kitchen. I can cook them medium rare if you want bloody animal.’