When Day is Done

‘Yer must be mad,’ Martha tutted. ‘I’m glad I can’t read.’

  Kate put her ten shillings away in her room. She had gradually given most of the balance of the original sovereign to Mrs Molesworth, and bought a few treats for Martha, without disclosing to her how she was able to afford them. On her first half-day off she took a shilling from her Christmas gifts and went first to a second-hand bookshop in Brunswick Road, feeling a heady sense of freedom.

  She was tempted by several books but decided to look through the bookstalls in St John’s Lane before buying. Walking into the city, she stopped to buy a pennyworth of stickjaw toffee for herself, and humbugs and toffee for Mrs Molesworth and Martha.

  She came to a block of tenement flats known locally as ‘the dwellings’. A group of shawled women, girls and young boys was gathered outside them, and a photographer with a tripod and his head under a black cloth was taking a photograph. Although poorly dressed, the girls all wore boots and white pinafores, and the boys had boots and some sort of headgear.

  Kate’s attention, though, was on a small barefoot boy who stood among the watching crowd, knuckling his eyes and crying bitterly. She bent over him. ‘What’s up, lad?’ she asked gently.

  ‘Them lot won’t let me be took on the photy,’ he sobbed. ‘An’ I live in them dwellings and some a that lot don’t even live there.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Kate.

  ‘‘Cos I ‘aven’t got no boots, and Wally and Basher ony borreed theirs and them girls ony borreed pinnies.’ And he cried even more bitterly.

  In the sweetshop Kate had been given a silver sixpence and three pennies in change, and impulsively she took a penny and the stickjaw toffee from her pocket. ‘Here you are, lad,’ she said. ‘They haven’t got a penny and a bag of toffee anyway, and now you have.’

  The boy’s sobs stopped as though by magic and he clutched the sweets and the money. ‘Ta, missus,’ he cried, and went leaping down with delight down the road.

  Kate smiled as she walked away but she looked with more attention at the people around her. It was a time of great distress and hardship among the poor of Liverpool, and the sight of starving, ragged children and gaunt adults had become so familiar to Kate that she had been almost oblivious to it.

  A harassed-looking woman passed her with a sickly child held in her shawl and two thin, white-faced children clinging to her skirts, and a skeleton-thin ragged man slumped against the wall, staring at the ground in bitterness and defeat. But it was the sight of so many undernourished and ragged children that troubled Kate most.

  All Mildred’s guests held well-paid, secure positions, or, in Mrs Bradley’s case, had private means, so they could afford to pay Mildred’s high charges and she could provide good fires and excellent food. Now Kate looked at people and felt ashamed that she had a comfortable home, warm clothes and good food, and they had so little.

  Should she have given the rest of her money to the woman with the children? I wouldn’t have liked to do it, Kate decided. She might have been offended or thought I was hard-faced. Anyway, I’ve done my bit today with that little lad. She smiled again as she thought of his delight and went happily to the bookstalls.

  There she bought a well-bound copy of Bleak House by Charles Dickens for twopence, and a copy of Dome by H. Tirebuck for a penny. In a sweetshop she replaced her stickjaw toffee and enjoyed it as she wandered around the shops, where she bought herself a pair of black stockings.

  When she got home, she took her books to Miss Tate’s room and told her about the poor children she had seen. Miss Tate told her not to worry. Many people were working to help the poor and hungry. ‘I am myself a member of a committee which raises funds to provide dinners for poor children, and many others in this city give time and money to similar causes,’ she said, and Kate was comforted.

  Miss Tate approved her choice of books and told her that Mr Dickens used to give penny readings of his books in Liverpool and Mr Tirebuck was a local man, from Toxteth.

  ‘I wish I knew all these things like you,’ Kate said wistfully.

  Miss Tate smiled. ‘I didn’t know these facts when I was your age, Kate. I’ve had time to learn, as you will. Don’t undervalue yourself. You’re an intelligent girl and now that you can read well, all knowledge is open to you. It’s all there between the covers of books.’

  Kate thought often of Miss Tate’s words and resolved that all her money would be spent on second-hand books and all her free time in reading. Her guilty feelings had been assuaged by Agnes Tate, and then by Mrs Molesworth.

  Kate had told her friend about the little boy and the other hungry people when she gave her the toffee she had bought her. She also told her about Miss Tate’s good works.

  ‘I never knew nothing about that,’ said Mrs Molesworth. ‘But don’t you be worrying. There’s plenty more posh people who should be worrying, but they don’t. You work hard for your bit of money, girl.’

  ‘I know, but a penny or even a ha’penny would mean so much to those kids, and I could spare it,’ said Kate.

  ‘Yes, and if you changed your money into pennies and ha’pennies and give it all away it’d only be a drop in the ocean. And when you’d done it once they’d all be waiting for you every time you showed your face. You wouldn’t have no peace,’ said Mrs Molesworth.

  Kate could see the sense in her remarks and decided that she would use any spare money for treats for people she knew – people like Mr Molesworth. Although she had never met him, she felt that she knew him from Mrs Molesworth’s frequent references to her ‘feller’.

  As summer approached, the Molesworth family had even more cause for rejoicing than Kate’s frequent small treats. Their son Billy, who had been on a two-year voyage to China, was returning home. ‘The only lad I managed to rear,’ Mrs Molesworth had once told Kate. ‘And I couldn’t have reared a better one. The salt of the earth, our Billy.’

  Kate asked Mildred to give Mrs Molesworth the day off to meet Billy’s ship, offering to do the charwoman’s work to free her.

  ‘If it’s like the last time he was home, it’s tomorrow she’ll need the day off,’ Mildred said caustically. ‘They’ll never be sober until his pay-off’s spent. It’s the way those sort of people live.’ But she agreed to the day off.

  Mrs Molesworth did seem tired and red-eyed the following day, but Kate believed it was caused by emotion rather than drink. ‘Oh, girl, I couldn’t stop looking at our Billy,’ she sighed. ‘He looked that healthy and full o’ life. And the presents he brought home.’ She produced a delicate fan and a pair of soft kid gloves. ‘He brung these for you, girl, because you’ve been that good to us.’

  ‘But how did he know?’ exclaimed Kate, then felt ashamed when Mrs Molesworth said, ‘I writ it in me letters to him.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Molesworth, I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know you could write.’

  ‘I didn’t get much schooling,’ the charwoman said, showing no offence. ‘But my feller learned me. He was a checker, y’know. Got a good head on him. The difference our Billy’s made to him in one day you wouldn’t believe, girl.’

  Kate was delighted with the gifts from Billy and sent him a thank-you note, but she said nothing to Mildred about them. She was due to visit Beattie and Rose on Sunday, and she took the fan and the gloves in her pocket to show Rose, from whom she had no secrets. Rose thought they were beautiful, but she laughed when Kate said she had concealed them from Mildred.

  ‘“Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive”,’ she quoted. ‘I suppose you’re afraid she’ll wonder how you could afford to treat Mrs M. She doesn’t know about the original sovereign, does she?’ A shadow came over Rose’s face. ‘You’re luckier than I am. Auntie would never give me money. She’ll buy me anything I want but money might make me independent, you see.’

  ‘Oh, Rose, I didn’t realise,’ Kate exclaimed. ‘Will you have some of mine? I get ten shillings a month and I don’t need it, honestly.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Ka
te,’ Rose said cuttingly. ‘I’m not complaining, just stating a fact. There’s nothing I want that I can’t have.’ Except independence, thought Kate, but she felt snubbed and stayed silent. As though to prove her point, Rose took her sister up to her bedroom and showed her wardrobes filled with expensive clothes.

  ‘Aunt and I went to Bold Street and we sat on little gilt chairs while girls paraded up and down before us wearing gorgeous clothes so that we could decide what we liked. Aunt bought me four dresses and an evening cape,’ she boasted.

  Kate admired the clothes but secretly decided that she preferred her own life, where she could to some extent do as she pleased. She felt that she had offended Rose and was uncertain how to make amends, but Rose solved the problem.

  ‘Kate, your hands!’ she exclaimed, taking her sister’s rough, chapped hands in her own soft ones. ‘You must be working terribly hard. It’s not fair. Aunt Mildred should be ashamed of herself.’

  Kate laughed. ‘I put lanoline on them when I remember,’ she said, ‘but they’re soon as bad as ever. I don’t notice them.’

  ‘But Aunt Mildred should,’ Rose said indignantly. ‘She’s as hard as nails. Would you ever believe she and Aunt Beattie were sisters? Aunt Beattie’s like a pink and white marshmallow, and she like a – a—’

  ‘A stick of liquorice,’ Kate suggested, and they linked arms and went downstairs giggling together.

  Once they entered the drawing room, as Beattie liked to call it, Rose was transformed from a bitter schoolgirl into a dutiful, affectionate niece, anticipating all her aunt’s wishes and gracefully handing round the cakes and sandwiches brought in by Jane. Kate watched her with admiration. She felt that her sister was not being deceitful but was doing her best to keep her aunt happy, and very evidently succeeding.

  Kate wanted to wear the gloves from Billy, so she had no scruples about telling Mildred that Mrs Molesworth’s son had brought them home and the charwoman had given them to her.

  ‘You shouldn’t take gifts from that woman,’ Mildred said. ‘Next thing she’ll be wanting favours. They don’t give anything for nothing, that class of woman.’ Kate looked at her with dislike. How awful to think the worst of people all the time, she thought, and felt that her white lie was justified.

  She said nothing about it to Mrs Molesworth, but it would have taken a great deal to upset her friend at this time. Billy was spending money freely on his parents, and almost the first thing he did was to hire a spinal basket carriage in which his father could lie and be wheeled about the city by his son.

  ‘My feller’s made up,’ Mrs Molesworth told Kate. ‘Billy’s took him all over the place. Even down to the docks and to the Pier Head to see the ships in the river. I haven’t seen Charlie laugh so much for years when they was telling me about going down the floating roadway. The tide was in and the roadway was that tilted Charlie thought Billy’d have to run headlong down it and they’d both finish up in the river. This chair’s doin’ him the world of good. I should o’ thought of it.’

  ‘But you couldn’t have managed it,’ said Kate, ‘could you?’

  ‘True for you, girl, I couldn’t,’ agreed Mrs Molesworth. ‘With us living over the shops Billy can wheel him along the landing, and he gets fellers to help with the carridge down the steps at each end, but that’s a laugh for Charlie and all. He’s talked to fellers he hasn’t spoke to for years. He said it’s like coming back to life.’

  Billy’s pay-off was soon spent and he signed on again, but his time ashore had brightened his parents’ lives and given them much to talk and think about when he was gone.

  ‘He’s only signed on for nine months this time,’ Mrs Molesworth told Kate, ‘and he’s leaving me more on me allotment. He wants me to give up work but I dursen’t. Wharrif he got married? He hasn’t half made a difference, though, buying in plenty of food before he went and the way he’s cheered Charlie up. Give him a new lease of life, the doctor said.’

  Billy returned in nine months’ time, and after that only signed on for short trips, but no matter how small the pay-off, he took his father out in the spinal carriage every time he came ashore. Mrs Molesworth still wore her battered boots and flat cap and sacking apron for work, but Billy insisted on buying better clothes for her to wear on Sundays.

  She accompanied her husband and son to a park on several Sundays, but then returned home to rest while Billy wheeled his father round the leafy lanes of Aigburth. ‘Me leg give out on me,’ she told Kate the first time. ‘I cudda done with getting in the carridge with Charlie.’ She laughed heartily but after that made only short journeys with them.

  ‘I said to our Billy I should o’ thought of the carridge for Charlie, and he said I done more. I kept Charlie clean and comfortable and well fed all these years and he hasn’t got no bed sores or nothing. He said he never thought of the carridge himself till he seen a man in Hong Kong in one.’

  Kate rejoiced at the change in Mrs Molesworth’s fortunes but was pleased that she intended to stay on at Aunt Mildred’s. She was fond of the charwoman and felt that she was the only person she could speak freely to or ask for advice. Also she seemed a link with Kate’s mother, and often told her tales of the family from the days when she had helped her mother to clean the mansion in St Anne Street.

  Martha was becoming ever more dissatisfied and grumbling incessantly, and no one was surprised when she gave in her notice. ‘There was something fishy about that one from the start,’ Mrs Molesworth told Kate. ‘She never had no box for a start, so she must’ve been outa a place for a while. And she never told us nothing about herself, like.’

  Kate smiled to herself. It wasn’t for want of trying on Mrs Molesworth’s part, she thought, that they knew nothing about Martha. ‘Tighter than an oyster’ was the charwoman’s verdict after one session.

  Now Mrs Molesworth said that she could have predicted to the day when Martha would go. ‘Just give herself time to get some good food inside her, some good clothes and long enough to ask for a reference,’ she said. ‘I had her weighed up all right.’

  Mildred said nothing while Martha was working her notice, but evidently she had been to the orphanage where their laundry was done and arranged for an orphan to come to work for her. She told Kate about it the night before the girl arrived. ‘Her name’s Josephine Daulby and she’s thirteen. You can help me to train her. It’s time you took more responsibility,’ she said.

  Kate said nothing. Mildred made these pronouncements from time to time, but Kate knew they meant little. She still worked as hard and was scolded as frequently by her aunt, and she was told nothing about the finances of the guesthouse. As Mrs Molesworth had predicted, she was soon plain Kate to everyone again, without protest from Mildred. She still received her ten shillings’ allowance every month, although the second afternoon off was not practicable and was never mentioned again.

  Kate was nearly sixteen, tall and thin, and although shy with strangers, she was happy and confident with those she knew well. She would never be a beauty like her sister, but she had large hazel eyes and clear skin, and her plain face was transformed by her ready smile. She looked very different to the frightened and unhappy little orphan who had arrived at the house on the day of her mother’s funeral.

  Chapter Five

  Josephine Daulby arrived the following day when the clean laundry was delivered, and stood by meekly while Mildred and Kate checked the linen with the van man. She was a small girl with large brown eyes and dark curly hair. Her arms and legs were like sticks and her cheeks hollowed, but her eyes were sparkling with excitement and she returned Kate’s smile with a beaming one of her own.

  As soon as the van man had gone, Mildred said, ‘Now, this is my niece, Kate, who’ll tell you what to do. I expect you to work hard and do everything she tells you to do.’

  ‘Yes, ma’am,’ the girl said meekly, but her eyes were still sparkling.

  ‘I’m going out now, Kate, but you know what to do,’ said Mildred. ‘Put the laundry away for a s
tart, and see that Mrs Molesworth doesn’t waste time.’

  ‘Yes, Aunt,’ Kate said, remembering her own first day and smiling encouragingly at the girl. As soon as Mildred had gone, she said briskly, ‘The first thing we’ll do is have a cup of tea. Are you always called Josephine?’

  ‘No, we just had numbers in the Home. There was so many of us, y’see.’

  ‘Well, can I call you Josie? Josephine’s a bit of a mouthful,’ said Kate.

  ‘Oo, yes please,’ the girl said eagerly.

  Mrs Molesworth appeared on the basement stairs, and Kate smiled at her. ‘Mrs Molesworth can smell tea being made from a hundred yards away, Josie,’ she joked.

  ‘Aye, but there’s always a cup for me if Kate makes it, and she’ll be the same with you, girl. You’ve fell on your feet coming here.’

  As the three of them sat drinking tea and eating biscuits provided by Kate, Mrs Molesworth questioned Josie closely. The girl said frankly that she was a foundling and had been given the surname Daulby because she had been found in a doorway in Daulby Street.

  ‘Josephine’s me own name, though,’ she said proudly. ‘Me mam must’ve been a lady because she could write. She writ me name on a label and the date I was born, May the third. Every year a doll come for me on that date until I was nine, and then they stopped, like. I think she must of died.’

  ‘You was gettin’ a bit big for dolls anyhow,’ the charwoman said.

  ‘I never knew about them until I was seven,’ said Josie. ‘Some woman what got sacked told me and she told me about the label on me clothes an’ all. They used to bring the dolls and some other toys out when these toffs come to inspect us, like, so I managed to get one of them and hide it. I brung it with me.’ She stopped, looking frightened. ‘Will I get into trouble?’ she muttered. ‘I won’t get sent back, will I?’

  ‘Of course not,’ Kate said swiftly. ‘It’s a little secret between the three of us.’ She rose to her feet. ‘Is this your bundle, Josie? If you’ve finished I’ll take you up to your room.’