The White Empress

by Lyn Andrews

  ‘Isn’t there a form or something I can fill in?’ she pleaded.

  ‘I can register you, that’s all. You go up to the Liver Buildings and see them, you may be lucky! Tell them Arthur Hanson sent you, it may help.’

  She nodded her thanks and turned away.

  She crossed the windswept pierhead, the rain soaking into her cheap coat. She felt cold and dejected. She had known it wouldn’t be easy. As she entered the Royal Liver Buildings a porter stopped her and asked her her business. He directed her to the offices she asked for. Canadian Pacific, Cunard and the Booth Line. Her confidence waned with each step she took up the flight of wide stairs. She was so nervous by the time a haughty-looking clerk in a stiff, winged collar asked in clipped tones what she wanted, she could only stammer, ‘I . . . I want to go to sea!’

  ‘Any experience?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, we’ve no vacancies! Try Cunard, White Star.’

  Her hand was shaking as she pulled open the door. She had forgotten how it felt to have to beg. Her thoughts flew back to those cold, winter days in Dublin when, as a child, she had accosted the wealthier citizens begging for ‘a halfpenny please, sir? Tis starved I am!’ She couldn’t go on! She leaned against the wall. She had to! Joe had!

  She received the same treatment in the Cunard office but resolutely pressed on, her self-confidence in tatters. The polished wooden counters, carpeted floors and tastefully framed prints of their ships, the offices of the Booth Steam Ship Company exuded quiet, old-fashioned gentility. The clerk was a middle-aged man in a dark suit and stiff white collar. It appeared to be a uniform among shipping clerks.

  ‘May I be of assistance, miss?’

  She took courage from his tone and manner. It was neither openly hostile nor arrogantly patronising. ‘I’ve come to see if . . . well, if you might be having any vacancies for a stewardess?’

  ‘Have you been to The Pool?’

  ‘I have that, sir. Arthur Hanson told me to try . . . here.’

  ‘He often does tell them that.’

  ‘Even . . . even if you don’t have anything right now, could I put my name on a list or something?’

  ‘We are an old-established company, miss?’

  ‘Cleary.’ She supplied eagerly. At least he was treating her as a person of some account.

  ‘Well, Miss Cleary, our ships are away for nine months of the year, we sail up the River Amazon – that’s Brazil – and we don’t carry too many lady passengers so therefore we don’t employ many stewardesses. The ones we have have been with us for years and are likely to remain until they retire. Have you tried Cunard, White Star or Canadian Pacific?’

  The tiny ray of hope that had flickered at his pleasant treatment of her, died. ‘Both.’

  ‘I’m sorry. There are others.’

  She turned away and then turned back to him. ‘Sir, I was told that to be a stewardess I would need to have qualifications, to talk properly and be able to get on with people. Is that the truth of it? Is that why they won’t take me on?’

  He placed the pen he was holding neatly down in front of him in a precise, definite movement. Then he clasped his hands. ‘Yes, most of that is true, sadly.’

  She turned and ran. Everything Joe had said was true! How could she have ever believed she could turn that dream into reality! Because she had risen, with Joe’s help and Mrs Travis’s, a step higher than the slum girl she had been, she had thought she could just walk in and expect to be handed her dream. It was patently obvious that she was still little more than that Dublin slummy who had stepped off the cattle boat! And it hurt. It hurt so much that her chest felt tight, her throat was dry and her eyes burned with unshed tears! She had no chance. No chance at all!

  ‘Settle for what you have,’ Joe had said, but she had refused to listen to him. Now it was a fact she could no longer refute. ‘Never give up your dream! Fight for your ambitions, Catherine!’ Mrs Travis’s words. But there was no fight left in her now. There was nothing she could do except go back to Everton Valley and try to come to terms with defeat.

  There was no one she could tell about the disastrous attempt. She couldn’t go to Mrs Travis and tell her she was looking for an alternative job, not when she had been so kind. She was afraid Joe would sympathise and pity her, but would also say ‘I told you so’ and even her severely lacerated pride wouldn’t tolerate that. She was tempted to tell Marie, but she felt she hadn’t known her long enough; that their friendship wasn’t yet so close. She knew it was pride that kept her tongue silent. What little she had left of it. So she was miserable and silent and not even her visits to Marie’s could dispel her utter dejection that was increased when Joe again got a month’s work on the Marguerita.

  He and Mrs Travis had a very long talk in the parlour and he had told her later that they had come to an agreement. The old lady understood his restlessness and agreed that, whenever the opportunity arose, he should take it. She would manage, he did his work well enough to be absent for the odd month or two whenever he managed to get a ship.

  Despite Maisey’s threats Shelagh had returned home and whenever Cat paid her Sunday visit there was an argument between them. Shelagh resented the security and luxury she lived in. She was jealous of the few clothes Cat had, for they were of a superior quality to her own and made Cat appear older, smarter and more attractive than herself. All she wanted out of life was a bit of fun, surely that wasn’t too bad, but Cat always seemed to be looking down her nose at her, disapproving. Cat blamed Shelagh for the decline in her mother’s health. She caused nothing but worry and trouble. She wasn’t stupid – she could get a better position if she worked harder and took things more seriously. She could be more considerate, she should help more in the house instead of complaining. But Shelagh had always been lazy and selfish and Cat knew that it was only her mother’s pleadings that had swayed Maisey to take her back.

  One spring morning she was walking up the street on her way home. She walked slowly, not really wanting to go at all. She was more dejected than usual for Joe had sailed the previous day. This time he would be away for nearly three months and had been promoted to donkey man, keeping the donkey boiler going at all times. The Marguerita was tramping around the ports of Europe and was even venturing as far as the Mediterranean, hopefully, he had said. Marie was working hard for examinations and on the previous Sunday immediately after afternoon tea, she had taken a reluctant farewell as Mr Gorry led his daughter, with all her books and writing materials, into the parlour to ‘study’. She had wished desperately that she could have joined them. She wanted to learn. Her experiences at the shipping offices had made her realise the truth about herself and she was trying to improve. In the evenings and when there was time to spare, she would borrow a book from the bookcase in the parlour and pore over it. They were mainly books on navigation and the like, which were totally beyond her, but there were a few on foreign countries and these she did find interesting. But there were so many words she couldn’t pronounce and many whose meaning was lost to her.

  Her attention was diverted by the clanking and clattering of cans, the high-pitched yowling of a cat and the sniggering laughter of young boys, followed by the sound of running feet. At the junction of the alleyway between the houses – known as ‘the jigger’ – and the street, she was knocked sideways by three lads who charged blindly into the street. She grabbed two of them by their collars. One was Eamon.

  ‘What do you think you’re doing? What have you been up to at this time on a Sunday morning?’

  He glared at her from under the thick fringe of hair. ‘Nothin’!’

  She shook him hard. ‘Don’t give me that, Eamon Cleary!’

  He refused to answer. She was making him look stupid in front of ‘the gang’.

  ‘We was only playin’ kick the can,’ the other lad muttered sullenly.

  She knew him. He lived at the top end of the street. ‘Kick the can on a Sunday, Vinny O’Brien! You should be home getting read
y for Mass! And what was all the yowling, it sounded like a cat?’

  The third member of the group had sauntered back, courage restored, seeing it was only a girl who had caught the others. She didn’t recollect having seen him before. ‘Where do you live? Round here?’

  ‘What’s it ter you?’

  ‘Hard-faced little sod, I’ll box your ears!’

  He ignored her. ‘We was only ’avin’ a birrof a laugh! Tied a can to the tail of a jigger rabbit. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It says a lot about you! No more sense in your head than to be persecuting a poor cat!’

  ‘Dinny’s got a job, he don’t go ter school no more!’ Eamon piped up, emboldened by his friends obvious lack of fear. ‘He’s a delivery boy!’

  ‘I didn’t think they let you out of school until you’d grown up and had some sense in your thick heads!’ she replied sarcastically.

  ‘Who’re yer callin’ thick?’

  She had released Eamon and Vinny O’Brien and her hand shot out and Dinny Lacey received a stinging slap across the side of his head that made his ears ring. ‘Now you can get home and tell your Da that Cat Cleary boxed your ears for your cheek, then you can get to Mass and if I don’t see you there I’ll tell Father Maguire about these shenanigans! Clear off!’

  He turned and ran with Vinny close on his heels. Eamon was about to follow but she grabbed him by his ear and he squealed like a stuck pig.

  ‘Hasn’t Ma got enough to worry about without you playing the eejit with the likes of them! Get home!’

  He rubbed his tingling ear as she pushed him into the house. Her father had just come downstairs, looking grey and needing a shave. Cat pushed her brother at him.

  ‘Can’t you do anything with him? Don’t you care about him at all?’

  ‘What’s he done now?’ he muttered.

  ‘Only woken half the street and tormented the daylights out of a poor cat, and he’s hanging around with back-crack lads! Don’t you care what happens to him? Don’t you care what happens to any of us? For the love of Heaven, Pa, can’t you do something – anything to help Ma? You know she’s ill, you know she’s worn out and worried to death about this boyo and . . . Shelagh!’

  His bleary eyes rested on her for a second then he looked away. ‘What can I do about anything? We should have stayed in Dublin.’

  ‘So, you’ve given up again! You just don’t care, do you?’

  ‘I do . . . in me way.’

  ‘And what way is that Pa? Getting drunk as often as you can so you won’t have to face up to things?’

  ‘You’ve got too much to say for yourself, that you have! Isn’t a man entitled to some respect from his own daughter?’

  ‘Respect! Respect!’ she yelled, not caring if the whole street heard her. ‘You have to earn respect and you’ve never done anything to make me respect you! And I don’t want to hear about “honouring Thy Father and Thy Mother”. I honour, love and respect Ma but I’ll never be able to say the same about you! I despise you!’

  With the attention diverted from himself, Eamon had slipped into the kitchen, leaving his father and sister in the lobby.

  ‘Eamon, is that Cat shouting at your Pa?’ his mother asked.

  ‘Yes, I think she’s tellin’ him ter gerra job,’ he replied, the picture of innocence.

  ‘Well, she’ll have no luck there, it’s like talkin’ ter the wall an’ I know!’ Maisey answered tartly.

  The hot, sticky days of summer dragged on. Four postcards had arrived from Joe and with the arrival of each, she missed him more and more. She was looking up Algiers on the big globe of the world, mounted on its polished wooden stand, when Mrs Travis quietly entered the room.

  ‘It’s in North Africa, Catherine, and from what I remember of Captain Travis’s description, it’s not a very nice place at all. Hot, dirty, swarming with flies, wretched beggars and thieves.’

  She turned, her cheeks flushed.

  ‘You look feverish, have you a headache?’

  ‘Just a bit of one, it’s probably the heat.’

  ‘I know you miss him – I do myself – but I did warn you. The sea is in his blood and you’ll never keep him ashore for long!’

  ‘I know, but it makes it harder when . . . when I get these.’ She held out the postcard that depicted an Arab bazaar.

  ‘What’s the matter, Catherine? For months you’ve been quiet and withdrawn. Is it entirely to do with Joe, or is something wrong at home?’

  The parlour was cool for the heavy drapes kept out the glare, but she did feel feverish. Suddenly, it all gushed out. A verbal torrent that couldn’t be stopped. Shelagh, Eamon, her father, her mother’s declining health, Marie’s commitment to her exams and the feelings of exclusion this caused. The pain, despair and humiliation of her visit to the shipping offices. When she was finished she looked down. Unconsciously she had torn the postcard to shreds.

  Mrs Travis sighed. ‘You can’t take the worry of them all on your shoulders, child. You’re too young! Obviously your father is beyond all help and your sister, I’m afraid, will go her own way regardless of any attempts to correct her. Your brother is your father’s responsibility – not yours! If he can’t control him and he gets into trouble, it will be your father and not you, that the authorities will blame.’ She held out her hand and Cat dropped the torn fragments of Joe’s card into it. Without being told to, she sank down on to the sofa.

  ‘What about Ma?’

  The old lady neatly stacked the mutilated card, piece by piece, in her lap before she spoke. ‘All my life I have tried in my small way, to help alleviate the sufferings of the poor familes in this parish, but it’s a drop in the ocean. Your mother was ill when you first came to Liverpool, wasn’t she?’

  Cat nodded.

  ‘This city, indeed this area, is not healthy. The air is damp and contaminated by the filth that pours into it from all the factories. For someone with your mother’s constitution, it is not good, not good at all! But until there is full employment, good housing and something done about the air we breathe, nothing will change. Nothing can change, for poor souls like her. It’s hard to accept, very hard, but there is very little any of us can do.’

  ‘That’s why I went . . . I wanted to try to change things for her, help her! I . . . I was desperate!’

  ‘And do you really believe that she would have left your father, her husband of many years, her son and daughter to live most of the time alone? Even with all the things you want to provide for her?’

  ‘Yes! Yes, I know she would!’

  ‘Then you have a lot to learn about people, Catherine. Especially about the vows of marriage.’

  ‘I have a lot to learn about everything!’ she answered bitterly for the old lady had planted the seeds of doubt in her mind. She had never stopped to think what her mother’s reaction would be to the dream home she had visualised. In fact she had never really thought about her mother’s feelings at all.

  ‘What can’t be changed must be endured, without bitterness!’

  She wanted to cry out that she couldn’t accept that! That life was unfair! Instead she pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear and bit her lip.

  ‘I notice that you’ve been reading.’ Seeing Cat’s quick, guilty glance, she smiled. ‘I can’t think that any of these old books on navigation could make interesting reading. Why didn’t you ask for one of the books I keep in my room?’

  ‘I . . . I didn’t want you to think I was being forward or—’

  ‘Dickens, Jane Austen and the Brontë sisters would appeal to you more.’

  ‘I . . . I don’t understand so many of the words!’

  ‘Then I’ll teach you to use a dictionary. Go upstairs and bring me Jane Eyre and the Oxford Dictionary. We might as well start now, it’s the least I can do and I think you’ll find inspiration and an escape from the worries of everyday life. I know I do.’

  After that she read voraciously. She read anything and everything and Mrs Travis had been right,
she could escape from life through the pages of books, into the lives of the heroines. And, without realising it, she was learning, too. Her vocabulary increased, she began to grasp the social changes that had taken place, to realise that life was better in so many ways.

  Marie had passed her exams with flying colours and called one day bursting with excitement.

  ‘Oh, it’s such a relief! I never want to see another book!’

  ‘Oh, I’m so pleased for you! I really am! But how can you say that? I love books! Mrs Travis has lent me so many and helped me so much.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cat, I haven’t been much company have I, lately?’

  ‘Your exams were far more important, you know I realise that!’

  ‘I was terrified when the envelope came. I thought Mam was going to faint. You see, the other two did so well, but it was so hard for me and I didn’t want to let her down, or Dad either. Not after all the money they spent on me.’

  ‘You didn’t.’

  ‘No, I didn’t and now Dad has promised to take us on holiday! He asked where I wanted to go, it was my choice, as a reward! I know Mam didn’t want to go back to Ireland, she’s always gone on and on about Bournemouth, so that’s where we’re going. To stay in an hotel for two weeks!’

  Even though she was so very pleased for Marie, she couldn’t help the stab of envy. She had hoped to have seen more of her only friend now she had finished at school.

  ‘Is Joe still away?’

  ‘Yes. But he is on his way back now. He said he hopes to be home some time in September.’

  ‘That’s not far off.’

  ‘When will you get back?’

  ‘A week before I start commercial college.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘Mam had one of her “serious” talks with me. I’ve got to grow up now, she said. “Got to act more ladylike and not romp around like a tomboy any more.” I’ve got this horrible feeling that everything is going to change! That everything will be different.’

  The thing Cat had dreaded since the day she had returned from her first visit to Yew Tree Road seemed about to happen. She had thought then that things changed, people changed. Her face reflected these fears.