Child of the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  A hefty police constable, looking as strong as one of those new air-raid shelters, his truncheon raised at the ready, hurled himself into Kitty’s scullery and nearly upended the three-tiered wedding cake that she had finished decorating only that morning. Trembling in all its white-pillared glory, it looked about to lose the tiny bride and groom that sat neatly on the top. Kitty, imagining her hard work was about to smash to the floor, saw red.

  ‘Here, what do you think you’re doing?’ She thrust out her hand and, in the blink of an eye, saved the cake from certain destruction. Having steadied it back onto the stand, she pushed her chin forward only inches from the bobby’s face and her determined expression told him he was out of luck if he thought he was going to take the shortcut to an arrest today.

  Tommy stood watching, his face lit with delight. With a bit of luck Kitty would forget all about finishing his wash.

  ‘We have reason to believe—’ the bobby began.

  ‘I don’t care what you’ve got, you’ve got no right to come crashing into decent people’s homes. If you haven’t got a warrant you’re not going any further, so get out of my kitchen and leave us honest folk to our work, will you!’ With that, slightly built as she was, Kitty pushed back the surprised constable and urged him down the lobby and out of the front door. Slamming it shut, she dusted her hands and vowed that she would have more than a little word with Danny and her father when they deigned to show their faces again.

  ‘And you …’ Kitty arrived back in the scullery, looking menacingly at Tommy, ‘get those hands washed. Your tea will be ready in five minutes.’ Tommy washed his hands in double-quick time. He was not going to argue with Kitty when she was in this mood. If asked, he would not be able to describe the rising admiration he now felt for his sister. She was only a slip of a girl, but she had the courage of a lioness.

  ‘We were just having a game of pitch-and-toss in the back alley, there …’ Danny stilled the hunk of bread that was heading towards his mouth and nodded towards the wall that separated the house from Pop Feeny’s stable. Danny and his father had crept back into the house while Kitty got the dinner onto the table. It was a simple meal of beef suet pudding with boiled potatoes and cabbage. Money for food was often scarce but Kitty was adept at stretching her housekeeping money out and she had inherited her mother’s talent for cooking as well as for watching the pennies. She could often be found at the local market on a Saturday evening, haggling with the stallholders and usually getting the best prices.

  Kitty hadn’t forgotten about the incident earlier but the worry over the housekeeping money was still unresolved and she bore down on her younger brother.

  ‘I don’t care about the game. What about the money in the tin?’ she asked Danny, who let out a long exasperated sigh.

  ‘That was just a loan, Kit. You know I’ll put it back before the rent man comes.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that. He’s been and I’ve paid him and now I’ve got nothing left.’ Kitty knew this wasn’t true, thinking of the money that Sid had popped in her pinny, but she wasn’t ready to let Danny off the hook. Her hands were in their usual position on her hips and she leaned towards him. She wanted answers, not excuses.

  ‘You haven’t?’ Danny’s pale face was a picture of disbelief. Kitty nodded.

  ‘He promised he’d be our lookout, but he was nowhere to be seen.’ Danny nodded towards young Tommy. ‘I was on a winning hand when the bobbies came. Someone scooped all the stake money – I’m not sure who but I’ll soon find out.’

  ‘A fat lot of good that will do me.’ Kitty was angry now. ‘What am I supposed to do when I have to go into the shop and tell old-misery-on-the-hob Mrs Kennedy that I don’t have the money to pay me bill?’

  Kitty would tell him about Sid Kerrigan dropping the money into her pocket later, but for now, he could sweat. Danny had a job as a stevedore on Canada Dock but he ducked and dived, did a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and up to now he had stayed just the right side of the law, but sometimes only by the skin of his teeth. Kitty worried how long it would be before his luck ran out and there would be no going back. She noted her shifty-looking father, his head buried in the Evening Echo, making no attempt to meet her eyes. How was she ever going to instil some morals in Danny if his father only encouraged him in the opposite direction?

  ‘I’ll get your money,’ Danny said in a reassuring voice, trying to calm Kitty down. It wouldn’t do to get her all steamed up before he told them all his news. It was going to be bad enough once he told her. He was going to join up!

  ‘Well, you just make sure you do, Danny Callaghan, otherwise you’ll be going to visit Mam up in heaven – if they’ll have you! We do not have the money to throw away on fines if you are caught gambling, Danny.’ Kitty took the plate from under his nose, refusing to acknowledge his look of disappointment that told her he had been about to mop up the remaining gravy with his bread. She stacked the plate on top of the others on the battered wooden tray. ‘I warned you not to bring trouble to this door, Danny, and I mean it.’ She gave her younger brother a murderous look.

  ‘I told our Tommy it would be worth a couple of coppers if he kept dixie,’ Danny said, as if his brother’s failure to keep a lookout for the law was the reason they’d got in this mess.

  ‘Don’t blame Tommy – you had no right,’ Kitty fumed. ‘I am trying to bring him up decent. The way Mam would have wanted.’ She was taking no lip from Danny now.

  Danny knew, judging by the determined look in her dark eyes, that Kitty was not in the mood for being soft-soaped. As she impatiently shoved a fine wisp of dark wavy hair behind her ear he took a chance and said, by way of explanation, ‘You know what it’s like, Kit: payday on the docks the lads wanted a little flutter. Percy the Greek was nowhere to be seen, so they decided on a game of pitch-and-toss. But where was our Tommy, who was supposed to be lookout …?’

  ‘Danny was here with me, where he should have been, and not with you lot of scallywags picking up bad habits.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Tommy whined. ‘I had a sore throat.’

  ‘Another one?’ Danny’s brows puckered. ‘You’ll have to get him seen to, Kit.’

  ‘If you two didn’t gamble and drink our money away, I might be able to afford a doctor.’ Kitty looked at her little brother. She didn’t know whether it was his bad start in life but Tommy had a very weak chest and still seemed to pick up whatever was going. The summer months saw an improvement but they’d had a few close shaves with him in their time and Kitty worried about him constantly.

  ‘All right, Kitty, that’s enough now.’ Her father tried to assert his authority, which she respected when he was sober. It was a different matter when he was falling over drunk, as he would have been if the dice school had not been scattered.

  ‘How am I expected to bring Tommy up the right way with you two leading the example?’ Kitty asked her father. ‘If it wasn’t for Jack and me, goodness knows what would have become of him. I don’t know where me mam got you two from, but it was definitely the same place!’

  ‘Sorry, Kit,’ her father and her brother said in unison, and as usual, she relented.

  ‘I don’t want to get a cob on with you,’ she said as if talking to young children, ‘but you both squander what little money we have.’ She’d only own up that she had the money in her pocket after the pub shut. They could live without it for once in their lives.

  ‘Jack won’t be happy, will he, Kit?’ Tommy said piously, giving Danny cause to glare.

  ‘Mam would be horrified.’ Kitty knew the mention of her mother always brought a wave of contrition. ‘And if you bring the bobbies to this door again, either of you,’ she said, pointing at them with the knife she was about to put on the tray, ‘I will tell Jack.’

  ‘Sounds like she’s at the end of her tether,’ Danny whispered to his father when Kitty took the tray out to the scullery.

  ‘I heard that, and I am,’ Kitty called. Then coming back into the
room and nodding to Tommy she said, ‘You go and have a lie-down, you look awful.’ She looked at his untouched plate of suet pudding.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of a lie-down,’ he said without complaint, so unlike him as he loved to be outside.

  ‘Is he sickening for something?’ Danny asked, his eyebrows meeting. Kitty tilted her head to one side to get a better look at Tommy’s downturned face. These things came on so fast with Tommy and they disappeared just as quickly sometimes.

  ‘I’ll go now if that’s all right, Kit?’ Tommy said, getting up from the table and heading to the stairs.

  Kitty’s eyebrows rose. He must be sick if he was taking himself to bed. ‘Go on,’ she said more gently. ‘I’ll bring you a drink up soon.’

  ‘Ta, Kit,’ Tommy said, looking miserable. Then, in a low voice, milking his sister’s sympathy for all it was worth, he added, ‘It was probably making me get that wash that did it.’

  ‘What’s the matter, Spud?’ Jack, just coming through the door, was surprised his little brother did not raise a smile when he produced his weekly comic.

  ‘He’s not feeling well; he’s got another one of his sore throats.’ Kitty felt guilty for scolding Tommy earlier. ‘I got a couple of lemons from the shop. I’ll make him a hot drink.’

  ‘In this weather!’ Tommy exclaimed in a croaky, despondent voice. ‘I’ll melt.’ Then, without another word, he climbed the stairs to the middle bedroom he shared with Danny. Dad had the back room since Mam died, and Kitty had the big front bedroom containing just a single bed, a small table for the alarm clock and a chest of drawers for her meagre amount of clothing.

  ‘That’s a lovely cake, Kit,’ Jack said, taking off his cap, his jacket slung over his shoulder. He and his father nodded warily to each other as Jack entered the kitchen. ‘Did you make it?’

  Jack was now a well-paid shipwright at Harland and Wolff’s foundry and marine repair works in Strand Road.

  Every payday Jack put his wages on the table, and Kitty gave him back his spends. Not once did she hear him complain. Work had been scarce for Danny and Dad, and Jack was often the only one providing. Kitty supplemented the coffers with the odd catering job, and made delicious wedding or christening cakes, but although everybody around came to her, she could not charge inflated prices to people she knew were in the same boat as herself.

  ‘Aye,’ Kitty answered proudly, gazing at the cake she had moved to the sideboard for safety. She could feel her face flush warmly; it wasn’t very often she got a compliment in this house. ‘I’m going to take it over to Aunty Dolly’s later.’

  ‘You’ve surpassed yourself, Kit!’ Danny smiled.

  ‘Will you stay for your tea today, Jack?’ He didn’t always, and Kitty sneaked a look at her father whose head was still buried in the Echo.

  ‘Would be a shame to waste it.’ He answered her after a pause, and gave her a grin. It must have been one of their good days, thought Kitty, and pulled a seat out for her brother, taking his cap and jacket and hooking them on a peg behind the door.

  ‘If you wait until I’ve finished my tea,’ Jack said, sitting down to the table for his evening meal, after which he’d go back to his digs, ‘I’ll carry it over for you.’

  It would be nice to have a chat with Aunty Dolly and Pop. Maybe, he thought, trying to suppress a warm smile, Rita would be there too …

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘It’s only us,’ Kitty called up the narrow passageway everybody referred to as a lobby, following Jack, who was carrying Nancy’s wedding cakes in three individual boxes, which Nancy had purchased specially from George Henry Lee.

  ‘Come in, Jack, and you, Kit.’ Rita shooed the sleeping cat off the chair and Kitty was surprised to see the kitchen almost full.

  ‘Oh, Mam, you didn’t tell us Kitty was bringing the cake over. Put it on the table here, Kit, so we can get a good look at it,’ said Nancy.

  ‘Hello, Jack, how are you?’ Rita, married now to Charlie Kennedy, gave a friendly smile as she tried to disengage her son, who was six years old, and his five-year-old sister from her skirt where they were playing a chasing game. There was only fifteen months between the two children and Michael was the image of his mother, with flame-red hair, though his eyes were hazel, unlike her green ones. Megan’s hair was fairer and she favoured her father’s looks.

  ‘All the better for seeing you, Rita.’ Jack gave her a warm smile. Despite herself, Rita felt herself blush. She and Jack went back a long way. Before she married Charlie, she and Jack had been walking out together. But that had all been a long time ago, she reminded herself. They’d been little more than kids. Now she was married to Charlie with two children. It was best to look forward and not back.

  ‘It looks like you’ve got your hands full there, Rita,’ Kitty said as she placed one of the boxes on the table ready for the family inspection. She felt nervous suddenly. She did hope they liked it. Nancy especially.

  ‘They never give me a minute.’ Rita’s laugh was easy-going, practised, and Kitty marvelled at her ability to snap on a smile at a moment’s notice. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without them, though.’

  ‘They’re thriving, Rita, and it’s a credit to you,’ Jack said.

  Rita found it hard to meet his eyes and brushed off his compliment. ‘Thanks, Jack, they’re good kids. Let’s hope there isn’t a war. I couldn’t bear to part with them.’

  Thinking of Tommy, Kitty knew exactly what she meant. If Mr Chamberlain decided that this country was going to war with Germany, the children were to be taken away to a place of safety. Kitty had heard the mothers talking in the shops and in the streets around. Many said that they would send their children away to God only knew where only over their own dead bodies. Others said that their children’s safety must come before any personal considerations. It was a choice no mother wanted to make.

  ‘It’s lovely to see everybody here,’ Kitty smiled as Jack placed the two bigger boxes on the table.

  Pop and Dolly nodded with proud appreciation of a full house. ‘Only our Frank missing,’ said Dolly, ‘but he’ll be home tomorrow if he can get leave.’

  ‘I’d better be off, Dolly. Good to see you all. I’m looking forward to a slice of that cake on Saturday.’

  ‘Bye, Jack. Mind how you go, now,’ Rita said, as Jack made his way to the door.

  ‘You too, Reet,’ Jack replied as their eyes met. Rita looked away quickly and then he was gone. But she was aware that Jack had used the same shortening of her name that he’d always done. Jack was the only person that Rita would allow to call her that.

  ‘Have a seat, Kit.’ Eddy scraped back his chair and offered it to Kitty. A merchant mariner, he had managed to get leave for his sister’s wedding.

  ‘Hopefully he will get here before Saturday,’ Dolly said, pouring tea into another two cups while Kitty’s heartbeat fluttered at the mention of Frank Feeny.

  ‘You’re looking well, Kit.’ Eddy’s friendly smile flashed white against a rugged, windblown complexion, enhanced by three years of sea voyages.

  ‘I’m fine, Eddy.’ Kitty took the cup of tea from Dolly and sat at the table. ‘How’s yourself?’

  ‘We docked yesterday. I’m joining a new ship down the Pool on Monday.’ He sounded excited and Kitty couldn’t help but notice the pained look on his mother’s face. Kitty knew young men like Eddy were joining the services because they could not get jobs, but around here many had always gone away to sea. The thought of war made her feel sick. There were two million unemployed in this country and it seemed that joining one of the Forces was the only one way to get a decent day’s work. She knew that naval forces had been marshalling for months and the local docks had provided anchorage for ships of many nations.

  ‘I’ve got salt water in my veins, like Frank … and Pop, of course.’ Eddy looked over to his father, a Royal Navy veteran who had seen action in the Great War. Although he did not talk about it much the proof of all he had been through sat on his handsome face. The dark eye-
patch he wore was a daily reminder.

  ‘You’ll have best bitter running through your veins on Saturday,’ Pop laughed. The Feeny house was always lively and full of laughter.

  ‘You know,’ Pop whispered to Eddy, out of Dolly’s earshot, ‘your mother never talks about it but there are bags of sugar and tins of stuff all over the house. She doesn’t want to be caught out if the worst happens. There’s talk of rationing if war breaks out.’ Everybody was quietly preparing for war, it seemed.

  ‘Are you going to save me a dance on Saturday, Kit?’ Eddy asked, slow, slow, quick-quick, slowing in circles around the room, making Kitty laugh loudly. ‘Go on, Kit, will you?’

  Kitty, nodding, agreed.

  Eddy and his older brother, Frank, had always treated her like a younger sister, larking about with her just as they did with Nancy or fifteen-year-old Sarah, the youngest of the Feeny clan. The thought of any of them, especially Frank, going to fight an enemy – risking their lives – gave her chills.

  Neither of them had serious relationships, but Frank seemed more the type to play the field. He always said there was enough of him to go round, and why stop at one, which brought howls of protest from his sisters, who maintained he would get himself into trouble saying things like that.

  The more outgoing of the Feeny brothers, Frank had courted a great many girls on his travels – so he said – and Kitty had no cause to doubt him. Now she sat ramrod straight, holding tightly on to her teacup like a shield. What was it they said about sailors – a girl in every port?

  Please come home alone, Frank. The sun dipped behind a cloud and the room grew darker for a moment, the gloom temporarily mirroring Kitty’s feelings when she recalled the last time Frank had brought a girl home to Empire Street. Kitty did not know who the girl was, nor did she ask Rita about it. She had seen Frank come down the street with the pretty girl, obviously taking her home to meet his folks. Kitty thought they looked like a couple of film stars. Frank, being his usual friendly self, waved to Kitty, sitting on the front step after cleaning the house from top to bottom and worrying where the money for the next meal was coming from. Frank’s girlfriend, dressed in a fabulous camel-hair coat with wide, turn-back cuffs and large buttons, waved too, making Kitty feel dull and dowdy by comparison. To her shame, Kitty did not wave back, pretending not to notice; instead she got up, went inside and cleaned up all over again, all the while fighting back hot tears and wondering where they had come from all of a sudden.