Child of the Mersey

by Annie Groves

  Looking to her right and then to her left, Kitty was not sure from which direction Rene would approach the canteen. She stamped her feet to try to get some life back into them and wondered if she had got the time wrong. Maybe Rene had said eight o’clock and not seven. She did not know how long she’d been standing here, probably not that long, but in this weather it seemed like ages.

  ‘Have you got the time, please, mister?’ Her voice carried on the cold wet air to a passing carter, who gave her a guarded look. Immediately Kitty realised she had worded her question in such a way it could have been misinterpreted.

  ‘Y’all right, there, love?’ The carter’s muffled voice was full of concern. Below the flat cap pulled down over his eyes and a couple of thick, woollen scarves wound warmly around his neck and hiding the lower half of his face he was unrecognisable. ‘Is that you, Kit?’

  Kitty took a closer look and realised it was Pop! She should have known. He did not wear a hessian sack covering his head and shoulders like some of the carters. Instead, he wore a good-quality Crombie overcoat and, encased in thick woollen gloves, his hands were probably a good deal warmer than hers were right now.

  ‘Hello there, Pop.’ Kitty shuffled a bit in the cold. ‘I’m starting work here today and I’m not sure I got the time right.’ Just then, she noticed a bustling figure hurrying towards her, and by the amount of freezing air she was wheezing, Kitty could tell she had been moving at a fair lick.

  ‘Hello there, girl!’ Rene gasped. ‘So sorry, we overslept this morning.’ She stopped a while to catch her breath. ‘I said to my fella, “That poor girl’s gonna be frozen to the bone” – on yer first day an’ all!’ She paused and peered at the passing carter, recognition lighting her eyes.

  ‘G’mornin’ there, Pop.’ Rene gave him a friendly wave. ‘Lend us yer scarf – it’s Baltic freezing this morning. I see your Dolly’s been at the knitting needles again.’ Rene let out a raucous laugh that split the morning air and convinced Kitty that it would wake her dad if the supervisor were any closer to Ford Cemetery.

  ‘Aye, she’s good with the old needles, is my Dolly,’ Pop said cheerily from his lofty perch.

  ‘D’you think she could knit me a millionaire so I don’t ’ave ter come out in this weather?’ Then she let out another disorderly laugh that ended in a fit of coughing as she scrambled in her bag for her keys.

  ‘If she does I’m first in the queue,’ Pop called back, laughing at his own witticism. Kitty laughed too for what seemed the first time in ages. She had hardly laughed at all since Tommy went away.

  ‘Here, we got a letter from our Frank this morning, Kit. Dolly’s made up. You can’t sit her down she’s that excited, especially after hearing about the poor buggers who lost their lives on the Royal Oak at Scapa Flow.’

  A warm glow suffused Kitty when she thought of Frank. She missed him like crazy. The Royal Navy had taken such a battering protecting the people back home.

  ‘I’ll try and drop him a line tonight,’ Kitty said. After all, she had promised, and even if she was just a neighbour it certainly had not felt that way when he had danced her around Empire Street at his sister’s wedding.

  ‘He asked to be reminded to you!’ Pop waved as he moved off to do his daily work.

  ‘Ta-ra, Pop, see you later!’ Rene called as she bent down to ram the key in the rusting lock. These people were far too cheerful first thing in the morning for Kitty’s liking. It was not natural. Dragging her fingers from the confines of a warm pocket, she gave a little wave.

  ‘Pop’s lovely,’ Rene said, ‘a true gent.’

  Kitty shifted from one foot to the other, wishing Rene would hurry up. The NAAFI canteen wasn’t opening for another few days. They were here to clean the building, which had been closed for years, before they could even start serving food to the men of the Forces. Rene had been supervisor at various other NAAFI establishments and knew just how these places were run, and by whom.

  ‘When we get cracking on this cleaning we’ll soon warm up.’ Rene’s voice was twenty-a-day scratchy above the noise of the cranes and wagons as she pushed open the canteen door.

  Kitty made to enter the building, grateful to get out of the freezing air, but Rene held her back with her forearm. She flicked an electric light switch and the canteen was suffused with a dull yellow light from low wattage bulbs.

  ‘What was that?’ Kitty jumped back, imagining she saw something skitter along the wall. Then she noticed another greyish flash. And another! When her eyes adjusted to the light, she gasped at the sight of bugs skidding across the walls, their antennae quivering ahead of them as they whipped into the cracks.

  ‘Jesus wept! I’ve seen crawlies before but none the size of those buggers.’

  ‘Don’t be scared, girl.’ Rene shuddered visibly. ‘You’ll soon get used to them.’ She waited a moment before continuing. ‘They’re silverfish. Always around an urn first thing. So make sure you put fresh water in it every morning.’

  ‘Is that my job?’ Kitty grimaced, following close behind Rene in the delusion that this would prevent anything dropping on her head.

  ‘Well, you don’t think I do it, do yer?’ Rene gave her a withering glance. ‘Don’t use the water from the day before, whatever you do. They come out at night to eat, but sometimes they like a drink as well, and we don’t want the customers knowing they’re not the first to drink their daily cuppa.’ Rene laughed again and Kitty shuddered. ‘Nor do we want the customers thinking they are getting more than their fair share.’ Kitty felt her stomach heave. She had put up with bugs in number two – every house had them – and she had even creosoted the walls to get rid of them.

  ‘Haven’t you had the bug man in?’ Kitty asked, and Rene laughed.

  ‘I’ll tell you what, girl, you tell the chief cook and bottle washer when he comes in, and he’ll tell you what you can do with the bug man.’ Rene took a box of matches out of her overall pocket. ‘He’s a conchy,’ Rene said, meaning a conscientious objector. ‘Tighter than a crab’s backside … and that’s watertight.’

  ‘I take it he runs this salubrious establishment?’ Kitty scoffed, not sure if she was staying yet, knowing she could resign at a week’s notice. She followed Rene to a small room at the back, where they took off their coats and hung them on a nail behind the door. Kitty wasn’t too keen to leave it unattended in case the bugs took up residence in her pockets.

  ‘It’ll be fine here,’ Rene said, showing Kitty how to drain water from the urn. Kitty wrinkled her nose, looking at the sink full of dirty crockery.

  ‘Oh, behave yourself, you’ll see much worse than that before you’re done.’

  After refilling the urn, Rene turned on the gas tap. It hissed and spat and she gingerly introduced the lit match. The geyser plopped. Then it whooshed into life! Flames like an angry dragon shot from its mouth.

  ‘That’ll have someone’s fringe off one o’ these days,’ Rene said, quickly stepping back. The whole place now reeked of gas. ‘It’ll be a wonder if we don’t poison someone. Mr Cropper says he’ll fill in a chit and give it to the requisitions people. I asked him when we took the place on, but he is so dozy – anyone would think it was coming out of his pocket.’

  ‘I’m not touching it!’ Kitty exclaimed, her eyes wide. ‘It’s lethal.’

  ‘We’ll have to get used to it, until a new one comes in,’ Rene said. ‘Mr Cropper will be in soon. You can tell him if you like.’ She laughed, watching the urn until it settled down. ‘He’ll probably put you on a charge, like.’

  ‘He can’t do that – we’re civvies!’ Kitty argued, and Rene shrugged.

  ‘He pleases himself more or less.’

  While waiting for the water to boil Rene went to retrieve a packet of five Woodbines from her coat pocket, took one out, broke it, lit half and blew out a long stream of smoke. ‘If you mention he has to do anything official you don’t see him for a week.’ She put the unlit, broken cigarette back in the packet, and put the packet on the shelf a
bove the sink.

  Kitty had no choice. If she wanted to pay Rita back for helping her pay for her dad’s funeral she had to put up with the danger. Leaking geysers, although lethal in the wrong hands, must be ignored. So must the bugs.

  However, she knew she would not be able to put so much as a cup to her lips until this place was scrubbed from top to bottom. It was not a case of just wiping down the tables. If the building was not fumigated then hot soapy water, and plenty of Lysol, would have to be the next best thing.

  Looking around, Kitty noticed brown drip marks cascading from the brown grease-mottled ceiling and wondered who had worked here before to let it get into this state. She didn’t come from Buckingham Palace, but this place was downright filthy. No stranger to a scrubbing brush, she could not wait to get going.

  ‘I’ll make a start.’ She pulled on the overall Rene gave her and, rolling her sleeves to her elbows, she filled a galvanised bucket with hot soapy water. Every surface was covered in a tacky residue that would have to be scraped off with a knife, she noticed, and that was before she attempted to put a scrubbing brush near it!

  ‘This place was probably condemned before the NAAFI got hold of it,’ Kitty muttered to herself. The customers must have had cast-iron stomachs.

  ‘I do my best to keep on top o’ things, once we get going,’ Rene said later. ‘But apart from you there’s only Mona and me. And she’s as useful as a wax fireguard!’ Rene poured two teas into surprisingly clean cups. ‘I’ve never seen anyone who’s got so many ailments in one body.’ She took a long puff on the cigarette permanently hanging from the corner of her crimson lips. ‘She’s been bloody neurotic since the beginning of the war.’

  ‘Has she got anybody away?’ Kitty asked, and Rene told her that Mona’s son was in the Eighth Army. ‘But we don’t get our pick of staff,’ Rene said. ‘Let’s face it, what girl wants to be up to her elbows in dirty dishwater every day?’

  ‘Well, you’ve sold the job to me,’ Kitty laughed, ‘but beggars can’t be choosers. You’ve got to take what’s going, I suppose.’

  ‘Aye,’ Rene said. ‘Mona will only be here when she feels like it.’ She stopped for a moment as if pondering her next statement. ‘One thing I will say, though, don’t let her persuade you to run messages.’

  Kitty’s brow creased into a furrow. What messages? But Rene did not elaborate.

  ‘I don’t suppose you work in a place like this for the lovely view,’ Kitty said, her voice holding a cynical note. She looked out of the steamed-up window to the dock road where grime and noxious fumes flew in off the river.

  ‘It’s a job,’ Rene said nonchalantly, picking up a bucket of hot water. In no time at all the two women were scrubbing for all they were worth.

  At the end of the morning Rene said, ‘I’ll tell you what, Kit, you can’t half shift yourself with that scrubbing brush.’

  ‘I might come from Empire Street but I’m not working in filth.’

  ‘Good on you, girl,’ Rene laughed. ‘You’ll do for me!’

  But will this place do for me? Kitty wondered.

  As the conflict continued, the nursing staff at Bootle Infirmary began to relax when there was no sign of attack or invasion of the city.

  ‘I wish something would happen,’ said one of the probationer nurses training alongside Rita. Many patients had been moved out to make way for the hordes of wounded civilians and servicemen who had not yet materialised. Most of the staff were standing around twiddling their thumbs and trying to look busy when Matron did her rounds.

  ‘I was on Men’s Surgical, last week,’ said Maeve, ‘and when an appendicitis case came in, the nurses practically threw themselves at him!’ She laughed. ‘He had never been so pampered.’

  ‘I don’t suppose that will last if we get invaded,’ Rita said. ‘We are the nearest hospital to the docks.’

  ‘At least when we were run off our feet we weren’t bored.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for, my dear,’ Rita said with a smile.

  Kitty had been working at the canteen for nearly a week and the place was now open and flourishing.

  ‘Even the bugs have been polished,’ Rene laughed as the dockers queued for their midday meal.

  ‘She’s what you could call an asset,’ a sailor in Royal Naval uniform said. ‘You’d better not let her slip through the net.’

  ‘Hey, be quiet, you,’ Rene laughed. ‘She’ll be expecting a rise in her wages at this rate.’

  Kitty took it all in her stride. She was here to earn the money to pay for her dad’s funeral. When that was paid, she would consider moving somewhere else. The munitions factories paid much better money than this job did. The only thing stopping her was that she could not stand the noise of the factories. How those girls put up with that racket all day she’d never know.

  It was a six o’clock start every morning. Rene liked to get the canteen open for the early birds. They had both fed so many servicemen, Kitty had lost track. Nevertheless, woe betide anyone who outstayed his welcome. Rene had a novel way of discouraging lingering at the table in the steamed-up canteen. She would fling a floor cloth, which usually landed around the unwelcome party’s ears. He soon got the message when she warned him this was not a dosshouse.

  ‘I hope you’ll stay, Kit. You’ve done a great job,’ Rene said when they got a break one afternoon.

  ‘I’d like to see the appreciation in my wages, if it’s all the same to you.’ Kitty knew compliments cost nothing and you could not feed your family with them.

  ‘You can tell that to Mr Cropper. He’ll be in later.’

  Kitty had heard that before, but there had been no sign of the manager. ‘I thought you said another woman worked here,’ she said, wiping down the L-shaped counter that ran half the length of the canteen, the floor space on the customer side being crammed with uncovered tables of every shape and size.

  ‘She’s got her hands full with Mr Cropper’s business,’ Rene said.

  ‘It’s nothing to do with me,’ Kitty said. The less she knew, the better. What the eye did not see and all that. ‘I’m only here to earn me wages. No more, no less.’

  ‘We’ll get on just fine, then,’ Rene smiled as the canteen door opened and a corpulent man, almost as round as he was tall, came waddling into the canteen, filling the steamy atmosphere with pungent smoke from the cigar clenched between his teeth.

  ‘’Ello, Mr Cropper, me old tater,’ Rene called cheerfully, scraping tarred remains from a huge cast-iron frying pan. ‘Come and meet Kitty.’

  ‘So this is the new girl, is it?’ Mr Cropper said, holding out a podgy hand to Kitty, who was carrying a heavy tray full of dirty crockery. However, she thought it wise to greet the manager properly. Putting the tray on a nearby table, she wiped her hand on her pinny and took his clammy digits in hers.

  ‘Has Rene been looking after you?’ he said. He didn’t wait for her to answer. ‘Good, good …’ He seemed distracted, looking out of the window, grimacing and rubbing his barrel chest.

  ‘Give me something for heartburn, Rene, love,’ he said, undoing the buttons of an expensive camel-coloured cashmere overcoat, and heading to the till. ‘And a nice cup of tea. None of that stewed stuff you used to serve, mind.’ He half turned to Kitty.

  ‘Are you planning on staying here?’ he asked, surveying the canteen and holding a wad of pound notes that he had taken from the till. ‘I see you’ve given these walls a lick of a cloth already.’

  ‘We did that last week, Mr Cropper,’ Rene said conversationally.

  ‘Where’s that Mona today?’ the large man asked. ‘I need an errand run.’

  ‘She’ll be in soon,’ Rene said quickly.

  ‘Don’t be letting her pull the wool over your eyes. She’s a sly one, that Mona. And watch what she slips under the counter.’

  Kitty looked at Rene, not knowing what to say. Experience had taught her to say nothing. Mr Cropper sat heavily on a chair at a table nearest the counter and Rene rolled her eyes bef
ore taking him a fresh cup of tea.

  ‘I can manage with Kitty here, Mr Cropper,’ Rene said. She sounded a bit nervous and Kitty wondered if she was afraid of the large man. ‘Mona won’t be long so—’

  Mr Cropper raised his hand. ‘I’ll stay until Mona comes in.’ He rubbed his chest. ‘Get me something for this indigestion.’

  ‘Won’t be a minute, Mr Cropper,’ Rene said, heading to the back room, followed by Kitty.

  ‘He must have an important order coming,’ Rene said, getting liver salts from the staff room. She added in a low voice, ‘A word to the wise, Kit. Whatever you see or hear in here stays in here. D’you understand?’

  Kitty nodded.

  ‘I’m not saying I agree with it, mind. But it pays to keep your opinions to yourself.’

  ‘Shall I take the medicine out to Mr Cropper?’ Kitty asked, and Rene nodded just as the canteen door opened.

  ‘Oh, here goes,’ said Rene. ‘Look what the cat dragged in.’

  A tall thin woman sauntered in, dressed in a loose-fitting wrap coat that might have seen better days ten years ago, judging by the balding fur collar and cuffs.

  ‘Afternoon, Mona,’ Rene called from behind the counter.

  A cloche hat covered Mona’s head, so Kitty could not make out the colour of her hair. Her feet were encased in black, Mary-Jane shoes that reminded Kitty of a pair her mam once had.

  The woman, looking from under the scalloped rim of her hat, eyed Mr Cropper and said in a low voice, ‘Is ’e gonna be ’ere all day?’ She didn’t wait for an answer as she sashayed into the staff room, undoing the single coat button at her hip.

  Kitty gave Mr Cropper his glass of Andrews Salts before picking up the loaded tray of dirty dishes and carrying it to the sink in the back room, where the woman was hanging her coat behind the door.

  ‘I’m Mona,’ she said, unhooking a grubby-looking white overall and slipping it over her black skirt and buttoned-up cardigan. ‘You must be Kitty.’ Then she lit a cigarette, laid it in the groove of a Bakelite ashtray and filled the sink with cold water. Kitty emptied the tray on the wooden draining board and after a while Mona turned off the tap, emptied the water from the sink, and put the plug in again. Kitty couldn’t work out what the woman was playing at. She hadn’t been here all week and she suspected that Mona was trying to fool her boss that she was putting her back into it.