A Daughter's Choice

by June Francis

  ‘I wouldn’t go off without telling you,’ said Katherine, as Celia helped her off with her raincoat and hung it on the back of a chair. She kicked off her shoes and wriggled her toes. ‘How d’you feel about going back to Liverpool?’

  Celia sat down heavily on a bed. ‘Is that where you’ve been?’

  ‘No! I’ve been looking for hotel work but with no luck. I’ve been offered something else instead.’ She leaned forward. ‘You did work in a pet shop when you were a girl, didn’t you?’

  Celia’s grey eyes showed surprise. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘This woman, Mrs Walsh, whose husband owns the Lancaster Hotel, has asked me if I would like the job of helping her elderly gran who has a shop in Liverpool?’

  ‘I knew it! You’re already fed up with me!’ Celia’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Well, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not much company and –’

  ‘Shut up, Celia!’ Katherine was tempted to give her a good shake.

  ‘See! You can’t even call me Mother!’

  ‘No, I can’t,’ she said crossly. ‘And I’m unhappy about that but it can’t be helped. Maybe when we’re more used to each other and I know you better I will. For now, listen while I tell you about this job. We can both go. There’s rooms above the shop. They’re empty but I’m sure we can buy some bits of furniture secondhand and do them up. The old woman’s crippled with rheumatism, she needs someone to help her.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Both of us! A pet shop, you say?’ asked Celia cautiously.

  ‘You’ve got it in one.’

  Another silence.

  ‘Where in Liverpool?’

  Katherine glanced at the slip of paper Mrs Walsh had given her. ‘Everton. Here, have a look. The old lady’s a Mrs Evans. I know it’ll be a big change from Southport but –’

  ‘If it’s Everton, it’s far enough away from the Arcadia for me. Not that I know this part well and it’s not too far from town, but still they won’t know to come looking for us there.’

  Katherine ignored all that. ‘So you like the idea?’

  ‘It depends on the old woman. But if you say we can both do it, I think it’s worth a try.’

  ‘Of course we can do it,’ said Katherine positively. ‘We’ll have a decko in the morning and see how things go. Now isn’t it time we were going down for dinner? I’m starving!’

  Katherine only narrowly missed falling over a half-full sack of dog biscuits in the open doorway as she entered the shop. Celia was not so lucky but that was probably down to her stopping to admire a couple of silky-haired angora rabbits in the window and pausing to place a couple of pennies in the head of an artificial dog left outside for donations towards an animal charity. ‘That needs moving,’ she said, kicking the sack.

  Katherine nodded absently and her nose twitched as different smells assailed her nostrils. A couple of flies buzzed as she glanced round the interior which was a mishmash of everything a pet might need. There were feeding bowls, rubber bones, thick studded leather collars and tiny ones with bells on. Dog leads hung from the ceiling as well as cages, millet sprays, and a fly paper with several flies stuck to it.

  On shelves closer to hand there were more bells with tiny mirrors. There were chocolate drops, peanuts, sunflower seeds, rabbit food and sacks of straw bedding. Budgerigars twittered, several puppies yapped and a marmalade cat uncurled itself from a patch of sun on the counter where there was a marble slab, a pair of brass scales and various-sized weights, as well as a pile of newspapers.

  The cat stretched and yawned before springing down from the counter and purring loudly as it stropped their legs.

  ‘At least he’s friendly,’ said Katherine, bending to stroke the animal.

  ‘Who’s there?’ There was the tap-tap of a stick and a curtain which hung beyond the rear end of the counter was pushed aside as the bent figure of an old woman appeared. She peered at them through thick-lensed spectacles as she rested a claw-like hand on the counter. A black shawl shrouded her shoulders and she wore a pine green frock buttoned up the front which almost reached her ankles. She wore slippers on her feet and her hair looked like it hadn’t seen a brush in a month. ‘Where’s that lad?’ she demanded.

  ‘There was nobody here when we came in,’ said Katherine.

  The woman scowled. ‘He’s a blankety-blank nuisance! I’m not paying him to skive off as soon as me back’s turned. You can’t trust lads these days. What is it you want?’

  ‘We’ve come to help you,’ said Celia before Katherine had a chance to get another word in. She took off her coat and squeezed round the other end of the counter, her freckled face bright with excitement. ‘I see you don’t have mice?’

  ‘Mice! Who sez I have mice? Why d’yer think I keep that no-good cat? Lazing about all day without a care in the world. What d’yer mean, you’ve come to help?’

  ‘Your granddaughter –’ began Katherine, only for Celia to get in first again.

  ‘When I said mice, I meant white mice. We used to keep them years ago. Me mam had a pet shop Scottie Road way.’

  ‘Did she now? And what the blankety-blank has that to do with me?’ said Mrs Evans, attempting to straighten up but getting so far and no further. Her wrinkled face twisted with pain. ‘One-two-three-four-five-once-I-caught-a-fish-alive,’ she gasped.

  ‘I know that one,’ said Celia. ‘Six-seven-eight-nine-ten – then I let it go again!’ She smiled at the old woman and Katherine struggled not to laugh at the expression on Mrs Evans’s face. ‘Your granddaughter sent us,’ she managed to say at last. ‘She said you needed workers.’

  ‘She had no right!’ Mrs Evans glared back at them. ‘If I’ve told her once, I’ve told her a hundred times – I can blankety-blank manage my own life!’

  Katherine was about to say as tactfully as she could that it didn’t look like it to her, when a middle-aged man stepped into the shop. ‘Any dog meat, Mrs Evans?’

  Katherine glanced at the shoulder-high shelves behind the counter where there were tins of cat and dog food.

  ‘I want none of them fancy tins,’ sniffed the man. ‘I want fresh horse meat. And I need a pound of dog biscuits.’ He dipped a hand into the sack by the door and threw a biscuit to the dog outside.

  ‘Meat’s in the fridge in the back, like it always is,’ said Mrs Evans. ‘You can go get it yerself.’ She nodded in Celia’s direction. ‘You can weigh him the dog biscuits.’

  The man disappeared through the curtain and Celia hurried towards the sack of biscuits. Katherine leant against the counter. ‘Do your customers always help themselves?’

  ‘Not all. Some I wouldn’t trust,’ she grunted.

  ‘None of them see to the animals, though, do they?’ asked Celia.

  ‘The lad helps me there.’

  Celia wrinkled her nose but made no comment.

  ‘He comes cheap!’ snapped Mrs Evans.

  Celia reddened but carried on weighing the dog biscuits.

  ‘Your granddaughter’s willing to pay one of us, and says if you’re in agreement we could have the couple of rooms upstairs. She’s worried about you,’ said Katherine.

  ‘Fine way she has of showing it, going all that way,’ grumbled the old woman. ‘How does she expect me to get there? It’s not as if she has a car to come and fetch me in.’

  ‘She visits you, though,’ said Katherine.

  ‘She doesn’t have to bother. And I don’t need a young flibbertigibbet like you telling me what’s what.’ She glared at Katherine from beneath bristling brows.

  ‘I don’t want to tell you what’s what,’ she said, smiling. ‘I couldn’t! I don’t know what’s what myself. We could work as a team, though.’ It was how Kitty had always talked about running the Arcadia. Teamwork.

  ‘Hmmmph!’ Mrs Evans diverted her attention to Celia who had finished weighing the biscuits.

  The man re-entered the shop carrying a handful of dark red meat and Celia removed the biscuits from
the scales. The old woman peered through her spectacles at him as he threw the meat on the brass pan, brushing a fly away and fiddling with the weights. The scales went up and down on either side and Celia watched them carefully. ‘Dead on a pound,’ he said, and whipped the meat off quickly, wrapping it in a sheet of newspaper.

  A frowning Celia handed him the biscuits but neither of them said anything as he slammed the money on the counter and hurried out. ‘There was more than a pound of meat there,’ she whispered to Katherine as soon as he was out of the shop.

  ‘What was that, you – you, the older one?’ snapped Mrs Evans. ‘Are you saying I don’t know me own customers?’

  ‘I wasn’t saying anything of the sort,’ said Celia, colour flooding her face as she folded her arms defensively across her chest. ‘Perhaps there’s something wrong with the scales and you both know about it?’

  Katherine stared at her. ‘You don’t believe that?’

  Celia hesitated then shook her head.

  Mrs Evans made a noise in her throat and grunted, ‘He’s a good customer.’

  ‘He’s robbing you,’ said Katherine. ‘You’ll soon lose your profits if they all do that.’

  The old woman glared at her but made no comment as she walked slowly from behind the counter to the open doorway. Her mouth was set in a hard line and she leaned heavily on her stick. ‘Where’s that boy?’ she muttered, gazing out across the road towards the post office and optician’s.

  ‘What do we do now?’ whispered Celia.

  ‘Wait,’ said Katherine. ‘What do you think of the place?’

  ‘Plenty of work!’ Celia went over to a cage of budgerigars and peered through the bars. ‘Their water’s clean and they’ve got food but there’s feathers and seed husks and droppings all over the place. I don’t know when their sheet of sandpaper was last changed. The lad’s making sure they’re fed and watered but that’s about all.’

  ‘It’s too much for him,’ said Mrs Evans without turning round.

  ‘Golly! You’ve got sharp ears for your age,’ said Celia, admiration in her voice.

  The old woman snorted. ‘If you’re so worried about my animals, do something! Let’s see what the pair of you are made of.’

  Celia looked at Katherine for reassurance. ‘Don’t look at me,’ she murmured. ‘You’re the one who knows about pet shops. What can I do to help?’

  ‘Water and disinfectant is what we need first.’

  ‘There’s a sink in the back with buckets underneath,’ said Mrs Evans, again without turning round.

  ‘Hot and cold?’ asked Celia.

  ‘This isn’t the blankety-blank Middle Ages! There’s an electric kettle too. The girl can make me a cup of tea.’

  Celia vanished through the curtain at the back of the shop but Katherine paused to ask. ‘How many sugars?’

  ‘Never heard of connie onnie, girl? I’ll have three of them.’

  ‘We used to make gorgeous coconut ice with connie onnie,’ enthused Katherine. ‘Ma made slabs of it in pink and white.’ Tears caught at her throat unexpectedly.

  ‘Toffee apples, that’s what I remember,’ grunted Mrs Evans, shifting round with obvious difficulty to face her. ‘My brother worked at Tate’s. He used to bring us molasses, thick and dark. It was good for us.’

  Probably rotted your teeth, though, thought Katherine, as she went into the back where she found Celia standing in the middle of the room gazing about her with a tight expression on her face. Katherine let out a low whistle.

  ‘Isn’t it just!’ her mother sniffed. ‘There’s a smell in here almost as bad as the shop.’ She pounced on a saucer on the floor. ‘Milk’s gone sour.’

  Katherine opened the fridge and recoiled before closing it swiftly. She picked up a blanket from an armchair in front of an unlit coal fire and didn’t have to sniff it to smell it. ‘I bet she’s not even going to bed but sleeping in this chair.’

  ‘Of course that’s what she’s doing! Your grandmother, my mother, did that when her chest was real bad. The old lady probably has difficulty getting up and downstairs on her own. When d’you think this place last saw a duster?’

  ‘Or a hoover?’

  ‘She probably hasn’t got a hoover. It’d be too heavy for her to manage. A Ewebank, that’s what she’ll have.’ Celia went over to the deep white sink and opened the cupboard underneath and took out a couple of buckets. Inside one of them was a floorcloth and a scrubbing brush. ‘Doesn’t anybody help her out at all?’

  ‘She’s probably too proud. Great-aunt Jane’s like –’ Katherine stopped, remembering she wasn’t related to Eileen’s grandmother any more and experiencing a sense of loss. ‘I’ll get cracking in here while you sort out the animals,’ she said, flexing her fingers which itched to bring order out of chaos. ‘And then we’ll have a look upstairs.’

  Celia murmured, ‘You’re supposed to be making her a cup of tea. And besides –’

  Katherine looked at her. ‘What is it?’

  Celia finished lamely, ‘I know it’s not very Christian but what if we tidy this place up and I clean out the animals and she tells us to go? We’ll have done a whole lot of work for nothing.’

  ‘Mrs Walsh would probably pay us. Anyway, how would your conscience feel if we just left it looking like a pigsty and those animals in their dirt?’ Katherine picked up the kettle and went and filled it at the sink. She put it on the small table where it had been and switched it on.

  ‘Watcha doin’?’

  She jumped as a boy materialised on their side of the curtain and stood looking at them. He had an untidy crop of light brown hair and a lop-sided grin.

  ‘Are you the lad?’ asked Katherine dubiously.

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’re only young,’ said Celia, standing in the doorway of the scullery as she rolled up her sleeves.

  ‘Don’t go telling the whole world.’ He dug his hands into his pockets. ‘I want the money the ol’ skinflint pays but I had to go and do a message for me granddad first, didn’t I?’ He jerked his head in the direction of the curtain. ‘She sent me to see what yer were doin’.’

  ‘Tell her Rome wasn’t built in a day and she’ll be having her cup of tea in a minute,’ said Katherine cheerfully.

  ‘And if she’s thinking we might be thieves, tell her she hasn’t anything I’d think worth stealing,’ said Celia. ‘After that, lad, you can come back here and help me.’

  He disappeared through the curtain but was back again in a couple of minutes. ‘She said there’s some broken biscuits in a tin on the hearth and that yous can have a cup of tea as well.’

  ‘Generous of her,’ said Katherine. ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Donny Jones. I was named after me dad but he got deaded with me mam. They were in a charabang that crashed and it was a miracle I survived. I was only a little lad and asleep on the back seat. I live with me granddad now.’

  ‘You can’t half talk!’ said Katherine.

  ‘Talking’s how I get noticed. If I said nuffink, people wouldn’t know I was there. What d’you want me to do?’ He addressed the question to Celia, gazing at her with a serious expression in his bright brown eyes.

  She handed an empty bucket to him. ‘You can put in all the water and food containers which can do with a wash. The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll finish and those poor animals and birds’ll be clean and comfy.’

  A couple of hours later Mrs Evans grudgingly admitted that their efforts had made a difference. The place reeked of Sanizal and down at the bottom of the back yard there were three sacks of smelly rubbish, around which blue bottles buzzed with a dizzy satisfaction.

  ‘I suppose you can have a look upstairs,’ she said, turning the shop sign to CLOSED. Donny had gone home for his tea and she was looking painfully exhausted. ‘You can look at me flat and take a look at the rooms above. There’s some old bits and pieces in there but you’d have to get yourselves a bed. There’s no lavvy, that’s in the yard. You’ll have to ex
cuse my place because I haven’t been able to do much to it lately.’

  Celia and Katherine looked askance at each other and Celia nodded. Katherine supposed there was no harm in looking but she was not too happy about there being no bathroom.

  They helped Mrs Evans into her chair. ‘There’s two lots of stairs,’ she said, closing her eyes. ‘You’ll have noticed the ones at the front next to the shop entrance and the other –’

  ‘We know,’ said Katherine. ‘It’s outside in the yard.’

  ‘The key’s in the lock on the inside,’ she yawned, and they left her.

  They were both silent as they went up the staircase next to the shop entrance and were still quiet as they toured Mrs Evans’s sitting room and bedroom. The living room was overcrowded with knick-knacks and large heavy old-fashioned furniture. Dust harbourers, Ma would have called them, thought Katherine.

  There was plenty of that around and the windows hadn’t seen a chammy and water for weeks, she reckoned. The fireplaces were a mixture of blackened cast iron and Victorian flowered tiles. On the landing there was a sink with cupboards underneath and a cooker. At the end of the landing towards the rear was the door which led to the outside wooden stairway down to the yard.

  Katherine ran up the next flight of stairs which led to the attics and the two rooms which, if they decided to stay, would be theirs. Celia followed more slowly. The front room was larger than the back which had been used to deposit junk in. Faded floral wallpaper patterned the walls and the brown and green linoleum was worn in places. Light bulbs were naked in their sockets and no curtains draped the windows.

  Celia dragged a dining chair from beneath a dirty green and gold damask curtain and sat down. ‘What do you think?’ she said, eyes darting about in her small, tense face.

  ‘It’s awful! I doubt if Mrs Walsh’s been up here in years.’

  ‘I know it’s not what you’re used to …’

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought it was what you were used to either,’ said Katherine, resting her hip against the window ledge and flicking back her reddish-brown hair.