A Liverpool Girl Read online

  ‘Mam, I’m givin’ our Pat a custard cream,’ said Babby, stopping for breath and shoving a tendril of her curly brown hair out of the way.

  ‘Good girl,’ replied Violet. And she couldn’t help herself. A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. Thank God for the kids. ‘Wait here,’ she added.

  She stopped outside a row of shops that were boarded up apart from a pawnbroker and a grocery store. Shading her eyes with her hand, she peered into what looked like a shutdown café. There was a curtain with a faded flower motif that sagged limply on a wire halfway down the plate glass window. Babby and Patrick followed Violet’s lead, and yet, despite standing on their toes to get a look, couldn’t quite see above the curtain and into the dingy room beyond. Hannah, intrigued, cocked her head, kicked her legs, squirmed and arched her back, and cried ‘Mam! Mam!’ as she demanded to be unstrapped from the pushchair.

  Violet regarded her reflection in the rippling glass. She licked a finger and traced the arch of her brows, then ran a tongue over her lips and pinched her cheeks sharply. Straightening out her skirt, she undid a button on her blouse, then another, and reached inside the neckline.

  ‘What you lost, Mam?’ asked Patrick quizzically.

  ‘Go and keep an eye on Hannah,’ replied Violet, her bosom now swelling and spilling out over the top of her blouse, pillows of white dewy flesh dazzling in the morning sun. Babby frowned. Violet was fairly sure Pat wasn’t sharp enough to make the connection between his mother’s breasts and paying the leccy bill. But Babby knew, all right.

  Violet was smiling when she came out. She was waving a piece of paper above her head, hopping from one foot to another excitedly.

  ‘I’ve got a job! I told you your dad is looking after us in heaven, kids!’ She knelt to speak into Babby and Pat’s faces. ‘Uncle Billy has said I can start next week!’

  Uncle Billy? thought Babby, frowning. This was a new one. There was an Uncle Matty, an Uncle Charlie, an Uncle Joe, and plenty others besides – and aunts, for that matter, none of whom they were related to. But she had never heard of an Uncle Billy. No doubt this Billy was one of those shadowy figures who came up trumps when the Delaney family needed help.

  ‘Start tomorrow! The Kardomah Café!’

  Patrick and Babby’s eyes widened. They had seen the pictures, yellowed by the sun, of knickerbocker glories and banana splits in the window, the polished brass rails, the neat tables with bowls of sugar cubes, silver cutlery, even linen napkins, but they had never been inside.

  ‘Eh, Mam!’ said Patrick, and hugged her, as she enfolded him in her skirts. ‘That’s posh, that is.’

  ‘I know, love. Well, we’re posh now. We’re right posh. Don’t let anyone tell you that they’re better than us Delaneys. I’ve got a job at the Kardomah Café!’ The way she said it, with her nose in the air, executing a small curtsey, made Babby brim with pride.

  Violet saw her smiling and ruffled the top of her hair. And she hoped to God she could stick at it, at least until the end of the month.

  They reached 17 Joseph Street. It was hard to imagine it had once been an attractive terrace. Their house stood, ugly and alone, on the rise of Everton hill, consumed by damp and dry rot, with rusting window frames. It had spongy floorboards, small grates which were never lit, and ice on the inside of the windows on cold mornings. But it was home to the Delaneys and, as Violet cooked them supper of the stew and tatties Liverpudlians called Scouse, with the smells of onions and Bovril wafting through the parlour, they felt happy and hopeful.

  ‘Hey, Mam, now you’ve gorra job, will you be able to fix the leaky roof of the outside lavvy?’ said Babby.

  ‘We’ll see,’ Violet said, with a smile.

  The following morning, opening the curtains, the sight of the River Mersey from the upstairs room lifted her spirits as always. In the sunshine, it looked like a long silver sleeve trailing across the ground. Factory chimneys belched smoke and the cranes of the ship yards rose up beyond the ugly tenements, the ships’ masts forming an intricate forest.

  ‘Always raise your eyes upwards, rather than down the hill. Might even see your dad up there having a pint in the clouds,’ she whispered to Hannah, who was still asleep in the bed. She planted a kiss on her cheek, looked back to the window, and decided there was nothing like the vast Liverpool sky to make her feel better about the world.

  Violet left Hannah dozing and made her way down to the parlour. She went over to the black-leaded range and stoked the dying embers of the firebox, put in a few pieces of kindling and a couple of lumps of coal to heat the back boiler and the oven. Despite it being seven in the morning, when she opened the shutters she saw Mr Boughton, the rent collector. He was pestering Phyllis O’Neill who lived opposite, twirling his umbrella, parading about in his ridiculous cape. With his phoney smile she thought he looked like the man in the Lucky Strike advert – a right fool. It annoyed Violet that he loitered in the road, and when she saw him handing out a farthing to her neighbour’s daughter, the very picture of a kindly old gentleman, she raised her eyes and tutted.

  ‘He’s a one. Doling out coppers like he’s the Sheikh of Arabia. But when it comes to fixing the house, or putting the rent up, he’s as tight and as miserable as they come,’ she said to Pat, who had come down to the scullery to make Hannah’s porridge.

  But not even wily old Boughton could dampen her spirits. She greeted him with a smile as she came down the front steps.

  ‘I’ve gorra job, Mr Boughton,’ she said.

  ‘Oh really?’ he replied.

  ‘Kardomah Café. Start this morning.’

  ‘Kardomah?’ he said. And he grinned.

  ‘What?’ she asked.

  He didn’t answer. ‘See you Friday, Violet.’ he replied. ‘You owe me a week’s rent.’

  Violet didn’t respond. She wasn’t going to let some mean-spirited moneygrubber spoil her day.

  She got the tram into town and, when she reached Mount Pleasant hill, it was the cloud of dust rising above the rooftops from the streets beyond that struck her first. The smell hit the back of her throat. Clutching her handkerchief to her mouth, she choked and winced as the particles of cement and brick stung her eyes. It was as bad as the air raids in the Blitz. An accident, perhaps. You would hear of buildings finally buckling under the strain of weakened foundations. She turned the corner, gathering pace. The roaring sound was deafening and she pressed her hands over her tightening eardrums. Bulldozers. There were two of them, the kind that were used in the war, old army tanks fitted with giant blades and stripped of their armaments, causing havoc. They crawled over the debris like metal cockroaches, flattening everything in their wake, on the square of land where, until the day before, houses and shops had stood. There was a crane, with a huge wrecking ball suspended from the top, which at that very moment, right in front of them, smashed into what remained of the terrace. A crowd had gathered. A cheer went up whilst Violet tried to push her way forward to see what was happening. As the dust settled and the crowd broke out into applause, only one back wall was left standing, three storeys high. It was an unsettling sight; a kitchen sink suspended in the air by its pipes, the outlines of fireplaces, a picture of the Virgin Mary hanging on a nail, remnants of people’s lives and no clue as to where these people had gone.

  Violet rushed forward, tried to duck under a piece of rope holding back the crowds.

  ‘What the bloody hell are you doing?’ she asked a man in overalls and a tin helmet, soot and dust covering his face.

  ‘I could ask the same of you, love. You’re not allowed past the rope. It’s dangerous. Not a place for a woman.’

  ‘Please, tell me what’s happening?’

  ‘You must have heard, love. Corporation’s building a load of new flats. Slum clearance …’

  ‘But you’ve got to stop! I’ve got a job at the Kardomah Café! I’m supposed to start work today! Here … at the Kardomah!’ she shouted plaintively.

  ‘I’ll have a cuppa and a sticky bun, then,’
he said and laughed.

  ‘Mine’s two sugars!’ shouted another voice, followed by more guffaws.

  She blushed, felt her cheeks reddening, knowing it was of little use, and there was certainly nothing the foreman could do about it.

  ‘Sorry, love. Stand back, please …’

  The wrecking ball swung against the building once again. The Kardomah Café became a heap of rubble and bricks, crashing to the ground as Violet pressed her hands over her ears.

  Tears sprang to her eyes and she crumpled to the ground.

  The man bent down, went to pick her up. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ he asked kindly. But Violet was in no mood for tea and he saw the sharp end of her tongue.

  ‘Cup of bloody tea’s not going to bring my job back. And you – out of my way! You’re as much use as a back pocket on a vest,’ she said bitterly. She gathered her skirts and set off to see a fella, who knew a fella, who knew a fella, who might be able to help.

  Chapter Three

  ‘I got yer, I shot yer! I got yer, I shot yer!’ The cries and chants at break time in Saint Aloysius’s playground, underscored with the banging of bin lids, the slapping of skipping ropes, and the clanking of the machinery at the nearby tobacco factory, made Babby’s ears throb.

  She sat on the rockery with a mossy statue of Our Lady tilted at an odd angle and drew her knees up to her chest. Johnny Gallagher pointed his forefinger at her. ‘I got yer, I shot yer!’ he chanted.

  ‘No, you haven’t. I’m on base,’ she said, smiling. ‘Anyway, aren’t you too grown up for kid’s games now?’

  ‘Never too old for cowboys and injuns,’ he replied, grinning.

  Suddenly, there was a rush of bodies, with three boys piling on top of her.

  ‘Gerroff!’ she cried, kicking and wriggling under the scrum.

  ‘Where is it?’ said one of them. And before she knew it, the boy lay flat on top of her, dove his hands into the pocket of her skirt, and snatched her lunch ticket. A cheer went up as the boy raced around the playground, waving the ticket above his head.

  ‘Babby’s got a nought! Babby’s got a nought!’

  She felt her heart thump at her chest and her face flushed crimson.

  Johnny Gallagher leapt up, chased the boy, and hooked a finger under the bottom of his knitted jumper.

  ‘Give it back!’ he said. ‘She can’t help it if her mam is skint!’

  Nobody wanted a nought. If your lunch ticket ended in a nought, it meant that you received free school dinners. The unfortunate opposite of winning a raffle, thought Babby. A nought meant you were poor, and with that came humiliation and embarrassment.

  ‘Leave it, Johnny,’ Babby said. ‘They’re eejits. Anyway, I have to go on a message for Mam to the Co-op at lunchtime and collect the divvies.’

  ‘I’ll thump ’em if you want. Give ’em bloody noses.’

  ‘Thanks, Johnny. But you’re all right. Will you tell Miss Brody about the message?’

  ‘Aye. You better come back, though. Don’t be using it as an excuse to go home and eat jam and sugar butties with your Pat.’

  ‘I’ll be back,’ she said. ‘I love school, me.’

  Johnny laughed. Babby hated school and the nuns who ran it; she hated the taunts and the times tables and the toffee-nosed kids who looked down on her because the Delaneys had nothing.

  ‘See you later,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be going to play out in the bombsites,’ he called after her.

  Three hours hour later, when Babby appeared in the parlour, casually slinging her school bag on to the floor, she knew that her brother, Pat, who had just got a job working as a message boy at Cunards, would guess straight away that she hadn’t come from school. The timings were all wrong. ‘Where’ve you been? Skiving again?’ he asked

  She didn’t reply, just shrugged and asked her brother, ‘You eating the last of the brokies?’ Sitting at the kitchen table, she grabbed the plate that was in front of him and began pushing crumbs around it with her finger.

  ‘There was only one left. You been sagging school?’ he asked again, standing and brushing crumbs from the biscuit off his lap.

  ‘Course not,’ she lied. ‘Could have shared it with me.’

  ‘You been playing at the hollas?’

  The hollas were the hollowed-out wastegrounds where the bombs had fallen in the war. The gaping wounds in the earth that pockmarked the city made Violet shudder every time she walked past one – she swore on her life that there were ghosts wandering about in there, there were. But Babby loved the hollas where they could roam around, feral and savage, set fires, and play hide-and-seek in the derelict houses. Johnny Gallagher once jumped from the first floor of a house and the windowsill had jumped with him – what a laugh that was.

  ‘Mam’ll wallop you if she finds out.’

  ‘She won’t find out if you don’t tell her.’

  ‘What are you doing, running around on your own out there like a wild thing?’ He laughed. ‘Look at your knee. Mam will tell you to put iodine on that.’

  Babby had fallen on a pile of bricks, but she winced at the thought of iodine which would probably hurt more than the scrape she had got. There was the sound of the door. It was Violet.

  ‘Don’t snitch. If you tell her I’ve been sagging school again, I’m for it,’ said Babby.

  Patrick raised a teasing eyebrow. Violet went straight down to the cellar to put a shilling in the gas meter so Babby took her chance and jumped up from the table and hid herself in the best room, the front one that her mother rarely went in. It had a balding chintz sofa and carefully arranged ornaments in a glass cabinet – a Toby jug, a statue of Jesus displaying his bloodied palms and a painted coronation mug. She loathed the mug. Union Jacks always reminded her of the day her father died.

  Patrick followed her, lolling against the doorjamb. ‘What d’you think our mam’ll do next if she doesn’t find another job?’ he asked Babby.

  Babby gave him a quizzical look. It made her feel uncomfortable to be dragged into the uncertainty of an adult’s world. She had never felt this when her dad was alive, especially when he would bring back the half-crowns that he got from the tips for playing his piano accordion and singing at the Boot. Though the ground had fallen from under her when he had died, with the money from the dockers’ widows’ charity, Violet had managed to hold things together over the past two years. But that was running out now.

  ‘Dunno,’ she answered.

  ‘The money that Mam got from widows’ fund, there’s nowt left.’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ asked Babby.

  She sighed. A week had passed since the disaster with the Kardomah Café. And still no job for Violet. The seriousness of the situation began to dawn on Babby.

  Violet appeared from the kitchen, carrying a bowl of tripe. Babby didn’t know how she could eat the vile stuff and her stomach somersaulted just to look at her mother prodding at it with a fork as it slithered off the end of the knife.

  ‘What’s wrong, Mam?’ asked Babby, trying to sound casual.

  ‘I’ve got an announcement,’ said Violet, beaming.

  Babby and Patrick exchanged a worried look.

  ‘Your Uncle Terry knows a fella who knows a fella—’

  ‘You got a job?’ asked Pat.

  ‘I have, love.’

  ‘At the Boot?’ asked Babby.

  Patrick glanced at his sister, threw her a warning look.

  Violet slammed down the bowl and wiped her mouth on her apron.

  ‘Now why would I want to get a job at that godawful place? Since what happened to your dad, you know I’d never set foot in there again. No, it’s at the wash house.’

  ‘You going to be washing?’ asked Babby.

  ‘Am I heck, as like! Going to be minding the prams.’

  Babby’s face clouded. The last thing she wanted was her mother working at the wash house. That was her place. That’s where her gang would ‘borrow’ the prams from and play steeries with them in the hol
las. No harm done, and with a bit of luck, they would replace the prams before the owners came out of the wash house, wondering why the pram’s wheels were slightly buckled and there were mucky fingerprints all over it.

  ‘Now, have you thought any more about going to live at your Aunty Pauline’s?’ asked Violet.

  ‘No!’ cried Babby.

  Violet sighed and shook her head. ‘I just don’t know what else to do, love. The wash house job is early hours.’

  ‘I don’t like Pauline. She wears those hideous clothes from the raggy shop and she doesn’t half love herself. She makes me go to church and pray all the time when I stay with her.’

  ‘And that’s just the kind of thing I should be making you do.’

  ‘Pray, you mean? And church? You always said, if there was a God, he wouldn’t have taken Dad from us.’

  ‘I never did!’

  ‘That’s why you stopped going to Mass. You said those nuns and priests will be clacking their rosary beads all the way to hell! You so did, when you asked them for some money when we were waiting for the widows’ fund—’

  ‘I didn’t mean it. I wasn’t thinking straight. Of course they don’t just dole out money; they do other things instead, like – like … like looking after you when you’re in trouble. Sister Immaculata explained it to me. I actually like her. She was kind.’

  Babby screwed up her eyes. The thought of Sister Immaculata, her bulging, fleshy face staring out from the distinctive starched white wimple she wore, the cowl spreading out from under her neck so it looked as if she was a giant baby wearing a giant bib, made her shudder. The notion of a world where everyone had to go traipsing back and forth to church, to genuflect, or pray for forgiveness, or sacrifice their souls to the Virgin, was appalling to Babby.

  ‘No, she wasn’t kind. Otherwise you would have started going to church again.’

  There was that familiar hard edge to her mother’s voice. ‘Oh, do be quiet, Babby. Pauline can look after you. Just till I get back on my feet. Who’s going to take care of Hannah if I’m working? You can’t. You’ve got school,’ she said. ‘God, Babby stop pouting! The wind will change and you’ll stick like that. Do I need to shake some sense into you? If only you would behave, love. Always giving cheek, looking for a fight. You’ll send me into an early grave, you will. You’re bold as a pig, selfish, all at the same time. I can’t waste any more time on you. Now. Go and put the hot water bottle on the stove!’