He began to kiss her more passionately and she couldn’t find the strength to push him away – perhaps the truth was she didn’t want to find it. She wished she weren’t so sensible, so religious, so cautious, that she could find the courage to live with him openly and not give a damn about being respectable and what anyone thought. Or that she were harder, like John, able to leave the people she loved behind without a second thought.
But she was none of these things. She was Alice Lacey, who had four children, who lived in Amber Street, Bootle and owned her own hairdressers’. Somehow Alice knew she would never escape these simple facts, because deep down in her heart she didn’t want to. She was her own jailer, bound by conventions she would never break. Even her love for Neil, which was far greater than she had ever admitted either to him or to herself, wasn’t enough to change her.
He was carrying her into the bedroom and she didn’t protest.
‘We didn’t know last night we would never make love again,’ he whispered, ‘and I’d like the last time to be special. Promise you’ll never forget me, Alice.’
‘I promise,’ she cried.
It was an hour later when Alice crept out of the flat, leaving behind a shattered lover and some part of herself.
She prayed he’d soon see sense, realise he was wasting his time with a woman who wasn’t willing to be seen with him in public, a woman who could never marry him, bear his children.
Oh, but she would never forget him, Alice thought as she hurried home, fighting back the tears.
She increased her pace. Neil wasn’t the only person
who made her want to cry. There’d been no sign of Fion all day. Perhaps she was home by now . . .
But when Alice got back to Amber Street, Fion wasn’t there. A worried Orla was, as well as Maeve and Martin, who’d been to the pictures and come back early just in case Fion had shown up.
The only person seemingly unconcerned was Cormac. ‘She’ll be all right,’ he’d said earlier. ‘Our Fion will manage better on her own than any one of us.’
‘What makes you say that, son?’ Alice asked curiously.
‘Because she’s unhappy, not like us. She’s searching for something we’ve already found. Of course, she might come back today or tomorrow, but if she manages to stick it out for longer, then I doubt if we’ll see her in a long time.’
Which didn’t exactly cheer Alice up on top of everything else.
The girl who served Fion’s breakfast next morning was a distinct improvement on the woman she’d met the previous night. ‘How would you like your bacon, darlin’?’ she enquired, smiling sweetly, when she removed the cornflake bowl. She was about eighteen, not exactly pretty, but with big, velvety brown eyes. Her brown hair was badly cut, as if she’d hacked it off herself.
‘Well, I don’t like it crisp.’
‘Neither do I. I’ll do it medium, shall I? I won’t be a jiffy.’
The dining room was every bit as miserable as the bedroom, possibly worse, with a depressing painting of a frantic-looking stag in the middle of a forest hanging above the blocked-up grate. There were only five other people there: a middle-aged couple, two Chinese girls and an elderly man who wished her good morning when she entered.
Fion sat in the window and ordered cornflakes, bacon and egg, and a pot of tea. Having this admittedly small control over her life gave her a heady feeling of adult responsibility.
The girl arrived with a slice of pink bacon, a neatly fried egg and half a tomato on a plate, as well as a rack with four triangular slices of toast. There was a saucer containing pats of butter and a small bowl of marmalade already on the table.
‘Thank you, that looks lovely.’
‘Let’s hope it tastes as nice as it looks.’
‘It did,’ Fion said when the girl came to collect her plate. By now, only the elderly man remained, having finished eating and smoking a cigarette. ‘Taste as nice as it looked, that is. Do you make the meals as well as wait on tables?’ It seemed a lot for one person to do, especially one so young.
‘Only on Sundays, when there’s not usually many guests. Are you on holiday?’
Fion wasn’t sure why she was there. ‘I’m going sightseeing today,’ she said, which didn’t really answer the question. ‘I thought I’d start off at Marble Arch and walk through Hyde Park.’
‘Well, you’ve picked a smashing day for it. I hope you see all you want to see. Oh, by the way, Mrs Flowers wants to know if you’re staying another night. She said you only paid for the one.’
Mrs Flowers seemed a most unsuitable name for the sharp-cornered woman. ‘That’s right, I wasn’t sure. I’ll definitely be staying another night. I’ll knock on Reception and pay on me way out, if that’s all right.’
‘That’ll be just fine.’
It genuinely was a smashing day, Fion thought outside, just as the girl had said. For some reason she could smell blossom, though there was no sign of any trees. At Euston Station she bought a guidebook – more waste of money if she didn’t intend to stay – then located the entrance to the tube.
She felt quite proud, after buying a ticket, of being able to negotiate her way to Marble Arch, emerging in sunshine that seemed to have got brighter during the short journey underground.
Large crowds were gathered just inside the park and
she noticed several men perched on boxes loudly sounding off about all sorts of things – according to the guidebook, this was Speakers’ Corner. One man appeared to be arguing that the world was flat. Fion listened for a few minutes and decided he was daft. She was about to explore the vast greenness of Hyde Park, when at the edge of the crowd she noticed a woman speaker surrounded by about a dozen men, all heckling so ferociously that the poor woman could scarcely be heard above the chorus of insults being thrown in her direction.
‘And why shouldn’t women be paid at the same rate as men?’ the woman wanted to know in a dead posh voice. ‘Equal pay for equal work. It’s already happening in the public sector, the NHS, the Gas and Electricity Boards, the Civil Service, so why not in the private sector too? It makes sense if you think about it.’
‘Rubbish!’ yelled a man. ‘
I’ve
just thought about it and it makes no sense to me.’
‘Women are the weaker sex. They can only manage half the output of a man,’ another man yelled.
‘Now it’s
you
who’s talking rubbish,’ the woman countered. She didn’t seem the least bothered by her voluble and antagonistic audience. She was very tall, with intense black eyes and greying hair. ‘During the war, women did the work of men. They worked on lathes and milling machines, they riveted, they welded . . .’
‘They screwed,’ one man interjected to gales of male laughter.
‘They drove lorries and tractors,’ the woman continued as if she hadn’t heard, ‘dug fields, planted corn, joined the Army, the Navy and the Air Force, worked in field hospitals, delivered post . . . ’
‘Took off their knickers,’ the same man shouted and was greeted with more hearty laughter.
‘Why don’t you take
yours
off, luv? Give us an eyeful.’
‘She’s nothing but a bloody lesbian. I bet she only shows herself to other women.’
Fionnuala, at the back of the crowd, was aware of the same hot feeling inside her head that she’d had when Cora Lacey tried to bully Mam. ‘You’re worse than animals, youse lot,’ she screamed. ‘If it weren’t for women, not one of you would be here. Men like you ought to be strangled at birth. You’re not fit to live, not one of you. Haven’t you heard of free speech? It’s what we fought for during the war, but you’re not willing to listen to a word you don’t agree with.’
The men had turned from the speaker and were regarding Fion with glazed eyes. ‘Now, you look here . . .’ One took a threatening step towards her, but Fion took an even more threatening step towards
him
.
‘Don’t like it, do you?’ she sneered. ‘Don’t like it when someone insults
you
.You’re lily-livered cowards, that’s why.’
‘If you were a bloke, I’d give you a punch on the nose.’
‘Oh, yeah! Just because me opinion’s different from yours?’
The men began to drift away, having lost interest, or perhaps they preferred their own rude heckling to being verbally assailed by a woman, particularly one so young with a Liverpool accent.
‘Well, you were a great help, I must say,’ the speaker remarked when the men had gone and she was surrounded by just Fion and fresh air. ‘It’s best to have an audience, even if they’re an unpleasant lot, than to have no audience at all. I might have got through to at least one of them.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Until then, Fion had been feeling very
proud of herself, expecting the woman to welcome support from a member of the same sex.
‘That’s all right.’ The woman grinned cheerfully. ‘I know you meant well but, in future, try to structure your thoughts, make pertinent points, don’t just come out with mouthfuls of invective. It doesn’t get us anywhere. By “us”, I mean women.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Fion repeated.
‘That’s all right. I’ll just have to start again. Here, take a leaflet, so next time you let off steam you’ll have the facts at your disposal.’
Fion wandered away. When she looked back, the woman was once again surrounded by a small group of men, several of whom were already shaking their fists.
She tried not to let the incident spoil her day, though every now and then she would find herself thinking up more insulting things she wished she’d said and tried to structure the insults into pertinent points. She read the leaflet, which had been issued by the Equal Pay Campaign.
The park was gradually becoming fuller. People had come to sunbathe, to fish, talk, watch their children play, to sit and lean against a tree and read the Sunday paper, or just stroll across the emerald-green grass on what was undoubtedly a glorious morning.
After studying the map, Fion realised she was now in Kensington Gardens and there should be a café around somewhere. She was longing for a cup of tea, after which she’d go to the Natural History Museum, then catch the tube to the Tower of London. Tonight she’d have a meal in Lyons Corner House, which she’d noticed by Marble Arch, then go to see
War and Peace
in the cinema at the top of Tottenham Court Road.
Late in the afternoon she remembered it was Sunday and, for the first time in her life, she hadn’t been to Mass.
She caught the tube to Westminster Cathedral and went to Benediction instead. It didn’t make up for Mass, but would do just for today.
The room in St Jude’s was beginning to look a bit like home. On the dressing table there were a hairbrush, a lipstick and a
Woman’s Own
with a picture of Princess Margaret on the front: toothbrush, paste and a pink flannel on the sink, and that day’s pants hanging underneath to dry. On the bedside table the guidebook and map were waiting for her to study when she got into bed, so she could decide where to go tomorrow.
It was strange, but she had felt much lonelier in Liverpool, living within the bosom of her closely knit family, than she did in this anonymous city where she didn’t know a soul. It was as if she was no longer her mother’s daughter, no longer sister to Orla and Maeve. She badly missed Cormac because he was the only person who’d never done or said anything that made her feel bad about herself.
Before opening the guidebook Fion counted her money. She hadn’t touched Mr Flynn’s twenty pounds, but the twelve pounds she’d saved for presents had almost gone. Twelve pounds! In only two days! At this rate there’d be no money left by the end of the week. And what was she supposed to do then?
There were two obvious answers: return to Liverpool, or obtain more money, and the only way to do that was to get a job. Fion found it a tiny bit disturbing that she much preferred the second answer to the first.
‘I’m sorry, Missus,’ the police sergeant said portentously, ‘but your daughter’s an adult. She can leave home if she wants. You can’t expect us to go chasing after a woman of twenty-four. Under eighteen, yes. Over eighteen,
folks can do as they please and it’s no one’s business but their own.’
‘But she’s only a very
young
twenty-four. She’s never even been to the pictures by herself.’
‘She’s still twenty-four. And she didn’t just disappear into thin air, did she? You say she left a note. Have you got it with you?’
‘No.’ Alice had only shown the note to Neil.
‘Did it say where she was going?’
Alice sighed. ‘No.’
‘Well, it would seem she doesn’t want you to know.’ The policeman suddenly softened. ‘Try not to worry, Missus. She’ll soon realise which side her bread is buttered and come back.’
‘Let’s hope so,’ Alice muttered as she left the station.
Fion had been gone almost a week. Alice would have worried more had not Cormac been so convinced she was all right. As it was, she felt guilt-stricken that she’d allowed Neil to ask the poor girl out, build up her hopes, then have them dashed so cruelly. Fion was such an impressionable girl. How must she have felt when she heard her mother and Neil together? She must have come round to the salon for some reason and it could only be to do with the dance the following night. She’d been so excited,
too
excited.
Her other daughters shared their mother’s guilt, particularly Orla. ‘I should have been nicer to her,’ she wailed. ‘I was horrible most of the time, yet I felt dead sorry for her.’
‘Perhaps she left because she didn’t want people feeling sorry for her,’ Cormac suggested.
‘
I
dropped her like a hot brick when I met Martin,’ Maeve moaned. ‘We always went to the pictures together on Sunday nights, but we haven’t gone for months.’
‘It was wrong of me to have made her manageress of the new salon, then just snatch the job away. I should have thought before I acted. She was far too young.’ Then there was the business with Neil, which she couldn’t reveal. Alice wondered what Fion was doing right now, on Friday night, six days after she had so abruptly left. Whatever it was, wherever
she
was, the poor girl was bound to be alone and as miserable as sin.
Fion was in a pub, the Golden Lamb on Pentonville Road, with Elsa, Elsa’s dad, Colin, and Elsa’s grandma, Ruby. The pub was bursting at the seams, there was sawdust on the floor, a spittoon in the corner and most of the customers were already sociably drunk. Hidden from view, a pianist was thumping out ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’, his or her foot stuck firmly on the loud pedal.