Lights Out Liverpool (31 page)

‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. In fact, tell Mrs Critchley to pack only a few of your things.’ She would have done it herself, but her head was whirling.

Ten minutes later, Vivien managed somehow to make her way to the door to wave goodbye to Freda. As soon as the car disappeared out of the drive, she turned to Mrs Critchley, who was standing gloating in the hall, ‘Ring Mr Waterton and tell him what has happened, then call the doctor, I think …’

Before she could finish, Vivien collapsed onto the floor.

The man in the black mac didn’t speak once on the drive back to Bootle, not even to the constable sitting at his side. In the back, Freda glowered at their red necks and wished they’d both drop dead and the car would crash and she’d escape back to Vivien. But her wish was in vain. Eventually, they drew up outside 14 Pearl Street.

The man looked in dismay at the filthy, curtainless windows of the house. He muttered, ‘You stay there!’ to Freda, as he got out and knocked on the door. He intended handing the girl over to her mother in person. Not until she was safely inside would he consider his job had been properly done.

To his further dismay, there was no answer to his knock. A woman stuck her head out of the upstairs window of a house opposite and shouted, ‘She’s not in.’

‘Where is she?’ he shouted back.

The woman shrugged. ‘Pissed out of her mind somewhere, I reckon.’

The man stood there, flummoxed. What was he supposed to do? He couldn’t very well take the girl back to Southport. He noticed an entry going down the side of
the
end house and walked down and round to the back of Number 14. The back door was open when he tried it and he shouted, ‘Is anybody in?’

As expected, there was no reply. He went through the house. By God! It was
disgusting
! That poor kid, coming back to this! No wonder she hadn’t wanted to leave. Almost retching from the smell, he opened the front door and beckoned to Freda. She climbed out of the car carrying her suitcase. No longer crying, her face was hard and expressionless.

‘I haven’t got time to wait until your mother comes,’ he said abruptly. His conscience was pricking. He felt ashamed of the job he’d done that day. ‘Get inside.’

Her head held high, the girl went into the house and the man slammed the door, then got into his car and reversed out of the street so fast that the tyres made a screeching sound as he backed around the corner.

Freda heard the car roar away as she entered the house in which she had spent her entire life until that wonderful day last September when she had been sent to live with Vivien. She shivered. It was almost as cold as the inside of Vivien’s refrigerator. Wandering into the living room, she stared with mounting desperation at the thick dusty mould in the corners, the debris in the fireplace, the orange boxes used for chairs, the bare wooden table which held a few hard crusts of bread and a couple of filthy jam jars which were used as cups. Was she supposed to sit on one of those boxes in her best blue velvet coat? Sleep upstairs in that lousy smelling palliasse on the floor in her pretty nightdresses?

Where was Dicky? Perhaps he’d gone to school. They’d always gone more often in the winter than in summer, for warmth and a hot mid-morning drink.
Vivien
had put Freda’s name down for a little private school in Southport. She was supposed to start next Monday. She still might. Vivien had promised to come for her.

The back door opened and for a moment she thought it was Vivien come already. Perhaps she’d followed in a taxi?

But it was Mrs Costello who came into the house. She took a step back when she met Freda’s look of loathing.

‘Aggie Donovan said you were home. Are you all right?’

‘What do you think?’ Freda snarled.

‘You’ll soon settle back in,’ Mrs Costello said, though she looked troubled. As well she might, the stupid woman, thought Freda.

‘It’s all your fault,’ she spat. ‘It was you who wrote the letter for me mam. Why couldn’t you mind your own business?’

Eileen Costello sighed. Perhaps she should have refused, but Gladys was Freda’s mam, with every right to insist on having her daughter back. Nevertheless, if Freda wanted to stay …

‘I’m sorry,’ she said lamely. ‘If there’s anything I can do?’

‘You’ve already done enough,’ snapped Freda.

The woman seemed reluctant to go. ‘Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve got to leave for work soon, but there’s time to put the kettle on.’

‘You can keep your tea. I don’t want anything off anyone.’

Freda went upstairs into the front bedroom, where she opened the window and sat on her suitcase waiting for Vivien. At the back of her mind, she visualised the scene;
Vivien
would phone Clive, who’d come home immediately. They’d get in the car and drive straight to Bootle. In fact, they might arrive any minute. She leaned out of the window, watching anxiously.

She heard her mam come home, but made no attempt to go down and announce her return. It wasn’t until Dicky found her hours later that Gladys realised Freda was back. She came up and regarded Freda blearily for several seconds. She had a feeling she hadn’t seen her daughter for a long while, though couldn’t remember why. Freda looked different. Where had she got those posh clothes from?

‘Where’ve you been?’ she asked.

‘To the moon.’

Gladys’s brain may well have been rotten with booze, but she recognised impudence when she heard it. She was also aware of the look of disgust on her daughter’s strangely plump and rosy face. She lunged forward, fist raised ready to strike.

To her amazement, Freda stood up and caught the fist with surprising strength. ‘Don’t you
dare
lay a hand on me,’ she hissed.

Gladys fell back in bewilderment. She stared at her daughter wordlessly, then stumbled down the stairs, muttering underneath her breath as she tried to take in what had just happened.

Dicky crept into the bedroom and sat on the floor beside his sister. He was glad she was back. There had been no-one to talk to whilst she’d been away. At school, the other pupils acted as if he was invisible except when they felt like beating someone up. No-one wanted to be a friend of Dicky Tutty’s.

‘Where’s all your nice clothes gone?’ asked Freda. The smartly dressed healthy-looking little boy might never
have
existed. Dicky was back in his rags, his face and his thin bare arms a mass of scabs and bruises.

‘Me mam took them to the pawn shop.’

‘I bet she took your train set, too.’

Dicky nodded. ‘I’m glad you’re home, Freda.’ Freda would look after him at school and make sure he got fed from time to time. She was good at wheedling scraps from the fish and chip shop or the baker’s, or pinching bars of chocolate out of Woolworths.

‘I’m not staying,’ Freda said sharply. ‘I’m only waiting for Vivien to come and take me back.’

Dicky’s face fell. He felt his whole body droop with misery. To his amazement, tears began to roll down his grubby cheeks. Neither of the children had cried much in the past. There seemed little point.

Freda regarded the tears coldly, then turned to look out of the window. But as she looked, she thought about her little brother. He’d scarcely crossed her mind the last few months, but seeing him now, such a scraggy little mass of bruised humanity, she felt a tightening of emotion in her throat. Poor Dicky!

‘Have you missed me?’ she demanded.

‘Yes,’ he sniffed.

‘Perhaps, when I go back to Southport, you could come and see us every Sunday? Vivien wouldn’t mind.’

He nodded eagerly. It was better than nothing. ‘As long as I come back to me mam.’

‘Are you hungry?’

He hunched his shoulders. ‘I’m starving.’

‘So’m I. If I give you some money, will you go and buy some food?’

‘Chips?’

‘No, they’re bad for you. Vivien never made chips. Buy some apples.’ Freda took her purse out of the grey
lizardskin
bag Vivien had bought for her eleventh birthday.

‘You’ve got money of your own!’ gasped Dicky, impressed.

‘Vivien put money in me new handbag,’ Freda said boastfully, adding warningly, ‘But don’t tell our mam, or I’ll bloody kill you.’

‘I won’t,’ promised Dicky.

Freda wasn’t sure how many days she sat by the window waiting for Vivien, leaving only to go to the lavatory at the bottom of the yard, her purse tucked safely in her pocket out of her mother’s reach. She didn’t even remove her clothes, but slept fully dressed, using the suitcase as a pillow, sending Dicky out for food. Gladys, aware her daughter must have money and thinking of all the gin it would buy, came up from time to time to demand it off her, sometimes wheedling, sometimes belligerent, but Freda adamantly refused.

‘Sod off!’ she said contemptuously. ‘You’re not getting a penny,’ and Gladys would reel away, confused and shocked. She even went next door to complain to Mrs Costello, but her neighbour was impatient and refused to help. In fact, she seemed more concerned about Freda than Gladys. ‘How’s the poor little lamb settling in?’ she asked.

One day, when Freda could stand it no longer, she went out to telephone Vivien, convinced something was wrong. If Vivien couldn’t come, she would have written. Vivien would never, never let her down.

Freda could use a telephone, having frequently made calls on Vivien’s behalf, though one with slots for coins was strange to her. She read the instructions carefully, put her pennies in the box, then, when Mrs Critchley
gave
the number, pressed the top button.

‘I’d like to speak to Mrs Waterton,’ she said in her most ladylike voice.

‘Who’s speaking?’

‘A friend,’ said Freda. She and Mrs Critchley had never got on and she had no intention of revealing who she was. The woman might well be awkward and refuse to fetch Vivien if she knew it was Freda calling.

‘I’m afraid Mrs Waterton passed away from a heart attack last Monday. The funeral was yesterday.’

Freda felt as if her body had turned into a block of ice. She dropped the receiver and, as if from far away, heard it swing to and fro like a pendulum against the sides of the box. She began to wail and beat her fists on the glass.

At the other end of the line, Mrs Critchley listened to the almost inhuman cries. It was that girl, she’d suspected as much.

Clive Waterton came into the room. ‘Who is it?’ he asked listlessly.

The noise had ceased. The girl must have gone.

Mrs Critchley replaced the receiver. ‘I think it was Freda,’ she said expressionlessly. She’d always loathed the girl. But that noise! She must be heartbroken.

Freda!

Clive threw himself into a chair as Mrs Critchley left the room to get on with her work. The doctor reckoned Vivien must have died within an hour of Freda leaving and, at first, Clive felt nothing but hate for the girl. But in his heart of hearts he recognised it was unreasonable to blame Freda, who would have wanted to stay as much as Vivien wanted to keep her. He recalled the day she’d arrived with her brother. The pair had looked like something out of a Dickens novel. He’d never taken to either
of
them himself, and even now, although he tried, he couldn’t raise the remotest feeling of affection for Freda. All his love had been centred on his lovely, diminutive wife. Vivien had been the only child he ever wanted. He clenched his fists and felt the nails bite into the palms of his hands. She’d gone! He would never see her again. No-one in the world would ever know how much he missed her.

Except, perhaps, Freda.

He knew that Vivien would want him to make sure she was all right. No, dammit, more than all right. He jumped to his feet. Vivien would want him to take care of her. To send her to school, raise her into womanhood, as she would have done herself. He went over to his desk and began to search through the papers, looking for Freda’s address.

Eileen Costello’s heart sank when she found Gladys Tutty outside her door yet again. ‘What is it now, Gladys?’

‘There’s a man come, and I think he wants to buy our Freda!’

‘What?’

‘Come and have a word with him, Mrs Costello. I don’t understand what he’s on about.’

Dragging her pinny over her head, Eileen hurried next door.

Gladys must have had some vague notion that guests were taken into the parlour, for Eileen found Clive Waterton standing in the middle of the room where Gladys slept, because most nights climbing stairs was quite beyond her. The bed was a heap of tattered, grey blankets and there was no cover on the striped bolster, nor any sheets. The brass bedhead was as black as if it had
been
made that way. The man’s nose was wrinkled, as well it might be, for the bed stank of urine and the stains were visible for all to see.

Clive Waterton had never believed until now that people lived this way. A conveyancing solicitor, he dealt with nice detached residences in their own grounds, or bungalows in Birkenhead or Formby. Occasionally, the deeds of smaller properties passed through his hands; neat little semi-detached homes in Southport. But these houses! They were no bigger than rabbit warrens. How on earth could people exist in such a confined space?

As for Gladys Tutty! The inside of her home was beyond belief, as was the woman herself. She stared at him drunkenly at first, though he noticed her eyes gleam when he mentioned money. He stood by the window, itching, convinced he’d been bitten by a flea or a bug of some sort, waiting for Mrs Tutty to return with her neighbour.

He recognised the woman when she came in. It was the one who’d turned up in Southport. She stared around the room for a moment, before shuddering slightly, as if she found the room as repellent as he did himself.

‘Now, if you wouldn’t mind explaining what you’ve come for?’ she said pleasantly. ‘Gladys seems to have got it in her head that you want to buy Freda.’

He shook his head irritably. ‘I would like the girl to come back to Southport, but insist on Mrs Tutty signing a paper putting her into my care. If she does, then I am willing to pay a hundred pounds compensation.’ He knew darned well the paper would never stand up in court, but was willing to take a risk on the women’s ignorance.