‘That’s the spirit.’ Tom laughed as he pointed to the bottle. ‘In more ways than one, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I would.’ Derek rested, thought for a moment. ‘I wonder what they did to her – Lottie, I mean.’
‘Oh, I imagine they’ve allowed her to carry on alive, just about. But I wouldn’t have been in her shoes, Derek. Not for any price.’
The man in the bed found himself very near to laughter. ‘That’s if they’ve left her any shoes. Can you picture her arriving barefoot in New York?’
‘She’ll be clothed and shod before she’s out of Manchester. That’s a very wily woman you married. She’s astute, and she’s not averse to doing whatever’s necessary to get her own way.’
Derek frowned. ‘You don’t think our Sal might turn out the same road, do you? I mean, Lottie’s mother were on the game for years. Aye, and I wouldn’t listen when my own mother warned me. But Lottie took after her mam—’
‘No. Sally has a mind of her own. She may not say much, but it’s unlikely that seven years with her mother will have much effect. Sally’s sensible.’
Derek’s face clouded over. ‘What’s going to become of her after I’ve gone, Tom? Mam’s well into her seventies, too old for getting landed with a young one. How will I rest when I’ve nobody to take over? I’ll be haunting these streets looking for my daughter. Any idea what I can do?’
Ivy clattered in at the front door. She shouted, ‘It’s only me,’ before dashing through the parlour and into the kitchen. Tom sank into a chair, grateful for the old woman’s timely arrival. Derek’s unanswered query would no doubt crop up again, but at least Tom could take some time to prepare his reply.
Derek peered at his mother. ‘What happened?’
‘She scratched me face. Any road, she’s gone on that train like a salad on legs, coated in muck, she were. I had to hang on for the bobbies so the others could get home. Has Rosie Blunt come back?’
Tom nodded. ‘About ten minutes ago.’
‘Good.’ She walked to the mantelpiece, noticed how empty it was without all Lottie’s creams and lotions. But the mirror was still propped behind the broken clock. Ivy picked it up. ‘Bloody hell,’ she said. ‘I look like the loser in a boxing match. Any road . . .’ She looked at her son, gave him a smile. ‘We’ll be all right now, lad. I can fetch a few bits and pieces across, no danger of them getting pawned. We’ll feed you up in no time.’
The back door swung inward and clanked against the scullery slopstone. Maureen Mason and Sally entered the room, the former looking flustered in the presence of her hero, the latter smiling tentatively when she realized that Mam wasn’t in. When Mam and Granny Ivy were in a room, sparks flew.
Maureen raised her eyebrows at Ivy; Ivy responded with a single nod. So. Charlotte Crumpsall had gone. ‘We’ll stay a minute, Sally and I,’ said the Irishwoman. ‘Then I’ll give her a bite to eat at my house. We’ve had a lovely time mending a shepherd.’ She smiled at Tom Goodfellow. ‘Go now, Tom. Ivy and I will sort things out.’
Sally looked at her father, at Uncle Tom, at Maureen, at Granny Ivy. ‘Mam might be back in a bit,’ she said.
‘No she won’t.’ Derek’s voice was unusually powerful. ‘She’s gone to America.’
‘I saw her with the cases,’ the child said quietly. ‘But I thought she might have been going to the pawnshop.’ Every adult in the room was dismayed when Sally began to cry. She cried not because her mother had gone, but because no goodbye had been said. Feeling sure that everything was her fault, Sally buried her face in Granny Ivy’s long black skirt.
‘Well, who’d have thought?’ asked Ivy of no-one in particular. ‘Shut in her room for hours on end, never a decent meal unless she ran to me or a neighbour, yet here she is breaking her little heart.’
Sally sobbed. They didn’t understand. None of them seemed to realize that if she’d been a good girl, Mam would have been different. There would have been a fire in the grate, meals on the table, clean clothes. But all these things had been neglected because of Lottie’s need to get away from her terrible daughter.
Ivy shook the child gently. ‘Come on, our Sal. What’s up with you? You knew it were going to happen.’
The child lifted her tear-stained face. ‘She were my mother, but she didn’t like me. It’s with me being so thin and ugly. I can’t sing and I can’t dance and I’m not clever at school. If I’d been nice, Mam would have stayed and looked after me.’
Ivy clicked her tongue, seemed lost for words.
Tom, who had never known Ivy not to have an answer, decided to leap into the breach. He squatted low, pulled Sally away from her grandmother. ‘Sally, look at me.’
Obedient as always, she turned her face up and tried to stop the tears. Uncle Tom. He’d told her that no-one could be an uncle unless he was related, yet he’d said she must call him ‘Uncle’. Adults, even nice ones, got a bit mixed up.
‘You are beautiful,’ he said. ‘It’s just a matter of time, then you’ll leave every girl in England at the starting post.’ He touched her face, traced the fine lines with a gentle finger. ‘Your bones are perfect, Sally. Your eyes are large and well-spaced, you have good, visible eyebrows, dark lashes, blond hair. Women would kill for a skin as soft as yours. Flesh is all you lack.’
Maureen Mason blinked rapidly. Oh, if only he would speak to her like this! If only he would compliment her . . . She crushed the thought, hated herself for almost resenting a little waif who needed every ounce of support from every source. ‘Sally,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ll eat my Easter bonnet in 1960 if you’re not the belle of the ball.’
Tom turned, looked at his next-door neighbour. In spite of her unwanted approaches, Tom had always judged Maureen Mason to be a good woman. But now, with a suddenness that was almost frightening, he was struck by her beauty. Like many Irish people, she was blessed with pale skin, hair that was nearing black, eyes of a green that managed to be soft. But he was in no position to . . . He glanced from Maureen to Sally, back to Maureen.
Ivy, who was old enough to read the thoughts of most people, could almost hear the man’s brain slipping into gear. If he married Maureen, he could take Sally into his house and . . . Oh, this was a good man. She busied herself by tidying up Derek’s bed. ‘You always were a messy sleeper, our Derek. Used to tie all the bedclothes in knots, didn’t you?’
He was becoming tired again. ‘Yes, Mam.’
She couldn’t go on for ever. Her bones complained while she bent to tuck in a sheet, the room spun when she lifted her head. Most mornings, her extremities were numb, as if her heart had slowed to a point where the blood was scarcely moving. But oh, she could go gladly to her Maker if Maureen and Tom could just be there for Sal. ‘Cup of tea?’ she asked her son. At least Sally had stopped weeping. If only Derek would eat, if only he could fool the doctors by pulling round . . .
‘No, thanks. I think I’ll have a doze now.’
Ivy ushered everyone into the parlour, closed the door to the kitchen. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘We can all set to, now. Would you two lend some pans, towels and bedding?’
The neighbours answered in the affirmative.
‘I’ll get some bits and pieces off Rosie Blunt, then there’s my own stuff. I want . . . I want them to have a proper home till . . .’ She glanced at her granddaughter. ‘We can fix them up between us. But I want to say ta to both of you. Without neighbours like you and the Blunts, I don’t know how we would have managed.’
Tom Goodfellow put his arms round the old lady who was frail in body, powerful in spirit. ‘Anything, Ivy,’ he whispered. ‘Maureen and I will do all we can.’
‘I know.’ Ivy pulled away from him, was surprised to feel the heat in her face. ‘Stop chasing after me, Tom Goodfellow,’ she said jauntily. ‘I’m not in the market for a man. Fact is, I’m too clever and good-looking for any of you.’
She left number 1, dragged Sally to the house in Worthington Street, sorted out some essentials, piled them on the floor. ‘Sal,’ she said when the task was nearly done. ‘Don’t cry for your mam. No use getting yourself in a state over her. What’s done is done, and it can’t be undone.’
‘I won’t cry,’ the little girl replied. ‘From now on, I’ll hardly think about her at all.’
She did, though. All through the night, she was plagued by dreams whose central character was always Lottie Crumpsall. Most of the time, Sally was chasing her mother, trying to catch up with her. But the further she ran, the further away her mother moved. Sally’s dream legs were like lead, holding her back, making her too heavy to run properly.
‘Go away,’ called Lottie. ‘Morton doesn’t want you, doesn’t like children. I’ll send for you.’
‘You won’t.’
Even from a distance, the grin on Lottie’s face was visible. ‘I will if you’re good. If you’re not good, you’ll have to stay upstairs. I know about the basket. There’ll be no more baskets.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always bloody hungry.’
Towards morning, Sally stopped running. The next dream was calmer. She was living in a house with a proper garden and a neat front door. Inside, everything was beautiful, right down to salt and pepper pots with flower designs and little silver tops. The chairs had real covers with no rips and no bulging springs. Gus lay on a red rug in front of the fire. He was purring so loudly that the sound filled the whole house . . .
She woke. Gus had his nose in her left ear, and his engine was running. Dad always compared Gus’s purr to a motor. She stroked the grey fur, wondered whether she would manage to feed him today. Yes, of course he would be fed, because Granny Ivy was asleep next door in Mam’s bed. Anyway, Mrs Mason was forever feeding this lovable cat. ‘You’re nice,’ she told him. ‘You never scratch and you never bite and you like pigeons.’
By way of an answer, he licked her face, his sandpaper tongue making her shiver.
‘Sal?’
‘Hello, Granny Ivy.’ The old woman looked really strange. Her iron-grey hair, which was usually dragged off her face into a bun, hung down her back. She was dressed in a long white nightie that billowed out all around her sparse frame. ‘You don’t look like you,’ said Sally.
‘Who do I look like, then?’
Sally couldn’t tell the truth, dared not express the opinion that her grandmother reminded her of a good witch. ‘I don’t know,’ she answered lamely.
‘Well, get yourself up. We’ve sorted out something for you to wear, then when you’ve had a wash, go round to Maureen Mason’s for your breakfast.’
Sally stared at Ivy. ‘Why?’
‘Because I said so.’ She had such beautiful eyes, thought Ivy. They were a bit like Derek’s used to be before . . . ‘Just do as you’re told, love. I’ll bring the washbowl and jug up, then you go out the front way, because your dad’s had a very bad night.’
When Sally was washed and dressed, she didn’t know herself, either. She sneaked into the bedroom where Ivy had slept, looked at the vision in a pock-marked mirror. Where had these clothes come from? she wondered. There was a proper gymslip in grey, with box pleats going right up to a square yolk. The blouse was so white that it almost hurt her eyes, and she had lovely new socks, a belt with a buckle, a navy mac, black shoes and a navy beret.
‘Tom Goodfellow’s had them clothes for weeks,’ said a voice from the doorway. Ivy smiled at the expression of wonder on her granddaughter’s face. ‘Even went into the cloggers for your shoe size. There’s another set too, in different colours. I think there’s a navy gymslip with a blue blouse.’
‘Oh.’ Sally was so choked that she didn’t know what to say. Her mother hadn’t loved her, hadn’t even liked her, but there were lots of other people who cared.
‘He couldn’t have given you them before, love. They’d only have ended up in Mr Heilberg’s shop. Though I think he’d started refusing stuff off your mam, but she would have pawned them or sold them somewhere in town.’
‘I look nice.’
‘You look lovely, our Sal.’
The little girl swallowed a bubble of gratitude that threatened to spill its wetness down her cheeks. ‘Why are they helping us, Gran?’
Ivy thought for a moment. ‘There were a time not that long ago when folk always helped each other. That time had a name, Sally, and its name was war. We pulled together and fettled our way through it as best we could. Them as wanted toffees swapped points with them as wanted tea and sugar. Your door were always on the latch in case a neighbour ran out of summat vital like milk.’
Sally turned from the mirror. ‘Where has that time gone?’ she asked.
‘To peace and to bloody pieces,’ replied the famous orator. ‘Same last war and all, the Great War. We all huddled together for comfort, kept one another’s body and soul together. Mind, even when that were over, I suppose we still helped one another. Eeh . . .’ She sat on the edge of the bed, a wistful look on her face. ‘You know, life were good when I were a child.’
‘Was it?’ Sally loved her grandmother’s stories.
Ivy nodded. ‘We moaned because we had nowt, but there were a lot of fun. Bruised fruit, a pinny full from the market at closing time, apples, oranges, pears, all for a ha’penny. Ten jam jars and you could get in the Theatre Royal without paying. Aye, they were good old days.’
‘Who’s downstairs?’ asked Sally.
Ivy’s features rearranged themselves into a facsimile of serenity. ‘Only the doctor, love.’
Sometimes, Sally could read Granny Ivy like an open book. This was one of those occasions. The old lady was doing her best to be chatty and pleasant because something awful was happening. Dad must be worse, she thought. Perhaps this was the day when her dad would finally go to the angels. Granny Ivy always said there was no pain in heaven, just God and Jesus and angels with wings and harps. Sally swallowed. She didn’t want him dead, but she didn’t want him hurting, either.
‘Go on, love. Have a nice day at school.’
Sally went. There was nothing she could do for her father, so she took the line of least resistance and obeyed.
‘Who got you ready, then?’ The big lad pushed Sally against a wall, reached out and ruffled her hair. ‘All dressed up, eh? I bet you’ve still got nits, though. Let’s look in her hair,’ he yelled to a gang of followers.
Within seconds, there seemed to be a dozen hands pulling at her pigtails, while several voices were raised, some in encouragement, others in mockery. ‘Thinks she’s somebody now, I suppose,’ said a girl from Standard Three. ‘Go on, pull. She’d be better without that mop of string.’