Polly's Angel (15 page)

And then he had met Polly. Sunny had never quite understood what had happened to him upon setting eyes on that small, wide-eyed face surrounded by all those bright, primrose curls. But whatever it was, it had changed things. He wanted to be with her all the time, only she was in school, so it became essential that he get the sort of job which allowed him weekends and evenings free. And he soon realised that he must ingratiate himself with her mam and dad and her brothers, those that were living in the city, anyway, because Polly was still a schoolgirl, although she was only just over two years younger than Sunny, and if he did not have parental approval then he knew instinctively that they would break the friendship up. Polly was very dear to them, and because they loved her they guarded her against anything – or anyone – which they thought might hurt her.

Sunny agreed with this, naturally. He guarded her himself, when they were together. And fortunately, Mrs O'Brady was a nice woman and did not seem to worry unduly that he had not, at present, got a job, particularly when she saw how hard he worked over Christmas – and what nice times he and Polly had together.

‘Sure an' you'll get a job when the better weather comes, Sunny,' Mrs O'Brady had said reassuringly when the Christmas job finished. ‘Work's always hard to find – harder when there's a Depression, but you're intelligent, always clean and neat . . . Why, you'll be after gettin' a better job than most of your pals, I'll be bound.'

Mr O'Brady, however, had begun to look rather thoughtfully at Sunny lately, so Sunny supposed that he would have to get himself into work again. The trouble was, when his mam was doing well she gave him money and work simply seemed an unnecessary unpleasantness. On the other hand, though, Mr O'Brady had said once or twice, in his deep, slow way, that sure and wasn't Mrs Andersen a fine woman, to keep a lad of Sunny's age and not drive him out to work, and there was something in the way he said it which made Sunny fear that Mr O'Brady had rumbled him. Or worse, had rumbled
them,
for he had no desire for the O'Bradys to look too closely at the way in which Mrs Andersen made her living.

For Sunny had known, ever since he had reached years of discretion, which, in his case, was the age of eight, that his mam earned money from having various gentlemen friends. Now that he was fully grown he knew that this meant she lived on what the priest would have called ‘immoral earnings', but he did not put it quite so plainly even to himself; he wrapped it up, telling himself that his mam was ‘a theatrical', or, even better, ‘a receptionist'. Indeed, she undertook a variety of legitimate jobs when she needed to do so, but he knew, really, that most of the money she made came from men who bought her favours.

And doing such work could be dangerous too. Women who pleased men sometimes had their throats slit as they lay in bed, or were robbed of their takings by other men – shiftless and greedy ones. Some women worked for men called pimps, who took the lion's share of their money, but Cecily Andersen was far too clever to get mixed up with anyone like that. She was a tall, handsome woman, blue-eyed and yellow-haired, but it was from her that Sunny had inherited his casual attitude to the task of earning a living. Cecily liked pretty clothes, cinema and theatre, and her bed. When she was working as an usherette at the cinema – a favourite job, because she met men there – she could have a nice sit-down in the back stalls and a zizz if the film was boring, but when she was doing receptionist duties she had to be – or at least appear to be – alert and ready to help, so although her good appearance and charm might get her into a job, her idleness very soon got her out of it.

However there were always men, she said, when washing her hands of her latest job. Cecily's most regular friend was Sunny's father, Bjorn Berkesmann, a Swedish officer on a timber ship which called every two or three months at the port of Liverpool. He came to the small house close by the Wapping dock whenever his ship was in port, so although Sunny did not have a full-time father in the accepted sense of the words, he saw Bjorn as often as most children of sailors saw their dads.

Bjorn was tall, blond and handsome. He was very like Cecily, so like her that once or twice they had been mistaken for brother and sister, and of course no one who had met Bjorn ever doubted Sunny's paternity. He was proud of his son furthermore, openly acknowledging him, and when Sunny had been small he had helped Cecily financially so that she had not had to work too hard or too often. Now that Sunny was a man grown, however, his father's attitude towards him had hardened somewhat.

‘You a good job should hev,' he had said accusingly only a couple of months ago, sitting in the big fireside chair whilst Cecily cooked them a meal and Sunny sorted out his shore lines, for he intended to go fishing next day. ‘You should your mudder be helpink to support, not still expectink her to support you.'

‘I've had good jobs, but they all get tired of me, an' gi' me me cards,' Sunny had answered, casting his father a mournful look. At least, it was supposed to be a mournful look, but Sunny saw by his father's expression that it had not been mournful enough. ‘Now summer's comin' I'll be gettin' somethin', Bjorn,' he said in a wheedling tone. ‘You know me, I like a bit of a change, an' a challenge, an' all.'

‘You're lazy, like your mudder,' Bjorn had said flatly. ‘But it vill not do, Sunny. Why not try the sea? It to me good hes been.'

‘It has been good to me,' Sunny had corrected automatically. His father's English was very good, but he sometimes got his sentences the wrong way round and appreciated being reminded. ‘I don't think mam would be too pleased if I went off to sea, would you, Mam?'

But to Sunny's astonishment, his mother had let him down. She was stirring something in a large saucepan and her spoon had stopped for a moment whilst she considered the question, then she had replied seriously, as though she had been thinking about it for some time. ‘Well, I'd miss you, natural,' she had said thoughtfully. ‘But I agree wi' your dad. You'd be better off at sea than idlin' round the docks gettin' into mischief. ‘Sides, you've gorra girlfriend, haven't you? Well, she's goin' to expect things like trips to the cinema, an' the seaside, to say nothin' of little gifts when her birthday comes round. Oh, I know I've always done me best for you, but I'm not gerrin' any younger, chuck. It's time you fended for yourself, did your own courtin'.'

Sunny had been so taken aback that for a moment he could only stare disbelievingly at his parent. Then he had said sulkily: ‘I don't idle round the docks gettin' into mischief. I've had lots o' jobs and while I'm in 'em I work damn' hard . . . but they bore me after a bit, all of 'em. And as for goin' to sea – what d'you think me young lady would say to that, eh?'

Bjorn, who was always fair, had admitted that a girl liked a feller to be ashore with her, though most girls appreciated that a man must get work in order to keep her. ‘So you must a good job find, and soon,' he had insisted. ‘Or you will get bad name for unreliability.'

So of course Sunny had promised to mend his ways, and had done so in a manner of speaking. He had kept out of the house during normal working hours and had kept some money jingling in his pocket with a variety of small jobs.

But right now it was a sunny day and yesterday he had worked from dawn until dusk, moving a large houseful of furniture from Rodney Street to Southport for a delivery man he was supposed to be working for, so he had money in his pocket and nothing to do until school came out, when he would be seeing Polly. At the weekend they meant to go over to New Brighton for a day on the funfair and some time on the beach, but today was Wednesday and an evening did not give them sufficient time to go far. Knowing that he would not be working he had suggested last evening that she should sag off school next day, but Polly had frowned on this, reminding him that she would be looking for a job in a year and a good school report was something she could not afford to whistle down the wind.

‘But you could say you had a sore throat, queen,' Sunny had said in his most coaxing tone. ‘A sore throat's easy to fake . . . An' if them teachers at your school are fussy about such things, I'd write a note for you, pretendin' it were from your mam.'

They had been sitting on the wall which surrounded St Martin's recreation ground, desultorily chatting whilst watching a group of lads playing a forbidden game of football amongst the flower beds. Polly had shaken her head, then turned large, reproachful eyes on him. ‘Sunny, you're a divil straight from hell, so y'are, and I'll not risk me immortal soul tellin' huge
lies
just so's you can have someone to mess about wit' when you're out of work. Anyway, what happened to the job on the furniture van?'

Sunny had grinned and caught hold of Polly's small neck, pulling her closer to him so that he might drop a kiss on the end of her nose. Polly who, while she sort-of liked it sometimes, found such behaviour embarrassing in the extreme, gave Sunny a playful punch in the stomach. ‘All right, all right,' he had said, laughing. ‘There's no need for violence, Poll, it were only to show you how I feel about you. Just a – a lovin' gesture, like.'

‘Lovin' gestures aren't needed,' Polly had said sharply. ‘Just you remember that if one of the teachers should happen to look out of me school, they'd be starin' straight across at us. And what would they think, eh, if they saw you maulin' me about and kissin' me nose? And the presbytery is even closer . . . Why, if the priests saw what you were doin' they'd probably want you to
marry
me, and what would you be after sayin' then, clever clogs?'

‘Can't marry someone of thirteen,' Sunny had said happily. ‘Anyway, I don't see why you're so goody-goody. Your Ivan said that in Dublin you were a right hell-raiser, and—'

‘What a thing to say!' Polly had gasped, clearly outraged. ‘I am
not
a goody-goody, nor I aren't a hell-raiser, neither. Ivan's just cross because when me daddy was ill and me mammy put me in charge of the house, I sometimes made him work a little bit, idle chiseller that he was.'

‘He scrubbed the spuds, cleaned the cabbage, mended the fire, brushed the floor . . .' Sunny had muttered beneath his breath, and had turned to grin at Polly, who had grinned back, unrepentant.

‘Oh well . . . mebbe I wasn't an angel, Sunny, but I never did tell lies . . . All right, I took apples from orchards an' spuds from the fields . . . Once we sold holly to the big houses round Phoenix Park – and it were their own holly, what we'd robbed from their hedges. But that's just – just mischief, not real badness.'

Sunny, who agreed with her, had still pulled a doubtful face. ‘Stealin's stealin', queen, no matter how you try to cover it up. Still, if you won't sag off school I'll call for you when you leave off, and we'll have a ride on the overhead railway down to Seaforth and back. I'll gerra couple o' tickets from somewhere.'

Polly had known, of course, that he was extremely unlikely to pay for the tickets, but apparently her strict code of conduct did not wince at this, so here he was now, walking towards the overhead railway terminus, which was down by the Pier Head. If you were quick, clever and lucky, it was often possible to pick up a ticket which someone had not handed over to the ticket collector, smarten it up, fill in the bit which had been punched out, and use it during the rush hour, when the railway staff were too busy to peruse each ticket separately.

So Sunny strolled on, and thought about getting a part-time job selling ice cream up and down the Pier Head; ices would go down well there on a hot day like this one. He could sell the ha'penny wafers, most folk could afford a ha'penny. In fact, he could make his way to the warehouse now, see if there was a spare bicycle and cart not in use . . . After all, what good was a lovely sunny day when you were alone and hadn't got your fishing rod handy? And he knew Polly – she would enjoy the ride on the docker's umbrella a good deal more if it was accompanied by a bag of popcorn or an orange or two. Sunny jingled the money in his pocket and decided to go down to the ice-cream factory. And if they didn't have a spare bicycle, perhaps they would sell him one of those big metal cases of the stuff; he reckoned he could shift a deal of ice cream on a day like this even without the bike.

Polly sat in the classroom with her books spread out on her desk, her friend Alice on one side of her and her friend Sylvia on the other, regarding Miss Witherspoon seriously with eyes which followed the teacher's every movement as she wrote on the blackboard and turned occasionally to explain something to her class. But despite her apparent deep interest in the lesson, Polly's thoughts were elsewhere.

It was a lovely day, the nicest one of the summer so far, and far from listening to Miss Witherspoon, who was teaching them to analyse a sentence, Polly was thinking wistfully that if only she had not been such a goody-goody, as Sunny had put it, she might at this very moment have been skimming stones across the River Mersey or searching for four-leaved clovers in Princes Park or paddling in the little waves on Seaforth shore.

‘Now we need a subject, a verb, an object . . . Which of you would like to come up and mark out this sentence?' Miss Witherspoon said, turning back to her class. ‘Polly O'Brady, can you show the class the adjectival clause, please?'

Polly dragged her happy mind, up to its ankles in cool seawater, back to the hot and stuffy classroom with its smell of girls, cabbage and chalk dust. Fortunately the teacher had said her name before the question and not after it, so she stood up, went to the board, and after a short hesitation, during which time subjects, objects, predicates and various other parts of a sentence whirled in her head, she marked the adjectival clause firmly with the piece of white chalk Miss Witherspoon held out.