He had met Lizzie the previous weekend, however, and they had had a pleasant afternoon. They had caught a tram up to Princes Park, fed the ducks, chucked a ball about and talked. The talk was the best thing. Lizzie was growing to be both pretty and sensible – he admired the long rope of fair hair which she always kept beautifully clean and neat – and because she was growing so fast, Aunt Annie had actually bought her a couple of neat dresses which had greatly improved her appearance. He gathered from Lizzie that her best dress spent a good deal of its time in J. O’Hare’s establishment on Scotland Road, being ‘rescued’ on a Saturday night and returned to the pawn shop on Monday morning. Not only was the money useful, but, as Aunt Annie put it, it stopped Uncle Perce’s mouth. He had been furious at what he called the ‘Waste of money’ over the purchase of the dress, but became reconciled to it when Aunt Annie explained that she could borrow money on it. The sort of clothing Aunt Annie herself habitually
wore would not have brought in so much as tuppence, even from the most generous-minded ‘uncle’.
However, it was not of clothing that Geoff and Lizzie had talked as they wandered across the sun-bleached grass of Princes Park. Despite the fact that there was two years between them, they would both leave school the following summer, so what they mostly talked about were their future plans. Lizzie had thought about going into an office, but was now resigned to factory work. It paid a great deal better and Geoff gathered, reading between the lines, that it was becoming increasingly important for her to earn a decent wage. He had no idea how much Denis and Herbie contributed to the household but guessed that now he had two sons earning and at home, Uncle Perce was simply drinking all his own money and contributing nothing, save kicks and blows when he was unable to find more money to pour down his neck.
Geoff knew that he was lucky, in a way, to be in the orphan asylum. He was well fed, well clothed and well housed. Lizzie, who had the advantage of a real home life, was seldom any of these things. Yet she was bright and lively and was just as ambitious as he. The factory would do, she told him, until she had made enough money and had had enough experience to try for something better. In the meantime, she would look after her mother’s sister, who had been good to her, and would endeavour to see that Uncle Perce never laid a finger on any of her wages.
Geoff doubted whether Lizzie would be able to stop Uncle Perce from stealing any money he found in the house, but guessed that she had plans to keep her savings – when she had any – well away from all her
relatives. Denis was a silent and taciturn young man, already running to fat and reluctant to shift himself, even in his mother’s defence, but Herbie was sly as a fox. He disliked Lizzie, being jealous of his mother’s affection for her niece, and would no doubt be keen to treat his cousin badly if he got the chance.
Not that he ever would. Lizzie was being raised in a rough school and was probably more capable than he, Geoff, of watching her own back. She was well aware that Herbie disliked her and would do her a mischief if he could, so wherever she chose to hide her wages, it would be somewhere that was safe from Herbie as well as her Uncle Perce.
When he reached the YMCA building, Geoff glanced towards the lower windows, as he always did. A face loomed briefly behind the glass and a hand was raised in greeting. Grinning to himself, Geoff returned the salute. He knew a good few of the youths living at the YMCA because when a lad left the protection of the Father Brannigan Orphan Asylum, he was quite often offered a place in that establishment. It meant that an ex-Branny boy could still visit his old pals up the road, often have the odd meal with the other lads in the orphanage’s big old-fashioned dining room, play a game of footie in the battered backyard and generally feel less isolated than those boys who chose to move into lodgings in some other part of the city.
Reggie Phelps, the lad who had waved to Geoff through the window, was a case in point. Brighter than most of his fellows, he had got a good job as a clerk with the L & NWR at Waterloo Goods Station and spent each day sitting in a large, untidy office, working on the ledgers and chaffing with the rest of the staff. Reggie was a tall, thin boy with hair so frizzy
that, from the back, he looked like a gorse bush. He was extremely short-sighted and peered myopically at the world through a pair of steel-rimmed spectacles. He was also an asthmatic and his struggles to get his breath had caused his shoulders to rise up so that he looked as if he were perpetually shrugging. He had never been any good at games, yet despite these drawbacks, he had always been popular with his fellows and Geoff was able to view a future spent in the YMCA with equanimity, since he would be sharing a roof with Reggie once more.
When Geoff thought about the future, mind you, it was apt to take on a rosier hue than the reality which he knew lay before him. He planned to stay at the YMCA until he could afford a place of his own and despite being, on the whole, a practical person, a vision of a cottage with roses round the door, a long garden full of flowers, fruit and vegetables and a river running nearby, persisted in putting in an appearance in his imagination. If he allowed his mind the luxury of a real daydream, there would be a woman in the cottage, or rather a girl. She had a long plait of corn-coloured hair and bore a remarkable resemblance to Lizzie Devlin, and when he
really
got going, his imagination also supplied his dream girl with a beautiful rose-coloured dress, covered by a snowy white apron, to whose hem clung two idyllically pretty children.
However, at this point Geoff usually pulled himself up short, scolded his imagination for running riot and turned it back severely to more practical matters; what he would do to earn himself a place in the sun, for instance. Banking was a grand starting point, but due to his upbringing Geoff had few illusions and knew that there were a great many bank clerks and
tellers and very few bank managers. So he intended to save his money until he could buy himself a small business of some description – at this stage he had no idea what – which he could nurse and nurture until it began to earn him the sort of money he needed. Only then would his dream of a country cottage – and Lizzie – begin to look possible.
Sometimes, in one of his more down-to-earth moments, he would remind himself that if Lizzie had to wait for him to earn the money for his cottage, she would be old and grey and well past child-bearing before she ever got to sniff the roses, but since daydreams were what kept a fellow going, he pushed more practical considerations to the back of his mind and enjoyed the fantasies.
It had rained all day, but when Lizzie and Sally emerged from school and began on the walk home, the rain had stopped and warm, late-afternoon sunshine was falling on the wet cobbles which steamed gently under its rays.
Lizzie and Sally, arm in arm, came gaily into the court, talking busily about the work which they would both start very soon. They had been lucky; they had both got jobs in the bottling department at Cantrell & Cochrane’s in Atlas Street, and were looking forward eagerly to the new life which would open up for them shortly, and to their first wage packet. This was to be their last week in school and since they had already been given their examination results and knew that they had done well, it should be an enjoyable week, too.
‘Are you coming round to mine for a cuppa?’ Sally asked, as they drew level with her front door. ‘Or does your Aunt Annie want messages? Oh, Lizzie, if it doesn’t rain tomorrow, what do you say we go over to New Brighton for the day? My mam’s ever so pleased wi’ my exam results and my dad’s fairly fizzin’ over with pride because we’re going to be working at C and C’s, so they’ll give us our ferry fares and a bit more, likely. What d’you say?’
‘I’d love it,’ Lizzie said honestly. ‘I don’t think Aunt Annie would mind if I took a day off for once. We do seem to have spent the whole summer so far working
– I’m right for a bit of a spree, to tell the truth. And though I usually work at Mayan’s on a Saturday, I’m sure she’d be happy to let me have the day off because she’s got a niece who stands in for me if I can’t work weekends.’
Lizzie had got herself a job in Mayall’s shop, on the corner of Lime Kiln Lane and Gildarts Gardens, which had been a great help moneywise but which had considerably shortened her free time. She went straight to Mrs Mayall’s shop after school and worked there until seven o’clock, and sometimes later, and all day on a Saturday. She made up orders, carefully weighing out the small amounts of butter, sugar, flour and other dried goods which the customer had ordered. Then she priced the items and made out a neat bill and after that she delivered them, usually walking but occasionally riding on a borrowed bike, for Mrs Mayall had a son of twenty-two who seldom rode his machine now that he worked in Birkenhead.
She did not mean to put a damper on her friend’s enthusiasm but it had been on the tip of her tongue to remind Sally what a dreadfully wet summer it had been and how unlikely it was that the weather would improve on a Saturday. Everyone knew it always rained weekends, so why should this one be different? Still, you never knew, and a day out with her best pal would be prime.
‘I’ll just pop in and see if Aunt Annie wants any help,’ Lizzie said as they reached her home. ‘Are you coming in for a mo’, queen?’
‘Might as well,’ Sally said gaily, and the two girls ran up the steps and through the front doorway. They burst into the kitchen, expecting to see Aunt Annie in her usual chair by the fire, but the room was empty. ‘She must be queuing for the lavvy,’ Lizzie remarked,
turning back towards the front door. ‘Unless she’s gone next door, of course. She might have gone to get her own messages, only she usually waits for me to do that. I wonder whether . . .’
The two girls had reached the front door. As they emerged on to the steps, Mrs Clarke from next door was coming towards them. Her face bore the expression of one about to impart momentous tidings and Lizzie, who liked Mrs Clarke but knew her to be a born gossip, smiled and went to pass her. Mrs Clarke, however, shot out a pudgy hand and seized Lizzie’s elbow.
‘Lizzie, love, your aunt’s been took to the ’orspital,’ she said importantly. ‘None o’ them boys was in, nor her old feller, so the doctor telled me to tell you you’d best get round there as fast as you can. She were mortal bad, fair doubled up and groanin’ like a foghorn.’
‘Oh, my God!’ Lizzie said, one hand flying to her heart. ‘What was it, Mrs Clarke? Was it her appendix? Or did she have a fall? She’s awful big, so if she fell she could do herself a deal o’ mischief.’
Mrs Clarke looked at her pityingly. ‘You mean to tell me you didn’t
know
?’ she said, incredulously. ‘You mean to say your Aunt Annie never telled you? Why, queen, she were in the family way. I reckon somethin’ went wrong . . . she’s a bit long in the tooth for babbies, is your Aunt Annie.’
Lizzie stared, eyes rounding in total astonishment. For a moment, she had not been able to think what Mrs Clarke meant by being ‘in the family way’, and even now she understood, she could scarcely credit the truth of the statement. Her knowledge of babies and the making of them was hazy, but surely Aunt Annie and Uncle Perce were both far too old for the
sort of carryings-on which having a baby implied? And then there was Aunt Annie’s weight; if Mrs Clarke was implying that the additional weight was due to a baby, Lizzie couldn’t see it. Aunt Annie’s figure was always so generously swathed in petticoats, skirts, blouses and shawls and scarves, that it would have been impossible to notice a little bump like a baby. However, Mrs Clarke said she was to go to the hospital, and go she most certainly would.
She was about to fly down the steps and out of the court, shaking off Mrs Clarke’s grip, when it occurred to her that she did not know to which hospital her aunt had been taken, nor whether Aunt Annie needed anything brought in. She turned to Mrs Clarke, the questions almost on her lips, but that competent lady forestalled her. ‘They’ve taken her to the Maternity Hospital on Oxford Street and she’ll need a nightgown and a bit o’ towel and some soap,’ she said instructively. ‘I doubt your aunt will have the sort o’ thing that the hospital expects, if you know what I mean. I’d lend her one o’ mine, but she’s twice my size . . .’ She paused delicately, eyebrows jerking upwards. ‘I could say a word to Mrs Bedford, if you think your aunt wouldn’t object?’
Lizzie doubted whether Mrs Bedford’s nightgown could possibly stretch to cover Aunt Annie’s enormous frame, but telling herself philosophically that this would be a problem for the hospital to solve, she agreed with Mrs Clarke’s suggestion and presently, with soap, towel and a borrowed nightgown in a paper carrier bag, she and Sally set off at their fastest pace in the direction of Oxford Street.
Lizzie stood in the kitchen, washing the pots and thinking, crossly, that it was about time one of the
boys gave a hand with the drying-up. Come to that, it would have been fairer if they had helped with the preparation of the meal, since she had her work cut out to cook anything, what with school, her job, and visiting her aunt.
For despite the fact that three days had elapsed since her aunt had been taken into hospital, no member of the Grey family had yet made any attempt at any sort of household task. It was true that both Herbie and Denis had visited their mother, Herbie with a paper bag of striped Everton mints and Denis with a large bunch of roses, but this was not exactly helpful to poor Lizzie, coping alone at home.
Sadly, Aunt Annie had lost the baby quite soon after reaching hospital. By the time her niece was ushered into the long ward, she was lying back on the hard, high bed, looking exhausted and trying to come to terms with what had happened to her. As soon as her eyes had fallen upon her niece, however, her expression had lightened and a wide smile had spread across her face. ‘Eh, our Lizzie, I knew you wouldn’t let me down,’ she had said, a world of relief in her tone. ‘You’ll look after me lads and your old uncle whiles I’m kept in here, won’t you, queen? Only they’s so bleedin’ useless about the house that they’d likely starve to death before I were let out.’