A month later, Sally and Lizzie were working side by side at their bench, snatching up the items as the belt moved past them, sealing them and replacing
them, to be whisked along to the next stage in the process.
‘How’s the chickens?’ Sally enquired, shooting a glance at her friend. ‘I know your aunt were tickled pink with ’em at first, ’cos you telled me so, but I suppose as they grow up, they’ll start trying to gerrout and explore the court. What’ll she do then, eh?’
‘They are getting bigger,’ Lizzie acknowledged. ‘They’re getting feathers instead of fluff and their legs seem to have got awfully long. They’re tame, though, not like the chickens you see in folk’s backyards. They’ve been brought up in our kitchen and I suppose they think they’re people, only littler of course. When Aunt Annie’s cooking, they jump up and down by her feet, cheeping for scraps, and of an evening when she’s sitting in her basket chair cobbling socks – you can’t call it darning, not the way she does it – they sit on her lap, the way a cat would. She talks to ’em as if they understood every word and saves them special treats – they love boiled potato mashed up with cabbage – and the other day, she went out to the pet-shop and bought a bag of corn. They won’t eat it yet, I think they’re too little, but it goes to show she thinks a deal of them.’
‘Wharrabout your Uncle Perce? And horrible Herbie? Wharrabout Denis an’ all?’ Sally asked. ‘Don’t say they like ’em too?’
‘Well, they do then,’ Lizzie assured her friend. ‘To tell the truth, Sal, it’s so grand to have Aunt Annie cheerful again, the same as she was before she went into hospital, that they would be prepared to put up with something a lot harder to take than a couple of chickens.’
‘Have those birds ever seen the outside world?’
Sally asked ten minutes later as the two of them were hurrying out of the factory after the whistle had gone. ‘Hens are supposed be outside, you know, not in a kitchen.’
Lizzie giggled. ‘The way Aunt Annie treats them, she’ll be taking them out on a lead for an airing any day now,’ she observed. ‘Did I tell you she calls one Sausage and the other Mash? She says it’s because she don’t know which is the cockerel and which the hen, but I ask you – naming chickens! She’ll be having collars made for them next.’
The two girls emerged from the bottling plant gates on to Atlas Road, turned along Love Land and then left into Burlington Street. ‘It were your pal Clem who got the chicks for you, weren’t it?’ Sally asked, as they made their way along the crowded pavement. ‘Has he been to see them, now they’re growing up? He can’t keep hens aboard a canal boat, that’s for sure.’
‘That’s all you know, clever clogs,’ Lizzie responded smartly. ‘Priddy was so taken with the idea of keeping a few hens that she’s fenced off a section of the butty boat with wire netting and she’s got half an orange crate full of hay in there and four grand pullets – that’s what they call hens when they ain’t chicks, nor yet fully grown – and whenever Clem takes Brutus across the fields, he brings back a few ears of corn or some nice young shoots for Paddy’s birds, and they’re doing fine.’
‘Well, I never!’ Sally said. ‘I didn’t know you’d seen Clem recently. Has he been round to the court a-visiting? Since the chicks were his idea, I suppose he’s interested in ’em.’
‘He’s not been round. But last Saturday, when I was doing messages for Aunt Annie, I crossed the
Houghton Bridge and saw the old
Rose
drawing up alongside Tate’s wharves, so naturally I climbed down for a word wi’ him. I walked up to the stable with him and we talked about our chicks and his pullets. He says they’ve had several tiny eggs from their fowls already, so it won’t be long before Sausage – or Mash – will be looking for a nice nest to lay in.’
Sally laughed. ‘Sausage and Mash!’ she said derisively. ‘I know you said the boys and your uncle gerralong okay with the chickens, but how do they feel about having to keep the kitchen door closed all the time, even in this hot weather? Doesn’t it fret them? And wharrabout watching where they tread?’
‘It were a bit awkward at first,’ Lizzie acknowledged. ‘But now the birds keep out of the way of your feet of their own accord. I always thought hens were uncommonly foolish creatures, but they aren’t, you know. They don’t want to be trod on any more than you or I would.’
‘And how’s your other flame?’ Sally enquired roguishly as they entered Cranberry Court. ‘The one from the Branny, I mean. He used to come around regular at one time, but we’ve not seen so much of him this summer.’
‘If you mean Geoff, he’s a friend not a flame,’ Lizzie said defensively. ‘The trouble is, he doesn’t work in a factory, he’s in a bank, and they open Saturday mornings, you know. But he and I are going off on a spree together in a week or so. He’s going to take me across the water, and we’ll have a grand day out in New Brighton. That’s why I’m saving all my pennies because the fun fair is one of the best ever, Geoff says.’
‘If he’s mugging you for a trip to New Brighton and goes on the fun fair, then he’s a flame not a friend,’ Sally said firmly. ‘No feller spends money like that on
a girl if he ain’t seriously interested, queen. Besides, you like him, don’t you?’
‘Oh, like!’ Lizzie said scornfully. ‘I like ever so many people, but that doesn’t mean to say I’m serious about any of them. How are you getting on with young Dougie Fairweather?’
‘Oh, him!’ Sally tossed her mass of red-brown curls, kept back from her face with a piece of bright green satin ribbon. She was getting prettier and prettier as she got older, Lizzie thought enviously. She always felt pale and rather plain beside her friend, longing for striking dark eyes instead of her own blue ones, and for curls and vivid colour instead of the soft waves of light hair which had to be plaited and bound round her head in a coronet at work. But despite envying Sally her vivid looks, they were still best friends and seldom parted for long. ‘Dougie’s all right – in fact he’s a nice feller – but he isn’t ever going to set the Mersey on fire. Clerks in the booking office don’t, you know. Still, he earns a fair wage and he’s not mean, I’ll give him that. I haven’t had to pay to go to the cinema once in the last four months.’
‘You mercenary woman,’ Lizzie said, climbing the steps to her own front door and pushing it open. ‘See you tomorrow then, queen.’
Lizzie and Geoff enjoyed themselves so much on their day out that they planned to make it a once-monthly affair. She came home, alight with the pleasure of her day, and spent a pleasant hour in the kitchen, giving Aunt Annie a blow-by-blow account of the treat.
‘I’ve been on the ferry before, of course, when I were a kid and Mam and Dad took me to New Brighton for a day on the sands. But this were different. Geoff and I went below and had a pot of tea
and some biscuits in the bar. It seemed ever so strange, eating and drinking aboard a great big ship – I felt like a princess, to tell the truth, Aunt Annie – and then we went up on deck and he told me all about the other shipping which we passed. He knows ever such a lot, but he never lectures you. He tells you in an interesting way which makes you want to know more.
‘Then when we got to New Brighton, we walked round the funfair, choosing what to spend our money on and being really careful to make sure the rides we chose were the best. Geoff is like that – he doesn’t do things on the spur of the moment, he thinks them out. Before we had our dinner, we had a go on the Big Wheel. It was wonderful, Aunt Annie! We could see for miles and miles, right across to the blue mountains in the distance – and then we had a go on the bumper cars, which was ever so exciting . . . didn’t I just scream every time there was a collision!’
‘Your Uncle Perce took me to the New Brighton funfair when we first started to go steady,’ Aunt Annie said, a reminiscent gleam in her eyes. ‘We went on the pier an’ all. Is it still there?’
Lizzie tried, unsuccessfully, to imagine her aunt and Uncle Perce squeezing into the tiny cab of a bumper car; she even found it difficult to imagine them walking along the pier, but she supposed that was how you felt about old people – that they did not begin to live until you yourself were born. ‘Yes, the pier’s still there,’ she confirmed. ‘It’s a grand place, full of amusements and with a concert stand at the end. We sat there after we’d had our dinner and listened to the band playing excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan.
‘We had fish and chips at the Avondale Café on the
prom and then we walked to where the Wall’s icecream man stands and Geoff bought us a special each. You should have seen it, Aunt Annie, it had lovely strawberry syrup all over it and a blob of cream on top.’
‘And what did you do in the afternoon?’ Aunt Annie asked. She was sitting with both Sausage and Mash on her lap and paused to give them an affectionate stroke. ‘I’m sure these here hens would have enjoyed the day out as much as you did.’
‘After we’d watched the concert, we went back to the funfair and had several goes on different amusements,’ Lizzie told her. ‘And then we went to the Tower Ballroom, which is ever so posh, and had a marvellous high tea with cold chi— I mean, cold meat sandwiches and scones and all different cakes and a huge pot of tea, of course. And after that, Aunt Annie, we went to the Tivoli Theatre on the prom and saw a wonderful variety show. There was a comedian and acrobats and some black and white minstrels . . . oh, all sorts. And when we came out we walked along the pier again, in the dark, and watched all the little lights flickering and fizzing, and ate candy floss until it were time to catch the last ferry home.’
‘It sounds ever so nice,’ Aunt Annie said, so wistfully that Lizzie was impelled to say: ‘Well, what’s stopping us, you and me, Aunt, going over there one Saturday? We can save up our pennies and have ourselves a nice day out. Only,’ she added with a twinkle, ‘I don’t think we can possibly take Sausage and Mash.’
Aunt Annie laughed too, but she said that having a day out now and again was a good idea, so she would certainly save up some money for the treat. ‘And I’ll mebbe start doin’ a bit o’ cookin’ for them as can
afford it, though I don’t think I’m up to launderin’ sheets yet awhile,’ she said. It was yet another encouraging little sign, Lizzie thought, that her aunt was fast regaining her former spirits.
Lizzie told Geoff all this the next time they met, and he offered to lend her some money so that she could take her aunt to New Brighton before the bad weather came. ‘You and me can go somewhere cheaper next time,’ he said vaguely. ‘We said we’d go each month, on my Saturday off. Well, what say we go into the country on this side o’ the Mersey next time? You said Clem and Priddy were telling you that hens need green stuff in their diet, and that Clem takes a bag with him when he walks that great dog and collects dandelion leaves and that. Why don’t we go on a foraging expedition for grub for Sausage and Mash?’
Lizzie thought that this was a very good idea and agreed, after only the slightest hesitation, to accept the loan from him.
She and Aunt Annie had had a grand day out, though Lizzie was guiltily aware that it was not quite such fun to share a day out with her slow-moving and overweight relative as it had been to be with Geoff. He had taken good care of her, fed her, amused her. Now it was her turn to do these things for Aunt Annie and though she did enjoy herself, she came home after it very tired. And feeling, somehow, a little flat.
She suspected that she was, quite without meaning to, comparing this trip home on the ferry with her previous one because, when she and Geoff had travelled home together, he had put his arm round her shoulders in a manner both casual yet intimate, and had murmured: ‘Dear little Lizzie, you get prettier and nicer every time I see you.’ And then he had kissed her.
It had not been much of a kiss, just a light little touch, soft as a moth’s wing, on her still parted lips as she had turned towards him, about to tease him for such a patently untrue if flattering remark. Nevertheless, it had been a kiss, and her very first what was more. So that sitting beside Aunt Annie in the big lounge bar below decks, drinking a last cup of tea before docking, she had felt that this day lacked . . . oh, something.
When she and Geoff set off together for their next outing, towards the end of September, the best of the summer weather definitely over, she wondered whether the day in New Brighton had been such a success because she was with Geoff, who thought her pretty, or because it was such a novelty to have a day out anywhere, or simply because they had done such lovely things and never had to worry once about what they were spending. Or whether, when it came down to brass tacks, it had been such a magic and memorable day because of that kiss.
On this September day he called for her early, as arranged. Aunt Annie had baked her a couple of very large and delicious-smelling mutton pasties and she had cut a pile of cheese and pickle sandwiches for their carry-out.
They caught an early bus as they had planned and went to a suitably rural spot near Crosby. They jumped down from the bus and Lizzie, following Geoff over a stile, glanced admiringly around. He had certainly chosen a beautiful spot, for although it was still very windy, in the shelter of the wood, with the sunshine dappling through the leaves overhead, they could have been a thousand miles from civilisation. She had brought two large string bags for the greenery they meant to take home with them and a stout canvas one containing their carry-out.
‘I know clover because the leaves are so pretty, like the clubs on a pack of cards,’ Lizzie said as they began to pick some leaves around the edges of a sloping pasture. ‘But unless it’s gorra yellow flower, I wouldn’t know a dandelion leaf if it bit me on the knee. How do you tell ’em from all the other leaves, our Geoff?’
Geoff showed Lizzie the selection of leaves he was picking which included a good few he couldn’t name, though he thought they were probably all edible so far as birds and rabbits were concerned. ‘When we came to visit the grand house round here, one of the farmhands used to take us foraging for his rabbits,’ he explained. ‘You mustn’t give them fresh green stuff – I don’t know why because they must eat fresh stuff in the wild – but he used to let us pick a big bag of leaves and then, when they had wilted next day, he’d let us feed the rabbits ourselves, by hand. I’ve never forgotten it, but I didn’t expect it would come in useful. It just goes to show, Lizzie, that nothing you learn is ever wasted.’