‘I’m sorry, lady, but the lad only comes Sat’days. It’d mean closing the shop if I brought it before then.’
‘Haven’t you got a van?’ It was a large shop and there was none of the usual rubbish for sale. Everything was good quality and she recognised a few valuable antiques. She vaguely remembered this was where her father used to bring the odd bit of porcelain and silver which he’d picked up for a song – making about one thousand per cent profit at the same time. Surely, a place like this didn’t function with merely a handcart?
‘I’m not using the van to deliver a fireguard, lady, not when petrol’s so scarce. If I did that, me month’s ration’d be gone in a few days.’
‘Don’t you get extra if you’re in business?’
The proprietor took offence, apparently thinking Jessica was arguing for an early delivery, rather than asking the question out of real interest. ‘Only for
essential
purposes,’ he snapped, ‘and I doubt if the Government would consider delivering a fireguard essential, not when the petrol’s needed by the RAF to fight the bloody war.’
‘I was only asking! I’ll take the guard with me.’ Both ends folded so it shouldn’t be too difficult to carry. She bestowed upon him a brilliant smile. ‘Thanks very much. I’ve been looking for one of these all over.’
Feeling placated by the smile, the proprietor offered her a piece of string so she could make a handle.
A few days later, Jessica telephoned Mappin’s Nationwide Removals and asked for the manager.
‘Charlie? It’s me, Jessica Fleming, Bert Hennessy’s daughter,’ she said when an old voice quavered ‘hallo’.
‘Jessie! I thought you went to live in the States when war broke out?’
‘I don’t know where you got that idea from, Charlie. Arthur and I have been living in the Lake District.’ The idea had in fact come from Jessica herself. When the axe of bankruptcy had fallen, she’d told all their old friends she and Arthur were moving to America, because she was too ashamed to reveal their real destination was Bootle.
She explained her proposed business plan to Charlie Mappin, but was dismayed by his reaction, even though, by now, it was half expected.
‘You’d never be allowed the petrol, Jess, luv. I’ve already put three of me lorries into mothballs, and if I didn’t have a Government contract which means I get an essential allowance, I doubt if I could keep the other four going.’
‘What sort of Government contract?’ Jess demanded. Perhaps she could get one for herself.
‘Carrying troops, always at very short notice. I keep a couple of drivers on standby twenty-four hours a day.’
‘Just a minute, Charlie, the pips are going.’ Jessica fed more pennies into the box, but the extra money was
wasted
. Charlie Mappin could offer no further encouragement. He was, he told her, even thinking of going back to a horse and cart for local jobs.
‘Ask the Kellys next door if they can get petrol for you on the black market,’ Sheila suggested when Jessica explained her predicament. ‘Though whatever you do, don’t mention it to me dad. He’s never approved of the Kellys. Faily got me a valve for the wireless the other day. Me dad would have a fit if he knew.’
May Kelly and her brothers, Fintan and Faily, had once done a roaring trade in shoplifting, occasionally interrupted when one of the lads spent a short term in jail. Since the war began, they’d turned their talents to the black market, though they were hopeless spivs, easily moved by a hard-luck story and often persuaded to give their stuff away or, at the very least, sell it at the price they’d paid themselves.
But the Kellys were unable to help Jessica when she called.
‘The cheapest I could get petrol for you,’ announced Fintan, a pale ginger-haired man in his early forties, ‘is six and six a gallon.’
‘Six and six!’ gasped Jessica. ‘But it’s only one and eightpence from a garage.’
‘It’s going up to two and a penny-halfpenny shortly,’ said May. Slightly older than her brothers, she ruled them both with a rod of iron.
‘Even so, it’s still three times as much.’ She’d never make a profit if she paid so much for petrol. Sadly, she decided to give up the idea of starting a business with the van.
‘Sorry, Mrs Fleming, but that’s the best I can do,’ Fintan said regretfully. ‘Would you like a lipstick?’ he added, as if by way of compensation.
‘What make?’ enquired Jessica.
‘Coty.’
‘Yes, please,’ she said eagerly. ‘A nice bright red if
you’ve
got it.’ She was down to using a matchstick to apply the final remains of the only lipstick she had left.
‘You can have it for nothing,’ said May. ‘Seeing as how we can’t help you out with the petrol.’
Jessica wrote to Arthur and brusquely told him he could have the van, just in case he bought one himself.
You’ll have to collect it, as I have no plans to drive up there at the moment
.
He replied by return of post.
I intend to visit you and Penny at Christmas. I’ll come by train and drive the van back
.
‘I’m not entirely sure if I
want
you for Christmas, Arthur,’ Jessica said crossly when she read the letter. She rather liked living alone with just Penny for company. She walked far and wide with the pushchair or caught the train into town and wandered round the shops, or what remained of them after the Blitz. The city centre throbbed with life and was always packed with servicemen and women in a dazzling variety of uniforms. At night she sat up in bed reading library books and old magazines till the early hours, something Arthur couldn’t stand as he couldn’t sleep with the light on. Of course, all this would change when she got round to making a living, something she’d have to do if she wanted to be independent. If she didn’t support herself, it would mean living off Arthur’s money, and he didn’t earn enough to keep two households going permanently. She felt doubly cross with Arthur, thinking of the money coming in from the rents of twelve houses. If the business hadn’t gone bust, she could have lived on that. Instead, it was going to pay off debts
he
had accrued. It didn’t cross her mind to stop the payments, keep the money for herself and let Arthur get on with clearing up his own mess. She’d given her word and she would stick by it. She visualised the horror, if all else failed, of having to go back to the Lake District to live.
‘I
won’t
!’ she vowed. If it hadn’t been for Penny, she
would
even have taken a job, though she hated the idea of being told what to do. She was a capitalist, not a worker. There were jobs galore at the moment, but she wasn’t prepared to leave her daughter with another woman for eight or more hours a day. Sheila Reilly, who was longing to get her hands on a baby, had already offered.
Whilst she wrestled with the problem of how to make a living, Jessica enjoyed what she hoped were her last few days of freedom, by familiarising herself all over again with the city she had deserted for far too long.
One Saturday, she walked the entire length of the Dock Road as far as the Pier Head, then caught the ferry to Birkenhead. The Dockie, the main target of the German bombs, had been bloodied and bludgeoned, and some of the landmarks she remembered were no longer there, yet it seemed busier than ever, as if every single aspect of the war at sea was being run from this very spot. Merchant seamen and sailors of all nationalities thronged the pavements in their colourful and often outlandish outfits. The noise of the traffic was deafening; trains thundered along the overhead railway, lorries and cars crawled along impatiently behind the occasional horse-drawn cart.
Behind the high dock walls, the tops of cranes could be seen, twisting and turning, stooping and lifting, never ceasing as ships were on-loaded or off-loaded with all possible speed, so more vessels could take their place and the cranes could start all over again.
‘This is where I belong,’ Jessica whispered. ‘This is where we both belong. You were born here, Penny. It’s in your blood, like it’s in mine.’ She patted her daughter’s head. Penny, fascinated with everything, waved her arms in delight.
Later, they sailed across the Mersey. Jessica had never seen the river so crowded. There were ships of every conceivable shape and size, though apart from the
aircraft
carriers, the tugboats and a single ocean liner, she had no idea what types of ships they were. Here and there the topmost parts of sunken vessels protruded through the grey waters, and warning buoys indicated where others had gone to a deeper watery grave.
She stayed on the ferry when it reached Birkenhead, then caught the train home from Exchange Station. Penny fell asleep and for some reason, Jessica’s mood changed and she felt slightly depressed. She worried that she might have done the wrong thing by uprooting them both from the security of the flat over the museum and Arthur’s monthly salary, but by the time the train reached Bootle, she’d managed to convince herself that what she’d done was right. For the last year, she’d been merely vegetating. Now, she felt truly alive. She remembered that tomorrow she was going to see her friend Eileen in Melling. A lot had happened to Eileen since they’d last met, and she wondered how she’d coped with the traumatic events of the last year.
‘I may as well use the bloody van seeing as how I’ve got it,’ Jessica said to herself when she got ready the next morning.
Sheila, who was coming too, along with the children, was delighted to discover they didn’t have to catch the usual two buses to go and see her sister. ‘Y’can never be sure of the buses on a Sunday. Many’s the time I’ve hung around for ages getting home.’
The children were all in their best clothes, having been to early Mass, and were even more delighted than their mother as they piled into the back. Sheila sat in the passenger seat with Penny on her knee. ‘It feels dead funny, a woman driving,’ she remarked when they set off.
It was a dull October day. Bulging black clouds chugged across the ashen sky and it looked as though it could well rain, but this did nothing to quench the spirits
of
the children. Sheila made a vain attempt to play ‘I Spy’, but they were too enamoured with their first journey in a van to co-operate.
When they reached the isolated cottage where their Auntie Eileen lived, they poured out of the back and ran whooping into the garden.
‘They need a man’s hand to keep them under control,’ Sheila said. ‘Poor Cal, he’s hardly seen his kids over the last two years.’
The small house looked lonely and very small in its big garden, surrounded by trees. Sheila shuddered. ‘I hate the idea of our Eileen living here all by herself, particularly in the winter.’
Jessica was shocked by how much Eileen had changed. When she first emerged from the house to greet them, she looked just the same; a tall graceful young woman with a luminous tranquil beauty, her butter-blonde hair dead straight and cut in a fringe. Closer, Jessica observed a deep well of sadness in the blue eyes which were so much like her father’s, as though Eileen spent much of her time weeping for Tony, her lost son. It was as if someone had switched a light off inside her. She wore a simple blue jumper and navy-blue skirt.
She smiled though when she saw Jess, and the two women embraced warmly. Then they compared babies. Penny had been born almost exactly twelve months before five-week-old Nicky.
‘Oh, I’d love another one,’ breathed Jess as she picked up the tiny white-clad baby, who yawned extravagantly and immediately fell asleep in her arms.
‘So would I,’ Sheila echoed.
‘I’m not too old, am I, at forty-five?’ Jessica asked anxiously.
‘There was a woman in Beryl Street who had a baby when she was forty-eight, though she had one up on you, Jess.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A feller!’ grinned Sheila. ‘There’ll never be a bun in your oven if Arthur’s living in one place and you’re living in another, unless you do it by post, or something.’
‘Don’t tease,’ Eileen chided her sister. She glanced at Jess. ‘You’d better get a move on, all the same. Now, let me take a look at Penny.’
Penny was reluctant to be looked at by a strange woman just then. She was anxious to get out into the garden with the other children. She allowed Eileen a cursory cuddle, before struggling out of her arms and making her unsteady way outside. Sheila shouted to Dominic to keep an eye on her. As the eldest of six, Dominic had been obeying the same instruction for years. He nodded obediently. ‘All right, Mam.’
‘She’s beautiful, Jess,’ Eileen said quietly. ‘I reckon you must have looked like that when you were a little girl.’
‘But don’t you think, Eil,’ Sheila said eagerly, ‘that there’s a touch of our Siobhan about her, round the chin and the eyes, like?’
‘Perhaps, but nature’s strange. Look at our Sean! He’s not the least like anyone in our family.’ She turned to Jessica. ‘You must come to Sean’s wedding, Jess. I think I told you he’s getting married in December.’
Sean Doyle, their younger brother, was a charming gypsy of a boy, with olive skin, dark mischievous eyes and coal-black hair.
‘I’d love to.’
‘Shall we have our tea now in peace? We can feed the children later.’
There was only one downstairs room in the cottage. Low-ceilinged and thickly beamed, it was about twenty feet long and stretched from front to back. The table at the far end was already set with cutlery and side plates.
‘I’ve brought you some cold ham, sis.’
‘Here’s a bunloaf and three hardboiled eggs, Eileen. Sheila said you’d be making salad.’
Since rationing began, no-one went to tea without bringing a contribution towards the meal. Eileen accepted everything gratefully.
‘Have your hens laid yet?’ asked Sheila.
‘Not yet. I hope they’re not all – what do you call men hens?’
‘Cocks,’ Sheila giggled.
‘I hope they’re not all cocks,’ Eileen said gravely. ‘I’ll just go and put the kettle on.’
Sheila turned to Jessica the minute Eileen disappeared. ‘She never laughs!’
‘Since Tony was killed?’
‘No, since Nick went away. He left for Russia the minute little Nicky was born. Eileen’s convinced, more than she’s ever been convinced of anything before, that he’s not coming back.’