Winnie of the Waterfront (11 page)

Gladys clamped a hand over her mouth. ‘We’ve had supper! I was told to have mine before I came to get you. I thought you were being given yours separately. Everything will have been cleared away by now.’

Winnie looked at her in disbelief. ‘You mean I won’t be getting any?’

Gladys shook her head. ‘Doesn’t look like it!’ Her face brightened a little. ‘You haven’t missed much. We only had a slice of bread and dripping and a mug of tea, and the milk in that was off.’

Chapter Eleven

OVER THE NEXT
few days, Winnie suffered one humiliation after another and was shocked to find that they were mostly from the nuns. They seemed to regard her as some sort of demon who had been dropped into their midst, and resolutely tried to oust the evil spirit inside her.

She bore their comments and actions as stoically as she could, determined not to let them see how much they upset her. She refused to let Sister Hortense or any of the other nuns know how much they frightened her with their threats of Hellfire and damnation. She tried not to look upset when they levied Acts of Contrition as punishment for things they said she’d done, or as atonement for sins she knew she hadn’t committed.

The thing she cared about most was losing her hair, and no matter what they said or did that was always uppermost in her mind. Her dad had been so proud of her black ringlets and every time she brushed or combed her hair she’d thought of him and the way he had stroked them and told her how lovely they were.

Now, her bristly scalp was like a badge of shame. She also felt that by cutting off her hair, Sister Hortense had confirmed in some way that her dad was gone and she’d never see him again.

Her first night sleeping in a dormitory with over twenty other girls was quite an ordeal because they were all so curious about her deformed legs.

She wished she could hide her affliction from them, but it was impossible. She’d been told she would have to leave her invalid chair downstairs which meant that she needed help to get up the stairs. She found that most of the girls were willing to assist her. If they weren’t strong enough to support her weight then they would fetch things for her, or find someone else who could hold her up.

The hard bed and thin blanket were not very much different from what she had been used to at home, so in spite of the strangeness of her surroundings Winnie found she slept soundly. On the first morning, the early morning bell had startled her and for a minute she couldn’t make out where she was or what was happening. There was so much activity going on all around her as all the girls hurriedly dressed and tidied their beds.

‘You’d better stay where you are. None of us have got time to see to you,’ Gladys told her. ‘I’ll tell Sister Theresa that I told you to do that so you won’t be in any trouble.’

Sister Theresa was small and fat. She came bustling into the dormitory full of authority, then began tutting, muttering and crossing herself, invoking the mercy of the Holy Mother, when she saw Winnie’s legs for the first time. ‘Can you try and dress yourself and I’ll find someone to help you get downstairs,’ she said as she hurried away.

When she was eventually helped downstairs,
Winnie
was shocked to find that her chair had been moved and that no one seemed to know where it was.

‘Sister Hortense said it was to be thrown out as rubbish,’ Babs whispered.

‘As rubbish!’ Winnie exclaimed, her eyes filling up with tears. ‘She can’t do that, I won’t let her! My dad made that for me, I want it back!’

‘You can stop your tantrum right away,’ Sister Hortense told her, overhearing. ‘It’s crude and ungainly and takes up far too much space. From now on you will use one of the orphanage’s wheelchairs, and you can think yourself very blessed indeed to be allowed to do so.’

When she saw it, Winnie had to admit that it was a great improvement on her old chair. It was a proper wheelchair with two very big wheels that made it possible for her to move herself around. There was also a little shelf in front to put her feet on so that they weren’t sticking out like they’d done in her old chair.

Getting into it wasn’t easy, though, because unless it was wedged against something solid it moved, but once she was in it she found it was comfortable.

In the weeks that followed, as she slowly settled into the orphanage routine, Winnie found that at first there were one or two who shunned her because they couldn’t stand the sight of her deformity. There were even a couple of girls who pushed or shoved her out of the way and took things from her, knowing she couldn’t chase after them to get them back. Gradually, however, she became
accepted;
the bullying stopped and she was no longer considered a freak.

Adjusting to the strict regime was not easy. The early morning bell sounded at six o’clock and they were allowed twenty minutes in which to wash and dress. Then they had to attend prayers in the chapel before starting their appointed tasks for the day. For some this meant sweeping or scrubbing the floors or the outside steps. For others it was cleaning windows, the dormitories, the kitchens or other rooms throughout the building. All this was before breakfast.

Gladys and Babs had been told to help Winnie to dress each morning, but this didn’t mean they were exempt from other work. Instead, they were told to work alongside Winnie doing more menial tasks like cleaning cutlery, washing dishes, ironing and mending.

Winnie was afraid they would resent her because of this, but instead she found that they both welcomed the chance to avoid some of the harder tasks like having to go outside and scrub the stone steps.

‘You want to try doing that on a cold frosty morning, or when they’re covered with snow,’ Gladys told her. ‘Your hands turn blue and they’re so cold that when you come back indoors they ache for hours afterwards.’

‘Sometimes they’re so numb that you can’t eat your breakfast,’ Babs agreed.

Breakfast was a bowl of grey-looking porridge, served without either milk or sugar. It was accompanied by a wedge of bread which was so hard
and
dry that the only way to eat it was to dip it into the thin porridge to soften it up.

‘Why is it so stale?’ Winnie asked.

‘Because it’s the throw-outs from all the hotels and restaurants in Liverpool. Two of the nuns go round with a handcart every evening and anything that is too stale to be served to their own customers they send to us. They think of it as their charity offering. Sister Magdalene tells them it will earn them a place in heaven when they die.’

‘They don’t believe that, do they?’

‘Of course they do! They’re all terrible sinners because they overcharge and cheat people, and this helps them to clear their conscience,’ Babs grinned.

After breakfast was over there was a general scurrying round before lessons began. Everyone was expected to help clear away the dishes and make themselves presentable before going to their classrooms.

One of Winnie’s greatest surprises when she had first arrived at the orphanage had been to discover that there were boys there as well as girls. ‘They’re kept separate in their own dormitories at night, and for their meals, but they mix with us the rest of the time. You want to watch out, a lot of them are bullies and they pick on anyone they think is weaker than them,’ Babs had whispered.

There was no mid-morning break like there had been at her other school. At midday they filed through to the refectory and were served a stew consisting of gristly lumps of meat and a mixture
of
whatever vegetables the nuns had collected from the restaurants.

Afterwards, no matter what the weather, both the girls and boys were turned out into the yard for an hour while the nuns withdrew to the sanctity of their own common room.

‘It’s out of bounds to everyone else,’ Babs warned Winnie.

‘Why? What happens there?’

‘They say they spend the time praying for our souls, but I know different,’ Maisie giggled. ‘A couple of us crept along there and spied on them.’

‘So what were they doing?’

‘Sitting there drinking tea, eating cake and biscuits, and chatting and laughing like it was a mother’s meeting.’

Winnie looked at her, wide-eyed. ‘Didn’t they see you?’

Maisie nodded her head. ‘Yeah! We were caught, but we didn’t care.’

‘Were you punished?’

Maisie pulled a face. ‘Yeah! No supper for the rest of the week and ten Acts of Contrition. It was worth it, though.’

The first time Winnie had gone out into the playground in her wheelchair she had found herself surrounded by boys. They pushed Gladys and Maisie, who had promised to look after her, to one side and grabbed hold of the chair.

They began pushing it very fast, then stopping so suddenly that she was thrown forward and nearly came out of it. Winnie had screamed in terror and pleaded with them to stop. Far from
making
them do so, this seemed to amuse them and drive them on to new antics. They began swinging the chair round in a circle, first one way and then another. They did it so hard and so fast that the wheels almost lifted off the ground.

This time she screamed, not in fright but because she felt sick. She begged them to stop, but they only jeered and swirled the chair round all the harder.

Gladys and Maisie, seeing how frightened Winnie was, grabbed at the boys to try and stop them. This seemed only to incite them all the more. Winnie was so petrified that she could only screw up her eyes, hold her breath and hope she would survive until they came to a stop.

When she felt she couldn’t stand it another minute because she felt so sick and giddy, the wheelchair suddenly came to a jarring halt. She was flung forward and would have been thrown right out of it but for a strong restraining arm grabbing her and holding her back in the seat.

Slowly she opened her eyes, almost afraid to discover what had happened to save her. A big fair-haired boy was holding her wheelchair steady and looking down at her, concern etched on his square-jawed face.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

Winnie nodded. ‘I am now,’ she said shakily. ‘I thought I was going to die.’

‘It won’t happen again, I’ll make sure of that,’ he told her confidently.

She smiled at him gratefully.

‘What happened to your hair?’ he frowned.
‘Lice?
I had nits when I came here and they cropped mine right down to my scalp like that.’

She looked at his thatch of short fair hair and smiled timorously.

‘No, I didn’t have lice! I had long black curls and Sister Hortense didn’t approve of them,’ she told him in a small voice.

He nodded understandingly. ‘Don’t worry, it soon grows again,’ he assured her. ‘No one can stop that happening, no matter how many times they cut it.’

Winnie felt reassured and smiled back at him. She hoped he was right, and at least it stopped her feeling quite so sad.

‘I’ve got to go now,’ he told her, and started to move away. Then he paused and, looking back over his shoulder, asked, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Winnie. Winnie Malloy.’

He nodded. ‘OK, Winnie. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure no one will bully you again like that.’

‘Thanks!’ He looked so kind and friendly that she didn’t want him to go. ‘You haven’t told me your name,’ she called after him.

‘It’s Bob. Bob Flowers,’ he turned around and called back.

‘Right. I’ll try and remember it,’ Winnie told him with a smile.

‘You were lucky he was around to spot what was happening,’ Gladys told her after Bob had gone off to join a crowd of older boys. ‘He’ll be the next Head Boy. He doesn’t leave until the summer after next when he’ll be fourteen. By then,’ she added confidently, ‘everyone will be used to
you
and your chair so no one is likely to bother you any more.’

Bob Flowers meant every word he said, but some of the younger boys were defiant. They resented him intervening and vowed amongst themselves to make Winnie pay for the fact that he had reported them and they’d been punished.

From then on she was the target for their spite. Most of them had been born and brought up in the Scotland Road area so they had learned early on in life how to be cunning.

Remembering Bob’s admonishment, they knew they would be in trouble if he ever again caught them openly teasing Winnie Malloy, so they resorted to much slyer tactics.

Several of them had so-called special friends amongst the girls who were the same age as Winnie, and so with their connivance they began to wage a vendetta against her. Knowing she was confined to her wheelchair, even when queuing up for her meals, they resorted to elbowing her out of line. Several of them would sneak up behind her, and then by moving in front of her, one by one, would prevent her from making any progress.

If she attempted to move round them they would close up tightly, refusing to let her back in again, completely ignoring her pleas, threats or protests.

When they were outside, one of the more daring boys would run up behind her and give her wheelchair a violent push, sending it skewing all over the place. Often this meant she went hurtling across the yard towards the iron railings.

When she protested they pretended to be deaf.

Once she was caught out by a boy offering to help her when she was having difficulty in propelling her wheelchair because it had been snowing and the ground was slippery. As they were both on their own she accepted gratefully. She only realised something was wrong when he started pushing her quite fast and she found herself being wheeled to a far corner of the yard. Once there, he abandoned her and ran off chortling with glee. She tried to wheel herself back but the wheelchair slipped and skidded.

Completely helpless, she’d shouted herself hoarse until someone had found her and wheeled her back inside the building.

Winnie’s most frightening experience of all was the day she lost her temper with Gerry Heal, a small weedy boy with glasses and a pimply face. Ever since he had arrived at the orphanage he’d been the butt of other people’s jokes because he was so puny, and now finding someone who was worse off physically than himself delighted him. He tormented her mercilessly.