A Kiss and a Promise (12 page)

‘And I’ll help you milk ’em,’ Michael said contentedly, as they began to climb the short cliff path. ‘Oh, Mam, it’s grand to be home, so it is!’

When the knock came at the door, Mrs Bennett almost missed it because the baby was grizzling again, beginning to cry in that desperate, infuriating way that a hungry baby will. Mrs Bennett had been ignoring the noise for ten minutes, but it was beginning to get on her nerves which was why, she told herself virtuously, she had been taking a nip out of the Guinness bottle when the knock had sounded. Now, she whipped the large black bottle off the table and inserted it carefully into the coal hod. That done, she hurried across the kitchen, seized the kettle from the fire and began to pour water into the teapot, calling out as she did so: ‘Come in, love, it’s on the latch.’

The door opened and a small girl looked tentatively into the room. She was a thin child with mousy hair and a small, nondescript face, saved from total plainness by a pair of very large, clear, hazel eyes. She was wearing a man’s tweed jacket, which had been cut down to more or less fit her, over a droopy gingham dress, with cracked boots several sizes too large on her small feet. But she grinned cheerfully at Mrs Bennett and came right into the room, sidling towards the fire and raising her voice to be heard above the baby’s wails. ‘Whazza marrer wi’ the baby, Miz Bennett? She ain’t half a-bawlin’.’

Mrs Bennett looked approvingly at her visitor, though someone less experienced in the ways of the court might have queried why she was not clad more warmly, for the March day was chilly. However, she continued to splash water into the teapot, saying as she did so: ‘Oh, she’s hungry, but I ain’t got nothin’ for her in the house.’ She gave the child a questioning glance. ‘Wharrizit, Addy? Your mam sent ya, did she? I axed her earlier if you’d get me messages today.’

‘Aye,’ the child said in a piping treble. ‘She didn’t say what you was wantin’, but please, Mrs Bennett, if there’s lots, can I take Ginny and the pram? I’s only eight an’ I can’t carry a lorra stuff in me arms and me mam wants a big bag o’ spuds and a cabbage, as well as a screw o’ tea and two penn’orth of buttermilk.’

The child had to raise her voice because of the baby’s wails and Mrs Bennett’s eyes brightened. ‘Wharra good thing you come when you did, chuck,’ she said, having a little difficulty with her words, but managing to get them out in more or less the right order. ‘It’s time li’l – li’l Gi-Ginny …’ She jerked her thumb at the now roaring baby, giving up the attempt to pronounce the child’s name. ‘She wants feedin’ and I ain’t gorrany milluck,’ she bawled. ‘You can ge’ me some an’ – an’ feed the little bugger while you’re about it.’ She beamed triumphantly down at the small Addy. ‘Awright?’

Addy nodded and held out a hand. For a moment, Mrs Bennett just stared down at it, then she clicked her tongue reprovingly at herself and reached into the pocket of her dress. She produced a handful of small change and counted it out on to the kitchen table, saying sonorously as she did so: ‘Two pun o’ spuds, conny-onny for the baby, an ounce o’ tea and a cabbage. Will ’at do?’

She gestured towards the small heap of coins as she spoke. Addy scooped up the cash and pushed it into her pocket. ‘If it don’t, I’ll leave off the tea,’ she said cheerfully. She crossed the room, seized the handle of the perambulator and pushed it towards the door. ‘See you later, Miz Bennett.’

Addy thumped the perambulator down the three steps on to the flagstones and was heading for Rathbone Street when Miss Tillett, Mrs Bennett’s neighbour, stopped her. She peered into the perambulator then withdrew her head hastily.

‘That baby needs changin’; she reeks of stale piddle,’ she said. ‘How’s the old gal today, eh?’

‘The worse for drink,’ Addy said baldly. ‘She thinks I don’t notice, but she were pourin’ water into an empty teapot and she gorrall her words muddled like, when she were tellin’ me what to buy.’

Miss Tillett tutted disapprovingly. She had been a nurse before she retired from the profession and kept her own small house immaculate, cleaning through every single day. She said this was for the sake of her lodgers – she had two of them – but Addy knew it was because Miss Tillett liked cleanliness and hated dirt and the problems connected with it. She also knew that Miss Tillett disapproved of the state of many of the homes in the court, including Addy’s own. But since she was always on hand to help a neighbour in distress, her lectures on the evils of dirt and a poor diet were taken in good part and most of the women, including Addy’s mother, did their best to take her advice. Poverty, however, prevented them from following such advice as closely as Miss Tillett would have liked.

The baby had stopped screaming as soon as the perambulator was moved but now, because Addy was standing still, she began to mutter. Addy hastily jiggled the handle but it was no use. The baby wanted feeding – needed feeding – and would not shut up until she felt the rubber teat enter her mouth. Addy was about to move on when Miss Tillett stopped her.

‘Bring the baby into my place,’ she said authoritatively. ‘I’ve got some conny-onny she can have and some cream to spread on her poor little bum. I don’t suppose the old girl gave you a clean nappy?’

Addy sniffed scornfully. Nappies were a luxury beyond the reach of most inhabitants of the court. Babies wore any rag of suitable size and Ginny would be no exception. After all, Mrs Bennett was only her granny and you couldn’t expect a granny to lash out on nappies when she’d been landed with an extra mouth to feed. Addy said as much to Miss Tillett as she bumped the perambulator up the steps and into the older woman’s kitchen, but Miss Tillett shook her head. ‘I know poor Stella died a few months back, but I also know the father has sent at least two postal orders so far, so there’s no excuse for the old girl neglecting Ginny.’

As she spoke, Miss Tillett had taken the bottle from the perambulator and was making up a jug of conny-onny and hot water. When this was done, she picked up the child and held her under one arm whilst she hastily spread the kitchen table with newspapers. Then she laid the baby upon the papers and began to remove the sodden and stinking bundle of rags from the child’s nether regions. Ginny paused in her screaming for a moment as she felt the cool air on her exposed skin and Miss Tillett exclaimed with disgust, pointing to the baby’s thin buttocks and lower stomach which were covered with red running sores. ‘Look at that! If this child lives another month with that old witch neglecting her, it will be a perishing miracle.’ She turned to Addy. ‘Fetch me a bowl of warm water, a bit of soap and a clean towel, would you, queen? You’ll find everything in the cupboard beside the oven. Then if you go under the sink, you’ll find a pile of old towels and sheets and that. I’ll tear one up to make a nappy. Then you can sit her on your lap and give her the bottle while I fetch some soothing cream out of me bag.’

Addy settled herself in one of the comfy fireside chairs and took the baby, who had reached the hiccuping stage, but the distressing sounds stopped as soon as she sucked in the first mouthful of warm milk and peace descended on the kitchen. Whilst she fed Ginny, Addy looked at her long and hard. Poor little bugger, she thought tenderly, seeing the sticklike thinness of the little arms and legs and the dreadful sores which, now that she looked closely, she realised extended from the child’s waist to her ankles. She was not a pretty baby but Addy knew that babies change as they grow older and anyway, what did prettiness matter? Poor little Ginny deserved a chance to live, and abruptly Addy decided that if she, herself, could help the baby then she would do so. The drunken old woman next door would probably be glad enough of any sort of free help and Addy knew that her own fat and comfortable mother would be as outraged as Miss Tillett if she knew the state the baby was in. I can go in every day after school, Addy planned busily as the level of the milk sank in the bottle. I can beg bits of rag off the neighbours and take the dirty bits back for Mam to wash and if the old woman runs out of conny-onny again, I’ll – I’ll threaten to tell the scuffers that she’s starvin’ the kid. I’ll tell her I know about the money as well so she needn’t try to pretend she can’t afford milk. Why, I’d take the baby away from her altogether if I could – I wonder if the old gal would mind?

She put the point to Miss Tillett, who smiled approvingly at her promise to ‘see the baby right’ but shook her head at Addy’s suggestion that they might keep the baby themselves. ‘She won’t let that happen, chuck,’ she said sadly. ‘Young Michael’s sending money every month for the baby’s upkeep. I know it all goes the same way, mostly to the Jug and Bottle, but if the baby was living with someone else and Michael found out, the money might not arrive any more. If Lizzie were alive … but you can’t expect young fellers like George and Lewis to know about babies and what they need.’

Addy’s happy imaginings of having a real live doll in the house to take care of disappeared and she thought, regretfully, that it would not have been fair on her own mam. After all, in term time, both herself and her three brothers and two sisters were at school, and since Dad was a seaman and rarely home for longer than a few days, all the responsibility would have fallen upon her mother.

‘Here we are then.’ Miss Tillett had returned to the room, flourishing her nurse’s bag which, as Addy knew, was kept well stocked with bandages, iodine and various unguents with which she anointed any ills that came her way. ‘I see she’s finished the milk already. Give her to me, Addy, and I’ll bring her wind up before I put some ointment on her wounds.’

‘Wounds?’ Addy echoed doubtfully. ‘I thought it were only soldiers what got wounds.’

Miss Tillett laughed. ‘You’re probably right; I meant sores.’ The child gave a couple of enormous burps and then her head thudded on to Miss Tillett’s shoulder and Addy saw that Ginny slept. In fact, she slept all through the anointing of her person, the adjusting of the towelling around her nether regions and the placing of her back in the perambulator. Addy thanked Miss Tillett sincerely for everything she had done and promised to bring the child back whenever she could do so; Miss Tillett had said that she wanted to check that the sores were healing but knew if she went round to No. 17 the old woman would regard her interest as interference and would make sure she kept Ginny out of Miss Tillett’s sight in future.

Feeling very grown up and responsible, Addy then wheeled the perambulator into the court and under the archway which led on to Rathbone Street. She felt as though she and Miss Tillett were conspirators, joined together in an alliance against horrid old Mrs Bennett to save the tiny princess, Ginny, from her gran’s wicked wiles. The fact that tiny Ginny neither looked nor acted like a princess did not matter. Addy rather admired the baby’s bright red hair but thought the child’s bony, knobbly little face looked rather like a turnip. However, her teacher at school, whom Addy much admired, was fond of saying that beauty is only skin deep and that pretty looks are not always accompanied by pretty ways. Therefore, she would continue to think of Ginny as a beleaguered princess, shut up in a crumbling castle, under the guardianship of a wicked old witch – Addy read a lot of fairy tales – and would be proud to do her best for the child.

In the perambulator, Ginny slumbered, a dreamy smile on her small lips. ‘If I could worm your dad’s address out of the old woman, I’d write to him and tell him where his money goes,’ Addy said, addressing the sleeper. ‘Still, me and Miss Tillett are going to take good care of you, so don’t worry your little self; we’re your pals, we are!’

She continued to chatter away to the baby until she reached the grocer’s on Washington Street. She had a wistful look in the window first, then put the brake on the perambulator and trotted into the shop, knowing that her dreaming must now stop as the serious business of getting the messages began.

It was a warm, bright day in late August. Ginny Bennett wandered slowly up Byrom Street. She had arrived at this point after a pleasant stroll through the city, peering in windows, examining the Adelphi Hotel and Lime Street Station as she passed them, detouring slightly so that she might walk through St John’s Garden, and finally ending on Byrom Street, which was her chosen destination.

Ginny was wearing what she always wore in summer, a drab and extremely dirty cotton dress. She was barefoot and this was something which she intended to remedy as soon as possible, for children were no longer allowed to attend school without shoes or boots and Ginny was desperately anxious to return to school with her playmates at the end of the summer.

She had missed a great deal of school because Mrs Bennett could always think of a good reason to keep her at home. Ginny had not minded too much in the early days but she had begun to realise of late that there were things she was going to need to know which could only be learned in school. There was another reason for her desire to begin to attend school regularly; her class was to have a new teacher, a Miss Mabel Derbyshire, and though only a couple of the girls had met her when she came for her interview, they were tremendously impressed. ‘She’s young, and awful pretty, and she ain’t the sort what will go at you wi’ a ruler or a cane,’ one of the girls reported. ‘She’s gorra nice voice and a nice way wi’ her an’ all. I reckon we’re real lucky to have Miss Derbyshire to teach us.’

And now there was the problem of shoes; children attending school must, the authorities said, have shoes. Several times, Ginny had obtained shoes from various sources, usually badly worn plimsolls with soles so thin she could feel every pebble through them, and gaping holes at toe and heel. Such footwear came from friends who had outgrown them or even from Paddy’s Market, where they could be obtained, usually, for as little as a penny. But with a new young teacher about to start at the school, everyone, and that included Ginny, wanted to make a good impression.

Once, Ginny had had a good, stout pair of shoes. Miss Tillett had got them for her and she had been proud of them, had actually worn them for two whole days before her grandmother, running short of cash, had either sold or pawned them; at any rate, Ginny had never seen them again. She had been young then, only six, but now that she was nearly ten, Ginny had learned her lesson well. It was useless acquiring anything good; Granny Bennett would simply sell it when she was short of a bob or two. The old woman was cunning as a fox. She would wait until Ginny was asleep and then she would pinch anything that she thought was sellable. Shoes or boots were best because she must have known she would be unlikely to get anything from the sale of Ginny’s disgusting cotton dress or ragged knickers. And anyway, she needed Ginny to get her messages and, lately, to cook her some sort of meal, because Mrs Bennett was beginning to go downhill, healthwise. She had had a very strange turn back in June and had ended up in hospital where the doctors had told her to leave the drink alone or pay the price, which would be an early death.