Luckpenny Land (20 page)

‘You haven’t told us your name.’

Never taking her eyes from the dog’s face the child answered. ‘Euphemia.’

Meg and Sally Ann exchanged rapid, amused glances. It seemed a very grand sort of name for such a small, scrawny child. ‘How lovely.’

Mam says it’s Greek, an’ it was all Greek to her how she come to have me.’

Sally Ann spluttered and choked and had to give her attention to the pan of stew bubbling on the range to bring herself back under control.

‘We won’t wait for the menfolk today, since this is your first meal with us,’ said Meg, and saw a pair of troubled eyes turn up to hers. ‘Oo do yer mean? What menfolk?’

‘Well,’ said Meg, trying to sound encouraging as she set a chair at the table for Euphemia which the child ignored, ‘there’s my father, Joe, but you must call him Mr Turner. Then my brother Dan, who is married to Sal here. I have another brother, Charlie.’ Meg swallowed. ‘But he has gone to join the RAF.’

‘Do they live here an’ all?’

‘Yes. But they’re out in the fields most of the time,’ Meg felt it necessary to add. ‘You won’t see much of them.’

Sally Ann placed a dish of succulent stew upon the table before Euphemia’s empty chair. The steam from it rose enticingly and the girl’s nostrils twitched.

She glanced at the stew, then quickly up at the two women before snatching the plate and running to a far corner of the room where she started to push fistfuls of the food into her mouth.

Meg was horrified. ‘Be careful, you’ll burn yourself.’

Sally Ann put a hand on Meg’s shoulder, staying her as she would have gone to protest. ‘Let her be. She’s probably had to fight for every scrap, poor lamb, to survive.’

‘Everyone calls me Effie,’ the child mumbled at last through a mouthful of food, and held out the licked plate. ‘Is there any more?’

Chapter Ten

Kath regarded her aunt with some trepidation. She sat like a matriarch in a wing-backed chair in her private sitting room, certain of her authority in the insular world she had created. Shrewd eyes lurked beneath a straight black fringe while fat ringed fingers were folded upon some knitting in her lap.

‘You’ll be looking for work, I take it?’ The voice was well modulated, in a tone used to being obeyed.

Kath looked slightly startled, not having considered doing any such thing. A few restful weeks was more what she’d had in mind, while she sorted matters out.

‘My stay would only be temporary. I intend going to London in due course. But until I’ve made my plans I’d like to stay here.’

‘At my expense?’

‘Indeed, no. I am perfectly able to pay my way.’ Kath had rather assumed there would be no charge of any kind, since she was family.

‘How old are you now?’

‘Twenty, nearly twenty-one.’

‘Hm. And Rosemary has kept you idle all your life, I shouldn’t wonder. Always was an expert in idleness. Landed herself a rich husband and retired to cosseted domesticity. No doubt that is what you have in mind.’

‘Not at the moment.’

Ruby Nelson sniffed. ‘It wasn’t the way my sister was brought up, I’ll have you know, nor is it the way I have lived my life. You might as well understand that if you choose to stay here, you’ll either pay your way or work. That’s my creed in life, as you might say.’

‘I understand perfectly.’

‘I hope you do. There’ll be plenty of war work about, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Heart sinking, Kath readjusted her plans yet again. Perhaps she could find quiet employment somewhere, driving the wounded to hospital, for instance. That sounded useful and not particularly onerous. On a sunny September day in Southport with only the sound of gulls in the air, it was difficult to imagine where the wounded would come from.

‘Breakfast at eight precisely, luncheon at one and dinner at seven. Latecomers do not get fed. I prefer all rooms to be vacated each morning by ten. It only makes for more work if people stay in them. And the front door is locked at nine-thirty. My rules are strict but fair.’ Ruby lifted the steel knitting needles and began to click away at some navy blue wool. The sound was almost as loud as the grandfather clock that stood in the corner and whose hands evidently governed the household routine to the second.

Kath said that she would make note of the times.

‘No gentlemen callers, of course. I take only honourable single women or widows, and gentlemen with impeccable credentials. My charges are reasonable. You will find the tariff on your dressing table. Less, of course, if you intend to cook your own meals.’

‘I would prefer full service, if you please.’

‘I am correct in assuming you are unattached?’

A slight pause then Kath risked a smile. ‘Yes, quite unattached.’

A nod of approval. ‘Then I am sure we will get along splendidly.’

This was not quite the warm welcome Kath had hoped for. But what choice did she have? She couldn’t go home and tell her parents the truth. If she had the courage, she’d go to some back street establishment and get the matter dealt with. But the idea of abortion revolted her. It wasn’t the poor little mite’s fault after all. She hadn’t worked out all the details yet. How she would keep her pregnancy hidden for a start. But she hoped that here, in Southport, there would be good adoption agencies, or else in Liverpool not far away. Then she’d head south.

Her aunt’s reaction to the news was another thing, best not thought about at this stage. Time enough to face that later.

The washing of Effie proved to be the greatest test of Meg’s patience to date. The girl refused absolutely to remove a single garment. But she’d reckoned without Meg’s own stubbornness.

‘You are not sleeping in one of my beds dressed in those rags. Like it or not, you are taking a bath. Hold her down, Sal, while I unfasten her boots.’

‘They ain’t rags. Mam put me in me best to come ’ere.’

‘Then God knows what your worst is like.’

‘You can have hot cocoa if you take a bath like a good girl,’ Sally Ann promised, using bribery in her desperation, but the offer resulted in only a momentary pause in the struggle.

It took the strength of both women to peel the coat and dress, both stiff with dirt, from the child’s emaciated body. When they had her naked on the rag hearthrug they both stared in awed horror. Great purple bruises covered her body.

‘I fell down,’ said Effie.

‘Several times it would seem.’

The lower lip was starting to tremble but the brown eyes blazed with hatred and fear. No wonder the child had clung so tenaciously to her rags. ‘Come on,’ Meg gently urged. ‘The water will warm you and we’ll be very careful, I promise.’

Effie had never taken a bath in her life, but testing the water with a tentative finger decided it might be worth the risk. She was curious to know what it might feel like to be clean. Mebbe the warm water would stop the continual itching that she suffered from. Very carefully, she lowered herself into the water and her small pixie face lit up at once with the pleasure of it.

Very gently Meg soaped the tender body while Sally Ann poured water from a large jug over the tangled hair. It took the best part of an hour and a half to bathe her and to clean and comb the walking masses from the hair, using copious amounts of lye soap and paraffin.

It was a shining little stranger who emerged. As the child sat wrapped in a towel by the fire, sipping the promised cocoa, Sally Ann and Meg smiled at each other.

‘She’s pretty,’ Meg said.

‘And smaller than ever. Have you realised, she’s not got a stitch to wear?’

‘I’ve still got me own bloody clothes!’

‘I’ve put those in the outhouse to be burnt,’ Sally Ann told her, so firmly that even Effie knew when she was beaten.

‘You can have something of mine,’ Meg offered. ‘I’m sure there must be some of Charlie’s old shoes in the attic. Though if you are to stay, you’d do best to curb that sort of language here.’

‘Joe would have a fit,’ Sally Ann agreed, stifling a giggle.

‘He will anyway when he sees her.’

‘I don’t care what any old man thinks.’
 

‘You will if he throws you out the door.’

‘I’ll go ’ome then.’ But it was a chastened Effie who spoke, her voice already blurring with sleep from the depths of the warm towels. She took no persuading at all to go to bed. Eyelids drooping as Meg led her upstairs, Effie opened them in wonder at sight of the small attic room.

‘Is this where I’ave to sleep?’

‘You’re to share it with me. Do you mind? I’ve made a bed up on cushions in the corner.’

Since Effie had never shared a room with anything less than her entire family before, and sometimes with perfect strangers, she merely shook her head.

‘We can buy you a proper bed when you’ve decided if you’re staying.’

‘You mean of me own?’

Meg laughed. ‘Of course. Come on, little Effie, you look all in.’

Now that the face was clean, purple bruises could be seen quite clearly beneath each dark eye. The child didn’t look as if she’d slept for weeks, nor eaten. Meg felt a warm, protective glow inside that here, at least, she could do something to help another human being in this terrible time of war. Effie would eat well from now on, if Meg had to starve herself.

‘You’re not going?’ Meg, halfway to the door, stopped at the sound of fear in the high-pitched child’s voice.

‘I could sit with you for a while, if you like?’

‘Don’t matter.’ The thin shoulders shrugged. But of course it mattered a great deal. Quite clearly the child had never been alone in her life before, Meg realised. In the tangle of bodies and human misery of the slums, privacy didn’t exist. She tucked the covers up to the child’s chin and sat with her until the sound of even breathing heralded a deep sleep. Only then did she go back downstairs. And found herself thrust into the fury of a typical Turner row.

‘Who said this young thug could come here?’

‘She’s a child, not a thug,’ Sally Ann was saying, patient resignation on her flushed face while her father-in-law stood before the fire, blocking all heat from the room, waving a fist in the air.

‘I’ll not have strangers in my house without my permission.’

‘The government doesn’t need anyone’s permission,’ Meg quietly told him. ‘Evacuees are being billeted on everyone.’

‘If we have to have one, then it should be a lad. At least he’d be some use.’

‘Effie is here for protection, not to work.’

‘This is
my
house. I’ll be the one to decide such things. If she’s not going to work, she can leave first thing in t’morning.’

‘There’s a war on, if you haven’t noticed.’ Meg reached for her coat.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’

‘To see Lanky. I meant to go this afternoon but couldn’t because we had Effie to see to.’

‘It’s too late.’

‘It’s no more than half-past seven. I won’t be long.’

‘I’ve not done talking to you yet.’

‘Well I’ve done talking to you.’ Meg closed the door on his fury. Halfway across the yard she thought she heard a scream and stopped. She decided it must have been a fox or some other wild creature and, pulling her bicycle from the shed, rode off up the lane.

Over the following week Meg did her best to keep Effie out of Joe’s way. It wasn’t easy. Sally Ann was nursing a black eye as a warning to them all of the risks they ran if they failed.

‘Why didn’t that lump of a brother of mine protect you?’

‘You know Dan can’t bring himself to contradict his father. They have a mutual adoration society going for them. Anyroad, nothing can stop Joe’s temper.’

Naturally inquisitive, the child poked and pried in every corner, often wandering off and reacting strongly if Meg tried to curb her freedom.

‘I goes where I wants to go. I’ll happen go ‘ome tomorrer.’

‘I hope you won’t. Don’t you like it here?’

‘Not much. It stinks.’

Meg had trouble hiding her smile since this was an odd sort of accusation coming from a child who herself had been unapproachable until a few days ago. She meant the animals, naturally, and nothing would induce her to go anywhere near them, coming almost to the point of hysterics at one point when Meg offered to introduce her to Daisy at close quarters.

‘Not bloody likely,’ she said, and set off down the hill at such a pace that Meg had to run to catch her, and it took some persuading to bring her back.
 

‘You mustn’t run off on your own like that,’ she warned. ‘You might fall and hurt yourself, and how would we know where to look for you?’

It was only when Effie was fast asleep in her makeshift bed that Meg felt it was safe to leave her. She’d been so busy settling Effie in to life at Ashlea this last week that she’d quite neglected Lanky and decided one evening that it was time to put that right. Sally Ann agreed to look after the child when Meg said she would walk up to Broombank for a change, since it was such a pleasant evening.