Rainbow's End (16 page)

‘I told the twins I’d batter ’em if they come down them stairs,’ she said, sinking into the creaking wooden chair at the head of the table which she always used when Mick wasn’t home. ‘I had a good day, but I’m wore out. I’m not doing the theaytres, not this evenin’. I reckon I deserve an early night for once.’

‘Reckon you do, Mam,’ Ellen said, since the boys were so busy filling their faces that they ignored the remark. ‘What’s your news, then?’

‘Oh, that,’ Ada said. She smiled at Ellen conspiratorially, as though they were both in the secret instead of only one of them. ‘What d’you want most then, Ellie?’

‘Want? Well, to get a job,’ Ellen said eagerly. Her mother smiled at her. She knew how desperately Ellen longed to earn some money and have some independence.

‘Oh, you’re a one, queen. Don’t you remember you were sayin’ t’other day you could do wi’ a bigger bedroom?’

‘Mam! Oh, Mam, d’you mean . . .’

There was an immediate outcry from the boys once they realised what their mother was getting at.

‘You’ve gorrus a new’ouse!’

‘Oh, Mam, does it’ave a lavvy of its own?’

‘Where is it? There’s a real nice ’ouse on Upper Beau what the landlord’s lettin’.’

‘It ain’t that one, this one’s on Mere Lane,’ their mother said triumphantly. ‘There’s a parlour, a kitchen, three bedrooms on the first floor an’ a lovely big garret, divided into two. I thought Ellen could have the big half of the garret, wi’ the babies,’ she added. ‘Which would leave the bedrooms for the rest of us.’

‘Mere Lane?’ Ozzie said blankly. ‘Where the’ell’s that when it’s at’ome?’

‘Oh, Oswald, you must know Mere Lane! It’s off Heyworth Street, up by the Iron church. Go on, you must know it.’

‘Well, I don’t,’ Ellen said, terribly disappointed. People didn’t move long distances, there was always a bigger house to rent in your own neighbourhood. ‘Why can’t we go to Upper Beau, Mam? That’s nice an’ near.’

‘Well, for several reasons. One is ’cos the Mere Lane house is very reasonable,’ Ada said, ticking off her comments on one hand with the forefinger of the other. ‘And two, we’d be on a tram route, which ’ud mek life a lot easier for all of us what have to get to work. And three, we’ll be near your Auntie Anne.’

Nobody groaned; nobody dared, Ellen thought. But there was a speaking silence.

‘What’s wrong wi’ me sister Anne?’ Ada asked crossly. ‘Come on, Ellen, why are you lookin’ like that?’

‘We-ell,’ Ellen said slowly, glancing hopefully at her brothers. Surely they would chip in, get her out of having to be unpopular? ‘We-ell, it ain’t that we don’t like Auntie Anne, Mam, it’s just that she . . . she doesn’t have much time for us.’

Ada’s elder sister had married the middle-aged owner of the tea-rooms in which she worked, and after the wedding she had thrown herself into the formidable task of proving that she was not ‘just a waitress’, as her husband’s relatives thought. She had taken over the day-to-day running of the tea-rooms, and had not even let the births of her three children get in the way of her business, which had prospered.

Auntie Anne’s elderly husband had died long before Ellen was born, and her two daughters and her son had all married and moved away. But Auntie Anne, now a rich woman with four very successful tea-rooms and a chop-house in Liverpool, never made a secret of the fact that she thought her younger sister had been improvident and foolish to marry her first husband and produce so many children, and downright stupid to marry a second time, and a seaman at that, who was seldom home, who had elderly parents to support and whose Irish brogue and sparkling blue eyes failed to charm one down-to-earth Liverpudlian at least.

‘Time for you? Why should she have time for you, Ellie?’ Ada leaned across the table and patted her daughter’s hand. ‘Only teasin’ you, queen, I does know what you mean, but it’s you’ll benefit from Auntie Anne bein’ so near us. She’s offered to give an eye to the babies, so’s you can work once the twins is in school.’

‘Oh, Mam!’ Ellen squeaked. ‘Oh Mam, that’s grand . . . but I didn’t know Auntie Anne liked kids!’

‘She don’t, particularly,’ Ada said, looking rather self-conscious. ‘But she’s started up a new business venture an’ she thought, if she gave an eye to the babies . . .’

‘What?’ Ellen demanded, instantly suspicious. ‘Oh, I knowed there were a catch!’

‘Well, she thought you might like to work in her shop,’ Ada said in a rush. ‘She’s gorran eye for a bargain, has your Auntie Anne. She’s goin’ to start a confectioner’s shop.’

‘What’s that mean?’ growled Dick, seeing that no one else intended to admit to ignorance by asking. ‘Sweets, is it?’

‘Cakes; fancy ones,’ his mother said briefly. ‘She’s been buyin’ ’em in for years for the tea-rooms, but now she’s decided to mek her own. And naturally, if she’s mekin’ for her tea-rooms, she might as well sell straight to the public. But she says she’s too old to get behind a counter at her time of life and her children are all livin’ too far away to help . . . so it occurred to her that she could trust Ellie wi’ the till an’ that. An’ I said, if she’d give an eye to the babies . . .’

‘Auntie Anne’s gorra house out at Seaforth though, hasn’t she?’ Bertie said suddenly. ‘That ain’t very near Mere Lane – or is it?’

‘Auntie Anne’s goin’ to live over the new shop,’ Ada said quickly. ‘There’s a big old house on Heyworth Street; she’s usin’ the front part for the confectioner’s shop an’ the rest for livin’ quarters.’

‘Then she’ll be on the premises,’ Ellen said in a hollow voice. ‘She’ll be checkin’ up on me every bleedin’ minute of the day . . . she’ll probably mek me give an eye to the babies while she goes an’ interferes in the shop.’

‘She won’t!’ her mother said, sounding affronted. ‘She’s gettin’ a bit long in the tooth for that sort of carry-on. No, she’ll leave it to you, Ellie. An’ . . . an’ her manageress.’

‘If she’s gorra manageress, what does she want wi’ our Ellen?’ Bertie asked, spearing a potato and carrying it carefully to his plate. ‘Sounds a rum ole go to me, Mam.’

‘It’s . . . it’s because she ain’t too trustin’, I think. She’s always handled the money at her shops . . .’

‘Oh come on, Mam, she ’ad four or five shops at one time,’ Dick put in. ‘She couldn’t be in four or five places at once, norreven Auntie Anne!’

‘Oh, all right, jump down me throat,’ Ada said irritably. ‘She’s worked wi’ folk till she knows ’em well, seemingly, then purrem in charge, like. But this time, she don’t reckon she can. So . . . so she’s axed me to be manageress, an’ our Ellie to be on the counter. An’ I shan’t interfere wi’ you, Ellie, you may be sure o’ that.’

‘Oh, Mam! It ’ud be grand to work wi’ you, an’ I wouldn’t mind if you did interfere a bit,’ Ellen said. ‘Why didn’t you tell us you were there too, though?’

‘In case you didn’t fancy the t’ought of working wi’ me,’ her mother said frankly. ‘An’ also because I’ll be keepin’ an eye on the bakery most o’ the time, whiles you’ll be sellin’, so we shan’t be together that much. But Anne did say as how we’d keep it in the fambly, so far as we could, an’ the head baker’s to be Mr Renwick, who was the cook in her very first teashop.’

‘Gawd, ’e must be old,’ Fred said. ‘E’ll probably drop dead afore pay-day.’

‘He’s not much older than your aunt,’ Ada said crossly. ‘He’s not much above fifty-five. So we’re movin’ to Mere Lane; right?’

‘But I don’t want to leave ’ere,’ Bertie said, putting into words what they were all thinking, Ellen suspected. ‘All me pals are ’ere, Heyworth Street’s miles away, I ain’t never even ’ad a friend from them parts.’

‘The shops are good,’ his mother said after a moment. ‘And folk is folk, Bert. You’ll mek pals soon enough.’

‘Shops! What’s wrong wi’ the shops on Netherfield Road, that’s wharr I say,’ Fred put in.

‘We’re goin’ to live in Mere Lane,’ his mother repeated. ‘It’s no use carryin’ on, Fred. You all wanted to move somewhere bigger. Well, now we’re goin’ to do just that. We’ll be out of here at the weekend.’

‘The weekend?’ Dick’s face grew cunning. ‘But you’ve not told Mick yet, Mam! He won’t like it if you up sticks wit’out tellin’ him.’

Ada’s face usually softened at the mention of her husband’s name, but now, if anything, it hardened. ‘He’s got no say,’ she said briefly. ‘He ain’t been home for months.’

‘But he’s at sea, Mam,’ Ellen said quickly. ‘He can’t come home, you know he can’t – you telled the twins he couldn’t, I heard you.’

‘Well, that’s as maybe,’ Ada said grimly. ‘But if he ain’t here, he’s got no reason to object if we ups sticks. Anyway, it’s settled. I’ve hired a couple o’ handcarts, so you boys needn’t mek any plans for Sat’day evening, nor yet Sunday. We’ll be moving all our stuff then.’

‘I wonder what the twins will say?’ Ellen said to Bertie as the two of them washed up the pots. Bertie was more helpful than the older boys and gave a hand when he had nothing better to do. ‘They’ll be affected more than any of us, Bert. They’ll be goin’ to a strange school, an’ all, wi’ strange kids, an’ leaving their pals behind. I bet they doesn’t tek it lyin’ down!’

The twins, when told that they were about to move house, were at first delighted and then furious.

Ada had chosen to tell them as they ate their tea, thinking that they would be too busy eating to worry much over the whereabouts of Mere Lane, but she had underestimated her children. Deirdre and Donal looked at one another and put down the jam sandwiches they had been devouring.

‘Mere Lane? That ain’t round here,’ Donal said. Ellen, watching them with a good deal of sympathy, thought she saw Donal’s cheeks whiten beneath the dirt. Mam’s forgotten how those two get around, she thought. They know every street, every tiny terrace, every court, even, within a mile or so. But they’ve not gone as far afield as Heyworth Street, not yet. ‘We don’t wanna go far, Mam, we like it here, wi’ our pals.’

‘It’ll be fun, movin’,’ Ada said brightly. ‘You’ll love it, Heyworth Street’s ever so lively, we’ll be near your Auntie Anne . . .’

‘But we thought you meant round here, not movin’ miles away,’ Deirdre wailed. ‘There’s heaps o’ houses round here, Mam – why, we’ve gorra pal, me an’ Donny, what’s livin’ in a
huge
house . . . we could ha’ moved in wi’ him!’

‘You’ll soon settle in,’ their mother assured them. ‘Why, the school in Kepler Street’s so close you’ll be able to see the house from your classroom, very like, you’ll just cross the road an’ you’ll be there! An’. . . an’ Heyworth Street an Mere Lane aren’t miles away from here, honest. When you’re bigger you’ll be able to walk back easily . . . or even catch a tram, ’cos trams run along Heyworth Street.’

But the twins, who were always eager for a tram ride, suddenly seemed to have lost interest in that particular mode of transport.

‘We don’t have enough pennies,’ whined Deirdre, whilst Donal, not to be outdone, reminded his mother of the many times she had told them that the best way to grow tall was to exercise their legs.

‘I can’t help it,’ Ada snapped. ‘We’re goin’, an’ that’s all there is to it. Now gerron wi’ your tea.’

‘I’ve had enough,’ Donal said sulkily. He crammed the last piece of bread into his mouth and turned to his twin, speaking thickly through it. ‘Gerra move on, Dee. There’s people we’ve got to tell.’

‘Not today,’ Ada said firmly. ‘Today it’s bed next. You can tell people tomorrer.’

The twins, grumbling, made for the stairs, but Ellen was not altogether surprised, when she went up after half an hour to see how they had settled, to find their bed empty; the small birds had flown by the usual route . . . they had waited until their mother and sister were too involved in making the evening meal to think about them and had stolen down the stairs and out of the door like a couple of shadows.

‘Just wait till they come home,’ Ada said grimly, when Ellen came downstairs and told her that the twins weren’t in their bed. ‘I’ll leather the pair of ’em.’

‘They’re real upset, Mam. It might be best to turn a blind eye this once,’ Ellen said gently. She knew how the twins were feeling because she felt very odd about leaving the area herself, and for her it was an adventure, with a job at the end of it and the tantalising prospect of freedom, eventually.

‘Oh well, mebbe you’re right at that,’ Ada said. ‘But honest to God, Ellie, the way everyone’s carried on you’d think we was goin’ to the ends of the earth. We’re still in Everton, you know.’

‘I know,’ Ellen said. ‘We’ll all settle to it, Mam, in the end. Just give us time.’

Chapter Five

Dublin, Summer 1909

Maggie was cleaning. She rather enjoyed cleaning when there was no one else in the house and she could pretend that it was her own place, and it was always best just after she’d fed Ticky his dinner, because afterwards he went down for a nap. But she was faced by a dilemma at present and whenever she was alone her thoughts reverted to it.

She was fourteen, so of course she had left school. Her mammy never said anything outright, but when Maggie went home for an hour or two, she looked wistfully at her daughter’s clothes and once or twice she had remarked that now her husband was dead and there were no more babies, she had expected things to get easier, but somehow . . . with only Aileen and Cairell earning amongst the girls, and Brendan among the boys, money seemed almost as hard to come by as it ever had.

And then, looking up at the ceiling or down at her own hands, Mrs McVeigh would say it seemed mortal hard that Mrs Nolan, who didn’t have a daughter to her name, should have a willing little soul to clean and cook and make and mend, whereas she, who had a great many daughters, should have to limp along somehow, almost unaided.

Maggie knew this wasn’t true, that her sisters did a great deal to help their mother, but she was also bright enough to realise that this was her cue. Her mammy thought she should offer to leave Mrs Nolan, Ticky and the twins, to say nothing of the other boys, and try to get decently paid work so that she could bring the money back for the family pot. And of course once she was living at home the housecraft which Maggie now excelled in and in which Mrs McVeigh was so sadly lacking, would be useful as well.