The Girl From Seaforth Sands (27 page)

Amy and her new friend had been forced apart by the sudden pressure of women tumbling down the steps to avoid the police, but now the other girl grabbed Amy’s hand and together they began to fight their way out of the mêlée. It was not easy. Men who had no connection with the police force had joined enthusiastically in the rout, hitting and punching indiscriminately at the women and, it must be confessed, frequently being hit back. Amy saw sturdy shawlies dealing mortal blows with their shopping bags, smart women using their parasols to good effect and even girls like her and her
new friend, kicking and punching with all the strength they could muster. Indeed, Amy herself punched a whooping boy on the nose when he tried to grab her friend’s hat from her hand and was delighted to see she had drawn blood. Though by the time they had escaped from the crowd and were sitting innocently in the Lyons Café in Lime Street nearby, she found she was trembling with a mixture of fright and excitement, and saw in the window glass that she had managed to get considerably rumpled by her recent activities. Her hair, which had been pulled back from her face in a severe bun, straggled in witch locks round her shoulders. Her neat white blouse was torn and had two buttons missing, and though she had been unaware of it at the time, she now realised that her feet had been trampled and kicked in the scrum and were extremely sore.

But it had been an adventure and one she would not have missed for the world. She accepted the cup of tea which the waitress handed to her and turned to her new friend. ‘Phew! I feel as if I’ve been run over by a tram, but it’s the most exciting thing that’s ever happened to me. Oh, my name’s Amy Logan, by the way, and I work in St John’s fish market. Who are you?’

‘I’m Ella Morton,’ the girl said, taking a sip from her own cup of tea. ‘I work in the Bon Marché on Church Street. And I share a room with another girl who works in Bunney’s on the corner of Whitechapel. Where do you live, Amy? In the city?’

‘No, I live out at Seaforth with my dad, my brothers and my little sister Becky. Oh, and with my stepmother. But to tell you the truth, Ella, I’ve been thinking for a long while that it was time I moved out – came into the city to be nearer my work. I’ve
got a pal called Ruthie and last winter we began looking for a room to rent, but the prices were more than we could afford on the sort of money we earn. Then my dad was taken ill and spent nigh on eight weeks in hospital, and I realised I couldn’t walk out on them, not with my dad so poorly. Only now that he’s better I’m beginning to think about a room share again.’

And presently, with Ella’s gentle encouragement, she found herself telling her new friend everything, beginning with Isobel’s death and Mary’s defection, and continuing to the present day with Suzie’s jealous attacks and the amount of work through which she, Amy, was supposed to wade unaided.

Ella had listened with interest and sympathy to Amy’s story, and her friendly attitude allowed Amy to utter the thoughts which she had been unwilling, at first, to voice. ‘Excuse me asking, but is your room very pricey? Only I guess you earn a deal more than I can, seeing as how the Bon Marché is a posh shop and you speak nicely and look so smart.’

‘I don’t know what you earn, but I don’t get paid anything like they would pay a young man in the gents’ department,’ Ella said. ‘The rent of the room does seem to swallow up a good deal of my wages and, of course, one must dress respectably if one is selling clothing to women with a great deal of money. They’re fussy, you see, which is why the managerial staff tend to pick girls with unaccented voices and a good appearance. But Amy, you must have been in work a year or so, since you look to be about my own age. I don’t imagine selling fish is either much fun or well paid, so why not try for something different? There are jobs for women to be had in big offices and banks. In fact, I am attending
evening classes at the YWCA in order to better myself. Have you ever thought of doing that? It is one of the things Mrs Blenkinsop believes in and she is an example to us all.’

Amy felt quite dazed, as though one moment she had been trudging along in her own dull old world and the next had been dragged, without her own volition, into somewhere quite different. She looked carefully at her companion, noting the smooth young face with its big brown eyes and merry mouth and then, at a second glance, seeing there was sadness in the eyes and the wariness of experience behind what she was sure was usually a sunny and trusting gaze. ‘How is it that you don’t have any trace of an accent though, Ella?’ she asked. ‘And why aren’t you living at home? If you’re my age – and you look about sixteen, same as me . . .’

‘Oh, it’s a common story,’ Ella said with a tiny sigh. ‘I was born and brought up in my parents’ home in Southport. We were what you might call well to do . . .’

‘That means rich,’ Amy said, grinning, ‘you can’t pull the wool over my eyes, old Ella!’ She half thought that this was a test; if her new friend secretly regarded herself as superior to Amy then she would dislike the familiarity of the remark.

But Ella grinned back at her, clearly not at all offended. ‘Oh, well, I didn’t mean to boast or anything like that, I just wanted to tell you the truth. Now, are you going to let me get on with it, or are you going to keep putting your spoke in?’

‘I’m going to have to teach you to speak Scouse,’ Amy said, smiling more broadly. ‘We say “Gerron
with it” in these parts, so you do just that. Gerron with it and I won’t put any spoke in any wheel; in fact, I’ll hold my clack till you reach the end.’

‘Gosh, she’s giving me a carte blanche,’ Ella said in an exaggeratedly posh voice. Then, returning to her normal tones, she added, ‘Right then, Amy, I’d better tell you from the start.’

The story, as Amy heard it, was both a dramatic and a sad one, for Ella Morton had had the privileged life of an only child of rich and loving parents until a year previously. Mr Morton had decided to take his wife on a tour of Europe, visiting places of which they had both heard but had never seen. His business partner was prepared to take full responsibility for the firm in his friend’s absence and had urged the Mortons to go ahead with the trip. The tour was to have taken them three to four months, but Ella was away at a boarding school in the south of England for most of this time and, when she came home, there would be a house full of servants who had loved her since she had been small and would, she knew, take great care of her. Ella herself had had no qualms over her parents’ extended absence, but had quite looked forward to having friends to stay.

Mr Morton had been in partnership with a Mr Fortescue in the running of a large finance company. Since the relationship was purely a business one, Ella had scarcely known her father’s partner, but what she had known of him she disliked. Her father had often remarked ruefully, ‘Jim can be a bit too sharp at times; one of these days he’ll cut himself and I hope to God I’ll be able to staunch the blood before he ruins both of us.’ Since this had been said half laughingly, however, Ella had been totally unprepared for what followed. One day her father’s
chief clerk had come to the house with a worried expression on his usually cheerful face. ‘Oh, miss, I’ve got to get in touch with your father. Can you give me his direction? I shall have to send a telegram – it is of the utmost importance that I contact him without delay.’

Ella had been unable to help him since her parents had merely told her the extent of their tour and not precisely where they would be situated at any one time. She had received letters and postcards, but usually these were headed with the name of the town in which they were staying and gave little or no indication of where they would be next.

However, Mr Jones, the chief clerk, was a man of considerable persistence and as soon as he realised that Ella was unable to help him he set about finding his employer via the telegraph office, even consulting such persons as the mayors of small towns who might be able to help trace the Mortons.

‘Sometimes I ask myself if it might not have been better had he not managed to find them,’ Ella said ruefully, now. ‘For he did find them, you know. They were in a tiny principality in the Pyrenees called Andorra, famous for its wild scenic beauty, I believe. Mr Jones’s telegraph message had reached them there and the news that Mr Fortescue had absconded and the business was ruined brought my parents chasing home. Much alarmed, my father hired a coach and they set off for Toulouse, where they could have caught a train for Paris and then on to Calais.’

She gazed ahead of her, as though she were seeing pictures of the past. ‘If they hadn’t been in such a hurry they might not have had the accident which killed them.’ She turned her large eyes on
Amy and a tear slid slowly down one cheek. ‘I sometimes fancy that the driver of their conveyance must have been the worse for drink because he managed to overturn the vehicle, God knows how, on a narrow mountain track, high above a steep ravine. Mr Jones told me later that death would have been instantaneous, for they must have fallen a good three hundred feet, ending up half submerged in one of the raging torrents which abound in those parts. The driver was killed as well, however, so no one will ever know the truth of it.’

Amy could only stare at her companion as her own eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh, Ella, what a terrible thing to happen,’ she said, her voice trembling. ‘You poor creature – how did you bear it?’

‘I bore it very badly at first,’ Ella admitted. ‘I raged against Mr Fortescue and railed against the fate which had taken my parents from me. When they said there
was no money, that the house would have to be sold to satisfy the company’s creditors, I was so sad that I barely took it in – scarcely realised what it would do to me. I told myself that they were welcome to have every penny of the money, to take the house, my pony, everything I owned, if only it could all have been a mistake. All I wanted was my parents back. But it wasn’t a mistake. They had gone and the house, our possessions, every penny that we had in the bank had gone too. Mr Jones thought I should appeal to my papa’s relatives, but I did not intend to do that. They had not approved of his marrying my mother and had never attempted to get in touch with us, not even a letter of condolence when the tragedy was reported in the newspapers. So I left my boarding school for, at seventeen, I felt I had been educated enough and in any event there was no possibility of paying the fees once my parents were dead. Mr Jones managed to get me a position in a small shop on the Scotland Road, owned by a relative of his. I was grateful, of course, but she was a slave-driving old creature, who let me sleep on a mattress under the counter in her shop, underpaid me dreadfully and used me pretty much like a slave. Still, it kept the wolf from the door until I managed to get a better place and moved out to share a room with Minnie Miniver – her real name’s Ethel Miniver, but everybody calls her Minnie and she’s a good laugh.’

At the end of the story there was a long silence while Amy gazed, awestruck, at her new friend. It astonished her that a girl who had clearly been raised in cotton, as the expression goes, should have been able to earn her own living, dress herself well and become independent in the way that Ella had. In fact, it made Amy feel ashamed. She had her father, brothers and even Mary, to say nothing of Mrs O’Leary, all of whom would have supported her had she got herself into some sort of financial trouble. But Ella had had no one and had been strong enough to turn inwards and to use resources which she had probably been unaware she possessed.

She said as much to Ella, who leaned across the table and clasped her hand. ‘We women are stronger than we realise ourselves,’ she observed. ‘You aren’t happy at home, Amy, but if something terrible happened, if your father and stepmother were no longer able to support you, I’m certain you would do just as I did. Why, I thought from the moment I saw you that you looked the sort of girl I could be friends with and I’m a pretty good judge of character, let me tell you. If you want to take Mrs
Blenkinsop’s advice and better yourself, then come along to the YWCA with me this evening when you finish work and see what’s on offer. Don’t ever sit down under the weight of your troubles; push them aside and start changing things, as Mrs Blenkinsop advises. For a start, you can spend a night sleeping in a blanket on the floor of our room, so you don’t have to go all the way back to Seaforth after classes. Well? What about it? Are you game?’

‘I certainly am,’ Amy said, her voice still revealing her astonished surprise. ‘When do they hold these classes, queen? Can I start at once? Only I’ll have to go home first and tell my dad I’ll be staying away for – what? A couple of times a week?’

‘That’s right, only it’s Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays,’ Ella told her. ‘We won’t charge you to sleep on our floor so long as the landlady doesn’t find out, but I do think you might provide us with a bit of supper on those evenings, just bread and marge and some jam, perhaps, or half a pound of broken biscuits and a pint of milk.’

‘How about a nice piece of smoked haddock, or a pair of kippers?’ Amy suggested, giggling. ‘I dare say your landlady might not like the pong, mind.’

‘Kippers!’ Ella said longingly. ‘It seems a lifetime ago that I had kippers for breakfast and, if you fit in and can afford it, perhaps we might manage to turn our two bedder into a three bedder, particularly once your family can manage without you. Why, we might even rent a larger room between the three of us.’

‘Or the four of us, if Ruthie came in,’ Amy said eagerly. ‘Oh, Ella, you don’t know what this means to me. You’re a sport and the nicest girl I’ve ever
met. What’s more, you’ve made me see that even a working girl like me can better herself. You’re a pal, so you are!’

The train was crowded. Amy and the others had known it would be, which was why they had arrived at Lime Street Station early. The four of them – Amy herself, Ella, Ruth and Minnie – had thought long and hard before deciding to take their week’s holiday from work and spend it in London, attending a big suffragette rally in the Albert Hall, then staying on to see the coronation of King George V five days later. Unfortunately others had also decided to arrive early in order to get seats on the train, so though the four girls had done their best to stick together, they had speedily realised it was to be every woman for herself. Amy and Ella had managed to get into the same compartment, but were separated at each end of it and could scarcely exchange more than smiles.