The Girl From Seaforth Sands (32 page)

She expected him to pass on, but instead he lingered. ‘You’ve changed, queen,’ he said, sounding almost surprised, as though he had expected her to remain a child for ever. ‘You were such an ugly, gingery kid, but now you’re quite a looker! Gerrin’ away from this household – and me, of course – seems to ha’ done you a power of good.’

‘How nice of you to say so,’ Amy said sarcastically. ‘I wish I could say the same of you, but honesty forbids it. Though you’re a lot larger, naturally.’

He grinned, a flash of white teeth in his tanned face. To Amy’s fury he looked amused rather than outraged. ‘Well, now, isn’t that just typical? I never knew you to say a nice word if you could think of a nasty one. And despite your looks, you’re still not half as nice as your sister Mary.’

Amy opened her mouth to say that she knew very well Mary was beautiful and she was not, but he had continued on his way past her and was mounting the stairs. When he came down again, having left Mary’s bags in her room she assumed, he went over to where Albert and Gus were sorting out vegetables and fell into conversation, leaving the two girls and Becky to chat among themselves. And presently, when Amy stood up to carry the peas and their pods into the scullery, she saw Paddy disappearing, without a word of farewell, through the back doorway.

Paddy had been genuinely impressed by the change in Amy. As he walked along, heading for the beach, he marvelled at how the ugly duckling of a few years back had changed into a beautiful swan. Not that she resembled a swan in the slightest. With her flaming red hair, and eyes green as sea water, she was far more exotic than any swan. What was more, though she had changed so much, she still had the sharp tongue and quick wits which he had once hated but now rather admired.

Pity they had never got on, because in different circumstances he would have liked to take her out, enjoy her company, instead of feeling bound to remain her enemy.

But there you were; she disliked him, so no chance there of a reconciliation. Shrugging philosophically, Paddy continued to walk and whistle, and to try to forget Miss Amy Logan and her fascinating but prickly personality.

Amy saw no more of Paddy until supper was actually on the table, though the rest of the family remained at home, making much of herself and
Mary. When she asked Albert, on the quiet, where Paddy had gone, he gave her a hard stare and said, ‘He’ll have gone to the allotment. Why do you want to know, queen? Paddy always clears out when you’re around, you know that.’

‘Yes, but he’s that keen on Mary, I should have thought he’d have stayed indoors,’ Amy said rather feebly. She told herself she did not care whether Paddy stayed or went, but she did wonder if his old feelings for Mary had survived their years apart. She could not say this to Albert, however, and allowed the subject to drop.

The tête-à-tête which she had wanted with Mary did not occur until late in the evening, when supper had been eaten. Becky had been put to bed and the family had spent a pleasant hour exchanging news. Bill told them all about life in the Great Charlotte Street fish market, Albert prattled on about the fishing, as did Gus, and Suzie spoke in a sprightly and affectionate manner of Becky’s progress at school and of the pleasure she herself took in home-making, now that there was a little more money available.

But Mary, rather to Amy’s disappointment, did not do much talking at all. On previous occasions when the two girls had met, Mary’s tongue had run on wheels; the other girls in her department, her neighbours in Young Street, friends of both sexes whom she had made in Manchester and the grand entertainments available in that city, had come pouring out. But now, although she answered questions readily enough, she was strangely reticent about her own life. She commented, rather sourly, upon the bedlam that had been caused on all forms of public transport during the recent unrest and
how bad it been for sales in her department. Amy, who had thought the strikes had been confined to Liverpool alone, was surprised, but did not say so. It would not do to antagonise Mary by making light of the troubles in Manchester compared with those of Liverpool, so she decided to hold her tongue. Under cover of the general conversation, Amy looked long and hard at her sister and realised, with a pang of mixed astonishment and dismay, that Mary was looking almost haggard. Her cheeks, which had always been round and pink, were hollow and the white skin in which she had taken such pride looked weary and almost sallow beneath the layer of fine powder that disguised it. Amy thought her sister had lost weight and she had certainly lost the air of confidence which Amy remembered.

Rather to Amy’s surprise, Paddy had not put in an appearance until the family were halfway through their meal, but then he had come in and taken the place beside Mary. He had spoken little, simply eating his food as rapidly as good manners permitted and gulping down three cups of strong tea. Then he had scraped back his chair, muttered to Mary that he would see her later, raised a hand to the rest of the company and left the house. Albert, noticing Amy’s surprised glance after his friend, told her that Paddy meant to fetch up the nets which needed mending, so that they might work on them before the light failed, but since Paddy did not reappear, Amy guessed that this was just an excuse. No matter what anyone might say, Paddy could not bear to be in the same room with her. Not that it mattered; she was happier with his absence than his presence and with the rest of her family around her he was quickly forgotten.

Presently Amy glanced at the clock over the mantel and realised that, unless she wanted to miss the last tram, she had best begin to say her goodbyes. She stood up. ‘Bless me, look at the time,’ she said gaily. ‘I’ve got to be going just in case the tram’s on time, though with this bleedin’ strike there’s no saying what will happen. Thanks for a grand supper, Suzie – my day off’s Wednesday this week, so maybe I’ll come over again . . .’ She turned to Mary. ‘Unless you’d rather come into the city, queen? We could have a day out together and I could introduce you to the girls I live with.’

‘I’d enjoy that,’ Mary said quietly, ‘it seems an age since I walked down Church Street and visited the big shops. Yes, a day out together would be fun.’

Amy walked to the back door and, reaching her hat down, pinned it on, then turned to find Mary standing beside her and donning her own magnificent headpiece. ‘I’ll walk down to the Rimrose Bridge with you, our Amy,’ Mary said with almost studied casualness. ‘It’s a warm night and I could do with a breath of fresh air.’

Amy waited for Albert or Gus to offer to accompany them, which would have spoilt everything, for she guessed that Mary wanted to talk, but neither of her brothers moved from their places around the table. Albert was carving a piece of driftwood into a little horse, which he intended to give to Becky, and Gus was deep in his father’s cast-off newspaper. Hastily, before either boy looked up, Amy called her goodbyes and the two girls slipped out into the cool of the night.

Until they reached Crosby Road they walked in silence, apart from Amy murmuring that it was good to smell the salt breeze again, but once
they turned the corner Mary began to speak: ‘Amy, I’ve got to tell someone and I’d rather it were you than anyone else. You know Roderick, my feller?’

‘You’ve mentioned him once or twice in your letters,’ Amy said cautiously, ‘but you never
said
much about him, if you understand what I mean. I don’t know if he’s tall or short, dark or fair, fat or thin. In fact, to be honest, Mary, I don’t even know if he was the sort of feller I’d like above half. Tell me about him.’

Mary sighed and stared ahead for a moment without speaking and, when she did, it was in a low tone, almost as though she were speaking to herself. ‘There’s no point in talking about Roderick,’ she said, ‘because he isn’t my feller any more. Just about the time your letter came, telling me about your trip to London, I found he was two-timing me with a young piece who worked in Buss and Sons, the ironmongers on Deansgate, just next door to William Wright’s, where I worked. So that’s five years of my life down the drain, queen.’

‘Oh, Mary,’ Amy gasped, ‘I’m so sorry, but you must think of it same as Gus thinks about losing Peggy. He says better to find out now than later and I’m sure he’s right. How could anyone do that to you, Mary? He must be a real swine.’

‘He was ambitious,’ Mary admitted. ‘But so was I, come to that. He was doing well in his bank, looking to be head clerk one of these days and I’ve moved up from just being a counter hand to being second-in-command of hats and gloves. We’ve been putting money away and in a couple of years we’d have had enough to buy a decent little house in the suburbs . . .’

‘Buy?’ Amy squeaked, quite stunned by this remark. People in their situation simply did not buy property, it was far too expensive. Everyone she knew rented their own homes, so why should Mary and this Roderick have been different? But perhaps renting property was not so easy in Manchester; her experience of such matters only encompassed Liverpool and its environs.

‘Yes, we meant to buy,’ Mary confirmed. ‘Roderick said that owning property was an investment for the future and he was keen on the future, was Roderick. What was more, he always liked me to look nice and dress well, because appearances are so important. He said he was proud of me – but then he goes gadding off with some horrible little tart what’s no more than sixteen. I ask you, Amy, what would you do?’

‘I’d do what you’ve done,’ Amy said immediately. ‘I’d come home for a bit of a holiday and maybe look around me for a job in Liverpool, where I wouldn’t have to see horrible Roderick or his tart. Is that what you mean to do, Mary?’

‘Well, I’m definitely thinking about it,’ Mary told her. ‘Fancy you guessing, Amy! The truth is, I’ve applied for a job as senior sales lady in Blackler’s department store and if I get it . . . Why, I’ve even sorted out accommodation. A friend of mine from Manchester moved to Liverpool six months back and she’s offered to let me share her rooms – she’s a bit out of the city but on a good tram route, so I shall be able to get in to work easily enough. If I take the job, that is. It’s a big move, but I’d be nearer home and nearer my family . . . Do you think I’d be doing the right thing, though? I mean, I’ve been in Manchester a long time now and I know the city a good deal better than I do Liverpool.’

The two girls had reached the tram stop but the driver was not in his seat, so Amy leaned against the vehicle for a final word before climbing aboard. ‘I don’t know whether I’m the right person to give you advice, since I’ve spent all my life in Liverpool and never so much as seen Manchester,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘But I’ve heard Blackler’s are a good firm to work for, and if you really don’t think there’s any chance of you and Roderick getting back together . . . well, it seems sensible to come home and . . . and sort of start a new life. You are sure you won’t want to . . . to start things up again with Roderick? I don’t know much about young men, you know, because I’ve never had one and neither have any of my friends, not the ones I room with, I mean. We’re all fancy free, you might say.’

There was a short, somehow startled silence, then Mary gripped her arm and spoke. ‘But what about Philip?’ she asked. ‘You told me in your letter you had met up with Philip and were going to see him again. Don’t tell me you’re not interested in him, because I shan’t believe you. He liked you when we were just kids. He told me so and to tell the truth, Amy, I think he liked me as well. Whenever we met in the square or down Deansgate he was always most polite, raising his hat and giving me the friendliest smile.’

Amy stared at her; so her first wild guess had been right; Mary had come back to Liverpool in the hope of getting to know Philip once more. However, she knew better than to let Mary realise she had guessed and was on the point of saying that her sister should not read too much into smiles exchanged in the street, when the driver and conductor abandoned the cigarettes they had been smoking and climbed aboard the tram. ‘Come along, ladies both,’ the conductor shouted jovially. ‘No time to lose, we’ll have folks all along the route cursing us if we don’t gerra move on, ’cos this is the last tram tonight.’

Hastily Amy scrambled aboard. She turned in the doorway and called back to Mary, ‘See you on Wednesday. Come to Huskisson Street around ten o’clock – don’t be late – and we’ll talk then.’

Within a month of the visit to Seafield Grove, Mary had accepted the job in Blackler’s and settled in to her friend’s rooms in a small house in Mather Avenue, out Allerton way. It was a suburb of the city which Amy did not know at all, but she had called for Mary after work one evening and gone home with her, and had been pleasantly surprised, almost envious, at the two airy rooms the girls shared, with the use of a kitchen and – wonder of wonders! – a real bathroom. It was not cheap and Mary had to get up early in order to catch the number 8 tram which would carry her in to the city centre, but she and Faith, her friend, were clearly very satisfied with their little home. In fact, Amy thought as she sat on the last tram back into the city centre later that night, Mary had really fallen on her feet and seemed happier – and better tempered – than she had been for a very long time.

All those ambitions to be something she wasn’t hadn’t done much to make her happy, Amy told herself, as the tram rattled and creaked onward. Nor did trying to live up to that Roderick feller. But being a person in her own right, earning her own living, meeting up with her relatives now and then . . . well, it had turned Mary back into the gentle, thoughtful young person who had adored her mother and
loved her little sister, and Amy was happy that it was so.

Presently the tram stopped in Renshaw Street and Amy stepped down, thankfully climbing on to a number 15 almost immediately, which would take her the rest of her way home. She turned into Huskisson Street, thinking that it was nice to have a sister close enough to visit for an evening and hoping that Mary, too, would come visiting in the not too distant future.

It was a burning hot day in August, and Amy and Ella were walking in to work, not because they felt they needed the exercise but because, due to the railwaymen’s strike, which was now established, and the consequent riots that had been rocking the city, the trams were running a restricted service. The tram drivers had gallantly refused to go on strike too, but because of the ugly mood of the rioters they had insisted upon some form of protection. Every tram now carried an armed soldier on board, but despite the fact that the troops came from the barracks in Seaforth, the girls felt uneasy in their presence. Many strange soldiers had been drafted in to help control the crowds and Amy felt that such men might fire first and regret it later, unlike the men who usually manned the Seaforth barracks. So rather than face the few trams that were running, the girls had decided they would walk in to work that morning.