Liverpool Annie (2 page)

'Here, youse lot, buy your mam a bar of Cadbury's milk chocolate and get something for yourselves and the girls while you're at it.' Bert handed Tommy half a crown. 'Take a ration book off the mantelpiece.'

Dot lifted her head. 'Put your coats on, it's still raining.'

Marie's sobs ceased at the prospect of the chocolate, and as soon as the boys had gone, Annie's dad crept into the room and sat down.

'Come on, luv, spit it out.' Bert stroked his wife's arm.

it's just there's so much to do, Bert, looking after nine people; all the washing and ironing and the cooking. And when Father Maloney came, walked right in and there I was in the middle of the dinner and washing everywhere, I just wished I had me parlour back, that's all.'

There was something significant about this last remark which Annie didn't understand, because everyone fell silent.

It was Dot who spoke Hrst. She looked at Annie's dad directly. 'I'm sorry. Ken, but it was only supposed to be temporary, and it's been over four years. Now, what with Bert back, and another baby on the way - well, the house just isn't big enough.'

There was another silence, and once again it was Dot who broke it. 'If only Rose could give a hand, that'd help a bit.'

Uncle Bert said awkwardly, 'Dot said the corporation came up with a house in Huyton, a nice modern one with three bedrooms.'

Annie's dad spoke at last, and the words came out in a breathless rush. 'It's too far away. Me work's on this side of town, Litherland and Waterloo. I couldn't ride me bike to and from Huyton every day, it must be fifteen or twenty mile.'

Dot took a deep breath. She was still sitting on Bert's knee, clinging to him as if it gave her the courage to speak out. 'Ken, you're me little brother, and I know you've been through a lot with Rose. If this was a bigger house, you could stay for ever, but . . .' She broke off and began to cry quietly. 'Oh, soddit! I hate saying this.'

'It's not right, y'know, Ken,' Uncle Bert said gently. 'Rose'll never get better as long as you and Dot wait on her hand and foot. If you had a place of your own, the responsibility might do her good.'

Annie's dad stared at his shoes. 'I'll see what I can do tomorrer. Bootle lost so many houses in the Blitz, there's not much going . . .'

'Good lad!' Bert said heartily as Annie's dad got up and left the room without another word.

Dot looked worried when the parlour door slammed shut more loudly than it need have. 'Now he's got the hump!'

'Never mind, luv. It had to be said.'

'I could kill that sodding Hitler for what he did to Rose.'

Annie, listening avidly, wondered what her auntie was on about.

'She weren't the only one. Dot,' said Uncle Bert. 'Other folks had as bad - and some had worse.'

Dot sighed. 'I know. Even so . . .' Her voice trailed away and they sat together companionably on the chair. 'I suppose I'd better see to the dinner before something else burns.'

'I'll give you a hand, luv.'

Dot giggled. 'You know what our Tommy said when I threw that cup? He asked if Mr Attlee had died. Jaysus, if anything had happened to ould Clement, rd've thrown the whole bloody tea service.'

Three weeks later, the Harrisons went to live in Orlando Street, Seaforth, and life changed so completely that Annie felt as if they'd moved to the other side of the world.

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Orlando Street seemed to stretch for miles and miles. More than one hundred polished red brick houses were on either side, built directly onto the pavement, identical, and as seamless as a river. The paintwork was severe: bottle green, maroon or brown doors and window frames, a few black. Once a year, Annie's dad repainted the outside woodwork the same bitter-chocolate colour.

When Annie was older, she would remark disdainfully: 'The world would end if someone painted a door blue or pink. I'm going to have the front door of my house bright yellow!'

In all the years she lived there, she always had to check the number to make sure it was the right house, and her heart sank when she turned the corner into Orlando Street. The awful day the Harrisons moved to Number thirty-eight remained for ever etched in her mind.

Uncle Bert turned up with a lorry and the beds were loaded in the back, along with their possessions, which Dot had carefully packed in cardboard boxes. Dad's bike was fetched from the back yard.

Dad looked bewildered and angry when he emerged with Mam. She wore her best coat made of funny, curly fur, and blinked at the daylight, as if she rarely saw it, her face all tight and pale.

'The girls'd better go in the back, they can sit on one of the beds,' Dad said curtly as he helped his wife into the cab.

Dot pursed her lips and yelled, 'One of you lads, come here.' When Mike appeared, she said, 'Go with them, luv. Poor little mites, they'll be scared out of their wits stuck in there all on their own.'

Mike evidently thought this a treat. His face lit up, and he leapt into the lorry and threw himself onto the bedsprings with a whoop.

When Uncle Bert picked up Marie, Dot burst into wild tears. There's no need to take the girls. Ken, Why not leave them with us?'

Annie, unsure what was going on, had a feeling this would be preferable, and grabbed her auntie's hand, but Dad shook his head.

'No,' he said in a thin, stubborn voice, it's about time Rose took some responsibility, like Bert said.'

'Jaysus!' Dot sobbed. 'He didn't mean the girls. Oh, if only I'd kept me big mouth shut!'

An hour later, Annie and her sister watched Uncle Bert drive away, Mike hanging out of the passenger window, waving. They waved back until the lorry turned the corner, then looked at each other nervously and went back into their new house.

Annie hated it as much as she hated the street. She hated the dark, faded wallpaper and the furniture left by the previous tenant, which Dad told Dot he'd got at a knock-down price.

The parlour was scary. There was something sinister about the tall cupboard with its leaded glass doors, the panes like a hundred eyes, glaring at her, unwelcoming and unfriendly, and the big black sideboard, full of whirls and curls, was something the devil himself might have.

She went upstairs and gasped in amazement. A bathroom! She climbed onto the lavatory with some difficulty, and stayed perched on the wooden seat for several minutes to get the feel of it, then pulled the chain. It was odd using a lavatory indoors, and rather exciting, though she'd prefer to be with Dot and Bert and the lavvy at the bottom of the yard.

She tiptoed into the rear bedroom which overlooked the backyard. 'Strewth!' she gasped, in exactly the same tone as Auntie Dot used. Like the parlour, the room was full of dark, gloomy furniture. A dressing table in front of the window shut out most of the light. Another single bed was already there, as well as their own, which meant they could have one each. Their clothes were in a box on the floor.

One by one, Annie gingerly opened the drawers in case anything interesting had been left behind. 'Strewth!' she said again, when the smell of mothballs made her sneeze. Apart from their lining of yellow newspapers, the drawers were empty, as was the wardrobe, except for three coathangers which she couldn't reach.

She unpacked their clothes and put most away, leaving the frocks for Dad to hang up. As she gravely carried out this task, she felt grown up and responsible, though she knew she was only delaying the time she dreaded: the time when she would have to go downstairs and face her mam.

Eventually, when she could put it off no longer, Annie crept down into the living room. Mam was in the armchair by the window, her head turned towards the wall.

Annie stared at her curiously. This pretty lady with the sad grey eyes and cascade of dark cloudy hair was supposed to be her mam, yet she seemed like a stranger. It was Auntie Dot who'd brought them up, taken them to the clinic and to Mass. It was into Dot's warm, rough arms they snuggled when they needed love, whilst their mam remained in the parlour, emerging occasionally on Sundays or at Christmas or if Dot had arranged a birthday tea, when she would sit, wan and pale and silent. Sometimes, at Dot's urging, the girls went in to

see her. Mam would be in bed or in a chair, staring vacantly out of the window. The girls never stayed long, because Mam never spoke, hardly looked at them, and a few times she hadn't even opened her eyes.

'It's not her body that's sick, it's her mind,' Dot had told them only a few days ago, and Annie imagined inside Mam's head being full of sores. 'It's that sodding Hitler what done it!' Dot, angry, slammed the iron down onto the collar of Bert's working shirt. 'Poor girl, such a pretty thing she was, well, still is, but the life's been squeezed out of her.'

'What did Hitler do to me mam?' Annie asked, imagining the monster personally squeezing the life out of her mother.

Dot sighed as she steered the iron around a row of buttons. 'Oh, I suppose you've got to know some time, and now's as good a time as any. It's just that you and Marie would have had an older brother if he hadn't been taken to heaven at eighteen months.' She made the sign of the cross. 'Johnny. Lovely little lad he was, dark, like your mam and Marie. He was born the first month of the war, just after our Alan.' She folded the shirt and reached for another. 'One night, after the siren went, your mam left him by himself for a minute, just a minute, mind, when the house was bombed and Johnny was killed. Poor Rose, she's never got over it.' Dot paused over a cuff. 'Mind you,' she said thoughtfully, 'she should be better by now, it's six years. Lots of terrible things happened to people during the war, but they pulled through.'

Standing by her mam, Annie felt overcome with misery. She didn't want to be in this dark, quiet house, away from Dot and Bert and her boisterous cousins. She badly wanted to be kissed and cuddled and told everything was going to be all right. Marie

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was in the kitchen, chattering away. Dad just grunted in reply. Mam didn't appear to have noticed Annie was there; her face was still turned away. Annie climbed onto her knee and lay there, waiting for an arm to curl around her neck. But her mother remained as still as a statue. After a while, Annie slid off and went upstairs to sit on the bed and wonder what was going to hap|:>en to them.

A few minutes later, Marie crept in, her impish little face downcast. 'Don't like it here,' she said tearfully. 'Want Auntie Dot.'

'Sit on me knee,' commanded Annie, 'and pretend I'm your auntie.'

So Marie climbed on her sister's kiicc, arui they sat there, smfhng miserably, until Dad called to say tea was ready.

A month later. Dot appeared with a black pram containing a tiny baby with bright red hair and bright blue eyes. Her belly was back to its normal size, and she looked lean and pretty, in a white cardigan over a green skirt and blouse, and with a green ribbon around her carroty curls.

'This is Pete,' she said proudly. 'Your new cousin.'

She left the pram outside and carried the baby indoors. The girls were so pleased to see her they clung to her skirt, hugging her legs. They'd feared they might never see Dot again.

'Where did he come from?' Marie demanded.

'Can I hold him?' asked Annie.

'I found him under a gooseberry bush,' Dot twinkled. 'Sit down, Annie, and you can nurse him for a while. Careful, now. I'd have come before, but as you can see, I've been rather busy.' As soon as the baby was deposited in Annie's arms, Marie climbed onto her aunt's knee.

Dot turned to Mam, who was in her usual chair by the window. 'How are you, Rose? Have you settled in, like?' she asked brightly.

Annie looked up from examining the baby's face, his short ginger lashes, his petal pink ears, curious to see Mam's reaction. She scarcely moved from the chair all day except to make the tea, when she would waft in and out of the kitchen like a ghost to peel potatoes laboriously and mince meat in the curious rusty machine left by the previous tenant. Often, the potatoes hadn't boiled long enough and were hard inside, and Dad had to do them again. He brought the meat home in his saddlebag, and at weekends did the washing, hanging their frocks and petticoats and knickers on the line. When Mrs Flaherty, the widow next door, offered to help, 'Your poor wife being ill, like,' he churlishly refused.

Mam rarely spoke. Even if the girls asked a question, she mostly didn't answer, just looked at them in a vacant way, as if they were invisible and she wondered where the voice had come from.

'I think so,' Mam whispered in response to Dot's enquiry.

'And how are you coping with the girls. Rose? Don't forget, I'd be happy to have them if they're too much for you. We've missed them a lot. In fact, Alan cried every night for a week after they'd gone.'

Not to be outdone, Marie said quickly, 'We cry too. Auntie Dot. Me and Annie cry every single night.'

'Do you now!' Dot said in a tight voice. 'And what do you do with yourselves all day?'

Annie and Marie looked at each other.

'We draw.'

'And play with our dolls.'

'Have you been to the park yet? And there's sands not far away.'

'No, Auntie, we haven't been anywhere, 'cept to the shop for a loaf sometimes,' Annie said importantly. 'Our dad leaves the money.'

'I see!' Dot's voice was still tight. 'Shall we go to the sands now?'

'Yes, please!' they chorused.

'Get your coats, then. There's a chill in the air for June.'

Dot didn't say another word until they were outside. As they walked along Orlando Street with Pete tucked up in his pram and the girls skipping along each side clutching the handle, she asked casually, 'Are you eating proper.-* What do you have for breakfast?'

'Cornflakes,' replied Annie, 'and we have bread and jam for dinner.' She didn't add, because she felt Dot wouldn't approve, that it was she who got the cornflakes because Mam usually forgot, and by the time they were hungry again and there was no sign of food on the horizon, she would cut four thick slices of bread and smear them with margarine and jam. Twice she'd cut her finger as well as the bread, but the blood merged with the jam and was hardly noticeable.