Poor Little Rich Girl (22 page)

‘Why is it worse, though?’ Lonnie shrieked. ‘Isn’t it nicer to be going home than going to work? I’m sure I should like it better!’

Dick laughed, smiling down at her. ‘Now just you think it out for yourself, young Lonnie,’ he said with mock severity. ‘First thing in the morning, us fellers can choose what time we leave home and there’s always some slug-a-beds who take a chance on catching a tram which will get them to the ferry by the skin of their teeth. Then something goes wrong and they miss the tram or a bootlace breaks or they have to go back for their carry-out. That means folk arrive at the ferry in the mornings a few at a time, see?’

Lonnie frowned over this for a few seconds, then her brow cleared. ‘Yes, I
do
see!’ she shouted. ‘When the hooter goes,
everyone
is free at the same moment. That means whoever runs fastest gets to the ferry first; am I right?’

‘That’s right, queen,’ Dick said. ‘You’re not as green as you’re cabbage-looking!’

Lonnie gurgled with amusement and Hester laughed outright. ‘That’s an expression we never heard in India,’ she said, just as Dick swung them back on to the floating road once more. With the wind behind
them, it was no longer necessary for Dick to keep his arm around either girl, but no one seemed too anxious to change position and the three of them marched happily back across the bridge. When they turned right into the Goree Piazza they were partially sheltered from the wind by the large buildings on their right and only then did Dick, rather regretfully, release his hold. But since Lonnie immediately grabbed his hand and Hester walked very close to him, Dick still felt warm and comfortable and proud of the company he was keeping.

‘What is this place?’ Lonnie said, looking curiously round the piazza. Dick shot a glance at Hester. Would she rather the child did not know some of the more disreputable history of the city in which she now lived? But Hester was looking at him with equal interest, so Dick decided he might as well enlighten them – if he did not, someone else would.

‘In times past, Liverpool was the centre of the slave trade,’ he told them. ‘The slaves were sold on the Goree Piazza here.’

‘I say!
Real
slaves? Black Africans with gold bangles round their ankles and spears and such?’ Lonnie asked. ‘Poor things! They must have felt worse than we did when we first came from India. They would be used to warm sunshine as we were, and they would hate this cold wind. Who bought the slaves, Dick? What did they want them for? Were there little boy and girl slaves as well as the grown-ups?’

Dick blinked at this volley of questions. In truth, he knew very little about the slave trade, save that it had been a blot on the history of the city in which he had been born and bred. He took a deep breath but was saved from having to reply by Hester, who cut in at once.

‘Lonnie, Lonnie, Lonnie! Dick is not your school-teacher, nor your governess, and doesn’t want to be bothered. If you want to know all about the slave trade, I will take you along to the reference library and you can look up slavery there. Or we might try the museum, which would be more entertaining, I dare say.’

Lonnie groaned at the suggestion, but at this point they turned into Crooked Lane and when Dick began to talk of the various delicacies available at the dining rooms she forgot about slavery and began to speak of the nice things she intended to eat.

Presently, the three of them were seated at a quiet corner table with a generous meal spread out before them. Dick had ordered what the proprietress called a ‘ham tea’ which meant a plateful of thickly sliced ham, four pickled onions and a pile of bread and butter. To follow this there were sultana scones, gingerbread and a seed cake as well as mugs of tea for Dick and Hester and milk for Lonnie.

Despite the fact that, on the previous day, she and Hester had enjoyed a delicious Christmas dinner and a very large Christmas tea, as well as a supper of various cold meats and left-over cake and biscuits, Lonnie’s eyes glistened as she munched the ham and contemplated the cakes to come. ‘My aunt believes that too much meat heats a child’s blood, whatever that may mean,’ she informed Dick. ‘As for sugary cakes and puddings, she says if I eat them, all my teeth will fall out.’ She snorted disdainfully. ‘As if they would! Why, when we lived in India, my
ayah
was always giving me sweetmeats from the bazaar and though, of course, my baby teeth
did
fall out, that was nothing to do with what I ate. It happens to every child, doesn’t it, Hester?’

‘Yes it does,’ Hester agreed. ‘But sweet things really are not good for one’s teeth. Or one’s complexion for that matter,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘since they are said to give you spots.’

‘Then Aunt Emmeline should be covered in spots as well as having no teeth,’ Lonnie said, triumphantly. ‘D’you know, Hester, that she doesn’t have any? Mollie told me that when she takes my aunt’s tea to her in the morning, she sees Aunt Emmeline’s teeth grinning at her from a glass on the bedside table. She says it fair gives her the willies and she doesn’t like it much when my aunt tries to talk to her without putting the teeth in first. Did you know that, Hester?’

Dick looked across at Hester; she was smiling, her eyes alight with amusement, and Dick thought she had never looked lovelier. The wind had whipped colour into her normally pale cheeks and the food and warmth, after the chill outside, had given an added brightness to her eyes and reddened her softly curving lips. ‘Well, Hester?’ he said, teasingly. ‘Were you fooled by Miss Hetherington-Smith’s china choppers? Or did you think they were rooted in gum, like what ours are?’

‘Rooted in gum? That makes it sound as though you and I glue our teeth in with gum each morning,’ Hester said, twinkling up at him. ‘As for Miss Hetherington-Smith’s false teeth, I really don’t think they’re a very suitable subject of conversation whilst we’re trying to eat our tea. Let’s change the subject, shall we?’

But Dick, having watched the dimple come and go in her cheek, wanted to see her laugh again. ‘I understand you invited Miss H to accompany you this afternoon,’ he said gravely. ‘Of course it wasn’t
an invitation to tea, but if it had been she could have had the best of both worlds. She could have gone off in the motor to Great Sutton and sent her teeth along to have tea with us. We could have put them on a little side plate with some ham and a pickled onion or two, and watched them chomp it all up.’

Lonnie gave such a shriek at this idea that Hester had to reprove her, though she was laughing so much herself that it was difficult to do so. Even Dick found himself laughing, and when he tried to calm down by taking a big swallow of tea he choked on it and had to turn away from the table and use one of his Christmas handkerchiefs to mop his streaming eyes.

The whole afternoon continued in this pleasant vein and Dick was delighted with the success of his outing.

‘I haven’t laughed so much before in my whole life,’ Lonnie said as they left the dining rooms and turned back towards the Pier Head where they would catch a tram heading for home. ‘At first I was sorry you hadn’t brought Ben, but he might have eaten my share of tea as well as his and I
did
enjoy all that lovely ham with no one to scold me for being greedy or make excuses to stop me eating cake. Oh, Dick, it’s been easily my best thing since we’ve come to Liverpool.’

‘What about the sledging, you ungrateful young thing?’ Dick asked, but he was secretly extremely flattered by her words. He had never been inside a house belonging to the rich, but imagined that it must be a sort of fairyland. Especially the nursery floor where there would be games in plenty and toys and treats for half a dozen children, so to have his little outing favourably compared with such things must be praise indeed.

‘Ye-es, the sledging
was
wonderful,’ Lonnie agreed. ‘I’m not sure whether it comes absolutely level with this afternoon, but I think it falls a little behind because there was no ham.’

Dick laughed outright at this self-confessed greed and assured Lonnie he would tell Ben that next time they went sledging he must bring along at least an old ham bone so that he and Lonnie could suck at opposite ends of it when their sledging was done. This sent Lonnie off into more shouts of laughter but before she could answer him a Number 13 drew up alongside them and they all piled on board. The lower deck of the vehicle was already almost full so they climbed the spiral stair to the upper deck and took their places right at the front. ‘I dearly love a tram ride,’ Lonnie sighed. She had not taken a seat but was standing in front of Dick and Hester with her nose pressed to the glass. ‘Everything looks so much more exciting from up here! We’re in Dale Street now … I can see the brewery where Maud’s brother Cecil works.’ She turned briefly to her two companions. ‘I knew it was Dale Street because I saw the sign at the corner … whoops, here we go across a huge street … there’s the library and the Walker Art Gallery … could we really go there one day, Hester? Oh, I wish I could have a tram ride like this every day! Aren’t the streets empty, though? Usually the pavements and the roadways are crowded but today there’s hardly anyone around.’

Lonnie continued to chatter, more to herself than anyone else, and presently Dick suggested to Hester that they should make some arrangement to meet again. ‘For I can’t expect my foreman to act as messenger every day of the week,’ he said. ‘Even Miss Hetherington-Smith might get a bit suspicious like
if tradesmen kept a-calling with one glove of a pair! Now what day is best for you and Lonnie?’ He lowered his voice. ‘Mebbe I’m being a bit forward, but speaking for meself I’ve had a grand time, and young Lonnie’s certainly enjoyed it. Only – only you may feel different, o’ course.’

‘I’d like to meet again very much,’ Hester said, rather shyly. ‘It
is
difficult because you work quite long hours, don’t you, and Sundays are impossible for us. Miss Hetherington-Smith makes sure we have very little spare time but we do get out occasionally. Didn’t Ben say you sometimes have a half day on a Saturday, for instance?’

‘Yes, though not very often,’ Dick said briefly. His mind was racing. There must be a way of meeting, if only he could think of it! The trouble was, darkness fell early at this time of year and Hester had already explained that she and the child had a curfew and were, in any case, never allowed out after dark. But there were exceptions to every rule, he reminded himself, and he did not think that even so dictatorial an employer as Miss Hetherington-Smith could prevent Hester from attending a night-school class, a concert of classical music or a church function. Of course she would have to get someone to keep an eye on Lonnie, but in a household which included, from what Hester had told him, at least three maids, this should not be an insuperable objection.

He said as much to Hester, who brightened. ‘It’s true that Mollie, Maud and Edith are all well disposed towards us,’ she admitted. ‘I see no reason why Miss Hetherington-Smith should object if I make such an arrangement with one of the maids. After all, they have regular time off and Miss Hetherington-Smith never tries to stop them from going about their own
business at such times. What do you suggest we do then, Dick?’

‘How about the flicks?’ Dick said, greatly daring. It was almost obligatory to hold a girl’s hand if you took her to the cinema; a good-night kiss was also taken for granted by most young women, though seldom on a first date. He looked sideways at Hester’s delicate, rose-petal cheek and swallowed hard. Oh, oh, oh! If only she would agree to a cinema trip, how happy he would be! ‘How about going to see Johnny Weissmuller in
Tarzan The Ape Man
? It’s on at the Evvie Palace on Heyworth Street, which isn’t too far from Shaw Street,’ he suggested and found his heart was in his mouth in case she should guess his amorous intentions and say no. ‘Some of the fellers from Laird’s have seen it and thought it were grand!’

‘A trip to the pictures,’ Hester said, her voice almost awed. She knew the Everton Electric Palace quite well, though she had never been inside it. ‘I haven’t been to the cinema for years … in fact, I’ve only ever been twice. Oh, Dick, that would be really lovely, but I shall have to tell Lonnie’s aunt I’m doing something more worthy, otherwise I shall never get permission to have an evening off. I wonder what it could be?’

‘Tell her you’re going with a girlfriend to a concert of classical music at the Philharmonic,’ Dick suggested. He was amazed at the speed with which his mind had worked, especially when he considered that he knew nothing of classical music and had never visited the Philharmonic Hall on Hope Street. ‘Do you think that would serve?’

‘It’s worth a try, anyway,’ Hester said, her eyes still alight. ‘It isn’t that I long for pleasures, or riotous living, or anything of that nature, it’s just that I’m
living a sort of unnatural life, if you understand me. The maids are nice girls, kind and often amusing, but their idea of a good book is
Peg’s Paper
, or the
Red Letter
. It wouldn’t occur to them to go to a library, as you do, Dick. And come to think of it,’ she added in an aggrieved tone, ‘I’m not even a member of the free library because Miss Hetherington-Smith keeps forgetting to sign the form saying I’m a resident on Shaw Street.’

‘Hang on tight, we’re coming up to Shaw Street now,’ Lonnie squeaked as the tram lurched around the left-hand bend. ‘Will we get off at our house, Hester, or shall we go on a bit? Dick won’t get off for ages yet, will you, Dick?’

‘I’ll get off at Abram Street and cut through,’ Dick said. ‘Better that way, don’t you think? Now let’s decide what day we’ll meet, and where.’

Hester nipped his arm and nodded warningly towards Lonnie but the child had turned back to her perusal of the outside scene and was ignoring them once more. ‘Should we say next Thursday?’ she suggested timidly. ‘I can walk down to the tram stop on Shaw Street at, say, seven o’clock, and you can be there waiting. That is, if I can get permission to go out, of course.’