Queen of the Mersey (11 page)

‘Anyroad, aren’t your mams coming to see you in a few weeks’ time? And on Monday, you’ll be going to school,’ she said comfortingly, ‘There’ll be loads of children there from Bootle. Two girls from Glover Street were on the coach with us.’

Eventually, they fell asleep, worn out, and Queenie was left to sit on the bed with her own thoughts. Laura had given her some books to read – The Railway Children, Little Women and Good Wives – but the curtains were drawn and she didn’t want to turn on the amazing electric light and risk disturbing the girls.

She hugged her knees and almost wished her mam hadn’t gone away, that she’d never met Laura, and her life was back the way it had always been, but the feeling quickly passed. She threw back her shoulders. From now on, she would have to be very brave, very strong, and watch over her charges, make sure they came to no harm.

She got up and changed into one of the pretty nightdresses Vera had bought. It was white wincyette with a pattern of rosebuds and rather stiff. Vera had said it would go soft when it was washed, but there hadn’t been time before they left Bootle. There were no hangers in the wardrobe, so she neatly folded her clothes and put them in a drawer. About to get into bed, she heard voices downstairs, so went over to the door, making no sound in her bare feet, opened it carefully, and crept out on to the landing.

The inside of The Old School House, what Queenie had seen of it so far, was made entirely of wood. Except for the kitchen, everywhere else, the floors, the walls, the ceilings, was lined with strips of natural wood, turned darker by the years so that they were now a dingy oatmeal colour. It was like being inside a great big tree. There were no carpets anywhere, no mats, no lino, not even on the two sets of stairs; the little narrow staircase that led from the kitchen, which the girls had used, or the much wider one in the hall.

Queenie peeped through the banisters and saw a very broad woman with a tough, mannish face, wearing a severely tailored costume and heavy, lace-up shoes, talking to Gwen Hughes. Gwen’s shoulders were bowed and she looked dejected, as if she were expecting a tongue lashing. Queenie knew exactly how she felt, having been in receipt of many herself in her short life.

‘Three!’ the woman spat. ‘You should have refused to take them.’

‘I couldn’t very well, Mrs Merton. Edna Davies said we could have had more. And as she pointed out, they’re all nice girls, well-dressed and clean, like. The older one’s got something wrong with her arm.’

‘I don’t care how nice they are,’ Mrs Merton said brutally in her hard, gruff voice. ‘I don’t like strangers in my house. Where have you put them?’

‘In one of the corner rooms at the back,’ Gwen said humbly.

‘Well, make sure they’re kept out of my way. They must use the back stairs and stay in the kitchen. I don’t want them in this part of the house, do you understand?’

‘Yes, Mrs Merton.’ Gwen shuffled away, Mrs Merton disappeared into one of the rooms at the front, and Queenie went to bed, wishing she hadn’t eavesdropped. It had made her feel more miserable than ever.

When she woke, it was barely light and Hester and Mary were dead to the world.

Queenie knew she wouldn’t fall asleep again, she felt too wide awake. She knelt on the bed, lifted a corner of blackout, and peered through the window. To her astonishment, she could see a vast expanse of water, glistening dully in the early morning glow, stretching as far as the eye could see, and preceded by a strip of flat, golden sand.

She hadn’t known that Caerdovey was on the coast. She quickly got dressed, including the hat that made her look so respectable and a cardigan in case it was chilly, and went down the narrow stairs into the kitchen.

The kitchen door was unlocked. Feeling daring, Queenie went outside and through the gate at the side, emerging in the main road. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

The small town was fast asleep, no one to ask how you got to the shore. She walked along the deserted road and eventually, between two houses, saw a narrow path with a thick hedge either side that she assumed was a public footpath.

Queenie pushed her way through the sharp, dew-drenched branches, disturbing the birds who chirruped indignantly at being woken early, emerging in a field of rough, overgrown grass scattered with clumps of yellow dandelions and sloping slightly upwards. Ahead, the water glimmered invitingly, although, from here, the shore was invisible. The sky was pearly grey, without a cloud in sight. This vast, alien world was entirely different to the one she’d been used to, but she didn’t find it frightening, not like the gloomy scenery of the previous day.

There was a tingle in the air, which smelt fresh and lemony. She breathed deeply and could feel it reaching right down to her lungs.

Now she was at the back of the houses on the main road. She could see The Old School House and the window of the room where Hester and Mary still slept. At least she hoped they did. They’d be frightened if they woke up and found her gone. There was a door in the grey wall at the bottom of the garden, so she hadn’t needed to come such a long way round.

The field ended abruptly in a steep incline composed of hard sand and the occasional gorse bush. It wasn’t very deep, but didn’t look easily negotiable until she spied, some distance away, a series of wooden steps curving down to the shore. She had just reached the steps when the sun rose, touching the water at its furthest point, and sweeping rapidly towards her, as if a dark cloak had been removed to reveal a sea as bright and as sparkling as diamonds.

Queenie gasped. She had never witnessed such a breathtaking sight before. The wet sand gleamed like satin and it met the water in a little ruff of snow-white foam. As the sun rose higher, the sea grew even brighter and the waves rippled and twinkled like stars.

She ran down the steps, tore off her shoes, and raced towards the water, her toes sinking into the wet sand, making a funny squelching noise. The water was icy cold and she shrieked, as strange, chilling sensations swept through her bones, from her feet to the top of her head, making her whole body shudder with a mixture of pain and delight. She stamped her feet and the water exploded in little silvery spurts.

‘Enjoying yourself, Queenie?’ said a voice.

She shrieked again, this time in fright, and looked up to see Jimmy Nicholls, who’d been in the class below her in Salisbury Road school, watching her with amusement. He was thirteen, a big lad, the biggest in the school, who always looked a bit ridiculous in his too-short trousers. There were scabs on his huge, red knees and he wore a tattered jersey and shoes with the toes almost out. He had a nice, dreamy face, and his short brown hair had been chopped off with the same disregard for appearance as hers.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked resentfully. She’d liked being on her own, being herself for once.

‘Been evacuated, same as you,’ he replied. ‘Staying over there, I am,’ he jerked his head towards a row of cottages, ‘with some old lady. Our Tess and Pete are next door. That’s the only reason I came. Pete’s only two and Mam didn’t want him coming with just our Tess. She’s only six. Mam daren’t give up her job to come an’ all, not with our dad out of work ’cos of his lungs. Me, I’d sooner have stayed home and joined the Army.’

‘You’re much too young. They’d never have taken you.’

‘Everyone ses I’m big for me age. I’d have tried, given it a go. What’s the water like?’

‘Cold. Is this the Atlantic Ocean?’ Ships sailed from Liverpool to America across the Atlantic, but she had no idea where it began or ended.

‘Nah, it’s the Irish Sea, or so my old lady ses, and she ought to know.’ He was removing his shoes and a pair of socks with holes in the toes and heels. Seconds later, he joined her in the water.

‘Bloody hell, Queenie!’ he gasped. ‘It’s freezing.’

‘You soon get used to it.’

‘I don’t think I’ll bother.’ He stamped out again. Back on the glistening sand, he regarded her silently for a while, then said, ‘You look different.’

Queenie didn’t answer. She felt and no doubt looked different, too.

‘You don’t sound the same, either,’ Jimmy said baldly. ‘’Fact, I can’t remember ever hearing you talk before.’

‘I can’t remember hearing you talk, either,’ she lied. He had a boomingly loud voice, as deep as a man’s, that was difficult to miss, but the new Queenie Tate wasn’t prepared to be put at a disadvantage.

‘Will you be going to school on Monday?’ he asked.

‘No. I’m fourteen. I’ve finished school.’ She wondered what she would do with herself all day without Hester and Mary.

‘I’m only thirteen, but I’m not going. I’ve had enough of school. Anyroad, it’s Catholic and I’m C of E. I told the lady who brought us I’d left, that I was only here ’cos of our Tess and Pete.’

‘I’m only here because of Hester Oliver and Mary Monaghan. I’d’ve far sooner stayed in Bootle.’

‘Me too.’

They grinned at each other and Queenie felt as if she’d passed another milestone. She was close to making a friend her own age, something that had never happened before.

‘I’ll have to be getting back,’ she said.

‘I’m not in any rush. I’ll walk with you. Where are you billeted?’

‘That grey house over there.’

‘It looks a grand place,’ he remarked.

‘It’s dead miserable inside. I’d sooner be in Glover Street any day.’

‘Me dad thinks it’ll all be over by Christmas and we’ll be home again.’

‘I hope so,’ Queenie said with feeling.

They strolled in companionable silence until they reached The Old School House where the door in the wall refused to budge when she tried to open it. Jimmy pushed her aside and attacked it with his shoulder and the door opened a few inches.

‘It’s covered with ivy, that’s what’s stopping it,’ he announced and gave it several more shoves, eventually flinging his very large self against it. The door opened and he fell inside.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’

‘Nah. What’s that place over there?’ He pointed to a small grey building at the side of the house.

‘I dunno.’ She hadn’t noticed it before. It was like a miniature house with the same pointed slate roof.

‘Shall we have a gander?’

‘I’ll see if Gwen’s up yet. She’s the housekeeper and she mightn’t like us bringing strangers back.’ Mrs Merton would definitely disapprove, but was unlikely to be around so early.

‘I’m not a stranger.’

‘Gwen’s never seen you before, has she?’ Queenie crossed the wet grass and went into the kitchen, which was as dead and deserted as when she’d left it. There was no sign of Gwen. There was no sign of Jimmy Nicholls either when she returned outside.

‘Oi!’ he called and she saw he’d opened a door in the small building that had aroused his curiosity. ‘It’s a garage,’ he said, ‘and there’s a car inside. When I grow up, I’m gonna buy meself a car and take me mam and dad out for rides.’

‘It must be Mrs Merton’s.’ She followed him inside and saw that there was room for two cars, although the other space was empty. Jimmy had climbed into the passenger seat and was clutching the steering wheel, pretending to drive, making funny engine noises. She felt worried, half expecting Mrs Merton to throw open the double doors at the front, and demand to know what was going on.

‘You’d better get out,’ she said nervously. ‘Someone might come.’

‘All right, Queenie,’ he said easily. ‘I wonder what’s upstairs?’ He made for the staircase at the back, more like a ladder, that led to a square opening in the ceiling, and had already reached the top, his head poking through the opening, before Queenie found the breath to ask if he was always this nosy?

‘Always,’ he assured her. ‘Dad ses if our name was Parker, they’d’ve called me Nosy. Come and have a decko. Someone used to live up here.’

‘P’raps they still do.’

‘Nah, it’s full of dust.’ He heaved himself upwards and disappeared.

Queenie climbed the ladder and found herself in a large, square room with a high, peaked ceiling and diamond-shaped windows at each end covered in cobwebs.

It held a bed with a striped mattress, an easy chair, chest of drawers, a table and two wooden chairs, and two tea chests. Everything was covered with a thick layer of dust. It must have been a squeeze, getting everything through the opening. Jimmy was already rooting through the tea chests.

‘It’s nothing but rubbish,’ he said. ‘Old clothes and stuff. Eh, we can come up here when it’s raining.’

‘We?’

‘You can come to my old lady’s if you want. She said I can bring me friends. She makes these dead good biccies. They’re called shortbreads. She didn’t mind me eating the lot.’ He sank into the easy chair, raising a cloud of dust.

‘I think you’d better go,’ she said. ‘I should see if Hester and Mary are awake.’

‘Okey-dokey,’ he said equably. ‘Will you be going to the sands later?’

‘Yes.’ Hester and Mary would love it. They could take the ball with them.

‘See you there then, Queenie. Tara.’

‘Tara, Jimmy.’

Jimmy was waiting, as promised, outside the row of cottages where he lived with his old lady, on Monday morning when she took the girls to school. They waved to each other. His sister, Tess, waited with him. By now, having played with each other all Saturday and Sunday, they knew each other well.

Tess was six and tall, with big bones, like her brother. She had a broad, flat face and dead straight hair, which she kept secured behind her ears with hairclips, making her look very severe. Her green frock was much too long and far too thick for such a warm day and her shoes were missing the laces. She was a moody girl who seemed to be in a permanent bad temper. Hester and Mary had decided that they didn’t like her and Queenie wasn’t so keen, either, though they all agreed that Jimmy was the gear; good-humoured, kind, showing immense patience with his horrid sister and his unhappy little brother. Pete was badly missing his mam.

‘You’re late,’ Tess grumbled when they came up. ‘Anyroad, I don’t see why we should have to walk such a long way. They should send a charabanc for us.’

‘Shurrup, sis. It’ll do you good.’

‘And we’re not late,’ Mary felt bound to point out. ‘Gwen said it’d only take half an hour and we left in plenty of time.’