Queen of the Mersey (6 page)

Vera reached for the teapot. ‘Pass us your cup, luv. It sounds as if there was a right old barney going on in your house last night.’

‘Indeed there was, though it makes a change. It’s usually that horrible Mrs Tate upstairs making all the racket.’ Laura frowned. ‘It’s strange, but she’s been quieter than a mouse recently. It’s not a bit like her.’

‘Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen Aggie Tate around in a while.’

Laura went straight from Vera’s to the shops in Marsh Lane, where she bought two ounces of Emu 3-ply khaki wool. With a feeling of despair, she saw signs that war was imminent everywhere. Sandbags were stacked in front of public buildings, and a dazzling silver barrage balloon floated in the blue sky over Bootle Hospital. Lots of houses already had their windows covered with crisscross tape to stop the glass from shattering in an explosion. She must do her own soon, and put up the blackout curtains she’d made.

It was a relief to get back to Glover Street. She intended knitting Roddy a pair of socks before he left on Monday. Despite everything, she didn’t want him to have cold feet. She got out the bag of needles, selected a set of four size twelves and cast on the rib. She’d made so many socks, she could now do them from memory, even turn the heel.

The rib quickly grew and she imagined it fitting snugly around Roddy’s lean ankle. Oh, Lord! She loved him so much. Laura sniffed, wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, putting all her pent-up frustration and resentment into knitting an innocent sock.

She felt a sense of achievement when four inches of rib were done and she could change to size ten needles and ordinary stocking stitch. At this rate, she might manage two pairs.

There was a knock on the living room door and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

It could only be someone from upstairs. Please don’t let it be that dreadful Mrs Tate, she prayed when she went to open the door.

Mrs Tate’s daughter was outside, shifting nervously from one foot to the other.

The first thing Laura noticed was that her right arm wasn’t withered as she’d thought, but twisted almost back to front.

‘Me mam’s gone on holiday,’ the girl whispered, ‘and she hasn’t come back. I don’t know what to do. The rent man’s called twice, but I didn’t let him in. I haven’t got the money to pay him.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Laura said sympathetically. ‘Why don’t you come in and tell me all about it?’

The girl shuffled into the room. She wore a threadbare frock that was much too short and ragged plimsolls that had once been white. ‘I don’t know what to do,’

she repeated.

‘I’m sure you don’t. Sit down, dear. When did your mother go?’ She quickly removed her knitting when the girl looked about to sit on it, giving it a regretful glance.

‘About two weeks ago.’

That accounted for the silence upstairs. ‘Did she say how long she’d be away?’

‘She said she’d only be a few days. I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered for the third time. ‘I’ve got no pennies left for the meter.’

‘What about food? Did your mother leave food?’

‘It’s all gone.’

‘When did it go?’ Laura asked angrily.

The girl cringed and looked fearful. ‘The other day.’

‘Please don’t be frightened. I’m angry with your mother, not you. What’s your name, dear?’

‘Queenie,’ the girl whispered.

‘Well, I think the first thing to do, Queenie, is get you something to eat.’

Laura considered the contents of her meagre larder. There were two eggs and a two slices of streaky bacon for Roddy’s breakfast next day, mincemeat and vegetables for a casserole tonight that she’d not yet started, and half a pound of broken biscuits. ‘Would you like to come into the kitchen while I make it?’

‘Ta.’ Queenie crept out after her, making hardly any noise at all on the linoleum floor.

Laura gave her a glass of milk and she drank it thirstily, able to hold the glass quite safely in her twisted hand, and watching her all the time with a pair of huge grey eyes, almost silver, surrounded by a frame of thick, pale lashes.

The eggs and bacon were quickly fried, along with a thick slice of bread. She put the food in front of the girl, then began to prepare the vegetables for the casserole. In no time at all, she could hear the plate being scraped.

‘Ta,’ Queenie muttered. The plate was clean, every trace of egg having been wiped up with the bread. The poor child must have been starving.

‘Did your mother say where she was going?’ she asked, when she sat down at the table with two cups of tea.

‘No, just on holiday.’

‘Where did she work?’

‘In a pub, the Black Horse. It’s on the Docky.’ The Dock Road was referred to locally as the Docky.

‘When my husband gets home, I’ll ask him to see if anyone there knows where she is.’

‘I want me mam back.’ Two giant tears rolled down the girl’s thin cheeks.

Laura felt her heart contract. ‘You poor thing!’ She reached for the girl’s hand. It felt as light as a feather in her own, sensible broad one. ‘You should have come down before. I feel awful, knowing you’ve been by yourself all this time with nothing to eat or drink.’ What a perfect bitch the mother was, though there was just a chance the woman had been taken ill or had had an accident and was lying in a hospital somewhere.

‘I didn’t want to be a nuisance,’ Queenie whispered.

‘Of course you’re not a nuisance.’ Although the words were sincerely meant, Laura would have far preferred to have been left alone with her knitting. She had no idea what to do with the girl now. ‘How old are you, Queenie?’

‘Fourteen.’

She looked less than that, her slight body that of a child’s, no sign of breasts beneath the cotton frock. Her white legs were as thin as sticks. On another face, her grey eyes would have looked quite pretty, but Queenie’s cheeks were almost nonexistent, making the eyes seem much too big and accentuating her pointed nose and little, pale mouth. Her hair looked dreadful, as if it had been chopped off with a pair of blunt scissors, though the colour was nice, a silvery blonde. It stood in stiff clumps on her tiny scalp. She looked like a half-starved elf.

‘Would you mind if I looked upstairs, dear, to see if your mother’s left any clues as to where she might have gone?’

‘No.’ Queenie shook her head. She seemed less nervous than when she’d first arrived. Perhaps she sensed Laura wasn’t about to bite her head off.

‘I’ll give you another cup of tea first, and perhaps you’d like to finish off these biscuits before they go soft. You’ll be doing me a favour.’ Laura put a plate of perfectly good, if broken biscuits on the table. She had a feeling, if she told Queenie to help herself, she’d only take a couple.

‘Ta.’

The first thing she noticed when she went upstairs was the strong smell of polish. The rooms were gloomy, the furniture old and well worn, as it was in her own flat. But Laura had added things to make it look like home; pictures and ornaments, embroidered cloths and flowers. Nothing had been added upstairs. The walls and surfaces were bare. Everywhere looked very drab, but immaculately clean. Queenie must have been dusting and polishing in readiness for her mother’s return. The idea made Laura want to weep.

In the bedroom, a neatly made double bed was covered with a well-worn eiderdown.

On opening the wardrobe, she found nothing but half a dozen wire coathangers, jangling eerily against each other. The drawer underneath contained sheets, unironed, but clean. An almost empty bottle of bright scarlet nail polish on the dressing table indicated this must be Mrs Tate’s room. In the drawers, there was a pair of leather gloves with the fingers hanging off and a few items of underwear that Laura wasn’t willing to touch. She came to the definite conclusion that Mrs Tate had gone for good.

Where did Queenie sleep? she wondered. She somehow doubted it was with her mother. The small room at the back, the equivalent of the one where Hester slept downstairs, had been turned into a kitchen. She remembered there was a floor above and found the narrow staircase tucked in a dark corner next to the lavatory. The further she climbed, the stronger became the odour of damp and mould. There were wet patches on the landing ceiling. She opened the first door and her heart sank. This must be where Queenie slept, on a mattress on the floor in a room with green mould in all four corners and no curtains on the window.

Beside the mattress, there was a nightlight in a metal container, matches, a cardboard box with a few pathetic items of clothing, and two magazines. Laura picked them up. Both were well-thumbed copies of Enid Blyton’s Sunny Stories.

Earlier that day, she’d flippantly remarked to Vera that she could have killed Roddy for volunteering, but the anger she’d felt then was nothing compared to the anger she felt now. Laura had a strong urge to strangle Mrs Tate with her own bare hands.

‘She’s done a bunk, I’m afraid. She’s gone to London with one of the customers, a chap by the name of Derek Norris,’ Roddy reported breathlessly. He’d been despatched to the Black Horse as soon as he’d finished his dinner to establish the whereabouts of their missing upstairs neighbour. ‘The landlord was highly indignant because she gave him less than twenty-four hours’ notice.’

‘Good riddance to bad rubbish!’ Laura snarled. She was washing the dishes with unnecessary vigour.

Roddy did a double-take. ‘Lo! The last few days you’ve been quite frightening.

There’s a side to you I never knew you had.’

‘I didn’t know I had it either.’

‘I quite like it.’ He slid his arms around her waist. ‘There’s something happening tomorrow that you don’t know about,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Please don’t be mad.’

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘We’re getting married.’

‘What?’

‘I got an emergency licence, but last night I was too scared to tell you.

Tomorrow, Saturday, at precisely twelve-fifteen, you shall become Mrs Roderick Bennett Oliver at the registry office in Brougham Terrace. That’s if you want to,’ he said meekly, nuzzling her neck. ‘Then your name will be down as my next-of-kin, not my parents.’

‘So they can write and tell me that you’re dead?’ Laura said bitterly. ‘Oh, Roddy!’ She turned and put her wet arms around his neck. ‘You know quite well I want to marry you, and of course I’m not mad. We should have done it before.’

‘I know, darling. I always thought we would, one day, but now it seems sort of necessary.’

Hester seemed quite taken with Queenie, perhaps because she was a welcome contrast to the belligerent, bossy Mary. What Queenie’s feelings were, no one knew. She looked dazed and kept glancing nervously over her shoulder, as if expecting her mother to appear and drag her away. The two girls sat on the sofa, Queenie reading Sunny Stories aloud to an entranced Hester. To Laura’s surprise, she read well in a high, sweet voice, not once stumbling over a word.

At nine o’clock, Laura suggested the girls went to bed and that Queenie should sleep in her mother’s room upstairs. Hester’s bed was much too narrow, even for two small people.

‘But she might come back and find me!’ The girl’s eyes were wide with horror.

‘Just in case she does, I’ll bolt the door on the inside,’ Laura promised.

‘Don’t worry, I’ll let her in,’ she said when Queenie seemed just as horrified at the idea of her mother being locked out, even if she dreaded her coming back.

‘You’ll have plenty of time to go to your own room.’ But not if I’ve got anything to do with it, she added to herself. She’d forgotten Queenie loved the cruel woman who had almost certainly gone for ever.

She went upstairs with the girl and tucked her in. ‘Good night, dear,’ she said gently, giving the clumpy hair a little pat.

Roddy had already put Hester to bed when she came down. ‘What will happen to Queenie?’ he asked.

‘I’ve no idea,’ Laura confessed. ‘All I can think of is going to the police. I doubt if she’s capable of looking after herself.’

‘That seems a bit harsh,’ he said ruefully. ‘On Queenie, that is. She seems a nice kid. They might put her in a home.’

‘I know. I’ll discuss it with Vera tomorrow. I need to speak to her, anyway, to ask if she’ll look after Hester while we get married.’

‘Oh, well.’ He stretched his arms. ‘Shall we turn in early tonight?’

‘We’ll do no such thing, Roderick Oliver. I’m about to have a bath and wash my hair and there isn’t time to light the fire and wait for the water to get hot, so I’ll have to boil pans instead. You must have a bath too. You smell of paint and it’s quite disgusting. And I have a wedding dress to get ready, gloves to find, a hat. I would have liked a little nosegay too, but there’s not much chance of that. At least I’ve got the ring.’ She twisted the thin gold band around the third finger of her left hand. ‘I’ve never had this off since the day you put it on,’ she said.

‘It won’t be off for long. Tomorrow, I’ll put it on officially, and you’ll never have to take it off again for the rest of your life,’ Roddy promised.

Chapter 3

The weather during August had been lovely. Day after day, the country woke to a brilliant sun shining out of a cloudless blue sky. It was hard to believe, while they luxuriated in the warmth and glory of these magical summer days, that such terrible things were about to happen to their world.

When Laura opened her eyes on Saturday morning, Roddy fast asleep beside her, the first thing she saw was her wedding dress hanging on the wardrobe door. With a little pang, she wished she were getting married in white, with all the fuss of a proper wedding; bridesmaids, flowers, an organ playing ‘The Wedding March’, a big reception afterwards. But if that had been the case, she mightn’t have been marrying Roddy. As he was the only man with whom she wished to spend the rest of her life, what did it matter that there would be no bridesmaids, no flowers, no organ, and merely lunch in a restaurant to celebrate?

It didn’t matter a bit, nor that her wedding outfit was in fact a cream silk afternoon dress she’d bought years ago off a secondhand stall in Petticoat Lane market. It had a frill for a collar and puffed sleeves ending at the elbow in another frill. She had no idea whether it was fashionable or not. Her mother had bought Good Housekeeping every month to keep up with the latest styles, but Laura couldn’t remember when she’d last read a women’s magazine.