The Bad Penny (14 page)
For some while, Selina kept Patty amused with tales of life on the ward and in the nurses’ home, but when they got off the bus it was Patty’s turn to describe in detail what was going on at Durrant House. ‘And you’ll never guess what’s happening in Peel Street,’ Patty told her friend. ‘Mrs Thornton’s moving on! She and the gardener at number twelve are getting married and moving out to Crosby, where they are taking up the posts of housekeeper and general handyman to an old lady. Apparently, she asked Miss Larkin to find her a reliable married couple. Miss Larkin knew that Mrs Thornton and Mr Hedges were planning to get married, so she suggested they should apply and of course they got the job.’
‘Golly!’ Selina said, round-eyed. ‘But won’t Miss Larkin miss her cook most dreadfully? And what will you and I do with no house in Peel Street to visit on a Friday afternoon?’
‘Oh, Mrs Thornton says she’ll have a word with the new cook when she’s appointed,’ Patty said, trying to sound optimistic. ‘Anyway, I’m luckier than most orphans because I’ve got you, Selina.’
Patty thought she had spoken no more than the truth and enjoyed a wonderful day with her friend, but when she returned to Durrant House she was immediately hauled into Matron’s study. Completely unsuspecting and still flushed with pleasure from her day in the open air, she hurried into the office and looked questioningly at Miss O’Dowd. ‘Yes, Matron? Nellie Beasley said you wanted to see me.’
‘Indeed I do,’ Miss O’Dowd said ominously. ‘Earlier today, I had cause to ask for some files to be brought up from the basement; yours was amongst them and I have now discovered that you are a liar and a cheat. I don’t know where you go to when you pretend to be with your cousin, but I do know that you have no cousin. You are a foundling, abandoned by your parents, who were, no doubt, people lacking moral fibre of any sort. Your connection with the house in Peel Street is not that of niece to the cook. I understand from your file that you were abandoned in Peel Street which is, of course, why your name is Peel. You will not rejoin the rest of your class but will be put back a year, and you will not be allowed out any more with this girl Selina. Nor will you again visit the house in Peel Street.’
Patty stared in astonished disbelief at the woman before her. ‘You can’t possibly put me down a year, Matron,’ she said at last. ‘It would mean doing the work twice, and anyway I’m nearly always top of the class I’m in. I’ve done nothing wrong, apart from saying Selina was my cousin instead of my dear friend. It’s not my fault I’m a foundling and – and Mrs Thornton has been wonderful to me. Please punish me in some other way, if you must, but not by taking my friend away from me or putting me in a lower class.’
‘Don’t question my decisions,’ Matron said icily. She reached behind her and picked up the cane and whilst Patty was still standing, staring at her, she came around the desk, moving incredibly fast for such a large woman, and caught Patty two stinging blows across the cheek. ‘I hope that will teach you a lesson,’ she said breathlessly. ‘You are a wilful and deceitful child and must be taught the error of your ways. I shall tell—’
But Patty had fled the room, a hand to her stinging cheek, and half an hour later she had also fled Durrant House and was crouched beneath a bench in Prince’s Park, sobbing and terrified, but determined never to return to a person who could behave as Miss O’Dowd had done.
Patty got very little sleep that night. Fortunately, the weather was still warm, and before running away she had had the foresight to take out her winter coat and to put on the stout lace-up boots which the girls all wore in wintertime. Had she been able, she would have stolen some food since there was no way she could provide herself with so much as a penny piece, but she had had no opportunity. Tea was the last meal of the day the children were given and it had been long over before Patty had returned from her day out. After escaping from Miss O’Dowd’s study, she had gone straight up to her dormitory and in feverish haste had arranged a bolster in her bed, to look as though she were curled up beneath the covers. It was the time of day the children spent in their common rooms and the teachers and the rest of the staff had some small degree of freedom, so no one was lurking in the corridors. Patty slid out of the side door and simply ran as fast as she could, not heeding in which direction she went. She had actually returned to Prince’s Park when darkness fell because it seemed considerably safer than the streets, but even in her anguish and misery she knew that it would not be a good place once the park keepers arrived the following morning. As soon as it grew light, therefore, she made her way out of the park and headed towards the docks. She had no idea where she would go or what she would do, but was simply eager to put as much distance as possible between Durrant House and herself. Naturally enough, she thought wistfully of both Mrs Thornton and Selina, but realised she could not take either of them into her confidence. They would not approve of the way she had been treated, but even so they would not be able to harbour a runaway orphan. They would have to hand her over to Miss O’Dowd and, even though she understood, she knew it would harm the relationship she had built up with the only friends, outside the orphanage, that she had in the world. If she meant to run away – and stay away – she must do so unaided. As she walked along the quiet pavement, wondering where to go, she remembered with nostalgic pleasure the previous day spent in Selina’s company, and this gave her an idea. The ferry had been crowded; she thought it was quite possible that a child alone might get aboard the ship unnoticed and ticketless, and reach the further side without being caught or questioned. Then – ah, then – the rich countryside would stretch out before her, with all its infinite possibilities. Immensely cheered by the thought, she set off for the Pier Head.
Despite the fact that it was term time, Patty was pleased to see that there were a fair number of children amongst the many adults crossing and recrossing the quayside. This meant that she would not be picked out immediately as a truant, though she wished, desperately, that she had managed to find some means of disguising the brown gingham dress, which was all Durrant House provided in the summertime. In fact, however, the dress was to be her salvation for presently, as she made her way towards the landing stage, someone laid a hand on her arm. Patty jumped quite six inches and prepared to run, believing for one awful moment that a member of staff – perhaps even Matron herself – had spotted her. Before she could do more than jump, however, she turned her head and saw a skinny boy, four or five inches taller than herself, whose toffee-coloured hair fell in a straight fringe across his forehead. He had light brown eyes and a confident air though he was dressed in ragged trousers and a grey flannel shirt several sizes too big for him. ‘Sorry I scared you,’ he said, ‘but ain’t that an orphanage uniform youse wearing? And judgin’ from the way you jumped, you’ve lit out from the place, like what I have. I doesn’t want to get catched and sent back and I reckon they’ll be huntin’ for one kid, norra couple. Pity about that there dress, but when it’s gorra bit dirtier no one won’t think twice. You catchin’ the ferry? Gorrany money? I’s headin’ for Ireland, but it may take a while to get there. Where’s you goin’?’
Getting over her initial fright, Patty stared at him curiously. He was extremely dirty and barefoot and probably about her own age, but he had a sort of cheerful independence, which made him appear older. ‘Yes, I was at Durrant House,’ she admitted, sinking her voice. ‘We’ve got a new matron and she hates me.’ She turned her face so that the cheek with two red weals across it was towards him and touched the wound with careful fingers. ‘She hit me with a cane so I ran away. I say, is that
your
uniform? Only it – it doesn’t look much like one.’
‘I snitched the shirt off of a washing line, the day afore yesterday,’ the boy said cheerfully. ‘The trousers is mine, but I ragged them up a bit, and I sold me shoes and socks to someone in Paddy’s market yesterday afternoon. I got a bob for ’em, ’cos the shoes was almost new,’ he added proudly.
‘I never thought of that,’ Patty said admiringly. ‘I guess I’d look better without boots, wouldn’t I? More like other kids, I mean. Do you reckon you could sell mine for me?’
The boy looked down at Patty’s feet. The winter boots had been new last autumn and still looked hardly worn. ‘Yeah, I reckon I could,’ he said, rather doubtfully, ‘but wharrabout walkin’, queen? You don’t look to me as though you’re used to goin’ barefoot. It’s different for me; until last summer, I were barefoot all the time and even in the orphanage, I took me shoes off whenever I could. Hated the feel of ’em, see? They cramped me toes up somethin’ cruel.’
‘I reckon I’d rather be barefoot than in these boots,’ Patty said, having thought the matter over. ‘Besides, I’m getting awful hungry, so any money we get for the boots we could spend on food.’
‘Right,’ the boy said with alacrity. ‘We’ll walk inland, then, see what we can find.’
Patty fell into step beside him, wondering why she did so. Her only previous encounter with a boy had been with young Lionel Tennant in Peel Street and that had not exactly filled her with loving kindness towards the male species. In fact, she had both feared and disliked boys ever since, so why was this one different? Patty shot a sideways glance at him, then decided that it was not looks which counted. He was a runaway, as she was, and seemed much more worldly-wise than herself. For all her much vaunted intelligence, she had not thought of selling her boots, nor had she realised how conspicuous they made her in a part of the city where almost every child she met was barefoot. In the circumstances, she decided, she would do well to forget her prejudices against boys and accept both his companionship and any help he might offer.
‘We’ll come back here later, I reckon,’ the boy said presently, as they passed Prince’s Dock and turned up Leeds Street. ‘There’s canny houses down by the docks where you can get a real good meal for less than a tanner. What’s more, we mustn’t forget we’re goin’ to need money if we mean to cross the water. Come to that, we’ll need food wherever we are. There’s a limit to what grub we can pinch, particularly at this time of year, when there’s very little in the way of fruit and veg left in folks’ gardens. Can you sing?’
They were passing Exchange station at the time and Patty stopped, staring at her companion, wide-eyed. ‘Sing?’ she echoed. ‘Well, I dunno. I suppose everyone can sing, can’t they? But what made you ask?’
The boy jerked his head towards the station entrance and Patty saw a skinny little man in a bright red shirt and royal blue trousers, with a shiny peaked cap on his head. He was playing on a thin black pipe and every now and then a passer-by would toss him a coin which he caught, with amazing dexterity, in his right hand.
Patty looked doubtfully up at her companion. ‘Do you mean we could make money, as he’s doing? Only I don’t think anyone would pay to hear me sing, and I can’t play a pipe – well, I don’t have one!’
‘No, but I have,’ the boy assured her. He rooted round in his pocket and produced a penny whistle. ‘Before they took me into St Peter’s Orphan Home for Boys, I often played the whistle so’s me mam could dance to it – and sing, of course. It weren’t so good in country places, ’cos there ain’t much money about, though folk often gave us fruit and veg an’ that. But in big cities we did awright. I reckon you an’ me could keep body and soul together and it’s better than beggin’. Scuffers don’t like you beggin’ but they’ll turn a blind eye to a bit o’ street music. Can you dance?’ he asked, as they turned left into Vauxhall Road.
Patty looked longingly at the shopfronts they passed, her mouth watering over the display of cakes and loaves in the window of Richard Taylor’s. ‘No, I can’t dance, nor walk a tightrope, nor juggle, nor do any other sort of circus acts,’ she said firmly. ‘Were you and your mammy circus folk?’
The boy grinned but shook his head. ‘No, though that were a good guess. Some people call us gypsies but we’re really fair folk – or at least we were when me dad were alive. It were a grand life, never stayin’ in one place for long, always movin’ on, bringin’ fun and entertainment wherever we set up. Me mam ran a hoopla stall and me dad did a knife-throwin’ act, as well as servicing the traction engines and doin’ all sorts of engineering work. But after he died, Mam had a struggle to manage and Texas Ted, the Riding Master – that’s the boss of the fair we were with – tried to get fresh with her. When she wouldn’t go along with what he wanted, he kicked us out and took our caravan for his fancy woman. Mam said it wouldn’t matter, we’d do OK by ourselves, but we needed a big city, so we came to Liverpool. It were grand for a bit, except we went into digs. They was awful poor – the food were dreadful, and the bed bugs nigh on the size of cats. Then two winters ago, Mam went down with pneumonia and died ten days later.’ He grabbed her arm and the pair of them crossed the busy road and dived down Burlington Street. ‘Hey, I never even asked your name. I’m Toby Rudd.’
‘I’m Patty Peel,’ Patty said readily. ‘I come from the Durrant House Orphan Asylum for Girls, on The Elms, up by Prince’s Park. It’s a hateful place, or it is now, with Miss O’Dowd in charge. It weren’t so bad with the old matron, but this one’s wicked as they come and the size of a mountain. Have you tried playing your pipe for money, Toby? Did it work?’
‘Yes, and I got fivepence three-farthings, only it got took off me by a bigger feller,’ Toby admitted ruefully. ‘I put a battered old tin down beside me to take the money and this great bullyin’ brute of a boy just snatched it up, money an’ all, and made off afore I could take the whistle from me lips. But if there were two of us, the one who was singin’ could put the money in a pocket – or up her knicker leg for that matter – because she’d have both hands free, see?’