The Girl From Barefoot House (7 page)

She looked through the window at the yard and said thoughtfully, ‘It’s got Flynn on your ration book, so I’ll have to register you with shops that don’t know me, somewhere in town. I’ll go in me dinner hour. It’ll be a nuisance, but the shops round here know everyone’s business.’ She got to her feet.

‘Well, miss, I’m going back to work now. I had to take two hours off because of you, and I’ve got a very responsible job. I’m secretary to the head of Claims at the Mersey Insurance Company. Mr Roberts can’t cope if I’m not there.’ She smirked. ‘I’m never home before six, so someone’s coming round at four to make your tea, but you can learn to do it yourself in future so that we don’t have to bother people. My Vince is on afternoons
– it’ll be half ten at least by the time he puts in an appearance.’ She looked keenly at the child crouched over the table. ‘Did you know you’ve got an Uncle Vincent?’

‘Mam talked about him sometimes.’

‘I bet she did, the sly bitch.’ She picked up a crocodile handbag off the sideboard. ‘I’m off. You be good, and if you stay good, behave yourself and keep out me way, we’ll get on just fine. You should be grateful you’ve got a nice, respectable home.’ Her lips twisted in a sneer. ‘I know what your mam was up to. If you’d stayed in Huskisson Street with that crowd of slags, you’d have ended up on the streets in time with your slag of a mam. That’s right, isn’t it, miss?’

Josie was pleating and unpleating the chenille cloth between her fingers, because her hands couldn’t keep still. Her aunt’s words, horrible words, beat against her brain, like tiny nails being tapped into her head. She felt as old as Sister Bernadette, a hundred, as memories returned, scenes flashed before her eyes and she recalled things that Mam had said.

I couldn’t live without my little girl, my Petal
.

Hello, Petal. I’m home
.

She visualised her beautiful mother standing at the foot of the bed, arms outstretched. She used to think Mam was weak, but last Friday she’d been ready to defend her daughter with her life. Josie firmly believed she would have killed the two men if Irish Rose and the black man hadn’t come.
I’ll swing for you
, she’d said. Mam was strong. And
she
would be strong. No one would insult her and get away with it.
No one
. She wouldn’t be sneered at or called names. And the same applied to her mother – she had no idea what a slag was, but it sounded horrible.

Aunt Ivy was still waiting for a reply. She returned to the table and tapped her foot. Josie, boosted by her newly found confidence, decided that if her wrist was pinched again, then her hand could drop off before she’d admit her aunt was right. She looked up at her, and felt hate burning in her eyes.

‘Don’t you
dare
call me mam a slag,’ she said slowly in a voice so deep it surprised herself. ‘You’re the one who’s horrible. You chucked her out, she told me. And I’d sooner be living in Huskisson Street any day than here.’

‘Oh, Oh, I see.’ Aunt Ivy was momentarily taken aback, but quickly recovered. Her face darkened. ‘Oh, so now we know where we stand. You know, all I have to do when I get to work is pick up the phone and you’ll be in an orphanage by tomorrow. Don’t imagine I
want
you here.’

‘I don’t want to be here.’

There was silence. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. It was an extremely grand clock, with peculiar letters instead of numbers on its pearly face.

Aunt Ivy’s face turned dark with anger. She said abruptly, ‘I haven’t time to argue. I’ll see you later, miss.’ Her heels clicked down the hall. She called, ‘We’ll soon see who’s boss.’ The front door closed.

Josie was shaking. She realised she’d won something that she hadn’t wanted to win: a minor battle. But she didn’t want to be at war with Aunt Ivy. Suddenly, all the hideousness, the misery, of the last few days came washing over her and she began to cry. It was the first time she’d cried since her mother died, and the sobs racked her body till it hurt. Her chest was sore, her throat was sore, hot tears scalded her eyes. She couldn’t believe that she would never see Mam again, or hear her voice,
touch her, live with her in the attic room. It seemed she was destined to live in Machin Street with Aunt Ivy for ever. The future, so bright a few days ago, stretched ahead of her, black, miserable and lonely. Everything had changed in the twinkling of an eye. She put her hands to her ears, to block out the future, to block out the fact that Mam was dead.

Why, then, could she hear screaming? Not so much screaming as a thin, pathetic wail, as if a small animal were caught in a trap, pleading to be rescued.

The screaming, the wail, came from herself, and she was running round the house, running upstairs, slamming doors, kicking furniture, beating the walls with her fists. And screaming. She pulled at curtains, threw pillows and cushions on the floor. In the bathroom she stopped to vomit in the sink, then rested her forehead on the cool, white porcelain rim.

After a while she lifted her eyes, and noticed the lavatory. It didn’t just have a wooden seat, but a lid as well. She sat on the lid, feeling calmer. Mam would be dead ashamed if she knew the way she’d just behaved. She’d been determined to make a good impression on Aunt Ivy. ‘I’m not having her turning up her nose at us,’ she’d said.

Josie slid off the lavatory, cleaned the sink and went around the house straightening the curtains, putting the cushions and pillows back in place. This time she noticed the lovely things that Mam had told her about. The ornaments and little items of fancy furniture, the pictures and mats that her very own grandad had brought back from foreign countries like Japan – elaborate brass candlesticks, mosaic bowls, statues, vases. She sat briefly on the puffy green settee in the parlour and admired the carved elephant with ivory horns with a table on its back.
In the big main bedroom, two lamps with shades made from little bits of coloured glass glittered on each side of the double bed, which was covered with a mountainous maroon eiderdown.

There were two bedrooms at the back, one full of cardboard boxes. The other must have been Mam’s and, she assumed, would be hers. A pretty white mat with raised flowers lay beside the single bed which had a dark blue embroidered coverlet. Another brightly coloured mat hung from a pole on the wall, which seemed a most peculiar thing to do with a mat, though perhaps it was a picture: a man, a shepherd because he had a crook, was standing at the foot of a mountain, a hand shading his eyes as he stared at a rainbow.

Josie threw herself on the bed, exhausted, and stared at the ceiling. In its much smaller way, this house was as grand as the one in Huskisson Street when it had been owned by the importer of rare spices. Even so, she didn’t want to live there, not with Aunt Ivy.

But where else could she go? Even if Maude was willing to have her, Josie knew that Mam, up in heaven, would strongly disapprove. And Mam would be as miserable as sin if she knew her Josie was in an orphanage. She supposed that she had no alternative but to stay with Aunt Ivy, pretend her name was Smith and that she’d once had a dad called John. Most of all, she resented having to say that she was five, because she was proud of being six.

She closed her eyes. If only she could sleep and never wake up! Sleep, however, refused to come, and she remained stubbornly awake, reliving last Saturday, hearing the bomb, the explosion, over and over. She’d
known
Mam was dead, she’d just
known
.

When someone knocked on the front door at first she
considered taking no notice. But the knock came again. It was almost certainly the person to make her tea. If she didn’t answer, it would be reported back to Aunt Ivy, and she’d have another black mark against her.

She trudged downstairs, wishing she’d had time to wash her face because it was probably all swollen, and her eyes felt as if they were glued together. She wished it even more when she opened the door and found a smiling Mrs Kavanagh and Lily on the doorstep, both looking extremely smart. Mrs Kavanagh wore a pink linen costume and matching hat, and Lily a grey pleated skirt and a white jersey. She had a leather satchel over her shoulder. Her long brown hair rippled, like a cloak, around her shoulders.

‘Hello, Josie, luv. We’ve met before, remember?’ Mrs Kavanagh said warmly.

‘Have you been crying?’ Lily demanded.

‘No,’ Josie said pugnaciously. ‘I never cry.’

‘Me, I’d cry buckets if me ma died.’ Lily tossed her head and looked superior.

‘Oh, do be quiet, Lily,’ her mother said crossly. ‘We all know you have to do the opposite of everyone else.’ She turned to Josie. ‘I promised Ivy I’d pop in and make your tea, but that seems a bit daft when you can have it with us. We’re only just down the street. I’m surprised Ivy didn’t take the afternoon off, ’stead of leaving you by yourself on your first day. Are you okay, luv? You look a bit rough.’

‘I’m fine, ta.’

‘Why is your frock too short?’ Lily asked rudely.

‘Because a bomb tore me old one,’ Josie explained, thinking this would make Lily sorry for her rudeness.

Instead, Lily said smugly, ‘
We’ve
never been bombed.’

‘Oh, shut up, Lily,’ her mother said. ‘Come on, Josie.
All the kids are home, ’cept Stanley who’s at work. And I’ve made scouse, everyone’s favourite. There’s treacle pud for afters.’

At the mention of scouse, Josie realised she was starving. She loved scouse – Mam made it all the time because there was a limit to the meals you could do on a hob over the fire.

The Kavanaghs’ house wasn’t remotely as posh as Aunt Ivy’s, but she much preferred its untidy clutter. A fire burned in the parlour, where the flowered three-piece was faded and well worn. Books and toys littered the floor, and the sideboard was piled high with more toys, a pair of football boots and some ravelled knitting. A doll squinted at her from the mantelpiece, reminding her of Irish Rose. In the square bay window, a treadle sewing machine was draped with yards of bright red tulle. A wireless was on, and a woman was singing very loudly, ‘Wish me luck as you wave me goodbye.’

Two very sunburnt boys with green eyes and hair the colour of butter wrestled each other on the floor. The biggest, who looked about twelve, was clearly winning, and a girl, a slightly older version of Lily, oblivious to the din, was reading a book, her legs draped over the arm of the chair. She looked up, said, ‘Hello,’ and returned to the book.

‘H-hello,’ Josie stammered. The change from the tomb-like atmosphere of her aunt’s house to the noisy chaos of the Kavanaghs’ was welcome, but slightly daunting. She stood in the middle of the room, not sure what to do. Should she sit down? Mrs Kavanagh and Lily had disappeared into the kitchen, and she wondered if she should follow, offer to help set the table or something.

The boys had noticed she was there. They stopped
wrestling. The older one held his brother down by the throat, and asked curiously, ‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Josie Flynn, I mean Smith.’

The boy grinned. ‘Josie Flynn-I-mean-Smith. That’s a dead funny name.’

Josie drew herself to her full height and said haughtily, ‘It’s Josie Smith.’

‘All right, you don’t need to bite me head off, Josie Smith. I’m Robert, and this is our Benjamin on the floor. We call him Ben. He’s only eight. Us boys are called after prime ministers, Conservative ones, natch.’ His green eyes sparkled mischievously. ‘The girls are only flowers. That’s our Daisy over there. She’s ten, and you won’t get a word out of her till she’s finished that book.’

‘Oh, shut up, Robert,’ Daisy snapped. ‘I’m not likely to finish me book while there’s such a racket going on.’

‘So why don’t you read in the bedroom?’

‘Because our Marigold’s trying on frocks. She’s going to the pictures tonight with Gabrielle McGillivray.’

‘What to see?’

Daisy sniffed. ‘I dunno, do I? I haven’t been invited.’

Josie was doing her best to remember the names – Marigold, Daisy and Lily, Robert, Ben, and who was the boy at work? Stanley, she remembered. She wondered if Mr and Mrs Kavanagh ever got confused when their children were all there together.

Throughout the noisy meal that followed, Mrs Kavanagh got confused all the time. ‘Pass us the bread, Mar—, Dais—,
Lily
,’ she would finish triumphantly when she got it right. Or, ‘Our Robert’s late. He should be home by now.’

The children grinned at each other. ‘Robert’s here, Ma. It’s our Stanley who’s late.’

The six Kavanaghs had been born neatly, a boy and a girl alternately, all two years apart. The girls were slightly plump like their mother, with the same dark brown eyes and the same brown hair which they wore long and parted in the middle. They looked like a set of Victorian dolls, with their pink, glowing faces, pert noses and tiny rosebud mouths.

Lily might well be the youngest, but she had more to say than the others put together. She talked in a firm, opiniated voice, to be met with, ‘Oh, shut up, Lily,’ from various members of the family.

At half past five, Stanley arrived home from his boring job in a bank, followed by Mr Kavanagh a few minutes later. He was very tall, very thin, very sunburnt, with pale, creamy hair like his sons. His dark suit was covered with threads, and Josie remembered Mam saying he owned a haberdasher’s in Penny Lane. He had the air of a man who was seriously moidered, but smiled benignly on his large family, who were still around the table where they’d been for almost an hour, because everyone was too busy talking to leave. Only eight-year-old Ben, next to Josie, hadn’t said a word.

Mrs Kavanagh went into the kitchen and fetched a plate of scouse. ‘There’s treacle pud for afters, Eddie.’

‘Goodo,’ he said, winking at Josie, and she thought it mightn’t be so bad living in Machin Street, with the Kavanaghs only a few doors away.

At half past six, Mrs Kavanagh suggested she go home. ‘Only because Ivy should be back by now and she’ll be worried where you are. Tell her it’s my fault you’re late. Oh, and luv.’ Josie was led into the hall, where it wasn’t exactly quiet but at least they were alone. Mrs Kavanagh sat on the stairs and pulled her down beside her. ‘That time we met in Blackler’s basement, luv, I guessed
straight away that Mabel was your mam – you’re too alike to pretend otherwise. Anyroad, I never told your auntie that I’d seen you. Poor Ivy, she’s not a bad woman, but she’s a stickler for appearances. It means I know darn well you didn’t have a dad who died in the Battle of Britain – Mabel would have been bound to mention she was married the day we met. And I remember you telling me then you were nearly four, so you can’t be only five like Ivy ses. I didn’t argue when she told me all that rubbish the other night. Even so, her secret’s safe with me. And, Josie, whatever happens, remember you’re always welcome in this house. Mabel was one of the nicest girls I’ve ever known, as well as the prettiest. I don’t give a damn what she got up to, and she’d have wanted me to be your friend.’