The Narrowboat Girl (2 page)

‘It
is
madam’s birthday,’ Nanny Firkin said, brewing tea for Harry. She was always mothering him, trying to feed him up. ‘Anyroad, I reckon ’er’s
picked the best of the bunch.’

While her dad gratefully drank his tea and ate Nanny Firkin’s sticky ginger cake, and Sal and Billy played with the other kittens, Maryann sat with her new pal in her lap, laughing as his
fur tickled her bare knees. She could scarcely believe it: a living creature, so tiny and perfect and beautiful, and he was all hers . . . She stopped, looking carefully at him and turned to her
grandmother who was sitting, as she always did, perched at the very edge of her chair as if in her long life she had never learned to take her rest and be comfortable.

‘Is this one a boy or a girl, Nan?’

‘Oh that’s a lad, that one. Tigerface I call ’im.’

‘Tigerface—’ Maryann cocked her head at him. ‘I think I’ll just call ’im Tiger.’ She nuzzled her cheek against him, brimful with delight. ‘Thanks,
Nan. ’E’s the best ever.’

Maryann lay cuddled up close to Sal that night on the bed they shared in the attic. There was a strong whiff of damp, but they barely noticed, being used to it. They had an
army blanket and a couple of old coats, and apart from that they had to keep each other warm. The nights were still quite mild now but it was perishing cold in the winter. Now she was older, Sal
refused to have a ‘bucket of wee’ by the bed and, however cold the night, if she needed to go, she took the key and went off down the yard to the freezing toilets. Maryann wasn’t
so fussed and would go down and relieve herself in the bucket in Tony and Billy’s room if needs be. Sal was getting far too particular, she thought.

‘Move over,’ Sal moaned. ‘I’m half hanging off the edge of the bed over ’ere.’

‘Sorry.’ Maryann shuffled along the lumpy mattress. There was a pause. A mouse scuttled across the floor. ‘Tiger’s so lovely, ain’t ’e?’

‘Oh Gawd, not again. Yes, Maryann, ’e’s lovely. ’E’s the most perfect cat in the whole blinking world. Now will yer shurrup?’

There was silence for a moment, then Maryann poked her in the ribs and Sal rolled over, giggling. ‘Oi, pack that in!’ But she was only pretending to be cross. The two of them
snuggled up together. Despite being so different they were close. They’d had to be, the way their mom was.

There’d been great excitement when they carried Tiger home. Nancy Black and three of her brothers had invaded to look him over until Flo Nelson unceremoniously shooed them out again.
Maryann had spent the whole evening holding him and playing with him and even Flo admitted he was ‘awright, I s’pose’. Now he was asleep, exhausted, on a strip of rag by the
range.

Maryann lay looking up at the dim rectangle of sky through the uncurtained attic window. The nights were drawing in now. ‘I don’t want to leave Tiger when I go to school,’ she
whispered. ‘I wish ’e could come too.’

‘Don’t talk so daft,’ Sal murmured. They lay together talking fondly about the kitten’s antics until the downstairs door opened and they heard their father’s tread
on the stairs. Flo Nelson was always harassed and irritable in the evenings and hustled them straight from playing in the yard up to bed out of her way. She had Billy to settle down and
didn’t want any added trouble from them. But their dad always came up to say goodnight. Maryann squirmed with delight. It felt so cosy in bed, with Dad coming up to give them a kiss.

He had been a stranger to them when he came home from the war in 1919. Sal had been eight then, and Maryann five and it had taken them some time to get used to one another. Flo, exhausted after
years of coping with two young daughters alone, of scrimping and queuing and struggling, had expected a man to come home who she could lean on, who would take over. Instead, for those first years,
she had an unpredictable, helpless wreck on her hands. Often she exclaimed angrily that the men who came home may have survived, but they were ‘no bloody good to anyone, the state they were
in’. The girls didn’t understand what it was all about. They didn’t understand the war, or the suffering of the soldiers, or that the man who had come home was one who had changed
and couldn’t fit in, wouldn’t, for a long time, be able to hold down a job. But they did know they were loved. Harry Nelson was a man who felt incomplete away from his family. He adored
his children, and that separation, added to the horror and degradation of the war, had increased his trauma further.

‘How’s the birthday girl?’ he said, stooping his long body and sitting down on the bed.

Maryann giggled.

‘That little Tiger of yours is asleep. Worn out.’ Maryann felt him rub her back with his warm hand and he gave Sal a pat. ‘Night night.’ He leaned down and kissed them
both. Maryann felt his lips press her cheek, the prickle of stubble on his top lip.

‘Eh – ’ow about you sing to me, eh – our special song? Just the first bit. How’ds it go?’

The song was one Sal had sung at school while the war was on, a prayer for the soldiers and sailors. She had told her father about it when he came home and they had sung it many times. Now they
both piped up:

In the early months after he came home, he would ask for the song, and when they sang it he would sit on their bed, his shoulders beginning to shake until he was weeping
uncontrollably. It had frightened them at first, but he was such a kind, gentle man that they used to sit beside him and put their arms around him. Flo had become resigned to his suffering and
fractionally more understanding. They had had the two boys, who filled Harry with joy. It had taken years, but now, with the passing of time and the help of his family, in particular his children,
Harry Nelson knew that the emotional wounds of the war were slowly healing.

Now he no longer wept when they sang to him. He sat quietly listening, then stood up as they finished.

‘Nice voices, you wenches. Sleep tight.’

Maryann listened to him going slowly down the stairs to see the boys, the familiar creaks of each tread. She closed her eyes. She felt safe and warm and loved. Later, looking back at those cosy
nights, she would wonder how she could have taken them for granted, when they were all too soon snatched away.

It happened two months later, quickly, horribly, all in an afternoon.

Maryann was with her friend Nance. Nancy Black had been Maryann’s best pal ever since they’d started school together. Maryann loved going to the Blacks’ because there was
always something going on. Even when Nance’s dad came home tanked up he never took any notice of her – he and Mrs Black had a right lot of shouting matches, but he’d never done
her any harm. As often as not when he arrived, Maryann and Nance’d shoot across the road to Maryann’s house to keep out of the way until the trouble died down.

The Black family consisted almost entirely of boys: Nancy was sandwiched between three older and four younger brothers. Her dad, Joe Black, known as Blackie in the district, scratched what might
have been a reasonable living as a cooper, going round the yards mending the maiding tubs, if he hadn’t parked his barrow and drunk his earnings away most afternoons. Nancy’s mom,
Cathleen Black, had a head of salt and pepper curls, one crossed eye and a moany voice. Maryann’s mom said Cathleen Black was a Catholic and ‘not up to much’ and having one eye
crossed like that ‘served her right’. Nancy said her mom was born like that so Maryann never understood how it could serve her right. Did God do things like that? Didn’t he like
Catholics? And was that why she had to take in washing and cart other people’s bundles off down the pawn shop on a Monday morning to make ends meet?

‘Well, it’s no good relying on that drunken bastard,’ Cathleen said, placidly, of her husband. ‘Or we’d all’ve starved to death by now.’ But then, with
a distant look in her eyes, she’d add, ‘’E was never like that before the war.’

Cathleen Black seemed to overlook the fact that Nancy was a girl most of the time and except for school, Nance wore her brothers’ cast-off shorts and shoes, and her hair, black and curly
as her mom’s, was cropped short. Nance strutted about with her elbows stuck out and you didn’t cross her. She was tough. Flo Nelson said it was a shame, her never looking like a proper
girl, but she was damned if she was passing down her girls’ clothes to people like that.

It was chilly that November afternoon, threatening rain, the air damp and rank with factory smells from all around and the stink of the yard privies. Both Maryann and Nancy had been ordered to
keep an eye on their baby brothers, and Billy Nelson and Horace Black were at one end of the long, narrow yard, playing with a collection of marbles.

‘Don’t you go putting ’em in yer mouth, Horace,’ Nancy shouted to him. ‘They ain’t rocks for sucking.’

Billy’s fair head and Horace’s dark one were close together and they kept picking up the marbles, throwing them at the wall, watching them bounce off and roaring with laughter.

‘They’re awright,’ Nancy said, long-sufferingly. ‘Let’s leave ’em be.’

She strode over in her patched, baggy shorts to where two of her older brothers, Jim, thirteen and Percy, ten, were trying to cobble together their own cart out of a wooden meat-crate
they’d bought for tuppence – the proceeds of selling empty jam jars – and some old pram wheels.

‘Get lost!’ Perce scowled at her as he did something important with a piece of wire. ‘You’ll only muck it up.’

‘Let’s play hopscotch,’ Maryann suggested. ‘I gotta bit of chalk.’

For all her boyish ways, Nancy loved having another girl to play with. Blowing on their cold hands, they ran up the yard and started marking out a hopscotch grid. Nance started the game,
throwing a pebble along the ground and jump-hopping back and forth. Mrs Black came out of the house with a scarf over her head and a cigarette jammed in one corner of her mouth and started hanging
out a line of washing. She took the fag out and turned to them. ‘Yer’d better not muck this lot up or I’ll belt the pair of yer.’

The girls ignored her. One or other of their moms said this to them several times a week every week and had done ever since they could remember. It had the same effect as ‘Don’t get
dirty’, which also went straight in one ear and out the other.

‘Is yer dad in yet?’ Maryann whispered to Nancy as she took her turn on the hopscotch.

Nancy pulled her mouth down and shook her head. Not many minutes later though, they heard his voice in the entry, mumbling furiously to himself as he staggered along. He was a red-eyed,
barrel-chested man, with such skinny legs to support his rotund girth that they looked as if they’d been pinched off someone else’s body. He came lurching into the yard, cap in hand and
swearing fit to blister paint.

‘Oh, ’ere we go,’ Cathleen Black said, vanishing inside her house to clear away the breakables.

Blackie stormed into the middle of the yard and bawled, ‘Someone’s nicked me fuckin’ barrer!’

Nancy and Maryann looked at each other. Nancy’s big brown eyes rolled expressively skywards.

Jim and Percy straightened up at the end of the yard. Other neighbours round the yard barely turned to look, this was such a usual occurrence. Blackie’s favourite watering hole was the
Beehive Inn in the next street. He’d bring his barrow, loaded with iron strips for mending the maiding tubs in which everyone did their washing, and leave it out at the front of the pub. By
the time he came out it had almost invariably gone – moved for a lark by local lads who then watched Blackie’s alcohol-befuddled indignation at its disappearance. Week after week he
never seemed to remember that if he left the barrow outside the pub, the same thing would happen. That, Flo Nelson said, was because he was ‘so bloody thick yer could stand a spoon up in
’im’.

‘You sure, Dad?’ Jim said, cautiously.

Blackie attempted to stride masterfully towards them, but ended up struggling to keep his balance.

‘’Course I’m bleedin’ shewer! What d’yer take me . . .’

‘It’ll turn up, Dad,’ Percy said. ‘It always does, don’t it?’

He and Jim weren’t going to volunteer to go and get it and face the jeering ridicule of the lads in the next street.

‘Someone’s nicked my . . .’ Blackie was just beginning all over again, when Sal came rushing up the entry, her face white as a china doll’s.

‘Maryann – oh Maryann!’ she cried, then burst into hysterical sobbing. At the sight of her sister’s emotion, a sick, cold feeling came over Maryann. For a moment they all
stood numbly, waiting.

‘Our dad’s been in an accident,’ Sal blurted out at last. ‘A terrible accident.’

Cathleen Black left her sozzled husband to his own devices, picked up grime-streaked little Horace and marshalled all the children across the road to the Nelsons’ house.
Maryann immediately caught hold of Tiger and hugged him to her. Her chest felt tight, as if it was going to tear open. Nancy watched her with wide, concerned eyes.

‘Our mom’s up the h-hospital.’ Sal sat down, still crying, at the table. ‘This copper come and said our dad’d been hit by a c-car and ’e couldn’t come
home and Mom had to go with him. M-Mom told me to come over and get Maryann and stay ’ere with Tony and Billy till ’er gets ’ome.’

‘Did the copper say ’ow yer dad is?’ Cathleen stood over her. She couldn’t stand Flo Nelson, always looking down her nose as if from a great height, but she was fond of
the Nelson children, and she couldn’t just leave the kids in a state like this.

Sal shook her head. Maryann started crying then. They’d taken her dad away and she’d never been inside a hospital and didn’t know what it was like, only they looked big,
frightening places, and he was hurt and she just wanted him home and everything to be back to normal. Her tears started Tony and Billy off crying too, and Horace looked at them all and began
bawling as well.

The evening passed like a terrible, blurred dream. They tried to eat the mash and mushy cabbage Mrs Black cooked for them, but Maryann felt as if her throat had closed up and
she could hardly swallow. The older ones went out into the yard after tea, but all Maryann wanted to do was play with Tiger and hold him tight.