About the Author
Also by Sheila Walsh
Title Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Two
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Part Three
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Copyright
Sheila Walsh has been writing novels since 1974, when she won the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s New Writers’ Award, followed ten years later by the Romantic Novel of the Year Award. Her work to date includes nineteen Regency novels and a number of short stories and serials.
Sheila is a past chairman, now vice president, of the Romantic Novelists’ Association. She is married with two daughters, and lives with her husband in Southport.
By the same author
Bath Intrigue
Lady Aurelia’s Bequest
Insubstantial Pageant
Incomparable Miss Brady
A Highly Respectable Marriage
For Des – with love
THE WARMTH FROM the bakehouse still lingered along the passage, taking the chill off the small washhouse. Liz Ryan heaved the last of the towels from the copper into the first dolly tub and from there to the second one, each time paddling them round vigorously before feeding them through the mangle. ‘Amo, amas, amat,’ she chanted, forcing the handle as it baulked at the thicker parts, before dropping the towels into the waiting basket. Then it was through the scullery and into the living room, to spread them out on the rack with the rest of the washing. With an ease that belied her slight frame, Liz hauled on the rope and the rack lifted, creaking, to the ceiling. ‘Amamus, amatis, amant.’ A couple of deft twists of the rope round the hook on the wall, and she knotted it and stepped back.
‘Well done,’ she said, with a satisfied nod, there being no-one else present to applaud her efforts.
Dad had been grunting in his sleep when she crept past the front bedroom on her way to swop her school uniform for the green wool frock her sister, Rita, had recently outgrown. Everyone else was out except her mother, who was serving a customer. Liz glanced uneasily at the clock. Mam was cutting it fine, if she wanted to avoid a long wait in the doctor’s surgery. Oh, please God, she prayed urgently, please make her go this time – and without an argument.
‘Perhaps I won’t bother, after all,’ Kathleen Ryan said, coming through from the shop, brushing aside her daughter’s over-eager reminder. ‘The surgery’s always packed of a Monday evening, and in this weather it would be just plain daft to sit there picking up germs, when there’s any number of jobs need doing here. The washing for one. I never did get it finished – oh, you’ve done it.’ She stopped, relief vying with vexation. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said grudgingly. ‘Truth to tell, it’s been one of those days when I couldn’t seem to get on for customers, and we’re bound to get busy again near closing time. I’d better leave going till later in the week.’
‘Oh, no, you won’t, Mam.’ Liz was firm, ‘I can look after the shop and everything just as well as you. Well, almost,’ she amended hastily, not wishing to provoke her mother in her present mood. ‘Ah, listen, you’ve put off going to Dr Graham twice already, and anyone with half an eye can see that you’re not yourself. Besides, I had to ask off school early on your account, and if you don’t go, Sister Imelda is sure to find out. I think she must have a direct line to God, that one – she always knows everything! I don’t want to be accused of telling lies.’
Her mother bridled. ‘That’s no way to talk about a good and holy nun, Liz. And I do wish you’d stop exaggerating. I’m tired, that’s all, and the last thing I want is to have that old woman, Graham, fussing over me. I know already what he’ll say: “You’re a bit run down, Kathleen”’ – she mimicked the gruff Scottish voice – ‘“You need to put your feet up more often.” I could tell him that for nothing, and save myself taking his precious coloured water!’
It wasn’t true, of course, and Kathleen knew it. A nagging ache was draining the energy from her even as she spoke. She was by nature a plain-speaking woman, and she knew full well that a bottle of coloured water wasn’t the answer to her problem, so why was she fooling herself? Just as she knew, after the fright she’d had that morning, that it would be stupid, if not downright dangerous, to play the ostrich any longer. Anyway, from the set of Liz’s mouth, she wasn’t going to be given the chance.
There was no getting anything past this middle daughter of hers, the very spit of herself at sixteen – sharp as a needle, and so eager for life, her supple body growing shapelier by the minute, the way her own had been before the years of childbearing had thickened her waistline. Liz was impulsive, outspoken and chock-full of impossible dreams. And stubborn. Looking at her now, with her shining brown hair imperfectly confined in two thick plaits, her brow a troubled furrow above a short straight nose, and determination written all over her, was like looking into a distant mirror. Except for Liz’s eyes. No-one else in the family had eyes that colour: dreaming tea-coloured eyes that took on the sheen of liquid gold the instant her emotions and enthusiasms surfaced – which they frequently did these days, for Liz was at an age when life was a challenge and there was no such word as impossible. Oh, God, Kathleen thought. What I’d give to be sixteen again!
The thought brought a rasp to her voice, ‘I’d be just fine, if you lot wouldn’t keep on at me. I’m sick and tired of being nagged at, morning, noon and night!’
But Liz was not put off by her mother’s brusqueness. A great one for giving you the edge of her tongue, was Mam, even more so of late. What did trouble Liz, because she was dead straight-talking as a rule, was Mam’s evasiveness – the way she wouldn’t quite meet your eyes. And for weeks now there had been a weariness in her voice that even sharp words couldn’t disguise, and black circles under her eyes. Alice Regan’s mother had looked exactly like that last year, and six months later she was dead. A small hollowing of fear lent increasing urgency to Liz’s argument.
‘It’s no use, Mam, you’re going if I have to shut the shop and take you myself! You promised Dad, and I’ll not be the one to help you break that promise.’
‘Oh, for pity’s sake!’ snapped her mother. ‘I never heard such a fuss about nothing. It’s plain there’ll be no peace for me in this house until I get it over with.’
‘Great. I’ll fetch your coat.’ Liz took the stairs from the living room two at a time, before Mam could change her mind.
Ryan’s, Bakers and Confectioners, on the corner of Fortune Street and Great Homer Street, enjoyed a regular passing trade, so that people were in and out of the shop fairly frequently after her mother had gone. But she was glad to be kept occupied – it meant there was less time to brood on the fate of Alice Regan’s mother.
Liz usually enjoyed having the place to herself. She loved the comfortable familiarity of the living room – the big oak dresser almost filling the wall that backed on to the shop, its polished cupboard doors reflecting the firelight. The top was cluttered with family photographs, trophies and mementoes, and in the centre, a small red lamp burned beneath a picture of the Sacred Heart. Mam’s piano, which had accompanied many a sing-song, occupied the wall facing the big kitchen range, leaving just enough space under the window for the treadle sewing machine that had been Grandmother Power’s. The window gave instant warning of anyone coming through the back gate and across the yard to the door or bakehouse, whilst the heavy lace curtain drawn across it prevented nosier folk from peering in, and helped to soften the starkness of the long bakehouse wall.
Light brown lino, still damp in places from its daily mopping, covered the floor, and in the centre was a large table with a much washed red chenille cloth thrown over it. Even the shabby sofa under the stairs had an endearing squashiness.
The smell of the potato and onion pie that Mam had put in the oven ready for supper was already beginning to mingle with the traces of hot crusty loaves, yeast, and all the other indefinable smells that filtered through from the bakehouse. Soon the washing would begin to steam gently, adding its soapy aroma to the rest. And beyond the passage, the bakehouse waited, scrubbed and clean and resting, its fire banked down until the night’s work began.
On a quiet day, Liz would maybe snatch a few moments to curl up in Dad’s old armchair by the fire, set within arm’s reach of his pipe-rack above the bookshelves where Dickens rubbed shoulders with Trollope, Yeats, G. K. Chesterton and Gerard Manley Hopkins, who was a priest as well as a poet. A great reader, was Dad. She would watch the flames playing over the gleaming blackleaded range, and dream of a time when the name Elizabeth Ryan would be famous. She never quite got as far as deciding how this goal was to be achieved. Such mundane considerations had no place in dreams.
Learning had never been any problem to her, though art was her favourite lesson, and Sister Barbara, her art teacher, had on several occasions hinted that she could go far. But art wasn’t for people like her – unless, of course, she turned her skills to confectionery. Dad always said she had a fine light touch with pastry and fancies, as well as the passion for perfection and eye for presentation that her brother, Chris, lacked. Elizabeth Ryan, Confectioner – by Appointment to His Majesty the King. She declaimed the words aloud. They sounded good – except that there hadn’t been much call for fancies, artistic or otherwise, in this part of Liverpool over the last few years, with so many folk out of work. And although times were improving, Chris was still having to work for Lunt’s in Latimer Street so as to bring in a wage.
Besides, Mam wouldn’t hear of her wasting a good scholarship and five years at Everton Valley Convent of Notre Dame on any airy-fairy artistic nonsense. She had always been in the school’s upper band, and was expected to matriculate next summer with the same ease that Rita had. Rita had gone on to sixth form college to get her highers, and was now in her first year at Mount Pleasant College, training to be a teacher.
But then, Rita always wanted to teach, just as Clare, Liz’s best friend at school, had her heart set on becoming a doctor. Whereas Liz, for all her dreaming, and a great need inside her that often burned for expression, hadn’t the first idea what she really wanted to do. So there’d be no highers for her, which was a pity; she quite enjoyed school. But Mam reckoned the time would be better spent at a secretarial college, where she could get a whole string of qualifications to fit her for a good office job – an idea Liz found vaguely depressing.
Mam set great store by qualifications. Liz could still remember how she had carried on seven years back, when Big Murray, the head teacher at St Anthony’s, had advised against Chris trying for a scholarship – as if it was a personal insult to her! After all, Rita had passed easily enough. Surely Chris deserved an equal chance. But for once Dad had properly taken the wind out of Mam’s sails.
Liz hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but it was almost impossible to have a private argument with only the scullery, the living room, two bedrooms and an attic to accommodate the seven of them. On that particular day Liz had been in the bedroom she then shared with Rita and Shirley Anne, and only a wall as thin as paper between it and her parents’ room.
‘We all know you’re a great one for education, Kathleen,’ Dad was saying, quiet enough, but with the Irish coming out in him, the way it always did when he was moved or meaning business. ‘But don’t be trying to make an academic out of young Chris. He sets great store by your opinion, but he’s just not bookish – expect too much of him and he’ll end up with the notion he’s failed you.’
‘He won’t fail, not if he works hard…’
‘You’re deluding yourself, acushla. Our Rita’s the brainy one. And Liz, too. She’ll surprise us all one day, I’m thinking – ’ Listening, Liz had blushed. ‘And we’ll have to wait and see how the little ones turn out. But Christopher is different – he’s a doer not a thinker, and he knows what he wants.’
‘I don’t understand you, Michael Ryan,’ Mam had thrown back at him. ‘He’s your son. Don’t you have any ambition for him at all?’
‘Ambition?’ he repeated. ‘No, not a scrap. I don’t hold with being ambitious for others. But I have hope. I hope all my children will succeed – that they will be whatever it is in them to be to the best of their ability. For Christopher that means making good bread. He’s halfway there already, but then, he’s had the knack of it from the day he first climbed on to a stool to get his hands in the dough trough.’
‘Only because you’ve encouraged him. Getting him up at five in the morning to help you before he goes to school – small wonder his work’s suffered!’ Her mother’s accusation sounded bitter. ‘God only knows why you’re so keen for him to follow you! It hasn’t got us very far.’
‘Is that how you see it? I hadn’t realized – ’ Liz heard the hurt in his voice, and longed to rush in and comfort him. But her mother must have heard it too, for she exclaimed: ‘That isn’t what I meant at all, and you know it! It’s not your fault times have been bad. But they will get better, and – oh, Michael, don’t you see? With a really good education, there are going to be so many more opportunities for our children than we ever had! I just want them all to have the chance of a good job that will lead somewhere!’
‘Of course you do, Kathy, my love. Do you think I don’t? But you must understand that baking isn’t simply a job. It’s a gift, something born in you, like painting or music. And when you have such a calling, you have to follow it, no matter what. Because at the end of the day, knowing what you want out of life is more important than passing a few ould exams for the sake of proving how clever you are.’
There had been a passion in Dad’s voice when he spoke of his work that Liz had never heard before – a poetic eloquence that made her heart almost burst with pride. It must have had a similar effect on her mother, for she allowed him to continue unchallenged.
‘And I think Chris should work somewhere else for a while when he does leave school,’ he said. ‘The experience will be good for him, and he’ll be bringing in a wage which we can’t afford to give him at present. But who knows – in a year or two, when the better times do come, we can maybe run to a bigger shop altogether; maybe even be like Fred Munnings, and have Ryan and Son above the door in fine gold letters. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, acushla?’
Only then did Mam speak. Liz wasn’t sure she believed they could ever compete with Mr Munnings, who had three shops, including one in Church Street where all the posh people shopped, and lots of wholesale customers besides, but she said with an odd sort of laugh, ‘Well, that’s being ambitious with a vengeance! But we’ll see. You’re a smooth-tongued rogue, Michael Ryan, when you’ve a mind to be.’
And Liz heard the smile creep into her father’s soft Irish voice. ‘Amn’t I just, though? And all without passing a single exam in me life! But, sure, a little thing like that didn’t stop you making shameless eyes at me the moment we met…’ And that had been the end of the argument, except for a lot of muffled laughter and scuffling.
Over the next few years her mother had certainly redoubled her own efforts, driving everyone else as hard as herself. Then, last winter, Mrs Heap died. She had kept a run-down grocer’s next to them on Great Homer Street, and Mam had been forever complaining that Heap’s shabby window was a disgrace that did their own trade no good at all.
They were in the middle of Sunday dinner when Dad mentioned that he had been talking to the old woman’s son, who was wanting a quick sale of the premises. Without a word Mam got up from the table and went upstairs. They heard the creak of the top drawer of the bedroom chest, and a minute later she was down again, laying a small Post Office savings book on the table beside Dad’s plate. Liz, as curious as the rest of the family, craned forward to look. They watched him open it, and saw his face go blank.
Finally he looked up at Mam, disbelief changing to awe. ‘But this is – There’s almost enough here to – ’ She nodded, and a slow smile lit his eyes. ‘Begob, but you’re a crafty one, Kathleen Ryan! You must have been squirrelling money away for years!’ He got up and put his arms round her in a way that brought a lump to Liz’s throat, and said softly, ‘I don’t know how you did it, but I’m glad it’s my side you’re on, woman!’
Mam had actually blushed. ‘I know it isn’t exactly the grand expansion you had in mind, Michael, but with a bit of help from the bank we could perhaps lay the first brick in the foundations of the Ryan Empire.’ And everyone had cheered, though the younger children weren’t quite sure why.
For a while after that things became quite exciting, as walls were knocked down and others built up. Everyone helped, even the little ones, and there was whitewash everywhere. At the end of it, there was lots more room in the house, and the shop looked twice the size, all light and airy, with the counters extended and new shelves put up to display the groceries.
Best of all, Mam now had the two things she had secretly yearned for – a bathroom, converted from the second scullery, with a gas geyser to heat the water, and a tiny parlour of her very own, out of what had been Mrs Heap’s living room.
Mam had had to be coaxed over the parlour, which she said was a needless extravagance. But – ‘Sure, it’ll be worth every penny, acushla,’ Dad had said softly, watching her expression, ‘if it brings that lovely sparkle back into your eyes.’
‘Wasn’t that the most romantic thing you ever saw?’ Liz whispered to her sisters in bed that same night. ‘Mam’s face was a sight – all pretty and rosy-cheeked.’ Rita, ever practical, pointed out that everyone flushed up when they got excited, and if Liz spent less time at the pictures, or with her nose in a book, she might be better able to distinguish between real life and sloppy romance. An argument ensued, with Shirley Anne for once taking Liz’s part – though she thought it a bit much, calling Mam pretty.
Liz smiled, remembering, and took the kettle into the scullery to fill it from the tap at the wide stone sink so that she could set it on the fire ready to mash the tea when her father came downstairs.
That had been the start of better times. It was as if Mam had been given a new lease of life. Like a bee in clover, she set about making the expanded shop pay its way. She got up very early to help Dad in the bakehouse, and most days Liz did her share of baking, too. Jobs were allotted with rigorous impartiality, and any pocket money had to be earned by taking extra Saturday jobs. ‘This isn’t a hotel,’ Mam would say briskly. ‘The good things in life have to be earned. And our Rita’s board and lodging at Mount Pleasant still has to be found.’
Dad bought a big covered handcart, and spent every spare moment carrying samples of bread and confectionery to all parts of Liverpool – not just the ordinary loaves, but some of the traditional recipes he had brought from Ireland; the soda and wheaten breads, the farls and barm bracks, and a special kind of potato cake called boxty, which he made to order. Liz would often grate the raw potato for the boxty, singing the rhyme he had taught her. ‘Boxty in the griddle, boxty in the pan. If you can’t make boxty, you’ll never get your man.’
Lots of general stores agreed to give his samples a try. In fact, the venture proved so successful that Dad had to start at two o’clock in the morning to get all the baking done in time, and Joey, and sometimes Liz herself, helped with the early deliveries. He’d even begun to talk about looking for a second-hand van.
The shop trade increased too, as folk, liking what they’d bought from the new outlets, came to see what else Ryan’s had to offer – such as the real home-cured ham, the eggs and cheese that Mam bought from Cousin Tom, who had a farm at Melling.
When Dad applied to join the National Association of Master Bakers, Mam’s cup was full. ‘You should have done it long since,’ she’d said with satisfaction. ‘You’ve as much right to call yourself a Master Baker as Fred Munnings.’
The jangle of the bell cut into Liz’s thoughts. She flicked back a straying pigtail, smoothed her pinafore and hurried through to the shop. Already the steamy windows were bejewelled with medallions of frost against the street lamp beyond. A shawled figure hovered near the side counter, one hand furtively outstretched towards a barm brack, only to be swiftly withdrawn.
‘On yer own, are yer, Liz gairl?’ Nora Figg’s voice oozed weary resignation, but the eyes of Fortune Street’s busybody, darting this way and that, were needle-sharp. ‘I just come ter see if y’d gorr’any of them penny bags yer mam has of a Monday.’
Liz knew there were some under the counter, mostly buns left over from Saturday. But she didn’t see why the likes of Mrs Figg should benefit. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Anyway, Mam says you’ve not to have any more till you’ve paid off your tally.’
Fury flared, but the retort was bitten back. A sigh swelled the thin bosom confined beneath the shawls. ‘She’s an ‘ard woman, your mam – God-fearing, but ’ard. It’s ter be ’oped she never lairns whar’it is ter be left a poor lonely widder woman, wid only the paltry Relief between ’er an’ deggeradation.’ Mrs Figg paused to gauge the effect of her oratory on the young girl.
But Liz had heard it all before. She might have shown more sympathy, had she not so often seen that same ‘poor widder woman’ leave their shop, stopping only to light a furtive fag before scurrying into the public of The Grapes on the corner opposite.
‘Perhaps,’ she suggested innocently, ‘if you were to pay something off what you owe? There’s more than eight shillings on the tally…’
‘Eight shillin’! And where would the likes o’ me get eight shillin’?’
Liz eyed the nicotine-stained fingers clamped over the jaws of a shabby purse which bulged noticeably in the middle. The woman followed her gaze. ‘It’s only pennies, an’ them mostly spoken for.’ Defensiveness turned to cunning. ‘If yer was ter slip me a couple of them ha’penny farls, mind, I could likely manage.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Liz seized the scones from the counter, dropped them unceremoniously into a bag, twirled the corners deftly and held it out of reach until the penny was safely in her hand. Grumbling, Mrs Figg opened the purse a crack and fished out the single coin. Liz took it and handed over the bag. ‘And don’t you dare tell Mam I let you have them!’
The paper bag disappeared rapidly beneath the folds of the shawl, but still Mrs Figg made no move to go. ‘Nor’ ill, is she – yer mam?’ Her shifting eyes were suddenly intent upon Liz’s expressive face. ‘Only I could of sworn I seen ’er goin’ inter the doctor’s sairgery earlier – an’ she’s been lookin’ as sick as a sow’s ear fer a while now…’
Liz realized too late why the wretched woman, known to all as ‘Nosey Nora’, had come into the shop. ‘Mother’s just fine, Mrs Figg. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve work to do.’
The woman bristled and drew her shawl tight around her. ‘Well, I ‘ope she’s wearin’ summat warm,’ she said spitefully. ‘It’s brass monkeys out there, an’ there’ll be a freezin’ fog comin’ in off the Mairsey any minute, mark my words!’
As she turned to leave the door burst open, letting in a rush of cold air and the pipe of treble voices irreverently rendering the unauthorised, but highly topical, version of a well-loved carol – ‘Hark the herald angels si-ing, Mrs Simpson’s pinched our king…’ – currently popular among the young.
‘You wanna watch wur you’re goin’, Joey Ryan!’ she snapped, as two well muffled schoolboys, their bright faces pinched with cold, tumbled into the shop, almost knocking her down. ‘No consideration f’ yer elders! What’s more, the scuffers’ll ’ave you up fer treason if they catch yez singin’ that blasphemous rubbish! An’ serve yer right!’ She left, banging the door behind her.
Liz was round the counter in a flash. She grabbed a fistful of collar in each hand, and frogmarched her brother and his inseparable best mate through into the living room, her tongue-lashing punctuated by the occasional sharp shake.
‘Leave off, our Lizzie! You’re chokin’ us!’
‘Serve you right if I did, my lad!’ she retorted, giving him a final shake before releasing them both. ‘And don’t call me Lizzie! How dare you shame us in front of that woman with that mockery of a carol!’
‘Don’t talk daft, it’s just a bit of fun. Everyone’s singin’ it.’
‘You’re not everyone. Anyway, it’s not just the carol,’ Liz said – though she hated them making fun of the handsome young king, whose voice had sounded so sad on the wireless last Friday night when she’d sat with Mam and Dad listening to his abdication speech. She thought it terribly romantic that he was giving up his throne for the woman he loved – a bit like Rudolph Rassendall in The Prisoner of Zenda, who’d had to give up the throne and Princess Flavia, except that fiction wasn’t quite the same thing. Mam, of course, being Mam, said that King Edward should have put duty before love, and Dad agreed with her. But all Joey had worried about was whether they would still be able to have the street party for the Coronation, like they’d had for the late King’s jubilee.
The recollection sharpened Liz’s voice anew. ‘I mean, just look at you! And you’re no better, Eddie Killigan – a pair of scruffbags sent to frighten the customers. And another thing,’ she prodded the air with an accusing finger. ‘You know full well you’re forbidden to use the shop entrance, let alone drag every Tom, Dick and Harry in with you, trailing your muddy feet all over the place and knocking customers over.’
With an air of angelic innocence, Joey opened wide his luminous blue eyes, with the dark curling lashes that were the envy of every girl in his class at school. ‘Nor I haven’t, neither, cos Eddie isn’t a Tom, or a D…’ He ducked the cuff she aimed at him, darted out of reach behind the table with the eel-like agility of an active ten-year-old, and saw her mouth twitch. ‘Anyhow, I don’t know what yer makin’ such a fuss for – it was only Nosey Nora!’
‘Don’t call her that! And don’t take your coat off, either. Mam’s left some messages for you to do.’
‘Aw, no! Why does it always have to be me? Our Shirley Anne’s four years older than me an’ she’s never made to do messages!’
‘Shirley Anne’s gone to her dancing class…’
‘Ooh er!’ Joey pulled his mouth into a prissy pout and teetered round on the toes of his boots. Eddie, his sandy hair standing up in spikes, fell about laughing, and even Liz found his antics hard to resist.
‘It’s a good job she can’t see you, my lad, or she’d thump you black and blue.’
‘Gerroff!’ scoffed Eddie. ‘Your Shirley Anne couldn’t batter fish!’
‘That just shows how little you know her, my lad.’ The shop bell rang again. ‘Come on, off with you now. I’ll have to go,’ she said, and twitched a piece of paper from behind the clock. ‘Back door this time. Here’s the list, and the basket’s on the table – ’
‘But we’re starving!’ Joey clutched his stomach in mock agony. ‘An’ it’s freezin’ out there!’
‘You’ll soon get warm if you run,’ Liz called hard-heartedly, already on her way, her plaits bouncing against her shoulders. And then, relenting a little, ‘Oh, go on with you. If I’ve time, there’ll be hot Bovril for you both when you get back – I might even let you make dripping toast.’
‘Great!’ The door banged. Liz winced and went through to the shop.
*
It had been a long uncomfortable wait, made worse by a room full of wheezers and scratchers, as well as the usual crop of work-shy men with hangovers and hacking coughs, and fractious children. Kathleen Ryan had deliberately taken a seat near the door, avoiding the area round the small gas fire where most people congregated. Even so, it wasn’t long before the stench of unwashed bodies filled her nostrils, penetrating the double layer of scarf held tight across her face. She had tried breathing through her mouth, but it made little difference. To make matters worse, her corsets were digging in something cruel, even with the laces let out as far as they would go and the two bottom buttons of her bust bodice undone. Above the fireplace an ancient wooden clock ticked sonorously, and as each minute passed, the finger jerked forward: One more an’ then I’ll leave, she kept telling herself, her stomach close to heaving.
Now, at last, she sat in the starkly lit surgery, surrounded by the familiar clutter of books and patients’ files, all kinds of paraphernalia spilling over every surface and on to the floor. It had looked exactly the same for as long as she could remember. In fact, the whole house, as far as she could see, was crying out for a duster and a bit of elbow grease. That housekeeper had a cushy job, all right.
Kathleen’s gaze returned to Dr Graham, who was writing in a swift spidery hand, and her knuckles whitened as she clutched the handbag lying in her lap. The desk lamp made a halo around his bent head, and illogically she found herself remembering a time when that unruly white hair had been black and wavy, and she had tugged at it with baby fingers. Where had the years gone?
She still felt uncomfortable after his examination – and, to be honest, was deeply ashamed at the need for it. What must he be thinking, after putting the fear of God into us all those years ago?
As if reading her thoughts, the doctor laid down his pen, a reassuring smile replacing the look of preoccupation. ‘Well now, Kathleen – ’ He spoke with fatherly familiarity – and why not, for hadn’t he brought her into the world, and her children too, and seen them through all their childish ailments? ‘It’s not the end of the world, though I’ll not insult your intelligence by pretending I’m happy about it.’
‘You and me, both,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s been so long. I ought to be ashamed – a woman of my age.’
‘My dear Kathleen, women of your age are having babies all the time.’
‘That’s not what I mean, and you know it. But you’d think after more than ten years – well, nine, I suppose, if you count the miscarriage…’
Dr Graham did not miss the suppressed hint of pleading, almost of panic, in her voice, and his heart went out to her. He remembered her last three increasingly difficult pregnancies, with intermittent bleeding, the one still-birth between Shirley Anne and Joey, and the final traumatic miscarriage to which she referred, resulting in a haemorrhage that had almost killed her. He had told her and Michael quite bluntly then that there must be no more babies. Sterilization had been firmly rejected, as he’d known it would be, as had the use of any so-called unnatural devices. He sighed. The situation was all too common among his Catholic patients, and the outcome inevitable, for even if the husband took to seeking his pleasures elsewhere, sooner or later the marital bed beckoned, with disastrous results.
But the Ryans were different. No one could doubt their great love for each other. Michael in particular had aroused Dr Graham’s admiration. His faithfulness was never in question, yet he had somehow managed to sublimate the physical expression of his love for the best part of ten yeras. Graham knew of very few men capable of sustaining that kind of voluntary abstinence for one year, let alone ten. Ah well, good man though Michael was, he was only human. One careless moment was all it took, and Fate had a way of playing some pretty rotten tricks.
‘No need to tell you, I suppose, that you’re almost four months gone?’ He fixed Kathleen with a baleful eye before concluding ambiguously, ‘It’s a pity you didn’t come to see me sooner. Not that it’s too late, even now – ’
She smiled faintly, in spite of her distress. ‘You’re a great trier, doctor, I’ll say that for you. But you know the answer.’
Dr Graham had long ago rebelled against his own Calvinistic upbringing, and what faith he retained was somewhat insubstantial, leading him into frequent conflict with the Almighty. He’d known he was on a hiding to nothing even hinting at abortion, but even so, he had to stifle the impatience which unquestioning obedience to the edicts of Holy Mother Church always evoked in him. If those who made the rules were required to suffer one quarter of the agonies that women endured – mostly through the selfishness of men – they would maybe amend some of their more sanctimonious utterances. Of course each new life was sacred. His whole profession was founded on the precept of caring, on the preservation of life, so that he suffered agonies of conscience whenever, like Solomon, he was forced to make a choice. But he had watched too many women like Kathleen die needlessly – and weren’t their lives sacred, too?
Kathleen, of course, had a way of defying the odds. Almost any other woman he could think of with her medical history, working the hours she worked, would probably have aborted naturally weeks ago. Even as a child, she had shown herself to be spirited and courageous. But this time a heart as big as a bucket and a capacity to endure might not be enough. He found himself hoping, with unusual fervour, that he would be proved wrong.
‘I was tired, and my breasts were a bit tender, but there was no morning sickness like I always used to have,’ Kathleen was explaining, ‘so when I had almost non-existent periods for a couple of months, it was easy to kid myself that it was the change starting early.’ And oh, God, didn’t I pray that it might be so! she thought. ‘But by the third month, I knew – the way I felt, it was no use fooling myself any longer. I suppose I should have come to see you then…’
‘It would have been more sensible,’ he agreed.
‘Well, I’m here now.’
It was ungraciously said, but Dr Graham ignored the uncharacteristic lapse of good manners, which doubtless arose from apprehension and guilt. How much longer, he found himself wondering, would she have gone on putting off this visit, had not some intermittent bleeding over the past few days culminated in a bleed that finally put the fear of God into her?
‘True enough,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure I don’t have to spell things out for you. We’ll just have to see what can be done to diminish the risk of aborting. Thankfully, no harm has been done – as yet.’ He let the last two words lie, and saw a shadow cross her face.
‘Tell me, how has Michael taken the news?’
It was immediately obvious from her face that she hadn’t told her husband, and this time a small ‘tch’ of impatience did escape him. ‘Oh, Kathleen, girl, what am I to do with you? Well, he’ll have to be told, because if this poor child is to have any chance at all, you’re going to have to make some pretty drastic alterations to your life from now on.’
‘HUSH NOW, FREDDIE,’ the young woman waiting to be served told the grizzling toddler balanced on her jutting hip, as he lurched forward to grab a jam doughnut placed tantalizingly beyond the reach of his wriggling fingers. ‘Mammy hasn’t got any pennies to spare today.’ She smiled wanly at Liz. ‘They don’t understand at his age, do they? I wouldn’t have brought him, only his grizzling gets on Arnie’s nerves…’
Liz often wondered how Ellen Cassidy, who had gentility stamped all over her, had come to marry her big roistering docker husband. They lived at number twenty-seven, four doors up from Nora Figg. Ellen couldn’t be much above her late twenties now. She had once been pretty in a fair, delicate way, and still could be, but five children in quick succession had left their mark, and since Arnie’s accident her blonde hair had dulled to mouse, and she had aged years.
‘Every tragedy ‘as its blessin’,’ Liz had overheard one customer confide to another after it happened. ‘At least there’ll be no more babbies for that poor lass.’ Looking at Mrs Cassidy now, thin and pinched with cold in her threadbare coat, it seemed to Liz that it was a queer kind of blessing.
‘How is Mr Cassidy?’ she asked.
‘Much as usual. But it’s kind of you to ask.’
‘You’ve come for your bread.’ Liz reached for the large loaf Ellen had brought in earlier to be baked, something Dad only did for a few special customers.
‘Thanks, love. And a tin of conny.’ Ellen seemed to hesitate, as Liz reached down the condensed milk, her glance strayed towards the living-room door. ‘Your mother wouldn’t be about, would she?’
Liz, wrapping the loaf, guessed why she wanted to know. She reached beneath the counter and brought out a couple of the bags she had denied to Mrs Figg. ‘Mam’s out, I’m afraid, but she said to be sure to give you these if you came in. One of broken biscuits and one of buns. And you might as well have this, too,’ she added impulsively, reaching for a solitary currant loaf on the back shelf. ‘It’s an order someone didn’t collect, and it’ll only go to waste. Call it fourpence – that’s a shilling altogether, with the bread.’
A faint flush of embarassment ran up under Ellen Cassidy’s skin, and she made no immediate move to open her purse. ‘Are you sure about the currant loaf? You’ll be open for a good while yet.’
‘Course I’m sure. Honestly.’ Liz crossed her fingers. It was only a white lie, she told herself, although there was no such thing according to Father Clarkson; in his book all lies were wicked. She’d get a terrible telling-off and at least five Hail Marys as a penance at her next confession, but it was worth it. Anyway, she didn’t see how God could possibly damn her for performing a Christian act. Still, as a kind of extra insurance, she kept the fingers of one hand crossed as she took the shilling. Then, in an excess of generosity, she recklessly reached for a doughnut, ducked under the counter flap and held it out to Freddie. ‘My treat,’ she said. He snatched it from her with fingers like icicles, and immediately his face was covered in jam.
‘Oh, bless you, Liz, but you shouldn’t have.’ Ellen’s voice was taut with emotion.
‘Whyever not?’
‘Because I don’t want him to grow up thinking that he only has to crave something…’
‘I’m sure he won’t. Anyway,’ Liz eyed the child’s smeared face, and grinned infectiously, ‘it’s a bit late to try to take it off him now. You’ll just have to tell him I’ve decided to give my Christmas presents a bit early this year.’
A tug hooted mournfully on the river as she held the door and watched them disappear down Fortune Street, followed by the first creeping swirl of fog. She shivered and hurriedly shut it out.
In the living room, Liz found her father thrusting a taper into the fire to light his pipe, his sandy hair curling damply on the nape of his neck where he’d given himself a quick swill under the tap.
‘Dad. I didn’t hear you come down.’
Michael Ryan straightened up, ducking to avoid the rack of washing with a deftness unusual in so big a man. He drew unhurriedly on his pipe, tamping it down until, satisfied at last, he pinched out the flame and returned the taper to its place on the mantelshelf. Only then did he turn, pipe in hand, eyes narrowed against the wreathing smoke.
‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you? You were busy in the shop.’
It was a perfectly reasonable reply, but something in the soft Irish voice made Liz look at him suspiciously. ‘How long have you been here?’
‘Long enough to discover that, left to yourself, you’ve a fine free way with the profits,’ he said in the mildest of tones. ‘If you mean to treat all our customers so magnanimously, I’m thinking we’ll be a long time making that fortune your mother’s always on about.’
‘It was only a currant loaf an’ a doughnut,’ she said defensively, ‘and I’ll pay for them out of my own money.’ One shaggy eyebrow twitched and she ran forward impulsively to throw her arms round him, relishing the rough texture of his cardigan against her cheek, with its familiar smell of Wills Gold Bar tobacco, and loving him quite fiercely. ‘Oh, Daddie, I suddenly thought how awful life must be for Ellen Cassidy. There’s only her struggling to keep that whole family together, and nothing to look forward to. I thought how lucky we were, and I just wanted to do something! Giving Freddie that treat was such a little thing.’ When he didn’t answer, she said in an anxious, wheedling voice, ‘You won’t tell Mam, will you?’
‘That is not a thing you should be asking of me,’ he admonished, but his hand was gentling her hair, for this was his Lizzie – generous to a fault, and he wouldn’t have her any different. Liz sighed and relaxed. ‘Did you have much trouble getting your mother off to the doctor’s?’ he asked presently.
She drew away at once, hearing the special softness that always crept into his voice when he spoke of Mam. But a sudden need to reassure him overcame the gnawing worm of jealousy. Putting on her best James Cagney impression, she said, ‘Well, I had to threaten her a bit, but she went quietly in the end.’
He managed a smile, but Liz noticed that it didn’t quite reach his eyes. And he began to fiddle with his pipe again, sucking at it and tamping it down as he so often did when he was bothered. Apprehension returned, churning her insides.
‘Mam will be all right, won’t she?’
Sighing, he laid his pipe on the mantelshelf and pulled her close again, this child who was his favourite, though he loved them all. His chin sank to rest against her hair. ‘Don’t ever be doubting it, Lizzie, my love. She’s just a bit run down, I reckon. But, sure, isn’t your mother Dandy Power’s daughter, and the very spit of him? The Powers are bonny fighters, every one.’ The raw emotion in his voice was almost more than Liz could bear, for it told her that in spite of his apparent confidence, he was as unsure as she was herself.
It had always been the same between Mam and himself. Grandma Power had told Liz often enough, before she went to God, about the big quiet young man from Connemara with eyes as soft and blue as cornflowers, who had taken a room next door to them, and lost his heart utterly and completely to their daughter Kathleen the moment he first laid eyes on her. Their wedding photograph had pride of place on the kitchen dresser, and Liz would often stand and look at it, the raw-boned young man with the shy smile, the sleeves of his coat not quite long enough for his arms, and the girl with pretty dark hair cut fashionably short and curling round her face. You could see the love shining out of them. To see them now, her father’s shoulders beginning to hunch a little after long hours in the bakehouse, and Mam, hiding a heart of gold and her weariness behind a brisk driving manner and sharp tongue, it was sometimes hard to believe they were the same two people. Yet only recently, at Uncle Nick’s wedding breakfast in the church hall, she had watched them dancing, folded very close, with Dad crooning ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen,’ softly into Mam’s ear, and a lump had come into her throat. Rita said it was embarrassing, them carrying on like that at their age, but Liz blinked away a tear and wondered if anyone would ever love her like that.
By the time Joey and Eddie came back, Michael had mixed his starter dough and gone on his rounds, to collect the money and any unsold goods. Liz made the promised Bovril for the boys, and left the two of them listening to Children’s Hour on the wireless while fighting over the toasting fork. ‘Don’t make a mess,’ she said. ‘I’ve put the dripping bowl out on the side, but I’ll thank you not to go digging down for all the juicy bits from underneath.’
‘Can we go and play ollies in the bakehouse after?’
She eyed the shiny marbles chinking in Joey’s hand with misgiving. ‘Only if you promise not to leave them lying around. We don’t want any broken legs this close to Christmas. And watch out for Missy’s kittens. They might just be daft enough to swallow one.’
When Shirley Anne came in, banging the back door behind her and muffled to the eyebrows in a thick woollen scarf for fear of germs, Eddie had gone home for his tea and Joey had vanished upstairs. Complaining bitterly, the younger girl unwound the scarf and left it in a heap on the floor with her dancing shoes, then rushed to the chair by the fire, pulled off her boots, and sat wriggling her feet in their thick black stockings as close to the flames as she dared, half crying as they began to thaw and hot aches set in.
‘You’d do much better to give them a brisk rub,’ Liz admonished, coming through from the shop. ‘You’ll get terrible chilblains doing that.’
‘I don’t care. Rubbing them hurts just as much.’ Shirley Anne pulled at the ribbon that tied back her shoulder-length flaxen curls, and they sprang free to cluster about her face. At just fourteen, she was already bidding to be a beauty – and knew it. ‘Besides, I’ve see you toasting your feet often enough.’
‘Please yourself. Only don’t be too long about it; there’s the table to lay and bread and butter to be cut. And I’ll thank you not to leave those things on the floor. Chris is bringing Jimmy Marsden home for supper.’
This news effected an immediate transformation. Her sister rose in a graceful swoop, all discomfort forgotten. ‘Isn’t he the one whose father has that big butcher’s shop near Lunts? The good looking one?’
‘if you happen to like boys who plaster Brylcreem on their hair and talk all smarmy…’ Liz said dismissively.
‘Well, Lily Killigan and me both think he’s smashing!’
‘“I,”’ she corrected absently. ‘Anyhow, Lily Killigan thinks anything in long trousers is smashing.’
Shirley Anne chose to ignore this slur on her best friend. She drifted across to the staircase, pausing two steps up, with one hand on the banister rail to say in her best stage voice: ‘I think I’ll just go and change my frock. This old serge isn’t fit to be seen. It needs washing.’
‘Well, you’ll have to wash it yourself,’ Liz snapped. ‘And don’t be long changing,’ she added, peeved that Shirley Anne could somehow manage to look ethereal even in her old serge and woolly stockings. ‘Mam’s out, and I don’t see why I should do everything!’
‘No need to snap. Anyway, I’ll be finishing school in a few days, so it’s hardly worth bothering.’
It had long been a source of grievance to Liz that her sister was accorded her full Christian name while her own much nicer Elizabeth had been shortened. At least she no longer got called Lizzie, except occasionally by Dad, and she didn’t mind that, because it was said with love. But in her less charitable moments, she resented the fact that, because Shirley Anne had been a delicate baby, she had been indulged from the first. Admittedly Liz, little more than a baby herself, had been enchanted by the tiny angelic bundle, who had learned early to exploit her fragile appearance and enormous blue eyes to good effect – and had continued to do so throughout fourteen years, both at home and at school, whenever anything in the least taxing was demanded of her. But somehow she was never too tired to dance.
It was when she was four that dancing lessons had been advocated to strengthen her under-developed limbs. Shirley Anne’s talent showed itself at once, evoking eulogies from Miss Eglantine, her teacher, and she quickly became the star of the dance school’s small concerts. When the remedial need for lessons passed, Miss Eglantine had argued that it would be criminal to stifle such a gift: Mam had refused to spend hard-earned money on what could no longer be justified as a necessity, but Shirley Anne made herself ill with crying, and finally promised that she would earn the money for her lessons.
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