The Land is Bright

Clough

Chapter One

Darkness came early to the narrow streets of Liverpool in 1886, but although the March afternoon was made even more dreary by fog, the tiny living room of number nine, Gell Street was bright with the flames of a huge coal fire.

A wooden cradle stood on the rag rug before the fire, and twelve- year-old Sally Palin was rocking it, and peering anxiously at her sleeping baby sister.

Two young boys with mourning bands on their shabby jackets were sitting by the table. The elder boy came over to the cradle and looked at the baby.

‘D’yer think we should get Mrs Malloy, Sal?’ he asked, but Sally shook her head.

‘No. Da left me in charge of our Emily,’ she said. ‘He’ll be home soon, anyhow.’

In an effort to look grown up she had scraped back her red-brown hair, and wrapped one of her dead mother’s white aprons around her thin body, high under her armpits, but her childish voice trembled, and her blue eyes were wide with fear.

‘But she looks awful poorly,’ John was persisting, when suddenly their father lifted the latch of the door. It opened directly into the living room, and his face paled as he saw the frightened children. Swiftly he crossed to the cradle, and turned back the blanket from the sleeping baby.

‘She’s sweating, Da,’ Sally said nervously, but her father smiled.

‘No wonder,’ he said. ‘She’s roasting hot.’ He drew the cradle further away from the fire.

‘Oh, Da, I thought she had the fever!’ Sally said. ‘Her cheeks were so red. I built up the fire to cook the scouse, but it’s ready now, anyway.’

‘Aye, well, you didn’t need to cook the baby too,’ Matthew Palin said drily.

Sally glanced at him, wondering whether or not she should smile. Since her mother’s death two weeks earlier, he had been like an unpredictable stranger instead of the loving father she had always known. Feeling lighthearted with relief about Emily, she drew the black pan on to the hob beside the fire, and said impulsively, ‘Our John wanted to call Mrs Mal, Da, but she’s already been in and out of the house all day like a fiddler’s elbow. I was sick of seeing her.’

‘That’s enough now, Sally,’ her father said sternly. ‘Yer should be showing a good example to the lads. Speak respectful about anyone older than yerself, and remember, Mrs Mal was a good neighbour to Mam when the baby was born and – and at the end.’

‘But Da, we looked after Mam,’ Sally protested.

‘Aye, but Mrs Malloy done things for Mam that I couldn’t do, and you wasn’t old enough for. Now think on, all of yer. I don’t want none of yer to ferget a good turn. And you, Sally, don’t yer ferget we’ve got a long road to travel yet with the baby. Yer’ll be glad of Mrs Mal many a time.’

He hung his cap and jacket behind the door, and sat down in the wooden armchair to unlace his boots. Sally hung her head.

‘There’s a letter for you, Da,’ she said in a subdued voice, hoping to change the subject. I never know when I’m doing right, she thought resentfully. Doing all the work and cooking a nice tea, and he bites me head off for nothing.

Matthew opened the letter and read it slowly, then sat with his lips pursed and a worried frown on his face, as Sally began to serve the meal, and John cut slices of bread. As they sat down to eat, the baby woke and began to cry loudly, and Sally jumped up to lift her from the cradle.

A moment later there was a tap at the door, and Mrs Malloy from next door came in. She was a tiny woman with bright blue eyes, and greying dark hair drawn back in a bun. Over her long black skirt she wore a spotless white apron, and a black shawl.

‘Ah, Matt,’ she said in a soft Irish brogue, ‘are ye all right, lad? I heard the little wan cry. Will I take her across to Maggie Connolly’s?’

‘If yer will, Mrs Mal,’ he said. ‘She’s maybe hungry.’

Sally took a blanket from the cradle to wrap round the baby, and Mrs Malloy chuckled.

‘God bless ye, child,’ she said. ‘Sure it’s only a few steps across the street, and she’ll be under me shawl. She’ll not take cold.’ Sally opened the door, and as Mrs Malloy carried the baby out, a young woman carrying a basket on her head came stepping down the street. She stopped beside them.

‘Is the babby orl right?’ she asked. ‘Our Molly’s just ‘ad ‘er fifth, an’ she’s got plenty of milk if yer needin’ it.’

‘Ah, no, Maggie Connolly has full and plenty,’ Mrs Malloy said shortly, and Sally timidly added, ‘Thanks all the same, Katie.’ The girl showed her broken teeth in a smile, and moved gracefully away, her ragged skirts swinging about her bare feet, and a strong smell of fish wafting back from her. Mrs Malloy screwed up her mouth in disgust.

‘The impidence of thim, the dirty tinkers!’ she exclaimed. ‘Sure I couldn’t face yer poor mam when me time comes, if I let the child be nourished be the like of them. At least Maggie’s clean. Go you in now, girl, and ate yer scouse before it gets cold on yer.’

She carried the baby across the narrow street to the neighbour whose baby had been born a few days before Julia Palin’s, and who had offered to share her abundant breast milk with the bereaved child.

When Sally turned back to the kitchen her father was sitting, spoon in hand, staring into the distance, and seven-year-old Alfred had taken advantage of his preoccupation to dip a crust into Sally’s plate of scouse. His own plate had been wiped clean.

‘Alfred,’ Sally shouted indignantly. He jumped back, and Matthew looked up sharply.

‘What’s the matter with yer, girl?’ he exclaimed. ‘Screeching like that. Enough to frighten the daylights out of anyone.’

‘Sorry, Da,’ Sally muttered, picking up her spoon. Her father began to eat his neglected meal, and Sally made fierce grimaces at Alfred. He grinned back, peeping at her mischievously under lowered eyelids, and child though she was herself, a wave of thankfulness swept over her, to see signs of the merry little boy he had been until his mother’s death two weeks earlier. Since then he had crept about like a sad little ghost, stunned by the suddenness of his loss.

After the meal the boys helped Sally to clear away, and to wash the dishes, and by the time that Mrs Malloy returned with Emily, now replete and fast asleep, John and Alfred were in bed.

Sally took the baby upstairs. When she came down Mrs Malloy had gone, and Matthew was sitting in his chair, smoking and staring into the fire, the letter in his hand. Sally moved quietly about the kitchen, glancing at her father’s abstracted face from time to time, as she cut bread and made sandwiches for his ‘carry out’.

Finally, when she sat down opposite to him and took up a sock to darn, she said timidly, ‘Is something wrong, Da?’

He leaned forward and knocked out his pipe, shaking his head, then a thought seemed to strike him. He held out the letter to Sally.

‘Ee are, girl. Yer can read it. It’s got to do with you, anyroad. It’s from yer mam’s sister, yer Aunt Hester, from Ormesdale.’ Sally laid down the sock and opened the letter.

My Dear Brother,

I hope this finds you all well as it leaves us at present. Me and Walter have been thinking about your poor motherless children, living in that place, since we came back from the funeral. As you know we have not been blessed with children, although we are well blessed with this world’s goods, owing to our hard work on the smallholding. We have talked things over, and Walter is willing to train the eldest lad up to the farming, and I will take the baby. I will give her a mother’s love and care for the sake of my poor sister. R.I.P.

I hope this will help you and lift the burden from young Sally,

Your affec. Sister,

Hester.

Sally dropped the letter.

‘Oh, Da, you wouldn’t!’ she exclaimed. ‘You wouldn’t let her take our Emily and our John.’

Matthew sighed. ‘I don’t know what to do, girl, and that’s the God’s truth,’ he said. He got up and walked over to stand at the door. Foggy air laden with the fumes of sulphur from a nearby match works drifted in.

Tugs on the river hooted mournfully, and there were screams and shouts as two women fought outside a gin palace further down the hill. Matthew slammed the door shut, and came back to the fireplace.

‘Living in that place yer aunt says, and maybe she’s right,’ he said bitterly. ‘We was always hopin’ to flit from ‘ere. I don’t want to part with none of yer, Sally, but it’d be a chanst for John, and the baby’d have a good home and every care.’

Sally’s face was red, and her eyes were bright with tears. ‘But I’ll give her every care, Da, and I will ask Mrs Malloy, honest I will. Our John’d fret and so would Emily, because she’s used to us already. Mam wouldn’t want them to go, Da.’

‘Well, God knows I don’t want us split up,’ her father said, staring into the fire, and rubbing the bowl of his pipe up and down his cheek. Sally watched him anxiously, and finally he sighed deeply and eased his shoulders back against the chair. Before he could speak there was a knock at the door, and Mrs Malloy came in with a pile of clean napkins for the baby.

‘Off to bed now, Sally,’ her father ordered, and she said goodnight to him and to Mrs Malloy, and went up obediently, taking care to leave the door at the foot of the stairs ajar. She felt sure that her father intended to consult Mrs Malloy and she was anxious to hear what was said.

As she crouched at the top of the stairs she heard him say, ‘Will ye take a look at that, Mrs Mal, and tell me what yer think.’

‘God bless ye, lad, sure ye know I’ve no schooling,’ Mrs Malloy replied, and then Sally heard her father reading the letter aloud. For a moment Mrs Malloy said nothing, then she asked quietly, ‘But yerself now, Matt. How do ye feel about it yerself, lad?’

‘I don’t know, Mrs Mal, and that’s the truth. It’s a chanst for our John, right enough, and the baby’d never know the difference, but I don’t want to part with none of them. Our Sal said just now that her Mam wouldn’t want them parted.’

‘That’s true for Sally,’ Mrs Malloy sighed. ‘Sure Julie would be broken hearted at the idea, and the baby couldn’t go yet anyhow, without Hester had a wet nurse for her.’

‘Oh, she’ll have everything organised, the same one,’ Matthew said bitterly. ‘There’s nothing she likes better than bossing people around.’

‘Aye, ye’d never take herself and Julie for sisters. Julie never raised her voice, but Lord ha’ mercy on her, she could charm the birds off the trees, and as blithe as a bird herself. But I won’t make your trouble worse be talking about her, lad.’

Sally heard paper rustle, then her father read aloud, ‘Your poor motherless children, living in that place, she says. Well, we know this is a rough sort of place to rear children, Mrs Mal. There’s decent people round here but there’s plenty of riff raff too.’

‘Outside the house, lad, but there’s nothing wrong between these four walls. Ye’ve reared a grand family, thank God, and made a good home for them.’

‘So yer don’t think I should let them go, Mrs Mal? Tell me straight now.’

‘Well, if ye were desperate, lad, I’d say yes – but sure, ye’re far from desperate. Ye have a grand steady job, and Sally’s a good reliable girl. I’ll help all I can.’

‘Yer’ve helped us already, Mrs Mal. I don’t know what we’d do without yer. I don’t think Julie’d like the children to go to Hester, anyroad. They never saw eye to eye.’

Sally heard Mrs Malloy chuckle. ‘Me and Walter have talked it over, says she. Poor little omadhaun, he’d be lucky if he got a word in edgeways. I don’t think he opened his mouth, except to eat, from the minute they came that day, until they went home. Mind you, she’d make two of him, wouldn’t she?’

‘Aye, but he knows how to make the money,’ Matthew said bitterly. ‘Still, I’ll tell them I’ll make me own arrangements for me own children, without them putting their oar in.’

‘But mind what ye say, Mattie lad. Ye don’t want to be falling out with them. No sense in shutting the door.’

‘Oh, I’ll be careful. I’ll take me time over the letter.’ Sally heard the click of the latch as Mrs Malloy left, and with a sigh of relief she stole into the bedroom, and kissed the baby’s soft cheek.

‘I’m your mam now, Emmie,’ she whispered. ‘No one will ever take you away from me.’ She climbed into bed and was asleep within minutes.

The following morning when Mrs Malloy had taken the baby to Maggie Connolly’s, Sally went out to scrub her step and that of her neighbour on the other side, Mrs Hart.

It was a bright morning with a fresh breeze, and most of the tiny houses had freshly scrubbed steps, and clean windows. Sally looked around her, feeling angry as she thought of her aunt’s phrase, ‘living in that place’. Without being able to express her thoughts, she felt instinctively that the people of Gell Street, although poorly clad and often hungry, had an innate decency, and a striving for respectability. The shadow of the pawnshop and the public house fell more heavily on most of the other homes than on her own, but all their lives were far different to those lived in the filthy courts and dilapidated houses, swarming with people, and with vermin, further down the hill.

Mrs Malloy was respectable, Sally thought indignantly, and so were John and James Duggan, the Irish brothers who lodged with her. Mrs Hart, whose step she was now scrubbing, had been born a lady, far superior to Aunt Hester.

When the steps were finished, she went in and moved the black kettle over the fire to make tea. It was ready when Mrs Malloy came in, smiling, with Emily wrapped in her shawl.

‘If ye’d see the cut of Maggie, girl,’ she said, ‘ye’d split yer sides. She’s just after whitewashing the bedrooms and she was like a snowman. I declare to God, she’d as much whitewash on herself as on the walls.’

‘She keeps her house nice and clean though, doesn’t she, Mrs Mal? I was thinking what Aunt Hester said about round here,’ Sally said.

‘Ah, bad luck to her. Boasting and bragging, and upsetting your poor da with the ould letter, as if he hasn’t enough on his plate, God help him. She’s had a grand aisy life and never known a poor day, but she was always black jealous of your Mam, all the same.’

Sally almost dropped the teapot in surprise.

‘Aunt Hester was? But why, Mrs Mal?’

‘Because your mam had a real man for a husband, and there was love and happiness in this house, Sally, for all they’d a struggle to make the two ends meet between paydays. But I shouldn’t be talking to ye this way, girl. Don’t let on to your da, now.’

‘Da didn’t like her saying that about Gell Street, anyway, I could tell,’ said Sally. Mrs Malloy sipped her tea, and sighed.

‘Well, God knows we’re all strivers, Sal, and yet we’re all living on the edge of a pit. It only needs a bit of misfortune to be knocking us over the edge.’

‘Yes, but we’re all respectable, aren’t we, Mrs Mal, and there are posh people here too, like Mrs Hart.’

Mrs Malloy gave a short laugh. ‘Mrs Hart, is it?’ she said. ‘There’s one now that should be a lesson to ye, Sally. Hadn’t she the great life, travelling the world with her mother, and coming home to a grand mansion, with servants to wait on her hand and foot, but then didn’t she run off with Tom Hart, and him the gardener? Her poor mother was that heartbroken she had the gates shut behind them, and she swore they’d never be opened until she was carried through them in her coffin.’

Sally was wide-eyed.

‘I never knew,’ she said. ‘I used to go in with Mam to help Mrs Hart, and Mam used to tell me to listen to Mrs Hart, and try to talk like her. I’m going in tomorrow to scrub out for her.’

‘Yer da doesn’t mind ye going in to do for her then? I know he thinks nothing of the quality. I remember him giving out about the ould Queen when she was here in May for the Exhibition.’

Sally looked puzzled. ‘Da said Mam helped Mrs Hart as a neighbour because she wasn’t strong enough to do her own housework, and Mr Hart is away on the tugs, and I should do the same.’

Mrs Malloy nodded her head with a satisfied air. ‘Well, if ye never have a penny, any of youse, ye’re well off with the father and mother God gave ye, girl, and the way they’ve reared ye.’ She put down her teacup and stood up, drawing her shawl around her, and bending to look into the cradle.

‘This little wan has a look of your Mam, Lord ha’ mercy on her,’ she said. ‘The dark curls and the lovely brown eyes, and so has young Alfie. Yerself and John, now, ye take after yer Da, tall and thin, but maybe not so red-haired. Please God, he’s the kind of man ye’ll find someday for a husband, girlie. A good, steady man.’

‘I’m not going to get married,’ Sally said. ‘I’m just going to look after Emily and Da and the lads.’

Mrs Malloy laughed. ‘Ah, well, time will tell, child,’ she said. ‘There’s wan thing, yer da won’t be able to close any gates after ye.’ She left, smiling, and Sally picked up the baby and cuddled her.

‘I mean it, Emmy,’ she whispered. ‘I’ll never leave you. I’ll always be here to look after you.’

Chapter Two

As time passed, life fell into a different pattern for the Palin family. Sally sometimes felt that the years before her mother’s death belonged to another life, when she had no responsibilities and her mother was always about the house, whistling and singing.

‘A whistling woman, a crowing hen, would frighten the devil out of his den’, her father had been used to say, when her mother whistled one of the tunes played by the barrel organ in the street, but how happy he would be if he could hear that merry sound now.

He had become quiet and morose, rarely speaking except to reprove one of the children, or to comment bitterly on some item in the newspaper, which he read from cover to cover each night; but he was always just, and as before, nearly all that he earned was used for his family. Four ounces of thin twist a week, and the nightly Liverpool Echo were his only indulgences, except for half a pint of rum and coffee in a Birkenhead coffee house, before starting his day’s work in the shipyard at six o’clock.

John had started work as a messenger boy for a grocer in Brunswick Road, after school and all day Saturday, and at the end of the first week he proudly handed his father his wages of one shilling and sixpence, and fourpence he had earned in tips. Sally felt proud too, when her father said, ‘Keep threepence out of yer wages, lad, and any tips yer make, and give our Sally the one and threepence. She lays out the money now.’

She put the money into her mother’s shabby purse, which already held the twenty-one shillings which her father gave her for housekeeping, but later she took out a shilling and put it into the old teapot on the mantelpiece. The housekeeping money had seemed enormous to her at first, even after she had paid the four shillings rent money, but it seemed to dwindle alarmingly. She knew how to buy food economically because she had so often shopped for her mother, but soap, candles, lamp oil and coal devoured money – especially coal, and yet there seemed no hope of using less. Good fires were needed for cooking, and for drying clothes, as well as for providing a warm room for Emily, and for the boys and her father when they came home wet and cold. Sally often wondered how her mother had managed to provide clothes and boots for the family, and worried about what she would do when they were needed. The shilling would be a start and every week she would try to save something more, she decided.

Emily was rapidly outgrowing her baby clothes, and it was Mrs Hart who solved that problem for Sally. When she went in to do Mrs Hart’s scrubbing one day there were two short baby dresses and two flannel petticoats lying on the table. The dresses were beautifully embroidered, and even the petticoats had feather stitching round the neck.

‘I’ve made these a little large to allow for growth, Sally,’ Mrs Hart said. ‘Emily seems to be growing so rapidly.’

Sally stood gazing at the dresses, speechless with delight for a moment, then she burst out, ‘Oh, Mrs Hart, they’re lovely. She’ll look a real lady. I’m going to shorten her on Sunday.’

‘I’m pleased to hear that, Sally,’ Mrs Hart said quietly. ‘Short dresses are much healthier for babies, I feel. Their limbs have more freedom.’ She was more animated than usual and her pale face was pink with pleasure at Sally’s delight. For a moment Sally could see traces of the lively girl she must have been. Since Mrs Malloy’s revelations she had often looked curiously at Mrs Hart, wondering how the pale, thin woman, sitting so quietly with folded hands and straight back, could ever have been the headstrong girl described by Mrs Malloy.

The dresses were admired by Matthew and the boys, but Mrs Malloy was less enthusiastic.

‘It’s a kind thought in her, right enough, to make the dresses,’ she said. ‘But sure, all that stitchery is out of place.’

‘You mean it’s too good for Emily,’ Sally said angrily.

‘Now don’t be firing up, girlie. Haven’t we all to live in the station God calls us, and it’s no kindness to be making the child different.’

‘Nothing’s too good for Emily,’ Sally said. ‘And she’s going to be a lady anyhow, when she grows up.’

Mrs Malloy smiled and sighed. ‘Dream yer dreams, child,’ she said. ‘Life will be knocking ye down soon enough.’

Emily had become the adored heart of the household. She was a placid baby, and even when Maggie Connolly’s milk dwindled, and the child was passed round the nursing mothers in the street, she accepted her various wet nurses with equanimity, and smiled on everyone.

Sally spent hours every day cuddling and talking to her. She had time to lavish on the baby because she had so few other interests, but she was conscientious about maintaining her mother’s standards in cooking, cleaning and washing.

The houses in Gell Street were regarded as superior in that neighbourhood. They were tall and narrow, and the front door opened into the living room/kitchen. Behind that there was a narrow back kitchen with a sink with a cold tap, and a washing boiler. Stairs from the living kitchen led to the two small bedrooms, and above them was the attic where the boys slept.

Twice a year Matthew whitewashed every wall in the house. Sally hated the smell of the lime, and envied Mary Duncan who lived across the street, because her house had wallpaper on the walls, until she sat behind Mary in school one day, and saw two bugs on her neck.

The lime wash kept the bugs at bay, and Sally’s mother had waged unremitting war on the cockroaches which swarmed in all the houses. She had filled in all the cracks in the skirting boards and floor boards with a mixture of carbolic soap and brown sugar, and sprinkled Keating’s Powder in the hearth to deal with those that came from behind the grate.

Sally continued to do this, and every Friday she blackleaded the grate, and polished the steel fender and the jockey bar, which hooked on to the firebars to hold the pans, with emery paper. A big black kettle constantly on the hob supplied hot water, and the oven on the other side was used for baking.

It was a bright and comfortable room, with a rag rug before the fireplace, and a horsehair sofa in addition to Matthew’s Windsor chair and the white scrubbed table and kitchen chairs. Sally felt that Emily need never be ashamed of it no matter how high she rose.

Without the baby her life would have been very lonely at this time. All her friends had now left school, and either departed into service, or were working long hours. She saw little of John, as he had time for only a hasty snack after school before dashing off to work. It was late when he came home, to eat his meal and fall into bed.

Alfred spent much of his time in Mrs Malloy’s house. He had become very attached to her two lodgers, who made much of him and brought him gifts of sweets or small toys. They were brothers from the west of Ireland, who had worked on building sites and lodged with Mrs Malloy for many years. She came in to see Sally one day, smiling.

‘I declare to God, Sally,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think they had a tongue between them, all the years they’re with me, and if ye’d hear them rattling away to young Alfie! Telling him all about their mammy, and their sisters, and the little ass they have for drawing up seaweed from the strand. Ah, well, ‘tis a good thing. He’ll not miss your poor mam so much, so.’

Although Sally missed her mother, she drew comfort from a feeling of closeness to her when she wore her aprons, or used her shabby old purse.

Sometimes when she thought of the old days before her mother’s death, she would suddenly be filled with a fierce longing for her. Then she would ferociously scrub the kitchen floor, or hack pieces from the block of salt and roll them out to fill the salt box, until the longing died down.

Sally rarely went far from home at this time, as Emily was becoming too heavy for her to carry far, even when she wore her mother’s shawl and supported the baby in it.

Once a week she walked down the hill to Great Homer Street to pay the Burial Club, past the filthy courts and alleys where starving half-naked children swarmed, and girls sat on the pavement chopping firewood. Often fights broke out between the girls, who tore at each other’s hair and lashed out with dirty bare feet, but the next moment they were screaming with laughter, their quarrel forgotten.

Once she saw a woman who had formerly lived in Gell Street, sitting apathetically on some broken steps with her children around her. Sally remembered that the woman’s husband had broken his back in a fall in a ship’s hold. Was this what Mrs Malloy meant, she wondered, when she spoke of the pit that they could so easily fall into?

On other afternoons she avoided such worrying sights by walking up the hill towards Shaw Street. Occasionally she went in to St. Francis Xavier’s Church in Langsdale Street, and sat quietly satisfying her love of beauty by gazing at the soaring columns on either side of the main aisle, or at the stained glass windows.

Sometimes there would be a smell of incense from an earlier service, or perfume from the flowers on the altar. Sally would unwrap her shawl and sit Emily up on her knee, hoping that the baby would absorb some of the beauty around her. The religious aspect meant little to Sally. Her father was a man of independent thought who cared little for any religion, and his cynical outlook had been absorbed by his wife, and through her by Sally.

Shortly after her mother’s death two ladies of the parish had visited the family, and Matthew had arrived home early from work to find one cross-examining Sally, and the other prowling round, looking in the oven and the cupboard. His face had grown white with anger as they greeted him patronizingly, and he had civilly enquired the name of the prowler.

When he was told it, he replied quietly, ‘Someone of that name owns them slums further down. Why don’t you go there, Missis, or do you only go in clean houses? They might need yer. I can look after me own. Good day to yer.’

Even their arrogance had failed them, in the face of his anger, and they had scuttled away. Mrs Malloy, of course, was in the house within minutes, to find out what had happened. She shook her head when Matthew told her in a few terse words.

‘Ye were maybe a bit hasty, lad,’ she said. ‘Ye have to hould a candle to the divil sometimes, and ye can do well out of the likes of them.’

‘I’d sooner starve,’ Matthew said forcefully. ‘Poking and prying without a by your leave. Let them go to them as needs them, but no. Yer won’t find them in Back Phoebe Anne Street.’

Mrs Malloy said no more, and after she had gone Matthew said irritably to Sally, ‘She’s a good woman, but don’t take too many of your notions from her. She’s overfond of creeping to the gentry to suit me.’

Sally only nodded, because she knew in her heart that there was no problem. Emily was going to be one of the gentry.

When Emily grew old enough to walk Sally took her further afield. On fine Sundays she took Emily and Alfred down to the Landing Stage, to watch the parade of people and to see the shipping crowded in the river. Her father always took a nap on Sunday afternoons and John preferred to be with his friends, but the two younger children enjoyed the outings. Sometimes on Saturdays she took them to Lewis’s, the Mecca of children at that time. Clean and respectably dressed as they were, they passed the eagle-eyed scrutiny of the doorman, but Sally watched cynically as the man bent deferentially to answer a query by a small boy in a smart sailor suit, then roughly altered his manner to order away a barefoot child who tried to enter. Wealth, it seemed, could always command respect.

Aunt Hester had accepted Matthew’s decision. She continued to write to them, but now it was Sally who answered the letters. She wrote of John’s job, and the family’s health, even about Alfie’s friendship with the Duggan brothers, but she said as little as possible about Emily. She was always afraid that if Hester saw Emily, she would find some way of persuading Da to part with her, even though all the family idolized her.

Alfred was always ready to carry her on his back, or to push her in the swing which their father had rigged up in the doorway, and John spent much of his scanty pocket money on her. Every evening Matthew went through a ritual of pretending to cut her toenails, and dandling her on his foot, before she was carried up to bed by Sally, but Emily remained unspoilt, and repaid them all with exuberant and demonstrative affection.

Sally had become a clever needlewoman, and Mrs Hart had shown her how to do the intricate embroidery she had learned at her exclusive school. The money saved in the teapot was used by Sally to buy second hand clothes in Paddy’s Market, which she turned and altered for herself and Matthew and the boys, but for Emily she always contrived to buy new material which she used to make beautifully trimmed and embroidered dresses and pinafores.

The neighbours commented freely on Sally’s devotion to Emily.

‘Eh, she won’t let the wind blow on that child,’ said one as the sisters passed, Emily’s white pinafore crackling with starch and Sally proudly holding her hand.

‘Aye, she watches over ‘er like a jewel,’ another woman said enviously. ‘It’s flyin’ in the face of God, to make so much of a child.’ But Emily was a general favourite. Even Mrs Hart, nervous and withdrawn with other people, would always unbend to Emily.

When Sally went in to help Mrs Hart she always took Emily with her, and the child stood by Mrs Hart’s chair, being taught the nursery rhymes and poems which she had learned in her own nursery.

Later at home Sally would listen proudly as Emily repeated what she had learned in exactly the clear, unaccented tones used by Mrs Hart. The two boys who spent more time than Sally outside the house both spoke with the thick Liverpool accents of their companions, and this led to a rare quarrel between Sally and John.

‘I wish you two would try to speak better,’ she said one day. ‘I don’t want Emily to copy you.’ John’s face grew red with anger.

‘Wharrabout when she goes to school?’ he said. ‘D’yer want her to be skitted at?’

‘I want her to be a lady,’ said Sally.

Alfred grinned but John said angrily, ‘Talkin’ posh won’t make our Emmie a lady, an’ talkin’ ordinary doesn’t make us scruffs, neither.’

‘You can do what you like,’ Sally said. ‘But our Emily’s going to have nice friends, and talk like them. She’s got a nice voice too. Maybe she’ll even get in the choir.’

‘Them snobs,’ John said scornfully. ‘Wharra ‘ope you’ve got.’

Sally was about to make an angry reply when Emily suddenly burst into loud sobs.

‘You shouted, you shouted,’ she cried, running to fling her arms around John’s legs and then back to Sally. The quarrel was forgotten as they both tried to comfort her, but Sally realised that she had hurt John, and later she said to him, ‘I’m sorry, John. I suppose I’m like Katie Boyle from Stitt Street, the one who stuck feathers in her hair. Mrs Hart said she had delusions of grandeur.’

‘What’s them when they’re a’ ‘ome?’ John said with a grin, and the incident passed, but afterwards Sally was careful to keep her dreams for Emily’s future to herself, except sometimes to hint of them to the child. On fine days when she took Emily to the Landing Stage to watch the parade of wealth and privilege as ladies and gentlemen were assisted aboard the tender which would take them out to the liner lying in the river, there was always an unspoken resolve in her mind that one day Emily would be among their number.

Sometimes they took the horse tram to the southern end of the city, and walked through the leafy avenues and squares of the residences of the merchant princes of Liverpool. One day they stood looking wistfully into the gardens in the centre of one of the squares, where nursemaids wheeled perambulators, and children played among the flowers and trees.

‘Can we go in, Sal?’ Emily asked, but Sally shook her head.

‘No, love,’ she said. ‘You have to live in one of those big houses, then you get a key to go in.’

Emily’s brown eyes looked up trustfully. ‘Should we live there then, Sal?’ she asked.

Sally hugged her fiercely. ‘Someday you will, my pet,’ she promised. ‘Someday you’ll be a greater lady than any of them.’

Chapter Three

They walked on, and Emily’s attention soon turned to the other sights. The organ grinder and his sad-eyed monkey, the chestnut seller, a pair of grey horses pulling a splendid carriage, all delighted the child.

Sally had forgotten that it was the Twelfth of July, until their homeward bound omnibus passed several Orange Lodge processions. She hurried Emily along Shaw Street, when they alighted, but as they turned in to Langsdale Street a procession appeared at the bottom of the hill. Crowds were milling about on the pavement, and Sally tried to cross to the other side of the road to where their home lay, but she was too late. She managed to push through the crowds on the left hand pavement, and to place Emily against the high wall which surrounded St. Francis Xavier’s, so that she could stand in front of her and protect her.

As the procession drew nearer, the mood of the crowd seemed to worsen, especially among some of the women who muttered and folded their arms outside their shawls belligerently. Police were pushing the crowd back. Sally turned towards Emily, and arched her back over the child as the crowd swayed.

The procession reached the church and the noise of the drum became deafening, then a woman in the procession thrust a long pole into the air. A kipper dangled from it, with a placard bearing the words ‘Cured at Lourdes’. Instantly pandemonium broke out, as several of the bystanders plunged into the procession.

‘Bad luck to ye, ye Orange whore,’ an old woman screamed, darting past the police and burying her hands in the placard carrier’s hair. Screams and yells filled the air and fights broke out along the length of the procession, while the police plunged among the marchers and spectators, laying about indiscriminately with their batons. Sally hung over Emily, bracing her arms against the wall, as bodies were flung against her and fell away again.

As the screams died down, she peered round cautiously. Most of the crowd had gone, and the police were lining up at the edge of the pavement. A broken boot and a torn orange sash lay near Sally’s feet, but the procession, looking tattered and dishevelled, was forming up again. A police sergeant jerked Sally’s arm, and she put her other arm protectively round Emily.

‘What are you doing here with that child?’ he asked roughly.

‘I’m trying to get home. We live in Gell Street,’