Child of the Mersey Read online

  ‘Aunty Ellen will know she left her family in good hands with us,’ Rita said, patting her mother’s shoulder. Dolly nodded. Rita always knew the right thing to say; she was going to make a smashing nurse. ‘But,’ Rita added with a half-smile, ‘calling Mrs Delaney names won’t bring her back.’

  ‘I know, and I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that old crow didn’t come to pay her respects. Just makes me mad, that’s all.’ Dolly sniffed into her handkerchief. ‘Poor Ellen didn’t deserve to go the way she did.’ She got up from the table. ‘The one thing I can do for her now is look after her family, and I will.’

  ‘We know.’ Pop rose, too, put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and gave a sad smile.

  ‘I will make sure her little ones know they can come here anytime.’

  ‘They know that already, Mam.’ Rita passed her mother a cup of tea. ‘I’ve put a little drop of something in that to help you sleep.’

  ‘We will not be starting that caper,’ Dolly said indignantly. ‘Strong drink has never passed my lips before, except at Christmas, and it won’t do now.’ Rita took the cup from her mam while, out of Dolly’s sight, Pop passed his daughter the bottle of whiskey, surmising what the eye did not see the heart could never grieve over. Unbeknown to Dolly, she had drunk umpteen cups of tea today laced with a slosh of the old country.

  ‘Poor Kitty,’ Dolly lamented. ‘She’s tied to that house as sure as any married woman – and she’s not even old enough to leave school.’

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  August 1939

  ‘Kit, it wasn’t me! Honest to God.’ Eight-year-old Tommy Callaghan looked over to where his older brother Danny was just sloping off towards the back door. ‘It wasn’t my fault. So you needn’t look at me like that.’

  ‘Don’t be so impudent, Tommy. I’ll see to you later.’ Kitty stood near the shelf in the kitchen with a half-empty tea caddy in her hand. She shook it a few times and peered inside. Then, after wiping it on her pinny, she replaced the lid and put it back on the shelf. Turning, she watched in frustration as Danny slipped smartly out of the door, quickly followed down the back yard by their father.

  Tommy, however, was not so fast, which enabled Kitty to grip the collar of his shirt, almost choking him in the process of dragging him back into the kitchen. She never raised a hand to Tommy, as a rule. If she stared at him long enough he always told her the truth. However, now, finding half the housekeeping money gone, she was sorely tempted to knock him into the middle of next week.

  ‘Aar ’ey, Kit, you know I’ve got a sore throat,’ Tommy complained, giving his collar an exaggerated tug. His face was the picture of self-pity.

  ‘Come here, you little horror. You don’t have to sound so hard done by. You are going nowhere.’ Pots hissed and bubbled on the rickety stove and the heat of the kitchen combined with the sizzling late afternoon sun creeping into the house was making it oppressive, but Kitty wasn’t going to let that stop her getting her hands on Tommy. She stooped low so as to be eye-to-eye with him and said very slowly, ‘Now tell me, Tommy, who took the money out of the tin? The truth. I’ll wait, but not for too long.’

  Her brother Jack had given her the housekeeping money only this morning and now half of it was gone. It would be a toss-up between paying the rent and buying food, and as the rent man was now calling on a daily basis because they were three weeks in arrears, she really didn’t have a choice.

  Kitty’s thoughts were racing ahead now. Losing half the housekeeping money meant she would have to go over the road and try to persuade Mrs Kennedy to let her have a bit longer to pay her ‘tick’ bill. Either that or grovel for the lend of a few bob to pay the bill, and then there would be interest to pay on top, and everybody knew that Winnie Kennedy was the last woman on earth you’d want to borrow money off. Her exorbitant repayment rates were not the only reason either. Kitty surmised she took great delight in giving sanctimonious lectures to poor unfortunate women who could not pay – in front of other customers, too.

  Kitty felt so sorry for the recipients of these self-righteous sermons, vowing never to get into that situation if she could help it. However, her own credit bill had accumulated to a frightening amount because of Nancy Feeny’s wedding. Kitty had offered to make the three-tiered cake as a wedding present, and it had seemed a good idea at the time. She hoped it would go some way to showing the Feeny family, Aunty Dolly especially, how grateful she was for all their help over the years.

  Aunty Doll had been good to her and Tommy, who had been a newborn baby when their mother died, practically raising them in those early years while they were still grieving. She would not dream of asking Aunty Doll to pay for the cake now.

  ‘What money?’ Tommy asked as a thatch of dark hair, so like their mother’s, flopped down onto his forehead and into those innocent-looking, adorable blue eyes. Kitty swept the fringe from his face. He could wrap her around his little finger usually, but not today. He was getting away with far too much these days.

  ‘The housekeeping money I keep in the tea caddy! C’mon, spit it out before it chokes you. Who took the money out of the tin?’ He was stalling now and she knew it. Well, she had all night; she would get the truth out of him by hook or by crook.

  After a long pause, during which Kitty was staring down at him as if she could read his mind, Tommy said reluctantly, ‘I didn’t see nothing … exactly.’ He paused. ‘I just saw our Danny – or was it me dad …?’ Tommy stopped talking, rolling his eyes around the room before latching on to two lines of condensation racing down the distempered wall. He suddenly found them very interesting – anything to avoid Kitty’s piercing eyes.

  Kitty took a long deep breath. ‘Were they at the tin?’ she asked with all the patience she could muster. ‘Tell me the truth now, Tommy, or I’ll have to tell Jack, and you know what he said when you were throwing stones at the barrage balloons on the dock?’ Kitty always knew when Tommy was telling the truth. ‘He said he’ll have you evacuated whether there’s a war coming or not.’

  ‘Don’t tell our Jack, Kit! It wasn’t me, honest,’ Tommy said hurriedly. He knew that their older brother would not be best pleased that somebody had been helping himself to the housekeeping that he brought to the house every week. Jack did not see eye to eye with their father and although he didn’t live with them any more, he made sure they didn’t go short of much and helped out any way he could. He liked to be certain Dad and Danny gave Kitty their share of the housekeeping, too. Nobody back-chatted Jack.

  ‘I won’t bring your name into it if you tell me the truth.’

  Kitty remembered the night Jack left. Even now, it made her insides shrink when she recalled her fear. He and Dad were nose to nose. Dad was drunk – as usual – and Kitty could see Jack was using every ounce of self-control to stop himself hitting his father. His huge fists, curled tightly at his side, were shaking with such rage his knuckles gleamed white.

  Jack had left school at fourteen to go out to work at the local ship manufacturers, and had done the best that he could to help Kitty out since their mother had died. But year after year, watching his father sink further into a life of idleness and drink had started to wear him down. By the time that Jack was seventeen, their rows had become a regular occurrence with each one becoming worse than the last. Kitty had become fearful that something terrible would happen between them and her fears turned out to be well-founded when things finally reached a head one night. Jack had proudly put his wages on the table for Kitty, only to hear from Danny and Tommy that their father was down the local, throwing pints down his neck and drinking what little wages he had managed to earn that week. Jack, unable to contain himself any longer, had rounded on his father when he stumbled home drunk a few hours later.

  ‘You’re a disgrace, man. Look at you!’ Jack had stormed. ‘You haven’t seen a sober day since Mam died … and as for work … you wouldn’t know how to do a decent day’s work any more.’

  ‘Do not bring your mother�
��s name into this, you … you snot-nosed pup!’ Sonny Callaghan retaliated. Kitty, fourteen at the time, knew Jack was stronger and fitter than his father. If he had a mind, Jack could have floored him.

  He was six foot tall by then, working in the local shipping manufacturers and bringing in regular money; he had no qualms about squaring up to his father, the man who had turned to drink when his wife died, leaving his family to be reared by neighbours.

  Kitty would never let the two men fight. She loved them both, even if she knew her father wasn’t doing the best by them. There were many nights when Kitty had heard him stagger into the house, crying drunken tears for the wife he had lost. She saw the constant sadness lying behind his eyes and more than once, when the drink loosened his tongue, he would say to her, ‘Your mother would give me such a tongue-lashing, Kit, if she could see me now. I’ve let her down.’

  But things had got out of control that night and Jack had finally said the unsayable.

  ‘Look at you, cock-of-the-walk Jack Callaghan, think you’re better than your own dad, don’t you? Well, you’re just a jumped-up little scrap who can’t even read nor write,’ Sonny goaded his son.

  Kitty could see Jack clench his fists with the effort of not hitting Sonny, but she knew Jack would never have forgiven himself for laying a hand on his own father, no matter how much he had been pushed. Jack’s schooling had always been an erratic affair and he’d spent more time trying to help his mother out with odd jobs than he’d ever spent learning his letters.

  ‘If you’d been the husband to Mam that you should have been, I wouldn’t have had to come out of school to try and do the man’s job that you’re not fit for. Dad, you’re a coward and it was you that killed her, with your drinking and feckless ways. If you’d looked after her like a proper husband she’d still be here today—’

  Sonny lunged towards his eldest boy. ‘Why you little guttersnipe—’

  ‘Stop it, both of you! Nothing could have saved her,’ interjected Kitty, throwing herself in front of her father. ‘The doctor said she had a weak heart and Mam will be turning in her grave to see you two going at it like this.’ She bundled little Tommy out of the room. ‘If you carry on I’ll go and live at Aunty Dolly’s. I will, I swear.’

  Jack turned to Kitty. ‘You’ll not have to worry about going to Dolly’s, our Kit. I’ll save everyone the trouble.’

  ‘What do you mean, Jack? You can’t leave us – how will we manage?’

  ‘I’ve been meaning to tell you, but it’s never the right moment. I’ve taken a job in Belfast, training as a shipwright in the Harland and Wolff shipyard there. They’ll give me a good tuition and when I come back I reckon I’ll be able to read and write as good as anyone.’

  Sonny Callaghan didn’t have the nerve to meet his own son’s eyes and Kitty knew that he was ashamed of his earlier outburst. But men had pride, didn’t they, and he would rather slit his own throat than apologise.

  Kitty felt the tears well up and suddenly the thought that her beloved brother was leaving was too much to bear. She threw herself into his arms. ‘Oh, Jack. What will I do without you?’

  ‘I’ll send home every penny I earn, Kit, and in a few years I’ll be back and be able to help better by being a qualified shipwright.’ He held her to his chest and said gently, ‘You couldn’t have two men living together that don’t agree. It’s asking for trouble. But I won’t let you down, Kit, you’ll see.’

  So Jack was gone for three years, but he was true to his word, his money arrived for her every week at the post office and when he came back three years later he was a changed man. Bigger, leaner, stronger, and Kitty could see her father could no longer safely poke the bars of Jack’s cage.

  Jack still came for his tea now and then and he and his father had reached an uneasy truce, but it pained Kitty to know that things would never be the same between them.

  Kitty tried to banish the terrible memories from her mind. ‘Look at the cut of you,’ she admonished Tommy, and her tone was more abrupt than she intended. Still gripping the back of Tommy’s collar, she pushed him towards the brown stone sink.

  ‘Before you sit up to your tea, you can have a good wash. You’re filthy!’ Turning on the single copper tap, Kitty let the cold water run into an enamel bowl and felt Tommy squirm. Nevertheless, she did not intend to let him get away. ‘I’m ashamed of you.’ She added hot water from the big black kettle that was always on the boil. ‘You’re a disgrace, running around like no one owns you.’ She knew she was being a little harsh but she had to keep a tight rein on Tommy, otherwise he would get out of hand. A bobby from Gladstone Dock had brought him home earlier in the week for shooting pigeons with his catapult.

  ‘But, Kit … I’ve been washed.’ Tommy’s muffled protest went ignored as she threw a clean, though threadbare, towel around his shoulders. Dipping his head over the sink Kitty said, ‘You could grow spuds in those ears, and that tidemark is bigger than the one on Seaforth shore.’ Scooping warmed water into an enamel cup that their dad usually drank from, she poured it over his head.

  ‘I got washed last night,’ Tommy protested, his voice echoing into the sink. He was finding it impossible to wriggle free of Kitty’s strong hold.

  ‘And this morning?’ Kitty asked, taking a remnant of old towel now used as a flannel, and slathering it in Lifebuoy carbolic soap, before vigorously rubbing at Tommy’s two-tone neck.

  ‘I didn’t get dirty in bed,’ Tommy exclaimed with haughty indignation, ‘so why do I need to get washed twice in the same day?’

  Kitty sighed and shook her head. ‘Getting washed wakes you up and makes you smell nice,’ she answered.

  ‘I don’t want to smell nice.’ Tommy sounded most put out. ‘I’m not a cissy.’

  Kitty could not help but smile, but still ignored his protestations. Then, after scrubbing Tommy’s neck, she said firmly, ‘Just put your filthy hands in that bowl.’

  ‘It’s freezing!’ Tommy barely dipped his fingertips into the cloudy water in the enamel bowl. ‘I’ll get pneumonia.’

  ‘You’ll get more than that if you don’t put your hands in,’ Kitty said, ‘but there’ll be no tea until you’re clean.’

  Tommy was certain of one thing: even though he had never known a mother’s firm hand he had not missed out. Kitty was mother enough for anyone.

  ‘I mean it, Tommy. If you don’t change your tune, Jack will make sure you’re with the first lot to be evacuated and who knows where you’ll end up?’ Kitty knew her little brother hated the thought of being away from home if war was declared.

  ‘Do you think there will be a war?’ Tommy asked. It would be so exciting, he thought as he rolled the block of red Lifebuoy soap around his hands, inhaling the carbolic scent. When he had enough lather, he blew bubbles through the O of his finger and thumb.

  Kitty said nothing; the thought that there could really be a war made her shiver. The newspapers and the radio could talk of nothing else but that evil man Hitler, with his silly moustache and his mad ravings. But as far as Kitty could tell, there was no taste for war in Empire Street. The memory of the Great War and the terrible toll it took on the country’s men was still felt and could be seen all around them. Women like Mrs Delaney who still wore her widow’s weeds. And men like poor Joe, with his one leg and half of his face missing, who sold matches on the street corner.

  And what about her brothers Jack and Danny? The thought that they could be sent off to fight in some far-flung place horrified her – they were so young. And what about Dolly’s boys, Frank and Eddy, they’d have to go too, wouldn’t they?

  Frank Feeny…

  Kitty was unaware of the smile that played on her lips as she thought of Frank Feeny and the slight blush that crept into her cheeks. Frank had been like a brother to her and he surely only thought of her as a sister. So why had he started to creep into her daydreams with his deep blue eyes and his hair the colour of molasses sugar?

  But her thoughts were interrupted and she quickly rele
ased her strong grip on Tommy’s collar when she heard the sound of heavy boots on the linoleum. To her surprise, a line of local men all entered through the front door that opened out onto the street and made their way through her kitchen towards the back door. Kitty’s mouth opened in a big O as the men filed quickly past her.

  ‘Sorry, Kitty,’ said Mr Donahue, who lived at the bottom of the street. He was followed by Danny and her father, who hurried behind him out of the back door, down the yard, past the lavatory and disappeared to the narrow alleyway beyond.

  Pushing Tommy to one side, Kitty leaned her hands on the sink and, perching on tiptoes, looked out of the narrow window. Her heart was racing now. What had Danny and her dad been up to this time?

  ‘Sorry, Kitty.’ Sid Kerrigan, marrying Aunty Dolly’s daughter Nancy on Saturday and looking every inch the spiv with his Brylcreemed hair and his sharp suit, joined the moving line of men to the back door. He furtively dropped a pack of cards and a handful of coins into her pinny pocket, and Kitty guessed that an illegal gambling ring had been running. The bobbies must have got wind of it; either that or they’d stumbled across an illegal game of pitch-and-toss, usually played in the narrow alleyway, commonly known as ‘the jigger’, that ran between the Callaghans’ house and Pop Feeny’s stable.

  Kitty’s suspicions were confirmed when, moments later, she heard another set of heavy boots running through the kitchen. She was furious that her home had been used as an escape route but she would rather have been struck down by a bolt of lightning than dob them into the police. You didn’t do that sort of thing on Empire Street.