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‘Cheap at half the price,’ quips another, until the whole nasty lot are egging him on.
‘Put him down!’ blares a woman in a hat as broad as a soup tureen. She waggles her finger in the direction of Reg’s privates. ‘You can put that away and all.’
‘Says who?’
‘Says me, Reginald Awkright. He’s half your size.’
‘We’re only playing.’
‘You’re throttling him.’
Wilfred tightens his grip. ‘Nah. Bit of rough and tumble, isn’t it, Bubbles?’
‘Tumble!’ I squeak.
‘See?’ says Reg. ‘He loves it, don’t you?’
Wilfred squeezes again, like I’m a set of bagpipes.
‘Yes!’ I rasp.
‘I said, leave the poor mite be,’ she snaps. ‘He can’t hardly breathe. I know your sort, Reginald.’
He lets out a whickering laugh. ‘I know your sort and all, Jessie, you wet-kneed slapper.’
The remainder of their banter is lost in the roaring between my ears. Reg and his rabble seem a long way off. Or rather my head seems a long way from them, detached from the neck and floating away. It is most peculiar, very like the feeling I get when I – she—
I splutter into myself. ‘Get off me!’ I shriek.
Whether it’s the command in the woman’s voice, or the shock of me fighting back, I’ve no idea, but Wilfred loosens his stranglehold. I tumble forwards, giving my elbow a blinder of a crack and half stagger, half crawl away as fast as I can. Jessie picks me up as easily as you might a dropped glove. I don’t cling to her like a drowning man to a lifebelt. Not me, not by a long chalk. I just need to steady myself on her arm, that’s all.
‘There you go,’ she says, setting me upright. She rounds on the gang. ‘As for you lot, play nicely or bugger off.’
She commences patting dirt off my jacket. She smells of trapped violets.
‘I’m all right. Don’t need help,’ I say half-heartedly.
‘You tell her,’ jeers Reg. ‘See? He doesn’t want you, you old whore.’
The boys snigger at the insult. I wait for the blubbing to start. But she tips up her chin with something that looks uncommonly like pride.
‘Don’t you just wish you could get a morsel of what I’ve got to offer!’ she hoots.
‘As heck as like,’ snarls Reg. I’ve never seen a man’s eyes so famished. He points at me. ‘I wouldn’t touch you with his,’ he declares.
Jessie furnishes us with a bray of merriment, turns with extravagant grace and promenades into the throng. I watch her go, mightily impressed. I’ve no idea why Reg called her old, either. She’s as pretty as a picture. The sort of woman a chap would be proud to have on his arm. However, I have precious little opportunity for approbation.
‘Just like a girl,’ he growls. ‘Ganging up on us.’
‘I’m not a flaming girl,’ I sigh with wearied emphasis. ‘You blind or brainless?’
‘You cheeky little sod. You are what I say you are.’
‘That’s right,’ says Wilfred, still determined to get on the right side of Reg. He grinds his fist into his eye socket. ‘Run to Mama,’ he whines. ‘Wah, wah, Mama!’
Reg twists his unpleasant attention from me to Wilfred. My face cools as the awful heat is taken away.
‘Who are you calling Mama?’ he says.
‘I didn’t mean you, Reg, old pal. I mean her.’ He stabs a finger in the direction of Jessie. She’s long gone and he is pointing at a vacancy.
‘I don’t see anyone.’
I concentrate on making myself unnoticeable. Things could still change in a heartbeat.
‘It’s a joke,’ Wilfred blusters.
‘I know what a joke is,’ Reg says. ‘You saying I don’t?’
‘No! Never!’
Reg inhales slowly and glances at me. I’m out of arm’s reach. Wilfred isn’t. ‘You saying I’m like that old tart?’
‘Yes,’ I whisper. ‘Sounds exactly like what he’s saying.’
There’s a horrified silence. No one drops so much as a giggle into it. Reg jabs a rigid finger into Wilfred’s chest. He reels backwards like he’s been hit with half a house brick.
‘No!’ he wails. ‘It was a joke! I didn’t mean you! We’re chums, aren’t we?’
Reg roars and at the signal the whole lot of them pile on to their new enemy. I don’t hang about to see the outcome. My conscience pricks briefly about dropping Wilfred into it, but it was him or me. I show the cleanest pair of heels this side of the Mersey and run slap bang into the lady who saved me. Of course, she didn’t exactly save me. I did that for myself.
‘Mind where you’re going!’ she chirps. ‘Oh, it’s you. You all right?’
‘Course I am,’ I mumble. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
She ought to tell me to get lost and I don’t know why she doesn’t. She ruffles my hair. I rub my head against her hand like a cat that aches to be scratched. Her fingers comb through my curls.
‘Bonny lad,’ she purrs.
The words startle me back into my skin.
‘Leave off!’ I squeak. ‘I’m no one’s bonny anything!’
I untangle myself from her skirts and fire homewards like a rocket. The kitchen is busy: Grandma sucking on that disgusting pipe of hers and Mam waving her hand and muttering, What a stink. Not that Grandma takes a blind bit of notice. So much for the welcoming bosom. After the night I’ve had a smile wouldn’t go amiss. I help myself to a slice of bread and dripping, plonk myself in front of the range and stare at the coals. I can’t go back to Shudehill. Reg will make my life a bloody misery. Where else can I go? What else do I have?
‘Is all well?’ asks Grandma, deigning to notice my presence. She taps her pipe on the edge of the table, to another complaint from Mam.
‘Why shouldn’t it be?’ I grumble through a mouthful.
‘Don’t you give me any of your lip,’ she replies.
‘You leave him alone,’ chips in Mam without looking at me. ‘He’s my special treat, so he is.’
‘It wouldn’t hurt to hear you saying that about Edie once in a while.’
Mam snorts. ‘Her? I wish things were the other way around.’
‘That’s half-daft. How can you dote on one and not the other?’
‘I’ll do as I please, thank you very much. All any mother wants is an honest-to-goodness son to do her proud. If you don’t like it, there’s the door and remember to shut it behind you.’
I scoff my bread, looking from one to the other. Biddies. I’ll never unravel the mare’s nest between their ears. But what I do hear is an advantage I didn’t know I had. I lick my fingers and leave them to it.
The bedroom sash is open. I clamber through the gap and ride the stone saddle of the windowsill, one foot in and one out. The sky is becoming pale as it considers the coming morning. I puff out my chest, draw the last scraps of night into my body until there’s no telling us apart.
There was a time.
I’ve not forgotten that land of sweet content, bright as a favourite story told at bedtime. Things aren’t the same since Edie got frozen into an obedience she imagines will thaw our flint-hearted mother into loving her. You may as well try to fold gravy. Mam can’t stand baa-lambs unless they come smothered in mint sauce.
Edie’s worse than a mouse; at least mice chew the walls and confetti the floor with their tiny turds. Her goodness clings like quicksand. If I get sucked in, it’ll be curtains. Every night I step close and try to take her hand, like we used to, but our fingers slide through each other. It’s like she doesn’t believe in me; like she thinks I’m not real. I don’t know what more I can do.
My chest is hot and tight. I grind my teeth until the feeling passes. If you’ve been booted out of Eden, moping like a snot-nosed toddlekins won’t bring it back. I will not think about things I can’t have. Fairy tales are for the cradle and I left that a long while ago.
Living in a houseful of women has dragged me down to their simpering level. I must toughen up if I’m going to make my way in this wide world. I’m not a bad lad; not the type to tie cans to a cat’s tail, string them up by their paws, set them on fire or any one of the bloody things boys do. But there’s no point being soft. In this life, you’re either a ginger tom swaggering the streets or a cowering kitten that gets trampled underfoot. I’ll let tonight be a lesson. My fault for not standing my ground, for being caught unawares. God helps those who help themselves.
I’m not lonely. Not by a long chalk. I just need to meet the right fellows, that’s all. The sort of pals who will stick by a chap through thick and thin. So what if I have to go to ground for a while? I’ve got tomorrow night, even if I have to steer clear of Shudehill. There’s always another night. There has to be. A man must have dreams.
EDIE (#ulink_03fad7fd-58d2-5503-80b2-55cd8a40c210)
1900–1901 (#ulink_03fad7fd-58d2-5503-80b2-55cd8a40c210)
I grow up with my ear to the floor, listening to Ma and Nana fight.
They argue about the beer, the takings, the sawdust, the spittoons, the weather, the dirt on the doorstep. If they chose the kitchen, I’d be none the wiser. But they go at it hammer and tongs in the scullery, beneath my room. Maybe they think I’m asleep; maybe they think me too much of a mouse to eavesdrop; maybe they don’t care either way. It is such a habitual lullaby I learn to sleep through it, much in the way that folk who live next to the Liverpool line slumber through the rattle of trains.
So things continue. The old century tips into the new, not that it makes a scrap of difference to my days. My height belies my age. At thirteen I overtop every sixteen-year-old hereabouts: a gangling beanpole of a girl as graceful as a donkey with three legs.
Ma won’t let me hide upstairs and read my schoolbooks, so I help out in The Comet. The customers make jokes at their plain Jane barmaid and I never master Ma’s knack for laughing yet keeping them at arm’s length at the same time. That’s not to say they are wicked folk; they are our neighbours and a mild crew by and large. Night after night, month after month, I listen to the same conversations about dogs and wives; who’s drowned in the Bridgewater; who’s been flattened by a cart. I ache for something I cannot put my finger on. But there’s no point wishing on half a wishbone, or setting my heart on stars when the likes of me won’t climb higher than the chimney.
So I nod, smile, serve beer and dread Thursdays. It is the day the ginger-moustached groper drops in, regular as the man from the Pearl come for his penny. I grow cleverer at avoiding him, although nothing stops his gaze following me around the room and singeing holes in my apron.
One evening, as I’m drifting into the dark hole of sleep, I prick awake. At first I think it’s the cold, for an icier February I never knew, but it is only Ma and Nana at loggerheads. I pull the blanket over my head.
My ears burn. There is an unaccountable magic wrought when one is the subject of conversation, some vibration of the ether that communicates itself directly to the person being talked about. I pick out my name, hissed over and over. They are arguing about me.
I can’t hear precisely what they are saying. I need more. I creep out of bed, and, praying that the stairs do not squeak, tiptoe to the scullery door.
‘She’s starting to notice,’ says my grandmother.
‘Is she?’ snorts Ma. ‘She wouldn’t notice a loaded dray if it drove over her, horse and all. She’s as thick as a ditch.’
‘She is not.’
‘I can’t do a thing with her,’ says Ma. ‘I set her to a simple task and she falls asleep with the broom in her hand. Lazy good-for-nothing.’
My throat tightens at the hurtful words.
‘Exhaustion. It’s not her fault. You know the cause as well as I.’
‘I most certainly do not,’ grunts Ma.
‘Cissy. It is time to call a halt to silence.’
All hell breaks loose: the kettle clangs on to the range; pots bang and scrape and rattle.
‘I will not have this subject discussed under my roof!’ Ma roars, fit to burst the windows out of their frames. ‘It’s disgusting!’
‘She’s old enough to understand!’ shouts Nana over the racket. ‘If you won’t tell her, let me.’
‘What, so she can let it slip at school? In church? On the street?’
‘She won’t do that.’
‘Won’t she? She’s addled enough. We’d be driven out. Don’t you remember—’
‘I do,’ sighs Nana.
‘Want that all over again?’
There’s a pause. I want to scratch my nose. It seems to contain a beetle with barbed claws.
Nana lets out a heavy sigh. ‘Of course not.’
‘You see? We’d all be better off ifshe’d never been born.’
‘Cissy! What a terrible thing to say.’
‘Is it? Before she came along I had a fine man, so I did.’
‘Fine? He was a work-shy, good-for-nothing—’
‘How dare you speak ill of the dead!’
‘Away with your nonsense, Cissy. Everyone knows he ran off with that baggage from—’
‘Who can blame him?’ Ma cries. ‘I’d be away if I could, and all. No decent man would …’ The pandemonium subsides. Through the crack in the door I see Nana cup her hand around Ma’s cheek. ‘Don’t …’ Ma says. It is a perilous sound such as a child might make and shocks me far more than any bellow.
‘My kindness did you no harm, Cissy. Surely you can do the same for your own child.’
