Child of the Mersey

‘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 released 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.

A hefty police constable, looking as strong as one of those new air-raid shelters, his truncheon raised at the ready, hurled himself into Kitty’s scullery and nearly upended the three-tiered wedding cake that she had finished decorating only that morning. Trembling in all its white-pillared glory, it looked about to lose the tiny bride and groom that sat neatly on the top. Kitty, imagining her hard work was about to smash to the floor, saw red.

‘Here, what do you think you’re doing?’ She thrust out her hand and, in the blink of an eye, saved the cake from certain destruction. Having steadied it back onto the stand, she pushed her chin forward only inches from the bobby’s face and her determined expression told him he was out of luck if he thought he was going to take the shortcut to an arrest today.

Tommy stood watching, his face lit with delight. With a bit of luck Kitty would forget all about finishing his wash.

‘We have reason to believe—’ the bobby began.

‘I don’t care what you’ve got, you’ve got no right to come crashing into decent people’s homes. If you haven’t got a warrant you’re not going any further, so get out of my kitchen and leave us honest folk to our work, will you!’ With that, slightly built as she was, Kitty pushed back the surprised constable and urged him down the lobby and out of the front door. Slamming it shut, she dusted her hands and vowed that she would have more than a little word with Danny and her father when they deigned to show their faces again.

‘And you …’ Kitty arrived back in the scullery, looking menacingly at Tommy, ‘get those hands washed. Your tea will be ready in five minutes.’ Tommy washed his hands in double-quick time. He was not going to argue with Kitty when she was in this mood. If asked, he would not be able to describe the rising admiration he now felt for his sister. She was only a slip of a girl, but she had the courage of a lioness.

‘We were just having a game of pitch-and-toss in the back alley, there …’ Danny stilled the hunk of bread that was heading towards his mouth and nodded towards the wall that separated the house from Pop Feeny’s stable. Danny and his father had crept back into the house while Kitty got the dinner onto the table. It was a simple meal of beef suet pudding with boiled potatoes and cabbage. Money for food was often scarce but Kitty was adept at stretching her housekeeping money out and she had inherited her mother’s talent for cooking as well as for watching the pennies. She could often be found at the local market on a Saturday evening, haggling with the stallholders and usually getting the best prices.

Kitty hadn’t forgotten about the incident earlier but the worry over the housekeeping money was still unresolved and she bore down on her younger brother.

‘I don’t care about the game. What about the money in the tin?’ she asked Danny, who let out a long exasperated sigh.

‘That was just a loan, Kit. You know I’ll put it back before the rent man comes.’

‘It’s a bit late for that. He’s been and I’ve paid him and now I’ve got nothing left.’ Kitty knew this wasn’t true, thinking of the money that Sid had popped in her pinny, but she wasn’t ready to let Danny off the hook. Her hands were in their usual position on her hips and she leaned towards him. She wanted answers, not excuses.

‘You haven’t?’ Danny’s pale face was a picture of disbelief. Kitty nodded.

‘He promised he’d be our lookout, but he was nowhere to be seen.’ Danny nodded towards young Tommy. ‘I was on a winning hand when the bobbies came. Someone scooped all the stake money – I’m not sure who but I’ll soon find out.’

‘A fat lot of good that will do me.’ Kitty was angry now. ‘What am I supposed to do when I have to go into the shop and tell old-misery-on-the-hob Mrs Kennedy that I don’t have the money to pay me bill?’

Kitty would tell him about Sid Kerrigan dropping the money into her pocket later, but for now, he could sweat. Danny had a job as a stevedore on Canada Dock but he ducked and dived, did a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and up to now he had stayed just the right side of the law, but sometimes only by the skin of his teeth. Kitty worried how long it would be before his luck ran out and there would be no going back. She noted her shifty-looking father, his head buried in the Evening Echo, making no attempt to meet her eyes. How was she ever going to instil some morals in Danny if his father only encouraged him in the opposite direction?

‘I’ll get your money,’ Danny said in a reassuring voice, trying to calm Kitty down. It wouldn’t do to get her all steamed up before he told them all his news. It was going to be bad enough once he told her. He was going to join up!

‘Well, you just make sure you do, Danny Callaghan, otherwise you’ll be going to visit Mam up in heaven – if they’ll have you! We do not have the money to throw away on fines if you are caught gambling, Danny.’ Kitty took the plate from under his nose, refusing to acknowledge his look of disappointment that told her he had been about to mop up the remaining gravy with his bread. She stacked the plate on top of the others on the battered wooden tray. ‘I warned you not to bring trouble to this door, Danny, and I mean it.’ She gave her younger brother a murderous look.

‘I told our Tommy it would be worth a couple of coppers if he kept dixie,’ Danny said, as if his brother’s failure to keep a lookout for the law was the reason they’d got in this mess.

‘Don’t blame Tommy – you had no right,’ Kitty fumed. ‘I am trying to bring him up decent. The way Mam would have wanted.’ She was taking no lip from Danny now.

Danny knew, judging by the determined look in her dark eyes, that Kitty was not in the mood for being soft-soaped. As she impatiently shoved a fine wisp of dark wavy hair behind her ear he took a chance and said, by way of explanation, ‘You know what it’s like, Kit: payday on the docks the lads wanted a little flutter. Percy the Greek was nowhere to be seen, so they decided on a game of pitch-and-toss. But where was our Tommy, who was supposed to be lookout …?’

‘Danny was here with me, where he should have been, and not with you lot of scallywags picking up bad habits.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Tommy whined. ‘I had a sore throat.’

‘Another one?’ Danny’s brows puckered. ‘You’ll have to get him seen to, Kit.’

‘If you two didn’t gamble and drink our money away, I might be able to afford a doctor.’ Kitty looked at her little brother. She didn’t know whether it was his bad start in life but Tommy had a very weak chest and still seemed to pick up whatever was going. The summer months saw an improvement but they’d had a few close shaves with him in their time and Kitty worried about him constantly.

‘All right, Kitty, that’s enough now.’ Her father tried to assert his authority, which she respected when he was sober. It was a different matter when he was falling over drunk, as he would have been if the dice school had not been scattered.

‘How am I expected to bring Tommy up the right way with you two leading the example?’ Kitty asked her father. ‘If it wasn’t for Jack and me, goodness knows what would have become of him. I don’t know where me mam got you two from, but it was definitely the same place!’

‘Sorry, Kit,’ her father and her brother said in unison, and as usual, she relented.

‘I don’t want to get a cob on with you,’ she said as if talking to young children, ‘but you both squander what little money we have.’ She’d only own up that she had the money in her pocket after the pub shut. They could live without it for once in their lives.

‘Jack won’t be happy, will he, Kit?’ Tommy said piously, giving Danny cause to glare.

‘Mam would be horrified.’ Kitty knew the mention of her mother always brought a wave of contrition. ‘And if you bring the bobbies to this door again, either of you,’ she said, pointing at them with the knife she was about to put on the tray, ‘I will tell Jack.’

‘Sounds like she’s at the end of her tether,’ Danny whispered to his father when Kitty took the tray out to the scullery.

‘I heard that, and I am,’ Kitty called. Then coming back into the room and nodding to Tommy she said, ‘You go and have a lie-down, you look awful.’ She looked at his untouched plate of suet pudding.

‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of a lie-down,’ he said without complaint, so unlike him as he loved to be outside.

‘Is he sickening for something?’ Danny asked, his eyebrows meeting. Kitty tilted her head to one side to get a better look at Tommy’s downturned face. These things came on so fast with Tommy and they disappeared just as quickly sometimes.

‘I’ll go now if that’s all right, Kit?’ Tommy said, getting up from the table and heading to the stairs.

Kitty’s eyebrows rose. He must be sick if he was taking himself to bed. ‘Go on,’ she said more gently. ‘I’ll bring you a drink up soon.’

‘Ta, Kit,’ Tommy said, looking miserable. Then, in a low voice, milking his sister’s sympathy for all it was worth, he added, ‘It was probably making me get that wash that did it.’

‘What’s the matter, Spud?’ Jack, just coming through the door, was surprised his little brother did not raise a smile when he produced his weekly comic.

‘He’s not feeling well; he’s got another one of his sore throats.’ Kitty felt guilty for scolding Tommy earlier. ‘I got a couple of lemons from the shop. I’ll make him a hot drink.’

‘In this weather!’ Tommy exclaimed in a croaky, despondent voice. ‘I’ll melt.’ Then, without another word, he climbed the stairs to the middle bedroom he shared with Danny. Dad had the back room since Mam died, and Kitty had the big front bedroom containing just a single bed, a small table for the alarm clock and a chest of drawers for her meagre amount of clothing.

‘That’s a lovely cake, Kit,’ Jack said, taking off his cap, his jacket slung over his shoulder. He and his father nodded warily to each other as Jack entered the kitchen. ‘Did you make it?’

Jack was now a well-paid shipwright at Harland and Wolff’s foundry and marine repair works in Strand Road.

Every payday Jack put his wages on the table, and Kitty gave him back his spends. Not once did she hear him complain. Work had been scarce for Danny and Dad, and Jack was often the only one providing. Kitty supplemented the coffers with the odd catering job, and made delicious wedding or christening cakes, but although everybody around came to her, she could not charge inflated prices to people she knew were in the same boat as herself.

‘Aye,’ Kitty answered proudly, gazing at the cake she had moved to the sideboard for safety. She could feel her face flush warmly; it wasn’t very often she got a compliment in this house. ‘I’m going to take it over to Aunty Dolly’s later.’

‘You’ve surpassed yourself, Kit!’ Danny smiled.

‘Will you stay for your tea today, Jack?’ He didn’t always, and Kitty sneaked a look at her father whose head was still buried in the Echo.

‘Would be a shame to waste it.’ He answered her after a pause, and gave her a grin. It must have been one of their good days, thought Kitty, and pulled a seat out for her brother, taking his cap and jacket and hooking them on a peg behind the door.

‘If you wait until I’ve finished my tea,’ Jack said, sitting down to the table for his evening meal, after which he’d go back to his digs, ‘I’ll carry it over for you.’