Love Me Tender

‘What about the rations?’ Maura said. ‘And your Sheelagh?’

‘Grandma’s not waiting on the rations, I know,’ Lizzie said, and added rudely, ‘As for Sheelagh, she can…she can go to the devil, for all I care.’

‘Och, Lizzie, what would Father Flaherty say?’ Maura said, and the girls’ spluttering laughter caught the attention of Mr Morcroft.

‘Now then, you two, what’s to do?’ he said.

Lizzie handed over the list, the ration books and the shopping bags, and Mrs Morcroft, looking over her husband’s shoulder, said, ‘Is your aunt bad again, pet?’

‘She’s having the baby, I think,’ Lizzie said. ‘Only it’s taking a while. I have to keep the weans away from the house.’

‘God, but hasn’t she had a tough time of it?’ Mrs Morcroft said. ‘And you’re a grand girl, Lizzie, to be minding the children. Leave the bags and list here and we’ll make them up for you.’ She leant into the till, extracted a threepenny bit and gave it to Lizzie. ‘And that’s for yourself,’ she said, ‘for being such a good girl.’

Lizzie smiled and thanked her, and added it to the sixpence her gran had given her, then waited while Maura collected her purchases. They had to go back to Maura’s house to deliver the groceries and ask Mrs Mahon if Maura could go to the Bull Ring with Lizzie. This suited Lizzie, for Maura lived just off Bell Barn Road in Spring Street, which was the opposite way from the O’Malley house. From there they could go along Sun Street and out on to Bristol Street without anyone in her house or Rose’s knowing anything about it.

Mrs Mahon gave Maura one and sixpence to get kippers if there were any cheap, and Lizzie realised with a jolt that it was Friday and possibly she too would have been asked to bring back kippers or fish pieces for tea, as they couldn’t eat meat on Fridays. Eggs used to be a good standby, but even they were hard to come by these days. She knew she’d catch it when she got home, but she didn’t care. Even if she was going to be killed at the end of it, she might as well enjoy herself. It was ages since she’d been out somewhere with Maura as they used to, before the war changed everything.

Lizzie did have a few pangs of guilt as they made their way along Sun Street. She was acting totally out of character, for she’d been trained from when she was little to be helpful to others, and it was in her nature to be considerate too, but the last few weeks had been very trying, and made more so by Sheelagh tagging behind her everywhere. Surely I can have one day off? Lizzie thought to herself, and I’m not going just on my own, I’ve got Pete and Nuala with me. She knew in her heart of hearts that her mother wouldn’t see it the same way, but she gave a defiant lift to her head and smiled across to Maura, and Maura, who knew some of Lizzie’s train of thought, said, ‘It’ll be grand, you’ll see.’

SIX

It was a tidy step to the Bull Ring, but the girls had done it many a time. Trams cost money, and neither Kathy nor Mrs Mahon were keen on throwing their money about. They set a brisk pace along Bristol Street while Nuala bounced about in her pram and laughed and waved her arms and Peter trotted along beside them holding the pram handle. ‘Isn’t this great?’ Lizzie said. ‘Just the two of us, without my moaning cousin spoiling anything.’

‘She is awful,’ Maura agreed. ‘Why does your mammy make you take her around with you all the time?’

‘Och, who can understand mothers?’ Lizzie said with a shrug. ‘Mammy says it’s because she’s lost her daddy, but I don’t see that hanging on to me helps. I mean, I don’t like her and I never have, and she doesn’t like me.’ She stopped a minute and then went on, ‘I think she sticks to me to be spiteful, because she knows I hate it. She’s always either giving out or moaning at me, and when she’s with her friends at school, she makes fun of me all the time.’

‘Poor you,’ Maura sympathised. ‘How long d’you think your mammy will make you take her about?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie said, turning the pram into Bromsgrove Street, and added gloomily, ‘I hope it doesn’t last till the war ends.’

‘That might not be long, though, mightn’t it?’ Maura said almost in a whisper. She looked about to see if anyone was listening and then said, ‘Some people think we’re going to lose, and soon.’

Hearing Maura say the same thing as Sheelagh caused Lizzie to snap, ‘Don’t be stupid, that’s a crazy thing to say.’

‘No it isn’t,’ Maura said. ‘Everyone thinks there will be an invasion.’

Lizzie couldn’t deny that. ‘It doesn’t mean we’ll lose, though,’ she said obstinately.

She was so upset by Maura unknowingly backing Sheelagh’s theories on the progress of the war that she’d increased the speed she was pushing the pram and was unaware of it until suddenly Pete, unable to take the pace, tripped and pitched forward. He’d skinned both knees and was bawling loud enough to wake the dead. Lizzie bent down and pulled him to his feet, putting her arms around him while she examined his injuries. ‘Don’t cry,’ she said, spitting on the hem of her dress and rubbing the grime gently from his knees with it. ‘It isn’t much. Look.’

Pete looked. He’d stopped crying, but the tears were still visible on his cheeks and lurked on his eyelashes, and Lizzie knew he was liable to start again any minute. ‘They sting,’ he whined.

‘I know,’ Lizzie sympathised. ‘Tell you what, I’ll lift you up on to the pram and you can have a ride, how’s that?’

Pete looked at the pram and then at the length of Bromsgrove Street stretching before them. ‘How much further is it?’ he asked.

‘Still a fair bit,’ Maura told him, and added to Lizzie, ‘But you don’t have to go on as if you were in some sort of race. No wonder Pete fell over. It’s too hot to rush about like that, I’m boiling already myself.’

‘I’ll ride,’ Pete said suddenly, and Lizzie lifted him up on to the pram, thankful he wasn’t going to make more of a fuss. Maura was right, she realised, because as the morning wore on it had become hotter and she was feeling prickly with it already. So with Peter settled at the bottom of the pram opposite his sister, the two girls went at a more leisurely pace.

Lizzie didn’t want to discuss the war any more, so she said to Maura, ‘Tell me about when you was evacuated.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well, why didn’t you like it?’ Lizzie asked. ‘’Cos I haven’t ever been to the countryside. What’s it like?’

‘Well, when I was there, everything was always dripping wet,’ Maura said. ‘There weren’t proper pavements, just muddy lanes and soaking wet fields. There were great big cows and smelly pigs and dogs that barked all the time.’

‘Was she nice, the woman you were sent to?’

Maura shrugged. ‘She was all right,’ she said. ‘’Cept she made me take my shoes off at the door, ’cos they were always muddy. She said I needed wellingtons, but I didn’t have none. It was freezing on her lino and kitchen tiles in my socks. It was all right for her, she had big fluffy slippers, but I didn’t.’

Lizzie nodded. She knew her mother had no money for slippers either.

‘Mammy was mad,’ Maura went on. ‘She said I’d catch my death of cold, and it was cold, everything was blinking cold.’

‘What about your brothers?’

‘Oh, Harry and Gerry went to someone else,’ Maura said. ‘It was on a farm and they wanted big strapping boys and they quite liked it, but Mammy took us all back at Christmas.’

‘I’m glad I didn’t go,’ Lizzie said. ‘It sounds horrible.’

‘Well, you didn’t miss much,’ Maura said. ‘And there’s never been any bombs falling either, has there?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said uncertainly. ‘But Daddy said that there will be.’

‘Och, my mammy said if they were going to bomb Birmingham, they’d have done it already,’ Maura said airily. ‘She said we’re safe enough two hundred miles from the coast.’

‘Daddy said something about a landmine flattening the house.’

‘I don’t think that will happen, do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘But I hope not.’

They turned into Jamaica Row as they talked and could see the spire of the Bull Ring’s church and Times Furnishing on the corner of High Street. The crowds had increased around them as they neared the Bull Ring, and Lizzie felt the familiar excitement as she turned the pram and looked for a moment at the teeming mass of people on the hill running down towards the Bull Ring proper.

The statue of Nelson surrounded by railings was in the centre, with the barrows selling their wares to the right of it stretching from Bell Street down past Woolworth’s to Edgbaston Street. Smithfield Market and Rag Alley were to the left, and towering above it all was St Martin’s in the Field Church, with all the flower sellers around it.

Lizzie had a job to hold the pram on the steep incline down to the market, and she lifted Pete out to make it easier and he held the pram handle. The cobbled streets gave Nuala a bumpy ride and she seemed to enjoy it, for she squealed in delight.

Once among the thronging crowds, Lizzie was afraid of losing Pete and warned him to stay close with no wandering off, but there were such interesting things to see and hear, he was very tempted. All around traders plied their wares, fruit, vegetables, fish and meat interspersed with stalls selling curtain material, bedding, antiques and cheap crockery in baskets.

The cries of the vendors, mixed with the voices of those bartering with customers and the general crush of people, made a clamorous noise everywhere, but there was a buzz about the whole place that most of the shoppers seemed to feel. It had a special smell too, as the aromas of all the different things for sale rose on the air. Over all the bustle, one voice rang out loud and clear, and that was the bag lady chanting ‘’Andy carriers, ’andy carriers.’ She was very old, toothless and blind, and had a label round her neck saying so and she’d been there as long as Lizzie and Maura could remember, selling her paper carrier bags in all weathers.

Maura was holding Pete’s hand tightly as he’d made more than one dash for freedom as they looked around the stalls. ‘Hello, ducks, what you after then?’ the stall holders would enquire, but Maura and Lizzie would just smile and shake their heads. They passed Solly’s fish cart and greeted him, but he hadn’t reduced the fish yet so Maura kept her money in her pocket.

Peacock’s store beckoned, and they took the children to gaze in wonder at the wide array of toys. There were dolls of all shapes and sizes from the cheap to the dear, and beautiful prams and cribs for them like those for a real baby, but Lizzie noted with satisfaction that none of the dolls was as beautiful as her dear Daisy. Pete was more interested in the railway made of tin, and the metal cars, and the little lead soldiers in the fort. None of the children had toys like these and to them it was like an Aladdin’s cave. Eventually Lizzie turned the pram and they went on to Woolworth’s, where nothing cost more than sixpence. Maura said, ‘Bit of a swizz, though, my mammy says.’

‘Why?’

‘’Cos they sell a teapot for sixpence and then the lid for another sixpence. I mean, a lid’s no good on its own, is it?’

‘Well, no,’ Lizzie agreed, but added, ‘Though it’s useful to be able to buy another lid if you break one, and anyway Woolworth’s sells lots of other things.’

Maura couldn’t argue with that. The two girls particularly liked the counters with the jewellery, rings with sparkling diamonds, or red glass stones that shone like rubies. There were necklaces of pearl, and a wide variety of brooches, earrings and bracelets, and all for sixpence. ‘I’m going to buy some of this jewellery when I’m working,’ Maura said, and Lizzie thought she might too. Then there was the counter with the pretty hairslides and bands and silver-backed brushes and matching combs, and all manner of other items to make their hair beautiful. Lizzie sighed and said, ‘I wish I had bands like this, don’t you?’

‘Oh aye, and some pretty ribbons,’ Maura said wistfully.

‘Let me see,’ Pete demanded.

Lizzie laughed at him. ‘What do you need to see for, Pete? Choosing a ribbon for your own hair, are you?’

Pete stuck out his bottom lip obstinately. He hated being made fun of and he aimed a kick at Lizzie’s shins, which she side-stepped neatly. She grasped her young cousin by the shoulders and gave him a shake. ‘If you don’t behave, I won’t take you to see the clock.’

‘What clock?’

‘You’ll never know unless you’re good.’

‘Put him back up on the pram,’ Maura suggested. ‘He’ll see all he wants then.’

Lizzie saw the sense of that and dumped Pete at the bottom end of the pram again, and they all stopped to drool longingly over the sweet counter. ‘How much have we got altogether?’ Maura asked.

‘Eleven pence,’ Lizzie said. ‘Sixpence from Gran, threepence from Mrs Morcroft and tuppence from your mammy.’

‘Not enough, is it?’

‘It might be, but we’d better save it, ’cos we’ll be hungry later,’ Lizzie said.

Regretfully they turned away from the beautiful array of sweets, out into the thronging market again. Next door to Woolworth’s was the plywood model shop, Hobbies, and they stood for a minute to let the little ones see the model yachts, trains and cars arranged in the window before crossing the market to the bottom of the steps leading to the Market Hall.

To one side of the steps stood an ex-serviceman from the Great War selling razor blades from a tray around his neck, and on the other side another ex-army man, who was also blind, sold shoelaces. ‘Black or brown, best in town!’ he’d cry, over and over. Lizzie always felt sorry for the old soldiers – her daddy said there were many like them, just thrown on to the scrap heap – but she hadn’t money spare to buy things she didn’t need, so she averted her eyes and brought her mind back to the problem in hand.

‘How we going to get up there?’ Maura asked.

‘I suppose if our Pete walks up we could carry the pram,’ Lizzie suggested.

‘Are you kidding?’ Maura said. She thought a minute and said, ‘You could leave the pram at the bottom.’

‘I’d have to carry Nuala everywhere then,’ Lizzie complained. ‘And what if someone walked off with the pram while we’re inside?’

‘What’s up, duck?’ said a man at a nearby stall. ‘You want to go up the market?’

‘Um, yes,’ Lizzie said. ‘Yes please, but the pram…’

‘No trouble,’ the man said. He lifted Pete off the pram and called to his mate. ‘Come on, Fred, these two lasses want to get up the steps with the pram and the babby. Give us a hand.’

They lifted the pram, Nuala and all, and carried the whole lot up the steps, while Pete ran up alongside holding Maura and Lizzie’s hands. Once inside the Market Hall he stood and stared wide-eyed. The ceilings were high and criss-crossed with beams, and long metal poles led down from the beams to hold up the roof. High arched windows lined the sides of the hall, with lower ones at the ends, and stalls of every description lay before them. The noise was incredible.

They hadn’t gone very far when the clock began to strike. Until that moment, neither Pete nor Nuala had noticed the clock, but now they watched it spellbound. Lizzie noticed that most people did, even grown-ups, and the hubbub around them died down as the figures of three knights and a lady struck the bell twelve times. ‘Is that the clock you said about?’ Pete asked when it was all over.

‘That’s it,’ Lizzie said, ‘and if you keep being a good boy, I’ll take you to see the animals.’

Pete beamed. ‘There’s animals?’ he cried disbelievingly.

Maura laughed at the little boy’s amazed face. ‘You wait and see,’ she said. ‘My mammy used to bring me here for a treat when I was about your age.’

There were stalls for everything in the Market Hall, and although the smell of fish lingered, it didn’t seem to matter and even added a little to the atmosphere of the place. There were flower stalls, clothes stalls and material stalls, and the junk stalls sold a wide array of interesting objects. There were stalls selling fruit and vegetables, fresh fish and meat and cheese. There were people setting pots and pans and other kitchen utensils, and there were stalls piled with sweets, toys, haberdashery and knick-knacks.

Pimm’s pet shop drew the children like a magnet, for none of them owned pets of their own. The canaries twittered around them in their cages as the children stared, and even Nuala clamoured to be let down. There were mewing kittens and boisterous puppies that nipped their fingers playfully as they tumbled about the large box that held them. They saw fish swimming endlessly around their bowls, and baby rabbits and guinea pigs in their cages, and they stopped by the budgies to try and teach them to talk. Pete didn’t believe they could, and although Maura and Lizzie repeated over and over, ‘Who’s a pretty boy then?’ none of the birds co-operated and copied them. In the end they gave up and Pete said triumphantly, ‘See, told you they couldn’t talk. You must think I’m stupid.’

Lizzie laughed and cuffed Pete lightly around the head, and he yelled, ‘Gerroff!’ but any further protests were stopped by the clock striking again.

‘Two o’clock,’ Maura exclaimed in disbelief. We’d better get going. I’m starving, aren’t you?’

‘Not half,’ Lizzie agreed, bouncing the pram back to the Market Hall entrance.

Willing customers carried the pram down the steps for them, and once on the cobbles Maura said, ‘Sniff that.’

Lizzie didn’t have to; she could already smell the joints of meat roasting in Mountford’s shop window, and it made her mouth water. ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘my stomach thinks my throat’s cut.’

They couldn’t afford a meat sandwich because it cost sixpence, and anyway it was Friday, so instead they bought a cone of baked potatoes for a penny each, with a slice of bread dipped in gravy for Nuala. ‘Are you sure she should be eating that?’ Maura asked.

Lizzie wasn’t really certain, but she shrugged and said, ‘Surely eating meat doesn’t count when you’re only a baby?’

‘I don’t know,’ Maura said. ‘But then, sure, she has to eat something.’

Nuala certainly seemed to enjoy her slice of dipped bread. She ate every bit and all told didn’t make much mess at all. Pete finished his cone of potatoes and licked his fingers and said, ‘I’m thirsty now,’ and Lizzie realised she was too.

‘Have we enough for drinks?’ Maura asked.

‘Not if we want sweets,’ Lizzie said. ‘But we can get threepence worth of over-ripe fruit that might cure the thirst, and still have money for some sweets too.’

Everyone agreed with that suggestion and they wandered down to the bottom where the cheaper barrows were and got some bruised apples, soft oranges and bananas going brown. They demolished them in quick order, sitting on a bench by the horse trough near St Martin’s, where Pete was entertained by the trams that came rattling up Moor Street.

Then they made their way to the sweet stall, where they pored over the goodly selection on sale. Gobstoppers lasted forever, but pear drops tasted better, and toffee was nice but would make them thirsty again. Eventually they bought a stick of liquorice at a halfpenny each, and two penn’orth of pear drops. Nuala had fallen asleep in the pram with her thumb in her mouth, so she didn’t have to be considered as they shared the sweets out among themselves.

‘We’ll have to be off soon,’ Lizzie said. ‘It’s a tidy step home and time must be getting on.’

‘Aye, I’ll have to get Mammy’s fish,’ Maura said. ‘If it’s gone down enough in price.’

Before that, though, Pete was enchanted by the day-old chicks a man had for sale by Nelson’s Square. They did look sweet, like little yellow fluff balls, and Pete was all for taking one home. Lizzie and Maura had a hard job to convince him that the chick would grow to a hen, and hens couldn’t be kept in a back-to-back house with no garden.

Pete had reached the mutinous stage when Maura spotted the man walking round with the tray of mechanical toys and successfully distracted his attention. He watched the toys jumping around the tray in open-mouthed astonishment, and Lizzie stayed with him while Maura got a huge parcel of kippers for her mother for one and six. She stored it at the bottom of the pram and they set off home. Pete’s legs were tired, and Lizzie tucked him in beside the fish, and even though the hill up to High Street was steep and she was puffed at the top of it, she left Pete where he was. It was a long way home, she thought, for legs as short as his.

All the way back, while Nuala slumbered, the two girls told Peter tales about the Bull Ring on a Saturday. ‘It’s better then,’ Maura said. ‘Late afternoon and evening’s the best time, and the food is nearly given away, my mammy says.’

‘Aye, but that’s not all,’ Lizzie said. ‘They have stilt walkers and a man in chains – all tied up, he is, and you wouldn’t think how he’d get out of it, but he always does.’

‘Aye, when the money in the hat is a pound or more,’ Maura reminded her. ‘And there’s a fire-eater and a man that lies on a bed of nails and lets other people walk on him.’

‘And others play music and sing,’ Lizzie said. ‘And a feller called Jimmy Jesus preaches from the Bible. He’s got long white hair and a beard and that’s why he’s called Jesus.’

Pete’s mouth dropped open in astonishment as he drank in all the two girls told him, scarcely able to believe it was true. ‘We’ll take you one day, Pete,’ Lizzie promised. ‘If your mammy says it’s all right, you can come with me and Maura. We’ll stay till the Sally Army brass band comes marching down Corporation Street. Later they give all the tramps soup at the Citadel. Jimmy Jesus too, so my daddy said anyway.’

‘Oh, they do,’ Maura said. ‘It’s great down the Bull Ring, isn’t it?’

‘Nowhere like it,’ Lizzie agreed. ‘And it was worth it today, even if I’m never allowed out again for a whole year.’

‘Och, course you will be,’ Maura said confidently. ‘They’ll just shout a bit, that’s all.’

Lizzie didn’t answer, for Maura didn’t know how her Mammy could go on, not to mention her Auntie Bridie, and whatever Maura said, she knew she was going to catch it.

She said goodbye to Maura at her door and went along Bell Barn Road to collect the rations before she dared go home. ‘How’s your aunt, dear?’ Mrs Morcroft asked, and Lizzie realised with a jolt she hadn’t thought about Auntie Rose and the reason for her jaunt to the Bull Ring all day. She wasn’t terribly worried – after all, women had babies all the time, and even though her gran said she’d had to have the doctor, it didn’t really mean she was deadly sick – so she said quite cheerfully, ‘All right, I suppose, Mrs Morcroft, but I don’t know, we’ve been out all day.’

She was more concerned when she got to Rose’s house and found no one in. She left the children in the pram outside and pounded upstairs. The bed was stripped and had a big stain across it, and there was bed linen soiled with blood thrown into a corner. Alarmed, Lizzie ran downstairs and pushed the pram across the road to her own house, but that was also empty, so then she ran, pushing the pram before her, past Pickering’s to her grandma’s.

She lifted Pete down and hauled Nuala from her straps, suddenly aware that not only was the little girl sopping wet, but that something was seeping from her nappy on to Lizzie’s dress as she balanced Nuala on her hip to open the entry door.

They were all there, Kathy, Maggie and Carmel, and they all turned at her entrance. ‘Where in the name of God have you been?’ Kathy demanded.

‘D-down the Bull Ring. Grandma told me to take the weans.’

‘She meant you to take them all,’ Kathy said. ‘Dear God, girl, you’re not stupid, and I’d keep out of Bridie’s way if I were you. She’s been spitting feathers all day, and Sheelagh’s done nothing but moan.’

‘Aye, as if we hadn’t enough on our plate,’ Maggie said bitterly. ‘It wouldn’t have hurt Bridie to look to her own weans the once, for she was worse than useless here, and Lizzie at least kept the wee ones away for the day.’

‘What d’you mean?’ Lizzie cried, suddenly frightened. ‘What’s happened?’