Winnie of the Waterfront

by Rosie Harris

  Ten o’clock came and went and Winnie became uneasy. The pubs would be out by now. Then the clock on the mantelpiece chimed for eleven o’clock. Everyone would have gone home by now – even the gas-lamps outside in the street had gone out – so where was her mam?

  Midnight came and Winnie felt waves of panic. There was nothing she could do. She strained her ears but there were no steps approaching through the darkness and the rest of the house seemed to have settled for the night. Cold and concerned, she dozed in uneasy, neck-jerking snaps. The moment she felt her head drop onto her chest she forced herself upright and rubbed her eyes hard to try and stay awake.

  How many times that happened she had no idea. The room grew colder and she pulled the blanket higher, but she couldn’t stop shivering. Gradually, as the grey light of morning came creeping into the room, she felt some of her tension ease momentarily. Daylight was followed by all the usual early morning noises as the rest of the people in the house got ready for work.

  So where was her mam, Winnie thought anxiously. Fresh waves of panic made her tremble. She didn’t know what to do. When Sandy came to wheel her to school he found her shaking and frightened.

  ‘My mam never came home last night,’ she told him.

  His eyebrows went up and he ran a hand through his shock of red hair. ‘She’s never stayed out all night before, has she?’

  Winnie shook her head. ‘She went to the pub because she had some bad news,’ she explained.

  He waited for her to go on.

  ‘There was this message,’ she snuffled. ‘It was about my dad. He’s missing, Sandy. It said “presumed dead”. I don’t think we’ll ever see him again,’ she choked.

  Sandy looked uncomfortable. ‘About your mam – which pub did she go to?’ he asked gruffly.

  ‘Why? What does that matter?’

  He shrugged. ‘I thought we could drop in there on the way to school. They might tell you what time she left. She might have gone home with someone,’ he added awkwardly.

  ‘What, and shacked up with them at their place all night?’ Winnie gasped.

  ‘Does happen,’ Sandy grinned.

  Winnie shook her head. ‘Not when she’d just heard bad news about my dad.’

  ‘That’s why it might have happened. She might have been feeling a bit low and felt she needed someone.’

  ‘I needed someone too, and she left me all on my own all night,’ Winnie wept.

  ‘Yeah, I know. Well, come on, let’s go and check it out. The sooner we know where she is the better you’ll feel.’

  Chapter Seven

  WINNIE AND SANDY skipped school, but it took them until midday to find out what had happened to Winnie’s mother. They went from one pub to the next, and although most of them knew who Grace Malloy was they couldn’t offer them any help.

  At most of the pubs the landlord admitted that she had been in there at some stage the night before, drinking heavily and causing a scene. Most times they also told them where she would probably have gone next. As they followed the trail, Winnie’s heart grew heavier and her fears about what could have happened to her mother increased.

  By mid-morning she was ready to give up. The day was grey and damp with a thick mist creeping up from the Mersey, but Sandy was insistent that they should go on.

  ‘We’re in hot water anyway for skipping school so we might as well go on looking,’ he told her as he manoeuvred her cumbersome invalid carriage along the narrow pavement towards the next pub they’d been directed to.

  ‘Heavens! I’d forgotten all about school,’ Winnie exclaimed guiltily. ‘I’m sorry if it means you’re in trouble! Do you think if we explain why we skipped off it will do any good?’

  Sandy shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Probably not, but don’t worry about it. I’m not, I’m enjoying myself.’

  ‘It’s not fair that you should be in disgrace because of me, though, is it,’ Winnie said worriedly.

  ‘I’m in hot water so often that I’m used to it,’ he guffawed. ‘Anyway, I’d sooner be doing this than sitting in class and listening to dull old lessons. Come on, what’s the next pub we’ve got to look for?’

  ‘I think he said the Brewers Arms, and that’s at the top of Scotland Road on the corner of Comus Street. I never knew my mam went there,’ she added, shaking her head.

  ‘I bet you never knew she went to half of the others we’ve visited this morning either. She must have had a terrific thirst on her, the way she seemed to put it away,’ he laughed.

  Winnie felt uneasy. Sandy was right. If her mother had taken a drink at each of the pubs they’d already visited this morning then she must have been well and truly drunk by the time she reached the Brewers Arms.

  The landlord there was a short, stout man with a round florid face and watery blue eyes. He looked very uneasy when they asked him if he knew anyone by the name of Grace Malloy and whether she had been in his pub drinking the previous night.

  ‘Why’re you asking?’ he prevaricated.

  ‘She’s my mam,’ Winnie told him. ‘She went out for a bit of a bevvy last night and she didn’t come home.’

  ‘You mean she left you at home on your own?’ he said in disbelief, staring at Winnie’s twisted legs.

  Winnie nodded.

  ‘Who’s this, then, your brother?’ he asked, nodding in Sandy’s direction.

  ‘No, he’s a friend. He pushes me to school every day.’

  ‘You mean you can’t walk at all?’

  ‘Not properly. I can get around indoors by using the furniture.’

  ‘And your mam went out and left you on your own!’ he repeated, running a thick, podgy hand over his dark greasy hair.

  ‘Was she in here drinking or not?’ Sandy demanded. ‘It would be pretty late on because we know she’d been drinking all evening and she’d been in about six other pubs before coming here.’

  ‘Yeah, she was in. Plastered, she was. Picked a fight so I ordered her out.’

  ‘Do you know where she went after that?’

  The landlord stared down at Winnie. ‘You telling me that you can’t walk at all? You have to have someone push you around in that contraption if you want to go anywhere?’

  ‘I’ve already told you so,’ Winnie frowned. ‘What’s that got to do with it anyway? I want to know what happened to my mam after she left here.’

  He rubbed his hand over his chin and looked uncomfortable. ‘Like I told you, she was plastered. She started making a nuisance of herself so I ordered her out. I can’t risk a disturbance in case it brings the scuffers nosing around. If that happens I could lose my licence and that’d be my livelihood down the drain.’

  ‘We know all that,’ Sandy said impatiently, ‘but what happened to Mrs Malloy when she left here last night?’

  ‘Well, as I told you, I had to tell her to leave because she was making a scene. When she got outside she seemed to stagger a bit and then she fell over and bashed her head on the side of the pavement.’

  Winnie looked at him wide-eyed, her face pinched with fear. ‘So what happened after that? What did you do about it?’

  He shook his head. ‘One or two of my customers tried to pick her up and sort her out, but her head was bleeding rather badly and she was moaning, so someone went off to get a scuffer. I didn’t argue about it because I thought it was better to report it to them than leave it for them to find out there’d been an accident.’

  ‘So what did the policeman do when he got here?’ Sandy asked.

  ‘He took one look at her and felt her neck and wrist for her pulse, like they do, and then called an ambulance. That came in next to no time. Well, it would, seeing it was a policeman asking for it. Then they took her away.’

  ‘Where did they take her? Which hospital?’

  The landlord shrugged. ‘The General, I suppose. I never asked. As far as I was concerned we’d done all we could. She wasn’t one of my regulars.’

  ‘So you haven’t enquired how she is?’ Sandy asked.

 
; The man shook his head. ‘Why should I?’ He ran his hand over his head again. ‘Hope I never see her again. I’ve got enough to do without having the place full of troublemakers.’

  Sandy swung Winnie’s chair round and without even stopping to thank the landlord he set off at a run, heading in the direction of Liverpool General Hospital.

  It took Sandy and Winnie almost an hour to obtain any information about Grace Malloy at the hospital because no one had ever heard of her. When they finally established that she’d fallen over outside the Brewers Arms public house at about half past ten the previous evening and had hurt her head, and that she had been brought to the hospital in an ambulance, they finally managed to trace that she had been admitted.

  Even then, no one seemed to be prepared to tell them how she was or which ward she was in. Time and again, Winnie assured people that Grace Malloy was her mother and watched as they took down details about where she lived.

  Eventually, she and Sandy were asked to wait in a small side room and were told that a doctor would be along to see them shortly.

  For Winnie, the waiting was intolerable. Sandy kept trying to reassure her by saying that any moment now a nurse would come and take her along to see her mother. Winnie kept shaking her head and pointing out that if that was the case then why couldn’t someone tell her how her mother was.

  ‘Because they’re busy. You’ll be able to find out for yourself how she is when they take you along to the ward to see her,’ he told her stubbornly. He didn’t like being in the hospital any more than she did. The smell of disinfectant and the general feel of his surroundings made him uncomfortable.

  Eventually, a tall thin man, wearing a white coat, a stethoscope dangling around his neck and a worried look on his face, came bustling into the room.

  ‘I’m Doctor Bailey,’ he announced in clipped tones. ‘You are Mrs Malloy’s relatives?’

  ‘She’s my mam,’ Winnie told him. ‘This is my friend, Sandy, who’s brought me here. I can’t walk,’ she explained.

  ‘Quite!’

  ‘Can I see my mam? What’s happened to her? Was she very badly hurt when she fell over?’

  ‘Your mother, Grace Malloy, hit her head against a kerbstone on the pavement.’

  ‘Badly?’

  ‘Yes, very badly. By the time she reached hospital she was unconscious and it was too late for us to do anything for her. I’m afraid your mother died last night.’

  ‘Died! Died? My mam’s dead from falling over on the pavement?’ Winnie looked astounded. ‘I don’t believe you!’

  ‘I’m afraid it is true,’ Dr Bailey told her. ‘She was very inebriated, of course, and that didn’t help matters.’ He looked at Winnie’s white little face with concern. ‘I am very sorry. Have you someone who can get in touch with us here at the hospital? Your father, perhaps? We need someone to sign the relevant papers and to arrange a funeral.’

  ‘My dad was called up into the army a few months ago and he’s just been reported “Missing, presumed dead”,’ Winnie told him in a small, flat voice that was little more than a whisper.

  ‘I see! So who is looking after you?’

  Winnie shook her head. ‘There’s no one else.’

  ‘No brothers or sisters?’

  ‘My mam was married before and has other children, but they have nothing to do with me,’ she said dully.

  ‘That is unfortunate, very unfortunate. I think you had better make contact with them, though, to make arrangements about her funeral. Her body can only stay here for a couple of days. If you don’t do that then your mother will have to be buried in a pauper’s grave.’

  Winnie looked at him, bewildered. ‘You do know where to find them?’ he asked.

  Winnie nodded, but she looked so uncertain that Dr Bailey turned to Sandy. ‘Can you help?’

  ‘I don’t know any of them. I suppose I could tell Father Patrick what has happened and he’ll probably be able to help. He’ll know all about the Malloys, he’s been their parish priest for years.’

  Dr Bailey looked relieved. ‘Yes, do that,’ he affirmed. ‘Tell their priest what has happened. Ask him to tell them to contact the hospital as soon as possible to make the necessary arrangements.’

  Winnie didn’t utter a word as they left the hospital and headed back home. The mist had now turned to rain and everywhere looked grey and dismal. Sandy didn’t know what to say to her so he didn’t speak either. He saved his breath, kept his head down and walked as fast as he could.

  Winnie couldn’t believe what either the landlord at the Brewers Arms or Dr Bailey at the hospital had told her. She knew her mother drank. Some mornings she had a hangover, but she was never completely incapable, only irritable or bad-tempered.

  If only her dad was here, he’d sort everything out, she thought sadly. Up until now she’d convinced herself that he was still alive. Now, though, she felt a void inside her, a loneliness greater than anything she’d ever known in her life before. It was a gigantic ache, a pain worse than anything she’d felt when she’d been in hospital and they’d pulled and messed about with her legs.

  The thought of having to make contact with her stepbrothers and stepsister only added to her inner torment. They’d never liked her; they’d resented her, scorned her, looked at her as if she was some sort of freak.

  She knew they probably wouldn’t be interested in the fact that her dad was missing and probably dead. They’d never liked him. Her mother was their mother, though, so her death would matter to them as well. Since her dad wouldn’t be able to do so, they would be the ones who would have to come to the hospital and arrange the funeral.

  And then what? How would she manage afterwards? Who would pay the rent on their rooms in Carswell Court? Her mam mightn’t have done very much to help her but she had always been there. She had done the shopping, when she remembered, and washed out their clothes from time to time.

  Winnie held back her growing terror. None of her mother’s grown-up children would want to take her in and have her living with them. She wouldn’t want to live with them anyway. She felt frightened of them and even scared of their children because they teased her about her legs.

  As they reached Carswell Court, she twisted her head round so that she could speak to Sandy. ‘Why are you bringing me back here? Shouldn’t we be going to school? I’ll tell Miss Phillips what happened, and that I asked you to help me to look for my mam. I’m sure she’ll understand.’

  ‘The doctor at the hospital said I was to go and see Father Patrick and tell him about the accident and everything,’ Sandy reminded her. ‘We’d better do that first, hadn’t we?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Well, I thought you might want to wipe your face and dry your hair before we go to see him.’

  ‘I don’t see what Father Patrick can do. Saying a Mass or lighting candles isn’t going to bring my mam back, or my dad, now, is it.’

  ‘I know that,’ Sandy muttered. ‘I think Doctor Bailey was thinking about you, and that you need someone to look after you. You can hardly live on your own now, can you!’ he added, his face red with embarrassment.

  For a moment Winnie didn’t answer. His remarks cut like a knife because he had put into words all the things she’d been mulling over in her mind since they’d left the hospital. Bringing them out into the open had made them real. It was now a problem that had to be faced; one that wouldn’t go away.

  Chapter Eight

  BY SIX O’CLOCK that evening Winnie Malloy’s stepbrothers Mick and Paddy, and her stepsister Kathleen Flynn, were at Carswell Court, all crammed into the tiny, run-down living room. Oblivious of Winnie in her invalid carriage they were arguing like banshees about the details of their mother’s funeral and who was to have what of her meagre possessions.

  ‘I’ll take her thick black shawl,’ Kathleen told them. ‘Not that I’m ever likely to wear such a thing, you understand, but I’d like to have it as a permanent memory of her. Whenever I think of her I see her wearing it,’ s
he sniffed, wiping away her tears.

  ‘If you take that then I’ll have nothing to put over me at nights,’ Winnie told her. ‘Mam always used it as an extra covering when it was a cold night.’

  ‘Shut your gob and stop bleating, you selfish little bint,’ Kathleen told her dismissively.

  ‘I’ll take the old armchair then,’ Mick stated. ‘The only bloody comfortable chair in the place. Probably the only piece of furniture here that belonged to the old girl.’

  ‘So what do I get as a keepsake then?’ Paddy asked.

  ‘Didn’t think you’d want anything. You were always the black sheep of the family. When Dad wasn’t thrashing you then Mam was tearing you a strip off for something you’d done wrong,’ Kathleen reminded him.

  ‘That’s all in the past,’ Paddy laughed. ‘You forget about these things in time.’

  ‘I have the perfect souvenir for you, then, brother,’ Mick guffawed. ‘Take the bloody clock! Every time it chimes you can think of one or the other of them.’

  ‘If you take the clock then how will I know the time? How will I manage to get to school on time, or to Mass on Sunday?’ Winnie butted in.

  ‘What’re you blabbing on about?’ Mick snapped. ‘You won’t be able to stay here, not on your own, now, will you? You can’t take care of yourself, not with them stupid legs.’

  ‘I thought I could try,’ Winnie told him defiantly. ‘My friend Sandy will push me to school and back and to Mass on a Sunday …’

  ‘… And carry you up to bed every night and plonk you on that bloody commode thing when you want to go to the lav?’ Kathleen asked in shocked tones.

  ‘You won’t be living here and you won’t be living with any of us either. We haven’t the room for you, kiddo,’ Paddy interrupted his sister. ‘Sorry, luv! We’ve already got two kids of our own and my Sandra says they’re more than she can cope with as it is.’

  Trying to be optimistic about her future seemed impossible, Winnie realised. She’d always known they didn’t like her, didn’t want her, and this was their chance to wipe her out of their lives for good. She was pretty sure that they were going to stick her away in a home of some sort and forget her.