by Maureen Lee
In Liverpool, there was Mrs Brophy, in her fine four-bedroom house with a big garden, struggling to keep her head above water until she and all her girls were at work and the money would come pouring in. At least Mrs Brophy was in a position to have dreams. For some people, life was truly hopeless.
Mollie realized this for the first time when Tom Ryan took her home to meet his mother. Irene Ryan’s house was spotless, the windows shone, the step was scrubbed, and there was food in the larder. The house stood out from its dreary, filthy neighbours in Turnpike Street off Scotland Road where Tom and his three brothers had been born and where scores of sickly, half-starved children played in the cobbled street dressed in little more than rags. Most were barefoot. Mollie couldn’t believe such poverty existed in a big, vigorous city like Liverpool.
The reason for Mrs Ryan’s affluence was due entirely to the generosity of her four sons, who had all passed the scholarship and had good, well-paying jobs. Mike, the eldest, worked as a supervisor in the post office in Moorfields, Brian was traffic manager for the Liverpool Tool Company, and Enoch had served his apprenticeship as a carpenter and now had his own little furniture business, which was doing extremely well. Mrs Ryan showed Mollie two chairs he’d made with lovely carved backs and curved arms. And then there was Tom, a policeman, though Mrs Ryan had wanted him to become a priest.
‘I always fancied having a priest in the family,’ she sighed when she and Mollie first met.
Tom had winked at Mollie from behind his mother’s back. ‘I’d’ve made a hopeless priest, Ma, and I’d never have learned the Latin.’
‘You can do anything if you try hard enough,’ his mother said severely.
Tom told Mollie later that this phrase had been drummed into him for as long as he could remember. ‘She said the same to all of us: “You can do anything if you try.” She used to get books out the library and help us with our schoolwork so we were always top of the class in everything,’ he said proudly. ‘Ma was determined we’d all get good jobs, not go on the parish like the rest of the lads in Turnpike Street. After our dad died not long after I was born, she used to take me cleaning with her, and she took in washing an’ all. Night-times, she worked in a pub on Scottie Road and our Mike looked after me.’
Irene Ryan was a small, knobbly woman who walked with a slight limp. Her hands were red and swollen and her back was hunched as a result of a lifetime of hard work. It was hard to believe she’d given birth to four strapping lads. A photograph of them stood on the sideboard, taken the day Tom had become a fully-fledged policeman, their little tough mother in the centre, wearing the beaver lamb fur coat that was her pride and joy. The lads had clubbed together and presented it to her on her fiftieth birthday.
They thought the world of their mam, who had encouraged them to dream and impressed on them they could do anything they wanted if they tried hard enough. They took turns sending money every week because it only seemed fair. If it hadn’t been for Mam, they wouldn’t be where they were today, but standing on street corners playing pitch and toss or hanging around the Docks or St John’s Market in the hope of getting a few hours’ work, while their wives and kids had to rely on charity for food.
Tom was the only son still single, but only until Mollie’s birthday came along in July when she would become seventeen and a married woman, both on the same day. She was looking forward to it because she liked Tom very much and he made her laugh - there hadn’t been much to laugh at in Duneathly over the last few years. And Tom loved her so wholeheartedly that it would be a shame to throw it back in his face because she doubted if a love like his came along twice in a woman’s life.
She’d left the Brophys months ago and now lived with Tom’s mother in the little house in Turnpike Street, sleeping in the same feather bed where Tom had slept when he was little - she could have sworn she could smell the fresh, tingling soap he used whenever her head touched the pillow. He was in a hostel where all the young, single policemen lived until they found themselves a wife. Once they were married, they would be given a police house. Tom didn’t know yet where it would be.
Mollie couldn’t wait.
‘Morning, luv,’ Mrs Ryan grunted when she limped into Mollie’s room with a cup of tea, as she did every morning.
‘Morning, Irene.’ Mollie struggled to a sitting position. She’d been told to call her future mother-in-law by her first name, as it sounded friendlier.
‘It’s a lovely day outside,’ Irene remarked, pulling back the curtains and allowing the golden sunshine to come pouring in. It was May and unseasonably warm for the time of year.
‘I wish you wouldn’t do this, you know,’ Mollie said uncomfortably. ‘I mean, it should be me bringing you tea, not the other way around.’
‘No, it shouldn’t, luv. Me, I’m a lady of leisure these days and I don’t have much to do with me time.’ Her prematurely wizened face split into a grin. ‘Anyroad, you’re a doctor’s girl: you’re probably used to being waited on.’
‘Indeed I’m not. No one got cups of tea in bed back in Ireland.’
‘Are you quite sure your father won’t be coming to the wedding, luv?’
‘No, he won’t,’ Mollie said quickly. ‘He’ll be too busy, and I think I told you he gets seasick easily, so he can never leave Ireland. There’s just my brother, his wife, and baby coming, Aunt Maggie from New York, and of course the Brophys, all six of them, including Agatha, who’s my bridesmaid.’
Aunt Maggie wasn’t crossing the Atlantic just for the wedding, but to meet Hazel, Patrick and Aidan for the first time, not to mention Thaddy, who’d only been a baby when she left for America. She would be staying in Finn’s cottage for two weeks after the wedding.
It was going to be quite a big wedding. Tom’s brothers, their wives and seven children would be there, plus half a dozen policemen and Irene’s best friend, Ethel, with whom she went every Saturday to the music hall in the Rotunda Theatre on Scotland Road.
Finn had sent five pounds, which meant everything had to be done as cheaply as possible, but Irene was good at doing things on the cheap. ‘Look after the pennies, and the pounds’ll look after themselves,’ she said wisely. She’d taken Mollie to Paddy’s Market where she’d bought a wedding dress with its own silky petticoat for one and sixpence - it needed taking up an inch or two, but otherwise fitted just fine - and a pair of stiff silk shoes, only slightly worn. The dress was made of slipper satin with a lace yoke and long tight sleeves, and smelt just a little bit of mothballs.
Mrs Brophy was letting Mollie borrow her veil and a wreath that was a mixture of pearls and little wax flowers. Ethel was making the cake. Pauline, Lily and Gladys, Irene’s daughters-in-law, with whom Mollie got on exceptionally well, had promised to make loads of sandwiches for the reception, which would be held in a room over the Throstles’ Nest, a local pub.
‘That way,’ Irene had said with a chuckle, ‘you only have to provide a drink for the toast. Afterwards, everyone can buy their own and it means you get the room free of charge.’
‘Anyroad, girl,’ Irene said now, ‘I’ll go and start on the brekky. I suppose you only want toast again?’
‘Yes, please. I’ll never get into that wedding dress if I have any more of your big fried breakfasts.’
‘You could do with more fat on you, Mollie.’
‘And so could you,’ Mollie retorted. She doubted if Irene weighed more than six stones.
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ Irene said good-humouredly. ‘The toast’ll be ready in five minutes.’
Mollie drained the tea, poured water into a bowl from the jug she’d brought up the night before, and quickly got washed. There was no bathroom in the house and she bathed in a tin bath in front of the fire on Saturday nights after Irene and Ethel left for the Rotunda and before Tom arrived to take her to the pictures. She put on the dress that Sinead Larkin had run up in a single day: pale-grey and dark-grey stripes with three-quarter-length sleeves and a plain, round neck. It was a trifle shorter than she w
as used to. Every time she put it on she thought about Annemarie.
She caught her hair in a bunch, pulled it over her shoulder, and began to twist it into a plait. Annemarie had used to do the same, and Mollie recalled the way she’d squinted at it the longer the plait became.
‘Don’t do that, darlin’,’ Mammy used to say. ‘One of these days the wind will change and your eyes will stay that way.’
‘Don’t care,’ Annemarie would cry. ‘Don’t care, Mammy, don’t care.’
The toast was ready: she could smell it. She wished Irene would use butter instead of margarine. At home, they’d only had butter, as one of the farmers used to deliver a huge pat every Friday morning, along with two dozen eggs and a jug of cream. Nowadays, Irene could easily have afforded butter, but old habits died hard and it probably didn’t cross her mind to buy anything but the cheapest margarine that tasted of petrol - at least, so Mollie thought.
She went downstairs to the little living room where Irene was holding a slice of bread as thick as a doorstep on a fork in front of the fire. There was no need of a fire today, but it was the only way of acquiring hot water.
‘It’s nearly done, luv. Pour yourself another cuppa, the pot’s on the table. You can pour me one while you’re at it.’ She said the same thing every day.
Mollie sat at the table that overlooked a small, whitewashed yard where the tin bath hung from a hook on the wall. There was a lavatory at the end which was full of spiders and very inconvenient to use if it was raining, even more so when it was dark and it was necessary to take a candle that was likely to go out before you got as far as the door.
Irene fussed around, piling toast on to Mollie’s plate. She protested she couldn’t possibly eat it all. One slice would have been sufficient.
‘Never mind, girl,’ Irene said, ‘I’ll give what’s over to the lads next door.’
The lads belonged to Tossie Quigley, who could be heard through the thin walls screaming at them at the top of her voice. Barely twenty, her two tiny boys looked more like toddlers than three- and four-year-olds. Tossie’s husband had just walked out one day and never come back, and she’d been left to cope on her own. Irene helped as much as she could, but Turnpike Street was full of people like Tossie and her stunted kids, and she couldn’t possibly feed them all. ‘Much as I’d like to,’ she often said sadly.
Mollie ate most of the toast, though it was an effort, collected her small white hat with a turned-down brim, white gloves, and black patent leather handbag from the parlour, and shouted, ‘I’m off now, Irene.’
‘Tara, luv,’ Irene shouted back. ‘What time will I see yis tonight?’
‘Not until late. Tom’s on early shift this week: he’s collecting me at half past five and we’re going to the pictures.’
‘Have a nice time, then, girl.’
Before opening the door, Mollie steeled herself. She hated stepping out into the street dolled up to the nines and coming face to face with women who’d probably never had a new frock in their lives, who wore tatty black shawls over their heads, and never seemed to comb their hair from one week to the next. The looks she got were full of envy or contempt, even hatred for this smartly dressed stranger who was about to marry a man with a decent job and a regular wage coming in. She waved at an elderly woman who was sitting on her doorstep enjoying the glory of the early-morning sunshine. ‘Good morning,’ she cried.
‘Morning,’ the woman replied sullenly.
A little girl was skipping with a rope that didn’t have any handles. Mollie patted her head. ‘Hello, darlin’.’
‘Hello.’ The girl stopped skipping and gave her a lovely smile. ‘I like your hat, miss.’
‘It used to have a feather on, but I took it off.’ She returned the girl’s smile. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Betsy. I’m going to have a hat like that when I grow up.’
‘I hope you have ten hats like this, Betsy.’
The street negotiated, she gave a sigh of relief when she reached Scotland Road where she caught the tram into town. Mollie had managed to get a job all on her own without the intervention of the long-dead Mr Brophy. She worked in Roberta’s Milliners in Clayton Square, but only until she married Tom. By then, Roberta’s daughter, Erica, who normally helped her mother in the shop, would have returned from Milan where she was taking a millinery course.
Roberta - whose real name was Doris - sold posh hats to posh women and was a dreadful snob. Mollie was convinced she’d only got the job because her father was a doctor. She suspected Roberta would like to have had the fact tattooed on her forehead for her posh customers to see.
She arrived at the shop and paused in front of the window where Roberta was changing the display, something she did regularly with enormous enjoyment: she was a widow and the shop was her life.
‘That’s nice,’ Mollie mouthed, pointing to the hat Roberta was fitting on to a faceless bald head. It was pink organdie with a wired brim and a floppy rose on the side, perfect for a wedding.
She opened the door and Roberta said, ‘It’s a copy of a Worth model.’ She mainly stocked copies of famous brands - Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, Callot Soeurs - some of which she made herself. Her customers passed them off as the real thing. Now that it was summer, most of the hats were straw: lacquered straw, wild straw, plain straw, and a few pastel-coloured felts. The in-style this year was the cloche, though there were a few with wide brims for women who had no taste or didn’t give a fig whether or not they wore the latest fashion. Mollie’s own hat was a last year’s model that Roberta had let her have for quarter-price. Originally, it had sported a giant ostrich feather, which she’d removed and given to Irene.
She made the first cup of tea of the day and stood behind the counter to wait for the customers to arrive. Roberta seated herself on one of the padded chairs in front of a long mirror, complaining that her feet were giving her gyp. From time to time, she glanced admiringly at her reflection. She was beautifully, if plentifully, made up, her lips painted bright red and hair dyed much the same colour. Her navy-blue costume with huge white buttons would have looked better on a woman twenty years her junior, but she was attractive in a showy sort of way.
She’d wanted to go on the stage when she was young, she’d told Mollie. ‘But my mother was dead set against it. She said it was a terribly common profession, and encouraged me to become a milliner instead. Then I met Stewart and we fell in love and got married.’ She sighed. ‘But I still wish Mother had let me go on the stage. I mean, there’s nothing common about Gertrude Lawrence or Beatrice Lillie, is there? And Sybil Thorndike is very highly thought of.’
‘There’s nothing at all common about them,’ Mollie agreed, though she’d never heard of any of the women.
Now Roberta was admiring her long, red nails, and Mollie immediately remembered waking up on the Queen Maia to see Olive Raines painting hers the same colour, Annemarie still fast asleep in the top bunk. She must have thought about her sister a hundred times a day. In her heart, she had the strongest feeling that Annemarie was safe and almost certainly happy - the drawing of Aidan was proof of that. By now, she would be fourteen. It was her birthday on April Fool’s Day. Had she remembered? Mollie wondered.
She recalled the night she’d gone to stay with her friend, Noreen, in order to avoid the attentions of the Doctor, and the next morning finding her sister lying like a corpse in her bed, her nightie stained with blood. Since that terrible day, Annemarie had barely spoken, let alone drawn a picture. But it appeared as if the spell she was under had been broken and all Mollie could hope and pray for was that one day she’d find her sister again - or that Annemarie would find her.
The door opened and a woman came in dressed entirely in fawn crêpe: her frock, loose coat, and toque hat were all made from the same material.
‘Mrs Ashton!’ Roberta leapt to her feet. ‘How lovely to see you. You’re looking well, I must say.’
‘We’re not long back from Bermuda,’ Mrs Ashton boasted. ‘We spe
nt the winter there.’
Mollie rushed forward and grabbed a chair, holding it invitingly for the woman to take. According to Roberta, once a customer was seated, they were far more likely to make a purchase.
‘You are so lucky,’ Roberta gushed. ‘My daughter is in Milan at this very minute. I’m so envious. Would you like a glass of sherry, Mrs Ashton, while you make your choice?’ Customers were even more likely to buy a hat once they’d had a glass of sherry.
‘Well, I wouldn’t say no: sweet, if you don’t mind.’ She seated herself on the chair, allowing Mollie a glassy smile.
Roberta waved a majestic hand - she would have been good on the stage. ‘Mollie, fetch Mrs Ashton a sweet sherry, there’s a dear.’
‘Has your daughter left the shop for good, or is this girl just filling in, as it were?’
‘Oh, Mollie’s just filling in. Her father’s a doctor,’ Roberta hissed. ‘Now, Mrs Ashton, do you want a hat for a special occasion? Or is it because it’s spring and you feel like something new?’
‘Both, I suppose,’ Mrs Ashton conceded. ‘I feel like something new and my first grandson is getting christened the Sunday after next.’
Roberta gasped. ‘I can’t believe you’re old enough to have grandchildren.’
‘Actually, he’s my third. I already have two grand-daughters. ’
‘That’s quite incredible. Don’t you think it’s incredible, Mollie?’
‘Incredible,’ Mollie concurred, though Mrs Ashton looked a good fifty.
