Daughters of Penny Lane

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘She’s no sort of mother; she’s a killer,’ Nellie advised her reflection in the badly marked mirror. And that was when she reached her moment of clarity. Yes, she was afraid of living alone above the business and no, she wasn’t really up to scratch in the shop, but Muth had to go. If Muth went, Nellie would seek out her daughters, and try to find Martin, because Muth had made all three of them leave. With Elsie Stewart gone, the girls might visit home with their husbands. ‘I’ll manage,’ she told herself, ‘because that’s what women do. They have to.’

  She left the cafe behind and continued the trek to Penny Lane. Alice was clever; Alice would know what to do.

  Alice took a liking to Peter Atherton from day one. He had a Woollyback accent, a mop of thick, curly, silvergrey hair and a sense of humour that belied his slow, exaggerated speech. ‘I were over here a few years back, watching a scrap between Liverpool and t’ Wanderers,’ was his answer when she asked how he had come to be living in Allerton. ‘I’d no bus fare home, so I stopped.’

  She dropped the tea towel she’d been folding. ‘No,’ she said after he’d retrieved the item for her. ‘You’re having me on, aren’t you?’

  ‘Am I?’ He winked.

  ‘Wanderers? Where were they wandering?’

  ‘Back home,’ he said solemnly. ‘They got beat three nil. That were t’ other reason why I stopped. Liverpool looked gradely compared to t’ Wanderers.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘I said what, as in what the hell are you jangling about?’

  His speech slowed all the way down to first gear. ‘Right, love. Bolton Wanderers football team; are you with me? They were rubbish that week, and I’d no money, so I stayed here, got a job, found a room, turned mesen into a Kopite.’

  ‘Mesen?’ Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead.

  ‘Myself,’ he explained as if talking to a child.

  ‘Gradely?’ she enquired.

  ‘A bit good. Do you not understand English, love? Anyway, take me to your leader. I’ve already met the miserable bugger at Maryfields, so he’s used to me. Retired, I am now, but not ready for pasture up on t’ moors. So I’m your helping hand. I mean hands, because I’ve got two.’

  ‘That’s handy,’ was her smart response.

  ‘Another bloody clever clogs just like him,’ Peter mumbled. ‘Still, they might as well keep all t’ sharp knives in t’ same drawer. Hiya, Dan. Dan, Dan, the custard man,’ he said as he followed Alice into her husband’s room. ‘Does this lass know you want hot custard with everything? Even ice cream?’

  Dan shook his head. ‘S-don’t start, Pete.’

  Alice left them to it. Hoots of raucous laughter followed her about the house, and she knew from the start that Peter Atherton was the right man for the job. According to Dan, the bus fare-less Peter had been a docker, a union leader, a builder, an insurance collector and an orderly in the convalescent home. At sixty-three, he remained as fit as a butcher’s dog, a Liverpool supporter, leader of a darts team, an expert crown green bowler and a killer at poker, his main source of income.

  She peeled vegetables and basted the Sunday roast. Peter stayed every Sunday, playing dominoes and cards with his patient. Apart from cooking a meal for three, she had Sundays to herself, so she could read, go for a walk or listen to a radio play. Frank drifted from room to room, his nose following the scent of cooking, his heart sending him back to check on Dan. A responsible animal, he took his job seriously.

  When the door knocker made a noise one Sunday in June, he performed his duty by barking in a restrained I’m-not-really-worried tone. Alice shoved the lamb back in the oven, removed her apron and walked down the hall. Not Vera again, please! No; the abused Vera’s husband and nemesis usually stayed in until Sunday evening, so . . . She opened the door. ‘Nellie, love?’

  ‘Hello, Alice.’

  Alice stepped back to allow her sister into the house. In her fifties, the oldest Stewart sister was red-faced, sweaty, breathless and older than her years. ‘What’s happened to you, Nell?’ Something had stamped hard all over Nellie’s features. Alice felt that she already knew the reply to her question.

  ‘Muth. Muth’s happened.’ And the tears flowed.

  Once settled at the kitchen table, Nellie calmed down and mopped her face with a handkerchief. ‘Can she get the shop off me, Alice?’

  Alice was making tea, the panacea for all ills. ‘No, she can’t. That shop’s in your name and Martin’s, so she hasn’t a cat in hell’s chance. Here. Let it brew for a while, then we’ll have a nice cuppa.’ She placed a tray in the centre of the table. ‘But you’ll have to go back and keep paying the mortgage. It’s the bank that will take the shop off you if you don’t pay up.’

  ‘I think Martin’s been paying it. But I’m scared of her.’

  Alice laughed, though the sound arrived without humour. ‘Everybody’s frightened of her. With a gob like that, she probably scares herself when she looks in a mirror.’

  Nellie shook her head. ‘She makes a show of me in front of customers.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She made a show of our Theresa, remember? Accused her of sleeping with loads of boys. Well. Theresa showed her good and proper, got herself a grand life at the other side of the world, and I can’t say I blame her, because she’s better off out of it.’

  ‘Martin left cos he couldn’t stand her bossy ways. Claire and Janet are God alone knows where, married to men I’ve never met. They had a double wedding – did you read about it? It was in the newspapers. Muth wanted the big bedroom, you see. And I just let it all happen because she was in charge. I’m weak, that’s the trouble; I’m not like you and our Marie. Alice?’

  ‘What?’

  Nellie twisted nervous hands. ‘Have you ever wanted somebody dead? I mean really, really wanted them dead?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Adolf Hitler. He obliged by topping himself in his rat hole.’

  ‘Just him?’

  The younger woman’s lower lip curled. ‘No – our mother as well. She drove our dad to an early grave and tried to turn me into something I’m not. Theresa travelled thousands of miles to get away. She drives people to distraction, that one.’

  ‘Muth’s the one I want to kill. She’s a bad woman, isn’t she?’

  ‘Oh, yes. Sometimes I feel as if she’s still here, in this house. And I get a whiff of Dad’s tobacco, as if he’s trying to save me from her.’ She gazed round the kitchen. ‘This place isn’t at ease with itself. There’s something . . .’

  Nellie shivered despite the heat. She couldn’t smell anything apart from roasting meat. ‘Muth won’t come here. Ever since you clouted her on the back of her head with that cuckoo clock, she’s called you mad. She calls me useless, fat and stupid. Nigel and Marie make her jealous, because they have that cracking house up Waterloo.’ She paused for breath. ‘I hate her.’

  ‘When I hit her with the clock, I was just giving her some time.’ Alice giggled in spite of her sister’s terrible sadness. ‘She tried to stop me going to see our Marie, because she decided I was thinking of moving in with her and Nigel.’

  ‘Which you did.’

  Alice nodded. ‘Well, our mother gave me the idea. They were good to me, them two. They were good to Dan, too. And I loved working with the animals, you know. Especially dogs. I remember when we took turns to stay up all night to feed newborn puppies while their mum got better.’

  ‘You like animals, don’t you, our kid?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You know where you are with them.’

  Nellie patted Frank. ‘This is a lovely dog,’ she said. ‘You got wed from their place, didn’t you, love? Great wedding, not spoiled by Muth.’ Nellie paused. ‘Is that your Dan laughing? Is he home? Is he all right, Alice? Can I see him?’

  ‘Drink your tea first. Dan and his so-called assistant are a comedy act. It’s a Peter Atherton from Bolton, used to wander about with the Wanderers. He got converted to Liverpool, calls himself a Puddler.’ She lowered her voice. ‘He
still supports Bolton on the sly, and he won’t go to a match where the two teams are playing each other. But he’s a case. He reckons to be teaching Dan the guitar, but it just sounds like a cat in pain. Pete says they’re going to get spots in local pubs, and they’ll be the cripple and the crooner. I take no notice. Dan’s a rotten guitar player, and Pete sings like a dying frog.’

  ‘So they’re just kidding?’

  ‘Yes. Dan can get about with crutches now. He’s doing well.’

  In spite of fear and bewilderment, Nellie smiled. Alice would make everything right. She found herself wondering whether her little sister might be in possession of a second cuckoo clock . . .

  Martin Browne reopened the shop. By tradition, newsagents served customers on Sundays right up until lunchtime, and they arrived in droves once Elsie had left. No one had volunteered to help with her suitcases, and no one had offered her a room, so she had wandered off down back streets in the direction of town without a word from any of them, though gossip among the neighbours had burgeoned. She’d gone; a cancer had been removed from Smithdown Road.

  They bought their cigarettes, Sunday papers, sweets and comics for the kids. Martin spoke to them. ‘Does Nellie make a habit of disappearing?’

  ‘No,’ was one response. ‘But she was getting fed up. We could all see she’d had enough of her mother. As you know, your Nellie’s a bit on the gentle side, so Elsie rode roughshod all over her.’

  ‘We’d all had enough as well,’ a tall man said. ‘She’s ’orrible.’

  Grunts of agreement filled the shop. From a jumble of sentences, Martin learned that Nellie wasn’t looking after herself, that she’d put on weight, and that people agreed that she’d been compensating for the loss of her husband and her daughters. ‘She’s turned to food to fill the space,’ an old woman said, ‘and it’s made her ill. Your mother-in-law was cruel to her. Nellie needs her girls back. I’ll have a quarter of mint imperials and ten Woodbines. I’ve got my sweet coupons. When will they come off ration?’

  ‘No idea, love. They need to stockpile enough sugar, you see. There weren’t many ships doing sugar runs during the war, so there’s catching up to be done.’

  She nodded. ‘And she needs you,’ the old dear continued. ‘Nellie. She needs you back, lad.’

  ‘She wants looking after,’ someone else added.

  He closed the shop at one o’clock and waited. Where was she? Where were the girls? The salesman had said he’d met Claire in town, and she’d had a little boy in a pram. She’d told him that Janet had a boy, too, but she’d refused point blank to disclose addresses. ‘It’s Gran,’ she had explained. ‘We don’t want her to find us.’

  Martin ran a hand through his hair. He was back in Liverpool, yet he felt no closer to his family, because they were all missing. ‘Jesus, help me,’ he whispered. ‘I’ve got rid of the dragon, but where’s my Nell? What about the girls and our grandsons?’ He didn’t care about Nellie getting fatter – he was no plucked pullet himself. She was still his Nell, and he’d left Liverpool only to bring her to her senses. It had been her mother, of course. Even after he’d shifted the bed away from the dividing wall, his wife had refused to allow him near her. ‘Old bitch,’ he spat.

  He peered through the glass in the door. Where had Nellie gone? Perhaps she had arrived at her senses, though he didn’t know that address, either. Oh, where could she be? With Marie? With Alice at that flat down Sefton Park way?

  His reason for leaving had been to force Nellie to get rid of Elsie, he reminded himself yet again. It had taken time, and he’d had to come back anyway to do the deed. Nellie usually took a while to cotton on to things. She was slow, but not stupid. ‘Come back to me, Nell,’ he mumbled. He wanted all three of his girls – Nellie, Claire and Janet. Nellie was the old boot’s eldest. Marie was number two – she was married to Nigel, a good chap, and they lived up Waterloo in a big black-and-white house filled with stray animals.

  Three daughters had copped it during the war – Constance, Judith and Sheila, which left just Nellie, Marie and Alice, because Theresa was a world away. Dashing upstairs again, Martin Browne checked on his wife’s wardrobe. She’d never owned many clothes, but he felt sure that there wasn’t much missing.

  He rushed down again, climbed into his battered Morris and drove to Sefton Park. For the second time within hours, the handsome young man was disturbed. ‘Alice doesn’t live here any more,’ he said, patience etched into every word. ‘And there was a woman here earlier looking for her.’

  ‘Brown hair?’ Martin asked hopefully. ‘A bit of weight on her?’

  The young man nodded. ‘I sent her to Penny Lane, because Mrs Quigley’s moved back to the house she was born in.’

  The young man disappeared, and it was Martin’s turn to sit on the steps. Alice. Well, fancy Alice moving back into the place in which Elsie Stewart had managed to make life difficult for seven girls and one decent man. Alice was . . . oh, what did they call it? She saw things, things that weren’t there for ordinary people. Psychic, that was it. She’d seen through Elsie, all right. The precious seventh child of a seventh child had dealt many blows, most verbal, a couple physical, every one of them aimed at the woman known as Muth. There wasn’t one good bone in Elsie Stewart’s body, but she was tough. He grinned. She’d needed to be tough once Alice had got her hands on that bloody cuckoo clock. Chuckling to himself, he stood up. There was no time to waste.

  He returned to the car and sat in the driver’s seat. Penny Lane was nearer than Marie’s place in Waterloo, so he would have gone there first anyway. He talked to himself all the way up Smithdown Road. ‘Be there, Nellie. Please be there, my Nell.’ He parked the Morris and popped a mint in his mouth. For his wife, he wanted his breath to smell fresh, at least.

  The house door was shiny black and newly painted. The rule about green woodwork had finished after the war, and Alice liked everything spick and span. Inside would be the same, each item in its rightful place, no dust, rugs beaten halfway to death, brasses as shiny as the lion’s head door knocker.

  A man answered Martin’s knock. ‘She’s just dishing up the dinner. Can I help you? I’m Peter Atherton, Dan’s minder.’

  ‘Is Nellie here?’

  ‘She is. And you are . . . ?’

  ‘Martin Browne. I’m Nellie’s husband.’

  Peter hesitated. ‘But Dan said you’d . . . er . . . left and . . . er . . .’

  ‘Well, I’m no longer erring. Are you going to let me in? Alice knows me.’

  Peter stepped to one side. ‘Come in. We’re just about to sit down and eat.’

  Martin entered the large kitchen. Dan was there, sitting in a dining chair, a carver with arms and a padded seat, crutches propped against the wall by his side. Alice was fussing about with a roasting tin, stirring frantically while adding stuff to turn meat juices into gravy. Nellie was near the back door. ‘Martin!’ she screamed. They ran towards each other and collided. He grinned; he needn’t have worried about bad breath, because his poor wife was hot, agitated and sweaty. And he didn’t care. ‘I’m home, love,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, God,’ she cried before bursting into tears yet again.

  ‘No. It’s just me, Nell. God’s busy with it being a Sunday.’

  ‘But . . . but Muth,’ she spluttered.

  ‘Gone. I threw her out.’

  Nellie took a step back. ‘You got rid?’

  He nodded. ‘And hello, Grandma,’ he announced. ‘Claire and Janet have both had boys. I don’t know where, and I don’t know when, but we’ve two grandsons.’

  Alice abandoned her gravy, while even Peter Atherton brushed a tear from his cheek. Dan grinned. ‘S-hello,’ he said.

  ‘He’s collected a pile of s’s,’ Alice explained, ‘so we’re having s-roast s-lamb. Sit down. I can stretch to five, but you all have to save a bit of lamb for him.’ She pointed to Frank. ‘His begging bowl’s in the middle of the table next to the mint sauce.’

  ‘Grand animal.’ Martin patte
d the white, worried head, then kissed his sister-in-law on the forehead. ‘Guard dog in Seffy Park, wasn’t he?’

  Dan frowned. ‘That woman’s mine,’ he pretended to growl.

  ‘See?’ Alice asked of no one in particular. ‘He can drop the s when he needs to. Does it for attention.’

  Dan eyed her coolly. ‘I’ll s-show you some . . . s-attention later,’ he threatened.

  She grinned at him. ‘You’ll have to catch me first, love.’ She blinked rapidly, trying hard not to spill tears. If only he could chase her. Blackpool beach, concrete posts planted to stop German ships and weaponry landing; running and weaving between these obstacles, Dan complaining because his feet hurt. Fallen arches had saved him from combat, but not from war. Would they ever be close again? Might she produce a child at last?

  When the meal was over, Nellie touched her sister’s arm. ‘He’ll be all right, Alice.’

  The younger sister managed a smile. ‘Are you psychic, our Nellie?’

  ‘I hope not – one’s enough for any family. No, I mean he’s walking a bit, isn’t he?’ She pointed at the crutches. ‘And I like that Peter and I love Frank. We could do with a dog at the shop. Can we have one like this?’

  Alice studied Frank, her sole baby so far. ‘There’s only one Frank. An Alsatian would be good. But find Claire and Janet first – they may not want dogs near their babies, Grandma.’

  ‘God, I’m old, aren’t I?’

  ‘Let’s not bother about age. After clearing these pots, we’ll go upstairs to my sewing room and find a pattern. I can make you some clothes that’ll suit you better than what you’re wearing. I’ll make you young again, our kid.’

  ‘I need a diet.’

  Alice nodded. ‘We’ll see to that, too. No sweets, no chocolate, five-minute walk every day, then ten minutes, build up to half an hour. Do it for yourself, not for Martin. You first. Time you thought about yourself, missus. Now, what about giving me a hand with these dishes?’