Love or Duty--A saga set in 1920s Liverpool

by Rosie Harris

  ‘Stop being so concerned about her,’ he chided, a frown on his rugged face. ‘You can’t go on worrying about Kelly forever, you know. You did everything you possibly could when she needed care and looking after and you most certainly got her back on her feet again.’

  ‘Yes, I know but I feel responsible for her. I have only been to see her once since I went home to look after my mother. My visit was such a complete fiasco that I feel guilty about it,’ Penny confided.

  ‘I remember and that’s why I think it might be best for you not to visit the Murphys again. Leave things as they are,’ he advised.

  ‘I know, but in some ways I still feel accountable for Kelly. I often wonder if I’ve unsettled her and made her discontented by showing her a different way of life,’ Penny persisted.

  ‘What utter nonsense! If you go somewhere for a holiday it doesn’t make you discontented for ever afterwards now does it. You simply enjoy the experience at the time and retain a happy memory of it.’

  ‘Yes, you are probably right,’ Penny agreed. Her face brightened. ‘Actually, that’s given me an idea. Perhaps I could take Kelly away somewhere for a week during her school holidays in August.’

  Bryn shook his head. ‘Think about it very carefully before you make a decision,’ he advised. ‘You don’t want to do anything you might regret later on.’

  Before she could make up her mind, Bryn brought her some very worrying news about Kelly. She and her older brother had been apprehended by the police for stealing from a shop in the city centre and had to appear at the magistrates’ court.

  ‘Oh my goodness,’ Penny gasped. ‘Whatever will happen to her now? Do you think it would help if I went along and offered to take her back to live with me?’

  ‘Are you sure that your parents would agree to you doing that?’ he asked cautiously.

  ‘I didn’t mean that I would take her home! I’m sure that wouldn’t be possible. No, I would have to move back to Mrs Reilly’s place in Blenheim Road and look after her there.’

  Bryn frowned. ‘Do you want to do that and to have to live in such cramped conditions again, Penny?’

  They discussed it at great length but in the end Penny felt she had no choice. When Kelly and her brother Paddy eventually appeared in court they were both found guilty. In the brother’s case it was not his first offence and so they were both sent to remand homes.

  Penny felt quite devastated; she even went as far as discussing the matter with her father. After carefully explaining all that had happened she plucked up the courage to ask him if he could intervene in some way.

  ‘Really, Penny! I’m surprised you have even dared to ask me to do such a thing. You know perfectly well what I think about your behaviour when the child was knocked down,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Surely that’s all in the past,’ Penny sighed. ‘This is a completely new development and I really feel I ought to do something to help her.’

  ‘If you have some foolhardy idea of volunteering to look after that child again then you can forget about it,’ he said abruptly, his face becoming florid with anger. ‘In fact I forbid it. I don’t want you living back in the Scotland Road area ever again. Furthermore, I most certainly have no intention whatsoever of harbouring that slum child here in this house,’ he added angrily.

  ‘I feel it is my duty to do something,’ Penny said stubbornly. ‘I feel I am responsible to some extent for what has happened because I showed her a better way of life.’

  ‘Yes, you should feel guilty about that,’ he agreed forcibly, ‘Your action has caused damage enough so don’t make things any worse.’

  ‘I want to help her; I want to put things right,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Penny, apart from probably disrupting that child’s life you also caused havoc in your own family. Arnold has broken off your engagement so you have sacrificed the opportunity of a good marriage. Furthermore, the distress that you caused worried your mother so much that she had a heart attack.’

  ‘I know all that and I do feel terrible about it,’ Penny said apologetically.

  ‘Your duty is to think of your mother instead of trying to change things in other families. Furthermore, if you insist on supporting this child I can well see that you will lose your new friend, Dr Cash.’

  Penny bit her lip. Remembering Bryn’s caution she knew there was a grain of truth in what her father was saying but she refused to let it pass unchallenged.

  ‘I don’t think for one minute that Bryn would react as Arnold did. They are completely different in the way they look at life. Bryn practises in that area of Liverpool and he understands the plight of the people living there.’

  ‘He works there as a professional man but it doesn’t mean he has to be a friend of all the people he meets there or assume responsibility for them when they digress.’

  ‘Well—’

  ‘Cut along, Penny. This conversation is over,’ Captain Forshaw said impatiently. ‘Go and read to your mother and forget all about this wretched child.’

  Seventeen

  Kelly Murphy felt miserable and disorientated. She was so unhappy that she vowed to herself that she would escape from St Saviour’s Home for Wayward Girls as soon as she could find a way of doing so.

  She still had nightmares about her day in court and hearing the terrible words that she was to be put into the care of St Saviour’s.

  Her brother Paddy had fared even worse than her; he had been sent to a remand home somewhere outside Liverpool. She couldn’t remember how long he was going to have to stay there any more than she knew precisely how long her own sentence was to be.

  She hated everything about St Saviour’s. The three-storey dark grey building was so forbidding that it had sent shudders through her as she was brought there straight from the magistrates’ court.

  She’d thought that the towering spire of St Saviour’s church that loomed over it was like a warning finger threatening what might happen once the huge wooden doors clanged shut behind you.

  The nuns in their dark grey garb and their solemn faces that were almost obscured by starched white wimples were equally frightening. Sister Sampson not only looked forbidding but was extremely rough.

  On Kelly’s arrival at the home it had been Sister Sampson who had frogmarched her straight to the washroom. There she’d made Kelly strip off all her clothes and sit on a hard wooden stool. Another nun had cut her long dark hair so short that it barely covered her head.

  Despite her protests she’d then been made to get into a bath of almost cold water where Sister Sampson proceeded to scrub her all over with carbolic soap. She’d gone from the top of her head right down to her toes until Kelly felt raw and sore.

  Sister Sampson had then handed her a coarse grey towel and told her to dry herself. She’d given her a cotton vest and knickers and a drab blue dress to put on. After that she’d taken her along to the main hall where Sister Thomas told her to sit with the other girls already there.

  Kelly had never felt so frightened in her whole life and longed to be back home. She was used to taunts from gangs of older kids in the streets around Cannon Court. She knew how to stand her ground and answer them back. They never tried to bully her because they knew that her brother Paddy was always somewhere around to come to her aid.

  This was very different. Talking was not permitted. When she whispered to one of the other girls they remained silent and looked cowed. Within minutes she learned that the nuns each carried a thin cane and that they would use them given the slightest opportunity. Kelly found that they had a sting sharper than any wasp.

  Kelly discovered the daily routine was strictly regimented and constraining. Their time was planned for every minute of every day. They had no freedom whatsoever. Because she was used to going her own way and doing things in her own time Kelly resented this aspect of her new life more than anything else.

  The day started at six each morning when Sister Margaret flung open the dormitory door and rang a handbell loud enough t
o waken the dead. Along with the fifteen other girls in the dormitory Kelly learned that she had to be up and dressed with her hands and face washed, her hair combed and her bed made and to be down in the main assembly hall twenty minutes later in time for prayers.

  She was warned on her first morning that if she was late for prayers it meant she would not have any breakfast. Even though breakfast was only a bowl of stodgy porridge and a mug of weak tea she always felt so hungry that to miss it was unthinkable.

  The day’s work started at seven thirty sharp. More prayers, then the tasks for the day were read out and everyone had to be at their designated cleaning job by eight o’clock.

  Scrubbing or sweeping the floors, shaking the mats, cleaning the windows, clearing out the ashes from the grates, bringing in the wood and coal, laying the fires, cleaning down the stairs, dusting and polishing; the tasks were endless.

  All their work had to be done in silence and completed by midday when they assembled again for prayers. Those who had failed to do their allotted task to the high standard demanded by Sister Thomas were punished.

  Kelly frequently found that she was singled out for a beating either with the long thin cane that Sister Thomas favoured or the leather belt that Sister Sampson used. She refused to cry out, even when tears of pain streamed down her face and angry red wheals appeared on her skin. This seemed to make the nun administering the beating hit her even harder to make sure she was fully aware that she had transgressed.

  The midday meal consisted of a bowl of grey looking soup or stew with stodgy chunks of vegetables in it and a slice of stale bread. Pudding was either lumpy rice or tapioca.

  At the end of their meal they had to take their dirty plates and rinse them clean in the large bowl of tepid water that stood on a stool at the end of each table and then leave them in a wooden rack to dry.

  In the afternoon they attended lessons. Kelly greatly enjoyed reading and writing but found that no matter how hard she tried she seemed to lack understanding when it came to doing arithmetic, so most of her lessons ended in a beating.

  Classes ended at four o’clock and then there was an hour of recreation. If the weather was good they were sometimes allowed out into the yard otherwise they sat and chattered to each other indoors. This was one of the times Kelly hated. It was when some of the older girls picked on her. They taunted and teased her or else pulled her hair, pinched and even punched her.

  When, in tears, she threatened to report them, they jeered at her and threatened what they would do to her if she dared to say anything to any of the sisters.

  After evening prayers they had the last meal of the day, usually bread and jam. Then it was back up to the dormitory that she shared with the other girls. Lying in the small narrow iron bed she thought about the life she had known with Penny and about her brothers and sisters and wept into the thin hard pillow.

  The routine was always the same, day in day out, except on Sundays. Then, as soon as breakfast was over, they were all assembled and marched in a long line into St Saviour’s Church for Mass.

  Their meals on Sunday were also special. At midday it was usually some kind of roast with potatoes and cabbage and this was followed by suet pudding. At teatime as well as a slice of bread and jam there were stale cakes that had been donated by the local baker or a piece of overripe fruit from the greengrocer.

  Kelly missed the freedom of roaming the streets, eating whenever she felt hungry and going to bed when she was tired which could be almost any time. She even missed having to look after her little brother and sister and the baby.

  Above all she hankered after the time she had spent with Penny after her accident. First it had been at her posh home in Wallasey and then at Ma Reilly’s. She’d been forced into a routine at both of them but it hadn’t been anywhere near as irksome as life was in St Saviour’s and she’d never been punished in any way at all.

  In fact, she reflected, she had been the centre of attention most of the time and she had grown quite fond of Penny. It was only now that she realized what a terrific sacrifice Penny had made in giving up her own comfortable home in Wallasey in order to come over to Liverpool to look after her.

  Most nights before she fell asleep she thought that if only Penny’s mother hadn’t been taken ill they would probably have still been together at Ma Reilly’s. That had been the reason she’d had to go back to her own home at Cannon Court. If that hadn’t happened then she wouldn’t have got into such a scrape because her brother had made her go stealing and she wouldn’t have been arrested and ended up where she was.

  She comforted herself with the thought that once Penny heard about what had happened she’d come and get her out. The problem was how she could let Penny know where she was.

  Penny couldn’t put Kelly out of her mind. Even though both of her parents had forbidden her to make any further contact with Kelly she constantly thought of doing so.

  When she mentioned visiting St Saviour’s to Bryn he did his utmost to dissuade her saying that it was best to leave things alone. He promised to let her know as soon as he heard that Kelly had been released and was back at her own home.

  For Penny it was not enough and finally one afternoon without a word to her family or Bryn she decided to go and visit Kelly. She couldn’t rest until she made sure that Kelly was being well cared for and above all that she was reasonably happy.

  As she travelled on the ferry boat from Seacombe to Liverpool she felt guilty about going against her family’s wishes. But her feeling of responsibility for Kelly’s welfare and her sense of where her duty lay were so strong that she managed to persuade herself that she was doing the right thing.

  The grey granite exterior as she reached St Saviour’s Remand Home for Wayward Girls sent a shudder through her. It was so depressing that as she rang the bell she had an ominous feeling of dread. It increased when the door was opened and she found herself face to face with a nun in dark grey garb and a stiff white wimple who regarded her impassively.

  ‘Good afternoon, I’m Penny Forshaw and I was wondering if I could see Kelly Murphy,’ Penny stated nervously.

  ‘Have you made an appointment with Mother Superior to do so?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid not,’ Penny said with an apologetic smile. ‘I suppose I should have telephoned first. The trouble was I wasn’t too sure when I would be able to come.’

  ‘You’d better come inside and I will enquire whether you will be allowed to speak to her.’ Reluctantly the nun opened the door a little wider to permit Penny to enter.

  The polished wooden floor and dark red walls of the reception hall were quite bare apart from a large framed picture of the crucifixion that hung on one wall. The nun indicated the solitary straight-backed wooden chair and motioned to Penny to sit down. ‘Will you wait here, please,’ she murmured before she disappeared.

  She was left waiting for such a long time that Penny wondered if the nun had forgotten about her. Then as silently as a ghost she reappeared and asked Penny to follow her.

  They walked in silence along stone corridors to another waiting room where she was told to, ‘Please wait, Mother Superior says you may speak to Kelly Murphy for five minutes.’

  This room was equally bare and cold. The window looked out on to a tarmac yard and a few girls were out there walking around aimlessly. They were all dressed alike in drab blue dresses and several of them were hugging their bodies with their arms as if they were cold.

  When the door opened again Penny looked up expectantly then gave a gasp as she recognized the thin little figure in the uniform drab blue dress who had come into the room.

  ‘Kelly.’ Impulsively she held her arms wide and without a moment’s hesitation Kelly ran towards her choking back a sob as she found herself encompassed in Penny’s embrace.

  ‘Have you come to take me home, Penny?’ she gulped, the tears streaming down her peaky little face.

  ‘No, I’m afraid I can’t do that … not at this moment.’

  ‘You will
come back for me, though; I hate it here with all the rules and the praying. The nuns are always punishing me and the big girls tease me and pinch me and pull my hair and …’ the rest of her words were muffled as she clung on to Penny sobbing almost hysterically.

  ‘Shush! Calm down, Kelly, or they won’t let me stay and talk to you,’ Penny admonished.

  ‘You will come back again and next time take me home with you,’ Kelly pleaded as she snuffled back her tears. ‘Don’t make me stay here, Penny. I hate it and I’m so afraid.’

  Before Penny could answer the nun appeared. ‘Come along, Kelly, back to the classroom.’

  ‘Can’t we have a few more minutes together?’ Penny asked.

  ‘No. Unless she joins the others now she will be late for prayers and if she misses prayers then she will not be able to have any supper,’ the sister told them.

  ‘I don’t care about missing supper, Penny, as long as I can stay here with you a bit longer,’ Kelly insisted.

  Penny saw the nun’s mouth tighten and remembering what Kelly had said about discipline she knew it was in Kelly’s interest to do as they’d been asked.

  ‘You’d better go now, Kelly,’ she said in a low voice. Reluctantly she hugged and kissed the little girl goodbye and promised to come and see her again quite soon.

  As the nun shepherded Kelly from the room and sent her on her way, Penny said, ‘I would like to have a word with Mother Superior.’

  ‘That won’t be possible. Mother Superior is already at her evening devotions,’ the nun told her dismissively.

  ‘I’m not in a hurry; I can wait until she has finished.’

  The nun shook her head. ‘I’m afraid it is far too late in the day for her to receive you. You will have to make an appointment and come back some other time.’

  Penny bit down on her lower lip, unsure of what to say or do. She wanted to act immediately because she was sure there would be considerable delay before she was allowed to remove Kelly from their care. She knew that Kelly was desperately unhappy which was why she wanted to put the wheels in motion right away.