by June Francis
‘Surely there must be some decent people there?’ protested Emma. ‘Lila told me that you met my father and that he spoke posh.’
‘Of course there are decent people there, but how will you be able to judge which ones they are when you’ve had no experience of life in the big city? You could end up in trouble.’
‘Stop frightening the lass, Jane,’ said Mr Ashcroft. ‘Liverpool’s not as bad as you make it sound and at least she’ll find plenty of life there. I met several Scousers in the army and I got on with them OK. We used to have a good laugh, despite them coming from a poor background.’
‘You’re a man and so it’s different for you,’ said his wife scornfully. ‘Emma might be twenty-one but she’s an innocent girl. So there is life in Liverpool, but it’s not the kind of life Emma’s used to. Her mother, Mary, soon found that out when she started mixing with actors, artists and musicians and the like.’
‘You make it sound like Sodom and Gomorrah,’ said Mr Ashcroft. ‘It’s a city like any other and there’s talent there. The comedian, Arthur Askey, came from Liverpool and so did John Gregson, the actor, and Tommy Handley from ITMA on the radio. You should let the girl find out for herself what it’s like.’
His wife’s lips thinned. ‘She’ll regret going there if she does. Mark my words,’ she said darkly. ‘Her grandmother would have wanted her to have nothing to do with her father’s second wife and daughter, otherwise she would have told Emma about them.’
‘Be that as it may,’ said Mr Ashcroft, his lean face stern. ‘Her grandparents are dead and the lass needs to learn to make her own decisions.’
‘Thank you, Mr Ashcroft, for your advice,’ said Emma, despite feeling inadequate to make grownup decisions after all that his wife had said. ‘And you too, Mrs Ashcroft,’ she added hastily. ‘But what did you mean when you said that my mother mixed with actors, artists and musicians?’
‘I’d rather not talk about it but I suppose I must,’ said Jane Ashcroft, folding her arms beneath her bosom.
Mr Ashcroft swore beneath his breath.
His wife glared at him and then turned back to Emma. ‘Your father being an artist wasn’t of any use at all to your mother. I’m sure nobody was buying paintings during the Depression.’
‘But you said that she had a lovely engagement ring,’ protested Emma. ‘He must have earned some money.’
‘Maybe he did but your mother ended up having to sell that ring.’
‘But my father must have had some talent,’ insisted Emma. ‘I found a lovely birthday card from him that was hand-painted. You met him and so he must have visited my grandparents’ cottage.’
‘But he didn’t stay, did he?’ said Mrs Ashcroft. ‘Forget about him, Emma. He’s dead and picking over the past will do you no good.’
Emma found her fists clenching. ‘Why did my mother leave him and come back here with me? I know she was ill but—’
‘Perhaps she realised her mistake in marrying him. He was a charmer, as I told our Lila, but it was your grandmother who cared for you and Mary in her final days. Your mother knew she’d be forgiven just like the prodigal son because your grandparents were good, caring Christians. You should let that be the end of it. After all, he mustn’t have wasted much time finding someone else if he had another child before he was killed at Dunkirk.’
‘Enough, Jane,’ warned Mr Ashcroft. ‘One would think you had something against the man. Now, put the kettle on and make the lass a cup of tea before she has to go out in the cold again.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Mr Ashcroft,’ said Emma in a low voice, shrugging on her coat. ‘I’ll have a cup of tea when I get home. Right now I need time to think, so I’ll go now and see you again sometime.’ She left the room.
Lila hurried after her. ‘I’m sorry about that, Emma. Mam really sounded like she had a knife in your dad. I can only think it’s because she knew your mother well before she ran away to Liverpool.’
‘Maybe that was it,’ said Emma, her face serious. ‘As it is I’ve learnt quite a bit about my parents this afternoon.’ She tucked her scarf inside her coat. ‘I’ll see you soon.’
She opened the front door and went outside. Before she had set foot inside the Ashcrofts’ house, she had been dithering about going to Liverpool because of the expense. Now she was determined to see her stepmother and half-sister. Surely Lizzie Booth would be able to provide her with some answers about her parents? After all, her father must have talked to her about his first marriage for her to know about Emma. She would wait until the insurance companies paid out what was due to her from her granddad’s policies and the snow was all gone before making a move. In the meantime she would need to find more bookkeeping work in order to support herself.
CHAPTER THREE
It was almost three weeks since Emma’s visit to the Ashcrofts’ house and she still had not made up her mind about when to visit Liverpool. She had thought much about what her grandmother’s feelings would be if she were alive and concluded that her reasons for preventing Emma from going to Liverpool no longer existed. Obviously the old woman had feared that if Emma had known the truth, then she might have followed in her mother’s footsteps and built herself a life in Liverpool and stayed there.
There came a sudden hammering on the door and Emma lifted her gaze from the numbers on the page of the open ledger and dropped her pencil. The noise had a pattern to it that she recognised and, pushing back her chair, she hurried through into the front room and opened the door. As she had expected, Lila stood on the step.
‘What’s all the commotion?’ asked Emma.
‘The king’s dead!’ Lila’s pretty plump face was flushed and her grey-blue eyes were shiny with tears.
Emma sighed. ‘I know. It was on the wireless.’ She beckoned Lila inside.
‘I feel really upset. In fact, everyone I’ve spoken to is upset,’ said Lila, going through into the kitchen. She was about to sit down in front of the fire when she noticed hanks of wool on the chair. ‘Where’s that come from?’
‘I found it in a cupboard upstairs in my grandparents’ old bedroom. Gran must have bought it at a bargain price but never got round to using it.’ Emma gathered up the multicoloured wool and moved it to the table. ‘I thought I’d use it up,’ she added.
‘You know what the king dying means,’ said Lila, sitting down in the chair. ‘Change.’
‘Obviously. Granddad always said the king was a man who knew his duty, unlike his brother who was born to the role.’ Emma put on the kettle. ‘King George stuck by us throughout the war, when he and the queen could have easily gone to Canada with the princesses.’
‘The queen’s not the queen anymore, Princess Elizabeth is. She’s already on her way home from Africa with the Duke of Edinburgh. Imagine how she must be feeling with having been so far away when her father died. She’ll want to be with her family right now. It’s at times like these that you need your family around you.’ Lila dabbed at her eyes as her tears welled up again.
Emma thought of her half-sister and stepmother. She still hadn’t done anything about contacting them but Lila’s words caused her to wonder whether her father had brothers and sisters. Maybe they were still alive! And what about her stepmother, she must have family somewhere?
‘Princess Elizabeth is going to have little time alone to mourn her father with her having to fill his shoes,’ mused Lila, leaning back in the chair. ‘I wonder what kind of queen she’ll make?’ Her face brightened. ‘There’ll be a coronation, and that means parties.’
Emma nodded, just able to remember King George VI’s coronation the year after her mother died. There had been parties and she still had a commemorative mug on the dresser. ‘A coronation will take time to arrange because they’ll be inviting heads of state from all over the Empire as well as other countries,’ she said.
‘Most of them will probably have to attend the king’s funeral, as well,’ said Lila. ‘You can bet there’ll be a lying-in-state for people to go and pay their r
espects.’
‘But that’ll be in London and all the newspapers will be full of it,’ said Emma, her expression thoughtful. ‘I might be best leaving putting an advertisement for bookkeeping work in the Clitheroe Advertiser and Times until the king’s funeral is over. In the meantime I think I’ll go to Liverpool. I might also buy myself a new outfit in the new midi style. I want to make a good impression and the blacks I have are so shabby. A new coat is out of the question but I think I must have a new frock.’
Lila’s eyes widened. ‘So you’re definitely going to go?’
Emma nodded. ‘Death can come so suddenly. Think of Granddad! What if my half-sister were to die before I got the chance to meet her because I delayed trying to find her?’
‘But she’s younger than you,’ said Lila. ‘You’re being really cheerful.’
‘We both know that the young can die as well. Remember Joan who died of scarlet fever?’
‘Aye, and I also remember Mam telling me about an outbreak of diphtheria that killed hundreds of children.’
‘Thank goodness, a vaccine was discovered that’s saved thousands of children’s lives,’ said Emma.
Lila agreed. ‘What will you do if your stepmother asks you to live with them?’ she asked.
Emma shook her head. ‘I can’t see that happening. Besides, my home is here.’
Lila looked relieved. ‘I’m glad you feel like that, because you’re my best friend and I’d miss you.’
Emma smiled. ‘I’d miss you, too. Besides there’s a possibility that we mightn’t hit it off.’
‘But you might, and if that was the case then you’d want to see more of them,’ said Lila.
‘Probably, but my doing so would all depend on how often I’d be able to afford to travel to Liverpool.’
‘Or them coming here. I would love to get a peek at your half-sister and see if she looks like you,’ said Lila.
Emma removed the steaming kettle from the stove. ‘There’s a thought,’ she murmured.
Lila sighed. ‘I envy you making your own decisions. I really should be sticking up for myself and doing what I want instead of doing what Mam wants all the time.’
‘But you can’t be doing that while things are so uncertain at the mill. Unless you find yourself a husband, of course,’ Emma added with a smile.
‘Mam’s always discouraged me from having a boyfriend.’ Lila grimaced. ‘Perhaps I should start looking for another job in Clitheroe and I might meet someone there. But in the meantime, do you want to go to the pictures tonight? The Man in Grey is on, with James Mason and Margaret Lockwood. I love him. He has a real menacing air about him and sends a shiver down me spine. So what d’you say?’
‘OK! But it’ll probably be the last time for a while,’ said Emma.
CHAPTER FOUR
Emma hitched her bag higher on her shoulder and stepped down off the train in Lime Street station. Jostled by other passengers as they forced their way past her in their haste to get to the ticket barrier first, she was spun round and felt her bag slide down her arm. She felt disorientated, what with the noise of hissing steam from the engine, the voice over the Tannoy announcing the time of the train to London, hurrying feet and people calling to each other. Then suddenly she realised her shoulder bag had gone and her heart began to bang inside her chest.
‘Don’t panic, don’t panic,’ she whispered to herself. ‘It’s probably on the ground.’
She stood stock-still and dropped her gaze, but her bag was not there and people were beginning to swerve to avoid her. One man swore, telling her to get out of the bloody way. Hurriedly she stepped aside and moved towards the edge of the platform, wondering if her bag had been kicked into the gap between the train and the edge. She knelt down but could see no sign of it. Could someone have snatched it? Her purse, hanky, library book and the letter from Lizzie Booth were inside it; her heart sank. At least there was not much money in her purse, but even so …
Emma felt sick as she rose to her feet and stood, dithering, trying to make up her mind what to do. This was a really bad start to her trip to Liverpool and she could not help recalling Mrs Ashcroft’s warning. Fortunately her return ticket was in her coat pocket. She looked towards the barrier and beyond to where high upon a wall was an advertisement for Taveners Fruit Drops and a huge clock, the hands of which stood at a couple of minutes past eleven o’clock. There was nothing stopping her from going home right now. Yet she was reluctant to do so after all the effort she had made to get here. She tried to cheer herself up by thinking that her bag might have been kicked along the platform and someone had picked it up and handed it in at the lost property office.
Her spirits rose slightly and she headed in the direction of the ticket barrier and there she told the ticket collector what had happened. He commiserated with her but told her bluntly that he doubted she would get it back. Still, he directed her to the lost property office before turning to the next passenger waiting to get through the barrier.
Emma soon discovered that no shoulder bag answering to her description had been handed in and, feeling down in the dumps, she turned away. Oddly, her thoughts now were of her mother and she wondered how she had coped in this huge, bustling station when she had come to Liverpool all alone. Had she already known someone in the city? Perhaps someone she had met walking on the fells. Maybe Emma’s father on Pendle Hill? Had she fallen in love at first sight with him and followed him here? The thought of her parents meeting in such a way caused Emma to feel quite emotional.
‘Yous all right, queen?’ asked a voice.
Emma lifted her head and brushed away a tear with the back of her hand and turned to regard the owner of the voice.
The woman was wearing a figure-hugging red suit that had seen better days and a tatty white fur hat. Her make-up had been applied in a slapdash fashion, so that she looked a bit of a clown. Emma knew there was no way she could explain to her the real reason why she had felt so terribly sad all of a sudden. Instead she said in a trembling voice, ‘My bag’s been stolen.’
‘Shame. Some people have no conscience,’ said the woman, who smelt of drink but had kind eyes. ‘Lost everythin’, have yer?’
‘I’ve still got my ticket home because I had that in my pocket, but I came here for a special purpose and don’t want to go home yet.’
‘I gathered yer weren’t from round here. Woolly back, aren’t yer? I had an aunt who lived up Blackburn way and she spoke just like yous.’
‘I was born here, though,’ said Emma swiftly. ‘My dad was from Liverpool but he was killed in the war.’
The woman heaved a sigh. ‘So was my fella. So where were yer aiming for, queen?’
‘I came here to find my half-sister. I had a letter with the address on but that’s gone, too.’ Emma sighed.
‘Can’t you remember where it is?’ asked the woman.
‘Oh aye! It was Whitefield Road,’ she replied.
The woman smiled. ‘Ha! Yer’ll need to get a tram or a bus that goes up West Derby Road past the Grafton dance hall and the Palladium picture house. Ask the conductor to put yer off at Ogden’s tobacco factory.’
Emma squared her shoulders. ‘I’ve no money, so I’ll have to walk there. Can you tell me which is the quickest way to go?’
‘It’s a bit of a walk, girl, and yer could get lost. It’s getting a bit foggy outside.’ The woman screwed up her face and dug into her pocket and produced a sixpence. ‘Here yer are, queen, have this one on me.’
Emma stared at the coin on the grubby, white-gloved hand and was touched by the gesture. ‘I can’t take your money.’
‘Why not? My money not good enough for yer?’ said the woman belligerently, jutting out her chin.
‘It’s not that,’ said Emma hastily. ‘I-it just seems wrong. You don’t look like you have much money to spare.’
The woman smiled. ‘Looks can be deceptive, queen.’ She took Emma’s hand and pressed the sixpence into her palm.
Emma returned her smile and th
ought of fairy godmothers in disguise. ‘Thanks. I really appreciate this.’
‘Glad to hear it. Yer can get the number 12 bus in Lime Street or the 11 tram. Just cross the road. They stop in front of the lions guarding St George’s Hall.’ She jerked a thumb. ‘Just go that way. You can’t miss it.’
Emma thanked her again and headed off in that direction. Although still upset about her bag being stolen, her spirits were lifted by the woman’s kindness, which belied what Mrs Ashcroft had said about the citizens of Liverpool. She only hoped that when she reached her stepmother’s house she would receive a warm welcome there, too.
As Emma came out onto Lime Street, across the road she saw a blackened building that reminded her of the Roman or Greek temples depicted in her children’s encyclopaedia. Spotting the lions the woman had mentioned on their plinths, she waited for a gap in the traffic in order to cross the road. She stood there for what seemed ages, hovering on the pavement, not prepared to take her life in her hands like some people who darted between vans, cars, buses and trams. Then she saw several people gathered on the kerb together, and as they swooshed forward onto the road, she decided to go with them.
On reaching the other side she joined a queue at a bus stop, aware of a feeling of nervous exhilaration. What if she got on the wrong tram or bus and ended up getting lost with only a couple of pennies to her name? Then a number 12 bus came along and she had no trouble getting on it. She found a seat downstairs and soon found herself having to repeat her destination several times to the conductor. He was obviously having some difficulty understanding her accent. Eventually he must have got the gist of what she was saying and told her that he’d give her a nod when it was time for her to get off.
She wiped a hole in the condensation on the window with her glove in an attempt to see the route the bus was taking, only to discover she could see very little. Still, there was no going back now she had come this far.
