“And it was there I went wrong,” she told Moggie afterwards. “I shoulda come home. Only I felt comfortable, like, ’cos there was plenty of women like me in shawls, good Irish women, so I took me time.”
She was waiting for the traffic to clear so that she could cross a side street, when a delicious aroma of fish and chips was wafted round her. She looked along the mean side street. The pungent smell was being blown towards her from across Islington, where people bearing large newspaper-wrapped packages were emerging from a fish and chip shop. One boy was actually running towards her, his hot parcel balanced carefully on one hand.
She lifted her nose and half closed her eyes. Her mouth was watering; her stomach felt as if it was flapping against her backbone, it was so empty. She forgot about going home and remembered only that she still had money in her apron pocket. She turned and almost ran the short distance to the shop.
The tiny window offered pie and chips, fish and chips, fishcakes and chips, tea and bread and butter, all laid out on thick white plates for passers-by to see. Behind the tiny display were two tables, at one of which a man and woman sat eating. Daisy swallowed and nearly choked on her teeth.
Could she eat with her new teeth? Could she bear to eat in public? It was, after all, not very nice having people watch you eat; eating was a private thing, like going to the privy.
I could carry the parcel home, she thought. She sighed with the effort of making up her mind. But then it would all be cold, she argued, as she paused uncertainly before the tempting display.
The door opened again, as a young woman with a baby wrapped in her shawl came out, bearing an aromatic bundle carefully wrapped in an old copy of the Liverpool Echo. Up the steps went Daisy, as if hypnotised, to join the throng of shabby people waiting for their orders to fry. When it was her turn to give her order she hesitated so long that the young man on the other side of the high, tiled counted said, “Hurry up, Ma. What do you want?”
She gulped, smiled nervously and said with difficulty because of her new teeth, “One fish and chips and tea and I’ll take it here.” She pointed to the vacant table in the bay window.
The young man shook up his huge net basket of chips so that the cauldron of fat spat and bubbled. “O.K. Sit down, Ma. Me Mam’ll bring it to you.”
Daisy turned and cautiously lowered herself into a chair at the greasy table. She chose a place that would show only her back to the other customers, so that they would not actually see her eat. In front of her the window was totally steamed up by the rapidly increasing damp heat of the shop. By now, the display of food congealed on plates which had tempted her from outside would be almost invisible to passers-by — and so would she be. She took out her teeth and put them in her apron pocket.
In a few seconds a big brown teapot, a chipped milk jug, a thick cup and saucer and an enormous plate of fish and chips joined the grubby sugar basin and the tomato sauce bottle on the table before her.
“Want some bread and butter?”
Afraid of how much it might cost, Daisy refused bread and butter.
“That’ll be sixpence,” announced Mam, waiting with hand on hip while Daisy counted out the money.
For a moment Daisy contemplated the steaming fish, infinitely appetising in its crisp batter overcoat. Her mouth watered, and then slowly, sensuously she began to eat.
She used the last drop of tea to rinse around her mouth before putting her teeth back in, a task which was easier than she had expected.
Outside, she was surprised to find that it was dark. The lamplighter had already wobbled his way along the street on his bike and the gas lamps gave a friendly glow to the mean neighbourhood. She must have sat longer than she intended, she thought with a little laugh. It was, however, surprising how good food could cheer you up; even her new teeth felt more bearable.
She swung down the steps and without thinking turned left. She turned left again, fully expecting to find herself back in London Road. Instead she faced a narrow dark street. She looked irresolutely along it. There seemed to be no light other than the gleaming lamp above the door of a public house further down. There was a number of people about, however, and this reassured her. Feeling sure that it would lead her into Lime Street, she began to walk along it.
As she passed the public house, the buzz of conversation within made it sound like a beehive with the bees about to swarm. But when she plunged into the gloom beyond it an eerie silence faced her. Where were the surging crowds of Lime Street? The seamen, the prostitutes, the Welsh beggars?
SEVEN
The main door of the tavern was on the corner, and Daisy had hardly taken a step towards it when it swung open. Three young sailors in skin-tight naval uniforms rolled unsteadily out of it and came down the street towards her. Although it was early in the evening, they were very merry and, with arms slung round each other’s shoulders, they were singing bawdily.
They took up the whole width of the pavement as they staggered towards Daisy, and she stepped back into the mouth of a narrow alleyway to await their passing. She was not particularly scared of them — they were only lads — and she chuckled as she watched them approach.
“Three German officers crossed the line to rape the woman and drink the wine,” they roared in cheerful unison.
She knew the song well and began to hum the refrain in tune with them.
Arms over each other’s shoulders, round navy blue hats perched precariously on the backs of their heads, they bellowed their way towards her; and, as she watched and waited, she hummed. They gradually became aware that there was a woman singing softly somewhere in the shadows before them, and they slowly staggered to a halt at the alley’s entrance. Her white apron showed clearly, and behind it a generous, vaguely definable bulk loomed before them.
“’Ello, la,” said the middle sailor. “Now what nice bit o’ fluff have we got ’ere?” He let go of one of his friends, who promptly leaned against the warehouse wall for support.
Daisy took a nervous step backwards, but there was a sudden rustle as of a rat running behind her, so she hastily stepped forward again.
She gulped. “Aye, lads,” she addressed them, her voice pitched uneasily high. “Can you tell me how to get to Lime Street?” She tried to edge her way out of the scant width of the alley but they were blocking it, so she beamed hopefully at their well-scrubbed faces.
“Well, now! Are you lost?” The boy’s voice was slightly derisive.
Daisy’s heavy-jawed, friendly face with its flashing smile gradually became visible, as the sailors’ eyes adjusted to the darkness. They all swayed towards her and leered in true music-hall fashion, as she answered, “Yes, I am.” She looked unhappily up and down the street, seeking a peaceful way to pass them.
“Wotcha want to go to Lime Street for?” two of them chortled together. “Isn’t here good enough for business?” They winked at each other and dug their elbows into each other’s ribs, as they laughed at her.
“Go on with you, you saucy buggers. I want to get a tram from Lime Street.”
“Lime Street’s got more’n trams in it,” announced one of them suggestively. He moved closer to her, till his white vest nearly touched her. She could smell the comfortable beery breath of him. She eased away from him till she was brought up short by the wall of the alley. He put one hand on the dank brick wall behind her and leaned forward confidentially.
This is what happened to you when you went about alone, she reproached herself.
She gathered what courage she could muster and said as cheerfully as she could, “Come on, lad. Tell me which way to Lime Street.” She pretended to laugh and tried to duck under his arm. One of the other sailors closed in and teasingly held out his arms, so that she would have sailed right into them. “Come on, luv,” he shouted cheerfully.
“Shut up,” said the third, who was leaning against the warehouse wall. “You’ll bring the cops.” He nodded his head towards the pub. “Come on, there’s plenty more like her — let’s go.”
But the other two ignored him. The one who had held out his arms to Daisy whined ingratiatingly at her.
“Come on, Ma. Don’t be shy. What about lifting your skirts for us?”
Daisy was flustered, her eyes darting up and down the dark road. “Eee, lads. I’m not that kind!” she protested, her heart pounding.
The boy who had first spoken to her and was closest to her let his hand drop from the supporting wall and, with a mischievous grin, curled his fingers round her neck. He pushed his lean body hard against her and rubbed himself against the comfortable rolls of flesh. One hand softly caressed her neck while the other fumbled under her well-formed bosom.
Daisy who had been staunchly faithful for twenty-nine years began to realise that the last eighteen months had been dreadfully bleak. Such a surge of passion ran through her that she found herself beginning to respond, and this shocked her.
“Not here,” she panted. “I couldn’t — I mustn’t!”
Her breath was sweet from the dentist’s disinfectant, as hard lips were pressed on hers and long arms were wrapped closely round her generous figure. She fought ineffectually, continuing her protests in ever-weakening whispers, as he eased her away from the wall and down the narrow alley into which she had originally stepped.
She tried to make herself cry out that he must not.
Holy Mother!
Fumbling hands found their way under long black skirt and petticoat, and Daisy was lost while still remonstrating faintly. He needed no caresses from her.
Afterwards, though her head was spinning and her body smarting from making love after such long abstinence, she found herself leaning against the unfriendly wall still holding the boy to her and crooning inarticulately to him as if he had been her lover for years. He rested panting against her, his head on her breast, while in the back of her mind she told herself she should push him off and hit out at him for so misusing her. But when he looked up at her and grinned wickedly, she found herself smiling back.
“Hey, how long you going to be down there?” shouted one of his friends. Cigarette ends flashed brightly in the darkness, as the other sailors leaned against the corners of the alley and smoked.
Daisy’s companion shouted back that he was coming. To Daisy he said with a grin, as he buttoned the flap of his trousers, “Ta, Ma.”
He put his hand inside his navy blue blouse and brought out half-a-crown. It flashed in the dim light, as he pressed it into her hand. Scarlet and shaken, ashamed of her own feelings, she remained leaning against the wall as he made his way back down the alley to the street whistling cheerfully. He passed one of his friends rolling inwards.
“Any good?”
“Good as you’ll get.”
A startled Daisy roused herself from her lethargy to find another pair of exploring hands opening her shawl.
“Eee, lad!” she protested. “What is this?” She dropped the half-a-crown down her blouse neck and caught the hands which had descended impatiently to her skirts. “Come on, now, lad. I’m not one o’ them.”
The lad laughed tipsily and continued. “Tell me another, Ma,” he sneered.
Though he looked thin, he was undoubtedly strong and he was by no means as gentle with her as the first boy had been. Daisy became suddenly deathly afraid of what he might do if she refused him — she knew about prostitutes who had been found murdered in just such an alleyway. So, without another word, she straddled herself across the narrow alley, one foot in the gutter, the other resting on the top step leading up to a door into a yard, so that she could accommodate him more easily. He whipped her skirts up over her raised knee, and she silently endured him.
“And there, in no time at all, at all, Mog, I found meself with another half dollar in me hand,” she later told her stony-faced cat, “And another one coming up t’ jigger at me.”
As the third youth approached, it seemed to Daisy that her real self stood outside her body watching in scandalized horror a completely alien Daisy, filled with excited anticipation, await the boy coming towards her.
“Mog, it was as if the divil himself was in me. At first I thought I’d run away up to top of t’ entry. But I could hear the rats rustling in the dust bins — and I’m more afraid of rats, as you know, Mog, than I am of any boy. So I waited for him.”
As far as Daisy could judge in the gloom, the boy was younger than the other two, and he approached her shyly. Coming in from the lighted street he could hardly see her, though she being more accustomed to the darkness could see him. When his groping hand touched her, he paused.
After a moment’s silence, he said, “It’s O.K. if you don’t want to, Ma.”
Driven by forces she did not understand, she said softly, “Come here, luv.”
Once more she steadied herself with one foot on the top doorstep beside her and then she opened her shawl and wrapped it round him as if he were a child she wanted to keep warm. To him she felt as cosy and warm as his own mother.
“It’s my first time with a woman, Ma,” he whispered.
She chuckled, feeling suddenly that she was at last in control of the situation.
“Come close,” she ordered, with a surge of pleasure, her fears forgotten, “I’ll show you.” And she did.
She held him to her for a moment or two afterwards, until his friends, phlegmatically smoking as they waited, started to call him.
“Grinds like the bloody mills of God,” one grumbled.
The boy dug around in the small pocket in the front of his sailor’s trousers. “How much, Ma?”
Daisy smiled at him warmly and waved a hand negatively. “That’s all right,” she said.
“Oh, no, Ma! I have to pay.” He sounded shocked.
He pressed a handful of small change into her palm and closed her hand over it. She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek. “Ta,” she said, and as he turned and swaggered back down the alley, she called, “Ta-ra, well,” in farewell.
After they had gone on their merry way, a very thoughtful Daisy emerged slowly from the alleyway. She straightened her heavy skirts as she considered the deadly sin she had just committed. She could almost hear Father Patrick holding forth on the subject of lust; and a deep flush crept up her neck and over her cheeks. The two coins she had dropped down her chest fell to the pavement with a sharp clink and she bent down and picked them up. Her heart was still pattering unnaturally fast. In the light of the pub she counted the money in her hand. It totalled eight shillings and sixpence. Amongst the change given her by the last sailor were two threepenny bits.
She smiled at the two tiny silver coins. “Two joeys! I’ll keep them for luck. He were a proper nice lad.”
She sighed. She felt extremely shaky and decided she needed a drink. She went round the side of the pub to the parlour entrance. Over the door was a notice saying, “Ladies with Escorts only.”
“Bugger them,” she muttered forcefully.
A labourer with his beshawled wife pushed past her. She followed him in smartly and sat down on the same bench as they did. The place was blue with tobacco smoke and the conversation was lively but not noisy.
She sat primly down, hands folded in her lap, her worn wedding ring glinting softly on one swollen finger.
When the barman took her order for a hot rum toddy, he realised that she was without an escort, but she looked so primly respectable that he made no objection to serving her.
As she sat staring at her glass she felt that everybody must know what she had done, and she was thankful for the comforting glow that the rum engendered in her. Nobody spoke to her, however. St. Margaret, her patron saint, did not appear, to upbraid her, and God did not strike her down. Her heart returned to its normal beat and she began to feel clever that she could drink without taking her teeth out. She asked the barman who was easing his way among the crowded tables, a tray of empties poised on four fingers, how to get to Lime Street Station. He told her and she swept out with a great feeling of newfound confidence.
By
the time she had boarded the tram for Dingle, her eyelids were drooping. The vehicle’s steady swaying and its steamy heat made her doze.
At one stop the driver put his brake on rather abruptly and the shudder that went through the great vehicle awoke her.
Where was she?
She rubbed a spyhole in the steam on the window and peered anxiously through it.
There was the pub with the grocery store next door to it.
She hastily heaved herself off the wooden seat and proceeded unsteadily down the narrow centre aisle, while the driver tapped his foot impatiently. She clambered down the steep steps and wrapped her shawl round her tightly as the wind struck her.
Only when the tram had moved onward and had resumed its rhythmical clang-clang did she realise that she had descended at the Shamrock, instead of at the Ragged Bear.
She shivered in the chilly night wind, and cursed. Holy Mary, it was nearly a mile to her home and rain threatened from a lowering sky. Along the street the gas lamps seemed to march for dismal, frightening miles.
The door of the Shamrock opened and a gust of laughter came out with a patron. It would be at least half an hour before another tram came by, she thought; it would be quicker to walk. But first she would have another drink, to warm her.
The silver in her apron pocket made a happy jingle as she went up the steps, and she grinned ruefully, catching her lower lip with her new teeth.
“Ah’ll have a gin, son,” she ordered the barman. After all, gin was what you were supposed to drink if you didn’t want to get pregnant. Then she remembered that she was past the age when she had to worry about pregnancy.
The gin tasted horrible, so she ordered a rum to follow. The world began to take on a kind of happy haze.
A heavily-built man on his way out paused in front of her. His close-clipped white hair did nothing to soften a wind-hardened red face. His greasy trousers and cap, his jacket ripped under the sweat-soiled armpits suggested a docker.
“Evenin’, Mrs. Gallagher,” he said. “Sorry to hear from George about your mother.”
Liverpool Daisy Page 5
