Liverpool Daisy

by Helen Forrester

  Nobody heard her lamentations and gradually they diminished to an occasional dry sob. She blew her nose through her fingers into the fire and then wiped her face slowly with her apron. Drained and exhausted, she stared into the embers.

  Nellie! She must wake up and think what was best for the girl. She would have to break the icy silence which existed between Meg and her. Great Aunt Devlin might be persuaded to help, too, though she might have to be paid. Her mouth twisted wryly. She was going to need all the money she could make. She was going to have to work much harder. Like a judgement on her, it was. Served her right for going on the streets like a common tart.

  It was after midnight when a knock came on the door.

  Daisy jerked awake and tumbled Moggie off her lap.

  She did not know the young man at the door. A merchant seaman, she judged, by the way he stood swaying on his heels as if to keep his balance on a heaving deck.

  “Yes, lad?” she inquired, her hand still on the heavy door.

  “You Daisy?” The voice was rich and deep.

  “Yes.”

  “Pat — the watchman at the Hercy — sent me up. Said you were very obliging, like.”

  Daisy simpered. “Come in, lad,” she said, her voice oily with friendliness.

  After closing the door behind him, she sidled round-him and with a knowing smile, announced, “It’s five bob for an hour.”

  She stood saucily in front of him, hands on hips, head thrown back, so that he could examine the goods, as she put it to herself.

  He looked her up and down slyly, and then said, “O.K.”

  She held out her hand and he pressed two half-crowns into it.

  She lit a candle and led him up to the bedroom, which was not quite as cold as usual, some of the heat having percolated from the living-room. She stood watching him leisurely take off his jacket.

  “Well, what about taking your clothes off?” he asked, when she had made no move.

  “Me! I never take all me clothes off!” The idea of exposing all of her body to anyone shocked her. She doubted if Mike had ever seen her naked. “’Sides, it’s too bloody cold.”

  “Aw, come on, Ma,” he cajoled, as he continued to strip himself. “We’ll warm each other soon enough.”

  She put down the candle and reluctantly began to unbutton her blouse.

  “Come on. I’ll help you.”

  His idea of how to undress her was so caressing that she found herself kicking off her boots and nearly leaping into bed.

  Her satin skin and luxuriously long hair showed to advantage in the candlelight and they did warm each other. Daisy learned more in an hour than she had ever known before, and it was with a feeling of tired pleasure that she added the five shillings to the tobacco tin which was going to save Nellie’s life.

  After the stranger had gone, she stood with one of her long petticoats wrapped round her like a cloak, thinking that if she could get a bed under her every time, life could be a lot more pleasant — and she could earn more.

  TWENTY

  Daisy woke late and lay languidly looking out of the bedroom window at a pure blue sky, until remembrance of Nellie’s terrible need forced her to move.

  She tidied the bed ready for Nellie, made a cup of tea and drank it quickly and, thus fortified, walked round to see Agnes, who received her with pleasure and more cups of tea.

  “Agnes is easy,” ruminated Daisy. “You can sell her anything. When she gets in a panic, though, it’s pure mairder.”

  There was no panic that morning, however. The news about Nellie only confirmed Agnes’s own long held opinion. She was glad, she said, to hear about Daisy’s job in the bottle factory and wondered if she could get a job there herself.

  “Not a hope in hell,” Daisy assured her hastily. “There’s queues of them trying to get in every day.”

  It did not strike Agnes to ask Daisy how she got in; she accepted everything that Daisy said as gospel truth. Old Daise had always been straight with her — always traded under a lamp post, she did, never under a tree.

  Daisy warned Agnes that sometimes she did an extra half shift, which meant that she would come home on the first tram in the morning, rather than on the last tram at night. Agnes assured her that she would never leave poor Nellie alone.

  Meg was different, thought Daisy, as she hurried over to her other sister’s home. Meg could argufy like a scuffer in front of the beak, and yet she was the best bet for real help with Nellie.

  Meg’s father-in-law, Mr. Fogarty, was the true head of Meg’s household. The three-bedroom row house sheltered him, his son, John, who was Meg’s husband, six of John and Meg’s children, aged from thirteen to seven, his second son, Tom, and his wife, Emily, and their six-month old baby, and lastly his youngest son, Albert, when he was not in gaol. Meg remarked bitterly from time to time that she did not believe that Albert could be guilty of all the thefts for which he had at different times served sentences, because when he was at home he did nothing but eat and doze comfortably on the sofa in the living room.

  As Daisy rolled into the scullery, her arms neatly crossed under her shawl, Meg looked up from the greasy dishes she was trying to wash clean without benefit of soap or hot water.

  “Why, look what the cat’s brought in!” she exclaimed acidly. “And what brings you here, Missus?”

  “Oh, stow it, Meg,” Daisy responded crossly, as she subsided, panting, on to the only chair in the scullery.

  “Who’s there?” inquired a cracked, male voice from the living room.

  “It’s only me, Daisy, Mr. Fogarty. How are you?” She rose and went to the door of the other room.

  A very thin, old man, his white hair ruffled up like a cockscomb, was sitting in a straight, wooden armchair. His clean union shirt was open at the neck and the sleeves were rolled up as if ready for work. He regarded Daisy with bloodshot blue eyes.

  “How do you think?” he replied disagreeably to her inquiry.

  “Well, I was hoping the pain wasn’t so bad,” she said brightly.

  He looked down at his cruelly twisted fingers. “With arthritis? Less pain? It’s a bloody pain in the neck, I can tell you,” he growled, and then cackled with laughter at his own joke. He raised his voice to shout to his daughter-in-law. “Meg, when you going to give me me aspirins?”

  There was the sound of the tap running, and then Meg appeared with a nearly empty bottle of aspirin and a cup of water.

  “You never remember on your own, do you?” he berated her. He opened his mouth and she set an aspirin on his tongue and then held the cup so that he could drink. “I’ll have another,” he said. “It’s bad this morning.”

  “You won’t have enough for the night if you do,” replied Meg dully.

  “I’ll worry about the night when I get to it. I may be dead by then, and that would make you happy, wouldn’t it now?” He gestured impatiently towards the bottle. “Well, shake a leg, girl, and give me another.”

  Meg obediently gave him another tablet.

  “Cover me. I’m cold,” he ordered.

  Meg brought an old overcoat and tucked it round his knees. He looked cunningly at Daisy. “Our Albert’ll get me another bottle out of Boots. Proper nimble fingers he’s got. Nothing like having a croppy head in the family, eh, Daisy?”

  Daisy had no doubt that Albert could lift a bottle of aspirins out of Boot’s Cash Chemists in Lime Street, so she nodded agreement.

  Meg silently returned to her saucepan washing in the scullery, and Daisy followed her. The house was quiet, except for a baby crying upstairs. “Meg’s little nevvie letting everybody know,” thought Daisy with a soft smile.

  All Meg’s own children were in school, and her husband John, had gone down to the docks to sign on as being available for work. He had to do this twice a day and stand around, rain or shine, in case he was needed. It was an empty charade. There was rarely any work for him, and he often returned at night sopping wet and frozen.

  “Well, what do you want?” Meg p
inched her mouth tight, as she rubbed away at a soot-blackened saucepan.

  Daisy cast a stabbing look at Meg’s thin back and then said in honeyed tones, “Listen, Meg. Nellie is terribly ill. The doctor come to her yesterday. Meg, she isn’t going to live unless we do summat about it.”

  Meg paused in her work and let the saucepan slowly sink into the grey dish water. She watched the concentric rings of grease eddy out from it. “Going to die?”

  Daisy fought back a desire to weep. She said, “It’s T.B., Meg. She’s spitting blood often now, and she can cough like you’d never believe.”

  Meg’s narrow shoulders slumped even more as she slowly ran the dishrag round the pan. She liked Nellie — everybody did — but she did not like Daisy very much, so she asked sarcastically, “What am I supposed to do about it?”

  “Well, I’m going to put her in our Mam’s bed and nurse her. The quack wanted her to go into the sannie. But she won’t go and I don’t blame her — heartless bloody place.”

  Meg shrugged. “Well, she’s your friend.”

  “I know. She’s your sister-in-law, too, remember.” Daisy sighed. “And it’s going to cost a bit for medicine and things.” Meg was smart and she must be careful what she said. “Maybe Agnes told you I got an evening job — and I don’t want to give it up seeing as how I’ll have to pay the doctor, ’cos George can’t do it.”

  “Ho-ho, hum-hum!” exclaimed Meg in surprise, and half turned to look at her sister. “Working, are yez? Since when may I ask?”

  “I been doing it off and on ever since our Mam died. Don’t get her pension no more — and me allotment isn’t enough.”

  “Where you workin’?”

  “In t’ bottle factory down town.”

  Meg stared at her fat sister doubtfully.

  “What do you do there?”

  Daisy floundered for a moment, then said, “Wash bottles and pack them in straw in cardboard boxes.”

  “And what do you expect me to do — on top of the ould fella an’ all.”

  “Well, I was hoping you would come and sit with Nellie some nights. Keep the fire going and help her if she coughs up.” Daisy rubbed her arms under her shawl, and added uneasily, “Sometimes I don’t get home till early morning — doing overtime, like.”

  “What about George — can’t he wake up long enough to do a bit?”

  “You know our George. He allus was the dumb one and he ain’t never been the same since he was in the hospital all that time. ‘Sides he hits her sometimes.”

  Mr. Fogarty suddenly bawled from the next room, “Meg, come ’ere. I want to pee.”

  “Old bastard,” muttered Meg. She turned on Daisy savagely. “I got enough to do. I can’t do no more.” She pointed an angry finger at the door to the other room. “He can’t do nothing for himself now.”

  “Your Emily from upstairs could help you,” Daisy suggested, a dark mantle rising up her neck. “Nell’s your sister-in-law too, isn’t she?” she added with asperity. “Make Emily do something.”

  “Ha,” Meg sniffed. “She’s expecting again and the baby only six months old,” she flared. “Always whining. Wait till she’s got six. I’ll thank all the Saints if she gets a Council house and gets to hell out of here.”

  Daisy wagged an admonishing finger at her. “You got Mary to help you, anyways — and your husband — John is handy — and Tom and Albert is your brothers-in-law — they owe you something. You could find some time to help me with Nellie — I haven’t got nobody.”

  Meg’s thin nostrils expanded as she drew in a breath. She was tired beyond endurance, frantic that she would not be able to feed the brood which depended upon her, grief-stricken as she watched her husband’s fine body deteriorate from lack of employment and poor food. She felt her sister to be grossly unfair.

  “I can’t do no more!” she cried with a half sob. “You got nobody to think about except yourself. Do you good to help our Nellie.”

  “Meg!” came an urgent voice from the other room. “Bring the pot, quick!”

  Daisy got up and flounced towards the door as Meg whipped a jam jar from under the kitchen sink and made for the other room.

  “Albert could do that for his father,” said Daisy furiously.

  Meg paused. Her mouth twisted in a sneer. “You ask him!”

  “Oh, go jump off the dock,” shouted Daisy in return.

  She threw open the back door and went grumbling down the back alley like a wood down a ninepins lane. Behind her anger the tears welled up. Where was she to get help? Nellie had no sisters or parents. She had lost one brother in the same Battle of Ypres that George had been wounded in, and her other brother had taken his wife and family and gone south to find work only a year before. “Holy Mother,” prayed Daisy, “help me. Dear Holy Mary.”

  Meg bent again to her saucepan washing. For a while her wrath at her sister sustained her, and then she began to feel a qualm of conscience about Nellie. Such a good woman deserved help, she knew. But I’m so tired, she cried silently to herself. I’m so tired.

  After the saucepans had been neatly arranged on their shelf, she took a bucket of rubbish and Mr. Fogarty’s filled jam jar out to the rubbish bin and the lavatory respectively, to empty. When the repulsive jobs were done, she leaned against the door jamb to look up over the smoke-blackened brick walls of the yard to the sky, a pale, limpid winter blue through which two gulls sailed and swooped. She watched through half-closed eyes as their raucous cries came down to her. For a moment she shared their freedom of the upper air. Then from the house she heard the petulant cry, “Meg! Meg! What about a cup of tea? Where are you, Meg?”

  She closed her eyes in exhaustion and lifted herself away from the door jamb. The latch of the door into the back entry clicked and her husband, John, come slowly in. He was a tall, lanky man and his long hatchet face was shaded by a flat cap. He had his hands clenched in the pockets of an old cloth jacket stained with oil and grease on the back and shoulders. He looked as exhausted as his wife felt, but his face softened when he saw Meg.

  “’lo, luv. What you doin’ out here? It’s cold.”

  “Emptying the ould fella’s pot.” She put the jar down on the stone step and went to her husband.

  He hastily took his hands out of his pockets and, with a quick glance round to see if anyone was looking, he enfolded her in his arms.

  She laid her head on his chest and her arms crept up round his neck. He bent and kissed the top of her tidy braided head.

  “No luck?”

  “No. Maybe tomorrer.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Still smarting from Meg’s rebuff, Daisy marched down the windy street to see George and Nellie. Her boots scuffed along the stone paving, as she muttered under her breath, “She’s nothin’ but a bloody bitch. No heart to her.”

  She found Nellie puttering slowly round her room, a coal shovel in her hand. A sober and obviously worried George was watching her from the rocking-chair. On his lap was a back copy of a pink racing paper.

  “Jesus!” exclaimed Daisy. “Couldn’t you make up the fire for her, George?”

  She snatched the coal shovel from Nellie and added a few lumps of coal to the fire. She had gone round to the coal merchant the previous evening and paid him to deliver a hundredweight of the precious fuel to Nellie first thing in the morning.

  George clamped his lips together sulkily.

  Nellie intervened. “It’s all right, Daise. I don’t feel so bad today.”

  “Good. But you get back on that bed again,” ordered Daisy. “Have you had any breakfast?”

  “Just a cup a tea. That’s all I ever take.”

  Daisy accepted this statement with a nod and plunked herself down on a chair, while Nellie obediently lay down on the bed.

  Daisy then turned a malevolent blue eye upon the luckless George,

  “Na, George. I don’t know how much you remember about last night,” she commenced bitingly.

  George glared at her. “’Course I remember,�
�� he snapped indignantly.

  Daisy grunted and looked round as if she had a large audience. “Humph, now that’s remarkable, ain’t it?”

  “Don’t be eggy, Daise. He knows,” Nellie pleaded.

  “Well, then, George, tell me. How are we going to get Nell to my house?”

  Nellie half rose on her elbow and interposed hastily. “I don’t need to go, Daise. I’ll be all right here.”

  Daise swung round towards her. Her voice took on a cooing note, as she said, “Na, look, Nell. We got to get you well somehow. And I haven’t time to come down here every day.”

  “George’ll look after me.”

  “You haven’t got the money to buy what’s needed, eggs an’ all. And he’s got to sign on for work and go to the P.A.C.”

  “If she stays with you, the Relieving Officer will stop the allowance I get for her, t’ bloody bastard.” said George heavily.

  “Not if you don’t say nothing’, you stupid bugger. You stay here and look after Joey, and if the P.A. visitor asks where Nellie is, tell him — well, tell him she’s nursing me! So she’s over at my place most days.” Daisy chortled at this idea and Nellie giggled and began to cough. Even George grinned sheepishly.

  “Our Aggie will come and sit with you of an evening some nights,” said Daisy, turning to Nellie who was trying desperately to control her coughing, “But Meg has got too much to do with old Fogarty an’ all, so George and Joey’ll have to come some nights. Great Aunt Mary Devlin’ll come, o’ course, sometimes, but we got to pay her, ’cos she can’t be sitting with other people if she’s sitting with you — and she needs the money.”

  Nellie and George agreed about Great Aunt Devlin.

  “Meg’s got too much on her shoulders already,” remarked Nellie, clearing her throat and managing to stop her coughing spasm.

  “Pah!” snorted Daisy. “She should get that Emily off her ass and make her help. And John, too.”