Annie Groves - Child of the Mersey

What was she going to do now? Mam was dead! A scream of anguish escaped her lips and drowned out the cry of the infant, whose tiny purple fists balled in fury, showing no regard for his mother who had made the ultimate sacrifice to bring him into the world.

Quickly coming to her senses, Kitty scooped the newborn babe from her mother’s lifeless arms and wrapped him in a threadbare sheet she retrieved from the dresser drawer. Scurrying from the room, Kitty headed towards the stairs, almost tripping in her haste to be out of the house.

‘Aunty Doll! Aunty Doll!’ she cried. ‘Please help me!’

Frank Feeny, hands in pockets, flat cap pushed to the back of his dark brown hair, whistled a happy tune as he turned the corner of Empire Street. At fourteen years old, he had just received his first pay packet from the Co-op, where he had worked for the past two weeks, and was looking forward to handing it over to his mam.

‘Kitty? Kitty!’ When he saw the distress on the face of the young girl whom he treated like his own kid sister, he broke into a run. She was clearly crying as she banged her front door shut.

‘Kit?’ Frank called again. ‘What’s the matter? What have you got there?’

Empire Street contained only ten houses, five on each side. From the dock road corner, there was the Sailor’s Rest public house opposite a disused warehouse, and at the ‘top’ end, opposite the stable where Frank’s dad kept his horses, was Winnie Kennedy’s general shop, next door to the happy home he shared with his family and where Kitty was now heading.

Everybody knew everybody around here – you couldn’t scratch your nose without somebody commenting on it – and some of the country’s richest men walked the same street as the poorest. Ship owners were only a stone’s throw from the working class and the families who lived hand to mouth.

The ships, the factories, the warehouses were proof of a thriving port; the noisy clang of dockside machinery, the rattle of trains taking goods to every part of the country, and beyond. The overhead railway at the bottom of Empire Street carried dockers, clerks, businessmen and everyone in between. Like any other port, it knew villainy, roguery, had sinners and saints; and everyone looked out for each other because that is what they had to do.

The kids stopped playing their games of hopscotch in the midday heat, while their mothers, sitting on the little walls that separated each doorstep, ceased fanning their faces with newspapers, to gawp at young Kitty darting across the street, carrying a bundle of sheets in her arms.

Kitty needed help. Frank’s legs, normally whippet-fast, felt as if he were wading through mud to get to her.

‘What you got there, girl?’ He lowered his handsome face to look inside Kitty’s bundle.

‘Frank! Get your mam, quick!’

Horrified, he saw the bundle Kitty was carrying was bloodstained, but he could not voice the terrible questions that were racing through his head. Thankfully, his mother, Dolly, had seen Kitty’s approach and was now hurrying out to her, wiping her wet hands on her full-length flowered pinny.

‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph!’ Dolly cried when she saw the infant in Kitty’s arms. From her forehead to her ample bosom and over each shoulder, she made the sign of the Cross. ‘Whose is this?’

‘It’s me mam’s. What am I going to do, Aunty Doll?’ Kitty’s dark eyes, stricken with horrified shock, looked to the woman who was as familiar as her own mam. She could always run to Aunty Doll, her mother’s best friend.

‘Where is she, Kit? Where’s your mam?’ Dolly said the words slowly, as if dreading the answer.

‘Aunty Doll, you’ve got to help me.’ Kitty felt her stomach heave; she was going to throw up right there on the street. ‘Me poor mam’s dead!’

The world of women and babies was a closed book to Frank but all he knew was that Kitty needed him, so he gathered her and the baby into his arms. There was something about Kitty; it was often said about her that she was an old head on young shoulders but Kitty was still only a child and he was determined to offer what comfort he could.

Dolly shuddered, horrified to think of her best friend, Ellen, suffering on her own as she must have done. The babe hadn’t been due for some weeks yet, so Ellen’s labours must have come over her very quickly – too quickly even for her to cry out and for one of the neighbours in these cramped back-to-back houses to hear her. As Dolly eyed the screaming infant and the quiet, grave face of young Kitty, she reminded herself that death was no stranger to these parts. Folk were poor, and doctors and medicine were for those that could afford them, which wasn’t many in Empire Street. A mother of five children herself, Dolly took the struggling child from Frank’s nervous arms, holding the infant boy to her breast. Her ease and experience must have been felt by the child because he stilled immediately.

‘Poor little mite,’ she observed. ‘You couldn’t have had a worse start. But we’ll make it right, won’t we, Kitty?’ And she took Kitty’s shaking hand and led her back to the house. ‘I’ll look after them, Ellen.’ She raised her eyes to heaven and knew the time had come for her to keep the pact she and Ellen made all those years ago.

Dolly vowed to do all she could to help Kitty and her family. It would be difficult enough for any woman in a family of men, who were not used to fending for themselves, but Kitty was only a slip of a girl, despite being mature for her years.

The day after Ellen’s death Dolly rose early, full of resolve to help her best friend’s only daughter. She lifted the newborn from the dresser drawer that rested on two straight-backed chairs, where he had slept in blissful ignorance, waking only to be fed.

Poor Ellen – Dolly made her usual sign of the Cross – God rest her weary soul, she would want her family kept together. However, that would not happen if it were left up to that feckless waster Sonny Callaghan …

Dolly had no compassion for Sonny Callaghan. He had been bad for Ellen from the day he met her. He was a dreamer who made gossamer promises. Beautiful but totally insubstantial and impossible to keep. He was more likely to be found in the pub squandering what he had earned rather than looking after his family. Ellen had ended up charring and taking in washing to supplement her meagre housekeeping, which more often than not never made it back from the pub on a Friday night.

‘Bah,’ Dolly told the sleeping infant, whose sooty lashes rested on peachy cheeks, ‘he’s a fool and your darlin’ mam paid the biggest price for loving him.’ She walked over to her bedroom window and looked out across the street where women huddled together, talking. Most likely discussing the future of the Callaghan children, thought Dolly.

‘It’s little Kitty who needs my help,’ Dolly told the sleeping child in the soft soothing tones of her Celtic homeland, ‘for it’s she who has it all to do now.’ Ellen had taught the young girl everything there was to know about keeping a clean house and making good, cheap, wholesome food, but Kitty, skinny little snapper that she was, could not manage a feckless father, two growing brothers, and a newborn babe all on her own. Furthermore, there were things that men knew nothing about. Dolly took a deep breath.

‘But I have it all in hand, Ellen,’ she said to the cerulean sky, as white cotton wool clouds ambled by. ‘I will make sure Kitty will not have to shoulder the burden on her own. There are plenty here to help her.’ The women of Empire Street coped because they had to. Their men were seafarers, away for long stretches, and it was up to the women to keep body and soul together, and maintain hearth, home and family. These women, however, were a lot older than this poor eleven-year-old girl.