Annie Groves - Child of the Mersey

‘I don’t care about the game. What about the money in the tin?’ she asked Danny, who let out a long exasperated sigh.

‘That was just a loan, Kit. You know I’ll put it back before the rent man comes.’

‘It’s a bit late for that. He’s been and I’ve paid him and now I’ve got nothing left.’ Kitty knew this wasn’t true, thinking of the money that Sid had popped in her pinny, but she wasn’t ready to let Danny off the hook. Her hands were in their usual position on her hips and she leaned towards him. She wanted answers, not excuses.

‘You haven’t?’ Danny’s pale face was a picture of disbelief. Kitty nodded.

‘He promised he’d be our lookout, but he was nowhere to be seen.’ Danny nodded towards young Tommy. ‘I was on a winning hand when the bobbies came. Someone scooped all the stake money – I’m not sure who but I’ll soon find out.’

‘A fat lot of good that will do me.’ Kitty was angry now. ‘What am I supposed to do when I have to go into the shop and tell old-misery-on-the-hob Mrs Kennedy that I don’t have the money to pay me bill?’

Kitty would tell him about Sid Kerrigan dropping the money into her pocket later, but for now, he could sweat. Danny had a job as a stevedore on Canada Dock but he ducked and dived, did a little bit of this, and a little bit of that, and up to now he had stayed just the right side of the law, but sometimes only by the skin of his teeth. Kitty worried how long it would be before his luck ran out and there would be no going back. She noted her shifty-looking father, his head buried in the Evening Echo, making no attempt to meet her eyes. How was she ever going to instil some morals in Danny if his father only encouraged him in the opposite direction?

‘I’ll get your money,’ Danny said in a reassuring voice, trying to calm Kitty down. It wouldn’t do to get her all steamed up before he told them all his news. It was going to be bad enough once he told her. He was going to join up!

‘Well, you just make sure you do, Danny Callaghan, otherwise you’ll be going to visit Mam up in heaven – if they’ll have you! We do not have the money to throw away on fines if you are caught gambling, Danny.’ Kitty took the plate from under his nose, refusing to acknowledge his look of disappointment that told her he had been about to mop up the remaining gravy with his bread. She stacked the plate on top of the others on the battered wooden tray. ‘I warned you not to bring trouble to this door, Danny, and I mean it.’ She gave her younger brother a murderous look.

‘I told our Tommy it would be worth a couple of coppers if he kept dixie,’ Danny said, as if his brother’s failure to keep a lookout for the law was the reason they’d got in this mess.

‘Don’t blame Tommy – you had no right,’ Kitty fumed. ‘I am trying to bring him up decent. The way Mam would have wanted.’ She was taking no lip from Danny now.

Danny knew, judging by the determined look in her dark eyes, that Kitty was not in the mood for being soft-soaped. As she impatiently shoved a fine wisp of dark wavy hair behind her ear he took a chance and said, by way of explanation, ‘You know what it’s like, Kit: payday on the docks the lads wanted a little flutter. Percy the Greek was nowhere to be seen, so they decided on a game of pitch-and-toss. But where was our Tommy, who was supposed to be lookout …?’

‘Danny was here with me, where he should have been, and not with you lot of scallywags picking up bad habits.’

‘It wasn’t my fault,’ Tommy whined. ‘I had a sore throat.’

‘Another one?’ Danny’s brows puckered. ‘You’ll have to get him seen to, Kit.’

‘If you two didn’t gamble and drink our money away, I might be able to afford a doctor.’ Kitty looked at her little brother. She didn’t know whether it was his bad start in life but Tommy had a very weak chest and still seemed to pick up whatever was going. The summer months saw an improvement but they’d had a few close shaves with him in their time and Kitty worried about him constantly.

‘All right, Kitty, that’s enough now.’ Her father tried to assert his authority, which she respected when he was sober. It was a different matter when he was falling over drunk, as he would have been if the dice school had not been scattered.

‘How am I expected to bring Tommy up the right way with you two leading the example?’ Kitty asked her father. ‘If it wasn’t for Jack and me, goodness knows what would have become of him. I don’t know where me mam got you two from, but it was definitely the same place!’

‘Sorry, Kit,’ her father and her brother said in unison, and as usual, she relented.

‘I don’t want to get a cob on with you,’ she said as if talking to young children, ‘but you both squander what little money we have.’ She’d only own up that she had the money in her pocket after the pub shut. They could live without it for once in their lives.

‘Jack won’t be happy, will he, Kit?’ Tommy said piously, giving Danny cause to glare.

‘Mam would be horrified.’ Kitty knew the mention of her mother always brought a wave of contrition. ‘And if you bring the bobbies to this door again, either of you,’ she said, pointing at them with the knife she was about to put on the tray, ‘I will tell Jack.’

‘Sounds like she’s at the end of her tether,’ Danny whispered to his father when Kitty took the tray out to the scullery.

‘I heard that, and I am,’ Kitty called. Then coming back into the room and nodding to Tommy she said, ‘You go and have a lie-down, you look awful.’ She looked at his untouched plate of suet pudding.

‘I wouldn’t mind a bit of a lie-down,’ he said without complaint, so unlike him as he loved to be outside.

‘Is he sickening for something?’ Danny asked, his eyebrows meeting. Kitty tilted her head to one side to get a better look at Tommy’s downturned face. These things came on so fast with Tommy and they disappeared just as quickly sometimes.

‘I’ll go now if that’s all right, Kit?’ Tommy said, getting up from the table and heading to the stairs.

Kitty’s eyebrows rose. He must be sick if he was taking himself to bed. ‘Go on,’ she said more gently. ‘I’ll bring you a drink up soon.’

‘Ta, Kit,’ Tommy said, looking miserable. Then, in a low voice, milking his sister’s sympathy for all it was worth, he added, ‘It was probably making me get that wash that did it.’

‘What’s the matter, Spud?’ Jack, just coming through the door, was surprised his little brother did not raise a smile when he produced his weekly comic.

‘He’s not feeling well; he’s got another one of his sore throats.’ Kitty felt guilty for scolding Tommy earlier. ‘I got a couple of lemons from the shop. I’ll make him a hot drink.’

‘In this weather!’ Tommy exclaimed in a croaky, despondent voice. ‘I’ll melt.’ Then, without another word, he climbed the stairs to the middle bedroom he shared with Danny. Dad had the back room since Mam died, and Kitty had the big front bedroom containing just a single bed, a small table for the alarm clock and a chest of drawers for her meagre amount of clothing.

‘That’s a lovely cake, Kit,’ Jack said, taking off his cap, his jacket slung over his shoulder. He and his father nodded warily to each other as Jack entered the kitchen. ‘Did you make it?’

Jack was now a well-paid shipwright at Harland and Wolff’s foundry and marine repair works in Strand Road.

Every payday Jack put his wages on the table, and Kitty gave him back his spends. Not once did she hear him complain. Work had been scarce for Danny and Dad, and Jack was often the only one providing. Kitty supplemented the coffers with the odd catering job, and made delicious wedding or christening cakes, but although everybody around came to her, she could not charge inflated prices to people she knew were in the same boat as herself.