ANNE BENNETT
Daughter of Mine

I would like to dedicate this book to my second

daughter, Bethany Bennett, with all

my love

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Other Books By

Copyright

About the Publisher

CHAPTER ONE

Lizzie Clooney and her cousin, Tressa, almost danced along Colmore Row to the Grand Hotel where both girls worked. ‘Imagine, a Christmas social,’ Lizzie said, her eyes shining at the thought.

‘Aye,’ Tressa replied, almost hugging herself with delight. ‘And to be held on the nineteenth of December before the hotel gets really busy. I mean, we have to grab this opportunity while we can. It isn’t as if we are meeting Catholic men on every street corner.’

Lizzie knew her cousin had a valid point, for although they enjoyed all the delights of Birmingham, the city they’d now lived in for nearly two years, they’d never encouraged any of the boys who’d pressed them for dates, certain they’d be Protestants. Never could Lizzie or Tressa contemplate marrying someone of another faith, for they both knew such a person would never be accepted into their families, who lived in Donegal in the north of Ireland.

Small wonder really, when you looked at the history of the place. Hadn’t there been enough trouble between the Orangemen and Catholics there to last anyone a lifetime, without them adding to it? ‘Everyone had better watch out,’ Tressa said warningly, but with a bright smile plastered to her face, ‘for I’m after catching a rich and handsome man at this social.’

‘Tressa!’

‘Well, I am. Are you not?’

‘No,’ Lizzie said, and then added more honestly, ‘well, not really.’

‘Are you mad?’ Tressa demanded. ‘This is our chance. D’you want to be an old maid all your life?’

‘No, of course not,’ Lizzie said with a laugh, ‘but I don’t want to get married yet a while.’

‘Well I do,’ Tressa declared. ‘If one takes my fancy, that is.’

‘You be careful,’ Lizzie cautioned. ‘You’ll get talked about.’

‘Och, will you listen to yourself?’ Tressa said contemptuously. ‘We’re not in a little village in Donegal now, Lizzie, where everyone knows everyone else’s business and would condemn you without judge and jury if the notion took them. I think if you ran naked down the city streets here, there would only be the mildest curiosity.’

‘Tressa!’

‘Oh don’t worry,’ Tressa said. ‘I’m not intending doing that.’ There was a slight pause and then with a twinkle in her eye, Tressa added, ‘Not straight away at least,’ and the two girls laughed together.

‘Think of it,’ Tressa said later. ‘Our futures might be decided by that night.’

‘Heaven forbid!’

‘What’s up with you?’

‘What d’you mean?’ Lizzie said. ‘Why do you want to tie yourself down so soon? For the first time in my life, I have freedom to do as I please, and money in my pocket to spend as I choose. I have bought new clothes, been to theatres and cinemas and dance halls. I don’t want to be tied to a house, doing the washing and cooking and cleaning without a halfpenny to bless myself with, for a long time yet.’

‘Don’t you think about it sometimes?’ Tressa asked.

‘Think about what?’

‘Being head over heels, besotted by someone?’ Tressa said. ‘And sex and things.’

‘Sometimes,’ Lizzie admitted. ‘I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But I don’t dwell on it. Sex an’ all verges on impure thoughts, anyway.’

‘You don’t confess it?’ Tressa said incredulously.

‘Aye, sometimes.’

‘You’re mad. No one can help their thoughts and I’m telling no priest what I’ve been thinking about. It might turn his hair white, or else give him a heart attack.’

‘And then he’d fall out of the confessional and roll down the aisle,’ Lizzie said, and the two girls collapsed helpless with laughter at the thought, and then, when the laughter had abated somewhat, Lizzie continued, ‘I wonder what penance he’d give you when he recovered himself?’ and that started them off again.

Through all the hilarity, though, Lizzie realised Tressa’s religion sat very easily on her, while she worried about every mortal thing. Maybe she’d fare better if she could view life in the same way as her cousin. But then she’d always thought Tressa had her life well sorted, and that had been the way of it throughout all of their growing up.

They’d been born within two days of each other: Lizzie on the 5th July 1912 on her father Seamus’ farm in Rossnowlagh, Donegal, and Tressa two days later above the grocery store in the nearby village of Ballintra, that had become Eamon’s when he married the grocer’s daughter Margaret. She was an only child and so had inherited the whole business on her father’s death.

Lizzie and Tressa had always been the best of friends, but even before they’d begun the national school together in Ballintra, Tressa had been the boss. The point was, Tressa was the youngest in her home. She had two brothers, Will and Jim, followed by two sisters, Peggy and Moira, but then her mother had suffered two miscarriages before Tressa’s birth and so much was made of Tressa when she was born hale and hearty. But, as there were no other children after her, she’d been petted and spoilt in a way Lizzie’s mother Catherine never approved of. Catherine believed that to spare the rod was to spoil the child and her children were taught to do as they were told and promptly, or they’d know the consequences.

That was the problem. Lizzie had learnt quickly to do as she was told and Tressa had learnt, just as quickly, how to get her own way. Her parents, and certainly her older sisters, had always given in to her and she expected everyone else, and certainly her cousin Lizzie, to do the same. She’d lay plans before her in such a way and coax and even bully until Lizzie would find herself wavering and finally giving in to whatever Tressa wanted.

By the time they’d left school, this was firmly ingrained. But although Lizzie had plenty to do at home, for her mother believed Satan made work for idle hands, Tressa had a different life altogether, for there was no opening in the shop for her. Since she’d left school at fourteen she’d hung about the house, only helping the odd times when they had a rush on.

Her father wasn’t keen on her taking on any other sort of job either. ‘You’d shame me,’ he’d said. ‘People will say I can’t afford to keep my own daughter at home.’

‘Quite right,’ Margaret nodded in agreement. She didn’t really want this child, this true gift from God, to leave her side. She wanted her near all the days of her life, and when she eventually married Margaret wanted her to marry in the village, where Margaret could take pleasure in helping rear any grandchildren, like she had with the others.

But Tressa had been bored and wanted to go to England. She didn’t really care where, she just wanted to sample city life, the sort of life Clara Dunne described that sounded so much more exciting than Tressa’s own. Clara was from the village and had got a job in one of the hotels in Birmingham, and Tressa had soon decided that that would suit her just fine and dandy.

‘Oh, Lizzie, you should hear her,’ Tressa had enthused to her cousin. ‘She said you wouldn’t believe the shops, and there’s a big market called the Bull Ring where you can pick things up for next to nothing. And that’s not all,’ she went on, seeing that Lizzie was unimpressed so far. ‘There’s picture houses, with proper moving pictures, and dances, and something called a Variety Hall where there are all manner of acts on. Oh, Lizzie, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be part of it?’

‘It would, right enough,’ Lizzie had said and then had promptly forgotten about it, for she was wise enough not to yearn for things she couldn’t have.

However, Tressa wasn’t used to having her wishes thwarted, but for once Margaret stood firm and said that she wouldn’t countenance the idea of her leaving, and certainly not by herself.

Tressa had no intention of going by herself. She’d automatically assumed that Lizzie would go with her and had said, ‘I wouldn’t be alone, Mammy. Lizzie would be coming with me.’

‘Does she want to go too?’

‘Of course she does,’ Tressa had said airily. ‘She just doesn’t know it yet.’ But she added this last comment under her breath. All she had to do was convince Lizzie it was a great idea. She’d done it many times before.

But Lizzie had proved to be unusually difficult. ‘Don’t give in to her this time,’ her elder sister Eileen had warned her. ‘You’re making yourself a rubbing rag.’

Lizzie thought Eileen had a cheek. How many times had she come begging, ‘Could you do that pile of ironing for me, Lizzie,’ or ‘churn the butter,’ or ‘wash the pots,’ or whatever it was. Eileen would always have a good reason for not being able to do it right then. ‘I’ll pay you back,’ she’d promise, but she never did. Even though Lizzie might resent it, she always did it and usually without a word of complaint.

But it was one thing scouring pots, ironing the family wash and making butter. It was quite another to go to a strange country she’d never had a yen to go to, because of a whim her cousin had to see the place. ‘I don’t know, Tressa,’ she’d said.

Tressa hadn’t been too worried. Lizzie often had to be persuaded to do things and eventually Lizzie had said, ‘If I was to come, and I’m not saying I will, mind, how d’you know there would be jobs for us both?’

Tressa allowed herself a little smile of triumph. ‘Clara said that in the New Year two of the waitresses are leaving, one to get married and one to look after her ailing mother, and of course she is getting married herself later. She says the boss likes Irish girls and so do the Americans, and the tips they give are legion. She said she’ll miss that when she is married herself,’ for Clara was sporting an engagement ring with a huge diamond in the centre of it. ‘She’s getting married in the spring and moving down south somewhere,’ Tressa said. ‘We really need to go while she’s there to speak for us.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ Lizzie had promised.

A couple of days later, Tressa watched Lizzie working in the dairy, pummelling the poss stick up and down in the churn. Lizzie’s arms throbbed with pain and her back ached, and despite the raw, black day she was sweating so much she felt it dampening under her arms and running down her back. It wasn’t even her turn to do the churning, she thought resentfully. It was Eileen’s, but she had had to mend the tear in the hem of her skirt for the dance she was going to that night.

Lizzie was also going to the dance and she had yet to have a wash and then iron her own clothes, but it was no good asking Eileen. She’d say she’d do them and then forget.

Tressa, knowing her cousin well, guessed what she was thinking about and so she said, ‘They’d manage without you here, you know. Your problem is you allow yourself to be put upon.’

And by you too, Lizzie might have said, but she knew Tressa had a point for there was Peter and Owen to help her father and even Johnnie, at eleven years old, was making a fine turn-out too. Her eldest sister Susan lived not far away and Eileen was on hand to help her mother. And she knew Eileen would have to help if Lizzie wasn’t there to cajole and coax and boss about. ‘You’re right,’ she’d said to Tressa. ‘I’ll go to this place Birmingham with you, directly Clara can get us jobs, and give the place a try-out at least.’

Of course it hadn’t been that easy. Lizzie’s own parents had to be convinced and give their permission for their daughter to go. ‘It’s all Tressa’s doing,’ Catherine remarked to Eileen. ‘If that Tressa went to the North Pole and gave our Lizzie the nod, she’d go along with her.’

‘Aye, Mammy, I know,’ Eileen said with a sigh, annoyed that her compliant sister was even contemplating leaving. ‘Still, maybe when all’s said and done, she’ll not stay long.’

‘That’s true right enough,’ Seamus had put in. ‘God knows she hasn’t a clue what city life is like and might not take to it at all. Let her get it out of her system anyhow and then she can never claim we were holding her back.’

Lizzie also thought she might not like the life, and that is what she said to console Johnnie, who was so dreadfully upset that she was moving out of his life. Looking at him, Lizzie had thought, was like looking at herself as a small child, for both of them had the dark brown wavy hair and the same deep brown eyes, snub nose and wide mouth. Only that day Johnnie’s eyes had swum with the tears that had also trickled down his cheeks. ‘Sure, I’ll be back before you know it,’ Lizzie had said, holding her young brother tight.

Of all his sisters and brothers, Johnnie loved Lizzie most. As she was seven years older than him, when he was younger he had looked upon her as another mother, and, in truth, Lizzie had done a lot of the rearing of him. With her temperament she seldom became angry and had far more patience than Eileen. In the long winter evenings it would be Lizzie who’d play cards or dominoes, or read to him to while away the time, and she was always ready to help him with his homework. And in the finer weather they’d walk together over the rolling countryside, or down to the sea to watch the huge rollers crash onto the sand leaving a fringe of foam behind them. Johnnie knew his life would be poorer without his sister, so he clung to the idea that she’d be soon back. ‘D’you promise?’ he’d said.

‘I can’t promise that, Johnnie,’ Lizzie had replied. ‘I don’t know myself how I’ll fare. We’ll just have to wait and see.’ She knew that Tressa had no intention of returning home, but for herself, she wasn’t sure how she would cope with any of it.

That morning, in late January 1930, as they’d stood at the rail of the mail boat, watching the shores of Ireland being swallowed up by the mist, Tressa had given a sigh of satisfaction and said to Lizzie, ‘I’d say we’ll be sure to catch ourselves rich and handsome men in England?’

Lizzie wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun and live a bit first.’

‘And Birmingham’s the place to do that all right,’ Tressa said. ‘So, are you glad you came at least?’

Before answering, Lizzie looked down at the churning sea the boat was ploughing its way through, which was as grey as the leaden sky, and she felt excitement beginning to stir in her. She smiled at her cousin and said, ‘If I’m honest I’m often glad when you bully me into doing something I’d not given a mind to before. I’m no good at adventures and maybe I never will be. Perhaps I’ll always be the kind of person that will have to have my arm twisted to do anything at all. So in all honesty I can say aye, Tressa, I’m glad I agreed to come and I’m so excited I can hardly wait.’

Birmingham lived up to the girls’ expectations, although Lizzie had been initially alarmed by the traffic, cars, buses, lorries and trams cramming the roads, and the throngs of chatting and often raucous people filling the pavements. She’d thought she’d never sleep for the noise and bustle around her. She shared an attic room with Tressa and two other girls called Pat Matthews and Betty Green, and on the first night sleep eluded her, despite her tiredness, and she kept jerking awake when she did doze off.

It was a full week before Lizzie slept all night, so wearied by the twelve-hour shift she’d just finished, nothing could disturb her. From that night it became easier and she began to enjoy city life, and there was great entertainment for two girls with money in their pockets, especially living where they did. They were almost in the centre of the city, where the cinemas, theatres, music halls and dance halls abounded, and at first Clara had taken them in hand to show them around.

She suggested both girls took dancing lessons soon after they arrived, for she said Irish dancing was nothing like the dancing done here. However, Lizzie and Tressa caught on quickly, for they found the years of dancing jigs and reels had given them agility and the ability to listen to and move with the music and to follow instructions.

Lizzie loved to dance and she was so looking forward to the social. Whatever Tressa said, you weren’t promising a man your hand in marriage for doing the rounds in a quick step or a waltz and she was determined to enjoy herself. The first thing to do was to find something suitable to wear.

The Bull Ring was the place where bargains were to be had, but in a way Lizzie hated going there. She knew of the slump and the men without work and she’d even seen some of the hunger marches go down Colmore Row. But there was no evidence of deprivation in the hotel, in the food served and facilities offered, for the people who came were, in the main, well-to-do and successful, so Lizzie and Tressa were inured from the poverty.

They weren’t aware of the teeming back-to-back houses not far from the city centre where families lived in a constant state of hunger, cold and deprivation, pawning all belonging to them to prevent them all starving to death. It was only in the Bull Ring that these things were brought home to them. Lizzie was sorry for the shambling women she saw there, who were sometimes barefoot, which had shocked both girls at first. They often had a squalling baby tied to them with a shawl and a clutch of filthy, ragged, barefoot children with pinched-in faces, and arms and legs like sticks. They would dart like monkeys to snatch at anything falling off the barrows before the coster could pick it up. The barrow boys would shout at them and often raise a fist, but they were too hungry to take any notice and it tore at Lizzie’s heart to see them.

Tressa laughed at her softness when one day she gave a group of children her saved pennies to buy a pie each so that they could have a full belly for once. ‘They needed it more than me,’ she said in defence when Tressa chided her. ‘That eldest boy was about the same age as Johnnie. Think of the difference.’

‘And what of the razor blades, shoelaces and hairgrips you buy nearly every time you’re let out alone? We have enough in now to stock a shop.’

‘Ah, Tressa, doesn’t it break your heart to see those poor men with trays about their necks, and many of them blinded or with missing limbs?’ Lizzie said. ‘They fought in the war-to-end-all-wars and now have no job. They’re like debris, thrown out on the scrap heap. I have to buy from them.’

There were always more of the poor about on a Saturday, hoping to snatch a bargain, but that afternoon, two weeks before the dance, the girls were on a mission. Tressa wouldn’t let Lizzie look to left or right and led her straight down the cobbled streets from High Street into the melee and clamour of people and the costers shouting their wares above the noise.

The place had a buzz all of its own and there was always something to see, but that day there was no time to stand and stare. They skirted the flower sellers, around the statue of Nelson, shaking their heads at the proferred bunches and the market hall where the old lags were with their trays. The old lady stood outside Woolworths as she did every day, shouting her wares: ‘Carriers, handy carriers,’ and they passed Mountford’s, where the smell of the meat turning on a spit in the window would make your mouth water.

The rag market was where they were making for, and when they entered it, it still had the familiar whiff of fish lingering, for it sold fish in the week. But now, goods of every description were laid out on carpets or rugs on the floor. Lizzie got a bronze satin dress with lace underskirts: the bodice was decorated with beads and fancy buttons and cut to show the merest hint of cleavage. She even picked up a pair of bronze shoes and a brown fur jacket at the second-hand stall and was well-pleased.

Tressa was equally as happy with her dress of dark red velvet bound in black, for with her blonde hair she suited red. The smart black jacket fitted like a glove and the two-tone shoes were a find. If they pinched a bit, so what. She just had to have them. They made the outfit. The girls were well satisfied and as Tressa said when they dressed up in their room later and spun around before the mirror, ‘Don’t the pair of us look just terrific?’

The days seemed to drag, but eventually it was time to lift the dresses down from the picture rail where they’d been covered by a sheet, and the two dressed in their finery. Even Lizzie, never one to give herself airs and unaware of her beauty, was stunned. The skirt, which reached the floor, rustled delicately when she walked; and the beads on the bodice, shimmering in the light, brought out the beauty of her creamy skin and made her eyes dance and sparkle. Tressa’s gown was pretty enough and she did look beautiful in it, but it was Lizzie’s that drew the exclamation from Pat and Betty, who’d demanded to see them both before they set off.

CHAPTER TWO

Lizzie and Tressa stood in the doorway and peeped in. Streamers interspersed with balloons were draped around the walls and hung from the ceiling, while around the edge of the room were small tables. Each one had a lighted candle in a gold-coloured candlestick and it gave a magical feel to the night. At one end of the hall was a band setting up with their instruments, and, to the side, a more than adequate bar.

‘Isn’t it wonderful?’ Lizzie said, as the band struck up the first tune of the night, which was a slow foxtrot to the tune of ‘My Foolish Heart’.

‘Aye,’ Tressa agreed, taking a seat at one of the tables. ‘But I hope we are asked up by someone and before too long. Wouldn’t it be a desperate situation altogether if we were left sitting at the table by ourselves all night? I’d die of shame.’

There was little danger of it for the girls’ entrance had caused quite a stir, and both were asked up almost immediately. As Lizzie spun around the room with one partner after another she began to thoroughly enjoy herself.

They discovered punch early on in the evening and, thinking it to be non-alcoholic, drank plenty of it. Unbeknownst to them, they had been watched for about an hour by two men at the bar, who smiled to themselves and then to each other as they saw the girls fill up their glasses once more and go back to the table for a well-earned rest.

As soon as the men detached themselves from the bar and began to move towards them, the movement drew Tressa’s eyes. ‘There’s two gorgeous fellows heading our way,’ she whispered to Lizzie. ‘Absolutely terrific, so they are.’ And then, as Lizzie was to turn her head for a swift peep, Tressa hissed, ‘Don’t look around. They’ll know we’re talking about them.’

Have we to be totally unaware of the two men walking towards us so deliberately, Lizzie thought. It seemed that way, and they’d reached the table before Tressa appeared to see them and Lizzie had her first good look. Both were tall, she noticed, and one had sandy-coloured hair and grey eyes and his mouth was wide and full, his whole attitude one of laughter and fun. His friend, though, was a different kettle of fish altogether, his countenance graver and his attitude altogether more serious. His hair was nearly black, his nose long and mouth thin, but his eyebrows seemed so prominent they almost hid his deep brown eyes.

Lizzie didn’t take to him at all, but the other man seemed to have eyes only for Tressa. They asked if they might sit for a while and talk to the ladies, and as Tressa was more than willing there was little Lizzie could say. They introduced themselves: the one enamoured with Tressa was Mike Malone, and the other one, Steve Gillespie. Lizzie sat and sipped her punch and listened to them talking. Both came from a place called Edgbaston, they said, only a short distance away, where they lived just a street apart. They’d been friends since their first day at St Catherine’s School and both were in full-time work, in the brass industry. ‘We’re lucky,’ Mike said. ‘And we know it, with so many unemployed now.’

They heard of Mike’s two elder sisters, now married and away from home. ‘I’m the youngest too,’ Tressa said. ‘Lizzie says I’m spoilt.’

Lizzie opened her mouth to say something, but Mike forestalled her. ‘Never,’ he said. ‘Such a beautiful girl cannot be spoilt. And I love your accents.’

‘Your names sound Irish too,’ Tressa said. ‘But your accents don’t.’

‘Our dads were both from Ireland,’ Steve answered. ‘But we’ve been brought up here. My father has no love of Ireland, for he had a hard time there after he was orphaned at the age of seven.’

Lizzie would have asked more questions, but Mike would not allow it. He forbade all talk of sadness and fetched more punch for the girls and a Guinness each for themselves, before leading Tressa onto the dance floor.

Steve watched Lizzie’s eyes as they followed Tressa and he said, ‘You don’t want to dance, do you?’

It was said ungraciously and Lizzie didn’t want to dance, at least not with Steve. She didn’t even want to sit with him. He unnerved her. She wanted to say she needed the Ladies, but she could hardly skulk there all night, and anyway, Tressa would root her out and be furious with her. So she said, ‘No, no, it’s all right.’

‘Your glass is empty, I’ll get us a refill,’ Steve said, and Lizzie was surprised. She couldn’t remember drinking the punch at all, but she took a big drink of the glass that Steve brought her as he talked of his father, who’d fought in the Great War as a volunteer. ‘He was injured, my father,’ Steve went on. ‘Had his leg shot to pieces and it probably saved his life.’

‘Have you any brothers or sisters?’ Lizzie asked. Her voice, she realised, was nothing like her own. It was thicker and the words were harder to form.

‘Yeah, one brother, Neil. He’s five years younger than me. I’m the golden boy, though, even above my father in my mother’s eyes.’

‘Oh.’

‘Oh yes. If I told my mother to jump, she’d just say, “How high”?’

‘I pity the girl you marry then.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Steve said, and his hand caressing Lizzie’s made her insides jump about uncomfortably. ‘I have good points too, Lizzie Clooney,’ he said in a husky whisper. ‘And many ways of making a woman very happy.’

Lizzie withdrew her hand and Steve laughed, and Lizzie drained her glass of punch, for she didn’t know how to react. But when he took her by the hand and led her onto the dance floor, she went willingly. Even when she felt his hands slide across her bottom as they waltzed to ‘The Blue Danube’, and his lips nuzzle her neck in the darker corners of the room, she found she didn’t mind at all. In fact, she liked it.

Tressa was happy to dance with Mike for the rest of the night, and Lizzie thought dancing with Steve wasn’t so bad and better than sitting on her own at the table. At some stage, as the night wore on, Lizzie was brought more punch, and after she’d drunk it she found it hard to stand up, let alone dance, and Steve took her outside. ‘You’ll feel better with some air,’ he said.

Lizzie hoped she would. She felt distinctly odd. Her legs refused to obey her and so did her mouth. She wondered what was the matter with her and she was glad of Steve’s arm around her.

Steve Gillespie had been attracted by the young girl since he’d first spotted her, and though he’d seen that Mike had been smitten with her cousin, she was nothing besides Lizzie. Lizzie was a real beauty.

Steve also knew the girl was virtually untouched, probably never even been kissed properly. She was now very drunk and he could guess that it was probably the first time she’d been in this state too, and she would be putty in his hands, if he so desired it. However, he didn’t want to scare her off altogether and so he decided he would proceed very slowly. So, when they reached the darkened entry, he kissed her, but gently on the lips and held her close.

Lizzie responded to Steve’s kisses. It was her first sexual experience and she felt faint urges tugging at her. Steve wasn’t used to such innocence and usually he was out for all he could get with a woman, but he felt an attraction for Lizzie that he had never experienced before. He felt a thrill of excitement when Lizzie groaned as he kissed her neck and throat. He kissed her more passionately, though he didn’t prise her lips open with his tongue, feeling that would frighten her. He felt the kirby grips she’d fashioned her hair up with fall to the floor as he held her head, and then he ran his fingers through the freed locks and buried his face in Lizzie’s neck. ‘Oh, Lizzie.’

The name, whispered so huskily, awakened her a little more and, greatly daring, she put her hands either side of Steve’s face and kissed him hungrily. She’d never had a real kiss, but for all that she was excited by feelings she didn’t understand, and when Steve ran his hands over her she didn’t object.

Steve was surprised, and supposed it was the alcohol she’d consumed that was making her so compliant. When she continued to kiss him and pressed her body close against his, he could not resist trying to go further. With his arm around her, he cupped one of her breasts, and when Lizzie didn’t push him away he felt the heat of desire flow through his body and his fumbling fingers began unbuttoning the bodice of her gown.

Lizzie, even in her hazy state, reacted strongly. ‘Stop it, Steve! What are you doing?’

‘Showing you how much I care for you,’ Steve said huskily, tightening his arms around her. ‘Ah, come on, Lizzie? Don’t stop now.’

‘No,’ Lizzie said, pulling away from him. ‘I’m not that sort of girl.’ She began to do up the buttons, unaware in her tipsy state that she’d clumsily buttoned herself up wrongly and left two buttons undone entirely. ‘I want to go back in now,’ she said, and Steve didn’t protest. He knew he had gone too far and too fast, and he also knew if he wanted to have a chance to see this beautiful girl again he would have to proceed slowly.

Tressa, coming into the hall, intending to look for Lizzie, saw them come in. When she saw the state of Lizzie, her flushed cheeks, messed-up hair falling about her face and unbuttoned bodice, she thought Lizzie and Steve had been up to far more than they had. She was mightily glad Mike hadn’t come with her and there were no other witness either, and also glad the Ladies led off the hall. With a glare at Steve that should have rendered him senseless on the floor, she shoved Lizzie into the Ladies to try and repair the damage.

‘You bloody little fool,’ she admonished as she wiped Lizzie’s face with her handkerchief, which she had dampened under the tap. ‘You haven’t the sense you were born with. Why did you agree to go outside with him in the first place?’

Lizzie looked at Tressa with an inane grin on her face. For the life of her she couldn’t understand why Tressa was cross. ‘For air,’ she said. ‘I was hot.’

‘Hot, my foot,’ Tressa cried. ‘The state you’re in, Steve Gillespie could have taken advantage of you.’ Might have taken advantage of you, she thought, but didn’t put in to words.

But what she said got through to Lizzie’s befuddled brain. ‘No,’ she replied. ‘I’m a good girl, Tressa.’

‘Aye, course you are,’ Tressa said sarcastically, buttoning Lizzie’s bodice up correctly. ‘Turn round and I’ll see if I can do something with this hair, and then I’m getting you a big glass of water and you are going to drink it. That punch is alcoholic, you know; Mike told me. I took to orange afterwards.’ Lizzie heard the words but they didn’t seem to matter. Nothing did, and she just grinned again. Tressa sighed and said wearily, ‘What’s the use of talking to you? Turn around and let me see if I can work some sort of miracle.’

There were not enough grips to put Lizzie’s hair up the way it had been and Tressa was forced to leave some of it loose, but it looked good even so. When Lizzie had obediently drunk the water, Tressa, surveying her, thought she’d done the best she could in the circumstances and led her back onto the dance floor.

Steve was sitting with Mike, and when he saw Lizzie framed for a moment in the doorway he thought he’d never seen anyone lovelier. Her face was no longer flushed and she had regained her creamy complexion, and her hair, though tidy, was now allowing waves to fall down her back and tendrils of it framed her face. He stepped forward quickly to claim Lizzie before someone else did, a large glass of punch in his hand. She lifted it to her lips, her eyes met Tressa’s, who raised hers to the ceiling as Lizzie took a large gulp.

The next morning, when Lizzie opened her eyes because Tressa was shaking her, she felt as if she’d fallen into the pit of Hell. A thousand hammers were beating in her head, her eyes throbbed and she felt sick. ‘Leave me alone.’

‘No way will I,’ Tressa said. She was glad the other two girls that shared the room were not there, for they were on breakfasts this morning while she and Lizzie weren’t on duty until six, and looking at her cousin’s comatose frame she was glad of it.

Tressa expected Lizzie to feel bad. Mike had said she’d have a bad head when she woke in the morning. They’d had to nearly carry her home and she’d almost tumbled down the stairs as Tressa forced her up them, her arm around Lizzie’s waist; and now she lay like one dead, while Tressa’s insides were filled with delicious excitement at seeing Mike again, and she was letting no drunken cousin spoil it. ‘Get up!’ she commanded, giving Lizzie a shove.

‘I can’t.’

‘You can and you bloody will. We’ve got Mass at eleven o’clock and the fellows are going to meet us outside.’

‘The fellows! What fellows?’

‘God, Lizzie! What fellows do you think? Mike and Steve, of course. We arranged it yesterday. Don’t you remember?’

Lizzie shook her head, but gently. She remembered very little, but she recalled her earlier feelings about Steve. ‘I don’t think I like Steve much,’ she said.

Tressa looked at her scornfully. ‘Oh aye,’ she retorted sarcastically. ‘Is that why you danced with him all night and went out with him into the night, arm in arm, and came back with your hair looking like you’d been pulled through a hedge backwards and your bodice nearly unbuttoned?’

Lizzie sat bolt upright in the bed, putting her hands to her aching head as she did so and fighting nausea. ‘I didn’t,’ she breathed, horrified. ‘Say I didn’t?’

‘You did. You were all over him and his hands were everywhere when you danced and you never said a word. You couldn’t get close enough. Even when we sat down, you sat on Steve’s knee and nuzzled into his neck. It was embarrassing. Do you remember none of it?’

‘No. Oh God!’ Lizzie said. ‘I can’t even remember how I got home.’

‘They walked back with us,’ Tressa said. ‘I could never have managed you on my own. I told you that punch was alcoholic, for all the good it did. You just kept knocking it back.’

Lizzie couldn’t remember Tressa telling her that, couldn’t remember anything much. But, whether she could remember it or not hardly mattered. According to Tressa, those glasses of punch had caused her to do God knows what with a person she had just met and in her sober moments hadn’t cared for. The evils of drink—Jesus Christ! Her mother had been right all along.And she felt so ill. ‘Tressa, I feel like death. I don’t think I’ll make Mass this morning,’ she said.

Tressa laughed. ‘You’re hammered, and for the first time in your life, I bet,’ she said. ‘Your mother would be scandalised.’

‘It’s not funny.’

‘No, it isn’t,’ Tressa said. ‘And you’re not spoiling my Sunday off because you got drunk last night. We wouldn’t have got home at all if Steve hadn’t nearly carried you to the door, and I nearly broke my neck getting you in the room. When we got here, you lay on the bed and began to laugh. The other girls were none too pleased being woken up, I can tell you.’

‘I woke them up!’

‘Not just them I shouldn’t think,’ Tressa said with gusto, laying it on. ‘God, you were in a state. I undressed you because you were incapable of doing it yourself. I put on your nightdress and tucked you up, and you owe me. So get on your feet.’

‘I can’t, Tressa, I’ll throw up.’

‘Well then, throw up,’ Tressa said unsympathetically. ‘Didn’t your mother ever tell you it was better out than in? And when you’ve been sick, take a couple of aspirin, clean your teeth, wash your face and put on your clothes for Mass.’

‘Did anyone ever tell you how aggravating you are, and a bloody prig into the bargain?’ Lizzie said, getting to her feet with difficulty and a degree of caution. She was unable to wait for Tressa’s response to this, though, for she had to run to the bathroom, her hand to her mouth, while Tressa’s tinkling laugh followed her down the corridor.

Steve noticed Lizzie’s pallor as soon as she emerged from the church and guessed the reason for it. He felt sorry for her, certain that the previous night had been her first brush with alcohol.

She was so embarrassed in front of him. She could scarcely meet his eyes, and though he thought she’d remember little of the previous night, he knew her cousin would have filled in any gaps and probably with embellishment.

‘Where shall we go?’ Mike asked. ‘The day is too raw for walking much. I fancy a pub somewhere.’

‘Somewhere where we can get food would be nice,’ Tressa said. ‘My stomach thinks my throat is cut.’

‘Of course, Communion,’ Mike said. ‘What about the Old Joint Stock?’

Tressa made a face. ‘No, they don’t do food. Anyway, it’s too close.’ It was just down the road from the hotel, near to Snow Hill Station. ‘Half the hotel go in there from time to time.’

‘What about The Old Royal in Edmund Street?’

‘I don’t know if they do food either. I’ve never been in.’

‘What about you, Lizzie? Have you a preference?’

Oh God yes, she had a preference. It was to go back to the hotel, crawl into bed and let the world go on without her, that’s what her preference was. Catching sight of Tressa’s face, she knew that if she voiced those thoughts her life wouldn’t be worth living. ‘No, not really.’

‘Tell you what,’ Steve said suddenly, ‘let’s go down Digbeth Way. We can cut down by the Bull Ring and there’s hundreds of pubs there and we’re bound to find one doing lunches.’

‘Aye, and the walk will give us an appetite.’

‘God, I don’t need to walk to give me an appetite,’ Tressa said. ‘If I don’t eat soon I might go mad altogether.’

‘What d’you mean, go mad?’ Mike said with a laugh, and when Tressa went to hit him with her handbag he caught her around the waist instead and kissed her on the lips.

Lizzie was shocked at Tressa behaving that way in daylight and in front of a church too. She saw Mike now had his arm around Tressa and both were laughing and looking at each other in such a way that Lizzie felt suddenly shut out.

Steve saw it too. When he draped an arm over her she wanted to protest at the familiarity, but then she remembered Tressa’s account of how she’d behaved with the selfsame man just the previous evening and felt she could say nothing.

‘How about you, Lizzie?’ Mike asked. ‘Are you hungry too?’

Lizzie gave a brief shake of her head, but regretted it immediately for it started the thumping pain again. ‘No,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I’m not hungry at all, and even the thought of food makes me feel sick.’

‘You need some of Uncle Steve’s medicine,’ Steve told her.

‘Uncle Steve’s medicine? What’s that?’

‘You’ll soon find out,’ he said with a smile.

‘Brandy,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve never had brandy in my life.’

She felt the nausea rise in her throat as Mike said, ‘You’ve not lived. Drink it down, it’ll settle your stomach.’

She looked around at them all watching her in this little old pub called The Woodman, chosen because it had a restaurant on the side, and she wondered if Steve was right, for the different smells of alcohol, cigarette smoke and food cooking were making her feel incredibly sick. She’d die of embarrassment if she was sick in front of everyone, and Tressa would kill her altogether.

Lizzie picked up her balloon glass and looked at the amber liquid. ‘There’s an awful lot of it.’

‘I asked for a double,’ Steve said. ‘I thought it an extreme case. Get it down you.’

‘It smells awful,’ Lizzie moaned, putting the glass down. ‘I couldn’t.’

‘Course you could,’ Tressa snapped. ‘For God’s sake, Lizzie, you’re not putting it up your nose. Don’t be such a wet blanket.’

Steve put his arm around Lizzie and said gently, ‘Trust your Uncle Steve, he’s had more hangovers than you’ve had hot dinners, and I know this will make you feel better. Hair of the dog, d’you see.’

Lizzie didn’t see at all, but suddenly she put the glass to her lips and took a gulp. It was like the very worst medicine she’d ever tasted and it burned her throat and made her eyes water, but even as she coughed and spluttered she felt the warmth of it trickling down her throat.

‘Treat it with care,’ Steve said, touched by Lizzie’s naivety, his arm still around her. ‘Sip it.’

Lizzie warmed to Steve for his patience and understanding, and when she had emptied the brandy glass she had to admit it did settle her stomach, but it went straight to her head and made it swim. However, that felt quite pleasant and was better by far than the pounding ache.

When Mike came back with the news that he had a table booked for one o’clock, even Lizzie didn’t dread it so much; and when Steve bought her and Tressa a port, the drink Tressa had had previously, Lizzie took it without a murmur, and liked the dark, slightly sweet drink much better than the brandy.

Lizzie and Tressa had been introduced to wine with the meal and neither were keen. Lizzie drank sparingly anyway, for the port and brandy had made her feel strange enough and she hoped they weren’t to stop in there all afternoon, though it was no day to be outside either. Mike and Steve must have felt the same, for as they finished their apple pie and custard, Mike said, ‘How d’you two feel about the pictures?’

Lizzie was delighted. Since arriving in Birmingham she’d been many times to the pictures with Tressa and liked nothing better. ‘What’s on?’ she asked. ‘The Blue Angel is on at the Odeon on New Street,’ Steve said. ‘I noticed on the way here. It stars Marlene Dietrich. Fancy that?’

‘Oh yes,’ Tressa said. ‘Neither of us have seen that.’

Steve was very attentive to Lizzie as they prepared to leave, fetching her coat and helping her into it, and taking her arm once outside. The wind had come up and icy spears of rain were attacking them, and Lizzie was glad of Steve’s arms encircling her, holding her so close she was able to semi-bury her head into his coat.

Steve felt ten-foot tall holding this slight-framed girl in his arms. He’d had many sexual experiences and with a variety of women, for he was a highly sexed man, but never had his heart been stirred before. But it was stirred now all right, in fact it had been churned up right and proper, and the prospect of her beside him in the dark of the cinema filled him with excitement.

Lizzie was delighted by the chocolates Steve presented her with in the cinema, but puzzled when he led her into the back row. Nevertheless, she presumed he had just followed Mike and Tressa, who were in front of them, and she sank into the seat in contentment.

No one had ever bought her a box of chocolates before and she took off the wrapper and looked in amazement at the selection. ‘All right?’ Steve asked.

‘More than all right, much more,’ Lizzie said, and, leaning over, she kissed Steve on the cheek. ‘Thank you.’

Steve felt expectation fill his body and Lizzie gave a sigh of contentment as the lights dimmed and she sat back to enjoy the film.

Evidently, Steve was uninterested in the film, for it had barely started when she felt his arm trail around her neck. She made no protest, though, until his hand cupped her breast, and then she gasped in shock. She shrugged her shoulder, hoping to dislodge his hand without disturbing the people in front of them. Steve, thinking Lizzie’s gasp was one of pleasure, began kissing and then gently biting her neck.

Lizzie threw Steve’s arm off roughly and moved away, sitting up straight in her seat. ‘Stop it.’

‘What? Stop what?’

‘All that sort of carry on.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Lizzie.’

‘Look, whatever impression you had of me at the dance, I’m not that sort of girl.’

‘You could have fooled me.’

‘Yes, well, now you know.’

‘You agreed quick enough to come into the back row.’

‘Ssh,’ said someone in front of them. ‘Go and have your row someplace else. We’ve bought tickets for this film and want to see and hear it.’

‘Sorry,’ Lizzie responded, flaming with embarrassment.

Steve was smiling, but in the darkness she couldn’t see that. ‘Look around you,’ he whispered in her ear.

She did, and though she could see little she knew some of the people were in very odd positions altogether and her eyes widened in shock when she thought she saw Mike’s hand inside Tressa’s clothes. Maybe, she thought, you said you were up for things like that when you agreed to go into the back row. She didn’t know the rules for this place. They’d never had any type of cinema in Ballintra, but she had no intention of forgetting herself.

‘We’ll hold hands,’ she said.

‘Hold hands!’ Steve cried in dismay. He’d forgotten to lower his voice and the people in front glared around at them. ‘I’ll have a word with the usherette if you don’t pack it in.’

Mortified, Lizzie grasped Steve’s hand firmly. After all, she told herself, she hardly knew the man and he wasn’t her type at all. Holding hands was really all he could expect.

Steve held hands, knowing he’d get no further and would only worsen things if he was to insist or try and force Lizzie; but never had he sat and just held hands before, especially if he’d bought drinks and chocolates. This time he’d even splashed out on a meal as well. Most girls would be more than grateful and not averse to a bit of slap and tickle themselves. Look at Tressa with Mike. Christ, he envied him, but his Lizzie sat rigid and he knew if he wanted to win her he’d have to play by her rules, for now at least.

CHAPTER THREE

Because of the girls’ shifts, it was the 23rd of December before Tressa and Lizzie saw Mike and Steve again, when they were taken to a theatre called The Alex to see Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

‘A fairy story!’ Lizzie cried in disbelief.

‘It’s a pantomime,’ Steve said.

‘What’s a pantomime?’

‘You’ll see.’

And Lizzie saw. She saw a sort of play with music, where the principal boy was a girl dressed up and the crowd were encouraged to boo and hiss and cheer and clap and some of the jokes were so suggestive they made her face flame. She wasn’t at all sure if she enjoyed it or not, but the others seemed to and so she said nothing. Then, they were taken to the Old Joint Stock for a few drinks before being delivered back to the hotel.

Tressa was happily tipsy and confided to Lizzie when they reached their room that she was in love with Mike.

‘How can you be?’ Lizzie demanded, shocked. ‘You’ve only just met.’

‘Sometimes a person just knows these things.’

Lizzie was still doubtful, but whether Tressa was in love with Mike or not, Lizzie knew that with their shift rota there would be little chance of her seeing Mike before the New Year. Christmas was almost upon them, one of the busiest periods of all at the hotel, where time off was minimal or altogether non-existent, and any free time they did have was usually spent sleeping the deep sleep of the totally exhausted.

All Tressa could talk about, though, was Mike. ‘I love him,’ she declared. ‘Wait till you love someone, you’ll sing a different tune then. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks, I bet.’

‘Maybe,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. It hasn’t yet anyway, and remember, when you marry it’s for life, Tressa.’

‘I know that,’ Tressa replied, ‘but if I wait a lifetime I’ll want no one else. How d’you feel about Steve?’

‘He’s all right.’

‘Come on, why don’t you give the man a chance?’

‘I have. I am. I just don’t feel that way about him.’

‘He’s smitten with you.’

‘How d’you know?’

‘You just do, the way he looks at you. His eyes never leave you. You must have noticed.’

Had she, and refused to acknowledge it? She didn’t know, but it was obvious Tressa was right because when they next went out with Mike and Steve in January, Steve asked her to tea the following Sunday to meet his parents, as she was free until seven o’clock that evening.

‘Why don’t you want to go?’ Tressa asked later. ‘I’m going to see Mike’s.’

‘I know, but you and Mike…well, it’s different.’

‘Lizzie, all you have to do is smile and be polite. What’s so hard?’

‘It’s not that. It’s the complexion Steve will put on it. It means something, surely, when you meet the parents?’ Lizzie bit on her thumbnail in consternation. ‘I mean, maybe it would be better to end it now, stop him getting ideas.’

No way did Tressa want Lizzie doing that, but she didn’t say this. Instead, she said, ‘How will you tell him? Do you know where he lives?’

‘No, well, only vaguely.’

‘So, you’re going to wait until he comes, when everyone’s gone to the trouble, made tea and all sorts, and you’ll let him go back alone to face their ridicule and scorn?’

Lizzie hadn’t thought of that. ‘You think it’s better to go through with it then?’

‘I think it’s the only thing to do now. You should have told him straight at the time.’

‘I meant to. He sort of took me aback a bit.’

‘Well, I think you’ve got to see it through now,’ Tressa told her, and Lizzie knew in her heart of hearts that Tressa was right.

Edgbaston was Lizzie’s first experience of back-to-back housing. Steve and Mike had come to meet the girls and as they alighted from the tram on Bristol Street, which was another first for them both, they all went up Bristol Passage, and at the top both girls stood and stared. Lizzie was in shock, and so, she saw, was Tressa. Nothing in their lives so far had prepared them for anything like these cramped and crowded houses, squashed together in front of grey pavements and grey cobbled roads. And so many of them: they went on and on, street after street of them. Even when Lizzie had seen the beggars and poor in the market, she’d not thought of them living in places like this. She’d not think of anyone living in places like this. Her father’s calves were better housed.

The two men didn’t seem to notice the girls’ disquiet. ‘We’ve come to the parting of the ways now,’ Mike said. ‘You go straight up Grant Street, so we’ll see you later.’

When they moved off, Steve put his arm around Lizzie. ‘All right?’

Whatever she felt privately, Lizzie told herself this place was Steve’s home, and she hadn’t any right to criticise it. How would she feel if she took him to Ireland and he tore her family’s farm apart? And so she said, ‘Aye, I’m grand.’

‘It’s bound to be a bit strange at first.’

‘Aye.’

‘And it’s natural to be nervous.’

‘Aye.’

‘Can you say anything other than “Aye”?’ Steve said with a grin, and Lizzie smiled back and answered in the same vein: ‘Aye.’

Steve’s parents’ house was number thirty-five, halfway up the hill, and it opened onto the street. ‘We’ll go in the entry door,’ Steve said, and led the way down a long, dark tunnel between two houses, where there was a door on either side. He turned the handle and went in, but not before Lizzie had had a glimpse of the cobbled yard the entry led to with washing lines criss-crossing the place and three toddlers playing in the dirt and grime.

Steve, following her gaze, said, ‘Normally this place is teeming with children. The bad weather today is keeping most of them inside.’

‘Aye,’ Lizzie said again, and ignored Steve’s sardonic grin as she wondered where in God’s name the teeming children played. But she had no time to frame this question, for Steve had gone inside and Lizzie had no option but to follow.

To the left of the entry door was a scullery of sorts, with a sink with lidded buckets beneath it and shelves to one side. There was no tap, and Lizzie wondered at that. Yawning cellar steps were directly in front of her and there was a door to the side which was ajar, and which was where the family were assembled to meet Lizzie.

Lizzie saw there was just one small-paned window letting light in, and that was covered with curtains of lace and heavier curtains of blue brocade hanging on either side. ‘So you’re here then,’ said a thin, sour woman Lizzie assumed to be Steve’s mother.

‘As you see, Ma, as you see.’

Now she had time to study the woman, Lizzie saw she had many of the same features as Steve and thought it odd that though they turned Steve into a handsome and presentable man, they turned his mother grimfaced and surly looking, unless it was life itself that had given her that discontented air.

Steve’s father was introduced as Rodney and was just a little taller than his wife, and Steve’s brother Neil was the same. Both had sandy hair and pale brown eyes, their noses had little shape and they had slack lips and an indeterminate chin, while Steve’s was chiselled and firm. Lizzie wondered if Neil resented his brother at all, for he was obviously at the back of the queue when good looks were given out. Beside his tall, brawny brother, he looked like a wee boy, and when he shook her hand his was clammy and limp and his father’s little better. It was like shaking hands with a warm, wet fish.

But she was to soon learn much of Neil’s rancour was caused by his mother, and it had nothing to do with looks or size, for, as Steve had boasted the first time Lizzie had met him, Flo only had eyes for her eldest son. He was the light of her life, and in case there should be any doubts, Flo went into a litany of how good, honest, upright, decent, respectable, etc. Steve was. What a marvellous son, a tremendous man altogether, and, she inferred, Lizzie was lucky to have him.

The point was, Lizzie didn’t want him. Flo could keep him by her side a wee while longer, but now wasn’t the time to say so.

It was a comfortable and well-furnished room, Lizzie had to admit. A brass clock was set on the mantelshelf below the picture of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, that familiar picture in all Catholic homes. A selection of brass ornaments were either side of the clock, and a shop-bought, fluffy blue rug was before the gleaming brass fender. Dark blue armchairs and a matching settee, each scattered with cushions of pale blue and cream, were pulled in front of the fire, which was roaring up the chimney. The linen, lace-edged arm covers on the chairs matched the antimacassars draped across the backs of the chairs and settee. Against the wall was a sideboard with a runner across the length of it and a large oval mirror above. Brass candlesticks stood each end of the runner with a potted aspidistra in the middle.

Lizzie guessed the table against the other wall matched the sideboard, for the ladder-backed chairs around it certainly did, but it had a tablecloth of lace covering it.

In one of the chimney recesses were shelves holding some books and a few toby jugs, but the wall the other side was covered in photographs of Steve. The brothers were so unlike each other, both in looks and stature, there was no mistaking them. There was just the one picture Lizzie could see that had been taken when Steve looked to be about ten and Neil about five. The rest were all of Steve: one of him as a baby on a lambskin rug, then as a toddler and a schoolboy. Steve’s First Communion was also documented, as was his Confirmation, and him in his new suit for the occasion, and another where he wore new overalls, checked shirt and shiny new boots, probably for his first day at work. There were none of anyone else.

The visit could not be considered a success. She knew afterwards that, whatever she’d done or said wouldn’t have been right, for the talk was stilted and false, and though the tea was adequate and well-prepared it felt like sawdust in Lizzie’s mouth. I pity the girl who eventually takes Steve on, she thought, for Flo will make her life a misery. Thank the Lord it’s not going to be me!

Eventually, Lizzie ran out of things to say and there was an uncomfortable silence for a minute or two before Rodney Gillespie began on his favourite topic: hatred of the Irish generally and Ireland in particular. ‘I was found by the parish priest when I was but seven years old,’ he said, ‘and all about me were dead or dying of TB. He took me in and tended me and apprenticed me to a brass worker in Birmingham the week after my eighth birthday.’

Lizzie did feel for the old man for Steve had explained some of the work they did the night they’d gone to the Old Joint Stock after the pantomime. He’d told Lizzie how the copper and zinc were turned into molten brass in furnaces that burned white-hot, and how they had to carry heavy ladles of it to pour into crucibles. He spoke of the heat and the danger and the way hands grew cracked and calloused and how bare backs ran with sweat all the day long, and of how his father had been at the work since he’d been a young boy.

‘Ah, God, for a wee child to be in such a place,’ she’d said.

‘Yeah, it was a hard life for him I think,’ Steve told her. ‘The apprentice was always the whipping boy, the one who got the toe of someone’s boot in his behind if he slackened at all, or spilt precious metal. Yet he has a love of England and brass, for he says it’s given him a home. There was always enough food for us, bags of coal and warm clothes and boots for the winter and blankets for the bed. My mother has never had to pawn.’

Lizzie had never heard the word pawn, so Steve had explained it to her, but she’d understood the rest: how a young boy was given the gift of life, and a good life, though a hard one. But now she saw he was revelling in this story that he must have told often, almost enjoying it, when life for many was hard then. So when he said, ‘Ireland took everything from me: parents, brothers and sisters,’ Lizzie said,

‘I thought it was tuberculosis did that?’

And then she nearly jumped out of her skin as Rodney’s hand slammed the table with such ferocity the crockery rattled. ‘Tuberculosis wouldn’t have taken hold if they’d all had the right food, and a decent cottage rather than the stinking hovel we had, and money for medicines,’ he thundered. ‘Ireland is no friend of mine.’

No one said a word after that, and the silence was strained. Lizzie left as soon as she decently could.

‘Don’t start my father on about Ireland if you don’t want a tirade,’ Steve warned later as they made their way to the tram stop. ‘He’s a mild-mannered man in most things but that, and he can’t bear being contradicted.’

‘Well, we might not meet again, so it will hardly matter.’

‘Of course you will, you silly girl.’

Lizzie decided she couldn’t let Steve go on in blissful ignorance of how she felt, and so she said gently, ‘Don’t read too much in to this, Steve.’

‘In to what?’

‘This visit to meet your parents.’

‘What’re you on about?’

‘I’m not ready for anything serious, not with you or anyone yet.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Steve said. ‘When you agreed to come it meant…well, it means something. Why did you come if you feel like that?’

The tram pulled up then and Steve waited until they were seated before he said, ‘It was him, wasn’t it, that put you off: the old man, and our poker-faced Neil.’

‘No, it wasn’t them.’ Lizzie tried to explain without hurting Steve’s feelings too much. ‘I admit I was alarmed by the way your father reacted, but that isn’t the reason I’ve said I don’t want anything serious. I…I just don’t want to be tied down.’

‘I ain’t in no hurry for marriage,’ Steve said. ‘But you can still be my girl, can’t you?’

‘No, Steve.’

‘Look, it’s how it is: Tressa and Mike, and me and you.’

‘Tressa and Mike have got nothing to do with us. We’re separate people.’

‘Mike won’t see it that way. We’re marras, mates, like, and if I tell him this he’ll chuck your cousin without a thought.’

‘He wouldn’t.’

‘Yeah, he would.’

Lizzie wondered if Steve was right. She remembered Tressa’s face earlier that day, the adoring looks she kept giving Mike. She had it bad, Lizzie knew that, and she also knew she couldn’t live with herself if she was to be the cause of the break-up.

‘Look,’ Steve said. ‘Do you dislike me; find me physically repulsive?’

Lizzie shook her head, for her initial dislike of Steve had frittered away, and he was a very good-looking man.

‘Do you like me, even a little?’

‘Of course I like you, but as a friend.’

‘That will do, Lizzie. I have enough love for both of us.’ ‘No, Steve. It isn’t like that.’ ‘I know, but sometimes feelings take time to grow,’

Steve urged her. ‘Give it a few more weeks, eh? Give me a chance. For God’s sake don’t pull the bleedin’ rug from under me already. We’ve only known each other a short time.’

‘And then what, after a few weeks?’

‘You’ll be madly in love with me.’

‘And if I’m not?’

‘I don’t accept failure,’ Steve said.

Nor does he accept ‘No’, Lizzie thought. He’s like Tressa. He wants his own way all the time, for he’s used to it.

But she said none of this, for the tram had pulled into the terminus in the city centre and Steve put his arm around Lizzie as they walked along. She didn’t object, because she was thinking over Steve’s words. Would it be any better if she told him in a few weeks’ time? She didn’t know, but at least then he couldn’t say she hadn’t given it a fair crack of the whip.

‘I’ll give them all what for when I go home,’ Steve told Lizzie, convinced, whatever Lizzie had said, that it was his family’s behaviour that had made her say what she had.

‘Steve, there’s no need.’

‘There’s every need,’ Steve snapped. ‘They’ll behave better next time, I promise you. I’ll even have a go at the old woman. She could have been more welcoming.’

‘She loves you, Steve,’ Lizzie said. ‘She doesn’t want anyone, especially any woman, to be more important in your life than she is.’

‘She’ll have to learn then,’ Steve said. ‘Silly cow. She’ll do as she’s bloody well told.’

‘Hush, Steve. Try and understand her point of view,’ Lizzie said, though she had no love for the woman herself.

‘She should bloody well understand mine,’ Steve growled. ‘And she will. I’ll see to it.’

Lizzie had had quite enough of Steve’s family. ‘I’ll have to go in, Steve,’ she said. ‘I’ll be late and then I’ll catch it.’

She was glad to go, for this bad-tempered Steve unnerved her more than a little. She almost felt the anger coursing through him as he drew her into his arms. The kiss was like a stamp of ownership. It was a hard, unyielding kiss, which bruised Lizzie’s lips and pushed them against her teeth, but Lizzie bore it without complaint, for she was too nervous of Steve to protest much.

She was changed and ready to go on duty when Tressa dashed in, red-faced both from the cold and the warmth of Mike’s embrace, and the kisses which had left her breathless. She was prepared to make light of any trepidations Lizzie might have had about Steve and his family problems, though she was pleased that Lizzie had agreed to go out with Steve a little longer. Lizzie felt she was being inexorably drawn into a future she didn’t want and felt filled with apprehension as she and Tressa went down to the kitchen.

The following Saturday morning, the head waiter, who had a soft spot for Lizzie, approached her as she was finishing her breakfast stint. ‘You and your cousin were down to work tonight, but you can have the night off if you like.’

‘I thought we had a big party in?’

‘We did have, but so many have come down with flu they’ve cancelled, and the hotel isn’t exactly bursting at the seams at this time of year. So, do you and Tressa want this or shall I offer it to one of the others, because the manager won’t pay for half of you to be doing nothing?’

Lizzie didn’t need asking twice and neither did Tressa, who insisted on letting the boys know. Lizzie would have preferred for the two of them to do something together, as they used to, but she told herself she had to get used to the fact that Mike was now the most important person in Tressa’s life. She also knew that Tressa was quite capable of throwing a mammoth sulk if Lizzie refused to do what she wanted, and then the value of the Saturday night would be lost to the both of them. And so they travelled up to Edgbaston to tell Steve and Mike.

They met that evening in the Old Joint Stock again, because it was easiest, and when Tressa and Mike sloped off after the one drink, Lizzie and Steve weren’t surprised.

‘So, what do you want to do?’ Steve asked.

There was no hesitation. ‘I’d like to go down to the Bull Ring,’ Lizzie said. ‘I’ve never been at night, but all the other girls have told me how good it is and the entertainment to be had there on a Saturday.’

Steve had no problem with that and Lizzie was filled with excitement as she stood at the top of High Street and saw it all arrayed below them. She was glad too that she had Steve’s arm around her, for the night was a chilly one.

It was all so different from the daytime, though just as full of people. Now it was lit up by spluttering gas flares and looked almost magical. There were still the poor, hoping to get meat or vegetables cheap, but they were hidden by the darkness. The flower sellers had gone from their usual space around Nelson’s statue, along with most of the old lags selling their wares from trays around their necks, and there was no little old lady outside Woolworths urging people to buy a carrier bag. However, others had taken their places, and one was a stall selling cockles and mussels and jellied eels. ‘Are you hungry? D’you want some?’ Steve asked.

‘Ooh no, thank you,’ Lizzie said. She had no liking for cockles or mussels, and as for jellied eels…‘I’ve tried them just the once,’ she said. ‘They’re slimy.’

Steve laughed. ‘That’s the idea,’ he said, and he smacked his lips as if he was going to enjoy a great feast, as he soaked his dish liberally with vinegar. He lifted one to his mouth and sucked it in with a slurp, laughing again at Lizzie’s look of distaste. ‘Lovely,’ he said. ‘Slips down the throat a treat.’

‘You’re welcome to them,’ Lizzie told him, wrinkling her nose. ‘Give me a hot potato any day.’

‘I’ll buy you one if that’s what you want,’ Steve said. ‘Might even get one myself to fill a corner.’

‘Fill a corner!’ Lizzie said scornfully. ‘You’re always filling corners, you.’ She was right, for Steve had a voracious appetite. ‘I think you have worms.’

Steve roared with laughter. ‘Worms! Don’t be so daft, woman. There’s a lot of me to fill. I’m a big strapping chap.’

He was right there, Lizzie thought, as with the eels finished he draped a heavy arm around Lizzie once more. His fingers resting on her shoulder smelt of vinegar and fish and she turned her face away, but she said nothing and they went on through the crowd.

There was a man tied up in chains demanding more money in the hat before he tried to get free. Lizzie thought he looked decidedly uncomfortable. ‘Have you ever seen him get out?’ she whispered to Steve.

‘Never,’ he said, tossing a florin into the hat, ‘though I’ve paid enough to, over the years. Mike says he’s seen it, but I doubt it.’

They got fed up waiting in the end and walked on. ‘I think it’s all a con, anyroad,’ Steve said.

‘How?’

‘Them chains can’t be real, can they? I mean, how could anyone get out of real chains when they are trussed up like he was?’ And then, seeing Lizzie’s crestfallen face, he gave a gentle laugh and tightened his arm around her. ‘Spoilt your illusions, have I?’

Lizzie didn’t answer, for her attention was taken by two stilt-walkers moving effortlessly amongst the crowds and between the stalls and barrows, and standing so immensely high that her mouth dropped open in amazement.

But Steve pushed her on to where the boxing ring was set up. ‘Me and Mike had a go here when we was lads,’ he said. ‘Knocked on our backs, the pair of us,’ he added, laughing at the memory. ‘Wouldn’t be so easy for him to do that to me today.’

‘Like to try your luck, sir?’ the man in the black top hat and red jacket encouraged, seeing Steve’s interest. The assembled crowd turned to see who he was addressing and shuffled their feet in anticipation of a fight. ‘Five pounds if you beat the champ,’ the man said.

Steve looked at the glowering champ sat in the corner of the ring. He was broad and hefty, terrifying to him as a boy, and he remembered the way the big man with fists like hams had felled him with one blow, and how he lay on the ring floor with the breath knocked out of his body and thought every bone and joint had been loosened. But the champ was running to fat now, and Steve, full-grown, well-muscled and strong, reckoned he could give the bruiser a run for his money.

‘Don’t, Steve.’

‘Five pounds is five pounds, pet,’ Steve said. But it wasn’t the money. It was the thought of the fight wiping the supercilious smile off the champ’s face, maybe making Lizzie proud of him. He didn’t know that such an action would not make Lizzie proud; that she hated violence.

‘I could beat that bastard with one hand tied behind my back,’ Steve sneered, and Lizzie pressed against him and felt the excitement pounding through his body.

The champ snarled at him. ‘Words is cheap, mate. Come up here and prove it. I’ll pound you into the ground, you cheeky young pup.’

‘Right,’ Steve cried, and tried to disentangle himself from Lizzie, but she held on to his coat. ‘No, Steve. Please don’t.’

‘Come on, darling, it’s only a bit of fun.’

‘Please, I can’t bear it. For my sake, don’t do this.’

Steve was pleased that Lizzie was showing such obvious concern for him. He hadn’t been aware she felt so strongly about him getting hurt and it gave him a glimmer of hope. No way was he going to risk upsetting her, so he smiled ruefully and said, ‘We’ll have to settle the score some other time, mate. I’ve got my orders for the moment.’

There was understanding laughter amongst the crowd and Lizzie was embarrassed by everyone looking at them. ‘Come on.’

‘I would have been all right, you know,’ Steve said when they were out of earshot.

‘I don’t care.’

‘You didn’t want me face messed up, is that it?’

‘I didn’t want you hurt at all,’ Lizzie said.

‘I didn’t think you cared.’

‘Of course I care.’

Steve pressed her close. ‘You don’t know how good it makes me feel when you say things like that.’

Lizzie’s heart gave a lurch. She didn’t mean it that way at all, but before she was able to explain this Steve had grabbed her arm. ‘Look, there’s the man who lies on the bed of nails,’ he said, and taking her hand he pulled her into the ring of onlookers watching the man, lying seemingly unconcerned.

‘Who’d like to stand on my stomach?’ the man said as they approached, scanning the women in the crowd. ‘You, darling, or you? Come on. Don’t be shy. Promise I won’t look up your skirt.’

Eventually, a girl stepped forward. She would have been about Lizzie’s age, and she was out with a crowd of similar-aged girls who were egging her on. In horrified fascination, Lizzie watched the girl remove her shoes and step gingerly onto the man’s stomach. Lizzie was glad of Steve’s arm around her, glad that she could bury her face in his coat and not see the nails sinking into the man’s flesh to the sympathetic ‘ooh’s’ and ‘ah’s’ of the crowd.

Coins splattered into the bucket, but Steve led Lizzie away. The accordions and fiddles had begun their tunes, and as they passed the hot potato man, Steve bought them one each, served in a poke of paper folded into a triangle to protect hands.

The tunes being played at first reminded Lizzie of Ireland and they lifted her spirits. She had the urge to lift up her skirts and dance the jigs and reels of her youth, but she didn’t, for she guessed Steve wouldn’t like her to make such an exhibition of herself. She contented herself by leaning against Steve and tapping her foot to the music as she ate her potato. Then they changed to the popular songs of the music hall that Lizzie had learnt during her time in Birmingham. They began with, ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon’ and went on to ‘Just a Song at Twilight’, before changing tempo to, ‘I’m Getting Married in the Morning’. By the time they’d got to ‘Daisy, Daisy’ the crowd had begun to sway and they really belted out ‘Roll Out the Barrel’, ‘It’s a Long Way to Tipperary’ and ‘Knees up, Mother Brown’ before the musicians ended the impromptu concert with ‘The Old Bull and Bush’.

Lizzie had had a wonderful time, finishing off her visit to the Bull Ring singing the hymns with the Salvation Army band until they marched back to the Citadel with the tramps and the destitute trailing behind them, confident of a good feed. She acknowledged that Steve had been kind, generous and good fun to be with. He’d also been the perfect gentleman and had not done or said anything even mildly suggestive, and so she relaxed against him as they sauntered back to the pub for a drink before Steve would leave Lizzie at the back door of the hotel.

Steve had also felt the difference in Lizzie, but he put a totally different interpretation on her behaviour, especially when he remembered how she’d reacted at the boxing ring when there was the possibility he could have been hurt.

In the pub, they talked easily of that night and the things they’d seen, and they discussed the budding romance between Mike and Tressa. As they made their way back to the hotel, Lizzie realised she might have had a totally miserable time without Steve, for she’d not have wanted to tag along after Mike and Tressa, even if they had allowed her to, so at the doorway she said, ‘Thanks for tonight, Steve.’

‘S’all right. My pleasure.’

‘Well, I truly appreciated it,’ Lizzie continued. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time.’

It was on the tip of Steve’s tongue to say he could think of a more satisfactory way of finishing the evening, where she could show him just how appreciative she was. But he bit the words back. Nor did he force her lips open when she kissed him goodnight, though he was so filled with desire that he shook slightly, and his groin ached so much he knew he’d have to seek relief before he made for home that night. And yet, despite his frustration, he went home whistling because he really thought Lizzie was warming to him, as he’d prophesised she would in time.

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