The Mersey Girls Read Online Free Page A

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Chapter Two
1924
    ‘Hey, watch out, watch out! Gerrout me wa-a-a-ay!’
    Linnet, who had been walking carefully down the snowy pavement on Havelock Street, clutching her messages and thinking wistfully of the hot cup of tea which would await her on her return home, was unwise enough to turn round to see who was shouting, which was how she came to find herself travelling, very fast, along the pavement with a pair of arms clutching her and her bum slithering at incredible speed along the steeply sloping snow-covered flagstones.
    The unexpected trip finished with equal suddenness. One moment she and her assailant and a small tin tea-tray were hurtling down Havelock Street, the next they had burst into Netherfield Road and were trying to untangle themselves from a lamp-post whilst a small boy sat on the pavement howling and clutching his knees and a very fat woman belaboured them indiscriminately with a large umbrella.
    ‘Bleedin’ gipsies!’ the woman shouted, swishing the umbrella in a half-circle and catching Linnet and the would-be tobogganer around their unprotected shoulders. ‘’Ow dare youse ruffians come into a decent neighbourhood like this, a-playin’ your wicked games! As if it ain’t bad enough living ‘alfway up Havelock Street, which is a rare danger in this sorta weather, without bein’ knocked off our feet by kids on bleedin’ tea-trays!’
    ‘Sorry, missus,’ the boy said, trying to get away from the flailing umbrella. ‘We din’t do it on purpose, it were an accident, we’re hurt, too, me and the little gal, we din’t mean to . . . ouch!’
    Linnet struggled to her feet as the woman gave her companion one last, valedictory thump with the umbrella and began to cluck over her small son, leading him up the steep street which she and her companion had just left. Bleakly, Linnet surveyed her string bag and its mangled contents. She had come all this way because Mammy had told her to fetch the new frock Miss Spelman, the dressmaker, had just completed for her, and now look at it! The brown paper was torn and beneath it, the tissue which Miss Spelman had carefully wrapped around it was torn, too, and wet. And she had visited Mammy’s favourite confectionery shop first because the owner had promised to obtain for them some rather special crystallised fruit – Mammy loved crystallised fruit – and now the pretty white package tied with pink ribbon was looking decidedly the worse for wear.
    ‘Oh me darling, whatever has happened to my parcels?’ Mammy would say, examining the dirty wrapping paper. ‘Did you fall over now in all this miserable snow and slush? I scarcely know how to bear the weather we’ve been having lately, I’m truly tempted to take my friend up on his invitation and go to Paris in the spring, just to get away from Liverpool snow and fogs.’
    Mammy never shouted when it wasn’t your fault, that was one good thing. And they were really flush at the moment because Mammy had a good part in the pantomime and her latest admirer, Mr Jackie Osborne, liked to buy special treats and to take Mammy out to dinner after the show. So perhaps it wasn’t terribly serious that the messages had got a little snow and slush on them – by the time she got home the wrapping paper would, in all probability, have dried out and be as good as ever.
    So there was no point in standing here wondering what Mammy would say. The fat woman and her son were labouring up Havelock Street now, the woman heaving herself along by clutching at the house-walls whilst the child’s howls had turned to hiccups, but the boy with the tea-tray stood there still, rubbing a scarlet ear and scowling after his attacker.
    ‘Well, as if I meant to do it!’ he muttered crossly, turning to Linnet. ‘As for you, you wasn’t even on the bloody tray, was you? I should think your knickers is probably ripped to shreds though, comin’ down Havey at that speed.’
    Linnet frowned at him. It was