Child of the Mersey. Annie Groves

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       CHAPTER ONE

       August 1939

      ‘Kit, it wasn’t me! Honest to God.’ Eight-year-old Tommy Callaghan looked over to where his older brother Danny was just sloping off towards the back door. ‘It wasn’t my fault. So you needn’t look at me like that.’

      ‘Don’t be so impudent, Tommy. I’ll see to you later.’ Kitty stood near the shelf in the kitchen with a half-empty tea caddy in her hand. She shook it a few times and peered inside. Then, after wiping it on her pinny, she replaced the lid and put it back on the shelf. Turning, she watched in frustration as Danny slipped smartly out of the door, quickly followed down the back yard by their father.

      Tommy, however, was not so fast, which enabled Kitty to grip the collar of his shirt, almost choking him in the process of dragging him back into the kitchen. She never raised a hand to Tommy, as a rule. If she stared at him long enough he always told her the truth. However, now, finding half the housekeeping money gone, she was sorely tempted to knock him into the middle of next week.

      ‘Aar ’ey, Kit, you know I’ve got a sore throat,’ Tommy complained, giving his collar an exaggerated tug. His face was the picture of self-pity.

      ‘Come here, you little horror. You don’t have to sound so hard done by. You are going nowhere.’ Pots hissed and bubbled on the rickety stove and the heat of the kitchen combined with the sizzling late afternoon sun creeping into the house was making it oppressive, but Kitty wasn’t going to let that stop her getting her hands on Tommy. She stooped low so as to be eye-to-eye with him and said very slowly, ‘Now tell me, Tommy, who took the money out of the tin? The truth. I’ll wait, but not for too long.’

      Her brother Jack had given her the housekeeping money only this morning and now half of it was gone. It would be a toss-up between paying the rent and buying food, and as the rent man was now calling on a daily basis because they were three weeks in arrears, she really didn’t have a choice.

      Kitty’s thoughts were racing ahead now. Losing half the housekeeping money meant she would have to go over the road and try to persuade Mrs Kennedy to let her have a bit longer to pay her ‘tick’ bill. Either that or grovel for the lend of a few bob to pay the bill, and then there would be interest to pay on top, and everybody knew that Winnie Kennedy was the last woman on earth you’d want to borrow money off. Her exorbitant repayment rates were not the only reason either. Kitty surmised she took great delight in giving sanctimonious lectures to poor unfortunate women who could not pay – in front of other customers, too.

      Kitty felt so sorry for the recipients of these self-righteous sermons, vowing never to get into that situation if she could help it. However, her own credit bill had accumulated to a frightening amount because of Nancy Feeny’s wedding. Kitty had offered to make the three-tiered cake as a wedding present, and it had seemed a good idea at the time. She hoped it would go some way to showing the Feeny family, Aunty Dolly especially, how grateful she was for all their help over the years.

      Aunty Doll had been good to her and Tommy, who had been a newborn baby when their mother died, practically raising them in those early years while they were still grieving. She would not dream of asking Aunty Doll to pay for the cake now.

      ‘What money?’ Tommy asked as a thatch of dark hair, so like their mother’s, flopped down onto his forehead and into those innocent-looking, adorable blue eyes. Kitty swept the fringe from his face. He could wrap her around his little finger usually, but not today. He was getting away with far too much these days.

      ‘The housekeeping money I keep in the tea caddy! C’mon, spit it out before it chokes you. Who took the money out of the tin?’ He was stalling now and she knew it. Well, she had all night; she would get the truth out of him by hook or by crook.

      After a long pause, during which Kitty was staring down at him as if she could read his mind, Tommy said reluctantly, ‘I didn’t see nothing … exactly.’ He paused. ‘I just saw our Danny – or was it me dad …?’ Tommy stopped talking, rolling his eyes around the room before latching on to two lines of condensation racing down the distempered wall. He suddenly found them very interesting – anything to avoid Kitty’s piercing eyes.

      Kitty took a long deep breath. ‘Were they at the tin?’ she asked with all the patience she could muster. ‘Tell me the truth now, Tommy, or I’ll have to tell Jack, and you know what he said when you were throwing stones at the barrage balloons on the dock?’ Kitty always knew when Tommy was telling the truth. ‘He said he’ll have you evacuated whether there’s a war coming or not.’

      ‘Don’t tell our Jack, Kit! It wasn’t me, honest,’ Tommy said hurriedly. He knew that their older brother would not be best pleased that somebody had been helping himself to the housekeeping that he brought to the house every week. Jack did not see eye to eye with their father and although he didn’t live with them any more, he made sure they didn’t go short of much and helped out any way he could. He liked to be certain Dad and Danny gave Kitty their share of the housekeeping, too. Nobody back-chatted Jack.

      ‘I won’t bring your name into it if you tell me the truth.’

      Kitty remembered the night Jack left. Even now, it made her insides shrink when she recalled her fear. He and Dad were nose to nose. Dad was drunk – as usual – and Kitty could see Jack was using every ounce of self-control to stop himself hitting his father. His huge fists, curled tightly at his side, were shaking with such rage his knuckles gleamed white.

      Jack had left school at fourteen to go out to work at the local ship manufacturers, and had done the best that he could to help Kitty out since their mother had died. But year after year, watching his father sink further into a life of idleness and drink had started to wear him down. By the time that Jack was seventeen, their rows had become a regular occurrence with each one becoming worse than the last. Kitty had become fearful that something terrible would happen between them and her fears turned СКАЧАТЬ