A Nest of Singing Birds Read online

  ‘Do you think you’ll like it then?’ Sarah said, smiling at her.

  ‘I’m sure I will. Do you think I’ll be kept on?’

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ Sarah said, in exactly the same tone as Anne, and they laughed together. ‘Seriously though, Anne, we really need you, because we’re so busy now and Mabel says we’ll be frantic when we start the Christmas stuff. Mince pies and bunloaves and puddings.’

  ‘People buy bunloaves and Christmas puddings?’ Anne said in amazement.

  ‘I know. My mum couldn’t believe it either,’ Sarah said, smiling. They parted at the corner and Anne hurried home unable to keep a beaming smile from her face. She told her mother how different the routine was in this shop and that Mabel had praised her and Sarah told her that she was really needed.

  Julia was delighted, and later told Pat that she was sure that Anne would be happy in Dyson’s. ‘She’ll appreciate it all the more after what she had to put up with in that other place,’ she said.

  * * *

  Anne was surprised by the number of people who knew about her experience at the first cake shop, and wished her well in her job in the second one. Anything that happened was like a stone thrown in a pond, she thought, with ripples spreading out in all directions.

  Her brothers and sisters had been so indignant that each had talked about Anne’s ordeal in the different places where they worked and to their own circle of friends, and Julia had told Carrie and Bridie who had talked about it.

  ‘That’s the thing about a big family,’ Anne told Sarah. ‘And, honestly, it’s not that important. I’ve almost forgotten about that horrible man and his job.’ But she shivered and Sarah said sympathetically, ‘I don’t think you have, but you will when everyone stops talking about it.’

  Anne liked Sarah more and more, and felt that they thought alike about almost everything. Sarah too belonged to a loving family, with two brothers and a sister, and her grandparents living just across the road from her home.

  When Anne had said at home that Sarah’s name was Sarah Redmond and she lived in Egremont Street, her father had exclaimed, ‘She must be Lawrie Ward’s granddaughter,’ and her mother added, ‘She comes from a good family then, love. She’ll be a nice friend for you to have.’

  Fred had called in and her father said immediately, ‘What do you think, Fred? Anne’s working with Lawrie Ward’s granddaughter.’

  ‘Is she? She’s in good company then if the girl’s anything like her grandfather or her grandmother. Salt of the earth, Lawrie and Sally Ward,’ Fred said.

  ‘Aye, Lawrie Ward’s done more for the poor than all the councillors put together,’ Pat said. ‘Or the rich people who open soup kitchens and such like.’

  ‘Well, he’s a working man himself,’ said Fred. ‘One of the cobblers that works for me – y’know, Wally, the little humpbacked fellow – he told me that when he was down on his luck it was Lawrie Ward helped him. He said he knew Lawrie didn’t have much more in his pocket than he had himself, but he did all sorts to help him. Found him a room and went to see people to get justice for him, was the way Wally put it.’

  ‘I’ve heard that he’ll tackle anyone, the Lord Mayor even, and write to nobs in London to get things done too,’ Pat said. ‘He’ll put his hand in his own pocket and leave himself short to help people as well, and Sally Ward’s always the one people send for when they’ve got sickness or death in the house.’

  Anne listened eagerly, planning to tell Sarah what had been said about her grandparents. At the first opportunity the following day she told Sarah how much her father and uncle admired Sarah’s grandparents and the girl said with a smile, ‘That’s how I got this job really. My grandma helped Mabel when her husband died, and when Mabel heard I was looking for a job she recommended me for this.’

  ‘My Uncle Fred said she’s the salt of the earth and so is your grandfather,’ said Anne. ‘I was surprised at how much my dad knew about him too.’

  ‘I’m surprised too,’ Sarah said, ‘because he does everything very quietly. Grandad says working men should stick together and help each other, but he doesn’t say anything about what he does.’

  ‘Probably people he’s helped talk about him,’ Anne suggested, and Sarah thought this was likely.

  Among the people who queued for pies were several young men from offices and banks nearby. They were still formal with Anne but had known Sarah for some time, and several of them flirted with her, although she was only a few months older than Anne.

  One of them was a bank clerk named Dennis who always managed to spend some time in the shop looking at Sarah and waiting to be served by her. Anne willingly cooperated in this, but within a week or two of Anne’s starting work in the shop, another young man seemed to single Sarah out.

  Michael Rourke was a handsome young man with dark hair growing in a widow’s peak and blue eyes with thick dark lashes, and Sarah confided to Anne that she thought she had fallen in love with him.

  Anne thought it was all wonderfully romantic, and Mabel did all she could to encourage the romance. ‘I think he’s lovely,’ she declared. ‘If you married him, Sarah, and you’d nothing to eat, at least you’d have something to look at.’ The girls laughed. Marriage was still in the remote future.

  Michael seemed very shy, but with a gentle push from Mabel he plucked up courage to ask Sarah to the cinema. Anne and Mabel waited eagerly to hear her account of the night out, but she had little to tell them.

  ‘It was very nice,’ she said. ‘It was lovely being out with him, and his manners were very good.’ It seemed to be all she intended to say but Mabel asked bluntly, ‘Did he kiss you?’

  ‘Er – no. He shook hands with me. I suppose that’s better than being too pushy,’ Sarah said, but Anne thought that she seemed disappointed, and when they were alone later, Sarah admitted that she was right.

  ‘A girl I know said you shouldn’t let a boy kiss you on a first date in case he thinks you’re cheap,’ she said. ‘It says so in Peg’s Paper.’

  She sounded doubtful and Anne said with a grin, ‘But you’d have liked the chance to say no.’ They both laughed and Anne said, ‘He’s bound to ask you out again, and it’ll probably be quite different then.’

  ‘Not too much, I hope,’ Sarah said, laughing.

  Anne had not been to the coal merchant’s office again to try to see Kathleen O’Neill, and sometimes her conscience was troubled by her neglect.

  The shop was closed on Wednesday afternoons and she decided that she would try again to speak to Kathleen on the following Wednesday. She went early to the corner opposite the coal merchant’s and when she saw Kathleen leave the office and be met by her mother and brother, Anne dashed through back entries and emerged in time to be walking up the street where the O’Neills lived just as they turned the corner.

  She planted herself in front of her friend and said loudly, ‘Hello, Kathleen.’

  She smiled nervously and said, ‘Hello, Anne,’ but her mother pulled at her arm and propelled her past. Kathleen glanced back over her shoulder at Anne but her mother hustled her and Cormac to their door and almost pushed them indoors.

  Anne had to walk away, but felt that at least she had made some contact with Kathleen. She told Maureen about the incident, and a few weeks later her sister told Anne that the O’Neills’ neighbour had been in the wool shop again.

  ‘She said a priest and a doctor had been to the O’Neills’. She couldn’t properly hear what they were saying but she thinks they had a job for Cormac. After they’d gone Mrs O’Neill was what Mrs Norton called “yisterical”. She was screaming and saying she wouldn’t let Cormac demean himself to work as a porter. He had royal blood in his veins and was descended from the kings of Ireland. I think Mrs Norton must have had her ear to the wall,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Mrs O’Neill must be mad,’ Anne said in amazement. ‘Poor Kathleen. She must hate her.’

  ‘But she doesn’t,’ Maureen said. ‘Mrs Norton said Kathleen and Cormac were both
crying and saying, “Don’t cry, Mammy. We love you. We’ll never leave you.” I wonder what the doctor and priest had been saying?’

  ‘What can they do, Mo? Someone should help Kathleen. She doesn’t want to live like that, I’m sure, although Cormac seems to like it.’

  ‘Not much anyone can do, love, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Anne.

  ‘Because Kathleen and Cormac are not children,’ Maureen said. ‘Kathleen’s fifteen and the boy nearly eighteen. Then Mrs O’Neill seems normal enough to most people. She does two cleaning jobs and mends umbrellas so she just seems a hard-working woman, a bit overprotective of her children. You notice she did all that screaming after the priest and doctor had been.’

  ‘Kathleen told me how hard she works to keep them,’ Anne said. ‘Her mother does everything in the house too and just waits on them. She won’t let them wash dishes or anything.’

  ‘And when she dies they’ll be helpless,’ Maureen said with a sigh. ‘Poor children – and poor woman. How long has she been a widow, Anne?’

  ‘Years and years. Their father was drowned at sea when they were only babies, I think.’

  ‘I’ll say a prayer for them,’ Maureen said, and Anne hugged her. ‘I’m glad I live here, Mo. In this family, I mean.’

  ‘Yes, we’re very lucky,’ Maureen said gently.

  When Anne went to bed, her mind was full of Maureen’s story about the O’Neills and pictures of Kathleen’s sad face passed constantly through her mind. She thought of all the other families she knew and decided that none were as happy as her own and some were nearly as strange as the O’Neills.

  Before she fell asleep Anne decided that the only thing she could do for Kathleen was to go as often as possible on Wednesdays to see her leave work and to say hello, even if Kathleen was rushed away by her mother afterwards. At least she would know that Anne had not forgotten her.

  * * *

  Anne had settled very happily in to her work in the shop and had become even more friendly with Sarah Redmond.

  ‘You’re a pair well met as far as giggling goes,’ Mabel told them, but she smiled as she spoke. As long as the girls did their work and customers were not kept waiting and treated politely, Mabel was an indulgent superior. In the lulls between customers the three chatted together, and Mabel often gave the girls her views on life.

  As Anne became known the young men in the queue began to flirt with her as they did with Sarah, and Mabel pretended to be shocked.

  ‘If I’d been flirting at your age my mother would have had my life,’ she declared. ‘I don’t know what you young girls are coming to.’

  ‘I’ll bet you did it without your mother knowing, Mabel,’ Sarah teased her. ‘You wouldn’t encourage us otherwise.’

  Michael Rourke still came every day for pies, but he had not asked Sarah out again and Mabel told her she should encourage him. ‘He’s just shy,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t have asked you out the last time if I hadn’t tipped him the wink about that film.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known,’ Sarah exclaimed and Mabel told her she was foolish. ‘Anne would’ve encouraged him, wouldn’t you, Anne? You’d tell him you like George Raft.’

  Anne still felt a little insecure and nervous of losing the job because she liked it so much, but she contradicted Mabel.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t. Not to the extent of telling him about a film and saying I wanted to see it,’ she said. ‘I think if he wants to ask Sarah out he should conquer his shyness to do it.’

  She waited nervously for Mabel’s reaction but Mabel only said, ‘You two are living in a dream world. You’ll learn.’

  A few days later Sarah had gone to the other counter with a woman who had bought pies, then kept changing her mind about the cakes she wanted. Mabel came round to help Anne with the pie queue and seized the opportunity to have a few words with Michael when he reached the counter.

  Anne was horrified to hear her telling him that Rumba was on in Crosby, and Sarah loved George Raft. Michael hung back and when Sarah came back to the pie counter asked if he could take her to see the film.

  Anne was tempted to warn Sarah, but when her friend told her, starry-eyed, that Michael had asked her out, and soon afterwards confided that her mother and father had started courting when her mother was fifteen, Anne was unable to spoil her joy.

  I’ll make sure Mabel doesn’t do it to me, Anne thought. I’m not getting involved with any of these lads.

  The shop was becoming busier every day and there was little time to talk as Christmas drew nearer, but Anne still enjoyed working there, even though on Fridays and Saturdays she and Sarah and Mabel stayed to lunch. They stayed in the storeroom only long enough to eat a pie and drink a cup of tea before returning to help the two in the shop deal with the hordes of customers, but on the first occasion this happened Anne was pleased to find an extra five shillings in her wage packet.

  Mrs Dyson told Mabel to put three boxes of cakes away for the staff, and on Saturday Mr Dyson made a rare appearance in the shop to say gruffly, ‘Ta, girls. You done well to manage that lot.’

  To Anne the praise and the extra money in recognition of their work were all the sweeter because she still compared Dyson’s with her last job.

  ‘Catch Mr James doing that,’ she told Sarah and Mabel. ‘He thought we were kangaroos. All he ever said was “Jump to it”.’

  They laughed and Mabel said, ‘All his slave driving hasn’t done him much good. His shop’s closed, y’know.’

  * * *

  Anne’s mother was alone when she reached home and Anne said in surprise, ‘Where’s everybody, Mum?’

  ‘All at the pictures except Eileen and she’s gone to the Roller Rink. Dad’s at a parish meeting,’ Julia said.

  She spoke wearily and Anne asked if she was tired. ‘I’m all right, love. I’ve been making the mincemeat,’ she said. ‘Your dinner’s in the oven. Are you ready for it?’ She made to rise but Anne stopped her.

  ‘I can get my own dinner out,’ she said. ‘Look, Mum, Mrs Dyson told Mabel to make up a box of cakes for each of us before they all went, and Mabel asked what we liked. I asked for a cream horn for you. I know they’re your favourites.’

  ‘That’s a good girl,’ Julia said. ‘I’ll make a cup of tea when you’ve finished your dinner, and I’ll have it then.’

  She leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes, and Anne looked at her with a worried frown. She thought that she had never seen her mother look so exhausted but then she realised it was only on rare occasions that she and her mother were alone together. Perhaps her mother had looked tired on other occasions but she had failed to notice because other people were there?

  As soon as she finished her meal Anne jumped up and insisted on making a pot of tea. ‘Let me wait on you for a change,’ she said.

  ‘But you’ve been working hard all day, child,’ her mother said. ‘It’s not right.’

  ‘And I suppose you haven’t?’ Anne said. ‘You do too much, Mum. We sell mincemeat in the shop, you know.’

  ‘Oh, God bless us, that’s only for people who are ill or unable,’ her mother exclaimed. ‘I haven’t come to that yet, buying shop mincemeat.’

  Afterwards Anne lay on the sofa, while her mother sat with her feet on the footstool, knitting, and they talked. Anne told her mother about the shop and about Mabel scheming to arrange dates for Sarah, and her mother said dubiously, ‘I hope she’s not doing anything like that for you, Anne?’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ Anne said, laughing. ‘No, don’t worry, Mum. I’ve been warned by seeing her in action for Sarah. She means well, though.’

  ‘No doubt, but I don’t think Sally Ward would thank her to be interfering like that,’ Julia said. She told Anne some anecdotes of Sarah’s grandmother, then went on to talk about the Misses Dolan.

  ‘They miss you, love. Try to slip in to see them, Anne.’

  ‘I’ll go tomorrow,’ she promised. ‘And I’ll go to see B
illy Bolten too. I mean to go and see them, but the time just goes.’

  ‘They know you haven’t as much time now you’re working,’ her mother said. ‘But their lives haven’t changed even if yours has.’

  Anne went to see the Misses Dolan the next day and spent an hour with them, admiring the lavender bags they were making and sniffing rapturously at the aroma of the Turkish cigarettes Miss Louisa smoked.

  She realised that the sisters were looking at her and laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I must look like one of the Bisto Kids,’ she said. ‘I love the smell of those cigarettes.’

  Miss Louisa glanced at the fat oval cigarette which she smoked through a cigarette holder. ‘I had to get a special holder for them,’ she said. ‘But I’ve always enjoyed them. My brother disliked the smell. He smoked gaspers.’

  ‘Tony smokes Gold Flake, and Stephen and Maureen smoke Capstan Medium,’ Anne said.

  ‘Your father doesn’t object to Maureen smoking?’ Miss Dolan asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Anne said. ‘After all, she’s twenty-seven and all her friends smoke. When I start I’ll smoke Turkish, I think.’

  When she left the Dolans Anne went to see Billy Bolten. She found him greatly changed in the short time since she had seen him, and pathetically grateful for her visit.

  Mrs Cullen, in whose house Billy had a room, told Anne that the old man had failed quite suddenly. ‘Mind you, it’s just weakness,’ she said. ‘He’s not in any pain. It’s just like a clock running down.’

  Anne went again to see her old friend a few days later, taking him a quarter of a pound of his favourite humbugs and some of her mother’s fruit cake. She was glad that she did when two days later she heard that he had died in his sleep.

  Billy had never had any visitors or spoken of any family, so Mrs Cullen was astounded when a few days after his death a man and a woman arrived with a horse and cart.