Patsy of Paradise Place, page 3
‘And are you telling me that you never went out on a drinking binge with the other fellas on the ship when you put into port?’ Maeve jibed.
‘Out drinking, no! I looked round the different places we docked in and took in the sights, but I didn’t squander my money boozing. You must know that from the amount I was sending home to you.’
Maeve’s mood suddenly seemed to change. Her face softened and her sneering was replaced by soft wheedling tones. Her eyes became limpid green pools as she looked up into her husband’s face ‘What are we quarrelling about, luv? You’re home now so why don’t we make the most of it?’ She reached up, slipped her arms around his neck and gave him a seductive smile. ‘I know of far better things we could be doing,’ she breathed coquettishly, the tip of her tongue teasing the lobe of his ear.
Chapter Three
FOR PATSY CALLAGHAN, Christmas 1922 was a mixture of sheer delight that her dad would be at home for Christmas for the first time since she could remember, wonderment that one of her most cherished dreams had come true, and fear that something would go wrong and spoil everything.
She would have given almost anything not to have had to go to school in the week leading up to the Christmas holidays. She wanted to spend every magical moment she could with her dad.
In the past, huddled in the dark waiting for her mam to come home from the pub, or wherever else she had gone in the evenings, Patsy had tried desperately to remember what sort of man her dad was. She wanted him to be strong yet gentle, kind yet authoritative. She hoped he didn’t have a temper or shout, but above all she wanted him to be understanding, yet firm.
It was so long, more than ten months, since he had been at home that her memory of him was rather confused. She hardly expected the real man to live up to her anticipations, but it was consoling to daydream.
To her astonishment he seemed to match up to her expectations in every way. Except for the shouting. He hadn’t shouted at her yet, but then she had been trying so hard not to do anything that might upset him or make him cross with her.
He had shouted at her mother a number of times and Patsy hated it when he did that, despite the fact that she could understand why it happened. Her mam could be so difficult to live with. In a matter of minutes she could change from being girlish and giggly into being mean and snappy. She could turn the atmosphere from one that was pleasant and relaxed into one that was fraught with tension.
It had happened several times since her dad had been home. Patsy had sensed they’d been rowing before she came into the house. She could hear their raised voices out in the street and then they would stop talking the moment she walked through the door. Her dad would look grim and her mother would be sulky, or pouting, and ignore whatever was said to her.
She’d confided in her best friend, Maureen Murphy who lived only a few doors away, about her mam’s moodiness.
‘One minute she’s all sunshine and kisses and the next minute for no reason at all she’s thumping me! Is your mam like that?’
Maureen’s blue eyes had widened; her plump pallid face had looked perplexed. ‘Not really. Sometimes she boxes my ears if I cheek her, but that’s about it. Mostly it’s a tongue-bashing I gets. I can shut my ears to that so it don’t bother me too much.’
Patsy pulled up the sleeve of her jumper and displayed the bruises at the top of her arms to Maureen, who shuddered at the sight of them.
‘Does your dad hit you, then?’ Patsy asked
Maureen pushed her long dark hair behind her ears and shook her head emphatically. ‘Me mam wouldn’t let him! She’s boss in our house and if me or me sister needs telling off then she’s the one that does it.’
‘So you never get hit, not unless you’re being cheeky?’
‘Our Megan sometimes slaps me one. She’s a right bossy-boots, but then you know that. She tells you off too!’
Patsy shrugged. ‘Words don’t matter, it’s the thumping that hurts. I’ve got bruises everywhere.’
‘What, as well as on your arms?’ Maureen asked.
‘On me back, me chest and me bum. The new ones are blue but later on they turn a greenish yellow. They don’t hurt then and I forget about them. Until the next time.’
Patsy couldn’t imagine her dad ever hitting her. She wasn’t too sure though whether one of these days he might lash out at her mother. Sometimes she seemed to be deliberately winding him up, teasing him, provoking him almost as if she wanted him to thump her.
Patsy wondered what would happen afterwards if he did. Would she walk out for good as she kept threatening to do when things didn’t go her way?
She hoped nothing like that would happen before Christmas. She wanted it to be an absolutely perfect occasion.
Slowly the days to Christmas crept by. She breathed a deep sigh of relief on the day school ended and she knew that from now on she could spend every moment with her dad. He’d promised her he’d help her make paper chains from strips of coloured paper and all sorts of other things to decorate the house. They’d never done that before and she was a bit surprised that he’d agreed, because he liked everything to be neat and tidy. Her mam said she didn’t care what they did as long as she wasn’t expected to join in or clear up after them.
On Christmas Eve he suggested they go into the centre of Liverpool to look at the decorations in the big shops in Church Street, Lord Street, Ranelagh Street and Clayton Square. Maeve said she would sooner stay at home, but at the very last minute decided she would come along as well.
Maeve wanted to visit Bold Street but John Callaghan said what was the point of looking in shops where everything was so highly priced you couldn’t even begin to dream of buying them?
He was far more interested in the shops like Bunney’s with their bright window displays that included toys and gadgets as well as clothes and things for the home. He was as keen as Patsy on looking round the toy departments and shared her enthusiasm for wind-up action toys and the Hornby train sets.
‘What an utter waste of time this is, looking at toys,’ Maeve grumbled. She pulled the fur collar of her dark green coat up around her ears until it was almost touching her green cloche hat. ‘Patsy is too big now for such things. She’s never played with dolls anyway.’
‘Only because I’ve never had one to play with!’
‘Yes you have. For Christmas last year I brought you home a lovely china doll from Spain,’ John reminded her.
‘You didn’t come home last Christmas.’
‘Well, no, but I brought it home in February and it was meant to be your Christmas present. Anyway, it settles the point. You do have a doll.’
As Patsy opened her mouth to explain about the doll Maeve grabbed her arm, her slim fingers with their long hard nails penetrating like talons, making themselves felt even through the thick gabardine sleeve of Patsy’s new raincoat. She turned quickly to face her mother and shivered as she saw the warning in the icy glare Maeve gave her.
She drew her breath in sharply, pulled her arm away from Maeve’s grasp and darted to the nearest brightly decorated window and stared in with feigned interest. But she could see nothing through the mist of tears that filled her eyes.
Her mother didn’t want her dad to know what had happened to his lovely present. She doesn’t want me to tell him that she burned it in front of me as a punishment because she said I had been rude to one of the uncles.
The memory sent a frisson of revulsion through her. He had been fat and smelt of whisky, but the worst thing about him had been his moustache. It had been wet and bushy and it felt like kissing a prickly brown rat. It made her stomach churn even thinking about it.
By the time they caught up with her, Maeve was complaining that her feet were aching and they still had all the shopping for food to do.
‘Why don’t you cut along to T.J. Hughes or C&A and buy yourself something special for Christmas,’ John suggested as he handed his wife a crisp five-pound note.
Maeve hesitated for a brief moment then her gloved fingers curled round the note and she planted a grateful kiss on his cheek.
‘Ta! I’ll do that and then I’ll get the tram home. Me feet are killing me. You and Patsy go to the market and pick up a bird and some veggies for tomorrow. Orright?’
The day took on an even greater magic once Patsy and her dad were on their own. The market was crowded with last-minute shoppers eager to find a bargain for the Christmas dinner. There was music playing and a group singing Christmas carols and even though John and Patsy found themselves being pushed and jostled from stall to stall they enjoyed every minute of it.
By the time they set off for home they were so loaded down with shopping bags and parcels that they could hardly stagger on to the tram.
One parcel intrigued Patsy more than all the others. While they were in the market her dad had bought her a milk shake and himself a coffee and they’d had a mince pie each. He finished his first and had told her not to hurry but to sit where she was at the table as he had forgotten something. He promised he would be back in a few minutes and told her to guard the parcels and not move from the table.
When he returned he was carrying a large parcel, but he didn’t say what it was and although she was curious about it she managed to keep from asking.
To their surprise the house was in darkness when they reached Paradise Place.
‘I wonder where your mam is,’ John frowned. ‘She can’t still be in town. Perhaps she’s gone upstairs to have a nap. She said her feet were hurting and that she was tired out.’
He left the shopping on the kitchen floor, all except the mystery parcel, which he took upstairs with him. Within seconds he was back down again. ‘She’s not there. It must be taking her longer to find something she wanted than I thought.’
Together they unpacked the foodstuff they had bought and put some of it away.
‘Leave the bags of veggies and the turkey where they are,’ he told her, ‘and start laying the table ready for tea.’
The time ticked by. Seven o’clock … half-past … eight o’clock. Patsy began to feel really hungry. It had been a long time since the milk shake and mince pie. ‘Can we have our tea, Dad?’ she asked cautiously.
He frowned. ‘I suppose so. I thought we would wait for your mam, but it is getting late. I can’t think where she might be. I’m worried in case she’s had some sort of accident. She can’t still be shopping or chatting with someone she’s bumped into.’
‘She’s probably met one of the uncles and gone off to the pub with him,’ Patsy muttered.
The moment the words were out, Patsy knew she’d said something she shouldn’t have done. She thought her dad was going to tell her off, he looked so angry.
‘Will you be all right on your own for ten minutes?’ he asked. He put a plate of bread and butter and a pot of jam on the table in front of her. ‘Tuck into that while I’m gone.’
‘Of course I’ll be all right, but where are you going, Dad?’
‘I’ll be back by the time you’ve eaten that lot,’ he told her.
‘Can’t I come with you?’
‘No, you’d better stay here in case your mam gets back and is worried because we’re not here.’
Patsy nodded and began to tuck into the food. She really was hungry and she was afraid he might change his mind and say they must wait until her mam was home.
By the time she had cleared the plate, neither of them had come home. It had been well over half an hour since her dad had gone out. She walked across to the window and peered out into the darkness debating how much longer he was going to be.
She was tempted to slip upstairs to see if she could find where her dad had hidden the mysterious parcel he’d brought home. She was sure it was something special for her for Christmas. If she squeezed it she might be able to guess what it was.
‘And if I get caught then I mightn’t get anything at all,’ she told herself out loud.
She took her plate over to the sink and rinsed the crumbs off it, dried it and put it back on the sideboard. Then she put the jam away in the cupboard. She was wondering whether perhaps she ought to go to bed when she heard a scuffling noise outside and then the door opened and both her mother and father were there.
‘Give me a hand, Patsy,’ her father ordered as he pushed a pile of shopping bags into her arms and then half lifted her mother over the doorstep. ‘You hold her upright while I shut the door and then we’ll get her up to bed, she’s not feeling too well.’
Even as he spoke Maeve heaved and the next moment Patsy found herself covered in evil-smelling vomit.
She felt like bursting into tears. Her lovely green jumper was covered with horrid smelling slime that was bound to stain it, ruin it even.
‘Go and take that off and put it to soak in cold water and I’ll wash it out properly later on,’ John Callaghan ordered grimly. ‘Don’t worry, luv, it will be all right. I’ll see to it as soon as I’ve put your mam to bed,’ he added more gently.
Holding back her tears, Patsy went to do as she was told. She felt so angry inside that her head ached, for it looked as though the special Christmas she had been dreaming about was going to be ruined after all.
All she wanted to do was get into bed, pull the covers up over her head and go to sleep and hope that when she woke up it would all have been a bad dream. Instead, she did as she’d been asked. She took off the smelly jumper, then filled the tin bowl they used to wash up in with water and plunged the jumper into it.
Her stomach heaved as obnoxious yellow slime floated to the top along with particles of food. She tipped the water away and refilled the bowl and then left it for her dad to see to once he’d managed to put her mam to bed.
She knew she ought to go and see if she could help him, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so because she didn’t want to see her mother like that. She’d never seen her so drunk. In the past when she had been out with one of the uncles and had too much to drink she was usually laughing loudly and singing and sometimes even dancing round the room with her arms held out and her head thrown back like some film star would do. This time, though, she had been more like a rag doll, limp and droopy with her head down on her chest and her legs going all over the place as she tried to walk.
Patsy thought about all the bags of food that she and her dad had shopped for in St John’s Market. Some of them were still on the kitchen floor, and tears of frustration stung her eyes. All their plans now seemed to be going wrong.
As she began to unpack them and put them away in the larder she wondered if they would be having a proper Christmas dinner after all. Her dad had splashed out and bought a turkey which he said was even nicer than chicken. She’d never tasted turkey in her life so she was looking forward to it very much.
It was to have been the highlight of their day, but now it looked as if her mother would be too ill to be interested. She wondered if she would even be well enough to get up and go to Mass with them.
Her dad’s plan had been that they would prepare the turkey tonight so that they could pop it into the oven to cook the moment they got up. After breakfast, before they all went to the special sung Mass at eleven o’clock, they would prepare the vegetables. They’d put the Christmas pudding on to heat up as well so that when they came home they’d only have to wait for the vegetables to cook and their dinner would be ready.
She was to be in charge of laying the table, and her dad had bought some paper hats for them to wear while they ate their dinner.
Now there was a shadow over it all. Patsy was afraid that her dad might be so disappointed and cross about the way things were turning out that he’d decide to go back to sea again after all.
Chapter Four
TO PATSY’S AMAZEMENT Christmas Day looked as though it was going to be every bit as wonderful as she’d dreamed.
She woke early and crept out of bed to look out. The sky was grey and leaden and Paradise Place was deserted apart from the Murphys’ black cat, that was picking its way delicately across the cobbles towards home.
There wasn’t a sound in the house so, shivering with the cold, she decided to creep back under the covers for a while. As she turned round to climb into bed her foot caught against something bulky. She bent down to pick it up, and saw that it was a pillowcase with several things inside it, and her excitement made her forget all about the cold.
Pulling back the curtains so that she could see what she was doing she dragged the bundle up on to her bed and began to unpack it, eager to find out what was inside.
The first thing she discovered was the bulky parcel her dad had nipped out from the market to buy. She’d suspected it was a surprise for her and was glad now that she hadn’t sneaked upstairs to try and find out what it was.
She felt it all over, trying to guess what it could be. It was something inside a cardboard box and he had wrapped it up in green paper that had holly and robins printed all over it.
Patsy was torn between desire to know what it was, and curiosity about what else was in the pillowcase. Taking a deep breath she put it to one side and began taking out the smaller items.
She spread them out on the bed beside her. An orange, some walnuts, raisins in a screw of pretty paper, a bar of chocolate, a big rosy apple, two bright new pennies that looked like gold coins they were so shiny, a comic, some coloured pencils, a drawing book and a pair of bright red slippers with white pom-poms on the front.
It was a treasure trove of all the things she liked best and she didn’t know which to use first. She felt almost too excited to open the other present and even toyed with the idea of leaving it until later. Supposing it was something she didn’t like? Then it would spoil everything.
She laughed out loud at the thought. She was being plain silly. How could there be anything she didn’t like!
She looked at each of the many presents again, trying to stem her fascination about the one that remained. Then curiosity got the better of her and she began removing the Christmassy paper.
