Reading

'The Girl from Barefoot House' is my favourite novel. I have never written a book before that was constructed following just a few words, in this case: 'Hello, Petal. I'm home.' From then on, it wrote like a dream. Not once was I stuck for words or at a loss where to go next. Even at the very end, I was wondering which of the men my heroine had had relationships with she would end up with, when I had a brilliant idea (or so I think) and it ended completely differently.

Liverpool, 1938

'Hello, Petal. I'm home.'

'Mam!' Josie raised her arms and was lifted out of bed and hugged, so hard, she could scarcely breathe.

'I see you drank your milk and ate your cream crackers like a good girl.'

'Yes, Mam.' She snuggled her head against Mam's neck, into the curved space she thought of as especially hers.

'I've missed you, Petal. Now, I've got a visitor, so you sit on the stairs for a little while. Take Mam's cardy, and don't forget Teddy. I'll be out to get you in the twinkling of an eye, then I'll make us a cup of cocoa and a jam butty like always.'
 
'All right, Mam.' Josie slithered obediently to the floor and Mam gently placed her navy-blue cardigan around her shoulders.
 
'How old is she?' The gruff voice came from the dark corner of the candlelit room by the door. A man stepped forward, very tall, with a bent nose and black curly hair. His face was hard, but his eyes were troubled.
   
'Three.'
 
'Bit young to be left on her own all this time, isn't she? It's not safe.'
 
'What do you mean, it's not safe?' Mam said tartly. She removed the long pearl pin from her brown felt hat. 'There's a fireguard and I leave something to eat. She knows I'll always come back. Anyroad, what's it to you?'
 
'Nowt. Just put her outside so I can get what I've come for before you pass out. You're stewed rotten and I've been waiting all night long for this.'
 
'It's what I was about to do before you shoved your big oar in.' Her voice changed as she turned to her child. 'Go on, luv,' she said softly, shoving her through the door and onto the landing.
 
Josie sat at the top of the stairs and held Teddy up so that he could see the stars peeping down at them through the skylight and the filmy cobwebs floating eerily in the light of the moon. Then she wrapped the sleeves of the cardigan around her neck and tried to tuck her bare feet inside the ribbed hem. It was cold in her nightie on the landing.
   
Their attic was the warmest place in the house according to Mam because heat rose and they got the benefit of everyone's fires as well as their own. The attic was where the maids used to live a long time ago. It had a small iron fireplace and a triangular sink in the corner. There was a tiny window just below where the roof peaked.
 
The stairs in the tall house in Huskisson Street, a mere stone's throw from the Protestant cathedral, had their own special smell, a mixture of all sorts of interesting things; of food, mainly boiled cabbage or fried onions, scent, smoke, dust, a peculiar smell that Mam said was dry rot. The house had once been very grand, having been owned by a man who imported rare spices from the Orient. The rooms used to be full of fine furniture, exquisite rugs, and carpets had covered the floors. Everywhere, apart from the attic, had been wired for electricity which was very up-to-date as not everyone could get light at the flick of a switch. Most people still used gas.
 
Mam spent ages describing how she imagined the place might have looked. 'But now it's gone to rack and ruin,' she sighed. All that remained was the opulent wallpaper in the downstairs rooms. Even the bathroom had lost its grandeur. Tiles had fallen off the walls and the taps provided water at a trickle. The chain in the lavatory was just a piece of string and no one could remember it ever having a seat.
 
There was a party downstairs, lots of voices, music. Someone was playing a mouth organ. Josie never seemed to be awake when the house was quiet. Perhaps it never was. Perhaps there were always people having parties, shouting and screaming, fighting or laughing, crying or singing. Sometimes, the Bobbies came, stamping through the house as if they owned the place. Up and down the stairs, banging on doors, not waiting to be asked in. When this happened, Mam would sit Josie on her knee and be reading a story whenever a Bobby barged in and demanded she come to the station.
 
'How dare you?' she would say in the frosty, dead posh voice, she kept especially for such occasions. 'I'm just sitting here reading me little girl a story. Since when has reading been a crime?'
 
'Sorry, ma'am,' the Bobby would say, touching his big dome of a hat, followed by something like, 'I didn't realise respectable women lived here.'
 
Mam would toss her great mane of brown hair. 'Well, they do, see!'
 
On Sundays, after she and Mam and some of the girls had been to Mass, everyone would be in a great, good humour. They would gather in one of the downstairs rooms for a cup of tea and jangle. There were six other girls besides Mam. Fat Liz, tall Kate, bucktoothed Gladys, black Rita, Irish Rose and smelly Maude. Maude was much older than the others and going bald, but was still called a girl. She smoked a lot and the fingers of her right hand were a funny orange colour. Mam was fondest most of Maude.
 
Josie, in her best dress would be in her element as she was made a desperate fuss of, passed from one knee to another and petted almost to death. The girls often bought her presents; a bar of chocolate, a hairslide, or a little toy. It was Maude who'd given her Teddy for her first birthday.
 
'They're dead envious because I've got you,' Mam would whisper. 'They'd all like a little girl like my Petal, but they'd never admit it.'
 
At nineteen, Mam was the youngest there, but the only one a mother. This made her very proud, as if she had one up on the others. Josie was quite definitely not a burden or a cross to bear, as some of the girls suggested. Okay, she could have earned two or three times as much had she been on her own, but she made enough to keep body and soul together, thanks very much.
 
The Sunday before last, when the subject had come up again, Mam lost her temper when Kate said, 'Let's face it, Mabel, someone in our line of work would be far better off without a kiddy.'
 
'Cobblers!' Mam flashed angrily. 'You're only saying that because you're jealous. Our Josie's more important to me than anything in the world.'
 
'Why should I be jealous when I got rid of two of me own?' Kate countered. 'If you cared about your Josie all that much, you wouldn't be here. This is no place to raise a kid. You had a proper education, not like us lot. You're always on about the chemist's shop where you used to work. If you put your mind to it, you could get a decent job like a shot.'
 
Like much of the conversation that she overheard, this went completely over Josie's head, but she noticed Mam's rosy cheeks turn white.
 
'No, I couldn't,' she whispered. 'Not while I'm stuck on the booze.'