Winnie of the Waterfront Read online

  ‘We only had two rooms in Carswell Court. We moved there after my dad was called up into the army because Mam couldn’t pay the rent where we were living in Elias Street.’

  ‘Well, it would be a start. I could try both places. Where did he work before he went into the army?’

  ‘He was a timekeeper down on the docks.’

  ‘So they may know what has happened to him. If he has returned home then he’d go there to get his old job back, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘He’d come and get me if he was back,’ Winnie said stubbornly

  ‘He mightn’t know where to look for you.’

  ‘He’d ask Father Patrick at St Francis’s. He knows I’m here.’

  ‘Let’s make sure we don’t lose touch with each other,’ Bob told her. ‘I like you a lot, Winnie. I’d like to help you when you get out of here.’

  She smiled, feeling a glow of happiness at his words. ‘It will be ages yet, you’ll have forgotten all about me by then.’

  ‘No I won’t! In fact, I’ll tell you what I’ll do. As soon as I am able to change my job for a better one then I’ll find somewhere for us both to live when you come out. How’s that?’

  ‘You’d do that for me?’ The warm glow returned and this time it felt as if her whole body was blushing as well as her face.

  He held out his hand. ‘It’s a promise. How long is it before you leave here?’

  ‘Ages yet! I’m not fourteen until May 1922!’ She felt the pressure of his broad, firm hand as he grasped hold of hers and solemnly shook it.

  ‘Good. We’re agreed about that, then,’ he said enthusiastically, his brown eyes shining. ‘I’ll write to let you know when I find somewhere for us to live. I’ll keep in touch by sending you a letter at Christmas, and on your birthday as well if you tell me the date of it.’

  ‘May third.’

  ‘And next May you’ll be twelve?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘You’ll have to stay in a hostel that they send you to for six months,’ Bob frowned, ‘so that means I’ve got until November 1922 to find us somewhere to live. It sounds an awful long time away, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Long enough for you to have forgotten all about me,’ Winnie sighed. ‘By then you will have left Liverpool and be sailing round the world, or have gone off to Australia to make your fortune.’ She tried to smile as she said it, but her voice was husky and there were tears prickling her eyes.

  Holy Cross Orphanage no longer felt like home to Winnie after Bob Flowers left. She was restless, longing for the day when she too would be able to leave there. She was looking forward so much to having a life that was not confined within the ugly, forbidding building where everything was timed by the clock and revolved around lessons and prayers.

  Gladys was older than Winnie and she would be leaving within a few months. Maisie was already dreaming about her own future and making plans to find her family, if they were still in Liverpool. Babs was the youngest of them all and she wouldn’t be leaving until after Winnie did, but she seemed content that things were like that.

  ‘I’d like to stay on here for ever,’ she told them dreamily.

  ‘You mean become a nun?’

  ‘I don’t think they’d let me do that.’

  ‘Why ever not? You never do anything wrong; you were confirmed when you were eight and you’ve probably never committed a sin since then.’

  ‘I might live a pure life but my dad was a murderer. He knifed a man in a pub brawl and the man died. That’s why I was taken away from home and put in here.’

  ‘You’ve never breathed a word about this all the time I’ve known you!’ Winnie said in amazement.

  ‘I try to forget about it. In fact, I have, more or less. Me mam went off with some fella right after the fight and no one knew where they’d gone.’

  ‘And what happened to your dad?’

  ‘Slung him in the Waldorf Astoria, didn’t they.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Walton Jail! Haven’t you ever heard it called that before?’

  Winnie shook her head. ‘Is he still in there?’

  ‘Should be. They gave him life. They’d have hung him if they could, but some of the evidence didn’t tie up or something.’

  ‘Couldn’t that mean he was innocent?’

  ‘I doubt it! He was too quick with his fists. Even when I could hardly walk he’d knock me over if I got in his way. Me mam was black and blue most of the time, that’s why she cleared off with another fella.’

  ‘Why didn’t she take you with her?’

  ‘Don’t suppose he wanted to be saddled with another man’s kid. I don’t blame him, especially when he knew the kid’s father was a murderer.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  FOR THE FIRST couple of weeks after Bob Flowers left the orphanage, Winnie waited expectantly for a letter from him. She knew he had moved into a hostel and that he was working in a factory, but apart from the fact that she was sure he must still be in Liverpool she had no real idea where he was.

  When he had promised to keep in touch she thought he’d meant that he would write to her and let her know where he was living and working, and how he was adjusting to life outside the orphanage.

  At least she’d had some experience about what it was like out in the real world, but for him it would be very strange. Apart from the few years when he’d been fostered, Bob had been in the orphanage since he was a baby. He had no experience of shops or handling money, or of traffic or any of the things most people were used to in their everyday lives and simply took in their stride. Perhaps he was so overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all that he hadn’t managed to find the time to write a letter.

  She thought of the way they had talked and planned about what they would do in the future. Bob had said he was going to find some place where they could both be together. She was sure he had meant every word of it, but perhaps he felt there was no point in contacting her until he had managed to do so. Maybe he thought that there was no immediate hurry to do anything about it, since he knew she would be in the orphanage until 1922.

  She would hear from him at Christmas, she told herself. It was only a few weeks away so she resolved to be patient.

  She found her own life changed considerably after Bob left. Because Gladys and Maisie were both older than her they were spending a great deal of time with Sister Tabitha, being prepared for when they would be leaving the orphanage.

  As a result, Winnie sometimes found herself feeling lonely, but this was soon banished by the extra duties she had to undertake. One of her responsibilities was to make sure the younger girls obeyed the strict dormitory rules. She also had to see that they were all properly dressed, that they attended church on time, and that they were never absent from lessons.

  Remembering how frightened she’d been when she had first arrived at the orphanage she tried to be lenient yet firm. She realised that the girls could easily dodge away from her or avoid her altogether because she was confined to her wheelchair. Most of them, however, were obedient and anxious to be helpful.

  After Gladys left at Christmas and Maisie the following Easter, Winnie’s only close friend was Babs. Both Gladys and Maisie promised to keep in touch, and even though Bob had made the same promise and she hadn’t heard a word from him since he’d left, she still hoped she would hear from them.

  As the weeks passed and not a single card or letter arrived, she felt disappointed and let down. They had been good friends for so long that she thought of them as being her family. She’d believed they felt the same way and that they would want to let her know how they were getting on.

  Once she asked Sister Tabitha if she had any news of Bob, Gladys or Maisie, but her enquiry met with a very brusque answer so she finally gave up hoping to hear from any of them ever again.

  Preparations for her own discharge from the orphanage started shortly afterwards. There were serious lectures about not neglecting her devotions, and how important it was to go to confession ev
ery week and take Holy Communion first thing on Sunday mornings, as well as to go to sung Mass later in the morning.

  ‘You will have far more sins to confess when you get out into the world than you have had a chance to commit while you have been here, my child,’ Sister Tabitha warned. ‘Sin will be all around you! Beware of the Devil and all the temptations of the flesh.’ She sighed deeply. ‘In your case, my child, there will not be so many of those of course. Instead of rebelling against the restrictions of your affliction give thanks to God that it will save you from the temptation of the flesh,’ she added piously.

  Sister Tabitha meant well, Winnie kept telling herself, but her words stung. It brought home to her in the cruellest way how other people viewed her disability.

  Was that why Bob Flowers had never kept in touch? she wondered. Once he was out in the outside world, working in a factory and meeting girls who were physically fit, who could walk alongside him, run upstairs, even go dancing, then why should he stay friends with a cripple who needed a wheelchair to get around in?

  He was strong, good-looking and as fit as a fiddle so it was understandable that he would want girlfriends who were the same. However, he’d still been kind to her, and she’d never forget how he’d championed her and defended her when she’d first arrived at the orphanage. Yes, Winnie told herself, she owed Bob Flowers a lot so it would certainly be uncharitable to resent the fact that the moment he was free to do so he’d gone his own way.

  Finding the right job for Winnie seemed to present Sister Tabitha with something of a challenge.

  ‘God help us, child, you’re not fit for heavy work! You can’t do a job that involves walking or even stacking goods on a shelf. I don’t suppose you’d be able to cope with working on an assembly line either,’ she said in despair.

  ‘I can work sitting down,’ Winnie reminded her.

  ‘Oh I know that, child, but it’s difficult finding a job where all you will be doing is nothing more than sitting in a chair.’

  ‘I could do clerical work.’

  Sister Tabitha shook her head and crossed herself. ‘Finding a firm who would consider letting a girl straight from an orphanage work in their office is like looking for a needle in a haystack,’ she pointed out sharply.

  Winnie’s eyes widened. ‘Why ever should that be?’

  ‘They’d be worried about your background. They’d want to know why you were in an orphanage in the first place.’

  ‘You could tell them the truth. That my dad was killed in the war and my mam died just afterwards.’

  ‘And that you come from the Scotland Road area and that none of your own family would take you in!’ Sister Tabitha added tartly.

  Winnie looked puzzled. ‘What has that got to do with it? I’ll have been here for nearly five years.’

  Sister Tabitha shook her head again but didn’t try to explain.

  It took considerable negotiating, but finally Sister Tabitha managed to find Winnie a job as a packer at a clothes factory. The wages were very low, and after paying out for her hostel accommodation Winnie learned she would have only three shillings left.

  To Winnie it sounded like a fortune until Sister Tabitha pointed out that she would have to pay for her midday meal out of it, as well as all the other things she would need.

  ‘Remember you have to put sixpence of it away for collection for when you go to Mass each Sunday,’ Sister Tabitha warned her.

  Winnie nodded assent, but mentally she was wondering how she was going to afford to put that much in the collection plate when she needed money to buy food, soap, clothes, and a hundred and one other things.

  ‘It also means that no matter what the weather is like you’ll have to save enough money for tram fares.’

  Winnie shrugged. ‘Even if I was able to afford to go on a tram, I don’t suppose they would let me on because of my wheelchair.’

  ‘Mother of God! Hasn’t anyone told you, child, that you won’t be able to take your wheelchair with you? That belongs to the orphanage and must stay here, so a tram is the only way you’ll be able to get anywhere. It’ll be that or walk! …’ Sister Tabitha exclaimed. ‘It’s a cruel world!’ she added, crossing herself as she saw the look of dismay on Winnie’s face.

  For the first time since she’d arrived at the orphanage, Winnie realised how well looked after she had been all these years. She might have hated all the rules and discipline but she’d had a bed to sleep in at night. The food might have been sparse and monotonous, but she’d never had to wonder where her next meal was coming from and she’d never had to find the money to pay for it either.

  In fact, she admitted to herself for the first time, the orphanage had been more than a shelter for the last four years. It had not only been a safe haven, but she’d had the use of a wheelchair.

  Learning to walk with sticks suddenly became all the more important, but the nuns seemed to have no idea of how she should go about it.

  Winnie wished that Bob Flowers was still in the orphanage, knowing that he would have helped her and encouraged her.

  Sister Hortense gave her two walking sticks and told her she’d better spend as much time as she could practising with them.

  ‘If I’d had my way you would have been given these the moment you arrived here and taught how to use them! Well, you’d better get on with it. Not long now before you leave here and then you’ll have to use them, won’t you!’

  Although her arms were quite strong, Winnie found she didn’t feel safe putting all her weight onto two thin sticks. She didn’t know how to walk with them either and there was no one to show her. She found she was afraid to take both of them off the ground at once because she wasn’t sure if she could support her weight on her feet while she moved the sticks forward. In the first week she had so many falls that she was bruised all over.

  ‘Mind you don’t go breaking your arm falling all over the place like that,’ Babs warned. ‘I don’t suppose it would matter too much if you broke one of your legs, they’re not much good to you anyway.’

  Winnie resented what Babs said, but once again she realised that that was how people saw her and it did nothing to boost her confidence.

  After a lot more practice she finally devised a shamble that involved only moving one stick at a time. Sister Tabitha saw how unsteady and ungainly her movements were and suggested that what she needed were crutches, not sticks. An improvised pair were found for her and she had to start devising a way to walk all over again. This time the pain under her arms as the top of the crutch pressed in was so uncomfortable that she could only move a few yards at a time and then had to have a rest.

  Finally, Winnie went back to the sticks and contrived a twisting, swinging method of movement that, although it was ungainly, suited her physically.

  Winnie had long outgrown the clothes she had arrived in so the orphanage had to provide her with some. Sister Tabitha handed her a black-and-white-print cotton blouse and a plain black skirt.

  ‘The skirt is terribly long on me,’ Winnie told her when she tried it on.

  ‘That is so that it hides those terrible legs of yours. People who have to live and work alongside you won’t want to be looking at them, now, will they?’

  Sister Tabitha also gave her a plain white blouse, and told her she could keep the underclothes, stockings, and the clumsy black lace-up shoes that she had worn while she’d been at the orphanage.

  ‘You’ll need something to pack them all in so you can use this,’ she told her, handing her a canvas bag. ‘You’ll need these as well,’ she added, producing a white towel and a small cut-down square of towelling to serve as a face flannel.

  Neither of them were new. The huckaback towel had been used by one of the Sisters and it was so thin in places that it was almost threadbare. The face flannel had been laundered so many times that it was bone hard.

  ‘Cleanliness is next to godliness, never forget that,’ Sister Tabitha said ponderously as she handed her a piece of Bibby’s carbolic soap. ‘You wi
ll need to watch your pennies when you leave here,’ she added, wagging her forefinger ominously. ‘You’ll have to buy all these sorts of things for yourself; there won’t be anyone handing them out to you.’

  On Winnie’s final day she was told that she could keep the wooden-backed hairbrush and steel comb that had been issued to her when she’d first arrived.

  ‘This will be the last Sunday you attend Mass here in our special chapel, but you may take your rosary with you, child,’ Sister Tabitha smiled. ‘I am sure you will remember all our teachings and generosity to you for as long as you live,’ she murmured fervently. ‘This beautiful icon is to be a special memento of your stay here.’ She showed Winnie a large, dark wood crucifix embossed with the figure of Christ in shiny gold metal. ‘It has been specially blessed for you by the Archbishop himself so you must treasure it,’ she said reverently, crossing herself and kissing the icon. ‘I’m sure it will be a great solace to you in the days to come. It will also be a constant reminder that you are fortunate that your own affliction is nothing compared to what Our Dear Lord had to suffer.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  EVEN THOUGH IT was a Sunday, Sister Tabitha accompanied Winnie to the hostel. Her black habit rustling with every step, her face implacable and almost hidden by her starched white wimple and black veil, she strutted along the pavement pushing Winnie’s wheelchair in ungainly jerks.

  ‘We don’t do this for everyone, you know,’ she pointed out. ‘Usually you have to find your own way. I’m only taking you in the wheelchair because I can’t bear to walk along the road with you.’

  The administrator at the hostel, Miss Henshaw, was a thin bony woman in her late twenties, with a pince-nez that she wore halfway down her sharp pointed nose. She seemed far from happy when she saw the wheelchair.

  ‘I know you told me she was disabled, but I thought she would be able to walk! Most cripples can, you know!’ she said briskly. She regarded Winnie speculatively over the top of her pince-nez as if she was some strange creature.