That Liverpool Girl Read Online Free PDF

outside. This was all getting a bit too much for her. She was to have a meeting with a Keith Greenhalgh, agent and steward for the estate known as Willows. The only men with whom she’d had contact thus far were her father and her employer at the laundry. She thanked goodness that older children were at school as she placed herself in the front passenger seat, smiling tentatively at the driver, who had left his seat in order to open the door for her. When he had settled her two companions in the rear of the vehicle, the man returned and pulled away.
    Cheering children chased them as far as the Rotunda theatre, where they fell away and turned to go home.
    ‘Miss Pickavance?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘I’m Jay, really John Collins. There was a spate of Johns when I was born, so I got reduced to Jay.’
    Hilda couldn’t lay her tongue against one sensible syllable, so Nellie helped her out. ‘My granddaughter’s reduced from Amelia to Mel, and it never done her no harm. She’s at Merchant Taylors’. That’s the best public school, and she won a full scholarship. Very clever girl, our Mel. And beautiful like my Eileen.’
    Eileen dug her mother in the ribs. ‘Stop showing off,’ she mouthed. It was always the same with Mam when she met someone for the first time. She said her own name, then waded in over her head with Mel’s success. Her granddaughter was top of the class in most subjects; she was going to Cambridge if a source of money could be found, and she did lovely calliography. Time after time, Eileen had corrected the word to calligraphy, but Nellie was happier with the extra syllable, as it sounded posher. She had quite a collection of home-made words, and she used them deliberately and without mercy.
    ‘She can sing and all,’ Nellie said now. ‘Voice of an angel.’
    ‘How would you know?’ Eileen asked. ‘For one thing, you’re tone deaf, and for another, you’re biased. Why don’t you brag about the other three, eh? One of them put Sally Wray’s tea-rose-coloured directoire knickers up a flagpole – I don’t know which of them, but I’ll get to the bottom of it.’
    ‘Or the top,’ said Hilda, her back shaking with laughter. ‘Flagpole? Top?’
    ‘Oh, heck,’ groaned Nellie dramatically. ‘You’ve woken a sleeping giant here, Eileen.’ She poked Hilda’s shoulder. ‘Oi, clever clogs. Might be top for flagpole, but it’s bottom for knickers, so hang on to your ha’penny, missus.’
    But Eileen ploughed onward. ‘Our Bertie and the horse – that’ll go down in history down Cazneau Street and Scotland Road. I mean, I know he’s only six, but per-lease. Hiding a carthorse between a small tin bath and a bloody mangle? He has to have come from a different planet. If he hadn’t been born at home, I’d swear they’d given me the wrong baby.’
    The driver pulled into a kerb, dried his eyes, and swivelled as far as possible in his seat. ‘You two should be on the wireless,’ he moaned.
    ‘We haven’t got one,’ came Nellie’s quick reply. ‘We had one, like, but it never worked since our Philip stood on it to reach a shelf. He’s been on the wireless, but he fell off.’
    Jay drummed his fingertips on the steering wheel. ‘And I suppose when he tried tap dancing, he slipped into the sink? The old ones are always the best, right?’
    Nellie pretended to glare at him. ‘This is all we need, a clever bloody Woollyback. You talk slow, but you get there, don’t you, lad?’
    He sighed. ‘Look. Getting there’s what it’s about today. We’ve miles to go, and we’ll not get there at all if I can’t see for laughing.’ He pointed to the new boss of Willows. ‘And this lady has business to discuss, but she’ll get yonder all red-eyed and daft if you don’t stop this malar-key. All right?’
    Nellie and Eileen shrugged. ‘Please yourself,’ said the former. ‘It’s not every day you get free entertainment thrown in, like, but we’ll shut up.’
    They would probably have shut