Liverpool Taffy by Katie Flynn Page B

don’t know what came over me,’ she told Ellen later that day, when the two of them were settled down over a bread and cheese supper, with the windows open to let in the breeze from the river and a glass of stout beside each plate. ‘It’s the worm turning, I guess. And do you know where she’d gone?’
    ‘Can’t imagine,’ Ellen said, sipping stout. ‘How d’you find out, anyroad?’
    ‘Well, I was going off down the road, feeling a bit scared in case she turned up and got really nasty, when someone called me. It was Maisie, the one who used to work in the flat.’
    ‘I didn’t know you knew her,’ Ellen said. ‘Or that she knew you, for that matter. What did she want?’
    ‘She wanted to know if I was slingin’ me ’ook, as she put it. She grinned like a Cheshire cat when I said I was, and then she told me Ma Kettle had been invited to her sister Olliphant’s for tea … but listen to this, Ellen, she’d been invited last week but hadn’t said a word tome, in case I thought I ought to go too! As if I would, as if I cared a fig for her old sister, who’s probably just as horrible as her. But wasn’t that mean? To go out just leaving me that message, when she could have told me before I went to Mass that she’d be out when I got back.’
    ‘Not that you went to Mass,’ Ellen said, spearing a pickled onion and popping it into her mouth. She crunched and then swallowed before she spoke. ‘Still, I know what you mean; she’s norra nice woman, that one. But it gave you all the excuse you wanted to scarper, didn’t it?’
    ‘Yes, it did. And all the reason I needed not to tell her where I was goin’ or anything. And if Kenny gets in first, which he probably will, he’ll read the note and understand that things had just got beyond bearing.’ Biddy leaned back in her chair and gave a sigh of pure contentment. ‘Oh Ellen, just to be able to go to bed early, for once! Just to know I shan’t be heaved out to wait on those boys … it’s heaven, honest to God.’
    ‘Yes, I wouldn’t mind if I didn’t ’ave go to in to the shop tomorrer,’ Ellen admitted. ‘Still, it’s awright when I’m there, specially if I gets a customer early. The customers like me,’ she added, ‘It’s Miss Elsegood and Miss Nixon what don’t.’
    ‘They’re just jealous because you’re young and pretty, and probably they’d like Mr Bowker to spend money on them instead of you,’ Biddy said generously, for the more she thought about it the less she liked the thought of an old man pulling her about. But Ellen, though she smiled, shook her head.
    ‘Nah, it’s not that because they don’t know about me an’ Mr B. Well, I don’t think they does, anyroad. But they know a waitress shouldn’t ’ave ’ad a good job in Gowns first go off, they know there’s something fishy goin’ on.’ She hesitated. ‘What you goin’ to do tomorrer, Bid?’
    ‘Dunno. Take a look around, maybe. It seems a long time since I went into a nice shop and browsed a bit. Why?’
    ‘We-ell, your money won’t last for ever, and …’
    ‘Oh, I’ll look for a job first go off,’ Biddy said, conscience stricken. ‘Sorry, for a moment I quite forgot I needed to earn. What pays best, would you say? Waitressing, shop work, that sort of thing?’
    ‘Factory work’s best,’ Ellen said authoritatively. ‘You wouldn’t get taken on in a shop in them clo’es – why didn’t you keep them nice things you ’ad on, earlier?’
    ‘She bought ’em,’ Biddy said briefly. ‘I know I earned ’em, but I didn’t want her saying I’d left with property belonging to her. She could have put the scuffers on me.’
    ‘What, the way she treated you, chuck? She wou’n’t dare! There’s a law in this country ’ginst slavery, you know!’
    ‘Yes, but it’s provin’ it,’ Biddy pointed out, ever practical. ‘It would be her word against mine, because I didn’t go shouting it from the rooftops, exactly. Still, I’ll look for a job