Stepping Stones

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Coming of Age; Marriage & Divorce; Sagas; 20th Century Romance

Synopsis

From 1930s Liverpool to London, then California and finally back to Liverpool, the powerful and compelling saga of one woman's turbulent life. Kitty O'Brien's husband is a drunken thug, and in order to feed her starving children, she sells her body on the Liverpool docks. Her daughter Lizzie is pregnant by her father and, still weak after her abortion, she kills him. Her mother takes the blame, but Lizzie cannot blot out the painful memories of her childhood. Eventually, with a failed marriage behind her, she finds fame, fortune and friendship in Hollywood - but happiness still escapes her. And so she returns to her roots, and it is her final marriage and its disastrous consequences that, at last, force her to face her past and find the happiness and peace of mind that have always eluded her.

Release date: November 10, 2011

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 596

Sample

It was still and deathly quiet one April night in the year 1931 in a place called Bootle in Liverpool. Cramped terraced houses, row after regimented row, were bathed in the clear, unearthly glow of a brilliant moon. Windows gleamed dully, front doors were firmly closed.

Not a soul was to be seen.

The cobbled streets, which shone like ribbons of polished lead between each row of houses, had a virginal, untrodden look. There was an air of emptiness, desertion – no sign at all of the overflowing hordes of human beings who dwelt within these two-up, two-down homes. Parents, children, babies, sometimes all crowded into one small bedroom with perhaps a grandparent sharing a room with the older children and unmarried or widowed aunts and uncles, orphaned cousins, often spilling out into the parlour downstairs to sleep on made-up beds or overstuffed sofas.

None of these people knew of the vivid, almost startling moonlight which bathed their homes and their streets, and even if they had, they would not have cared. They were too preoccupied with sleeping off the exhaustion of the previous day and preparing themselves for the next.

The men, the ones who had jobs, put in ten or more gruelling, back-breaking hours on the docks or in blackened, evil-smelling factories where the noise of pounding machinery near split their eardrums, and sparks attacked their eyes and smoke their lungs. Some of the women worked in the same factories, just as hard, but for even less money than their menfolk.

The women had to be up earlier than the men. At the crack of dawn they’d come down to their cold kitchens and put a match to the rolled-up paper and firewood laid on last night’s raked-out cinders and then carefully put the coal on, piece by piece, until the fire caught and was hot enough to take the kettle for the first cup of tea of the day and a pan of water for washing.

Just beyond the houses ran the River Mersey, and that night it gleamed a dull and blackish-silver over which the silhouettes of great tall cranes loomed, brooding, waiting like carrion-crows to pounce on any unsuspecting person who might emerge from the neat forest of stiff, silent houses.

Low and fat, tall and thin, the funnels of the ships stood sentinel, bellies half-empty or half-full, waiting for the weary men to come and on-load or off-load their cargoes, and now the hulls could be seen gently moving to and fro in rhythm with the lapping tide.

Suddenly, the air of Chaucer Street was rent by a fearful scream.

In Number 2, Kitty O’Brien was about to give birth to her ninth child. Three of these children were dead, their births occurring at a late and dangerous stage of pregnancy – not because her once-healthy body had difficulty in bearing children but because her husband Tom had beaten her so severely he’d brought on a premature delivery. Kitty was twenty-eight years old.

She’d been trying to hold the scream back, thinking of the children asleep upstairs, feared of waking them, of frightening them. Kitty would have laid down her life for her children.

But the scream couldn’t be contained. It burst forth from her throat like water through a broken dam.

‘Oh dear God, the pain! Dear God in heaven, make it stop! Make the pain stop!’ These words were not spoken aloud, just in Kitty’s head. With an effort, she turned her head to see the crucifix hanging over the mantelpiece and the statue of Our Lady which stood underneath.

‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, make the pain stop!’ She screamed again as an agonizing spasm of hurt engulfed her body.

‘That’s right, luv. Let it go. Yell all yer like.’

Theresa Garrett, stout and tall, grey hair in steely waves under a thick net, surveyed the torn mess of Kitty O’Brien’s female organs. Mrs Garrett was not a trained nurse. She’d never been inside a hospital except as a visitor, but she was the acknowledged midwife for the area that included Chaucer Street. As long as there were no complications, she would come and deliver a baby for anyone who asked, at any time of day or night, as competently as any doctor.

She was not fit to deliver Kitty O’Brien and Mrs Garrett was only too well aware of it. Every time the poor woman gave birth, she ripped herself open again and the tears were never repaired. Mrs Garrett couldn’t sew her up. Kitty refused to leave her children to go into hospital and that pig of a husband wouldn’t part with a penny to pay for a doctor to come and see to his wife.

Tom was upstairs now, sleeping off his ale. It had been six-year-old Kevin who’d come to Mrs Garrett’s Southey Street home to say his mother had begun having the pains.

There was no charge for Mrs Garrett’s services, but afterwards, when they were able, people would come round with a small luxury – a home-baked bunloaf, ten good cigarettes or a bag of fruit. She knew Kitty O’Brien would never be able to give something which cost money, but one day she would appear with a crocheted collar, knitted gloves or an embroidered doily made from bits and pieces salvaged from the clothes and bedding given her by the Sisters of the Convent of St Anne. Indeed, in her pocket at that very moment was one of Kitty’s handkerchiefs, neatly hemmed and with a rose embroidered in one corner. The material had probably come from an old worn bolster or pillowcase, the silk for the flower carefully unpicked. That was for bringing Rory into the world five years ago. The midwife valued these little gifts more than most others, in her mind’s eye imagining Kitty in a rare quiet moment, stitching away, screwing up her eyes to see in the dim gaslight.

Her rather grim features softened as she knelt beside the small heaving body. There was no bed in the house free for Kitty to give birth in. She lay on coarse blankets on the floor in front of the dying kitchen fire.

Mrs Garrett’s experienced eye told her it was time for the woman to push. ‘Come along, luv. A good shove now and it’ll all be over.’

A neighbour, Mary Plunkett, hovered in the back kitchen doorway, waiting for something to do. Pots of steaming water stood on the hearth ready for use.

The baby’s head appeared. Dark hair – that was a change. So far, all Kitty’s babies had been blond like their father.

Kitty screamed again. ‘Dear Jesus, help me,’ she whispered.

Upstairs, several childish voices shouted in alarm: ‘Mam? Mam?’ And twelve-month-old Jimmie began to cry.

Glad to be useful, Mary Plunkett went up to quieten them.

‘Nearly done now, luv, just one more shove.’

Mrs Garrett could see the baby’s face. Oh yes, a dark one this. Suddenly, the entire body was expelled, taking the midwife by surprise. ‘Lord, you’re in a hurry,’ she said in alarm. There was a slight pause before she added, ‘It’s a girl, Kitty, a lovely dark lass.’

She shouted upstairs, ‘Mary, tell the boys they’ve got a little sister and then come down and give me a hand.’

Minutes later, Mrs Plunkett put an arm round Kitty’s shoulders, lifting her slightly onto a second pillow, so that the mother could glimpse her first-born daughter.

Through a blur of thankfully-receding pain, Kitty saw the long smooth body of her new baby, the sleek hair. She heard the first cry, a sound she’d always found ominous. It seemed to her a signal of suffering to come, rather than an amen for suffering just ended; a heralding of broken nights, teething pains and colic.

She saw Mrs Garrett cut the cord with her large silver scissors and hand the baby to Mary to wash. But what Kitty was expecting to happen, didn’t. She thought the colour of the baby’s skin would change with the washing. Wasn’t it the blood or the afterbirth that made the satiny skin look so dark? But no, the faint fawnish colour remained.

Kitty’s heart began to beat so loud and so strong it seemed the very floor took up the sound and made the entire house throb. She felt herself go dizzy. A prayer, even more fervent than the unspoken pleas made during the excruciating birth, pounded through her brain: ‘Please God, make me die. Holy Mary, make me die this minute.’

‘Here, what’s the matter with her?’ Alarmed, Mary Plunkett placed the baby in the laundry basket which had served as a cot for all the O’Brien children, and came over to mop Kitty’s brow with a wet cloth. ‘I think she’s got a fever or somethin’. She’s sweatin’ like a pig.’

Mrs Garrett, gently cleaning Kitty with disinfectant, felt her pulse. ‘It’s racing,’ she said worriedly.

‘Should we get the doctor?’

‘No, he’ll expect to be paid.’

‘The ambulance, then?’

‘Give her ten minutes. Perhaps she’d like a cup of tea.’

A cup of tea! Kitty heard the words from far away. A cup of tea would cure everything. A cup of tea would turn the baby’s skin white. Anyway, it seemed she wasn’t going to die. Neither God nor Our Lady were going to answer her prayers. She wondered why neither of the other women were shocked by the baby’s colour. ‘A lovely dark lass,’ Theresa Garrett had said calmly, even admiringly.

Almost as if she’d been reading Kitty’s thoughts, Mary Plunkett, who was pouring tea into three chipped cups, glanced towards the baby and remarked, ‘Isn’t she just the colour of Eileen Donaghue’s Marian? Wasn’t she one o’ yours, Mrs Garrett?’

‘That’s right,’ said the midwife, carefully patting Kitty dry with the torn remnants of an old sheet, brought with her. ‘Marian must be twelve or more by now. And d’you know Molly Doyle of Byron Street? All her little ones are dark like that. It’s the Celtic streak, you know. Like a tribe of little Indians they are.’

‘Well, it’ll make a change,’ mused Mary. ‘A small dark sister for five big blond brothers.’

Kitty relaxed. Her body literally sagged with relief. So it was all right. It was quite normal for an Irish baby to be so dark-skinned …

The old armchair was brought over – Tom’s chair – and Kitty was lifted and tucked up inside it, then Mary handed her a cup of tea. Despite the nagging ache in her gut and her feeling of total exhaustion, the new mother felt warm and comfortable basking in the rarely-afforded attention to her sole comfort.

It was only when a new baby was born that there was a day or two’s respite from never-ending housework. Tomorrow, Mary Plunkett would come in again to help and her other neighbours would see the older boys, Kevin and Rory, got to school and they’d look after Tony and Chris and the baby, Jimmie – though he was no longer the baby now she had this new one, this little dark daughter.

The neighbours would also make Tom’s tea and his butties for work, but they had their own families to care for and in a few days Kitty would have to look after her ever-increasing family by herself. Jimmie had only just been weaned. Now there was another one to feed and it meant three of her children were under the age of two.

She looked across at the new arrival. Such a pretty baby, sleeping peacefully, long sooty lashes resting on unwrinkled olive cheeks. Celtic streak? Oh, no! Kitty knew, though she would never be able to prove it – not that she would ever, in her whole life, want to prove it, it would be her secret forever and ever, amen – but Kitty knew this baby’s father was not the beast upstairs. It was not Tom O’Brien, whom she could hear snoring away in the great soft bed where he used and abused her nightly.

No, this baby’s father was someone else altogether.

Kitty remembered the night, almost exactly nine months ago. It had been a Thursday and there was no money left, not a penny, and nothing due till the next night when Tom came home with his wages. He was out at the pub, enough in his own pocket for a drink or two, whilst at home his children went hungry and the larder was empty, not even a stale crust left.

‘I’m hungry, Mam.’

‘What’s for tea, Mam?’

Little desperate voices. Her children, asking their mam for food, and the baby whingeing away at her empty, sagging breast. No milk, for she’d had nothing herself that day but water. Four little faces looking up at her accusingly. A crying baby, chewing at her. She was their mam and she couldn’t feed them and there was no prospect of feeding them till the next night.

Everything fit to be pawned had long since gone. All the wedding presents. The clock from her family in Ireland, the teaset from Tom’s. She’d never had the money to redeem them. The tatty bedding was worthless, the furniture junk. Nothing left to pawn or sell.

Of course she could call on her neighbours – throw herself on their mercy. And they would rally round. They always did. Someone would go from house to house till they’d collected enough food to see the family through the night. No matter how short they were themselves, they wouldn’t see her starve. She’d given food herself before, raided the contents of her meagre larder when another family was in need. They shared each other’s bad fortune and good fortune, though the latter was rare, but when Joey Mahon won money on the football pools, he’d thrown a street party for the children and they’d had jelly with hundreds and thousands on it and real tinned cream.

But it seemed to Kitty – in fact she knew it was the case – that she had to seek her neighbours’ help more often than anybody else. She didn’t know another woman whose husband kept his family as short of money as Tom did his. Why, she thought with shame, should these other women’s men have to work to keep her children fed? They had enough troubles of their own.

So, late on that hot moist evening, with her children wanting food and no money in the house and nothing left to sell or pawn, Kitty O’Brien, absolutely desperate for cash or food and leaving her young family behind with strict instructions to behave themselves and take good care of the baby, wrapped her black shawl around her shoulders, slammed the back door behind her and walked along the Dock Road to sell herself.

For there wasn’t a thing in the world Kitty O’Brien wouldn’t have done for her children.

A fine clinging sea mist had hung over the Dock Road that night nine months ago, making the sky darken sooner than it should have done. There were fewer people about than usual, though the pubs were crowded and the sounds of breaking glass and drunken voices, laughing and shouting, drifted out from time to time. One of those voices belonged to Tom, Kitty thought bitterly, in there drinking whilst his children and his wife starved.

Foghorns sounded, dull and ghostly, and Kitty hurried even faster along the road to the place where the prostitutes plied their trade. She knew this because once, before she was married, not long over from Ireland and on her way into town on the tram, her best friend Lily had pointed out the street where women hung round waiting for paying customers. From then on, every time they passed it, they giggled, fresh-faced, bright-eyed and virtuously shocked.

Could that really have been only ten years ago? It seemed more like a hundred. She hadn’t been into town since she’d married Tom and doubted if she ever would again.

The overpowering smell of spices mingled with the mist, tickling Kitty’s nose as she came to the street where she had to wait. She didn’t know its name but recognized the large brass sailing ship sign above an office on the corner.

Several women were already there, huddled in doorways, and she was worried they might come and shout at her, a stranger, taking away their custom, but in this fog, and they, like her, hidden by black shawls, they all looked the same.

There were no men to be seen, though. Panicking, Kitty wondered how long she’d have to wait, worried for her family, but then a dark figure loomed out of the dimness, approached a woman, and they disappeared together. Kitty strained to hear what was being said. Did you ask for sixpence or a shilling? It might even be half-a-crown. As long as she got enough to buy something for the children to eat, she didn’t care. On the other hand, it was silly to ask for less than the going rate. Curiously, she felt no shame, no fear. Yet here she was, a good Catholic woman, intending to sell her body for money.

Kitty had no intention of being choosy. The first man who came along – assuming that he would want a poor worn-out housewife – would do. She had to get home as quickly as possible. Kevin, who was only six himself, was looking after a small baby …

But a foreigner! Not exactly dark-skinned but not light-skinned, either, with glowing, intense eyes and hair as black as night and very shiny, so shiny the yellow light was reflected on his thick waves.

By now, two other women had gone off with customers and this man, this foreigner, stood expectantly in front of her. Kitty’s heart sank. At the same time she realized it was foolish to expect a tall blond Irishman, a young Tom, to proposition her. This was the docks – most of the men looking for women would be from abroad.

Was she prepared to do it with this man who was gabbling at her in a strange tongue, making exaggerated gestures with his long slender hands? She wondered if he was asking how much. ‘Five shillings,’ she said faintly, thinking that if it was too much he might go away. He didn’t. Instead, he gestured again and Kitty’s heart sank still further. He was signalling that they should leave. Together!

She followed him to the end of the street and round the corner. This particular area was notorious – full of criminals or so she’d heard. The man paused and Kitty realized he was waiting for her to lead the way, take him somewhere. Oh, God! Did he expect to go to her house? An hysterical laugh almost choked her, as she imagined turning up at Number 2 Chaucer Street with him, taking him upstairs, the children watching …

‘This way,’ she whispered nervously, turning the corner. There was bound to be a back alley behind the row of shops they’d just passed.

He was surprisingly gentle. No one but Tom had ever touched her there before. She still hurt from having Jimmie, but this dark-haired stranger was not vicious or rough like her husband, and after he had come – a soft, shedding release – he pressed her to him briefly, as though they had shared something remarkable together, and a strange feeling swept over Kitty and she found herself trembling.

She looked up at him, seeing him properly for the first time. His eyes were a lovely golden-brown, a colour she’d never seen before. From a window somewhere in front, a light came on and shone on his face. He was younger than she’d first thought, perhaps only twenty. His expression puzzled her until she realized it was pity, total, all-consuming pity – and she remembered with a shock that Tom had punched her in the jaw last night and it was black and blue and swollen, and she thought how repulsive she must look. If only she could speak his language, she’d tell him it didn’t matter about being paid, she probably wasn’t worth anything, but then she remembered the children and their hunger …

‘T’ank you,’ the young man whispered. ‘T’ank you ver’ much.’ He pressed something into her hand and was gone.

Kitty pulled her knickers up, straightened her skirt and shawl and held what she’d been given up to the light.

It was a ten-shilling note!

‘What’s the baby to be called, luv?’

Kitty smiled, transforming her once-pretty, now caved-in face. Her blue eyes, usually so watery as if loaded with unshed tears, brightened, and for a few seconds at least they looked clear and healthy.

A name for the baby? She’d only been thinking of boys’ names. So far, even the dead babies had been boys and all along she’d been expecting another.

‘Elizabeth,’ she said. She’d wanted to be Elizabeth herself when she was a little girl because it could be shortened to many other names.

Mary Plunkett changed it immediately to the only form she knew. Bending over the still-sleeping baby, she placed her finger in the tiny clutching hand. The baby’s brown fingers tightened over hers.

‘Jesus, she’s strong!’ she gasped. She chucked the infant under the chin with her other hand. ‘You’re going to be a fighter when you grow up, aren’t you, Lizzie, me gal?’

‘Well, that’s what you need to be in this life,’ Theresa Garrett said dryly. ‘Isn’t it, Kitty luv?’

Kitty nodded, smiling no longer. A fighter. Yes, she hoped that’s what her Elizabeth, her Lizzie, would become – unlike her mother, who’d become a victim, long ago beaten by life.

Kitty lost the baby she conceived soon after Lizzie was born and the next a few months later.

Theresa Garrett, summoned to help with these painful miscarriages, demanded that Tom O’Brien call in a doctor to examine the poor, worn-out body of his wife, but he refused, so Theresa decided she’d pay the fee herself.

She asked the doctor to come early one evening when she knew that Tom would be home. Unfortunately, it also meant he would be drunk. Tom always called in at the pub on the way home from work for a few quick ones, and would arrive mildly stewed. After tea, he went out again and usually returned violent and half-mad with drink.

He was in his mild state when Theresa arrived with the doctor, who took Kitty upstairs.

The midwife didn’t sit down but stood in the doorway watching the man sprawled in the armchair in front of the kitchen fire. There was no sign of the children. Lizzie, the baby, who was now eight months old, was probably asleep somewhere and the rest of them had made themselves scarce, as they usually did the minute their dad appeared.

Tom O’Brien had lodged opposite Theresa Garrett’s house when he’d first come over from Ireland twelve years before. She remembered his buoyant good looks and charm, the spring and the hope in his step as he walked along the street, eventually appearing with pretty fair-haired, blue-eyed Kitty on his arm. For a moment she felt pity, viewing the coarsened, brutal man slouched in the chair. His blond hair, once the colour of sunshine, was now greasy and lank, and had turned to a dirty grey. His mouth and chin had slackened, fallen back out of control and slobber ran down onto his swollen neck and jowls. The oil-stained working shirt was open to the waist exposing a belly swollen by beer, bulging over the rope holding up his trousers.

But the pity didn’t last for long. Hundreds, thousands of men came over from Ireland expecting to find the streets of England paved with gold. Had not her own dear husband done so, ending up stoking the engines of trains for twelve or fourteen hours a day till he’d died of emphysema at the age of forty-five? But unlike Tom O’Brien, these men didn’t take out their failure, their loss of hope and dreams, on the weak and puny bodies of their wives and children.

The man was a brute and there were no two ways about it.

When Dr Walker, a well-dressed, harassed-looking man who was continually being pressed by his nagging wife to give up this ill-paying practice and move somewhere where the patients could meet their bills, came downstairs after examining Kitty, he said to Tom bluntly, ‘Your wife is worn out by all this childbearing. You must let her be, at least for a while. Give her body a rest.’

‘Let me wife be?’ snarled Tom. Normally impressed by authority, he was too drunk and too angry to care. ‘Why d’ya think I married ’er?’

‘You’ll kill her,’ warned the doctor. ‘And what will happen to the children if she dies?’

Tom didn’t give a damn about the children. If Kitty died, then the Sisters at the Convent could have every last one of them and he would return to County Cork where he would starve in dignity and peace.

‘Fuck the children,’ he yelled. ‘Take yer fuckin’ advice and shove it where the monkey shoved its nuts. And fuck yer too, yer interferin’ auld hag,’ he directed at Theresa Garrett, waiting in the hallway.

When they’d gone he punched Kevin, the first of his children to venture indoors, and then went to the pub, drowning his sorrows by drinking even more than usual. On his return home, he dragged his wife upstairs, taking her so violently that she shrieked in pain and he felt so aggrieved he hit her. Then he feel asleep, half-dressed, his stained, acrid-smelling working trousers twisted round his ankles, so when he got up next morning, he fell over and woke up half the street with his shouting.

During the long night, Kitty tried to turn her head away from the stinking armpit beside her and wondered how on earth she would have the strength to get up in a few hours’ time and cope with the drudgery of the day. Her head ached from where Tom had hit her and the pit of her stomach felt as if it had been pierced with a knife. She longed to move to a more comfortable position but if she did, and if she woke Tom, he might have her again and the thought was unbearable. She’d sooner remain cramped and stiff than risk that. Kitty felt her eyes prickle with tears. It wasn’t often she felt sorry for herself, mainly because it wasn’t often she had the time.

In the single bed jammed in a corner, little Lizzie gave a long shuddering sigh and Kitty held her breath, dreading the child would wake and disturb Jimmie and Chris, asleep at the other end of the bed. She couldn’t imagine being able to raise the energy to get up and see to a crying baby just then, apart from which, it might wake Tom, but Lizzie was a good baby, always had been, and she remained fast asleep.

At the age of five, Lizzie started in the Infants at St Anne’s Convent School, where she was regarded with mixed feelings by the nuns.

Several of the sisters made pets of Mrs O’Brien’s children because they admired their mother’s courage. Although all her brood were painfully thin, they didn’t smell, their clothes were clean and neatly mended, and their hair was free from nits. The sisters had told Kitty about the clinic where she could get her children injected against illnesses like diphtheria, and be given free orange juice and cod-liver oil, and she’d taken them all, so they were bright-eyed and clear-skinned and all in all, far better turned out and healthier-looking than many of the children from far less poverty-stricken homes.

One or two of the nuns looked down on Kitty, feeling that a woman of whom a man had had so much carnal knowledge must be a bad lot. However, in the main the O’Briens were regarded as individuals, with their separate faults and virtues, but when it came to Lizzie, many of the sisters weren’t sure if they approved of what they saw.

For a child so young, she had an almost exotic look; there was a foreignness about her, with her dark creamy skin and bitter-chocolate-coloured hair carefully woven into a great thick plait reaching almost to her waist. And such unusual-coloured eyes – golden-brown with shreds of lighter gold – wise, knowing eyes that belonged to someone years older, not a child of five.

Sister Cecilia had read a book which said a whole tribe of people from India had landed in Wales a long time ago and it was from them this dark alien look had emanated, spreading to Scotland and Ireland too. But there was a different air to Lizzie O’Brien, one that was not apparent with the other dark-haired children. Wrong though it might be to use such a word about a child so young, there was a look of wantonness about her.

One who found this more disturbing than most was Sister Augustus, who, when licking her lips, would find moisture on her faint black moustache when she leaned over Lizzie’s sums – and she seemed to lean over Lizzie’s sums more than anybody else’s – and because she took so much pleasure in stroking the little girl’s smooth satin arm, a pleasure which she instinctively knew was wrong, she was inclined to blame Lizzie for this, rather than herself, and marked the sums wrong even when they were right as a sort of penance. Why Lizzie should have to pay the penance, Sister Augustus found difficult to explain, even to herself.

None of the other teachers were so prejudiced when it came to marking Lizzie’s work, and all agreed she was an exceptionally bright child. All the O’Brien boys were intelligent, but Lizzie outshone her brothers in every subject.

By this time, Lizzie had acquired two younger sisters, Joan and Nellie, the latter almost as dark as Lizzie herself, and another brother, Paddy, who’d been born in between the two girls.

Mrs O’Brien had been forced to make more visits to the Dock Road and carrot-haired Joan, although she would never know it, had a French sailor for a father. Kitty hadn’t realized he was a gingerhead until he took his round hat off to say goodbye, and when the flailing red-skinned, red-haired baby was born nine months later, she was past caring. She’d discovered Tom hadn’t paid the rent for a fortnight and the landlord was threatening eviction.

The rent arrears required several trips, for the ten shillings she’d earned that first time had turned out to be far above the normal going rate. Apart from being less profitable, none of these subsequent encounters were as pleasant – though Kitty hesitated to let herself even think about it in those terms – as her first trip, yet neither were they as unpleasant as what she had to put up with from her husband.

Tom not paying the rent worried her deeply at first, for what he could do once, he could do again. There was no conceivable way she could pay twelve shillings and sixpence a week to Mr Woods, the landlord – her entire housekeeping was less than that. Fortunately, she discovered that Mr Woods waited outsid