Queen of the Mersey by Maureen Lee Page A

‘She’s got six spare bedrooms, she could have been landed with twice or three times as many. And if you’d seen the state of some of the children, in rags and bringing not a stitch of clothing with them, poor little beggars, you can also tell her she’s lucky to get such nice, respectable girls. As you can see, they’re all wearing hats,’ she added as if this was the ultimate sign of respectability. ‘Now, I hope you’ve got some food ready, Gwen.
    I bet they’re starving after that long journey.’
    ‘There’s a lamb stew on the stove and I’ve made a fruit cake,’ Gwen Hughes muttered.
    ‘Gwen’s fruit cakes are famous throughout this part of Wales, so you’re in for a treat,’ Mrs Davies told them as proudly as if she’d made the cakes herself. ‘Two more things, a priest is coming to the Councillor Jones hall at eleven o’clock on Sunday to say Mass, though poor Councillor Jones would turn in his grave if he knew, him being strict Presbyterian like, but there isn’t a Catholic church in Caerdovey. And school starts at nine on Monday in the same place.’
    ‘Thank you,’ Queenie said politely. Mrs Davies must have assumed they were all Catholics because they’d come on the St Joan of Arc bus. She didn’t bother to disabuse her, and Hester and Mary seemed to have been struck dumb.
    ‘You’d better come indoors,’ Gwen said in a surly voice when Mrs Davies had gone, remarking that she’d never known it quite so hot as it was today.
    Mary found her voice and whispered that she wanted to go to the lavatory, so Gwen took them through a dreary kitchen with a tiled floor and roughly plastered walls, and up a narrow wooden staircase. She pointed out the lavatory, then showed them where they were to sleep, in a long narrow room at the back of the house with only two beds, a wardrobe and a chest of drawers.
    ‘I’ll fetch another bed down from the attic,’ Gwen said wearily. ‘It’ll only be a trestle, but it’ll have to do. Would you like the stew now, or would you sooner wait till later and just have cake and a cup of tea?’
    They decided they’d sooner wait for the stew, so Gwen went to put the kettle on, Mary to the lavatory, and Queenie took off her hat – Laura’s straw boater that she’d worn for school, now trimmed with pink ribbon rather than the chiffon scarf, which had been thought to look too dressy. The ribbon matched her pink and white flowered frock, which had also been Laura’s. She looked down in awe at the white canvas sandals on her tiny feet – Vera had given her a bottle of white powdery liquid to clean them with. The transformation of her wardrobe, from one faded, too small dress and a pair of tatty pumps, to such a grand, modish outfit, was another of the remarkable things she was having difficulty getting used to. Mrs Davies had spoken to her as if she was a normal human being, as if she was no longer the Queenie Tate whom everyone had looked down on at school, an expression of disgust on their sneering faces.
    Mary invited them to come and see the lavatory. ‘There’s a bath in there as well and it’s not tin like our bath at home.’
    The bath was white enamel with claw feet and had a tap at the end. Hester recalled they’d once lived in a house that had a bath just the same. ‘But Mummy said the water was hardly ever hot enough.’ Her bottom lip trembled. ‘I think I want my mummy, Queenie. I don’t like this house.’
    ‘I think it’s all right, so there!’ Mary made a face and told Hester she was a cry baby but, that night, after they’d eaten the cake and, later, the stew and more cake, played catch in the garden with the ball they’d brought with them, after Gwen had suggested they go to bed, even though it was only half past six, and Queenie had obediently agreed because perhaps it was the sort of thing people did in Wales, it was Mary who collapsed into a paroxysm of tears. She wanted her mam, her dad, her brothers, her dolls, her own bed. She wanted to go home, she sobbed. She hated Wales, and in