The Girl From Barefoot House Read Free Page B

she looked through books with Teddy and taught him the words she knew.
    After the war started, Mam’s visitors were mainly young men in uniform – some gave Josie a penny, or even a threepenny bit, as they were leaving. She put the money in a cocoa tin to save up for a house.
    On the last day of the summer term, the children were allowed home early. They whooped out of the gates, blissfully excited at the thought of no more school for six long weeks. Josie ran all the way home, burst into the house and was halfway up the first flight of stairs when Irish Rose emerged from her ground-floor room. She was a tiny woman – ‘petite’ Mam called her – with lovely ginger hair, and would have been dead pretty if she hadn’t had such a dreadful squint.
    ‘Josie,’ she called urgently. ‘Come in with me a minute, luv. Your mam’s got someone with her. She wasn’t expecting you just yet.’
    ‘Why can’t I wait on the stairs, like always?’ Josie hadn’t realised Mam had visitors while she was at school.
    ‘I think your mam would prefer it if you waited with me. It might take a while. Come on, luv,’ Rose coaxed in her soft, lilting voice. ‘The kettle’s on, and I got half apound of broken biscuits this morning – most of ’em are cream.’
    At the mention of the biscuits, Josie returned downstairs. She loved Rose’s big room, with its fancy net curtains and red silk tasselled lampshade. Rose had spent several days sticking tape to the tall windows in a highly complicated pattern. The linoleum was purple with a pattern of trailing vines, and the red and blue striped wallpaper, with its sprinkling of embossed gold flowers, was a relic of the importer of rare spices – faded, torn in places, but still incredibly grand. During the summer, the marble fireplace was filled, as now, with tissue flowers that Rose had made herself. A patchwork quilt covered the single bed, and the sideboard was packed with statues, holy pictures and photos of Rose’s numerous sisters and brothers and other relatives back in Ireland, who would all ‘drop stone dead’ for some reason if they knew what their Rose was up to on the mainland.
    The kettle was already simmering on the hob, the tea was quickly made and the broken biscuits emptied on to a plate.
    ‘You can dip your bicky in your tea if you want, luv,’ Rose said kindly, before proceeding daintily to dip her own. Rose was always dressed up to the nines from early morning. Today, she wore a lovely maroon crêpe dress with sequins on the bodice. Her cheeks and lips had been painted the same colour as the dress, and her lashes were two rows of stiff flies’ legs. She regarded Josie searchingly with her good eye. ‘And what did you get up to at school today?’
    ‘We did games this avvy, and Catechism this morning,’ Josie said importantly. ‘Did you know the Pope cannot err? What does err mean, Rose?’
    Rose shrugged. ‘Dunno, luv. I’m a downright eejit, me. I can’t even read proper.’
    ‘Honest? Me mam reads books all the time, big thick ones,’ Josie bragged. ‘She gets ’em from the library.’
    ‘Oh, we all know how clever Lady Muck is.’ Rose sniffed and looked annoyed. She went on, a touch of spite in her voice, ‘But she weren’t clever enough to check if her chap was wearing a johnny, were she? I always do. The chaps hate using ’em, and only an eejit would take them at their word. Now look where it’s landed her.’
    ‘Where’s that, Rose?’
    ‘Up shit creek without a paddle, that’s where.’
    Josie was about to ask if shit creek was anywhere near the Pier Head when an agonised scream came from upstairs.
    ‘Mam!’ Josie would have recognised the sound anywhere. In her panic, she dropped a custard cream in the half-drunk tea, and almost fell in her rush towards the door.
    ‘Wait a minute, luv,’ Rose leapt to her feet. ‘Oh, dear God. I should’ve locked the effin’ door,’ she groaned.
    At first, Josie couldn’t make out what was