Liverpool Daisy by Helen Forrester Read Free Book Online Page B

into the street.
    She teetered nervously on the pavement outside the hospital and wished heartily that Nellie was with her to share the perils of the city. Every so often her new teeth would shift slightly and she would hastily breathe deeply to assuage the desire to vomit.
    She watched the trams go by. They were packed with people going home and were not stopping except to let passengers down. She would have to walk down to Lime Street, she decided.
    She trailed down Pembroke Place until she reached London Road. No one among the scurrying passers-by bothered her, and by the time she had reached the junction of the two thoroughfares she had gained a little confidence. She paused inMonument Place. The brightly lit stores in London Road beckoned her; and when a small group of women shoppers started across the road she went with them, mesmerised by the lights and the cheery bustle of the crowd.
    She wandered through two big stores, fingering sheets, caressing shiny furniture and looking open-mouthed at ladies’ lingerie of such delicacy as to be shocking. She was pleased to see that they also stocked more sturdy garments, good fleecy cotton bloomers and woollen vests with high necks. She was so highly entertained that she forgot to be afraid; and even the discomfort of her mouth receded.
    At closing time she left reluctantly with the other wanderers in the store, and continued her walk towards Lime Street.
    “And it was there I went wrong,” she told Moggie afterwards. “I shoulda come home. Only I felt comfortable, like, ’cos there was plenty of women like me in shawls, good Irish women, so I took me time.”
    She was waiting for the traffic to clear so that she could cross a side street, when a delicious aroma of fish and chips was wafted round her. She looked along the mean side street. The pungent smell was being blown towards her from across Islington, where people bearing large newspaper-wrapped packages were emerging from a fish and chip shop. One boy was actually running towards her, his hot parcel balanced carefully on one hand.
    She lifted her nose and half closed her eyes. Her mouth was watering; her stomach felt as if it was flapping against her backbone, it was so empty. She forgot about going home and remembered only that she still had money in her apron pocket. She turned and almost ran the short distance to the shop.
    The tiny window offered pie and chips, fish and chips, fishcakes and chips, tea and bread and butter, all laid out on thick white plates for passers-by to see. Behind the tiny display were two tables, at one of which a man and woman sat eating. Daisy swallowed and nearly choked on her teeth.
    Could she eat with her new teeth? Could she bear to eat in public? It was, after all, not very nice having people watch you eat; eating was a private thing, like going to the privy.
    I could carry the parcel home, she thought. She sighed with the effort of making up her mind. But then it would all be cold, she argued, as she paused uncertainly before the tempting display.
    The door opened again, as a young woman with a baby wrapped in her shawl came out, bearing an aromatic bundle carefully wrapped in an old copy of the Liverpool Echo . Up the steps went Daisy, as if hypnotised, to join the throng of shabby people waiting for their orders to fry. When it was her turn to give her order she hesitated so long that the young man on the other side of the high, tiled counted said, “Hurry up, Ma. What do you want?”
    She gulped, smiled nervously and said with difficulty because of her new teeth, “One fish and chips and tea and I’ll take it here.” She pointed to the vacant table in the bay window.
    The young man shook up his huge net basket of chips so that the cauldron of fat spat and bubbled. “O.K. Sit down, Ma. Me Mam’ll bring it to you.”
    Daisy turned and cautiously lowered herself into a chair at the greasy table. She chose a place that would show only her back to the other customers, so that