Liverpool Taffy by Katie Flynn Read Free Book Online Page A

grudges me,’ Biddy had said once, in the early days. ‘I swear she counts up every cabbage leaf that passes my lips to see whether she’d be better paying me a wage instead of giving me my meals.’
    Kenny chuckled. The two of them were sitting on the hard bench in the shop kitchen, ostensibly studying. Kenny worked for a firm of chartered accountants and was going to take exams to better himself and he had told his mother that Biddy was a big help to him since she understood the work and could ask him the sort of questions he would get in his exams.
    Mrs Kettle didn’t grumble, because they only worked after the shop was closed, and with Christmas over there wasn’t the call for the extra slabs of toffee, bags of fudge, candy walking sticks and sugar mice which sold so readily over the holiday season.
    ‘Now’s the lean months,’ Ma Kettle had said as February came in with a cold wind and snow in bursts. ‘We should tighten our belts, eat less, not more. We won’t ’ave to work so ’ard because we don’t sell so much. Think on, young Biddy.’
    Biddy, however, decided that the cold made her hungrier than ever and several times sharp words were exchanged over her ability to look such a skinny little thing but to eat like Jack, Luke and Kenny.
    ‘Stick to your guns; you eat wharrever you need,’ Kenny urged whenever his mother was out of hearing. ‘Remind the old gal that at least you doesn’t nick ’er perishin’ toffee. Even Mais nicked ’er toffee.’
    Spring came, but despite the milder weather and longer days it was difficult to rejoice over much, since the shop kitchen was mostly too hot anyway and of course with the approach of Easter the Kettleestablishment started on Easter treats – chocolate eggs, marzipan fruit and flowers – which meant that Biddy was busy from morning till night, and often too tired to sleep soundly either, what with the stuffiness of the small room and Ma Kettle’s reverberating snores.
    ‘I’ll have to get out of it by the time summer comes,’ Biddy told herself desperately, as she fell into her truckle bed each night. ‘I remember last summer – swatting flies, chasing bees, sweating till I was hollow and dried out – I don’t know as I can stand that again.’
    The trouble was that Ma Kettle was determined to have her money’s worth out of Biddy. I’m sure she jots down all food costs, my share of the fire – not that I ever see it – wear and tear of chairs, tables, knives and forks, and then thinks she ought to work me harder, Biddy thought desperately, as she mixed icing sugar, almond flavouring and egg yolk in a huge bowl. Other people get Sundays off, I know they do, but Sundays is housework day and all I seem to do is scrub floors, make beds, wash the linen, peg it on the line, run out and get it in if rain threatens, put it out again, fetch it back and iron it, fold huge sheets and then carry them up to make the beds up again, starch Luke’s shirts, mend his frayed collars … the list went on and on.
    ‘Tell the old gal you’re ’titled to a day off, same as the rest of the world,’ Kenny advised. ‘You could come wi’ me on the ferry over to Birkenhead, and then by bus out into the country. Go on, tell Ma you need a bit of a rest. She goes off to see Aunt Olliphant, we fellers go off to see a bit o’ life, why shouldn’t you?’
    ‘I will,’ Biddy decided. ‘She can only sack me, after all.’
    And in a way it worked.
    ‘A day off? Lor, chuck, what next, I asks meself? I treat you like me own daughter an’ you want a day off?’
    ‘If you had a daughter, Ma, and made her work seven days a week, the priest would be after you,’ Biddy pointed out. ‘You aren’t too keen on me goin’ along to mass either, are you?’
    ‘May you be forgiven,’ Ma said piously, going through the shirts that Biddy has just ironed to make sure there wasn’t a crease on any of them. ‘As if I’d let a member of the Kettle ’ousehold miss mass! It’s