Of course it hadn’t been that easy. Lizzie’s own parents had to be convinced and give their permission for their daughter to go. ‘It’s all Tressa’s doing,’ Catherine remarked to Eileen. ‘If that Tressa went to the North Pole and gave our Lizzie the nod, she’d go along with her.’
‘Aye, Mammy, I know,’ Eileen said with a sigh, annoyed that her compliant sister was even contemplating leaving. ‘Still, maybe when all’s said and done, she’ll not stay long.’
‘That’s true right enough,’ Seamus had put in. ‘God knows she hasn’t a clue what city life is like and might not take to it at all. Let her get it out of her system anyhow and then she can never claim we were holding her back.’
Lizzie also thought she might not like the life, and that is what she said to console Johnnie, who was so dreadfully upset that she was moving out of his life. Looking at him, Lizzie had thought, was like looking at herself as a small child, for both of them had the dark brown wavy hair and the same deep brown eyes, snub nose and wide mouth. Only that day Johnnie’s eyes had swum with the tears that had also trickled down his cheeks. ‘Sure, I’ll be back before you know it,’ Lizzie had said, holding her young brother tight.
Of all his sisters and brothers, Johnnie loved Lizzie most. As she was seven years older than him, when he was younger he had looked upon her as another mother, and, in truth, Lizzie had done a lot of the rearing of him. With her temperament she seldom became angry and had far more patience than Eileen. In the long winter evenings it would be Lizzie who’d play cards or dominoes, or read to him to while away the time, and she was always ready to help him with his homework. And in the finer weather they’d walk together over the rolling countryside, or down to the sea to watch the huge rollers crash onto the sand leaving a fringe of foam behind them. Johnnie knew his life would be poorer without his sister, so he clung to the idea that she’d be soon back. ‘D’you promise?’ he’d said.
‘I can’t promise that, Johnnie,’ Lizzie had replied. ‘I don’t know myself how I’ll fare. We’ll just have to wait and see.’ She knew that Tressa had no intention of returning home, but for herself, she wasn’t sure how she would cope with any of it.
That morning, in late January 1930, as they’d stood at the rail of the mail boat, watching the shores of Ireland being swallowed up by the mist, Tressa had given a sigh of satisfaction and said to Lizzie, ‘I’d say we’ll be sure to catch ourselves rich and handsome men in England?’
Lizzie wrinkled her nose. ‘Let’s have a bit of fun and live a bit first.’
‘And Birmingham’s the place to do that all right,’ Tressa said. ‘So, are you glad you came at least?’
Before answering, Lizzie looked down at the churning sea the boat was ploughing its way through, which was as grey as the leaden sky, and she felt excitement beginning to stir in her. She smiled at her cousin and said, ‘If I’m honest I’m often glad when you bully me into doing something I’d not given a mind to before. I’m no good at adventures and maybe I never will be. Perhaps I’ll always be the kind of person that will have to have my arm twisted to do anything at all. So in all honesty I can say aye, Tressa, I’m glad I agreed to come and I’m so excited I can hardly wait.’
Birmingham lived up to the girls’ expectations, although Lizzie had been initially alarmed by the traffic, cars, buses, lorries and trams cramming the roads, and the throngs of chatting and often raucous people filling the pavements. She’d thought she’d never sleep for the noise and bustle around her. She shared an attic room with Tressa and two other girls called Pat Matthews and Betty Green, and on the first night sleep eluded her, despite her tiredness, and she kept jerking awake when she did doze off.
It was a full week before Lizzie slept all night, so wearied by the twelve-hour shift she’d just finished, nothing could disturb her. From that night it became easier and she began to enjoy city life, and there was great entertainment for two girls with money in their pockets, especially living where they did. They were almost in the centre of the city, where the cinemas, theatres, music halls and dance halls abounded, and at first Clara had taken them in hand to show them around.
She suggested both girls took dancing lessons soon after they arrived, for she said Irish dancing was nothing like the dancing done here. However, Lizzie and Tressa caught on quickly, for they found the years of dancing jigs and reels had given them agility and the ability to listen to and move with the music and to follow instructions.
Lizzie loved to dance and she was so looking forward to the social. Whatever Tressa said, you weren’t promising a man your hand in marriage for doing the rounds in a quick step or a waltz and she was determined to enjoy herself. The first thing to do was to find something suitable to wear.
The Bull Ring was the place where bargains were to be had, but in a way Lizzie hated going there. She knew of the slump and the men without work and she’d even seen some of the hunger marches go down Colmore Row. But there was no evidence of deprivation in the hotel, in the food served and facilities offered, for the people who came were, in the main, well-to-do and successful, so Lizzie and Tressa were inured from the poverty.
They weren’t aware of the teeming back-to-back houses not far from the city centre where families lived in a constant state of hunger, cold and deprivation, pawning all belonging to them to prevent them all starving to death. It was only in the Bull Ring that these things were brought home to them. Lizzie was sorry for the shambling women she saw there, who were sometimes barefoot, which had shocked both girls at first. They often had a squalling baby tied to them with a shawl and a clutch of filthy, ragged, barefoot children with pinched-in faces, and arms and legs like sticks. They would dart like monkeys to snatch at anything falling off the barrows before the coster could pick it up. The barrow boys would shout at them and often raise a fist, but they were too hungry to take any notice and it tore at Lizzie’s heart to see them.
Tressa laughed at her softness when one day she gave a group of children her saved pennies to buy a pie each so that they could have a full belly for once. ‘They needed it more than me,’ she said in defence when Tressa chided her. ‘That eldest boy was about the same age as Johnnie. Think of the difference.’
‘And what of the razor blades, shoelaces and hairgrips you buy nearly every time you’re let out alone? We have enough in now to stock a shop.’
‘Ah, Tressa, doesn’t it break your heart to see those poor men with trays about their necks, and many of them blinded or with missing limbs?’ Lizzie said. ‘They fought in the war-to-end-all-wars and now have no job. They’re like debris, thrown out on the scrap heap. I have to buy from them.’
There were always more of the poor about on a Saturday, hoping to snatch a bargain, but that afternoon, two weeks before the dance, the girls were on a mission. Tressa wouldn’t let Lizzie look to left or right and led her straight down the cobbled streets from High Street into the melee and clamour of people and the costers shouting their wares above the noise.
The place had a buzz all of its own and there was always something to see, but that day there was no time to stand and stare. They skirted the flower sellers, around the statue of Nelson, shaking their heads at the proferred bunches and the market hall where the old lags were with their trays. The old lady stood outside Woolworths as she did every day, shouting her wares: ‘Carriers, handy carriers,’ and they passed Mountford’s, where the smell of the meat turning on a spit in the window would make your mouth water.
The rag market was where they were making for, and when they entered it, it still had the familiar whiff of fish lingering, for it sold fish in the week. But now, goods of every description were laid out on carpets or rugs on the floor. Lizzie got a bronze satin dress with lace underskirts: the bodice was decorated with beads and fancy buttons and cut to show the merest hint of cleavage. She even picked up a pair of bronze shoes and a brown fur jacket at the second-hand stall and was well-pleased.
Tressa was equally as happy with her dress of dark red velvet bound in black, for