style="font-size:15px;"> ‘How can you be?’ Lizzie demanded, shocked. ‘You’ve only just met.’
‘Sometimes a person just knows these things.’
Lizzie was still doubtful, but whether Tressa was in love with Mike or not, Lizzie knew that with their shift rota there would be little chance of her seeing Mike before the New Year. Christmas was almost upon them, one of the busiest periods of all at the hotel, where time off was minimal or altogether non-existent, and any free time they did have was usually spent sleeping the deep sleep of the totally exhausted.
All Tressa could talk about, though, was Mike. ‘I love him,’ she declared. ‘Wait till you love someone, you’ll sing a different tune then. It’ll hit you like a ton of bricks, I bet.’
‘Maybe,’ Lizzie said. ‘We’ll have to wait and see. It hasn’t yet anyway, and remember, when you marry it’s for life, Tressa.’
‘I know that,’ Tressa replied, ‘but if I wait a lifetime I’ll want no one else. How d’you feel about Steve?’
‘He’s all right.’
‘Come on, why don’t you give the man a chance?’
‘I have. I am. I just don’t feel that way about him.’
‘He’s smitten with you.’
‘How d’you know?’
‘You just do, the way he looks at you. His eyes never leave you. You must have noticed.’
Had she, and refused to acknowledge it? She didn’t know, but it was obvious Tressa was right because when they next went out with Mike and Steve in January, Steve asked her to tea the following Sunday to meet his parents, as she was free until seven o’clock that evening.
‘Why don’t you want to go?’ Tressa asked later. ‘I’m going to see Mike’s.’
‘I know, but you and Mike…well, it’s different.’
‘Lizzie, all you have to do is smile and be polite. What’s so hard?’
‘It’s not that. It’s the complexion Steve will put on it. It means something, surely, when you meet the parents?’ Lizzie bit on her thumbnail in consternation. ‘I mean, maybe it would be better to end it now, stop him getting ideas.’
No way did Tressa want Lizzie doing that, but she didn’t say this. Instead, she said, ‘How will you tell him? Do you know where he lives?’
‘No, well, only vaguely.’
‘So, you’re going to wait until he comes, when everyone’s gone to the trouble, made tea and all sorts, and you’ll let him go back alone to face their ridicule and scorn?’
Lizzie hadn’t thought of that. ‘You think it’s better to go through with it then?’
‘I think it’s the only thing to do now. You should have told him straight at the time.’
‘I meant to. He sort of took me aback a bit.’
‘Well, I think you’ve got to see it through now,’ Tressa told her, and Lizzie knew in her heart of hearts that Tressa was right.
Edgbaston was Lizzie’s first experience of back-to-back housing. Steve and Mike had come to meet the girls and as they alighted from the tram on Bristol Street, which was another first for them both, they all went up Bristol Passage, and at the top both girls stood and stared. Lizzie was in shock, and so, she saw, was Tressa. Nothing in their lives so far had prepared them for anything like these cramped and crowded houses, squashed together in front of grey pavements and grey cobbled roads. And so many of them: they went on and on, street after street of them. Even when Lizzie had seen the beggars and poor in the market, she’d not thought of them living in places like this. She’d not think of anyone living in places like this. Her father’s calves were better housed.
The two men didn’t seem to notice the girls’ disquiet. ‘We’ve come to the parting of the ways now,’ Mike said. ‘You go straight up Grant Street, so we’ll see you later.’
When they moved off, Steve put his arm around Lizzie. ‘All right?’
Whatever she felt privately, Lizzie told herself this place was Steve’s home, and she hadn’t any right to criticise it. How would she feel if she took him to Ireland and he tore her family’s farm apart? And so she said, ‘Aye, I’m grand.’
‘It’s bound to be a bit strange at first.’
‘Aye.’
‘And it’s natural to be nervous.’
‘Aye.’
‘Can you say anything other than “Aye”?’ Steve said with a grin, and Lizzie smiled back and answered in the same vein: ‘Aye.’
Steve’s parents’ house was number thirty-five, halfway up the hill, and it opened onto the street. ‘We’ll go in the entry door,’ Steve said, and led the way down a long, dark tunnel between two houses, where there was a door on either side. He turned the handle and went in, but not before Lizzie had had a glimpse of the cobbled yard the entry led to with washing lines criss-crossing the place and three toddlers playing in the dirt and grime.
Steve, following her gaze, said, ‘Normally this place is teeming with children. The bad weather today is keeping most of them inside.’
‘Aye,’ Lizzie said again, and ignored Steve’s sardonic grin as she wondered where in God’s name the teeming children played. But she had no time to frame this question, for Steve had gone inside and Lizzie had no option but to follow.
To the left of the entry door was a scullery of sorts, with a sink with lidded buckets beneath it and shelves to one side. There was no tap, and Lizzie wondered at that. Yawning cellar steps were directly in front of her and there was a door to the side which was ajar, and which was where the family were assembled to meet Lizzie.
Lizzie saw there was just one small-paned window letting light in, and that was covered with curtains of lace and heavier curtains of blue brocade hanging on either side. ‘So you’re here then,’ said a thin, sour woman Lizzie assumed to be Steve’s mother.
‘As you see, Ma, as you see.’
Now she had time to study the woman, Lizzie saw she had many of the same features as Steve and thought it odd that though they turned Steve into a handsome and presentable man, they turned his mother grimfaced and surly looking, unless it was life itself that had given her that discontented air.
Steve’s father was introduced as Rodney and was just a little taller than his wife, and Steve’s brother Neil was the same. Both had sandy hair and pale brown eyes, their noses had little shape and they had slack lips and an indeterminate chin, while Steve’s was chiselled and firm. Lizzie wondered if Neil resented his brother at all, for he was obviously at the back of the queue when good looks were given out. Beside his tall, brawny brother, he looked like a wee boy, and when he shook her hand his was clammy and limp and his father’s little better. It was like shaking hands with a warm, wet fish.
But she was to soon learn much of Neil’s rancour was caused
