Read Liverpool Taffy for Free Online

huge in a white petticoat, man’s socks and a long grey shawl.
    ‘Come on, child,’ Ma Kettle said, not unkindly. ‘Jack’s off back to sea this mornin’ so you must be down early to mash the tea. Then you can start off the brekfuss … the boys ’ave bacon, a couple of eggs each, a pile of bread wi’ margarine on … but us wimmin, we’ll mek do wi’ bread ’n’ scrape an’ a nice pot of tea, shall us?’
    Biddy was tired after a restless night and confused to find herself in Ma Kettle’s frowsty little bedroom, but one thought came clear to the front of her mind as she climbed stiffly out of bed and reached for her clothes. Don’t let her push you around, the thought said. Stand up for yourself!
    ‘Bacon and egg,’ she said therefore, with all the firmness she could muster. ‘I work best after bacon and egg.’
    ‘Ah,’ Ma Kettle said, after a pause so long that Biddy began to wonder whether the older woman had gone back to sleep. ‘Oh ah. Bacon an’ egg, eh?’
    ‘Bacon an’ egg at breakfast,’ Biddy said hastily. It was years since she’d tasted bacon and egg, but she did see that if Ma Kettle chose to take her literally she might well find the rest of the family eating roast chicken whilst she dined – lightly – on a tiny piece of bacon and a pullet’s egg. ‘Girls need something more for dinner, of course.’
    ‘Of course,’ Ma Kettle said. She sighed. ‘Better get amove on; Jack’s fond of an early cuppa. And he’ll want his brekfuss betimes, too. Better shift yourself, chuck.’
    Biddy, throwing her clothes on, said meekly that she would do her best to hurry. She realised that, having got her own way, she must be careful not to provoke Ma Kettle by being cocky. So she did not wash and Ma Kettle did not suggest that she should, she just hurried downstairs and began to hunt out the ingredients for the boys’ breakfast.
    At least she isn’t going to try to starve me, she told herself as she got the huge frying pan out of the cupboard and put it carefully on top of the stove. As the fat began to hiss and spit she broke the first egg into it and stood the bacon ready. A real breakfast, and as soon as the boys were fed she, too, could eat this wonderful food! It was worth getting up early, worth slaving for Ma Kettle all day in the shop and half the night in the house, if she, Biddy, ate as well as the boys!

Chapter Two
    In January no beach is at its best, but Richart David Evans, Dai to his friends, sitting on the little cliff above the beach at Moelfre, looking down on the grey shingle, the black fanged rocks, the slow inward saunter of the silvery winter waves, was not seeing the scene before him. His mind was closed to the beauty, as it was to the cry of the gulls, and the salty, exciting, indefinable smell of the dark green weed and the wooden fishing boats, pulled up above the tideline.
    His Mam was dead. After weeks of suffering she had died first thing in the morning four months ago, when Da had been out in the long garden at the back of the tall house on Stryd Pen, hoping to find that one of the hens had laid an egg with which he might tempt his heart’s darling, for there was no doubt in Dai’s mind that Davy had loved his Bethan true.
    Davy had been devastated by her death, unmanned by it you could say. For weeks he had been inconsolable and Dai and his sister Sîan had done their best to comfort him, to see that he ate, slept, even mourned, with some degree of self-control. But a month ago Sîan, who had been engaged to be married for over a year but had delayed the wedding first because of her mother’s illness and then her death, had wed her Gareth and moved into his cottage in the nearby village of Benllech. And Da, Dai brooded darkly, had done the unforgivable.
    He had brought another woman into Mam’s home.
    ‘Fond of the girls is your Da,’ Mam had whispered toher son just before she died. ‘Marry again he will, love – marry again he must, for that’s your Da