Free Reading by Lightning by Joan Thomas

as they sped towards Liverpool. They clacked through Warrington and my father gazed for the first time at a town made of golden brick. Boris and Joe talked more and more and my granddad less and less. Nan had a gay moment at the station, but after that she did not speak at all and did not look at my father. She kept her shawl over her head and stared at the window. She was wearing her Sunday shoes instead of her clogs, and they were famous for hurting her feet, but my father had never seen her like this and thought she was angry about something.
    At Edge Hill they went into a long dark tunnel and then they pulled in to Lime Street Station, under a high glass and iron ceiling, with clumps of fern growing from cracks in the brick walls. They disembarked and claimed their luggage andstood baffled among the throngs of people. Each of them felt a little squeeze of private disappointment that Isaac Barr was not there to meet them. Eventually they made their way up off the platform and Joe thought to walk out to the street to look and came back to tell them that a big wagon bearing the sign BEAVER LINE stood in the street. They dragged their gear outside. “Is this for Reverend Isaac Barr’s ship, then?” my granddad asked, and the driver said, “It’s the Beaver, ain’t it?” In a few moments they set off through the stained stone buildings of Liverpool, on streets that descend to the sea.
    When they got to the pier head the driver pointed out the SS
Lake Manitoba
moored out in the Mersey, a trim black and white steamship but not large. She had only one stack, unlike the other ships that loomed over the quays.
    â€œWill she carry them all?” asked Granddad doubtfully. Isaac Barr had advertised for five hundred, but a man on the wagon said two thousand were going.
    â€œThey’ve fitted her out special,” the driver said. He let them off at the Beaver Line baggage area, where massive carts were piled with crates and barrels and trunks and trunk-sized wicker baskets. A lad handed them a grease pencil and told them they must write on all their luggage WANTED, NOT WANTED .
    â€œWe wants it all,” Boris said to him, “or we wouldn’t of brung it.”
    â€œIf you don’t want it before Saint John it must go in the hold,” said the lad firmly.
    My dad was handed the grease pencil and printed NOT WANTED on all three trunks and they hoisted them up onto a cart. Boris pointed out six crates labelled PIANOFORTE SET UPRIGHT and two huge crates of oblong shape with no label.
    â€œThem’s coffins,” he said. “Some navvy’s takin’ his coffin to Canada.”
    â€œThem’s bathtubs,” said Joe.
    The long floating pier was crammed with parasols and women’s hats as wide as the horizon. My father’d never been to Blackpool like certain of his friends, he’d never seen the sea, and he was dazed by the brightness of the air and the smell of salt and sewage and horses, the wild squabbling and swoop of gulls and the thunder of freight wagons trundling over the cobblestones. They saw two parrots and numerous cages of canaries and possibly some sparrows. They noted that patent-leather shoes were highly favoured as colonial wear. A brass band stood on the edge of the pier playing “Rule, Britannia!” My father looked eagerly at a girl with a pretty, sharp face sitting on a trunk. She wore her hair down, and he judged her to be somewhat younger than he was. Her mother was heavily pregnant. “They’re never putting the poor dear on a ship in her condition!” cried Nan.
    Excitement rose as the SS
Lake Manitoba
was moved up to the pier. They were soon separated from Boris and Joe. “Ne’r mind, you’ll track them down on the ship,” his father said. “You’ll have nowt else to do for a week.” Nan had bought some ship’s biscuit and helped Willie tuck it into his knapsack under the Bible that she