A Mersey Mile (3 page)

‘Manfredi and Tognarelli,’ she told him. ‘They’re all over Lancashire. Best ice cream ever.’ He remained talkative. She needed to put the pies and pasties in the
oven, needed to boil water for vegetables, but Cal was finally managing a conversation. ‘They were nearly as mad as the Irish,’ she said.

He sighed. ‘Polly?’

‘That’s me.’

‘There’s no easy way of saying this, so I’ll just come out with it. I know now when I need the commode, right?’

‘Yes.’ She waited. ‘And?’

‘And I can take some of my weight on my legs, yes? I’m capable,’ he said. After another pause, he continued. ‘I need a clean girl to have my child if you aren’t
going to have a family, because I probably won’t marry. But I’d get somebody in to help with the child so that you’d be free. It’s just that I want to be a dad.’ Did
that pretty young nurse like him? She was probably the same with all patients, yet there was warmth, tenderness, a hand on his shoulder offering comfort and encouragement. . . No. Who wanted the
non-walking wounded? Would he ever walk? Linda Higgins, her name was . . .

Polly sat down suddenly at the table. ‘How the bloody hell do we manage that, Cal? Do I walk about interviewing folk and filling in forms? I mean, if I got somebody from Mother
Bailey’s, she could be diseased. Normal girls want a wedding ring first.’

‘I don’t want a wife; I need a son or a daughter.’

Polly had never heard anything like this in her life, and she said so. ‘But women don’t part with their kids. When they’ve cursed the world through all that pain, they fall in
love with the baby. It’s nature’s way; it’s why we hang on to the mucky, howling little buggers.’

He disagreed. Everybody needed money. Somewhere, there was a woman who would bear a child for cash.

‘Sell her son or daughter? If I had a child, I’d keep it. No matter how much money I was offered, nobody would ever get their hands on my baby. Why do you want one, anyway? To push
your wheelchair when you’re older?’ Immediately, she wished she could bite back her words. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

‘No, it’s all right. It was a good question. The answer’s no.’

‘Then how could you mind a small child?’

He smiled. ‘Like I said, I’ll get somebody in. I’m going to walk again. Nobody will want to marry a lame man, and I’ll never walk without some kind of help. Anyway,
I’ve a late appointment Thursday, so come and see what I can do. There’s a lot of pain in my legs. The new pills are painkillers.’

Polly blinked back a new river of saline. He was pleased by pain. Any sensation in his legs, good or bad, was something to be celebrated. ‘Have you walked, love?’

He nodded. ‘Muscles are weak, but I’ll get there, Pol. No two ways about it, I’ll always be crippled, but not like this. I’ll need crutches – sticks at best, but
something’s healed. We have to go slow, cos we could mess it up all over again, but come and watch me, queen.’

And that was the moment. She ran out of strength, knelt down and hugged him. Tears intermingled until they were both exhausted. God was there, and God was good, because He’d looked down on
Callum Kennedy and allowed a miracle to take place. ‘You won’t need to pay, Cal. Somebody will love you.’

‘But what if—’

‘What if nothing. Don’t be in such a rush. Look at us both; we’re wiped out. You are still a good bloke and a very handsome one. There’s a girl for you.’

They were tired to the bone, yet they carried on regardless, carrots and peas on hobs, pasties and pies in the oven with a huge apple crumble, Cal making custard while Polly wiped tables in the
cafe. Her brother wanted a normal life. Somewhere in this city, there was a girl who could love a man with bad legs. He wanted children, sons and daughters or nieces and nephews; he wanted life
around him. At last, he was confiding in her. She put dishes of pickled beetroot and red cabbage in the centre of each table. Was life threatening to improve? She shouldn’t get her hopes up;
neither should Cal.

Customers found Polly unusually quiet when she opened up at dinner time. Bursting to tell somebody Cal’s better news, she sealed it inside herself, scarcely daring to speak in case her
twin’s secret spilled out. He might walk. He might be able to sit behind a counter and take money for sweets, newspapers, or whatever they chose to sell when they moved on to . . . to
where?

‘Where will they send us?’ she asked of no one in particular.

‘As far away from our city as they can,’ answered Dusty Den, the rag and bone man. ‘Have you got Flick’s carrots there, Pol? He looks forward to his snack.’

‘Eat your dinner,’ was her reply. ‘Let me feed him.’ She went outside to Den’s famous steed. He was a full-size dray horse, because his owner refused to overload a
pony. ‘Ruined, aren’t you?’ Polly asked the animal. ‘Better fed than some round here. Good old days?’ She stroked the blaze of white on his face. ‘Were they
really? Do you remember anything, or are you too young?’

There were two sides to every story, she told herself. She remembered stillbirths, neonatal deaths, the terrified screams of mothers losing their lives in childbirth. Diphtheria raced through
families and from one street to another; even the church closed its doors during one epidemic. Tuberculosis had been common, as had scarlet fever, while the general health of most had been poor.
But this was home. People who lived on or near Scotty had always loved the place.

Parents did what they could, but they were fighting radical decay combined with poverty, and few won that battle. It was partly due to the houses. They were draughty, sometimes infested, often
damp. Yes, better housing was needed, but why couldn’t the powers replace dwellings here a few at a time? ‘Because they want us shifted permanently, Flick. Divide and rule’s the
name of the game.’ Scotland Road had been blamed for the 1919 loot, and had been condemned because of it. ‘Uncle Tom did more damage than he realized with that bloody gas cooker,’
she told the horse.

She stood for a moment and looked at the road she loved, a road that was famous all over the world. The spine of this community would be broken within years, and no physiotherapy, no crutch,
would help it back to its feet. Scotty’s men had fought just years ago alongside the better fed to defeat a monster, and their neighbourhood was now threatened. Yes, give them new houses, but
no, don’t take their history away. Was this a country fit for heroes? Possibly. Unless you were from Scotty Road, in which case you didn’t count.

It was a beautiful place, vibrant, loud, busy. It might have been cleaner, but it had everything people needed, every kind of shop from wet fish to pawnbroker, from vegetables to pianos. She
tried to imagine it broken, empty and unloved, but she failed. This was the centre of so many people’s universe, the very pulse of life. Could there be a Liverpool without Scotty? Could there
be a port without docks, fish without chips, woman without man? She still missed the rotter who had abandoned her . . .

She went in to help Cal dole out generous helpings of apple crumble and custard. All twenty-four seats were occupied, so generosity veered towards the custard on this occasion. ‘I’m
going to make crème caramel,’ Cal announced. ‘Need a bain-marie.’

‘You what?’

‘French for a bath – you stick your cream caramels in the water.’

‘Oo-er. You been reading again, our Cal? You want to watch that, you’ll be having a brainstorm.’

‘What’s up?’ he asked. He knew her so well. ‘Thinking about Greg?’

‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘Pass me this morning’s bacon.’ She put the cold bacon between slices of bread and went out through the back door. Urchins were fewer these
days, because people managed better, but a few still arrived and waited quietly for butties. ‘Share them,’ she said to the tallest child. Then she supervised while the food was doled
out. ‘Look after one another,’ she ordered. ‘Cos that’s what it’s about. We’re Scotties, and that’s what we do.’

There were fewer Scotland Roaders these days. Yet those whose houses had been eradicated often walked or bicycled down from the districts in which they had been planted. They bought what they
could carry, drank in the pubs, ate in Polly’s and visited friends whose homes remained intact. They hated their new lives. City dwellers of long standing, they disliked flats, newly built
terraces and semis, the schools, the shops if there were any; and above all, they missed each other. Gran and Auntie Lil were a mile away, God alone knew where the neighbours had ended up, and
several children kept running away back to the only life they’d ever known.

One old dear had summed it up in the cafe a week ago over a cup of tea and a pudding. ‘We’ve got gardens, but nobody has a lawnmower, so the grass is up to our ear’oles;
we’ve got hallways so floors in rooms stay cleaner. But when dirt walked in round here, it brought friends with it. Give me the bloody muck any day, love.’ They were, Polly thought,
like the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament, wandering hither and yon, slaves to Egypt, to Rome and to the whims and fancies of whoever walked at the front. Except that this Liverpool crowd of
displaced persons had been split up by their own government.

Polly entered the living room. ‘Cal?’

‘What?’

‘Strength in numbers, eh?’

‘If you say so.’

‘Well, they’re knocking some of Everton down. We need to join up with the Proddies.’

‘And get our own people back from Kirkby or wherever,’ he said.

She agreed. ‘Relatives in Ireland and Scotland, if they can afford to come. The priests will let them sleep in church halls. Italian ice-cream folk from all over the country. We fight,
Cal.’

‘That’s right, love. We fight. Like Mam, no rules of engagement. Teeth, hair and skin – till they run over us with demolition machinery. Park me at the front. Whether or not
I’m walking, stick me in the wheelchair and see what they do. Let them squash a bloody cripple.’

‘Do you think they would?’ There was panic in Polly’s voice.

Cal laughed. ‘No, but it would make a great photo for the newspapers, eh?
Man, disabled due to poor safety control on Liverpool’s docks, stops the traffic.
’

‘That would go down well with the Docks and Harbour Board,’ she said. ‘Can you imagine the faces of Liverpool councillors when it got in the
Echo
?’

‘Bugger the
Echo
,’ Cal muttered between gritted teeth. ‘I want
The Times
and the
Manchester Guardian
. Oh, and make sure they snap my good side. I
don’t want to be making a show of myself, do I?’

She sat down. ‘It won’t be like that, though. There won’t be one big day when everybody gets shifted. They’ve been chipping away for twenty-odd years with a bit of help
from Germany: a few houses here, a street there, pull down some affected by a nearby direct hit. We’ll have to do a Jarrow. If London won’t come to us, we’ll go to it.’

‘I can’t walk. I’ll never walk properly.’

‘Then we go on rag and bone carts, on coal lorries, in removal vans, in hearses. We go so slowly that we bung up all the roads.’

Cal pondered. ‘We need a fighting fund,’ he announced after a few seconds. ‘I know Frank will come up trumps, but we need collecting tins in pubs. If we’re going to
London and bringing in foreigners, we want cash.’

There wasn’t a lot of money about even now, in 1955. Ten years after winning a war, Britain fared moderately well while Germany, though divided, seemed to be improving superbly on its
western side. Cal had seen bombing and had survived, as had Polly, Frank and poor Ellen, yet they’d all taken punishment since the ceasefire, what with the deaths of their parents and Ellen,
Cal’s accident, and Polly’s resulting imprisonment.

There were gaps in terraces, used now as playgrounds, but they had been homes. So much loss. A beloved wife gone, a pair of strong legs ruined, neighbours wiped out, and now the fruits of a
Siberian salt mine were about to be poured into wounds. It would be done slowly. When enough cardboard cottages and flats had been erected on the edges of Liverpool, another Scotty terrace would
bite the dust. And folk would be separated for the sake of a new, clean start where they’d be disorientated and less likely to offend. ‘I’ll get the money,’ she said.
‘And we have to be clever. No physical stuff, just London packed with objectors. A peaceful demonstration’s what we want.’

Cal didn’t particularly want peace. Deep down, he was furious about his injured spine, his disobedient legs, Lois who had run away from him, Greg who had rejected Polly, councillors and
parliamentarians who didn’t give a damn about anybody at all.

Then there were the softies who went on about bloody Dresden – what about Bootle? It was all London this, London that and God help Coventry, yet Liverpool’s docks, railways and roads
had carried every bit of ammunition for the whole show, and Bootle had sustained the worst damage nationwide. But who gave a flying fornication? It was only Liverpool; they were only northerners.
‘I want to strangle somebody,’ he said. ‘Very, very slowly, till their eyes bulge.’

‘Why, Cal?’

He shrugged. ‘Everything. Lois, who loved me forever no matter what, the bloody docks and all the accidents, mates just a few years older than me buried in France and Italy – what is
there to be satisfied with? Mary’s perm and a scouse pasty?’

‘Don’t get bitter. What we need is to express our disgust and our distrust. Because it will happen. There’s no stopping what’s to come, Cal. We’ll be in some new,
jerry-built community, but we can show them one thing. We can still assemble, still congregate and let them know what we think of them in their panelled offices and gentlemen’s clubs. We can
sign petitions saying we aren’t satisfied with Westminster, and it’s not just us; we can bring in folk from Glasgow and other disappointed cities. This country’s not fit for rats,
let alone heroes.’

‘You have to be the spokesperson,’ he said.

‘No danger; try stopping me. See, people have got things arse over tip, Cal. The folk in London are our servants, but everyone acts as if it’s the other way round. It’s time
somebody from Lancashire rattled the doors of their Rolls-Royces and filled Downing Street with silent people. Silence will upset them. We communicate in writing only. Let them know through what we
don’t say that we can turn Liverpool into a seething mass of civil disobedience if we choose to.’