The Seven Streets of Liverpool (14 page)

Sheila knew it was no use arguing. She nodded. ‘All right, girl. Do you need some money?’

‘I’ve got money at home, thanks.’ Alice abruptly kissed Edward on the top of his head and left.

In her own house, she upturned the old tea caddy that held the cash she’d been saving for an emergency ever since she and Sean had married. There hadn’t been one as yet, but now there was an emergency bigger than any she had ever imagined. She picked up the two crumpled ten-shilling notes and the assortment of copper and silver coins and counted them; she had thirty-two shillings and fourpence halfpenny.

She put the money in her purse and sat down at the table. All of a sudden, the confidence had gone. Instead, she was panting for breath and felt as sick as a dog. She had no idea how to get to Blackpool. None of Sean’s relatives realised that she had scarcely been outside Bootle in her life. When Mam was alive, they’d sometimes gone on the tram to Scotland Road, where there was a market and they’d bought enough second-hand clothes to see the family through the next few months, but that, and Eileen’s house in Melling, was as far as she had ever been.

She knew Blackpool wasn’t far away, because it was in Lancashire, and Bootle was in Lancashire too. She reckoned if she caught a train from Marsh Lane station then she would be going in the right direction and at some point she’d find out which way to go next. All she had to do was grit her teeth and get on with it. It was what she’d done when she used to take in washing. She’d come home laden with a frightening amount of bedding that had to be washed and ironed quickly, and had worked till midnight day after day until it was done and she could return it to its owner in good time and be paid what she was owed.

Alice had never let anyone down, and she certainly had no intention of letting down her darling Sean, who was lying seriously ill in a hospital somewhere in Blackpool.

It was a relief to discover that an electric train would take her from Marsh Lane to Exchange station in Liverpool, from where she would catch another train, a steam one this time, to Blackpool.

It would have been an adventure if the reason for her journey had been less worrisome, passing row after row of streets on the way in to Liverpool. Alice knew that there were millions of people in the world and that thousands of them lived in Liverpool, but it was strange to see proof of it for the first time.

The journey to Blackpool was just as interesting, stopping as it did at St Helens and Wigan and at a place called Preston, where hundreds of soldiers were waiting for other trains to take them to places unknown.

Alice alighted from the train in Blackpool feeling as if she’d just landed on the moon. It looked so strange, with its tall houses and closed shops and not all that many people about when she’d thought it would be crowded. But perhaps that was only in the summer, when people came on holiday.

The letter said that Sean’s hospital was on South Promenade. ‘Just catch a tram along the front, luv,’ a porter at the station told her, so Alice did, and it looked even more like the moon as she trundled past some alarming constructions and the weirdest buildings, with signs proclaiming themselves Pleasure Park, Amusements, Fortunes Told and even a Ghost Train, whatever that was.

Out of the window on the other side of the tram, the Irish Sea was a vast expanse of huddled waves the colour of mud, and the sky was full of mottled grey clouds without a patch of blue.

Alice had never felt so alone before. She was relieved when the alarming constructions ended and houses took their place, some of them extremely grand. She got off the tram in case it passed the hospital without her knowing.

Her boot was hurting badly by the time she arrived at a big double-fronted sandstone building with a sign above the glass doors saying that it was St Steven’s Hospital. She limped up the steps and through the doors into a small hallway with a room marked Reception. She had no idea what that meant, but she knocked on the door anyway; it seemed the obvious thing to do.

A woman inside shouted, ‘Come in.’

‘Good afternoon,’ she said when Alice entered.

‘Good afternoon.’ Alice had thought it was still only morning. She produced the letter from the hospital and said she had come to see Aircraftsman Sean Doyle. She was instructed to take a seat outside and a Dr Whelan would come and see her shortly.

The doctor turned out to be a charming Irishman with twinkly brown eyes and a head of thick grey curls. As they climbed the stairs towards the first floor, Alice asked if her husband would be expecting her. ‘I came the minute I got the letter,’ she said.

Dr Whelan looked at her sadly. ‘I’m afraid not, Mrs Doyle.’ He didn’t explain why, but opened a door, and there was the dearest husband in the world lying on a bed with his eyes closed, though they opened wide when Alice threw herself on top of him and showered his face with kisses.

The doctor took her arm and pulled her gently away, and Alice was left to stare into Sean’s familiar brown eyes, which showed absolutely no acknowledgement, no familiar twinkle, no sign whatsoever that he recognised who she was.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ she asked in an anguished voice. She had expected to see him perhaps with his arm in a sling, his leg in plaster, a bandage on his head, but not looking perfectly whole except for his empty eyes.

‘He has amnesia, Mrs Doyle,’ Dr Whelan said quietly. ‘He has lost his memory. There was an incident in Malta.’

‘Will it ever come back?’

‘Hopefully; in time.’

‘In time,’ Alice echoed. She was regarding her husband silently, not knowing what to do or say, when a familiar voice from behind her said, ‘There you are, girl,’ and she turned to see that Jack Doyle had entered the room.

‘Mr Doyle!’ Alice launched herself at him and he had no alternative but to catch her in his arms. ‘He’s here, can you see him, our Sean? But he can’t see us.’

Jack set her back on the floor. ‘He can see us, luv. He just doesn’t know who we are.’

‘Oh, but he will one day, won’t he?’ she said eagerly. ‘One day soon?’

‘Let’s hope so.’ He turned to the doctor. ‘I’m Sean’s father: I rang up this morning,’ he said. Then, to Alice, ‘Sheila managed to get a message to me at work. I came straight away.’

The doctor left, and Jack and Alice sat and talked to Sean for a good hour, though by the time they left he had shown no sign at all of recognising them.

‘I reckon we’d better start making tracks back to Bootle,’ Jack said eventually. ‘Have you had anything to eat today, luv?’

Alice remembered that the letter had arrived before she’d had so much as a cup of tea. ‘No,’ she admitted.

‘Then we’ll go somewhere and have a drink and a sarnie, then get the train home.’

Alice didn’t think she’d be able to eat again until Sean was better and had recovered his memory. She said so to his dad.

‘Don’t be daft,’ Jack snorted. ‘We don’t want Sean getting better while his missus steadily wastes away. It wouldn’t exactly please him, would it?’

On Saturday, Jack and Alice, this time accompanied by Sean’s sisters, Sheila and Eileen, travelled to Blackpool together.

The problem of the children – Sheila’s seven, along with Alice’s Edward and Eileen’s Nicky – was solved when Kate volunteered to look after all of them at the cottage in Melling, as long as a few other people were willing to give her a hand. Brenda Mahon, bringing her girls, and Lena Newton offered to help, Phyllis Taylor, when she heard, insisted on coming along too. Phyllis liked having her finger in every available pie.

It was the first day of March, the sun was out, and spring was in the air. You could almost smell the forthcoming sunshine, the plants that were about to grow and the leaves that would soon appear on the trees.

Kate had drawn up a timetable showing expected mealtimes and games to play and pinned it to the kitchen door. A giant pan of scouse had been simmering on the stove since early morning; a cake missing all sorts of ingredients, fortunately none of them essential, was waiting to go in the oven; lemonade and sweets had been purchased and a few small prizes were there to be won.

The kittens, Godfrey and Tommy, had been left in the flat over the dairy as company for each other.

They arrived at the cottage like a youthful army, marching in pairs. The older ones played hide and seek, first in the house, then in the garden when a pale sun appeared mid-morning. Afterwards, they picked daisies and made chains. Dominic Reilly, Sheila’s eldest boy, who was nearly twelve, became aware that Monica Mahon, Brenda’s elder girl, who was approaching eleven, was outstandingly pretty, with her chestnut-brown ringlets and wide-apart grey eyes. He had known her his entire life, but had never really noticed her before.

When they gathered round the big table in the cottage for their dinner, he held out the chair next to his for her to sit on.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered, blushing slightly. She thought what a nice lad he was, if a bit loud and extremely naughty a lot of the time, though not now.

After the meal was over, the four youngest were put to sleep in Eileen’s double bed, where Lena Newton watched over them, wishing that at least one of them belonged to her. Maurice had been transferred to a ship whose job it was to take supplies to Russia, so she didn’t see as much of him as she used to. She knew she should have been sorry and was ashamed that she felt glad, even though it meant there was less chance of her having a baby than there’d been before.

Dinner over, the older children went outside again. On the list that Kate had made, they were due to play rounders. Instead, they went mad, climbing trees, doing cartwheels, and running around with their arms spread wide like aeroplanes while making the appropriate noises and pretending to shoot each other down.

Halfway through the afternoon, Peter Mallory turned up. He was disappointed that Eileen wasn’t there, but was willing to organise a game of cricket, ‘If there’s a bat around anywhere.’

Brenda said she thought there was one in the garden shed, while Kate wondered who on earth he was.

‘He’s a friend of Eileen’s,’ said Lena, who’d met Peter before. ‘But I could have sworn his name was Wood, not Mallory.’

Kate didn’t care what his name was; she was just thankful that a man had turned up to keep the older boys in hand, though Dominic, who she’d thought at first was the naughtiest of the boys, showed no interest in cricket and seemed happy to share the swing with one of Brenda’s daughters. Kate considered it rather touching, though by now she was longing for the mothers to come back and reclaim their various children.

They arrived, Eileen, Sheila and Alice, just after six o’clock, when the children were exhausted and had collapsed in odd places all over the house, from where they were collected and counted.

‘How was Sean?’ Kate asked, concerned at the sight of their miserable faces.

‘Not so hot,’ Sheila said with a sigh. She clapped her hands and her oldest children pretended to stand to attention. Two of them saluted. ‘There’s nothing funny about anything,’ Sheila snapped. ‘Your uncle Sean’s not at all well. Fetch your coats and we’ll go home.’

‘He’s lost his memory,’ Eileen explained to everyone. ‘But they’re letting him out in a fortnight, see how he gets on with his family all around him.’

‘He’s going to get better,’ Alice said fiercely. ‘I’ll make him better if it kills me.’

It was dark by the time everyone arrived back in Pearl Street. The children, young and old, were quite agreeable to going to bed early. Even Phyllis Taylor felt tired after spending an entire day chasing after eleven children, not that she hadn’t enjoyed herself tremendously. Her mother worked disgracefully long hours and wouldn’t be home until ten. Phyllis decided to listen to some music while reading a book, two of her favourite occupations.

She had turned on the gas fire and Radio Luxembourg was on the wireless, with Bing Crosby singing a collection of songs from Broadway shows, when there was a knock on the door. It couldn’t be anybody local, or they would have just pulled the key through the letter box and let themselves in. Always interested in anything even faintly out of the ordinary, Phyllis leapt to her feet and went to answer the door.

A young, truly gorgeous American soldier was standing on the pavement outside, a jeep parked in the street behind him. He looked disappointed when Phyllis appeared and she wondered who he had expected to see.

‘The lady who used to live here, she had red hair,’ he said haltingly. ‘Is she in?’

‘You mean Mrs Fleming – Jessica? She’s Mrs Henningsen now.’ Phyllis had never met Jessica, but had heard all sorts of interesting things about her, including the fact that she had the most amazing red hair.

He nodded eagerly. ‘That’s right, Jessica.’

‘Well, after marrying Captain Henningsen, she went to live near Warrington. He’s an American, like you.’

The soldier shifted from foot to foot. ‘I’m going about this all the wrong way, miss. It’s not Jessica – Mrs Henningsen – I wanted to see; it’s the girl who lived here with her: Kitty Quigley.’

‘Ah! Kitty, well she …’ Phyllis paused and a whole chain of thoughts chased each other through her head. She reckoned this must be the soldier that Kitty had fallen madly in love with and who had made her pregnant. But Kitty was living directly across the street, happily married to George Ransome and now expecting
his
baby. On the other hand, she had only married George while on the rebound from the exceptionally attractive specimen of manhood staring at Phyllis at this very moment, waiting for her to reply. The man was married, but perhaps his wife had died or divorced him. Would Kitty be able to resist him if it turned out he was now available? Phyllis had noticed that some people didn’t think twice about dispensing with honour and integrity when there was a war on. Look at her own father! All in all, in the long run it would be better if Kitty wasn’t told that her old lover had come in search of her, whether he was still married or not.

She smiled warmly at the soldier. ‘Would you like to come in for a minute?’

He stepped inside. ‘Why, thank you, miss. I’m Dale Tooley, by the way – Sergeant. I haven’t been this way, Lancashire, for a long time. I’m normally based in Kent.’