The Seven Streets of Liverpool (19 page)

‘We’ve met each other a couple of times.’

‘And she didn’t tell me?’ Winifred felt hurt.

‘She doesn’t want me back, Winnie, that’s why. She thinks I’m bad for you.’

‘You
are
bad for me. Frankly, Leslie, I wish I’d never met you. When we arrived in Liverpool, we spent over a year looking for you. Then last Christmas I decided to hire a private detective. He tracked you down within a week. Ever since, I’ve been waiting for you to approach me. I knew you’d get fed up with Dawn, just as you’ve got fed up with all the other women you’ve had relationships with since we’ve been married.’

He looked at her soulfully. ‘Yes, but you’re the only one I’ve ever loved, Winnie;
really
loved.’

Despite the cloying voice and the soulful eyes, she almost believed him. He reached out and took her hand, and she wanted to collapse on top of him on the bed and kiss him to death.

‘Does the bruise hurt?’ she asked instead.

‘Only a little,’ he said bravely. ‘When the hospital let me out, can I come home with you?’

Winifred sat in the chair beside the bed and thought. This Dawn person was bound to start searching for him. And initially Winifred herself had made such a performance out of trying to find him that the local newspaper might well discover he’d turned up and want to do an article about him. If he was discovered to have been lying, he could well get into serious trouble: leaving his job in a government establishment; using another man’s identity card.

‘I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘You’ve got yourself into a rather dubious position, Leslie. I think the best plan would be for you to go back to Beverley and start again. You won’t be able to get our own house back for a while, so you’ll have to rent somewhere else for the time being.’

‘Anything you say, Winnie.’ He smiled obediently. ‘Will you be coming with me?’

‘I think you should go first, straight away, in fact, and find us somewhere to live. I can’t give up my job just because I feel like it, so that will take some working out. I might be able to arrange a swap with another nurse.’

‘Yes, Winnie. I’ll go tomorrow.’ He stared at her. ‘Just now, how did you know I hadn’t lost my memory?’

‘I could tell by the expression on your face. You’re an awfully clever chap, Leslie, but somehow you manage to be awfully silly at the same time.’

Phyllis flatly refused to leave Bootle and return to Beverley. ‘I like it here,’ she said defiantly. ‘Anyway, I shall be eighteen in August and will be called up.’

‘Women aren’t called up,’ her mother informed her.

‘Then I shall call myself up. I’d like to join the army and go abroad.’

‘Phyllis!’ Her mother sat down with a thump. After Leslie turning up, she didn’t think she could stand another shock. Although she was right about women not being called up, they were required to take on some sort of wartime duties when they reached the age of eighteen, like working in a munitions factory, for instance. One of her friends at the hospital had a daughter who was in the Women’s Land Army.

‘It might be July before I can join your father in Beverley,’ she said. ‘I always thought that one day you would take your Higher School Certificate, then go to university. Isn’t that what you planned to do?’

Phyllis hadn’t realised her mother would be so upset at her refusal to return home. Her voice was softer when she replied. ‘Yes, Mum. I’d still like to do it one day, but there’s a war on. Hopefully it will be over soon, but I doubt it will end before I turn eighteen. There may never be another war in my lifetime, so I really would like to do my bit while I have the chance.’

Winifred stroked her daughter’s glossy hair. ‘You are a lovely young woman, Phyllis,’ she said fondly. ‘Me and your father don’t really deserve you.’

‘Well
he
doesn’t,’ Phyllis said derisively. ‘And he doesn’t deserve you, either.’ Privately, she was overjoyed that her parents would soon be back together again.

After about a week, Eileen and Doria weren’t getting on too badly. Their conversations were becoming slightly friendlier. Now that it was May, her dad came almost every day after work to tend to the garden or just sit on the old bench at the bottom smoking a cigarette and surveying his little kingdom with a pleased smile.

She had told him that Doria was a friend of one of Kate Thomas’s daughter’s – he already knew that Kate had moved out – and that her husband was with the British forces in India.

‘I expect he’s an officer,’ Jack said with a cynical grin. ‘Her talking the way she does, dead posh like. You don’t get made an officer if you don’t talk like you’ve got a plum permanently stuck in your gob.’

‘Oh, you’re a sarcastic bugger, Dad.’ Eileen punched him lightly in the chest. ‘But you’re right, he’s a captain.’

Sheila, Brenda and their children had visited on Sunday and had been told the same thing, though they demanded more information.

‘His name’s Hugh,’ Doria had told them. ‘Hugh Kneale. He comes from London, the same part as me: Wimbledon. We met when we were children.’

‘Why are you staying with our Eileen?’ Sheila wanted to know.

‘Because I desperately needed peace and quiet,’ Doria said with a dramatic wave of the hand. ‘Hugh and I hadn’t found a place to live when we married, only a year ago. It was a rushed wartime wedding: you know the sort of thing.’ She paused. ‘I’ve been living with my parents and they have so many
friends
! There wasn’t a moment of peace.’ She glanced slyly at Eileen and winked. They had worked out the story the other night. There was loads more information about the imaginary Hugh should anybody ask. But nobody did.

Nick’s bus had taken him as far as Earls Court. It was a part of London he didn’t know, so he got on another bus that was going to Liverpool Street station. He didn’t know that either, but at least it was a major station and he could get a train to somewhere far away that he
had
heard of.

Norwich, he discovered when he arrived at the station and enquired about tickets. He bought a ticket; a single. Norwich was where he’d gone to meet Eileen when she’d worked for a while on a farm. It was after her little boy, Tony, had died and she was devastated. Nick had been looking forward to them all living together one day in the cottage in Melling.

Life had seemed so much more simple and straightforward in those days, yet in reality, looking back, it had been full of complications. His courtship of Eileen had been eventful; would they get married or not? Deep down, he had always known they would, because they had loved each other, ‘till death us do part’, as the vows they had taken at their wedding had promised. What had happened to change all that?

He laughed aloud, a sardonic laugh that had no humour in it, startling the other passengers in the carriage. For a moment, he’d actually forgotten that he had lost his arm.

Chapter 16

Phyllis Taylor turned up at Eileen’s cottage one Saturday at the end of May bringing her cheese ration and a tin of golden syrup that had been given to her mother by one of her patients.

Eileen professed herself eternally grateful. ‘Nicky loves syrup sarnies, the sort where the syrup soaks right through the bread, and cheese is useful for all sorts of things. I think I might grate it.’

‘Can I help with something?’ Phyllis enquired. Eileen, Sheila and Brenda were seated around the kitchen table drinking tea.

‘Yes, luv, you can actually.’ Eileen gestured through the window. ‘See that girl on the bench at the bottom of the garden?’ Phyllis looked and saw a very pregnant young woman nursing her stomach, on which Napoleon was curled in a ball. She looked fed up to the teeth.

Phyllis nodded. ‘Who is she?’

‘Her name is Doria Kneale and she’s married to a captain in the army,’ Eileen told her. ‘She’s staying with us for the time being and I’m pretty sure she’d appreciate the company of someone her own age, rather than someone like me giving her all sorts of advice she doesn’t want. Go and talk to her for a while, if you don’t mind.’

‘Of course I don’t mind.’ Phyllis’s face sparkled with enthusiasm and willingness to help as she left the kitchen and marched purposefully down the garden.

Eileen watched her. ‘I really like that young woman,’ she said. ‘In her own way, she’s the salt of the earth. I wish there were more like her around.’

Brenda and Sheila murmured their agreement. ‘Though I don’t think she’ll be here for much longer,’ Brenda remarked. ‘Aggie Donovan says her mother wants to leave and move back to Yorkshire. She’s trying to find someone to swap jobs with.’

Eileen wrinkled her nose. ‘I’ll be dead sorry to see Phyllis go.’

‘So will I,’ echoed Sheila. ‘I wonder who’ll move into their house?’

‘Since this bloody war started, people move in and out of property by the minute,’ Brenda complained. ‘I mean, Miss Brazier lived in that house from the day she was born, and only left when she joined the army, then Jessica Fleming took it over.
She
left when she married that Yank and moved to Burtonwood. Now Phyllis and her mam are about to move on. In the old days, people got married and lived in the same house all their lives – like me!’ She folded her arms and said indignantly, ‘I’m beginning to feel like a real stick-in-the-mud. I wouldn’t mind moving somewhere meself.’

Doria Mallory and Phyllis became instant friends when Phyllis introduced herself that day in Eileen’s garden. There was something in their very different personalities that appealed to the other.

Phyllis thought it most peculiar that although they were about the same age, their lives had gone so differently. ‘I’ve never even had a proper boyfriend,’ she said, ‘and you’ve got a husband in the army and are about to have a baby. It’s not that I’m envious or anything, just that I think life’s funny. It has no pattern.’

‘How old are you?’ Doria asked.

‘I’ll be eighteen in August.’

‘I’ll be twenty in August.’

‘What date?’

‘The fifteenth.’

Phyllis clapped her hands delightedly. ‘I’m the fifteenth too. Isn’t that an incredible coincidence?’

‘Yes – but you know, Phyllis, two years makes all the difference. An awful lot can happen in that time – as it did to me.’

‘When I’m eighteen, I intend to join up,’ Phyllis told her. ‘I really fancy the army.’ She sat at the end of the bench and automatically picked up Doria’s feet and placed them on her knee, as if was her role in life. ‘How do you keep your slacks up?’ she enquired.

Doria was wearing black trousers with a loose top. She lifted the top to reveal long straps that went over her shoulders. ‘I haven’t got a waist any more,’ she said sadly.

‘I expect they’re called maternity slacks.’

‘I expect they are.’ Doria’s arms went back around her stomach and Napoleon. ‘I wish I’d done something more exciting when I was eighteen,’ she said. ‘But I had an important clerical job in London by then and I don’t know if the powers-that-be would have let me leave. The girls I know who are in the forces are having a really exciting time. Wherever they might be, there’s at least twenty men for every girl. One girl I know is in the furthest reaches of Scotland, and another is in Italy.’

Phyllis was momentarily shocked. ‘You shouldn’t be thinking like that when you’re a married woman about to have a baby.’

‘I know, but the thing is, I shall never have a good time again.’ Doria looked stricken, as if it had only just dawned on her that the list of things she could no longer do would lengthen immeasurably once she became a mother. ‘I shall have to be nothing but sensible from now on.’

‘Poor you!’ Phyllis patted one of her feet. ‘Sensible is an all right thing to be. If everyone in the world were sensible, there would never be wars. Are you up to going to the pictures in your condition?’

‘Just about.’ She could still probably fit in a seat.

‘Then shall we go one afternoon next week?
The Glass Key
with Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake is on in Walton Vale. We could meet about half past four after I’ve finished work. You can catch a bus straight there from Melling.’

‘I’d love to. Gosh, once I’ve had the baby, I won’t even be able to go to the pictures without getting someone to look after him or her.’

Phyllis cocked her head on one side and said thoughtfully, ‘You’ll have someone to care for who is actually more important than yourself. That would be a really funny feeling. I mean, I really love my mum, but fancy loving someone even more, so that no one else really matters, not even yourself.’

‘I’ll
never
feel like that.’ Doria shuddered. Imagine not having enough to buy a new frock from Harrods, and having to spend what money you had on clothes for the baby instead.

‘You will, you’ll see,’ Phyllis promised, squeezing both of Doria’s feet in a comforting gesture.

But Doria still doubted it very much.

It had been rumoured for months that D-Day was absolutely certain to take place any day now. No one knew exactly when. Letters were received from relatives living in the Home Counties or on the south coast telling news of never-ending aeroplanes flying over, of non-stop troop movements, of seeing hundreds, perhaps thousands, possibly millions of American soldiers whichever way you looked.

Troop carriers, lorries and vehicles of every description, all camouflaged, poured through towns and villages, where people had never seen anything like it before. All this activity was in preparation for the crossing of the Channel to France, and before you could say ‘abracadabra’, the troops would have reached Germany and the war would be over.

Wouldn’t it?

Hopes had been raised so many times before. It was the best part of a year since the Allies had landed in Sicily, yet they still hadn’t arrived in Rome.

But people couldn’t help but think that the end was definitely in sight when, at half past nine on Tuesday morning, 6 June 1944, it was announced on the BBC that D-Day had arrived at last. Overnight, the first of the thousands of troops had crossed the Channel as part of the Normandy landings.

That night, the King of England spoke to the nation on the wireless. ‘D-Day has come. Early this morning, the Allies began the assault on the north-western face of Hitler’s European fortress …’

Well, victory must certainly be in sight if the King himself believed it.

Leslie Taylor had found a pretty little cottage to rent in the very centre of Beverley. ‘It’s just off the main street,’ he wrote to Winifred. ‘I actually prefer it to our own house. It’s much cosier and warmer and very handy for the shops. I’m sure Phyllis will love it.’

Phyllis had no intention of loving it, or even going to see it, at least not for a long time. She had made arrangements to move in with Lena Newton and sleep on her settee once her mother had gone.

‘I’ll come back to live with you and Dad one day,’ she promised, ‘but I did tell you, Mum, I mean to join the forces when I’m eighteen. And I want to be company for Doria for a while after her baby’s born.’ Doria was convinced she would be depressed.

Her mother sighed. ‘I know, love. I just know you’re going to have a terribly important and never-endingly busy life.’ Just now, Phyllis was breaking her heart. She almost wished Leslie hadn’t put in an appearance when he did or, better still, hadn’t vanished in the first place. They’d still be living in Beverley, and Phyllis would be about to leave school and go to university.

Eileen couldn’t wait for Doria to have her baby. The girl did nothing but moan about the problems she had moving, lying down, sitting up and sitting still, going to the lavatory, climbing stairs and coming down again. She was off her food one day, and couldn’t eat enough the next. Basically she had quite a sweet nature, but only when her life was going smoothly and nothing even vaguely difficult – like having a baby – was happening.

What was worrying Eileen was how Doria would feel once the baby was born. What about if the delivery hurt? (Did a delivery ever
not
hurt?) Or the baby cried a lot – or even a little? Or it needed its nappy changing more than once a day?

More importantly, how long did Doria intend to stay in the cottage with Eileen having no option but to listen to her constant complaints. Where could the girl go? Her mam and dad wouldn’t want her, not with a baby.

Phyllis was an enormous help. Eileen didn’t know how she would have managed without her. She came after work every single day apart from Saturday and Sunday, when she stayed from early morning until late at night, and she also announced that she had learnt at school back in Beverley how babies were delivered.

‘The cookery teacher, Miss Wainwright, thought us girls should know how it was done, so she described it and made some illustrations. Oh, and she got into terrible trouble when the headmistress found out. You’d think there was something disgusting about it.’

‘I hope she didn’t get the sack,’ Eileen said. ‘Miss Wainwright, that is, not the headmistress.’

‘No, but she left to go to another school soon afterwards.’

‘When I was at school,’ Eileen reminisced, ‘some girl got into trouble when she asked one of nuns to explain the virgin birth.’

‘It’s a perfectly legitimate question,’ Phyllis said. ‘No one should get into trouble for being curious.’

Doria’s baby arrived on a Sunday afternoon at the end of June. Eileen wasn’t present. It was Sean’s twenty-second birthday, and a party had been planned at the cottage – it would have been his first big day out since his recovery – but rain had been predicted for the whole of that weekend, and it had been pouring down non-stop since Saturday morning.

Instead, Eileen took Nicky and the food she had prepared to Pearl Street. The party would be held at Sean and Alice’s house instead. Phyllis stayed behind in Melling to keep Doria company.

When Eileen returned to the cottage that night, having left Nicky with his grandad, Doria wasn’t there, but Phyllis was.

‘It was about midday when she had her first contraction,’ Phyllis explained. ‘For a while, they were half an hour apart. I telephoned the hospital when they became more frequent’ – arrangements had been made for the baby to be born in Walton hospital – ‘and they said to keep a note of the pains and when they reached ten minutes apart to telephone again and they’d send an ambulance.’

‘Yes?’ Eileen said impatiently. She followed the girl into the kitchen, where she’d been told a kettle had just boiled for tea.

‘Well, that’s what I did. When the pains were ten minutes apart, I telephoned the hospital and an ambulance came. I went with her, the baby was born, Doria fell asleep and I came home. It wasn’t nearly as exciting as I expected,’ Phyllis said disappointedly. The kettle had boiled again and she poured the water into the teapot.

Eileen sat down and grinned. ‘I bet you were hoping to deliver it yourself.’

Phyllis grinned back. ‘I wouldn’t have minded.’

‘Anyroad, you still haven’t told me whether it’s a boy or a girl.’

‘It’s a boy, he’s terribly pink. He weighed eight pounds five ounces, and he’s to be called Theobald.’

‘
What?
’ Eileen was horrified. ‘That’s a terrible name to give a child, particularly in Liverpool. If he’s not popular at school, they’re likely to call him Baldy.’

‘I think Theo’s rather nice.’ Phyllis put a cup of tea in front of Eileen and sat down at the table with her own. ‘Can I sleep in Doria’s bed tonight?’

‘Of course, luv.’ Eileen gave a sigh of relief. ‘Oh well, I’m glad that’s over. Has Doria said anything about what she intends to do next?’

‘She muttered something about joining the forces with me – I shall be eighteen in August.’

That couldn’t possibly be right – the girl had only just had a baby – but it seemed as if Doria would be out of her hair soon in one way or another. Perhaps she hoped her mum and dad in Wimbledon wouldn’t be able to resist their first grandson once they set eyes on him, then she could join up and they wouldn’t mind.

Winifred Taylor discovered a nurse in Hull – the city was close to Beverley – who fancied working in Liverpool, if only for the variety it offered. Her name was Barbara Wilkinson and she was ten years younger than Winifred and didn’t have children.

‘My husband is in the army somewhere in Italy,’ she wrote. ‘I’m sure he would like to work in Liverpool when he comes home after the war. It would be a lovely change for us both, almost an adventure.’

Now Barbara had to be interviewed and approved by Bootle hospital, and Winifred by the one in Hull.

‘It shouldn’t take much longer,’ Winifred said to Phyllis. From her record, she was sure Barbara would be an ideal nurse. ‘Hopefully I will still be here for your birthday in August. Would you like a party, love?’ She was dreading the day she would be parted from her daughter, even if it meant she would be living with Leslie again.

‘No thanks, Mum, but I’d like a big do on my twenty-first. By then the war will be long over and I will have loads of new friends.’ Though Doria would remain her best friend for ever and ever.