The Seven Streets of Liverpool (22 page)

‘I’m just as pleased to see you too,’ she told them when they were seated around the table. She looked at Sheila. ‘I thought I’d go and see your Eileen this afternoon. We’ve been writing to each other, but it’s ages since I heard from her and she doesn’t know I’d decided to come back – I only made up my mind at the last minute. Gus is being posted to France to join the American forces, so I’ll probably not see him until the war is over.’

‘I thought you had a really nice bungalow in Burtonwood?’ Brenda cried.

‘I have, but I hardly know anyone there and I decided I’d sooner spend my last months in England with my friends in Bootle than anywhere else in the world. We plan on moving to New York eventually, as you know.’ Gus’s family owned a chain of bakery shops there.

‘Where’s Penny?’

‘In bed, fast asleep. Well, she was until you two attempted to knock the door down.’

Five-year-old Penny proved that she was now wide awake by entering the room, still in her nightdress. ‘Hello,’ she said, looking shyly at the newcomers.

‘Hello, luv,’ the women chorused, and Sheila added, ‘The older she gets, the more your Penny looks like our Caitlin. They could be sisters.’

‘Actually, Penny is very like my mother,’ Jessica remarked. ‘There’s a photo of her somewhere. I’ll show it you if I happen to come across it.’

‘She hasn’t got red hair.’ Brenda glanced admiringly at Jessica’s own head of glorious waves and curls.

‘Neither had my mother. She had brown hair; it was my father who was the redhead.’

Sheila decided it was time she went home. ‘The kids’ll be wondering where I’ve got to. Can you come round tonight for a chat, Jess? Bring Penny with you. Oh, and you’ll find our Eileen has quite a surprise in store when you see her.’

‘In that case, I’ll go to Melling as soon as I can.’

Outside, Brenda said to Sheila, ‘I woke up this morning feeling really down in the dumps. Now I feel as happy as a lark because Jess has arrived. The world’s a funny place; what do you think, Sheil?’

‘It’s a funny place all right, Bren, particularly with people like you and me in it. Me dad says we remind him of those women on the wireless, Gert and Daisy.’

Brenda hooted. ‘Oh well, cheerio, Gert.’

‘Ta-ra, Daisy. I’ll see you later.’

Five years ago, a mere few weeks after the start of the war, when Jessica had returned to Pearl Street, she and Eileen had started out as enemies, what with Jessica thinking she’d come down in the world, but had eventually become friends. It was therefore no surprise that Eileen’s reaction when she opened the door was somewhat similar to Sheila and Brenda’s earlier on.

‘Jess!’ she yelled. ‘It’s marvellous to see you. You’re looking well. Oh, and Penny, you are prettier than ever. Come on in, luv, so I can kiss you. And after I’ve done that, I’ll make us all a cup of tea.’

Nicky had arrived in the doorway and was hanging on to his mother’s leg. He and Penny, who was two years older, had met before, but the chances were they wouldn’t remember each other.

The fire had been lit, mainly with wood chopped from the trees in the garden. There was a fresh, flowery smell to the room that hinted of lavender.

Theo was propped up in a bed of cushions on the settee, staring into the fire with a strange expression on his face that was possibly a smile.

Seeing him, it was Jessica’s turn to yell. ‘You’ve had a baby-and no one told me, not even this morning when I saw your Sheila.’

‘Don’t be daft, Jess. This is Theo. Sit down while I make some tea, and then I’ll tell you all about him and everything else that has happened since I last wrote.’

Jessica was almost too stunned to speak by the time Eileen had regaled her with the story of Nick and Doria, and how she’d ended up holding the baby while the main characters in this sorry tale had both disappeared. While they were speaking, Nicky and Penny had gone into the garden to gather the windfalls off the apple trees.

‘I haven’t an idea in the world where Nick is, or Doria, though I could find out about her easily enough if I wanted.’ She explained that Doria had gone off with Phyllis, who had lived with her mother in Jessica’s old house. ‘Phyllis has promised to write to Lena Newton, who lives over the dairy. Not that I’m interested, mind you,’ she said hastily. ‘I’d be happy to keep Theo for ever – you know his real name is Theobald?’

‘Never!’ Jessica studied the baby. ‘Can I give him a little cuddle?’ she asked.

‘Of course!’

‘Oh, they do feel nice, don’t they, babies?’ She heaved a pleasurable sigh. ‘When they’re little, they fit in all the places outside your body just like they did inside.’ She tucked Theo against her side, within the curve of her arm, then, without looking at her friend, she said, ‘What are you going to do about Nick?’

Eileen watched the fire spit and crackle before answering, an expression of almost hopeless sadness on her face. ‘I don’t know, Jess,’ she said eventually. ‘I love him dearly most of the time, but other times I don’t love him at all. I know something bad happened when he lost his arm, but it wasn’t my fault. Not only that, but I loved him more after the accident than I’d done before – and I hadn’t thought that was possible.’

‘Love, babies, men and women.’ Jessica stared into the fire. She looked staggeringly beautiful with the firelight reflected on her lovely face, her hair as brilliant as the flames and her green eyes soft and pensive. ‘Life is just one long drama, and I bet it never stops. When we are both very old women, we’ll have the same things to worry about – and I’ll be there a long time before you. I was forty-six on my last birthday and I can’t tell you how much I would love to have another child; girl or boy, I wouldn’t care. Another one to hold as I’m holding this little one here.’ She smiled at Theo, and Eileen could hardly believe it when he smiled back.

‘You lost a child, didn’t you, Jess?’ she said softly. ‘Not long after you met Gus.’

Jessica remembered the day with horror. It was one of the worst of her life. ‘Yes, it was Arthur’s child, a brother or sister for Penny.’

Eileen didn’t know it, but Jessica was lying through her teeth.

That night, Jack Doyle let himself into his daughter’s house just around the corner from his own. He was only coming for a chat, to see how Sheila and the kids were. It was a while since Calum had been home, and it was clear for the whole world to see how much she loved and missed him.

There was more than a bit of noise coming from the living room; mainly screams of laughter, and he could make out a voice he didn’t recognise – a woman who didn’t have a Liverpool accent.

There was something going on in the parlour, too, though the voices in there were more subdued by far. He opened the door and saw that the best table had been pulled into the middle of the room and six children were sitting around it engrossed in a game of cards. It was Pairs, a game Jack had often played with his grandkids. It required enormous concentration that he was incapable of.

‘Hello there,’ he said.

‘Hello, Grandad,’ muttered Dominic. The other children ignored him, too involved in their game.

‘Ta-ra, then.’ He closed the door, his brow furrowed in thought. Sheila’s three lads had been there, and he recognised Brenda’s girls, but here’d been another girl, the youngest of the lot, brown-haired, pretty …

‘Jaysus!’ He actually whispered the word out loud. ‘Penny Fleming!’

So that was who the unknown voice belonged to: Penny’s mother. He was amazed he hadn’t recognised it straight away. Jessie Fleming was back in Bootle! What for this time? To haunt him and taunt him; to break his heart for the umpteenth time? And she’d brought their daughter with her.

Jack left the house, closing the door quietly behind him. He hoped Dominic wouldn’t mention that his grandad had been and gone. If Sheila said anything, he’d just reply that seeing as she’d company, he’d thought it better not to disturb them.

He made his way rapidly to the King’s Anns and ordered a whisky chaser with his first pint.

‘Have you come up on the pools, Jack?’ Mack the landlord enquired. ‘You usually only treat yourself to a chaser on special occasions, like Christmas.’

‘Just felt like one tonight,’ Jack mumbled. He hid himself in a corner and hardly spoke to a soul the entire night. Word soon got round that Jack Doyle was in a mood and to leave him alone.

He left the pub before Mack rang the bell for closing time, and made his unsteady way back to Garnet Street. When he let himself in, he found a note on the mat just inside the door.

Jack, I need to see you urgently. Will you please come round as soon as you can. I’m back at number 10. Jessica

Chapter 18

Well, he wasn’t going now, not straight away, not when he was more than a bit drunk and couldn’t think straight. But he could never think straight when he was in the vicinity of Jessie Fleming.

Jack was a popular man and he knew it. He was also as straight as a die and could hold sway over a hundred men, two hundred, and bend them to his will. He was generally happy with his lot. His wife, Mollie, had died not long after Sean was born, but that was the way things happened. No one should expect life to be one big bed of roses. There was good, and there was bad. He drove his daughter Eileen mad going on like this, explaining everything away, reasoning, making sense of things, never allowing for the unexpected to happen. But Jessie Fleming was the unexpected; he would never be able to explain her away.

Next day, at work on the docks unloading a big dusty ship from India, he was bloody useless. He couldn’t remember which was his right hand and which his left. He fell down the same ladder twice, fortunately not a very big one, and discovered he’d put lemon curd instead of mustard on the sarnies he’d made for his dinner.

He arrived home at six in a terrible tuck with himself. Should he go and see Jess now? Should he go and see her at all? How dare she just demand his presence as if she were the Queen of bloody England? Knowing Jess, though, she’d not take no for an answer; best to go now, before he went near the pub and got pissed out of his mind for the second night in a row.

He was tempted to go as he was, in his working clothes, smelling of God knows what had been in the crates and sacks he’d spent the day carrying off the ship. But a sense of pride made him change into a clean shirt and his second-best suit. He contemplated not wearing a collar and tie, but once again pride forced him into searching for his collar studs and picking out a tie – he only had two.

Ready! Now, which way should he go? It was still light outside, and tongues would wag if he was seen entering Jessie’s house by the front door, all done up, like. Aggie Donovan’s tongue would wag the most, and if Sheila discovered where he’d been, he would be subjected to the third degree, pinned against the wall while she shone a torch into his face and demanded to know what was going on. He would have to go down Amethyst Street, turn into Coral Street and go in Jessie’s by the back way.

He looked at his reflection in the wardrobe mirror, bowed at himself from the waist and set off.

‘Ah, there you are,’ she said. She smoothed the lapels of his jacket by way of greeting and kissed him briefly on the cheek. She was wearing a long blue velvet garment; he wasn’t sure if it was a dressing gown or an evening dress. It wasn’t the sort of thing that Pearl Street women were usually seen wearing. He could smell the scent she’d used, which was subtler and softer than the stuff the other women he knew dabbed behind their ears. Straight away, instantly, he wanted to bury his face in her red hair. ‘How have you been, Jack?’

‘Very well,’ he replied; his voice had just a touch of a croak in it. ‘Very well indeed. Where’s Penny?’

‘Upstairs, fast asleep.’ She smiled and said conversationally, ‘I’m glad your Sean is so much better; almost completely, Eileen said. She told me before what a state he was in before. Almost like a coma.’

‘Almost like a coma, yes, you’re right. But he’s much better. Wants to go back in the RAF, but they wouldn’t take him in a million years.’

‘You’re right. He needs to be set up in his own business.’

At her words, Jack recovered himself just a little. ‘His own business? Oh, that’s a fine idea. I’ll set one up for him tomorrer.’

Jess smiled. ‘Good old Jack, as prickly as ever. Why don’t you sit down and have something to drink?’ She pointed to the easy chairs close together in front of the fire and he sat on the nearest. The room was fully furnished, and he wondered if it was Miss Brazier’s furniture that she’d left behind when she went off and joined the army.

‘I wouldn’t mind a cup of tea.’ There hadn’t been time to make a pot at home while he’d been beautifying himself for her.

‘I meant a real drink. There’s everything imaginable available at the base. What would you like? I’ve brought whisky, rum, gin, a couple of liqueurs. I even have half a dozen cans of beer.’

‘Huh! It doesn’t look as if your lot are suffering shortages like us on this side of the Atlantic,’ he growled.

‘They aren’t. They brought loads of stuff over with them. And I don’t know what you mean by “your lot”, Jack. I married an American, but I didn’t change my nationality.’

‘Sorry,’ he muttered. ‘I’ll have a whisky, then, neat.’ It was his nature to pick a fight with anyone who appeared to be overprivileged. He’d had no end of battles with Jess’s dad, the tight bastard, in the days when he’d lived in Pearl Street. ‘Anyroad, what was it you wanted to see me about?’

She selected the whisky from the row of bottles on the sideboard, poured him a glass, then sat in the other chair. He was aware that her face had suddenly flushed. She was embarrassed about something. ‘You’ve always known that Penny is your child, haven’t you, Jack?’

It was his turn to flush. ‘Yes.’

‘Arthur must have had something wrong with him. We were married for almost twenty years, but I never became pregnant, although I’d always longed for children.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘There was just that one time with you – and nine months later I had Penny.’

Jack hung his head, embarrassed himself, and didn’t speak.

‘I became pregnant a second time. That was yours too, but I lost it.’

He hadn’t known that and he was shocked. ‘Lost it?’

‘I had a miscarriage, a sort of accident.’ She moved her legs so that her knees touched his, and he wondered if she’d placed the chairs close together deliberately. ‘Ever since, I’ve never stopped wanting another baby, Jack.’

‘Aren’t you getting a bit past it?’ he said coarsely. ‘And correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t you been married to your Yankee officer for the past two years? Is he another one like Arthur?’

‘Gus is a widower; he has a son from his first marriage. No, there’s nothing wrong with him, I just haven’t been lucky enough to conceive, that’s all. Now he’s been posted to Europe; he only left the other day. I’ve no idea when I’ll see him again.’

‘What’s that got to do with me?’ Why on earth were they having this conversation? He reminded himself that it was Jess who’d introduced the subject of babies and how they were acquired.

‘Can’t you guess?’ she said softly.

It took Jack a minute or so, and when he understood what she meant, his body went cold from head to toe in a way it had never done before. He stared at her with horror. ‘You want me to … ?’ He couldn’t think of a polite word for it on the spur of the moment.

‘Yes.’ She fell to her knees and laid her head in his lap. ‘Please, Jack.’

Jack couldn’t have described the emotions that ran like wildfire through his body right then, but he went from being very cold to very hot. He couldn’t help himself. He slipped out of the chair so that they were kneeling together on the mat in front of the fire and buried his face in her beautiful hair. ‘I love you, Jess,’ he whispered.

‘And I love you, Jack. I always have and I always will.’

He laid her down so that she was on the floor beneath him. The dressing gown thing fell open, exposing her white body and her luscious breasts. He kissed them greedily, then thrust his big hand between her legs …

Afterwards, they lay on the floor, exhausted, though Jack wasn’t the sort of chap who could lie about naked in someone else’s house and he had pulled his trousers back on. He wondered what had happened to Jess’s blue garment as he stroked the curve of her hips and felt the softness of her breasts.

If she loved him as much as she said, why weren’t they living together in the house in Garnet Street, where they could lie together like this whenever they liked – which as far as he was concerned would be every single night?

He didn’t bother asking the question; he already knew what the answer would be, not that she’d spell it out in detail. He, a mere docker, living just round the corner from the house where she’d been born, wasn’t nearly good enough or important enough for her. She was only prepared to take up with a professional man like Arthur, her first husband, who’d gone to university and had a degree in something or other, or the Yankee officer she was hooked up with now.

He grinned, and she said immediately, ‘What are you smiling at?’

‘I was thinking how I’m nothing but a bloody racehorse,’ he said. ‘A stud.’

‘You should charge a fee,’ she suggested, smiling back. ‘It would have to be guineas, not pounds.’

A thought struck him. She wouldn’t want the Yank knowing she’d been having it off with another man. If Jack was going to give her the baby she wanted, it’d have to be soon, within the next few weeks. It meant he’d have to get a move on. In fact, he felt up to it again right now.

He could do things to Jess, and she to him, that he’d never dreamt of doing with Mollie. He bent down and kissed her right breast, and she responded by arching her back and clasping his head in her hands. ‘Don’t stop, Jack,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Don’t stop.’

In the King’s Arms, quite a few of the customers were keeping an eye out for Jack Doyle. He hadn’t felt well the night before, had actually gone home early, they recalled, and they were worried that he’d come down with something.

When it reached nine o’clock, Mack suggested that someone go and knock on his door, make sure he was all right.

The someone returned five minutes later and said there’d been no answer to his knock, ‘I didn’t like to go inside. Anyroad, if there’s summat wrong with him, then his kids’d know and we’d have heard.’

Mack nodded. ‘I reckon you’re right. It seems that for once, Jack’s got something more important to do tonight than prop up the bar.’

It was October; Christmas was approaching. Would this be the last Christmas of the war? Everyone had wished for the same thing every Christmas since it had begun. Every time they had been wrong.

In the days before the war – it felt like an eternity ago – they’d made the cake and the puddings well in advance of Christmas, given them time to mature, like fine wine or posh cheese. But now it was a struggle to get most of the ingredients. Dried fruit was desperately hard to come by, eggs virtually impossible unless you were a child; margarine was needed for every day, not for an entire week’s ration to be used in a cake, even if it was for Christmas. Candied peel, glacé cherries and almonds were but a distant memory, as well as nutmeg, unless you still had a bit left to grate from before the war.

Despite these handicaps, the women with children were determined that Christmas Day would turn out to be just fine. Half a dozen or so of them might well get together and make the cakes and puddings between them, each contributing something until most of the ingredients were available. Decorations, years old, would be brought down from lofts or up from cellars and used over and over again. Fathers and grandfathers would be called upon to make go-carts and scooters, though obtaining wheels proved a problem.

Sheila Reilly was desperate to find a skate – the sort with four wheels that you stood on, not the fish. The family already had one, and she would have loved the lads to have a pair between them. She had put a card in the window of the post office before now, but nothing had come of it.

Brenda Mahon was at her busiest, having had orders for dozens of bobble hats and scarf and glove sets. Customers had to provide their own wool, which was rationed and could only be obtained by using precious clothing coupons – or by undoing another knitted garment that had lost its shape.

The weather didn’t help the national mood of mild dejection. The summer hadn’t exactly been glorious, and the autumn was foggy and damp, with the sun mainly invisible as it hid behind the droopy grey clouds that seemed to be permanently overhead. It had been forecast that the winter was destined to be a cold one.

In addition to the nagging worry that the war might never be over, that things could possibly get even worse as time passed and they would never eat a proper Christmas cake again, or manage to obtain a skate, Eileen and Sheila were deeply concerned that their dad appeared to be coming down with something.

‘He’s dead quiet all the time,’ Sheila complained to her sister. ‘Even if you deliberately say something to rile him, he doesn’t respond. I’ve encouraged him to see a doctor, but he says he doesn’t believe in them.’

‘Well, we’ve always known that,’ Eileen said worriedly. ‘It’s ages since he came to do the garden. Mind you, it’s not as if he’s miserable. No matter how quiet he is, he always seems to have a bit of a smile on his face.’

‘Do you think he’s up to something, sis?’

‘What on earth could he be up to that he wouldn’t tell us about?’

Sheila shook her head. ‘I can’t think of a single thing.’

Phyllis Taylor wasn’t enjoying being in the army nearly as much as she had expected. She was still missing her mum and dad, still feeling homesick, though it was two months since she had joined up.

And although Doria would always be her best friend, there were times when she wished she was best friends with someone else, someone who enjoyed sightseeing, say, who would like to go to museums and art galleries, theatres – though it would have to be the cheapest seats. (Some of these places might be closed due to the war, but it would be easy to find out.) Doria preferred dance halls and pubs crammed with servicemen, who would virtually leap upon them when they entered and insist on buying them drinks. Then Phyllis would have to confess she didn’t drink.

‘Just an orange juice,’ she would insist. At first she wondered why the man offering the drink would instantly go off her, until she realised it meant he was most unlikely to get her drunk and therefore willing to go outside with him for a ‘jolly good snog’, as Doria called them.

It was all rather unpleasant. Even if Phyllis could bring herself to ditch Doria as a friend, she would never do it, because she felt obliged to protect her. The day might come when Doria would get into serious trouble with one of the men interested in having more than a snog, and who would rescue her if Phyllis wasn’t around?