The Seven Streets of Liverpool (25 page)

‘I bet you’re proud, Gladys.’ It was the red-haired woman, Jessica, whose dad had lived in the end house and been a rag-and-bone man. ‘Freda is a credit to you.’

‘No, she’s a credit to herself,’ Gladys said. She felt pretty sure that once Freda got as far as Cambridge University, she and Dicky wouldn’t see much of her any more, but she didn’t care.

Using the last of virtually everything in their larder, someone had made dozens of fairy cakes and, as an act of sheer rebellion, had iced every single one. It was to be assumed that icing sugar was still banned, so every person who ate a cake, including the children, was breaking the law.

Bunting criss-crossed the street, fluttering in the soft breeze, the sun shone brilliantly, balloons floated in the air, flags hung from the windows, blackout curtains had disappeared. Everyone, young and old, felt mad with happiness and excitement.

Women appeared with trays of jelly and custard sprinkled with some very old hundreds and thousands, a packet of which had been found at the back of someone’s cupboard. The children leapt up and grabbed them with joy.

The window of Jessica’s house was wide open and a gramophone was playing ‘You Were Never Lovelier’. It was being sung by a man with a voice like melting chocolate. A few couples had started to dance.

Eileen remembered dancing with Nick to the same song. It was the weekend they’d spent in London. What was he up to? she wondered. Why else would he be coming back now the war was over if it wasn’t for good? And would she take him back? Of course she would, no matter what he’d done, because she loved him and always would.

Lena Newton listened to the song. It was so romantic. She and Maurice had never danced, so she had no idea what it must be like, the feeling of having a man’s arms around you in that particular way.

She had been talking to a man at work a few weeks ago. ‘What are you going to do after the war?’ he’d asked. ‘You were posted here, weren’t you? You don’t belong in Liverpool.’

‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ She had supposed that she would stay on in Liverpool, but on reflection, there was nothing here for her except Godfrey, her cat, and a few friends. She had no real ties.

‘What are you going to do?’ she’d asked the man.

‘Me and the wife intend emigrating to Australia,’ he’d replied. ‘It’s a new country, very different from here, loads of space, different climate. It’ll be a big change as well as a challenge.’

Emigrating! She’d never heard the word before. And she quite fancied a change and a challenge. Her first thought was of Godfrey, but she knew Brenda would be willing to have him.

The man advised her to write to the Australian Embassy in London and ask them to send information as well as the appropriate forms. ‘That’s what I did,’ he said, adding with a grin, ‘You never know, Mrs Newton, one of these days we might catch up with one another on the other side of the world.’

Lena had received the forms and filled them in, and was now waiting for an answer. She had told no one about her plans.

As it began to grow dark, the lamplighter came and the gas lights flickered on for the first time in almost six years. A great cheer went up.

‘When the lights go on again,’ they sang, ‘all over the world.’

The King’s Arms was full to overflowing. Some customers were forced to sit outside on the pavement, but they didn’t mind. Nobody minded anything; the war was over and nothing else mattered.

Jack Doyle came and gave a short speech, saying how stupid war was and promising personally that there would never be another.

Someone suggested they all meet again at the turn of the century. ‘It’s going to be called Millennium Eve.’

‘We’ll all be dead by then,’ someone laughed.

‘
I
won’t.’ It was Sean Doyle speaking. ‘I’ll only be seventy-seven.’

The same person laughed again. ‘
Only!
’

When Eileen noticed how late it was, she realised it was time she went home. She didn’t want Nick coming back to an empty cottage. She left Nicky and Theo with Brenda and said she would come back for them early tomorrow. She told no one why she was leaving, just kissed everyone in sight and returned to Melling.

Nick was on the train from Euston to Liverpool. At some time or other, the uniqueness of the day had come to him: that this was the sort of day when you did talk to strangers. Chances were he would never experience another day like this in his lifetime.

When he’d got off the train at Liverpool Street station, it was more like a ballroom or a music hall. In the ticket hall, people were dancing. By the exit, they were singing. He wished he were an artist and could have painted the scene. Feeling rather out of things and much too sober, he went into a bar and ordered two pints of beer and a double whisky.

That was better! He patted his stomach cheerfully and went outside, where he realised there wasn’t a chance in hell of getting a taxi. He went on the underground instead and lost his way. By the time he arrived at Euston station, it was later than he’d planned. Not that it mattered.

The Liverpool train was already crowded when he got on, and every single soul appeared to be singing. There were no seats available, but that didn’t matter either. He hadn’t yet drunk enough to join in the singing, but there was a bar on board where he ordered another two beers and more whisky. Thus fortified, he joined in one of the inevitable sing-songs in a corridor full of troops.

‘I used to be in the air force,’ he told a young man in naval uniform. He felt slightly ashamed at being in civvies.

‘How come you got out before the war ended?’ the young man enquired.

‘Lost my arm.’ Nick giggled. He turned and showed the sleeve of his jacket neatly tucked inside the pocket.

‘Jesus, I’m really sorry.’ The young man touched him gently on the shoulder.

‘That’s all right,’ Nick said gaily. ‘Everything’s all right. In fact, everything is absolutely top-hole.’

He’d been playing a part over the last year. He wasn’t really the sort of fellow who wanted to listen to the tide for the rest of his life, and make love nightly to a woman he didn’t actually fancy and who insisted on making love to
him
. As for Clarence, he wasn’t exactly stimulating company.

No, what he wanted,
who
he wanted, was Eileen and Nicky, his wife and his son, and to live with them in the cottage in Melling. Together, the three of them would take whatever life had to throw at them.

‘Eileen!’ he shouted. ‘I love you.’

No one was taking a blind bit of notice. A soldier had opened the train door, was actually swinging on it; in and out, in and out. The train was hurtling along, rocking violently, making a monumental noise.

‘Don’t be a damn fool,’ someone shouted.

Someone else pushed past Nick, desperate to get to the toilet. In an effort to move out of the way, Nick tripped over a khaki haversack that had been left on the floor. He put out his left arm to prevent himself from falling, entirely forgetting that he no longer had a left arm. Unable to stop himself, he fell out of the open door.

The train must have travelled another mile before someone thought to pull the communication cord.

In Melling, Eileen sat alone in the cottage, waiting to hear the sound of Nick’s footsteps on the path; waiting and waiting.

The parties were over. The centre of Liverpool was wreathed in silence. It was that hour when the moon was fading and the sun had yet to appear, when it was neither night nor morning. The city had been bombed ferociously during the war that had just ended, but its people were unconquerable and would never be beaten. Any minute now, a new day would dawn. Who knows, the old streets might still be there, in another thousand years.

Epilogue

Millennium Eve

They arrived at the cottage at about half past seven. It was nothing like Penny remembered. The dark country lane had been widened to become a busy road, and there were now houses on either side, mostly detached, mostly bungalows, all brightly lit, with neat gardens, garages and cars parked outside.

And Penny was sure it hadn’t had a name before. Now there was a slice of varnished wood hanging over the front door, with
Autumn Cottage
painted on it. The place was also considerably bigger, with an extension almost as large as the original cottage built on the side.

‘Have they moved it?’ she asked Caitlin. ‘Is this really the same cottage in the same road?’

‘Liverpool’s changed drastically over the last fifty-five years, Pen,’ Caitlin said. ‘It’s expanded; most cities have. This is definitely me Auntie Eileen’s cottage.’

‘If Liverpool’s expanded, then what’s happened to the docks? There was nothing left of them when I looked this afternoon.’ Penny felt genuinely upset. All her memories of Bootle were being drastically altered.

Caitlin parked her car on the drive leading to the garage, and they both got out. ‘Nowadays,’ she said, ‘there are what are called container ports. Cargo doesn’t have to be unloaded by real human beings, like in Grandad’s day. Bootle isn’t a container port, so the docks have died a death.’

What a terrible shame, Penny thought sadly.

The curtains hadn’t been drawn in the front room, which was already full of people, mainly standing. Music was playing loudly. Caitlin knocked on the window and then rang the front door bell.

The door was opened by a woman of about fifty. ‘Oh there you are, sis!’ she cried, and threw her arms around Caitlin and kissed her on both cheeks. Then she did the same to Penny. ‘I don’t know who you are, but welcome,’ she said, pulling them both inside.

‘This,’ Caitlin said a trifle portentously, ‘is your Auntie Penny. Penny, this is your niece, Lillian. She was me mam’s tenth and final child, born five years after the war was over.’

‘How do you do?’ Penny murmured. She clearly recalled Sheila Reilly and her vast brood of children.

‘Let’s get something to drink.’ Caitlin led her into a huge modern kitchen that had replaced the rather stark, old-fashioned one that Penny remembered. ‘There’s only wine, red and white, and beer – and it’s very limited. We didn’t want people getting drunk when they had to drive home. What a way to start the new century – in the ozzie or a police cell.’

‘Or the morgue,’ Lillian suggested drily. ‘Can I have your coats to take upstairs? Ugh! Is this mink?’ She was only prepared to hold Penny’s fur coat by the lining. ‘Poor little minks,’ she said sadly. ‘They’re so sweet when they’re alive.’

‘They also stink something horrible,’ Caitlin told her. ‘Our Lil’s a vegan,’ she added to Penny when Lillian had gone upstairs. ‘I like your dress. You suit red. It goes well with your hair.’

‘They’re both new, the dress and the hair.’ Her fair hair had grown darker with the years and was turning grey. Perhaps it was Steve’s decision to exchange her for a younger model that had inspired her to have it dyed Marilyn Monroe silver and buy a simply styled dress in eye-blinking red. ‘Do I look fifty-nine?’ she asked Caitlin, who responded with, ‘No, you only look fifty-eight and a half – and you still haven’t said what you want to drink.’

‘Orange juice, please.’ She still had a touch of jet lag. Everything and everywhere felt extraordinarily odd.

It felt odder still when they went into the front room and Caitlin clapped her hands, demanding attention. Without actually counting, Penny reckoned there were about thirty or forty people there. Apparently there were more to come, all connected in some way or other to Pearl Street.

‘Quiet, everyone,’ Caitlin shouted.

‘Yes, miss,’ a few voices remarked sarcastically.

‘Stand to attention,’ someone else called.

‘Be quiet, the lot of you,’ Caitlin answered with a grin. ‘I’d like to introduce this lady. Some of you have never met her before, and for those who have, it was fifty-five years ago. This is Penny O’Hagen, née Henningsen, née Fleming, though in actual fact,’ she went on dramatically, ‘if she went by her real father’s name, she would be Penny Doyle.’

‘What?’ queried a couple of voices.

Penny wanted to sink through the floor. Every eye in the room was upon her.

Caitlin continued, ‘It wasn’t until Penny’s mother Jessica died – she of the wonderful red hair; I’m sure lots of you remember her. Anyroad, Jessica passed on in 1985, but not before telling Penny that her real father was Jack Doyle.’

At this, there was a chorus of ‘I don’t believe it’ and ‘By Jove’.

‘Yes, isn’t it amazing?’ Caitlin was almost dancing on the spot. ‘During the war, our strait-laced, stiff-backed, extremely moral grandad had an affair with gorgeous Jessica Fleming, resulting in Penelope here, who is related in some way to virtually everyone in this room. What is more, folks, this wasn’t just a flash-in-the pan affair. Jessica also had a son, Bernard, by our sexy old grandad, born straight after the war. Now, where’s me Uncle Sean?’

‘Here!’ A grey-haired man with a short beard waved from across the room.

‘You’ve just acquired a half-sister.’

‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph!’ said Uncle Sean, pretending to swoon. ‘We’ll have a jangle later, Penny, luv.’

Penny nodded weakly. She became aware that the music was nothing but wartime songs. Presently, the Andrews Sisters were singing ‘Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree’. A few people had joined in. The noise was tremendous. She found herself surrounded by people who recalled her, or her mother and her lovely hair.

‘I remember you well,’ a woman a few years older than her said. ‘I was Monica Mahon in those days and we used to play together. I married Dominic Reilly, but we got divorced not long afterwards. You might not know this, but Dominic became quite a famous football player. Loads of girls were after him and he couldn’t bring himself to turn a single one away.’ She laughed as if she’d been over the experience a long time. ‘He’s a manager now and still can’t turn the girls away.’

More people came and spoke to her. ‘Hello, Penny, I’m Niall Reilly.’

‘I’m Muriel Mahon.’

‘I’m Edward Doyle – so you’re my auntie,’ chuckled a slim, handsome man a bit younger than herself. ‘Sean Doyle is me dad.’

‘What happened to Eileen who used to live here?’ Penny asked. It was Eileen, her mother’s friend, who she remembered the best, and playing with her little boy, Nicky, in the garden of this very cottage. It had been most odd to discover, years later, that Eileen had been her half-sister.

‘After the war was over,’ Edward said, ‘Eileen married Vincenzo Conti, the gardener. She died quite young, in her forties, but not before she’d had two daughters. Vincenzo took them with him to live in Italy.’

‘Where’s Nicky, her son?’

Edward glanced around the room, which seemed to be getting more crowded by the minute. ‘I can’t see him, but he’s probably somewhere.’

Caitlin was making another announcement. ‘As you know,’ she shouted, ‘I’ve been busy preparing for this party for years, tracking people down, like, seeing if they wanted to come if they were still around. Well, one I found was Lena Newton, who lived over the dairy in Pearl Street during the war. She lives in Australia and she’s in her nineties and can’t be with us, but she’s actually sent a letter wishing us good luck. She married a sheep farmer, had five kids, went into politics and became a member of the government of New South Wales. I’ll put the letter on the sideboard in case anyone wants to read it.’

‘I’ve brought something.’ A long-haired man of about thirty wearing jeans and a fluorescent sweatshirt stepped forward holding a book. ‘Me dad used to live in Pearl Street; his name was Dicky Tutty. He lived a good life, worked hard, paid his taxes, but his sister, me Auntie Freda, became a lawyer and was quite famous – she took up lost causes and represented hopeless cases. She retired ten years ago and lives in London with her husband. She had a book written about her.’ He held it up for everyone to see. The front cover showed a stern-faced woman grimacing at the camera below the title
Left of Left, The Life of Freda Owens.

‘I’ve heard of her,’ gasped Caitlin. ‘I never dreamt she was our Freda from Pearl Street.’

‘Well she was,’ Freda’s nephew said proudly.

Penny was feeling uncomfortably hot. She left the room and discovered that people were gathered in the hall and on the stairs. No doubt she was related to them all in some way; their great-aunt or second cousin once removed, whatever that meant. The kitchen was crowded too.

She thought about her girls, her daughters, her real flesh and blood, and wished she was with them in Breckenridge, Colorado, rather than with these people to whom she was related, yet who were mostly total strangers.

There was a door to her left, which she opened in the hope that it was a place where she could be alone for a while to shed a few silent tears; a broom cupboard would do, a bathroom, a laundry room, anything. Instead she found herself in a small office, where a man was seated behind a desk feeding paper into a fax machine.

‘I’m sorry.’ It came out like a sob. ‘I didn’t realise …’ She was about to leave, but the man got to his feet and came towards her. He was tall, blond, with slightly greying sideboards and a world-weary expression in his blue eyes. He laid his hand on her arm.

‘Don’t go, sit down a minute. You’re too gorgeous to leave straight away.’ He smiled at her appreciatively. ‘Is it getting to you out there? It’s making me as depressed as hell. That song they’re playing now was my mother’s favourite.’ ‘We’ll Meet Again’ was being sung by a woman with a voice like an angel. ‘Would you like some coffee?’

Penny sank into a chair. He’d called her gorgeous – and that smile! ‘I’d love coffee,’ she conceded with a massive sigh, ‘but the kitchen’s full to suffocation.’

‘Aha! Well I thought that might happen, so I have my own supply.’ He pointed to a coffee machine on a bookshelf beside the desk and switched it on. ‘I’m a columnist with the
Guardian
newspaper and had an urgent article to get to London before midnight,’ he explained, ‘which is why I’ve secreted myself in here. I’ll join the fray in a minute, but not before you and I have had a cup of coffee. Fortunately, I have another cup.’

It dawned on Penny that this must be Nicky Stephens, who she’d played with often when they were children. For some reason this knowledge came as an enormous disappointment. She was wondering why when she remembered that she was his aunt, and no matter how gorgeous he found her and she him, they were out of bounds to each other.

‘I’m Penny Henningsen,’ she said. ‘If you remember me at all, it will be as Penny Fleming. Your mom and mine were best friends.’

The coffee had boiled and he was pouring it out. ‘Do you take milk and sugar?’ he asked.

‘Cream, if you’ve got it, no sugar.’

‘All I have is some grotty powdered milk.’

‘Grotty powdered milk will do.’

He brought the drink across. ‘Eileen Stephens wasn’t my real mother,’ he said. ‘I’m Theo Stephens; Nicky is my half-brother and he’s not going to be here till later. My real mother died in the war, but I couldn’t have had a better substitute than Eileen.’

‘I don’t remember you.’

‘I wasn’t quite a year old when the war ended.’

Penny sipped the coffee. She didn’t want to think any more. In the living room, they were having a loud argument about the attributes of Margaret Thatcher compared to the present prime minister, Tony Blair.

Theo Stephens was also listening. ‘I don’t like either of them,’ he remarked. ‘And I feel sorry for you lot across the Atlantic having elected George W. Bush as your next president.’

‘I feel sorry for us too,’ Penny said. ‘We voted for Al Gore.’

‘Who’s “we”?’ he asked quickly.

‘Me and my husband; we’re separated.’

He grinned. ‘I’m sorry to hear it.’ He didn’t look it.

‘What about you?’ she asked.

‘Divorced. Three sons. Three grandchildren. All living in London.’

‘I have two daughters, Laura and Elaine. And five grand-children.’

They stared at each other, neither saying a word, while Penny thought of all the love, the pain and the drama that went into a few words describing two people’s lives.

There was sudden activity in other parts of the house. It would seem everyone was going into the garden, brimming over with excitement. The television was on loud as it chimed in the new year – the new millennium.

The chimes couldn’t be heard outside. In the garden, Penny and Theo were holding hands, and she wondered how long it would continue. Just until the century changed from the twentieth to the twenty-first? Or afterwards?

Voices began to count down: ‘Eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two …’

The ‘one’ went unheard as the world exploded into a roar of sound and the sky became a mad canvas of lights and colour, with fireworks soaring upwards, spilling stars and sparks and streamers in their wake.

‘
Happy New Year!
’ people screamed.

‘
No it’s Happy New Millennum!
’

They danced and laughed until Caitlin’s voice could be heard above all the others.

‘Let’s make a toast!’ she yelled.

‘What to?’ they yelled back.

‘To Pearl Street. That’s why we’re here. Raise your glasses to Pearl Street.’

‘To Pearl Street!’ everyone shouted, and they laughed, cried and shouted even more.