The Seven Streets of Liverpool (3 page)

Neither spoke. Somehow they seemed able to communicate better when silent than when attempting to hold a conversation. Eileen had curled her arms around his neck. He had his hand in the small of her back, pressing her against him.

‘I love you,’ she wanted to say. But it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He didn’t believe that she loved him, not now that he was such a damaged human being: ‘a freak’ was how he referred to himself. There was nothing she could say that he wouldn’t think was merely sympathy because of his condition. Where did he think all the passion had gone? Eileen hadn’t thought it possible to love him more, but she did now. She remembered that tomorrow, Boxing Day – actually it was already very early Boxing Day – he had to go back to London. The train would almost certainly be crowded and he wouldn’t be able to sleep, perhaps not even sit down if he couldn’t find a seat.

‘We should go to bed, Nick,’ she murmured.

Instantly he stopped dancing, his arm falling away as if she’d just told him she couldn’t stand being close to him. ‘Yes, we’d better,’ he said stiffly. He wouldn’t touch her in bed, and if she touched him he would regard it almost as an insult, because she felt sorry for him.

‘Would you like some cocoa?’ she asked.

‘No thank you. I’ll go on up now. Good night, Eileen.’ She could have sworn he almost bowed courteously, as if they’d just met. It was hard to believe how much they’d once meant to each other.

Eileen made cocoa for herself and took it to drink in the moonlit room. It would give Nick time to pretend to be asleep.

At first she’d been pleased when he’d been given a clerical job in some government office in London. It was something to do with the Royal Air Force and would take his mind off things, she had thought, give him an interest. Staying in Melling he could well become bored and feel overly conscious of his injury. But she guessed he was lonely in London. There was no one there to make a fuss of him, and the weekend journey to and from Liverpool on packed trains was onerous and wore him down. She’d suggested he come home just once a month, but he’d smiled cynically as if she was saying she would prefer to see him less often.

‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s seeing Nicky every week that keeps me going,’ he’d said coldly.

Eileen finished the cocoa, took the cup into the kitchen to wash, then went upstairs. As usual, she climbed carefully into bed so as not to disturb Nick, though she knew darn well he was wide awake.

Next morning after breakfast, she and Nicky went with him to Kirkby station. She put the little boy in his big pram; although nowadays she mainly used his pushchair, this way Nick could put his suitcase on the pram, saving him from carrying it.

They walked down the slope to the platform. Their conversation on the way had been stilted. Eileen couldn’t think of anything to say, and she assumed Nick couldn’t either. She felt horribly relieved when she saw the white smoke of the train as it approached. Then horribly sick as it got nearer and she knew that she wouldn’t see him again for another five or six lonely days.

Having him home was an ordeal, but seeing him leave was enough to break her heart.

Chapter 2

January 1943

There were thousands and thousands of streets similar to Pearl Street in the cities, towns and villages of Great Britain, yet each was unique in its own special way. It wasn’t just the architecture but the inhabitants that distinguished them from each other.

Pearl Street had twenty-three terraced properties on each side, the front doors leading directly on to the pavement. Each small back yard housed a lavatory and a washhouse. Some of the washhouses had been turned into basic bathrooms, tool sheds, workshops or pigeon lofts.

About halfway down the street, the row of houses on both sides was interrupted by a narrow entry that led to the neighbouring streets as well as to behind the back yards where dustbins were left to be emptied by corporation workmen. These narrow, squalid passages were used by innocent courting couples, as well as prostitutes and their clients. They were also the place where someone might be taken for a good beating, and were occasionally the scene of a murder – this had definitely been the case in some of the more violent parts of Liverpool.

There was one thing in particular that made Pearl Street and the streets nearby differ from most others, and that was the twenty-foot-high wall at one end, behind which electric trains ran to Liverpool one way and Southport the other, turning the streets into cul-de-sacs. A piece of chalk could magically turn the ugly wall into goalposts or a set of wickets. Girls could play two-balls against it, or even three-balls if they were skilful enough.

Until recently, most of the residents had lived in the street their entire married lives, had even been born there, but since September 1939, when the war began, people came and went by the minute, or so it seemed to the more permanent residents.

Eileen Costello, for example, who was now Eileen Stephens and had lived in number 16, had met a chap from Greece who’d joined the air force and had gone to live in Melling. Eileen’s first husband, Francis Costello, had been killed in the raids along with their little boy, Tony. Some people thought that Eileen still hadn’t got over losing Tony. Eileen’s sister Sheila and her kids had moved into the house when number 19 had been bombed.

And Miss Brazier from number 10, a real sour old maid, had gone mad all of a sudden. Throwing caution as well as her old maid’s clothes to the wind, she’d dyed her hair blonde, joined the army and been transferred to Scotland. Months later, it was rumoured she had married a sergeant.

Just before the war began, Mary and Joey Flaherty and their kids had gone to live in Canada, and later the Evanses had moved to Wales to live with relatives. Dear old Mr Singerman from number 3 had lost his life in one of the worst of the raids. His daughter Ruth and her husband had been living in his old house ever since. The war had made a widow of Jessie Fleming, but she’d since married a Yank with a funny surname and was living in Burtonwood until the conflict was over, when she and her little daughter Penny would move to the United States. Jessie came and went from the street like a yo-yo, having lived there on three separate occasions, most recently in Miss Brazier’s old house.

Now, two other women were living in number 10: the Taylors, mother and daughter. Mrs Taylor was about forty and her daughter looked as if she hadn’t long left school. Both wore black a lot, as if someone close to them had recently died, presumably Mr Taylor. No one knew why they were there, or where they had come from. They were a quiet pair and were keeping themselves very much to themselves.

At least they were until Aggie Donovan managed to trap the daughter directly outside the house, where she questioned her mercilessly for a good half-hour.

‘Her name’s Phyllis and she’s from some place near Hull,’ Aggie later confided breathlessly to Brenda Mahon. ‘Her mam’s a nurse and she’s got a job in Bootle hospital. And you’ll never guess why they’ve come.’

‘Because the mother’s got a job in Bootle hospital?’

‘No.’ Aggie glared at her neighbour. ‘It’s something else. Guess.’

‘I’m hopeless at guessing,’ Brenda confessed.

‘Her dad, Mr Taylor,’ Aggie said in a hushed voice, ‘came to work in Bootle after the war started and has never been seen since. He just disappeared off the face of the earth,’ she finished dramatically.

‘I know a Mr Taylor in Southey Street,’ Brenda said. ‘He’s about a hundred years old.’

‘It’s not him, they’ve checked,’ Aggie said impatiently. ‘They think he might have got caught up in an air raid and lost his memory, like. It was in a picture,
Random
something.’

‘
Random Harvest
,’ Brenda supplied. ‘With Greer Garson and Ronald Colman. I saw it last year.’

Aggie dismissed this observation with a wave of her well-worn wrinkled hand. She had lived almost eighty years without having seen a single picture and was none the worse for it. Anyroad, real life was far more interesting. ‘They’re just going to wander round Bootle looking for him,’ she told Brenda. She rather liked the phrase. ‘Wander round,’ she repeated.

‘He might be dead,’ Brenda remarked.

‘In that case, someone would have told them; a copper, like. I mean, he’d have had his identity card on him.’

Brenda agreed that this would have been likely. She escaped from Aggie and went to relay the news to Sheila, while Aggie looked for someone else to tell.

The Taylors weren’t the only new arrivals in Pearl Street. The house at the top of the street used to be the dairy, but now that the country was on rations and people were required to register with a single grocer, it couldn’t exist selling nothing but milk. So the dairy closed, the farmer’s son who ran it and lived upstairs returned to live on the farm, and a billeting officer in Birmingham arranged for a Mrs Lena Newton to take over the flat. It had been swiftly redecorated and some items of new furniture provided. The dairy part was left empty.

The street had already decided that Lena was as plain as the proverbial pikestaff. With her frizzy brown hair, round glasses and evidently nervous disposition she looked rather like a lost owl. Most people found this rather endearing, so it wasn’t all that surprising that she’d managed to cop a fella – to prove it, there was a wedding ring on the third finger of her left hand.

Back in Birmingham Lena had been employed as secretary to an accountant, but had recently been directed by the Ministry of Labour to work for the manager of a small engineering firm in Hope Street, Liverpool, which manufactured propellers for the Royal Navy. His need of a secretary was far more urgent than that of a mere accountant – what were
they
doing towards the war?

The move suited Lena ideally. Her husband, Maurice, was a merchant seaman and Liverpool was the port to which he returned most frequently. It meant that when he was on leave they could spend more time together.

Lena was a shy person who didn’t make friends easily. She willingly told Aggie her entire life story in the hope that she would pass it around and people would come and befriend her. It was Aggie who told her about Brenda Mahon being a dressmaker, and Lena decided to approach her and order two frocks, a winter one and a summer one. It was a good way of becoming part of the street.

More than anything she wanted to get to know the woman with the new baby who she’d noticed passing her flat, the infant hardly to be seen beneath its mountain of bedding. She was hoping the woman would become a friend and let her hold her new son or daughter. A baby – several babies, in fact – was what Lena wanted more than anything else in the world, but despite having been married to Maurice for ten whole years, there’d been no sign of her falling pregnant.

Tom Chance was still living with the Tuttys. He had got a job as a barman in a pub on Marsh Lane and handed over ten bob a week to Freda for his keep. He’d offered it to Gladys first, and Freda had to tell him that it was she rather than her mother who was in charge of the household finances.

‘I don’t want her tempted into buying gin,’ she told Tom, now officially their lodger. A single bed and an extremely narrow chest of drawers had been bought second-hand and installed in the box room. Brenda Mahon had been called upon to make curtains.

‘I’ll have the place wallpapered when the weather gets warmer,’ Freda promised.

Tom nodded gravely. He was the perfect lodger, never making a noise or a nuisance of himself in any shape or form. And he helped prepare the meals. He seemed to know ways of making the food more tasty, like mashing the potatoes and turning them into little cakes to roast in the oven, and adding a pinch of curry power which he bought from somewhere to the gravy.

At school, Freda thought about him during boring lessons like science and needlework. She had a feeling she was falling in love with Tom Chance. If he was still around when she was sixteen, she made up her mind she would marry him.

In February, Calum Reilly came home from sea with six days’ leave ahead of him. For the first two, he slept solidly, waking occasionally to kiss his children, introduce himself several times to his new daughter and make love to his wife. They both realised that it wouldn’t be such a good idea for Sheila to fall for another baby so soon after the last, so they reluctantly took precautions. Neither liked the idea of him having to withdraw at the very last minute, but it had to be done.

‘Seven children is enough for any man, never mind the woman,’ Cal said gruffly. ‘And you lost one, didn’t you, luv? That would’ve made eight.’

‘I wouldn’t mind eighteen,’ Sheila said wistfully and not all that truthfully. The new baby, Mollie – called after Sheila’s mother – was wearing her out. She’d quite like to rest for a year or so before starting again.

A few days later, Lena Newton was seated by the table nursing the new baby, now six weeks old, and marvelling at how perfect she was. It had turned out to be easy to make friends. Brenda, the dressmaker, had mentioned her best friend Sheila’s new baby, Lena had asked if she could see her, and Brenda had taken her to the Reillys’ there and then. ‘Sheila loves visitors,’ she said.

Calum Reilly was still there and actually remembered coming across Maurice Newton, Lena’s husband, on a ship once.

‘He joined when he was eighteen,’ Lena told Calum.

‘So did I.’ Calum smiled. ‘It’s a small world, the merchant navy.’

His children were crawling all over him, making the most of him before he went away again. Sheila was watching them, her eyes bright with happiness. Lena looked down at the tiny baby in her arms and thought how perfect their lives were. When next Maurice came home, there would be just the two of them. And although she would be pleased to see her husband, it wasn’t the same without children.

She was invited to go with Sheila and the children to Melling next time they went. ‘You can meet our Eileen and her little boy, Nicky. If it’s the weekend, then Nick will be there, her husband, and our dad’ll be doing the garden. You can meet them too.’

In London, Nick Stephens sometimes wondered if his job in the War Office had been invented specifically for him. Someone somewhere had felt sorry for him and arranged for him to sit in a room in an office in Dover Street, off Piccadilly, and make lists of statistics, as well as a record of news items from the press and the wireless and debates in Parliament that were in any way concerned with the Royal Air Force. He couldn’t imagine what use the statistics were to anyone and was convinced he was being paid to waste his time.

The someone somewhere who was keeping an eye on him obviously felt the same about him as did Eileen, his wife, in whose eyes he could see nothing but pity because he wasn’t a real man any more, just as he was no longer a member of the Royal Air Force.

In case this was true, he was often tempted to give up the position, but what would happen then? He couldn’t get another job, not a real one, not with only one arm. He would have to live in the cottage in Melling, live with the endless pity showing in his wife’s eyes.

One evening late in February he emerged from the office in Dover Street and made for Piccadilly and the basement bar where he would spend the next hour – or possibly two or three – getting totally plastered before making his unsteady way back through Green Park to his lodgings in Birdcage Walk. There he would fall into a drunken slumber, waking up with a hangover that wouldn’t disappear until lunchtime the following day.

God, this was an awful life! Was he destined to live like this until the bloody war was over? And the terrible thing was that even then he genuinely couldn’t think of a single thing he wanted to do. Flying a plane had always been his ultimate ambition. Nothing else held any interest.

The streets were dark – properly dark, that is, as black as a night could be without a moon, a star or a single speck of light to be seen. There was something about the lack of light that made him lose his sense of balance, so that he felt lopsided. Traffic lumbered past, ghosts of buses and cars and the occasional lorry. He was worried about crossing the road, staying upright. If he wasn’t careful he’d lose his other bloody arm. If he was lucky, he might be killed and there’d be nothing at all left to worry about.

Except there was Nicky, his son. He wanted to see Nicky grow up, become a man. And there was Eileen, his beautiful wife, who he would never stop loving.

‘Oh, sod it,’ he said out loud.

‘Is that you, Nick?’ A woman’s voice he vaguely recognised.

‘Yes,’ he said curtly. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Doria Mallory. I work in the office next to yours. Do you mind if I hold on to you? I’m absolutely lost here. Have you any idea where we are? I always lose track the minute I step outside the building.’

‘Opposite Charlie’s, I reckon.’ If you turned left coming out of Dover Street, it was twelve paces down.

‘Charlie’s?’

‘It’s a bar. I’m hoping to go there if I can get across the road.’

‘Oh, may I join you for a drink? That would be wonderful. A gin and It is exactly what I need right now.’

‘Are you old enough to go to pubs?’ She didn’t sound it.

‘I’m eighteen; nearly nineteen.’

‘Oh, all right then.’ He would have preferred her to go away once she had helped him across the road.