Honour Thy Father

by Honour Thy Father (retail) (epub)

  John was still often detained at the factory on union matters but on the night of the CND talk by Bill Brewer he made a determined effort to be at home in time to sit down with the family for the evening meal.

  ‘Where are you off tonight then, Dad?’ Gerry said, eating his meal rapidly.

  ‘I’m not out. I’ve asked another fellow to give the talk tonight.’

  ‘Good. Time you slowed down a bit,’ Gerry said cheerfully.

  Anne shook her head at him. ‘You’re the one who needs to slow down. Out till all hours then getting up for work the next day.’

  ‘Never mind, Mum. Wait until we hit the big time then I’ll give up my job and stay in bed all day.’

  Julie giggled and Gerry began to tease her about her homework. In spite of her long absences from school, Julie had passed the eleven-plus and had been selected for a place in the same convent grammar school as Dilly, Tony and Helen’s daughter, and seemed happy there.

  ‘About time for a haircut, isn’t it, son?’ John said, looking at Gerry’s mop of fair curls.

  Gerry laughed. ‘No. There’s no short back and sides now, Dad. Everyone’s grown their hair.’

  John seemed about to protest but instead he asked where the Merrymen were playing.

  ‘At a club called the Cherry Tree,’ Gerry told him. ‘It’s a bit minty but it’s a booking.’

  ‘I might come and see you,’ said John and Gerry looked alarmed.

  ‘Not there, Dad. It’s a dive.’ He looked at John’s dark suit. ‘You’ll have to get some gear if you want to start clubbing it,’ he laughed.

  Laura had not spoken at all but now she said suddenly, ‘The oldest swinger in town.’

  John glared at her.

  ‘You could come some night next week,’ Gerry suggested. ‘We’ve got a few good ones then. The Grafton and the Orrell Park. You could pretend to be an agent. Wave a cheque book.’ He laughed and John smiled uncertainly.

  What’s happening here? he thought. A little while ago I was the one who made the decisions. He’d have asked me if he could grow his hair and stay out so late but suddenly I’m being told what to do. He felt uneasy and disorientated. He looked down the table to Anne, who smiled and said cheerfully, ‘I wonder how Bill will go on. I hope he doesn’t get stage fright.’

  ‘A lot of fellows are into CND, you know, Dad,’ Gerry told him. ‘And David says a lot of them at the college are too.’

  ‘It’s daubed all over the entrance to the Cavern,’ Laura said. ‘Y’know, CND and the symbol.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Everybody’ll be affected if they go ahead with these bomb tests.’

  Later John said to Anne that he seemed to have alarmed Gerry by suggesting going to listen to the Merrymen.

  ‘It’s just that you’d probably stick out like a sore thumb from what I’ve heard of these clubs,’ Anne said. ‘They’re all so young and you wouldn’t be able to hear properly with the noise and the screaming girls. Not a bit like the caelidhes we used to go to,’ she laughed.

  John smiled then said ruefully, ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t have wanted my dad there either.’

  ‘I tell you what though, John, these kids have got it made. They seem to think the world’s their oyster and it is. Like Joe says, they’ve got plenty of money and good jobs and they do what they like and get away with it.’

  ‘I know. I was thinking that tonight and I don’t know how the hell it happened.’

  ‘It’s because they’re all the same. They’ve all got money in their pockets and it’s given them the confidence to demand their own way and get it. They just sort of take it for granted and that’s made them all independent.’

  ‘Like Gerry with his long hair,’ said John. ‘He didn’t ask me, just told me.’

  ‘Well, he is eighteen, John.’

  ‘Yes, but we didn’t make our own decisions at that age. We were still treated as children.’

  Anne looked at him quizzically. ‘How old were you when you went to Spain to fight?’

  ‘Yes, but I had to do it on the quiet. Pretend I was going to Paris for the weekend or my dad would have stopped me.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Mind you, he told me the night before I left he knew what I was up to but he said as long as Mum wasn’t upset I should do what I believed in.’

  ‘I always admired your dad,’ Anne said softly.

  ‘Yes, I have to admit he was good about that. Not many fathers at that time would have taken that line.’ He lit two cigarettes and handed one to Anne. ‘Now that I’m at this stage myself I think I understand him better or at least I have more sympathy for him. Mind you, it’s harder now. We’re living in a different world.’

  ‘I’m made up for the kids,’ Anne said staunchly. ‘This is the time to enjoy life while they’re young. I hope the good times last for ever. We were kept down too much.’

  ‘As long as things don’t go too far the other way,’ John said. ‘Some of these television programmes seem to be making out that anything goes. It’s fuddy-duddy to have any morals.’

  ‘I didn’t like that programme, That Was The Week That Was, mocking religion. But those sort of people always had way-out ideas. Strange lives, and they’ve got the chance now to air their ideas, but ordinary people see them for what they are.’

  ‘Our generation do, Anne, but kids are easily influenced. They’ll think it’s clever and fashionable and try to copy them.’

  ‘No, they’ve got more sense.’

  ‘Don’t be too sure. Businessmen don’t spend money advertising soap powder and stuff like that on TV unless they know they can influence people. It’s the thin edge of the wedge.’

  ‘It won’t last,’ Anne said cheerfully. ‘They’ll just go too far and get knocked back. Why, I nearly wrote in about that programme, I was so shocked, and lots of people must have felt the same. Some with more influence than me and others who did write in. They can’t afford to stir up a hornet’s nest like that and get away with it.’

  ‘I’ll tell you two who need watching,’ John said. ‘Our Laura and Rosaleen. Joe and Sarah seem to wear blinkers.’

  ‘You’re wrong, John,’ Anne said positively. ‘Rosa’s too pretty for her own good but they’re both good girls. They won’t come to any harm.’ John shrugged, unconvinced, but Anne had lost interest in the argument. At this time her thoughts were often with her beloved sister, Maureen, whose health was failing. She was to return shortly from the refugee camp to a hospital in England.

  Chapter Nine

  The snow at last began to melt on 16 March and soon the hard winter was succeeded by a lovely summer. Laura and Rosa had both obtained Saturday jobs to supplement their pocket money, but while Laura stayed in the same job in an estate agent’s office, Rosa flitted from one job to another, rarely staying more than three weeks anywhere.

  Gradually the girls were drifting apart although they remained good friends. They were nearing the end of their schooldays. Rosa showed a flair for art and design and hoped to go on to the College of Art and she was still interested in dancing and also had vague plans for an acting career. She had twice appeared in pantomime with others from her dancing school at Liverpool Empire.

  Laura shared none of these interests and was uncertain about a career. After a visit to Julie in hospital she thought briefly that she might become a nurse but she was dissuaded by a nurse friend of Moira’s.

  ‘You’d never stand it,’ the nurse told her frankly. ‘The discipline and being told off for something you hadn’t done. You’d be crowning Sister with a bedpan.’

  Laura had to agree but could think of nothing else. She was not ambitious and thought she would be happy enough in any type of office work.

  As the two girls grew older, the difference in their temperaments showed more clearly and made them less close. Laura’s feelings were deep and complex. She loved Julie and worried about her, yet she had to struggle not to resent the amount of love and attention given her sister by their mother. She was proud of Gerry but
she felt it unfair that he had so much freedom and she had so little.

  Her anxious protective love for her mother was deep and never wavered and she longed to shield her from any unhappiness. Her feeling for her father swung between love and hate, or what she told herself was hate, only to feel ashamed that she had used the word about her own father. Often her confusion was compounded by an act of kindness and compassion by her father or evidence of his care for his own mother.

  Everything was black or white to Laura at this stage and she spoke as she thought, often with devastating effect, but although she regretted giving offence she was unable to compromise.

  Rosa was completely different. Light-minded and light-hearted, she did whatever she wanted to do without thought of the consequences and was untroubled by the effect on other people. She lacked the imagination to put herself in another’s position and understand their feelings and she never felt deeply enough to care.

  Everyone was charmed by Rosa, even the girls in their group who lost boyfriends to her, because it was obvious that Rosa did nothing to draw them away. Her beauty and charisma did that.

  The group of friends who had stayed together since their youth-club days were gradually breaking up. Rosa had been the first to go out alone with a boy but soon others within the group began to pair off.

  Laura stayed within the group and still regarded the boys only as friends. She was impatient with the constant giggling discussion about the boys among the other girls.

  ‘I think they’re daft,’ she told Rosa. ‘We have far more fun in a crowd.’

  ‘You know what you are?’ Rosa laughed. ‘You’re a late developer.’

  ‘It’s more that you’re an early developer,’ Laura retorted. ‘And you’ve given the others ideas.’ But she still loyally covered for Rosa when she was out late on a date.

  As time passed, Laura found that she had more in common with her cousin David than with Rosa. They shared a love of books and David had a dry wit which Laura appreciated. He played cello in the college orchestra and was studying hard, hoping to be accepted for Oxford or Cambridge. He had no time for visiting clubs but he collected records of the Beatles and Roy Orbison and had lately become interested in soul music.

  ‘A bit of everything,’ the girls teased him. ‘How can you enjoy the stuff you play on the cello and like all those records as well?’

  ‘Easily,’ David retorted. ‘One doesn’t shut the other out and I mostly buy ballad-type music anyway.’

  ‘It’s no use playing records in your room,’ Rosa said. ‘You’ve got to hear them to really appreciate them. Come to the Cavern.’

  David responded to the challenge and had the foresight to buy tickets for the Cavern for 3 August when the Beatles and another of his favourite groups, the Escorts, appeared there.

  The warm city streets were thronged with young people as David and the girls walked along North John Street. Crowds filled Mathew Street as they turned off for the Cavern but only ticket-holders were admitted. The Beatles had become even more popular since appearing on television’s 625 Show and on numerous radio programmes.

  ‘Good job you got the tickets, David,’ Laura said as they pushed through the crowd. ‘We’d never have thought of it.’

  ‘Whew, it’s hot, isn’t it?’ David said. ‘Might have been better to go to the Grafton last night to hear them.’

  ‘No, the Cavern’s better,’ Rosa said but when the performance was over David again regretted not going to the Grafton Rooms instead.

  ‘I agree the music sounds great and it’s a fabulous atmosphere but it stinks,’ he complained.

  ‘No it doesn’t,’ Rosa said indignantly. ‘You’ve got no soul. That smell’s fab. So exciting. You just know you’re going to have a fantastic time as soon as you smell it.’

  ‘What? BO and mustiness, that’s all I could smell,’ David said. ‘And the heat and the water running down the walls. No thanks. I’ll stick to records.’

  ‘There’s a heat wave on, you goon,’ Laura said but David only laughed.

  Although it was midnight, the streets were still full of young people strolling around in the warm, scented air, wearing every style of fashion – young men with long hair in gaudily patterned shirts and winkle-picker shoes or clog-style sandals in bright colours and girls in bright shift dresses and elaborate hairstyles.

  They met many people they knew and exchanged greetings or stopped for a few minutes to talk. Everyone seemed happy and suddenly Rosa threw back her head and raised her arms. ‘Isn’t this great?’ she cried. ‘Oh, I’m so glad we live now.’

  ‘“Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,”’ David began and Laura finished the quotation. ‘“But to be young was very heaven.”’

  They all laughed then linked arms and ran through the side streets from sheer joy in living. Older people talked of a new Elizabethan Age after the Queen’s coronation in 1953 but to the young people now it seemed that the Golden Age had arrived. Everything was changing and youth was coming into its own.

  A friend of Moira’s was a typist in a cotton brokers’ office in the Cotton Exchange where all the clerks wore dark suits and bowler hats. The office boy had been reprimanded for wearing a leather jacket and string tie for work and had left, only to become the hugely successful Rory Storm of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. He later went back to visit the office wearing designer clothes and driving a white Rolls-Royce and was surrounded by the dazzled office girls. Incredulous and dismayed, the sober-suited male clerks watched with envy.

  Everyone dreamed of following his example and boys and girls were determined not to be pushed around. Bewildered supervisors and senior staff now looked in vain for the deference they felt was due to them.

  Laura and Rosa felt cheated that they had missed most of the years of the Beatles in Liverpool although they followed their triumphant progress elsewhere with pride and there were many other Liverpool groups for their adulation.

  Their tastes were now different and by the time Rosa moved on to the College of Art, she followed the more raunchy music of the Rolling Stones and the Kinks. Laura still preferred the local groups, the Escorts, the Searchers and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas.

  Laura had seen little of her silent deskmate, Mary Morgan, in recent years but on her first day at a business college in Rodney Street they met again. Relief at seeing a familiar face made them greet each other eagerly and soon they became close friends, although Laura’s loyalty to her cousin Rosa never wavered.

  The country was rocked by the Profumo scandal at this time and Mary said she was sick of hearing about it. ‘Who cares what those sort of people get up to?’ she said. ‘They just haven’t got enough to do. My father keeps on about the devil finding work for idle hands and Sodom and Gomorrah but he can’t get enough of the details.’

  ‘My dad’s on about the political angle all the time,’ said Laura. ‘And my Uncle Joe, y’know, Rosa’s father, he’s back and forth like a yo-yo switching news broadcasts off. Rosa says the newspapers are like lace curtains because he cuts out any articles that give too many details. Trying to protect her innocence.’

  ‘He’s a bit late for that, isn’t he?’ Mary said but at a warning glance from Laura she said no more.

  Mary was fascinated by the easy hospitality of Laura’s family. The first time she went home with her she was warmly welcomed by Anne and introduced to one of her numerous relatives who had called with her two daughters and they all sat round the kitchen table drinking tea and eating fruit cake and small buns. Before long they were joined by Julie with two friends from the netball team and later by Gerry and Peter Taylor. Julie had outgrown her childhood weakness and was now strong and healthy although still very shy but she talked to Mary.

  Mary was sorry when Laura took her off to her bedroom to listen to records, especially as Gerry and Peter had been talking about the Iron Door Club where they met up with other pop groups after their gigs.

  ‘I thought you wanted to hear my Beatles records,�
�� Laura said. ‘You can hear those two any time. They’re always gassing.’

  ‘I can’t,’ Mary said, but she said nothing about wanting to stay in the warm and friendly atmosphere of the kitchen.

  Mary had never mentioned her own family but the following day she began to talk about her home.

  ‘It’s very different to yours,’ she told Laura. ‘Very formal and we hardly ever have visitors. I don’t think my father has any friends.’

  ‘Are you an only child?’ Laura asked.

  ‘Good heavens, no. I’m the one he’s ashamed of though, because I failed the eleven-plus. My eldest brother James is at Sidney Sussex, Cambridge, and my sister Angela is reading maths at Oxford. It was bad enough when Luke only got Lancaster University but when I went to St Joe’s he just wanted to draw a veil over me.’

  ‘My Uncle Joe says it isn’t pass or fail, it’s just selection and the secondary moderns should have the same standards as the grammar schools, the same facilities,’ Laura said.

  Mary looked sceptical. ‘Try telling that to people like my father.’

  ‘My brother was at St Edward’s College but he left after O levels. Julie’s at Notre Dame although she missed a lot of school because of illness,’ said Laura, ‘I’m the odd one out but that’s nothing new.’

  ‘That makes two of us,’ said Mary. Now that she had spoken about her family she often talked about them to Laura who was surprised to find that there was great hostility between Mary and her father. I thought I was the only one who didn’t get on with her father, she thought, but Mary’s dad sounds much worse than mine.

  She quickly realised that although their feelings about their fathers made a bond between them their attitude to their respective mothers was very different. In contrast to Laura’s own deep love for her mother, Mary seemed to feel only contempt for hers.

  ‘She’s just a doormat – a handrag,’ she declared. ‘He treats her like a servant and she accepts it. No spirit at all.’

  ‘Was she always like that?’ Laura asked curiously.