Honour Thy Father

by Honour Thy Father (retail) (epub)

  ‘Monica,’ someone said laughing. ‘You’re the limit.’

  Laura laughed with the rest but it made her suspicious whenever she was asked for a date. Even the slightest reference to Rosa put her on the defensive and the evening usually ended with a row. ‘You’re as prickly as a bloody hedgehog,’ one boy told her angrily and when Laura flashed back, ‘I just don’t like being used,’ he was honestly amazed.

  Secretly Laura wondered whether she would ever be wanted for herself and for the first time she envied Rosa as she flitted from one boyfriend to the other, often juggling two or three at once.

  Mary was not very successful with boyfriends either. She could be as blunt as Laura on occasion and she watched every boy she went out with for any trait which reminded her of her father.

  ‘Who needs them anyway?’ she said to Laura. ‘I’m not keen on the moonlight and roses stuff and I’m not anxious for marriage like a lot of girls. It’s too much of a gamble.’

  Laura knew that she could not agree with Mary but for once she held her tongue and simply nodded.

  Kate and Jim stayed on for a few days after the golden wedding party, then went to Ireland to the birthplace of Jim’s great-grandfather. They were all sorry to see Jim go but found it much easier to part with Kate. She had become aggressively American and constantly told them how backward and old-fashioned England seemed to her. She offered Cathy recipes containing types of meat and flavourings unknown to her and talked of pumpkin pie and blueberry compote. ‘You’ve never made them?’ was her amazed cry until John showed his impatience.

  ‘What are you so surprised about?’ he said forthrightly. ‘You lived here until you were nineteen. You know what sort of food we eat.’

  She abandoned the recipes then and talked instead of her fully tiled kitchen and all her labour-saving devices and the much superior lifestyle she enjoyed in America.

  ‘The sooner she goes back there the better,’ Sarah said privately to her mother. ‘She’s become a real pain.’

  Cathy agreed but said that she was pleased she had seen Kate again and now knew that she was safe with a good husband. She was also glad to know that Sam was comfortable and was being cared for by a married couple.

  ‘Jim says they are more like friends than servants. We know they’ve been with Sam for years. The man was born in Athol Street off Scotland Road and the woman’s from Sheil Road way, so Sam will be at home with them, and they’ll be good people coming from Liverpool.’

  ‘Don’t let Kate hear you,’ Sarah laughed. ‘You know everything good must be American.’

  ‘Good job she thinks so as it seems she’ll spend her life there,’ her mother said calmly. ‘Mind you, Sar, I wouldn’t like her kitchen. It sounds more like a hospital.’ She looked round her own comfortable, shabby kitchen. ‘This suits me much better.’

  Sarah hugged her. ‘And you’ve cooked some lovely meals here for all of us – and not a bit of ground hogmeat in any of them.’ They laughed together and Kate sailed to Ireland blissfully unaware that they were not heartbroken to see her go.

  Mick urged his parents to travel to America to see Sam and offered to pay their fares but they refused.

  ‘We’re too old now, Mick,’ Cathy said. ‘We’ve never travelled and I’d be very nervous. Anyway, I’d be worried to be so far away from Sarah.’

  Sarah had become increasingly breathless and had been advised by her doctors to have an operation to open the mitral valve in her heart. Admission to hospital seemed imminent so Mick said no more.

  ‘We’re very fond of Sam,’ Greg said. ‘He’s one of the best. We used to speak on the phone occasionally until the stroke affected his speech and letters aren’t quite the same.’ He sighed. ‘I’d like to be able to tell him how much we appreciated his kindness. Tracing Kate and sending her home like that for the party.’

  ‘Gerda and I might have a holiday in the States next year,’ Mick said. ‘I could fix it to see Sam and tell him. I’d have to make sure he didn’t think we were after his money. Tell him how well we’re doing.’ He laughed heartily and Cathy and Greg smiled.

  ‘It’d be the truth anyway, thank God,’ Cathy said. ‘And John and Sarah are comfortable too.’ Her dimples showed as she laughed. ‘We might have been born too early for aeroplanes but I know your generation think nothing of flying. It’s a different world.’

  ‘It’s nice to come home to the old one though,’ Mick said, hugging her.

  Chapter Eleven

  Gerry was twenty-one in January 1966 and his parents had planned a party for him but he was away on tour in Hamburg.

  ‘I wish the Merrymen had stayed together,’ Anne said. ‘I worry about him with this crowd. He doesn’t seem to be able to please himself at all and he doesn’t look well, either.’ She had been concerned about Gerry’s loss of weight and the dark shadows under his eyes when he arrived for the golden wedding party but later in the evening she had been relieved to see that his spirits were as high as ever. She was unaware that they were the result of the pill he had taken.

  She had been talking to Maureen but Laura joined in the discussion. ‘I don’t know why they’re always on tour. Plenty of venues in Liverpool for them. The Litherland Town Hall, the Orrell, the Grafton, as well as the Cavern, and there are clubs opening all over the place. It’s fab here now.’

  Both women laughed and Maureen said, ‘I think you’re right, Laura. Joe was telling me the other day about the kids in his class. One of them said, “It’s the gear in Liverpool, isn’t it, sir? It’s like being drunk all the time.”’

  Anne agreed that everything seemed to be going right for Liverpool. Local groups dominated the charts and success stories could be heard on every side. Young people were proud to see contemporaries they knew personally, although under different names – Billy J. Kramer, Cilia Black, Gerry Marsden and the Pacemakers – appearing on television and felt reflected glory from the success of the Beatles in America.

  Older people were happy too. Everton Football Club were League Champions 1962–63 and Liverpool Football Club 1963–64 and Liverpool won the FA Cup in 1965. The Redmond and Fitzgerald families were all Everton supporters except John who predictably followed Liverpool, so everyone was happy.

  Trade was booming and jobs plentiful and the dark days of hand-to-mouth casual labour seemed to have gone for ever.

  ‘I wouldn’t change places with Rockefeller,’ an old ferryman told John as he boarded the ferry one day.

  ‘Neither would I,’ John replied without hesitation.

  Early in the New Year Maureen told the rest of the family of her illness and her decision to live in the convent guest house. Anne was still opposed to the idea and her eldest brother Tony and his wife Helen agreed with her but Joe supported Maureen. They had always been close friends and he understood Maureen’s need for independence and for the support of the religious community who shared her acceptance of the will of God.

  ‘But why go to strangers when we’re all here to look after you?’ Tony argued.

  ‘Maureen knows that,’ Joe said firmly, ‘but she must be free to do as she wants. If it doesn’t work out she knows she will be more than welcome with any of us.’

  ‘Thanks, Joe,’ Maureen said. ‘I’m grateful to all of you but Joe’s right. This is the best way I can cope and anyway I’ll be able to see you all very often.’

  Soon after Maureen left, Sarah was admitted to hospital for the operation on her heart. She had found any exertion increasingly difficult, becoming very breathless and tiring easily, and she had been forced to give up the job in the sweet shop. Frequent bouts of bronchitis had decided her doctors that an operation could not be deferred any longer and she was admitted to have the mitral valve opened.

  The operation was a complete success and she returned home six weeks later, declaring that she had been promised a new lease of life and that she intended to enjoy it to the full.

  While all this was happening, there was constant contact between the relations, whi
ch meant that Rosa and Laura were thrown together, more especially as Gerry was away so often on tour and David was abroad for a year with the Peace Corps before going on to Cambridge.

  Rosa seemed to have completely forgotten their quarrel but Laura found it more difficult. Ricky Hewlett was never mentioned but Laura suspected that Rosa was still seeing him. She worried about her cousin but Rosa talked freely about her other dates and Laura consoled herself that there was safety in numbers.

  Laura and Mary had now completed their training and both had found well-paid jobs, Laura in a shipping office and Mary with a firm of importers in the same office block in the centre of Liverpool.

  Out of her first month’s salary Laura bought small treats for all the family. ‘You haven’t won the pools, love,’ her mother protested. ‘This is money you’ve worked hard for,’ but Laura enjoyed giving.

  Mary’s father demanded a large share of her salary but she and Laura still had enough money now to buy the fashionable clothes that they craved and to finance their visits to clubs and discos.

  Mary told Laura that she intended to save something every month to enable her to leave home as soon as possible, but Laura was less anxious to leave home now. While Maureen lived with them John had controlled his temper, although often provoked by Laura, and since Maureen had gone they had avoided confrontation. Both had been too busy, John with the general election when Labour had been elected and with Sarah’s operation, and Laura because she was enjoying herself so much.

  She was now nearly eighteen years old, tall and slim with long legs which showed to perfection in the mini skirts she wore. John had objected to the first one but Laura told him that it was comparatively long. ‘Have you seen Rosa’s?’ she asked.

  On his latest visit home Gerry had told her that she had improved. ‘I could fancy you myself,’ he told her, adding with brotherly candour, ‘pity you always look as though you’re ready for a fight.’

  Later Laura carefully studied her face in the mirror. Her blue eyes were fringed with long dark lashes, her nose was straight and her skin and teeth were good but she was unable to see why Gerry thought she looked aggressive. She asked him before he left but he said he was only joking. ‘No, tell me,’ she insisted.

  ‘It’s just the way you hold your head, I think,’ he said. ‘The way you look at people. Don’t worry about it. Nobody’ll try anything on with you anyway.’

  She studied his face then said impulsively, ‘You’ve changed, Gerry. Why don’t you come home? Don’t go back to Hamburg,’ but he only shrugged and turned away.

  Anne was worried about Gerry too. ‘He looks ill, John,’ she said.

  John agreed but he told her that Gerry said the manager had promised that he would get English bookings for them as soon as the present contract in Hamburg was finished. ‘He didn’t want to tell you because they’ve been let down before but I think it’s better for you to know,’ he said and Anne was glad there was some hope at least of her son coming back to England.

  Laura and Mary saw little of the friends from their youth-club days now and when Laura was escorted home from a club and asked for a date she had the satisfaction of knowing that these young men had never met Rosa. They were usually brief affairs but Laura told Mary that this suited her. ‘I wouldn’t want to be serious with any of the fellows I’ve met so far although they’re all right for the odd date.’

  She often thought about Gerry’s remark about ‘trying it on’ after a scuffle with one determined young man and fending off another who had attempted first to force his tongue into her mouth then down her ear and then pulled down her top and bra and put his mouth against her breast.

  Laura gave him a blow across the head which rocked him back and told him furiously to clear off.

  ‘You wanna move with the times, grandma,’ he shouted as he stalked away.

  And Laura shouted back, ‘Not with a clot like you, I won’t.’

  She laughed about it in the office the next day but one of the girls said seriously, ‘They expect it now though. Not just hugs and kisses any more. In fact, after a couple of dates most of them expect to go all the way.’

  ‘So what? As long as you’re careful,’ another girl said. ‘All those rules – nobody bothers now. People are more broad-minded. Look at the telly. Anything goes.’

  ‘If they think I’m going all the way with them, they’ve got another think coming,’ Laura said. ‘It strikes me it’s the fellows who are all for changing things.’

  ‘I’m surprised any fellow had the nerve to try it on with you, Laura,’ a girl named Tricia said. ‘I thought you’d only have to give them one of your looks.’

  ‘What do you mean, one of my looks?’ Laura said, puzzled, and the other girls laughed.

  ‘What my nan used to call a look as good as a summons,’ Tricia said. ‘And you don’t know you’re doing it half the time, do you?’

  Before Laura could answer, another girl said to her, ‘You’re behind the times, you know, Laura. You’ll never keep a bloke these days if you’re too strait-laced. Nina’s right. They expect girls to be broad-minded and nobody thinks anything of it now. Do they?’ she appealed to the other girls.

  ‘I do,’ Laura said firmly. ‘And if that’s all a fellow wants he can sling his hook as far as I’m concerned.’

  ‘Wait till you really fall for someone, then we’ll see,’ Tricia laughed, but their tea break was over and they returned to their desks.

  Gerry came home briefly in early March and the family were horrified to see how ill he looked. He insisted that he was having a great time in Hamburg and the group were going down a bomb and had been asked to stay on for another tour.

  He was still telling himself that he only took his ‘Bennys’ to keep him going through the long hours on stage so he brought few home with him and suffered accordingly. Anne and John were alarmed by his trembling hands and sudden sweats and asked him to visit the family doctor but he refused irritably.

  ‘Even his character’s changed,’ Anne said fearfully. She was even more alarmed when Mike Millward, a guitarist with the popular local group, the Fourmost, died in March at the age of twenty-three. ‘It can happen even at that age,’ Anne said. ‘He was a big, strong lad too, six foot four and full of life.’

  ‘It was cancer with that poor lad, Anne,’ John said. ‘I think it’s something different with Gerry but still serious. The way his hands tremble and his eyes look terrible. So bloodshot and the pupils are like pinpoints. He’ll have to see a doctor.’

  When Anne heard Gerry vomiting the next morning and saw how he trembled as he came from the bathroom she decided to ask the family doctor to visit whether Gerry liked it or not.

  The doctor was an old friend and when Anne described Gerry’s symptoms he told her he would go up and see Gerry alone. ‘What are you taking?’ he asked bluntly as soon as he had examined Gerry.

  ‘Only the odd pill to get me through a performance,’ Gerry said sullenly. ‘I’m not ill.’

  The doctor questioned him closely about the type and number of pills he took. Gerry knew only the slang names – blues, Dexys, purple hearts, Bennys – but as he talked to the doctor he realised for the first time the number and variety of drugs he had been taking.

  ‘What about grass, reefers?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘Yes, but that’s nothing, is it?’ Gerry said defensively. ‘Everybody smokes them.’

  ‘What about the hard drugs? Cocaine?’ the doctor said and heaved a sigh of relief when Gerry denied ever trying them. ‘You’re lucky then,’ he said grimly. ‘You can become an addict with one shot of cocaine and then you’re in real trouble. Now you’ve got a chance to sort yourself out.’

  He sat and talked seriously to Gerry for some time but when he went downstairs he said nothing to Anne about the drugs. ‘Overwork and bad living conditions,’ he said. ‘He needs rest and a nourishing diet. I’ll give you a prescription for some tablets but you must be in charge of them. Don’t let him have more than the presc
ribed dose.’

  ‘He couldn’t take more. He’s very sensible,’ Anne said in surprise but the doctor insisted that she took charge of the tablets.

  ‘It’s easy to forget you’ve taken one,’ he said, ‘and take another. I’ll call back this evening for another look at him.’

  John was at home when the doctor returned. After seeing Gerry again he told Anne and John about the drug taking. ‘I’m going to admit him to hospital,’ he said, ‘because he has some of the symptoms of TB but don’t be alarmed. Even if it is TB, we have the drugs to treat it now.’

  He gave Anne some instructions about sterilising dishes and when John accompanied him to the door the doctor said bluntly, ‘Damn fools, these lads. Knocking themselves about, couple of hours’ sleep in twenty-four, drugs to keep them going, jumping about on stage and snatching bits of food when they can. They don’t value their health until they lose it.’

  Gerry seemed resigned to entering hospital and surprisingly unconcerned about being away from the group. ‘They’ll have found another mug to take my place,’ he told his father. ‘We missed the boat, y’know, Dad. That first agent who wanted the Merrymen – that was a reputable outfit, good managers who looked after the lads and only took their fair cut. This lot are cowboys. Don’t give a damn about us and all the money we make goes into their pockets, not ours.’

  ‘Never mind, son, you live and learn,’ John said. ‘Put it down to experience and when you’re well enough, find a better group.’

  ‘I’m still under contract to them,’ Gerry said but John told him not to worry.

  ‘Just get fit again. I’ll sort that out,’ he said.

  Laura and Julie came in to see Gerry but he told them not to kiss him. ‘I’m getting a little bell,’ he joked. ‘Unclean, unclean.’

  ‘You sound more like yourself already,’ Laura said. ‘And you don’t even know yet whether it is TB. Are you worried about missing your bookings?’

  ‘No. To tell you the truth I’ve been feeling so bad that I was just glad to come home and forget it,’ said Gerry.