by Maureen Lee
‘Really?’ He appeared very knowledgeable. She liked men who regularly read newspapers, not just the sport like Maurice, who was mad on football.
‘Do you fancy a drink, Mrs Newton?’
‘Well …’ Lena fancied a drink if only so they could go on talking, but she rarely touched alcohol. ‘I wouldn’t mind an orange cordial or a cup of tea.’ She felt so uplifted and moved by the picture that she didn’t care if they were seen together. As George had said, they were friends, that was all.
‘I’m afraid, Mrs Newton,’ he said regretfully, ‘there are no cafés round here open this late. I wouldn’t dream of inviting you into one of the local pubs, but there’s a nice place on Stanley Road called the Crown. It’s a hotel as well as a public house, and the clientele are entirely respectable. Would you care to go there?’
They’d been standing outside the Palace all this time, in everybody’s way as they left. He held out his arm for her to link, and she felt it would be awfully rude not to take it, so she did.
Although Tom Chance’s job as a barman kept him busy of a night, most mornings he caught the tram into town, where he stayed for hours, sometimes not coming home until it was time for tea.
Freda was unable to hide her curiosity for long, and one day just after Easter, when she was still on holiday from school, she couldn’t resist asking him what he did there.
‘Have you got another job in town?’ she enquired. He was about to leave the house with a khaki bag like a satchel on his shoulder. Having seen him unpack it from time to time, she knew it contained a collection of pencils, some of them coloured, and a notebook.
‘No.’ He smiled. Freda loved his smiles. She reckoned he kept his best ones for her. The ones he gave her mother and Dicky she was convinced weren’t quite so broad, and didn’t always reach his eyes. ‘I was thinking of writing a history of Liverpool. All I do is walk around and around making notes and drawings.’
‘A history of Liverpool!’ She was impressed. She’d never thought of the city having a history. It was just there and she couldn’t imagine it ever having been different – which, now she thought about it, was rather foolish.
‘Liverpool is one of the most important cities in the world and has been the first to do so many things,’ Tom went on. ‘For instance, it was the first to have a lending library, a lifeboat station, municipal trams and electric trains – which reminds me, the first railway tunnels in the world were built underneath you-know-where.’
‘Liverpool,’ Freda breathed.
‘Where else?’ Tom laughed. ‘Why don’t you get your coat and come with me? You’ll be back at school soon. I’m sure your mother won’t mind.’
Freda didn’t give a toss whether her mother minded or not. She collected her coat, wishing it was much smarter and a nicer colour than navy blue, and they set off. They caught a tram from Stanley Road into town. Tom paid her penny fare when she realised she hadn’t thought to bring money.
On the way, he told her that the Queensway Tunnel under the Mersey, linking Liverpool to Birkenhead, was sometimes described as the Eighth Wonder of the World. ‘Oh, and the first British person to win the Nobel Prize was called Ronald Ross, and he worked at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine – which, incidentally, was the first school of its kind …’ He paused and looked at Freda, eyebrows raised.
‘In the world,’ Freda said triumphantly.
‘Right! Oh, we’re going to have a fine old time, you and me.’
They got off the tram outside St George’s Hall. ‘The finest neoclassical building in all of Europe,’ Tom said.
‘Not in the world?’ queried Freda.
‘No, there must be some just as fine elsewhere, just not in Europe.’
Freda had seen it before but it hadn’t made any impression on her until now. As she watched Tom, hands on hips, regarding it with a mixture of wonder and admiration, a ray of light seemed to shine on her brain and she saw the building, with its long row of marble pillars, as a thing of incredible beauty, almost making her want to cry.
‘Now I’m going to take you around the Seven Streets of Liverpool – these were the first important streets of the city. They’re many centuries old. Some of the names have changed, but they were originally called Castle Street, Bank Street, Juggler Street, Dale Street, Chapel Street, Moor Street and Whiteacre Street.’
Freda felt quite tired by the time they’d walked all seven streets, Tom stopping from time to time to point out a particularly spectacular building. When he put his hand on her shoulder it felt lovely and warm and heavy and she wished he would leave it there for ever. He did leave it for a little while, leading her towards a café in Whitechapel where they had dinner, though Tom called it lunch. They both had fish and chips and peas, followed by jam tart with custard and a big mug of tea.
‘That was the gear,’ Freda said when she had finished. ‘Thank you,’ she added shyly. It was rare that she thanked anyone, but this time she did it with total sincerity.
‘And thank you, Freda, for accompanying me on my trip today. In a way, you’ve made me see things through different eyes and I am more impressed with Liverpool than ever.’
He leant across the table and squeezed her hand. If she had been older, Freda was convinced he would have kissed her. She just knew, could sense, that she and Tom Chance were made for each other and they would get married one day.
That night she designed her wedding dress.
A few days later, the holiday ended and Freda returned to her convent school. Her class, Form 4, had their first English lesson of the term that same morning. The girls were asked to write an essay on any event that had occurred during the week-long break.
‘Any small incident, a friend or relative’s visit, for instance, or your visit to them,’ suggested Sister Bernadette, the English teacher. ‘I would like to have the work in before the end of the week.’
That night Freda went into the parlour, where it was quieter, to write the essay, taking her dictionary with her. One of the neighbours – it might have been Eileen Costello when she used to live next door – had given her the dictionary when she had passed the scholarship and gone to Seafield Convent.
Although she didn’t mention Tom, she described her trip to Liverpool and the sights she had seen, using the information he had provided her with to emphasise what an important city Liverpool was, how innovative and alive, how it was famous throughout the world. She listed the seven streets and said she had walked along every single one, and that it was her intention to do it again. Dicky might like to go one of these days; even Mam might enjoy it.
The essay was returned in class marked 9½ out of 10. Sister Bernadette called Freda to her desk. She was a young nun, good-humoured and friendly. Everybody liked her.
‘This is an admirable piece of work, Freda,’ she said. ‘Where did you get the idea from?’
‘Our lodger,’ Freda admitted reluctantly, unable to think of a way of claiming it was all her own idea.
‘It’s so good that I would like to enter it for a prize. Liverpool Corporation have asked schools to submit essays from their sixth-form pupils, the subject being the city in which they live; in other words, Liverpool.’
‘But I’m not in the sixth form yet,’ Freda pointed out – as if Sister Bernadette didn’t already know.
The nun shrugged. ‘That might not matter. No one in our sixth form has come up with this notion of the Seven Streets. I really like that. Oh, and Freda, your essay would have earned ten out of ten had you pointed out that Liverpool isn’t exactly the exemplary city you describe.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Freda was astonished to hear it.
‘No, dear. It was one of the first cities to have something called a wet dock. That means it was prominent in the slave trade. Many thousands of black people were taken via Liverpool to the United States to become slaves. The conditions on the ships were deplorable, and once the slaves arrived, they were treated with appalling cruelty. Liverpool became rich through this awf
ul business, and it’s something the city should be greatly ashamed of.’
‘I see,’ said Freda.
She returned to her desk feeling both proud and as if she had been taken down a peg or two.
Chapter 6
Summer had arrived. On a warm and sunny Sunday early in July, Jack Doyle was thrilled to see that the lettuces he had planted earlier in the year in Eileen’s garden in Melling had grown at least another inch and would soon be ready to be eaten. As someone whose lettuces in the past had always originated from the greengrocer’s, growing them himself was something akin to a miracle.
Tiny apples and pears had appeared on the fruit trees and gooseberries on the bushes. There was even a handful of strawberries, strictly meted out one at a time to Sheila and Brenda’s children, and of course Eileen’s son Nicky. Eventually, blackberries would appear on the prickly bushes at the bottom of the garden.
It had been a hard sacrifice to make, but Jack no longer took sugar in his tea, giving it instead to Eileen to make jams and pies. The pastry was rather hard because it didn’t have enough lard in it, but Jack loved to see Eileen lift a sweet-smelling crusty fruit pie out of the oven, or witness the jars of delicious home-made jam, of which he was always the first recipient.
It cheered him up tremendously, feeling that no matter what Hitler did, the British people would make the best of things. The men would fight their hardest and the women would keep the home fires burning, as the song said.
It worried him that Nick wasn’t home so often nowadays. He wasn’t sure what his son-in-law did down in London; something highly confidential and very important, he imagined. Perhaps it was connected with the recent invasion by the Allies of Sicily, the final step before reaching Italy and mainland Europe.
Jack knew he wasn’t the only one to wish with every fibre of his being that this bloody war would soon be over. It was a wish shared by every single person in the country.
Eileen watched from the kitchen window as her father, brow furrowed, stood beside the lettuces, lost in thought. One of the few good things that had come out of the war was her marrying Nick and moving into his cottage, thereby letting her dad loose on the large amount of land that went with it.
She wondered if, having lived his entire life in small terraced houses with only a tiny scrap of back yard, he’d always missed having a garden. He’d taken to it as if it was something he was born to, growing vegetables like an expert. The fruit bushes and some of the flowers – the hydrangeas, carnations, delphiniums and poppies – came up year after year and might have been there for ever, for all she knew. Perennials, Dad called them. Their scent was heady and overpowering, as if she had entered a different land. On summer mornings, when she drew back the kitchen curtains and heard the birds already chirping madly in the trees, Eileen quite expected to see elves and fairies playing in the wisps of mist on the patch of lawn outside.
Mostly the vegetables her father grew were given away – virtually every house in Pearl Street had benefited from the produce Jack Doyle had grown on his daughter’s land.
Directly outside the window, Nicky was playing in his sandpit. The sand had come from the beach at Formby; a friend of Nick’s had brought it before he’d had to give up his car when petrol became restricted to vitally important people like doctors. It was about time they acquired more sand and she reckoned that was Nick’s job, not hers. She didn’t know anyone with a car. But it was Sunday, and yet again he wasn’t coming home.
Eileen sniffed and blinked in an attempt to prevent herself from bursting into tears. Something was wrong, it must be. It wasn’t just that nowadays he only came home to Melling once a month when it used to be once a week, but once here, it was obvious he’d come to see his son and not his wife.
Could he have met someone else? Did he have another woman down in London? It was impossible to believe. Just thinking about it made her catch her breath, almost choke with disbelief. Not Nick, not the man to whom she had given herself for ever, in sickness and in health, in every single conceivable way. She had imagined them together in the cottage; extending it when they had more children, growing old here.
She watched through the window as Nicky left the sandpit and made his steady way down the garden, calling, ‘Gwandad!’ He was having trouble with his r’s.
Her father pushed the spade into the earth so that it stood on its own and held out his arms as the little boy approached.
‘You’re a great little lad, Nicky Stephens,’ she heard him say. He picked up his grandson, threw him over his shoulder and came marching up the garden towards her, Nicky squealing with delight.
They arrived at the open kitchen door. ‘Where’s that bloody husband of yours?’ demanded Jack, making Eileen want to cry again, though her father would cringe with embarrassment if she did.
‘He has loads of work to do,’ she muttered. ‘He’s overwhelmed with it.’
‘You said that last time I asked – or it might have been the time before.’ He nodded towards the hall. ‘If I call him on that thing in there, will he answer?’ He meant the telephone, which he only used occasionally because it made him nervous.
‘He’s not allowed to take calls in the office,’ Eileen said.
‘Then how the hell do you speak to each other?’
‘It’s not really allowed, but he can call me when the woman on the switchboard goes for her dinner and some other woman takes over who doesn’t mind. There isn’t a phone in his digs.’
‘Has he called over the last few days?’ Jack put Nicky on the floor and the boy immediately tried to climb back up his legs.
Eileen hung her head as if she’d done something wrong at school. ‘No,’ she whispered.
‘Bastard,’ spat her dad. ‘I never thought I’d use that word about Nick Stephens.’
Eileen lost her temper. ‘And you shouldn’t now,’ she snapped. ‘Something might be wrong and he doesn’t want to worry me. And what makes you think he isn’t genuinely overwhelmed with work?’
Her father’s cheeks were red with anger. ‘Then he’s been overwhelmed a bloody long time. What’s wrong with him? Have you asked him straight? If you haven’t, then next time he deigns to show himself, I suggest you do. If you won’t, I’ll do it meself.’
‘Oh go away, Dad. Leave me alone. Anyroad, I’ve got to get ready for Mass.’ She picked up Nicky and almost ran out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind her.
Ten minutes later, when she and her son were ready, she returned to the kitchen intending to apologise, but her father wasn’t there, nor was there any sign of him in the garden, or of his bike.
Things couldn’t go on like this. When Nick had first started not coming home as much as he’d used to, he’d always phoned to let her know. But now he no longer bothered. Twice he had turned up unexpectedly on a Sunday afternoon, as if he’d found himself with time to spare and thought he might as well go home and see his wife and child, even if it only left him with a couple of hours in Melling before having to return to London.
Mass over and back home again, Eileen sat down and wrote him a letter. It was the only way she could be sure of getting in touch. She had no intention of begging and making herself sound pathetic. That wasn’t the sort of relationship they had. If she couldn’t talk to him – write to him – as if she was an equal partner in the marriage, then she wouldn’t write to him at all.
In the letter, she merely asked, calmly and politely, what was going on – was something going on? She didn’t ask if she had offended him, or he had gone off her – that would have been demeaning. Just a simple question: what, if anything, was wrong?
Her father had left and Sheila wouldn’t be coming over today; there was something happening at Sunday School that her children and Brenda’s girls were involved in. Eileen would have gone to Bootle to see them, but there was always a chance that Nick might turn up unannounced, as he had done before.
She had no alternative but to stay at home with her son for company. In fact, Nicky was jol
ly good company, but short on conversation. They went outside and sat on a bench together, and in a very short time, Nicky laid his head on her knee and fell asleep.
There was no getting away from it: despite the little paradise in which she now lived, she missed Bootle, where she had lived cheek by jowl with her neighbours, where the only thing that met her eye when she drew back the curtains was a brick wall, where everyone knew her business. Were she still living in Bootle, there were at least a dozen people she could have called on and the same number who might have called on her. Had Nick turned up when she was out, someone would know where she had gone and would tell him. Paradise could be lonely at times.
She’d get a lodger, she decided. She’d let out the second bedroom where Nicky usually slept; he could sleep with her for the time being. There was a munitions factory in the village. She had been working there herself when she’d met Nick, and it was where one of her best friends, Kate Thomas, was employed. Kate was in charge of the welfare of the female workers, who came from all over the country. She found them places to live and dealt with their various problems. She was bound to know someone who needed somewhere to live.
She felt guilty at the idea of taking in a lodger for company rather than out of compassion, but she would leave the woman, whoever she was, entirely to her own devices. It was just the idea of another person living in the house that attracted her.
Eileen had almost fallen asleep herself when she became aware that someone was knocking on the front door. She carefully removed Nicky from her knee and laid him on the bench, then went to see who was there.
At first, she didn’t recognise the young man standing outside, though his blond hair looked familiar.
‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she stammered, ‘but …’
‘It’s Peter Wood,’ he said helpfully. ‘I was at your garden party.’
‘Oh, I remember, yes.’ She stood aside to let him in. ‘Have you come to Melling to see your uncle again – is he at home this time?’