Laceys Of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  He began to kiss her more passionately and she couldn’t find the strength to push him away – perhaps the truth was she didn’t want to find it. She wished she weren’t so sensible, so religious, so cautious, that she could find the courage to live with him openly and not give a damn about being respectable and what anyone thought. Or that she were harder, like John, able to leave the people she loved behind without a second thought.

  But she was none of these things. She was Alice Lacey, who had four children, who lived in Amber Street, Bootle and owned her own hairdressers’. Somehow Alice knew she would never escape these simple facts, because deep down in her heart she didn’t want to. She was her own jailer, bound by conventions she would never break. Even her love for Neil, which was far greater than she had ever admitted either to him or to herself, wasn’t enough to change her.

  He was carrying her into the bedroom and she didn’t protest.

  ‘We didn’t know last night we would never make love again,’ he whispered, ‘and I’d like the last time to be special. Promise you’ll never forget me, Alice.’

  Maureen Lee’s award-winning novels have earned her many fans. Her recent novel, The Leaving of Liverpool, was a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller. Maureen was born in Bootle and now lives in Colchester. Find out more at: www.maureenlee.co.uk.

  Laceys of Liverpool

  Maureen Lee

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2001 by Orion Books.

  This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Maureen Lee 2001

  The right of Maureen Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 3234 9

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Also by Maureen Lee

  For Paul,

  May the force always be with you.

  Prologue

  CHRISTMAS 1940

  The woman lay listening to the rain as it beat against the hospital windows. She and Alice hadn’t picked a good night to have their babies. As had become the custom in Bootle over the last few months, there’d been an air raid, a bad one, and they’d all been moved down to the cellar. Alice’s lad had been born only minutes after the All Clear, at a quarter past eleven. Her own son had arrived almost three hours later, so they’d have different birthdays. Later, there’d been an emergency. Some woman had been found in the rubble of her house about to drop her baby. Since then, things had quietened down.

  In a bed opposite, her sister-in-law was fast asleep, dead to the world, like the other six women in the ward. ‘Why can’t I sleep like that?’ the woman murmured fretfully. ‘I can never sleep.’ Her mind was always too full of plans for the future, schemes: how to get this, how to do that. How to make twenty-five bob last the whole week, including paying the rent and buying the food. Oh, how she’d love new curtains for the parlour! But new curtains, new anything, were an impossible dream.

  Unless she stole something, pawned it, bought curtains with the money. She’d stolen before, her heart in her mouth, sweat trickling down the insides of her arms. The first time it was only a string of beads that looked like pearls. The price ticket said a guinea. The pawnbroker had offered a florin, which she’d accepted gratefully and bought four nice cups and saucers in Paddy’s Market.

  One day she’d walked all the way into town and nicked a cut-glass vase from George Henry Lee’s, which she kept on the mantelpiece, though she was the only one who knew it was cut glass. Billy thought it was just a cheap old thing. The silver candlestick she’d robbed from Henderson’s had paid for a nice mat in front of the parlour fireplace. Some things she kept, some she pawned. She’d become quite skilled at shoplifting. The trick was to stay calm, not rush, smile, make your way slowly to the door. Stepping outside was the worst part. If spotted, it was the time you’d be nabbed. But she’d got away with it so far.

  The woman didn’t care how she looked as long as it was respectable, or what she ate, but she liked pretty things for the house: curtains, crockery, cutlery, furniture. Furniture most of all. She’d give anything for a new three-piece: velveteen, dark green or plum-coloured. She licked her lips and thought about brocade cushions with fringes, one at each end of the settee, on each of the chairs.

  Most of all, she’d like a nice big house to put the lovely things in. She was sick to death of living in a two-up, two-down in O’Connell Street. But if curtains were an impossible dream, then a big house was – well, out of the question. Being married to a no-hoper like Billy Lacey, she was just as likely to fly to the moon.

  She shoved herself to a sitting position. The red light on the ceiling cast a sinister glow over the ward, over the prone bodies beneath the faded cotton counterpanes. ‘It looks like a morgue,’ she thought. Paper chains crisscrossed the room and she remembered it was Christmas Eve. ‘Everyone’s dead except me and that fat bitch in the corner snoring her head off.’

  The clock over the door showed a quarter past four. A cup of tea should arrive soon. Alice, who already had three kids, all girls, and knew about such things, said the tea trolley came early, around five o’clock, which seemed an unearthly time to wake anyone up. In the meantime she’d go for a walk. If she lay in bed till kingdom come, she’d never go asleep.

  The rain was lashing down, making the windows rattle in their frames. It drummed on the roof and she hoped Billy would keep an eye on the loose slates over the lavatory. She’d been at him to fix them for ages, but would probably end up fixing them herself. She fixed most things around the house. Her lips twisted bitterly when she thought about Billy. His brother, John, had stayed in the ozzie with Alice until an hour before their lad was born. He’d only left because the girls were being looked after by a neighbour who was scared of the raids. But Billy had left her on the steps outside the ozzie when she was about to have their first-born child. Off to the pub, as usual. He didn’t know yet if she’d had a boy or a girl.

  There was a nurse in the glass cubicle at the end of the ward where a sprig of mistletoe hung over the door. She was at a desk, head bent, writing. The
new mothers were expected to remain confined to their beds for seven whole days, not even allowed to go to the lavatory, but the woman slid from under the bedclothes and crept past, opening one half of the swing doors just enough to allow her through. The nurse didn’t look up.

  The dimly lit corridor was empty, silent. Her bare feet made no sound on the cold floor. She crept round corners, through more doors, dodged into the lavatories when she heard footsteps coming towards her. The footsteps passed, faded, and she looked both ways before coming out, hoping it wasn’t someone on their way to her ward who’d notice the empty bed, though it was unlikely. The hospital was understaffed. Some nurses had joined the Forces, or gone into better-paid jobs. There were a lot of part-timers and older nurses who’d retired and come back to do their bit.

  She arrived at the place that had been her destination all along: the nursery. Five rows of babies, tightly wrapped in sheets, like little mummies in their wooden cots. Most were asleep, a few grizzled, some had their eyes wide open. Like her, they couldn’t sleep.

  Her own baby had been whisked away because of the emergency and she’d barely seen him. Now she did, she saw he was a pale little thing. He looked sickly, she thought. There was yellow stuff in his eyes. As she stared at her sleeping child, she felt nothing. She was twenty-seven, older than Alice, and had been married longer. But she hadn’t wanted a baby. The sponge soaked in vinegar she’d inserted every night, which Billy knew nothing about, hadn’t worked for once.

  The child couldn’t possibly have come at a worse time. Just when she’d worn Billy down, ranted at him mercilessly for month after month, until he’d conceded that letting his missus get a job wasn’t a sore reflection on his masculine pride. Not with a war on and women all over the country working in ways they’d never done before. Why, there were women in the Army, on the trams, delivering the post, in factories doing men’s jobs.

  It was a job in a factory on which the woman had set her eye, making munitions. You could earn as much as four quid a week, three times as much as Billy. And as she said to him, ‘Any minute now, you’ll be called up. What am I supposed to do then? Sit at home, twiddling me thumbs, living on the pittance I’ll get from the Army?’

  His face had paled. He was a coward, not like his brother John, who’d volunteered when war broke out, but had been turned down because he was in a reserved occupation. John was a centre lathe turner, Billy a labourer. There was nothing essential about his menial job. John, anxious to make a contribution towards the war, had become a fire-watcher. Billy carried on as usual and haunted the pubs waiting for his call-up papers from the Army to land on the mat.

  She’d only been in the munitions factory a fortnight, packing shells. It was hard work, but she liked it. If she felt tired, she thought about the pay packet she’d get on Friday, about the things she’d buy, and soon perked up. Then she discovered she was up the stick, pregnant and, stupid idiot that she was, she told the woman who worked beside her and next minute everyone knew, including the foreman, and she’d got the push.

  ‘This is not the sort of job suitable for a woman in the family way,’ the foreman said.

  The woman glared through the glass at her baby. She hadn’t thought what to call him. She wasn’t interested. Billy wanted Maurice for some reason if they had a boy, but she had no idea if Maurice was a saint’s name. Catholics were expected to call their kids after saints. Alice’s girls had funny Irish names and she didn’t know if they were saints either. The new kid would be called Cormac. ‘No “k” at the end,’John had said, smiling. He humoured his silly, dreamy wife something rotten.

  Where was Cormac? There were cards pinned to the foot of each cot with drawing pins. ‘LACEY (I)’ it said on the cot directly in front of her. Her own baby was ‘LACEY (2)’. Alice had yet to see her little son. It had been a difficult birth and she’d been in agony the whole way through. John had been close to tears when he’d had to go home. Afterwards, with seven stitches and blind with pain, Alice had been given something to make her sleep.

  Her own confinement had been painless – she wouldn’t have dreamt of making a fuss had it been otherwise. She hadn’t needed a single stitch. Her belly still felt slightly swollen and she hurt a bit between the legs, that was all.

  Even though she didn’t give a damn about babies, the woman had to admit Cormac was a bonny lad. He had dark curly hair like his dad, and he wasn’t all red and shrivelled like the other babies. His big brown eyes were wide open and she could have sworn he was looking straight at her. She pressed her palms against the glass and something dead peculiar happened in her belly, a slow, curling shiver of anger. It wasn’t fair: Alice had the best Lacey, now she had the best son.

  From deep within the bowels of the hospital, she heard the rattle of dishes. Tea was being made, the trolley was being set. Any minute now, someone would come.

  The woman opened the door of the nursery and went in.

  Chapter 1

  CHRISTMAS 1945

  Alice Lacey sang to herself as she swept a cloud of Florrie Piper’s hair into the corner of the salon. ‘Away in a manger, no crib for a bed . . .’ She brushed the hair on to a shovel and took it into the yard to empty in the dustbin.

  ‘They say you can sell hair like that for a small fortune in the West End of London,’ Mrs Piper yelled from under the dryer when Alice came back.

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Wig makers. They’re always on the lookout for a good head of hair.’

  ‘Really,’ Alice said doubtfully. The hair she’d just thrown away was more suitable for a bird’s nest: dry as dust, over-permed, full of split ends and dyed the colour of soot.

  ‘You can comb Mrs Piper out now, Alice,’ Myrtle said in a slurred voice.

  ‘About time too,’ Florrie Piper said, tight-lipped. ‘These curlers are giving me gyp.’

  ‘I don’t know how you stand it to be honest.’ Alice switched off the dryer, and Mrs Piper heaved her large body out of the chair and went to sit in front of a pink-tinted mirror.

  ‘We can’t all have naturally wavy hair, Alice Lacey, not like you.’ Florrie Piper chose to take offence. She sniffed audibly. ‘You shouldn’t work in a hairdresser’s if you can’t take what’s done to the customers.’

  Alice removed the net and yelped when her fingers touched a red-hot metal curler. It must be torture, sitting for half an hour with bits of burning metal pressed against your scalp. ‘I’ll take them out in a minute,’ she muttered. ‘Would you like a mince pie?’

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t say no,’ Mrs Piper said graciously. She’d already had three. Food wasn’t usually provided in Myrtle’s Hairdressing Salon, but it was Christmas Eve. Some rather tired decorations festooned the walls and a bent tinsel star hung in the steam-covered window. There’d been sherry earlier, but the proprietor had finished off the lot by dinner time. Myrtle was as tipsy as a lord and had made a terrible mess of Mrs Fowler with the curling tongues. The waves were dead uneven. Fortunately, Mrs Fowler’s sight wasn’t all it should be and she refused to wear glasses. Hopefully, she wouldn’t notice.

  Mrs Piper had recovered her good humour. ‘What are you doing for Christmas, luv?’ she enquired when Alice began to remove the curlers. Her ears were a startling crimson.

  ‘Nothing much.’ Alice wrinkled her nose. ‘John’s mam’s coming to Christmas dinner, along with his brother Billy and his wife. They’ve got a little boy, Maurice, exactly the same age as our Cormac. Me dad usually comes, but he’s off to Ireland tonight to spend Christmas with his sister. She’s not been well.’

  ‘Your Cormac will be starting school soon, I expect.’

  ‘In January. He was five only yesterday.’

  ‘And how are your girls? You know, I can never remember their names.’

  ‘Fionnuala, Orla and Maeve,’ Alice said for the thousandth time in her life. ‘They’re at a party this avvy in St James’s church hall. Something to do with Sunday School. I made them a cake to take. I managed to get some dates.’
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br />   Mrs Piper eyed the remainder of the mince pies. ‘Would you like another?’ Alice enquired.

  ‘I wouldn’t say no,’ Mrs Piper repeated. ‘It would be a shame if they went to waste. You’re closing early today, aren’t you? I must be one of your last customers.’

  ‘We’ve got a couple of trims, that’s all. Here’s one of ’em now.’ The bell on the door gave its rather muted ring – it probably needed oiling – and Bernadette Moynihan came in. She was a vivacious young woman with an unusually voluptuous figure for someone so small. Alice smiled warmly at her best friend. ‘Help yourself to a mince pie, Bernie.’

  ‘I thought we were having sherry an’ all,’ Bernadette cried. ‘I’ve been looking forward to it all day.’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s gone.’ Alice glanced at Myrtle who seemed to have given up altogether on hairdressing and was staring drunkenly at her reflection in the pink mirror.

  Bernadette grinned. ‘She looks like a ghoul,’ she whispered.

  Myrtle was a tad too old for so much lipstick, eyeshadow, mascara and rouge. Now, everything was smudged and she looked like a sad, elderly clown. Her grey roots were showing and the rest of her hair had been peroxided to a yellow frizz. She made a poor advertisement for a hairdressing salon.

  ‘Don’t comb it out too much, luv,’ Mrs Piper said when the curlers were removed. ‘I like it left tight. It lasts longer.’

  Alice loosened the curls slightly with her fingers and Mrs Piper said, ‘How much is that, luv?’

  ‘Half a crown.’

  ‘And worth every penny!’ She left, tipping Alice threepence, with her head resembling the inside of an Eccles cake.

  The door closed and Alice looked from Bernadette to Myrtle who was slowly falling asleep, then back again. ‘I’m not supposed to give trims, not official, like.’ She usually went to Bernadette’s to trim her hair, or Bernadette came to hers.