The Mersey Girls

by Sheila Riley

  It was hard to describe the vast difference of the two worlds she lived in. One was so opulent, magnificent, peopled by millionaires and film stars – the other was a dockside backstreet where people lived hand-to-mouth most days. She would die of shame if Bruce ever found out she lived here. She hoped he might telephone but wasn’t sure now that she was back in the real world. Most likely, he would be off on some other far-flung adventure after his meeting in River Chambers.

  Taking a deep breath, the smell of smoking chimneys hit the back of her throat. To think, when she was thousands of miles away, overseas, she longed to be back in this little street. But her rose-tinted thoughts of quaint dwellings opposite meandering waters watching boats sail by were soon dashed by the dusk reality.

  The pretty houses were a row of red-brick terraces, and the romantic water was a grey canal. There were no pretty sailing boats, only dredgers and tugs moving stuff to and from the docks. Sailing to exotic places was a natural choice for a girl who wanted more from life than a sink, a cooker and a life of drudgery.

  Grace had been to some of the world’s most fabulous places: America, Canada, the Caribbean, the Mediterranean. She had been all over the world. She had drunk champagne with Cary Grant, cocktails with Katharine Hepburn. Shared a joke with Clark Gable. Frank Sinatra had sung for her. Kings and princes had conversed. She played roulette with European diplomats and enjoyed spontaneous, late-night concerts with Hollywood stars.

  She was discreet and that made her popular with people of importance. She knew their secrets, and she kept them closely guarded. But her biggest secret was the one she held closest of all, and the reason she was not going to be on the next trip.

  Grimacing, she gave the cabbie a pound note when she couldn’t find a ten-shilling note and told him to keep the change. Tipping back the peak of his cap, he jumped out of the driver’s seat and deposited her heavy suitcases at the bottom of the steps leading to her front door.

  ‘Hello, Evie!’ Grace said, stepping out of the black cab and dodging a cracked paving flag and seeing the girl from the top of the street. She liked Evie, who was far more mature than she would ever be.

  ‘Hello, Grace,’ Evie answered, entranced by the elegant red peep-toe wedge sandals, and feeling instantly dowdy in the presence of such glamour, ‘long time no see.’

  In a world where drab was the norm, Grace Harris looked like she had stepped out of a Hollywood film, wearing a cream-coloured swing coat that skimmed a figure-hugging dress with a sweetheart neckline matching her red leather handbag and velvet beret. Not that she was paying much attention of course, Evie thought.

  Her own appearance had been acceptable when she looked in the mirror over the fireplace earlier, but next to Grace she looked like she had dressed at a jumble sale. She remembered seeing a picture of Princess Margaret in a newspaper wearing an outfit almost identical to the one Grace was wearing now. Grace looked fabulous, and for once Evie wondered what it must be like to afford clothes that matched your shoes, bag and hat? ‘I bet you’re glad to be home?’

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Grace replied, rolling her vivid blue eyes and placing her matching red vanity case in the crook of her arm as she headed to the open front door, where Susie and the Harris family spilled out and down the steps to greet her.

  ‘Coo-ee, Gracie!’ Susie’s strident tone split the twilight air and a flock of pigeons took flight from their rooftop roost as she increased her pace to get to her friend first. ‘Oh let me look at you!’ Susie exclaimed, pushing past Evie without a blink of her sooty lashes before throwing her arms round Grace’s shoulders.

  After admiring everything from her clothes to her suntan, Susie possessively linked arms and corralled Grace towards the front door. ‘Let’s get inside and you can tell me all about your trip – and your engagement. I don’t want you to leave anything out. You have to tell me everything. I can’t wait to hear the details…’

  Evie smiled as she watched Grace being manhandled by her boisterous family. Noting the word ‘Mom’, which sounded strange spoken in a Liverpool backstreet. Nobody called their mother, Mom, in these parts. Mam, Ma or even Mim in the case of Connie’s mother – but not Mom. That was American, that was.

  ‘Nice to see you again, Evie,’ Grace called over her shoulder when she could get a word in edgeways, her suitcases still resting on the pavement.

  Susie had seen Grace talking to Evie Kilgaren who she thought was a cut above these days and her nostrils flared. The office manager. She should hang her head in shame with a past like hers. But now was not the time for such thoughts. Her best friend was home. And they were going to have a fine old time.

  ‘You don’t want to be talking to her.’ Susie’s voice carried on the quiet evening air. ‘What’s in the cat must surely be in the kitten and you’ll never guess… Auld man Skinner’s only gone and employed her as office manager over me – can you believe it?’

  A moment later, Danny came out of the house, his chiselled face freshly shaven, if that small white blob of shaving cream on his neck was anything to go by. Dressed in a pair of dark canvas trousers and a white singlet covering his combat-trained physique, he picked up the suitcases like they were empty, and Evie smiled, remembering the cab driver staggering to put the cases on the pavement.

  ‘We’ll get no sense out of Susie now that Grace is home, and Ma’s just as bad,’ Danny said, his cheerful voice a breath of fresh air after Susie’s catty remark, his eyes crinkled at the corner when he gave her a lopsided grin.

  Evie didn’t trust herself to speak, and staring blankly she chewed the inside of her cheek, unaccustomed to the strong physique of tall, dark half-naked men. ‘Well, best be off, glad to see Grace is home, she looks very well.’

  ‘Aye, a bit of sunshine can do that for you,’ Danny said, watching Evie make her way up the street with her head held high and a natural swagger in her stride. She could do that now, he thought. Evie had earned the right to walk any damn way she pleased and there was nobody to touch her. He liked that. He liked that a lot…

  ‘Pass me the butter dish,’ Ada didn’t look up as she pounded the potatoes to a pulp.

  ‘That’s a fortnight’s ration of best butter you lobbed in there,’ Danny said, noticing his ma was agitated and wondering if the reason was Susie, demanding Grace’s attention, when Ada thought she should be the one to ask all the questions.

  ‘Our Grace hardly had time to get through the door, Susie hasn’t given her a minute – and we still don’t know what’s happened to the fi-ancee.’

  ‘Are you sure you’ve got enough…’ Danny didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence, silenced by Ada’s icy glare as she dished out the food that filled the plates.

  ‘I’ve got more than enough,’ she said, knowing there were many women who could not afford cheap margarine to fluff up their potatoes, let alone best butter. ‘Nothing is too good for my girl. I know people who know people who can supply me with more butter if I want it. I’ve got the money.’ Ada realised she had said too much when she saw Danny raise an inquisitive eyebrow, and backtracked. ‘What I mean is, I’m not having Susie go tell her mother she wasn’t properly looked after. Only the best for this family, especially now our Grace is home.’

  Danny bent to give Ada a gentle peck on the cheek and she shooed him away with the flick of her hand, although the gesture soothed her. ‘You soppy ha’porth.’ However, he knew she was in her element, fussing and putting on a show, like they had a steak banquet in the parlour every night.

  ‘She hasn’t mentioned her intended yet,’ Ada noted. ‘Maybe when we can get a word in edgeways, we will find out why.’

  ‘Don’t fret, Ma,’ Danny said, ‘it’s not good for the digestion.’

  ‘This’ll show Susie what good food my family are used to,’ Ada replied, carrying a tray of plates into the parlour while Danny helped by carrying another tray to save time.

  ‘Oh, Mom you have done a fabulous job with all of this,’ Grace said, giving
Ada a breath-taking hug, marvelling at the dining table, pulled out to full capacity and pristine in her mother’s best white tablecloth. She pointedly ignored the D’Angelo Line logo edged in silk, knowing that on her last visit to the ship her mother had taken quite a while going past the laundry on her way to the staff lavatory.

  ‘Come and get it before it gets cold,’ Ada said urging them all to tuck in before turning her attention to her own meal.

  Grace watched her mother cut into her steak, gather a hill of creamed potatoes and piled a mountain of mixed vegetables on to her fork. She could not drag her eyes away, suspecting her mother's mouth would not open wide enough to shovel that lot in, but it did, and Grace wasn’t hungry any more.

  'Did you bring back any pictures, Grace?’ Bobby asked as he too shovelled food into his mouth making her feel bilious.

  12

  ‘You’ll never guess who I saw getting out of a taxi half an hour ago?’

  ‘Princess Elizabeth?’ Connie answered, wiping her hands on her smock-covered bump, her baby was due around the same time as the princess, so she followed everything she did with heightened interest. Even the customers were running a book on who would have their baby first. ‘She might have a hankering to slum around in the backstreets – or maybe Elizabeth Taylor, wanting a pleasant change from Hollywood… Am I getting warmer?’

  ‘No, you’re as cold as 1947.’ Evie laughed, following Connie upstairs. Nineteen forty-seven was the coldest year on record and, thank goodness, there hadn’t been one like it since. It was also the year Evie started doing the pub accounts as payment of gratitude to Connie and Angus’s support in those bleak days, three years ago, when her world collapsed beneath her.

  With their unfailing support, she pieced together the jigsaw of her life and gave Jack and Lucy the loving security they deserved.

  Seated at the table in Connie’s furnished sitting room above the Tavern, Evie added the figures while Connie went to make a cup of tea.

  ‘Well?’ Connie asked, coming in from the kitchen. ‘Spit it out before it chokes you, who did you see?’ Connie grabbed hold of Fergus, who was sitting under the table and trying to pull the tablecloth over his head.

  ‘Grace Harris!’ Evie said. ‘She looked like a film star.’

  ‘We’ll never hear the last of it when Ada comes in to see Mim,’ Connie said, fastening the blue leather Jumping Jack shoes, which Fergus had kicked off. ‘It’ll be “our Grace” this and “our Grace” that. There’ll be no stopping her and Mim trying to outdo each other in bragging rights.’ Connie and Evie laughed, knowing the two older women, who had been friends for donkey’s years, had never agreed on anything.

  ‘She’s the spit of Maureen O’Hara in that film with Tyrone Power. The Black Swan, that was it.’ Evie’s voice was soft and whispery as she put away the ledger in the sideboard, having finished the weekly accounts. ‘You should have seen her, Con. Talk about style. She looks like she’d just stepped off the big screen at The Cameo picture house.’

  In the years after the war, the women of Reckoner’s Row were starved of a bit of glamour and going to the pictures was their only chance to leave their worries at the door and immerse themselves in a world of make-believe for a few hours.

  ‘Grace had sunshine running through her hair, and her dress matched her handbag, her hat and her shoes… and her coat was the same as one I saw Princess Margaret wearing on the newsreel at the pictures.’

  ‘So you said.’ Connie smiled when Evie repeated her description. ‘It doesn’t sound like you took much notice,’ Connie added, tilting her head to one side, never begrudging Evie her daydreaming pleasure. For someone who was so determined that she would make a better life for herself and her family – and Connie had no worries that Evie could make it happen – she was just like the rest of the female population in wanting elegance and personal grooming. Everybody wanted to look their best no matter how little they had. ‘Did she speak to you?’

  ‘She did.’ Evie sat upright, her eyebrows raised, ‘I didn’t think for a minute she would, being a friend of Susie Blackthorn, I just thought they were two halves of the same, but she was nice.’

  ‘Here’s me thinking I looked nice when I found a bit of red ribbon for my hair, and Grace gets out of a taxi looking like a Hollywood starlet,’ she told Connie, failing to hide feelings of dowdiness in a straight black skirt and cardigan over a plain white blouse. ‘I’ve never seen clothes like them.’ She stood up, giving a demonstration, ‘The red dress fitted into her tiny waist like this,’ she squeezed her slim waist, ‘and it had a sweetheart neckline showing her tan to perfection.’ Anything pretty lifted her spirits a treat. ‘On her feet she wore wedged sandals with no back in them, can you believe that?’ Evie sighed; her eyes dreamy as an unguarded flash of amusement flickered in Connie’s eyes told her she was being daft. She had coveted nobody’s belongings before, but there was a first time for everything. ‘I’d give my right arm for a pair of red wedges… But they wouldn’t look that good on me. The colour of my legs veer towards milk bottles, not Caribbean sunshine.’

  ‘You’re as good as any of them out there.’ Connie gave her friend an optimistic smile. ‘You need to stop thinking everybody’s better or wiser or happier than you, young Evie.’

  ‘Hark at you and your young Evie.’ She laughed, trying to avoid the subject she had heard a thousand times before, ‘I am twenty-one’

  ‘And look what you’ve achieved.’ Connie was not side-tracked. ‘You’ve raised two kids, single-handed, while doing a full-time job, and you’ve turned that house next door into a cosy welcoming home, a place to be proud of.’

  ‘Aye,’ Evie laughed in that practical way she had about her, ‘and one of these days my halo will fall down and strangle me.’

  ‘More important, didn’t I see you talking to Danny, and him only half dressed?’ Connie had that knowing look in her eyes, her words tumbling like loose pebbles bent on disturbing still waters, and causing Evie’s eyes to widen and for her to shift in her seat. She knew Connie would like nothing more than to see her courting.

  Evie hoped nobody would notice Danny leaning on their railings engaging her in a bit of innocent neighbourly conversation, but the slow smile told Evie that Cupid Connie was unconvinced.

  ‘That’s the third time this week I’ve seen you both so deep in conversation that neither of you noticed anybody calling you.’

  Connie was trying to coax something from her that didn’t exist, Evie thought, and she would not fall into the trap of discussing the conversations she had with Danny Harris.

  ‘He’s a free agent,’ Evie sounded more irritable than she intended, ‘he can talk to any girl he wants to.’ Connie was her friend, and she didn’t know where she would be without her, but she didn’t have to tell her everything that was going on in her mind, or her heart. Her face grew fevered and Evie looked anywhere but at Connie. ‘He’s just a friend, a neighbour. Nothing more.’ Evie shrugged hopefully looking casual. ‘He even asked me to go to the pictures and I said no.’

  ‘Why did you say no, you daft mare?’ Connie rolled her dark eyes.

  ‘I’ve got a house to run, and a family to look after, and I’ve got to manage an office…’ Who are you trying to kid, Evie Kilgaren?

  ‘So, where is he then? This new fella of yours,’ Ada asked, ignoring Susie, who muscled in on family time. Bert and Danny had already hinted at going to the Tavern to get away from Susie’s incessant questions and there was no chance of hearing Dick Barton with all the excitement.

  ‘Are we going to meet your chap before the big day?’ Susie asked.

  ‘You mean you don’t know?’ Grace felt her stomach sink as she watched the sun slip behind a darkened cloud. ‘The wedding is off, I wrote you.’

  ‘Off!’ Susie’s eyes sprung open wide. ‘Well, you kept that quiet.’

  ‘It would never have worked,’ Grace said, ‘we were incompatible.’

  Ada looked like someone had just hit her with a wet fish.
This news had knocked her for six, Grace could tell by the stunned silence. Her mother hadn’t been outside Liverpool since she stepped off the Irish boat, and was not as sophisticated as she liked to think she was.

  ‘What a shame.’ Susie’s smug tone was palpable.

  ‘No wedding,’ Ada said, ‘I bought a hat…’

  ‘Oh that’s a terrible shame, maybe you can get a refund.’ Susie didn’t feel the need for tact knowing moments earlier, Ada looked like the cat who had pride of place on the milk float, now she looked like a miserable old moggy thrown out for the night, although she felt thoroughly chastised when Ada gave her a glare that would stun an elephant.

  ‘I wondered where your engagement ring was?’ Susie said, knowing there would not be the huge white wedding Ada had been bragging about for months. She looked stunned by the news while Susie wanted all the juicy details.

  ‘We didn’t get the letter!’ Ada said.

  ‘I’ve still got the ring,’ Grace said, trying to allay her mother’s obvious disappointment, ‘it's a pink diamond, you know.’

  Ada brightened somewhat until Grace took the ring from its box and Susie lunged, slipping it onto her own finger and pursing her lips, as she gazed at the dazzling sparkle.

  ‘I dreamed of being the mother of the bride,’ Ada cried, while Grace put her arms round her mother to console her, knowing her ma wasn’t one for sentimentality, but she did like to have a good brag.

  ‘I wondered why you weren’t showing it off,’ Susie said, pushing her hand under the fringe of the standard lamp in the corner of the room and wiggling her fingers.

  ‘I’m not one for crowing,’ Ada said, consoled for now, ‘but isn't that the most fantastic ring you ever saw?’ She didn’t wait for an answer. ‘American, I suppose? You won't get one of them round here.’ Ada nodded to the ring, knowing the mere mention of the country brought images of Hollywood stars and rich, handsome men, and Susie’s eyes widened.