The Seven Streets of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  ‘I remember her. Didn’t she win an Oscar?’

  ‘She did indeed.’ He slapped his knee. ‘By Jove, you know your pictures, Mrs Newton. I’ve never met a woman so interested in them before.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Lena murmured, ‘it’s hard to believe those other worlds exist, particularly in America.’ She just loved the frilly curtains Americans had on their windows, the settees with flowered covers and the big airy rooms. And it would seem that almost everybody owned a motor car.

  ‘Isn’t it,’ George enthused. ‘You know, once this war is over, I wouldn’t mind paying a visit to America, to Hollywood in California, take a gander around the studios, like.’ He put his hands behind his head, leant back in the chair and stared with an expression of sheer wonder into the empty fireplace. ‘I could even stay and live there,’ he said. ‘Get a job. There’s nothing stopping me.’

  ‘Nothing at all, Mr Ransome,’ Lena murmured breathlessly. ‘It would be sheer heaven – or “the gear”, as people say in Liverpool.’

  ‘Heaven on earth,’ George agreed. ‘Do you know, Mrs Newton, it’s you what put the idea into me head. Just talking to you about the pictures. The chap at work, the one who loans me the magazines, he’s more interested in the technical side of things, the cameras, the lighting, not the stars and the pictures themselves.’

  Lena would have given anything to accompany him to California. What a thing to wish for! She must be going mad.

  Across the road, Brenda Mahon was busy working on her Singer sewing machine when there was a knock on her front door. Despite the late hour, Brenda went to answer it. Customers often turned up at the most unearthly times if they wanted something making. Nowaday, many people worked shifts and didn’t get home till midnight. Not that it was midnight now, but quarter past ten.

  ‘Hello,’ she said when she opened the door to a soberly dressed man of about forty. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I’d like a dress made, please, out of this.’ He held open a paper carrier bag. Inside Brenda could see folds of glittering pink satin.

  ‘Of course. Come in.’

  She took him into the parlour, which, as usual, was draped with half-made clothes as well as old curtains and bedding that would be turned into something entirely different in the very near future.

  The man stopped in the doorway. ‘What a wonderful sight,’ he murmured appreciatively. ‘It’s like an Aladdin’s cave.’

  ‘People have said that before,’ Brenda told him. She took the material out of the bag, spread it on her sewing table and fingered it. There was between four and five yards and it felt thick and slippery. ‘This is a lovely piece of material,’ she remarked. She looked forward to working with it. ‘What sort of dress would you like – is it for your wife, or your daughter?’

  ‘For my wife,’ the man said. ‘We’re going to a dinner dance in October.’

  ‘Do you want to borrow a pattern book so your wife can pick the style she wants?’ Brenda enquired. ‘Though she’ll need to come in anyroad, so I can measure her.’

  ‘She won’t be able to come in, I’m afraid; she’s an invalid, but I have her measurements with me. Oh, my name is Mr Lester, by the way.’

  ‘I’m Mrs Mahon.’ They shook hands. Mr Lester was very handsome, though he appeared to have a permanent frown, and wore a well-cut dark brown suit. He took a piece of paper out of his breast pocket and unfolded it. It was a pencil drawing of a headless woman wearing a long, simply styled dress, complete with measurements; from shoulder to waist, waist to hem, the waist itself, length of arm and width of wrist. ‘This is the style my wife would like,’ he said. ‘Are these figures enough, and do you have a suitable pattern?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ Brenda said hesitantly. She didn’t need a pattern, but she had never made anything before without the presence of the prospective wearer. ‘I can always come to your house and double-check these measurements,’ she suggested.

  ‘She’s not well enough for that, I’m afraid.’

  Brenda wondered if she would be well enough to wear the dress to the dinner dance in October. Anyroad, she was perfectly capable of making the garment to the measurements supplied. It was just that she would have liked to see it on Mrs Lester before it was handed over.

  ‘How much do you charge?’ asked Mr Lester.

  ‘A guinea,’ Brenda said promptly. She charged strangers more than she did her neighbours and friends. ‘How did you get my name?’

  ‘My wife got it from someone. Her usual dressmaker has moved away.’

  ‘As your wife won’t be able to come for fittings, will you be coming yourself when I’m halfway through, like, to make sure I’ve got the measurements right?’

  ‘I don’t think that will be necessary,’ he said smoothly. ‘I have complete confidence that you will be able to turn out the garment to my wife’s satisfaction. When shall I return to collect it?’

  ‘In a month’s time.’

  ‘Good night, Mrs Mahon.’

  They shook hands again and he left.

  Brenda sat thinking how much she enjoyed being a dressmaker. She loved sewing and met all sorts of interesting people. Mr Lester was a bit out of the ordinary; there was something funny about him, but she couldn’t quite work out what it was.

  She went upstairs and checked that her girls were fast asleep, then crept out of the house and across the road to Sheila’s, where she pulled the key through the letter box on its string and let herself in.

  Sheila was nursing Mollie, now six and a half months old. The living room looked as if a hurricane had swept through it. In a minute, Brenda would help her friend tidy up. They often met around this hour, after the pubs had emptied and everywhere was quiet and peaceful – though it had been dead chaotic while the raids were on – to have a jangle and to bring each other up to date on the happenings of the day.

  ‘I saw George Ransome creep across the road and around the back to Lena’s,’ Brenda said. ‘Well, he didn’t exactly creep, but he walked sort of gingerly. He goes there regularly.’

  ‘How can you be sure he went to Lena’s?’ Sheila attached the baby to her other breast. Mollie gave a half-hearted cry of protest before the new breast was thrust into her mouth.

  ‘Lena’s is the only house where he couldn’t go in the front – where it wouldn’t look funny, like.’

  ‘D’you think they’re actually doing it, Bren?’

  Brenda grinned. ‘Doing what, Sheil?’

  ‘Oh, you know what I mean – it!’

  ‘Well I hope so,’ Brenda said with a chuckle. ‘George Ransome can come through my back door any time he likes. Eh, you should have seen this chap who’s just been to ask if I’ll make a dress for his wife. He brought this lovely pink satin with him, a bit loud for my taste, but …’ She paused and a look of delighted recognition spread over her face. ‘I know, he wants it for himself!’

  Sheila looked started. ‘What?’

  Brenda wandered into the kitchen, where she put the kettle on and washed two cups and saucers. ‘He wants the dress for himself,’ she repeated.

  ‘Like Old Mother Reilly and Kitty, you mean? They were on at the Empire Theatre last year. That woman who works in the fish and chip shop in Marsh Lane, Millie Felice, she went to see them.’

  Brenda supposed Mr Lester might be on the stage. ‘I dunno,’ she muttered. But if that was the case, she would have understood perfectly if he had said the dress was for him. There would be no reason to pretend it was for his wife.

  ‘In real life,’ Sheila went on, ‘Old Mother Reilly is a man and he’s married to Kitty.’

  ‘I know,’ Brenda acknowledged. ‘Would you mind if your Calum dressed up as a woman?’

  Sheila shuddered. ‘I’d go right off him if he did. What about you?’

  Brenda narrowed her eyes and tried to imagine Mr Lester in a pink satin dress. ‘I don’t think I’d mind,’ she said. ‘It would depend who it was. Oh, and talking of Kitty, it’s ages and ages since we heard from our Kitty.’r />
  The women were silent as they thought about their friend Kitty Quigley, who’d left Bootle last year to be a nurse on a hospital ship.

  ‘She left about a year ago, last August or September,’ Brenda continued. ‘She wrote me one letter and you had one too, didn’t you? Since then, nothing. Her dad hasn’t heard anything either. He’s worried sick.’ Kitty’s dad lived along the road with his two stepsons.

  ‘I hope she’s all right,’ Sheila said worriedly.

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Brenda. ‘The trouble with Kitty is that she’s too nice by a mile.’

  Sheila smiled. ‘Not like us, we’re horrible.’

  Brenda nodded in agreement. ‘Dead horrible.’

  Chapter 7

  Kitty could hear the woman talking about her. She was being deliberately loud, knowing that she was in earshot, standing behind Kitty in the queue outside the greengrocer’s.

  ‘She’s lived there over a year and there’s been no sign of a husband,’ sneered the woman. She lived in the basement in the same house as Kitty – a three-storey terraced property close to the docks – and was never seen without a ciggie in her mouth. She must get them on the black market; ordinarily, cigarettes were impossible to buy on a regular basis.

  ‘I know a woman whose hubby’s in India and has been on leave just once since the war started,’ another voice said reasonably. ‘Mrs Quigley’s hubby could be anywhere in the world.’ The voice belonged to the girl who lived next door and had just had a baby, a little boy. ‘And don’t forget, she wears a wedding ring.’

  ‘Huh! Y’can get wedding rings sixpence a time in Woolies,’ the other woman said scornfully. ‘They’re made of brass. And anyway, what about letters? She hasn’t had a single letter either, not before the baby, nor after.’

  ‘You’re right,’ put in another voice. Although Kitty couldn’t see the speaker, she knew that this voice belonged to the woman with the hairy chin who was a friend of the smoker. ‘I mean, even if her husband’s not in a position to write, she must have friends, relatives, but not one has put pen to paper in all this time.’

  ‘Well I feel sorry for her,’ the girl with the baby said. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t talk so loud, or she’ll hear.’

  ‘I hope she does hear. This is Portsmouth. We don’t like strange women landing on us with their bastard kids. Why doesn’t she go back to Liverpool where she belongs?’

  Why didn’t she? Kitty wondered when she was back in the small, dreary room in which she had lived for so long. Why hadn’t she left months ago, when she still had the money for her fare, when she could have turned up in a nice new coat with her hair styled, looking eminently respectable? Why on earth had she stayed until now, when all her savings had gone and she looked like death warmed up? And out of interest, where would she have turned up? The only place she could go was Bootle, Pearl Street, where she knew people, where her father lived.

  She’d been too ashamed to go back; ashamed of Rosie, her beautiful little girl. What did it matter how smart she looked, how elegantly her hair was styled, when she was accompanied by a child who’d been born out of wedlock? That was what people would notice, her child, not her clothes or her hair.

  She glanced down at her four-month-old daughter. She was fast asleep, lying on her back, her tiny arms stretched upwards in a gesture of surrender, eyelids fluttering slightly, breathing steadily, not a trouble in the world, entirely unaware of the havoc she had wrought on her mother.

  How was it possible for people to regard such innocent perfection with disgust?

  Kitty’s mind went back to the day she had left Liverpool, so proud to have a job as a nurse on a troop ship, though at the same time devastated at having discovered that her boyfriend, Dale, an American serviceman, who she assumed she would marry in the very near future, already had a wife and two children back in the States.

  At first, she’d considered that her life was over, that nothing would matter any more; even now she could still collapse into tears when she thought about how much she had loved him – and how much he had claimed to love her. But for the sake of other people – her family and friends – it was essential she return to being at least a shadow of her old self.

  And she had done it. But she had only been a few weeks on the ship when she realised she was pregnant. It seemed no time since she had experienced the shock of Dale revealing he was married; now there was the further shock of discovering she was expecting his child. She had thought she could manage at least another month before having to tell someone and go home. But she was living among nurses. Some were already aware of her bouts of morning sickness.

  It was Matron, who wasn’t just an ordinary matron but a senior officer in the navy, who had noticed her thickening waistline. Kitty was given a good talking-to and ordered to leave the ship when next it docked in England, which turned out to be in Portsmouth. She had found the place where she now lived within the first half-hour – there was a crudely written card in a downstairs window: Room to let, 3/6d week, sherd kichen.

  She’d enough money in a Post Office account to get by on for a while. For the next few months she hardly moved out of the room, only to register with a grocer and buy the basic rations. She was allowed extra milk for being pregnant. There was a kitchen in the house where it could be warmed, and she would dip pieces of bread in it. It was virtually all she ate, all she felt like eating.

  She had returned to the room after having Rosie. She felt too weak to travel all the way to Liverpool. She wasn’t a properly trained nurse, but she knew enough to realise she was probably anaemic; the baby had taken a lot out of her. She needed iron – decent meat, fruit if it was available – but still she existed on milk and bread. It was easy to get and easy to eat. She breastfed Rosie and felt only half alive.

  But now something would have to be done. She had a baby and scarcely a penny in her purse – not even enough to get her through tomorrow. The inertia that she had felt for so long suddenly drained away and she began to panic.

  She twisted the wedding ring that she had worn since leaving Bootle. It wasn’t a sixpenny brass one from Woolies, but a real gold one that had belonged to her mother. She’d always known she could pawn it in an emergency, but if she just used the money to live on, then the time would quickly come when she truly had nothing. Of course, she’d never get the ring back; there was no way she would return to Portsmouth to redeem it.

  She sighed and got to her feet. There were quite a few things she had to do if she was leaving the next day. One thing was to plan how she could get away without the landlord, who lived on the premises, becoming aware. If he realised that she was going for good, he’d demand a week’s rent in lieu of notice. She wanted to keep all the money from the ring for the train fare and other expenses on the way. She decided to leave the pram behind. It was second-hand and falling to pieces and would be a nuisance on the train. She’d carry Rosie in her arms – well, in one arm and the suitcase in the other hand.

  ‘I’ll go to Pearl Street,’ she said out loud. ‘Jess Fleming will let me stay with her until I sort meself out.’ She had lodged with Jess for months and she had been a shoulder to cry on when Dale had broken the news that he was married.

  It took two days and four trains to get to Bootle. Some of the advertised trains didn’t run at all or were cancelled at the last minute because they were required by the military. Kitty and Rosie spent the night in a hotel by Euston station. Rosie, disturbed by the unfamiliar noise and movement, as well as inadequate feeds, cried for hours and other guests complained. The manager knocked on Kitty’s door and demanded she stop her baby crying.

  ‘How?’ Kitty asked simply when she opened the door. In fact, Rosie had just gone to sleep and had woken up again, disturbed by the man’s knock.

  Next morning, they left at the crack of dawn, but the train they caught only went as far as Stafford. The next train stopped at Crewe, and waited there for ages until someone decided it was to go no further. It was nine o’clock by the time K
itty and her baby arrived at Lime Street station on another train. With a mixture of despair and recklessness, she paid for a taxi to Exchange station, where she caught an electric train to Marsh Lane.

  She was home! Things hadn’t exactly gone swimmingly, but she’d managed to reach her destination after carrying a baby and a suitcase all the way from Portsmouth, though a lot of people had been kind and had helped with one or the other. Now all that was wanted was for Jess Fleming to be in and Kitty knew everything would be all right.

  A young woman answered the door of number 10; a girl, in fact, of about sixteen.

  ‘I’m sorry, but Mrs Fleming left ages ago,’ she told Kitty. ‘She lives in Burtonwood now and has a different name. People often come and ask for her, but as I said, she’s gone.’

  ‘Oh dear.’ The news came as such a shock that Kitty had to lean against the door jamb for support. What was she going to do now?

  ‘Oh heck!’ the girl gasped. ‘Give me the baby and come inside. Sit down a while. Would you like a glass of water? I’m awfully sorry, we’re out of tea, though we have some horrible coffee.’

  ‘I’d like some water, please.’

  Minutes later, Kitty was sitting in the familiar room in one of the chairs she’d sat on many times before. ‘I used to live here,’ she told the girl, ‘but I’ve been away and lost touch with everyone.’

  The girl had forgotten all about fetching water and was playing with Rosie, who had just woken up. ‘She’s gorgeous,’ she said. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Rosie.’

  ‘A pretty name for a pretty baby.’ She chucked Rosie under her chin. ‘Hello, Rosie. I’m Phyllis. How d’you do?’

  Rosie smiled, and Kitty half expected her to reply, ‘I’m fine, thank you, Phyllis. How are you?’

  Gosh, she must be tired!

  ‘What will you do now that Mrs Fleming isn’t here?’ Phyllis enquired. She was a pretty, very composed young woman for her age, with short brown curly hair and hazel eyes. Kitty wished she’d had so much confidence when she was that young.