by Maureen Lee
A lamp had been switched on to make the living room look slightly more cheery. Eileen was hoping she wouldn’t have to light a fire and use precious coal as early as September.
Peter was meeting his nephew for the first time. ‘How old is he now?’ he asked Eileen. The baby was sitting on his knee, scowling at him and the world in general.
‘Ten weeks,’ she told him.
‘Does he always look this unhappy?’
‘He’s not unhappy; he’s just not very pleased with things.’
‘That sounds like unhappy to me,’ Peter jigged the baby up and down. ‘Did he miss Doria when she left?’
‘He didn’t give any sign of it.’ Eileen shook her head. ‘I mean, he’s looked like that since he was born. I’ve taken him to the clinic and they confirmed he is a perfectly healthy baby. He might have three-month colic, in which case another few weeks and he’ll be smiling at everybody.’
‘It’s nice being an uncle. I’ve never held a baby before.’ He hoisted Theo on to his shoulder and stroked the back of his head. ‘Now that he’s actually born, and she has a flesh-and-blood grandson, my mother worries that she and Dad should be doing something about him.’
‘Such as?’ Eileen asked warily.
‘I don’t think they know, but they’re pretty fed up with Doria and your precious husband.’
‘There’s no need for them to do anything,’ Eileen told him firmly. ‘Doria left him with me.’ If there was any argument about it, she had Doria’s note to prove it.
‘You don’t mind having him?’
‘I love having him. Nicky does too. And don’t forget, Theo has relatives here. Nicky is his half-brother.’
‘Does that mean you and I are related in some remote way?’
He was flirting with her. She could tell by the way his blue eyes sparkled and his mouth twisted in an appealing way that she was determined to resist. ‘You and I aren’t related in any way at all,’ she informed him, and was relieved when her dad came into the kitchen with Nicky, wanting to know if there was a cup of tea going.
On reflection, Peter Mallory was much too young for her to have a relationship with, no matter how inconsequential. He was twenty-three and she was thirty-one, hardly old enough to be his mother, but old enough for it to matter.
She was even more relieved when Sheila, Brenda, Lena Newton and a whole crowd of children came marching up the path like an advancing army, and she could keep out of Peter’s way for the rest of the day.
A few days later, Brenda Mahon woke up in Pearl Street to yet another dull morning. September was normally her favourite month, but this year it had let her down. She had always enjoyed kicking her way through the crisp golden leaves that had fallen from the trees in North Park, but now they would be all wet and limp and would stick to her shoes and she could easily slip over. She had taken the girls there in the pram when they were little.
She turned over in the double bed and wished there was a man in the other half. Not for a bit of nooky or anything like that, just for company, someone to talk to, share a joke or two. She cursed Xavier, her husband, and wondered where he was. It was years since she’d heard from him – not surprising, given that she’d thrown him out after discovering he’d married another woman. He hadn’t just been unfaithful, but a bigamist on top.
Xavier Mahon had been a miniature Adonis, a man with ten hats – or was it twelve? She’d forgotten. She actually wouldn’t mind having him at home for a little while, just to prove to people that she had a husband. If she knew where he was, she’d write and invite him back for the weekend.
It gave her a fright when Tommy jumped on to the bed and began to lick her face. Well, at least there was one male in her life who she could talk to without any chance of an argument.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, sitting up and hoisting the pillow up behind her. Tommy crawled on to her knee and made himself comfortable ‘I’ll give you some milk in a minute.’ It was about time cats were entitled to their own milk ration.
For some reason, she felt out of sorts this morning. Perhaps it was because the war had gone on too long, the entire country depressed and bored witless.
There was a glimmer of pale light between the blackout curtains. That meant she could turn on the gas light and draw back the curtains without some overzealous air-raid warden screaming, ‘Put that light out! ’ She’d go downstairs soon and make some tea; as usual, she was dying for a cuppa.
The first thing she noticed when she opened the curtains was that there was activity across the road at number 10 where the Taylors had lived; Winifred had returned to Yorkshire and Phyllis had joined the army. The woman Winifred had swapped jobs with hadn’t wanted a whole house to live in, so number 10 had been empty for a few weeks.
Brenda had her nose pressed against the net curtains, trying to make out the new occupants, when the curtains upstairs were suddenly whisked back by a familiar figure in a blue dressing gown. Brenda’s scream of delight caused Tommy to leap off the bed and hide underneath, while Monica and Muriel rushed into the room thinking their mother was being murdered.
‘What’s the matter, Mam?’
‘Nothing!’ Brenda yelled. ‘Nothing’s the matter.’ She dragged on her clothes and stumbled across the road to Sheila’s house, pulling the key through the letter box and letting herself in.
‘You’ll never guess who’s moved into number ten,’ she shouted. ‘Never! ’
Sheila was still in her nightdress. Upstairs, the boys were having a fight and the girls were arguing. ‘Clark Gable?’ she guessed.
‘No, idiot. Guess harder.’
‘The King?’
‘No, even better: Jessica Fleming.’ Brenda spread her arms and stepped forward as if she’d just introduced the biggest star in the world to a grateful nation.
‘The red-haired one?’
‘What other Jessica Fleming do we know?’
‘Blimey!’ Sheila said. ‘Don’t forget, she’s not Jess Fleming any more, but Jess Henningsen since she married that American captain – or is he a colonel? I wonder what she’s doing back in Pearl Street.’
‘Let’s go and see.’
‘Not in me nightie, Bren. We’ll go when I’ve got dressed.’
Jessica Henningsen had been born in Bootle forty-six years ago. She was the only child of a rag-and-bone merchant, a shady character who became rich from the profits he made out of buying a precious piece of china or family heirloom from some poor old person who was ignorant of its real value as well as down on their luck and therefore desperate for a few bob. These items he would sell at a vast profit.
The business had done so well that Jessica and her father – her mother had passed away when she was a baby – had moved away from Pearl Street to live in the best part of Liverpool. After her father’s death, Jessica’s husband Arthur, a nice man but hopeless at business, had lost everything, and the couple had returned to Pearl Street, where Jessica owned several properties.
In the third year of the war, Arthur had joined the army and was killed in Egypt, and Jessica had married Major Gus Henningsen of the US Army Air Force. Now she was back in Pearl Street for the third time.
‘For goodness’ sake,’ she laughed when she opened the door and found her two old friends outside, almost hysterically pleased to see her. She sat them down and made them tea.
‘I’m just as pleased to see you too,’ she told them when they were seated around the table. She looked at Sheila. ‘I thought I’d go and see your Eileen this afternoon. We’ve been writing to each other, but it’s ages since I heard from her and she doesn’t know I’d decided to come back – I only made up my mind at the last minute. Gus is being posted to France to join the American forces, so I’ll probably not see him until the war is over.’
‘I thought you had a really nice bungalow in Burtonwood?’ Brenda cried.
‘I have, but I hardly know anyone there and I decided I’d sooner spend my last months in England with my friends in Bootle than
anywhere else in the world. We plan on moving to New York eventually, as you know.’ Gus’s family owned a chain of bakery shops there.
‘Where’s Penny?’
‘In bed, fast asleep. Well, she was until you two attempted to knock the door down.’
Five-year-old Penny proved that she was now wide awake by entering the room, still in her nightdress. ‘Hello,’ she said, looking shyly at the newcomers.
‘Hello, luv,’ the women chorused, and Sheila added, ‘The older she gets, the more your Penny looks like our Caitlin. They could be sisters.’
‘Actually, Penny is very like my mother,’ Jessica remarked. ‘There’s a photo of her somewhere. I’ll show it you if I happen to come across it.’
‘She hasn’t got red hair.’ Brenda glanced admiringly at Jessica’s own head of glorious waves and curls.
‘Neither had my mother. She had brown hair; it was my father who was the redhead.’
Sheila decided it was time she went home. ‘The kids’ll be wondering where I’ve got to. Can you come round tonight for a chat, Jess? Bring Penny with you. Oh, and you’ll find our Eileen has quite a surprise in store when you see her.’
‘In that case, I’ll go to Melling as soon as I can.’
Outside, Brenda said to Sheila, ‘I woke up this morning feeling really down in the dumps. Now I feel as happy as a lark because Jess has arrived. The world’s a funny place; what do you think, Sheil?’
‘It’s a funny place all right, Bren, particularly with people like you and me in it. Me dad says we remind him of those women on the wireless, Gert and Daisy.’
Brenda hooted. ‘Oh well, cheerio, Gert.’
‘Ta-ra, Daisy. I’ll see you later.’
Five years ago, a mere few weeks after the start of the war, when Jessica had returned to Pearl Street, she and Eileen had started out as enemies, what with Jessica thinking she’d come down in the world, but had eventually become friends. It was therefore no surprise that Eileen’s reaction when she opened the door was somewhat similar to Sheila and Brenda’s earlier on.
‘Jess!’ she yelled. ‘It’s marvellous to see you. You’re looking well. Oh, and Penny, you are prettier than ever. Come on in, luv, so I can kiss you. And after I’ve done that, I’ll make us all a cup of tea.’
Nicky had arrived in the doorway and was hanging on to his mother’s leg. He and Penny, who was two years older, had met before, but the chances were they wouldn’t remember each other.
The fire had been lit, mainly with wood chopped from the trees in the garden. There was a fresh, flowery smell to the room that hinted of lavender.
Theo was propped up in a bed of cushions on the settee, staring into the fire with a strange expression on his face that was possibly a smile.
Seeing him, it was Jessica’s turn to yell. ‘You’ve had a baby-and no one told me, not even this morning when I saw your Sheila.’
‘Don’t be daft, Jess. This is Theo. Sit down while I make some tea, and then I’ll tell you all about him and everything else that has happened since I last wrote.’
Jessica was almost too stunned to speak by the time Eileen had regaled her with the story of Nick and Doria, and how she’d ended up holding the baby while the main characters in this sorry tale had both disappeared. While they were speaking, Nicky and Penny had gone into the garden to gather the windfalls off the apple trees.
‘I haven’t an idea in the world where Nick is, or Doria, though I could find out about her easily enough if I wanted.’ She explained that Doria had gone off with Phyllis, who had lived with her mother in Jessica’s old house. ‘Phyllis has promised to write to Lena Newton, who lives over the dairy. Not that I’m interested, mind you,’ she said hastily. ‘I’d be happy to keep Theo for ever – you know his real name is Theobald?’
‘Never!’ Jessica studied the baby. ‘Can I give him a little cuddle?’ she asked.
‘Of course!’
‘Oh, they do feel nice, don’t they, babies?’ She heaved a pleasurable sigh. ‘When they’re little, they fit in all the places outside your body just like they did inside.’ She tucked Theo against her side, within the curve of her arm, then, without looking at her friend, she said, ‘What are you going to do about Nick?’
Eileen watched the fire spit and crackle before answering, an expression of almost hopeless sadness on her face. ‘I don’t know, Jess,’ she said eventually. ‘I love him dearly most of the time, but other times I don’t love him at all. I know something bad happened when he lost his arm, but it wasn’t my fault. Not only that, but I loved him more after the accident than I’d done before – and I hadn’t thought that was possible.’
‘Love, babies, men and women.’ Jessica stared into the fire. She looked staggeringly beautiful with the firelight reflected on her lovely face, her hair as brilliant as the flames and her green eyes soft and pensive. ‘Life is just one long drama, and I bet it never stops. When we are both very old women, we’ll have the same things to worry about – and I’ll be there a long time before you. I was forty-six on my last birthday and I can’t tell you how much I would love to have another child; girl or boy, I wouldn’t care. Another one to hold as I’m holding this little one here.’ She smiled at Theo, and Eileen could hardly believe it when he smiled back.
‘You lost a child, didn’t you, Jess?’ she said softly. ‘Not long after you met Gus.’
Jessica remembered the day with horror. It was one of the worst of her life. ‘Yes, it was Arthur’s child, a brother or sister for Penny.’
Eileen didn’t know it, but Jessica was lying through her teeth.
That night, Jack Doyle let himself into his daughter’s house just around the corner from his own. He was only coming for a chat, to see how Sheila and the kids were. It was a while since Calum had been home, and it was clear for the whole world to see how much she loved and missed him.
There was more than a bit of noise coming from the living room; mainly screams of laughter, and he could make out a voice he didn’t recognise – a woman who didn’t have a Liverpool accent.
There was something going on in the parlour, too, though the voices in there were more subdued by far. He opened the door and saw that the best table had been pulled into the middle of the room and six children were sitting around it engrossed in a game of cards. It was Pairs, a game Jack had often played with his grandkids. It required enormous concentration that he was incapable of.
‘Hello there,’ he said.
‘Hello, Grandad,’ muttered Dominic. The other children ignored him, too involved in their game.
‘Ta-ra, then.’ He closed the door, his brow furrowed in thought. Sheila’s three lads had been there, and he recognised Brenda’s girls, but here’d been another girl, the youngest of the lot, brown-haired, pretty …
‘Jaysus!’ He actually whispered the word out loud. ‘Penny Fleming!’
So that was who the unknown voice belonged to: Penny’s mother. He was amazed he hadn’t recognised it straight away. Jessie Fleming was back in Bootle! What for this time? To haunt him and taunt him; to break his heart for the umpteenth time? And she’d brought their daughter with her.
Jack left the house, closing the door quietly behind him. He hoped Dominic wouldn’t mention that his grandad had been and gone. If Sheila said anything, he’d just reply that seeing as she’d company, he’d thought it better not to disturb them.
He made his way rapidly to the King’s Anns and ordered a whisky chaser with his first pint.
‘Have you come up on the pools, Jack?’ Mack the landlord enquired. ‘You usually only treat yourself to a chaser on special occasions, like Christmas.’
‘Just felt like one tonight,’ Jack mumbled. He hid himself in a corner and hardly spoke to a soul the entire night. Word soon got round that Jack Doyle was in a mood and to leave him alone.
He left the pub before Mack rang the bell for closing time, and made his unsteady way back to Garnet Street. When he let himself in, he found a note on the mat just inside the doo
r.
Jack, I need to see you urgently. Will you please come round as soon as you can. I’m back at number 10. Jessica
Chapter 18
Well, he wasn’t going now, not straight away, not when he was more than a bit drunk and couldn’t think straight. But he could never think straight when he was in the vicinity of Jessie Fleming.
Jack was a popular man and he knew it. He was also as straight as a die and could hold sway over a hundred men, two hundred, and bend them to his will. He was generally happy with his lot. His wife, Mollie, had died not long after Sean was born, but that was the way things happened. No one should expect life to be one big bed of roses. There was good, and there was bad. He drove his daughter Eileen mad going on like this, explaining everything away, reasoning, making sense of things, never allowing for the unexpected to happen. But Jessie Fleming was the unexpected; he would never be able to explain her away.
Next day, at work on the docks unloading a big dusty ship from India, he was bloody useless. He couldn’t remember which was his right hand and which his left. He fell down the same ladder twice, fortunately not a very big one, and discovered he’d put lemon curd instead of mustard on the sarnies he’d made for his dinner.
He arrived home at six in a terrible tuck with himself. Should he go and see Jess now? Should he go and see her at all? How dare she just demand his presence as if she were the Queen of bloody England? Knowing Jess, though, she’d not take no for an answer; best to go now, before he went near the pub and got pissed out of his mind for the second night in a row.
