The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  When they sat down in the kitchen for a well-deserved cup of tea, Jean asked Keith whether he would be taking an evacuee. ‘I might,’ he said. ‘If there’s one on his own. But the three lads up here are going to need a firm hand from what I’ve heard. If any of them starts bother, I’ll move him in with me. Are you getting one?’

  ‘A girl,’ she said. ‘With already having the two girls, we’re more used to females.’ She stood up. ‘Right, I’ve a meal to do. Will you be eating with us tonight? You’ll be very welcome.’

  He shook his head. ‘Thanks, but no. I’ve a few things to do.’

  Alone once more, he allowed a long, sad sigh to surface. Thoughts of Eileen had been keeping him going. He couldn’t return to Cora Appleyard for sustenance or relief, because he was fixated. Again. And there was no one with whom he might share his thoughts and fears, since most would see his weakness rather than the strength of his feelings. Should he stop writing to her? Was a clean break less painful than an extended goodbye? And anyway, this foolishness could be part of an overactive imagination. Eileen and Tom might be no more than friends …

  He went out to talk to the horses. His favourites, the large cart-pullers, were out in the field acting daft. A carthorse at play was a magnificent sight, owning the same silliness as an untrained polo pony but carrying about his person the weight of a small steam engine. The sight of four feathered feet waving in the air while an equine giant rolled in the grass was one to be treasured.

  Keith whistled, and they stopped their foolishness to follow him into the yard. Behind them trotted a little palomino. Keith had plans for Pedro. The youngest of Eileen’s boys liked horses, and he would be taught to ride. There was still a chance. If he could tame her sons, he might just get her to look at him again. And life at Willows needed to be as easy as possible for Miss Pickavance, so the management of those children was of prime importance.

  He settled the horses and returned to the house, surprised when he found Gill sorting out cupboards and crockery. ‘How did it go?’ he asked. ‘Has Collie gone home?’ He had not expected to see her, but she told him that the ward sister had ordered her home, as Jay needed to settle. ‘I have to take pyjamas and stuff tomorrow, because he’ll need them.’

  ‘And Collie brought you back?’

  ‘Yes, he’s gone. He’s a couple of cows need attention over at Pear Tree. And I’m pregnant, and Jay’s having blood tests, but they’re ninety per cent sure it’s diabetes. So that’s his dream of being a pilot finished. He can fly a kite, but that’s about it.’

  ‘And you’re upset, but you’re hiding it.’

  She nodded and carried on wiping saucers. ‘I’m not upset about having a baby, because it’s what I’ve always wanted. It’s Jay. They gave me a booklet, and on one page it warns about heart attacks and blindness while further on it tells a diabetic to carry on as normal. So it’s not just Stephenson that’s mad; it looks like the whole medical profession could do with a fortnight in Blackpool for rest and recuperation.’

  ‘They’ll be keeping Jay in for a while, then?’

  ‘Yes. They have to get his food points to balance with his insulin, then try to calculate how much work he does in a day, multiply the points, adjust the insulin accordingly, then go back to the number they first thought of. It’s like some warped game. They’ve no idea what they’re doing, and I’ll have to pick up the pieces when their guesswork goes wrong. I’ll be following him around all day.’

  ‘I’ll help. You know I’ll do anything I can, Gill. So will Neil and Jean. Do you want to sleep at Home Farm tonight? I’m sure they wouldn’t mind.’

  ‘No, no. I’m all right.’ She wasn’t. She didn’t want to sleep at Jean’s house, but she wasn’t all right. There was the worry about Jay, for a start. Bolton Royal Infirmary seemed not to know whether to starve him or feed him, and she was afraid in case the little one in her belly might never see its dad. But there was a bigger anxiety, and he was standing very near to her. Gill had no idea how or when it had happened, but she seemed to have grown rather too fond of the land agent. She hadn’t fallen in love, because that was a sudden thing; she had slid into it smoothly and easily. Trying to climb out was no use; it was like struggling in quicksand, as she seemed to sink further whenever she attempted to free herself.

  ‘What is it, Gill?’

  ‘Tiredness,’ she answered.

  ‘Then go home and rest. I can finish off here.’

  She walked towards the door, stopped and turned. ‘Why did you never marry, Keith?’

  He raised his shoulders. Everyone kept asking him the same question. ‘No one would have me? Oh, I love too well, Gill. There was a girl, and she died. Her ghost stayed with me for a very long time, and I’m no spring chicken now. But there’s a lot to be said for living alone. I please myself and only myself. I can get away without shaving at weekends, and no one nags me.’

  ‘Do I nag Jay?’

  ‘Yes, of course you do. And Jean nags Neil, because that’s the way it works. Women nag, and men ignore them.’

  She loved Jay. She did, she did. This Keith Greenhalgh business was a flash in the pan, no more than that. It was a bit like when she was at school, and Jimmy Schofield held her hand during long multiplication. At the age of twelve, she’d had her wedding planned; she and Jimmy would marry, get a farm and have four children. It was all connected to hormones, and her hormones belonged to the man she’d married. She had to make herself fall in love with Jay all over again.

  ‘Gill?’

  ‘It’s all right, Keith. I just got a bit fed up with Jay the super-pilot. Not easy living with someone who doesn’t know whether he’s coming, going, or falling on the floor like a sack of logs. I love him, I’m sure, but it’s been hard wondering which one of him would be coming home.’ She paused. ‘The being in love doesn’t last, does it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I expect it lasted for me because I turned her into an angel. The dead are always perfect, but we aren’t. You’ve a lot to face up to. There’s a baby coming, and your man’s ill. Don’t stop loving him because he’s less than perfect. Now’s the time for a deep friendship to be formed. When you locked him out that night and he came to me, he was a sick man. We didn’t know that. We thought he was a natural clown who couldn’t hold his drink. He’s your husband, Gill. In sickness and in health, remember?’

  She smiled. There were many kinds of love. Red hot desire usually burned itself out, and unless replaced by something more substantial it disappeared like steam pouring upwards into the atmosphere. Romantic love that depended on poetry and posturing was not to be trusted, either. Love needed to come from the mind as well as from the soul. Real love was loyalty, laughter, and conversations in which minds met even though they didn’t necessarily agree.

  Gill wasn’t sure what she felt for Keith Greenhalgh, so she decided that it was some kind of combination of all three. She wanted to touch and be touched, might have enjoyed a bit of Wordsworth, and the man was an intelligent communicator when he chose to talk. He was a passing fancy, or so she hoped. She said goodbye and left.

  Keith continued to deal with crockery and pans. Something about Gill had moved him. She wasn’t pretty, wasn’t ugly, was a good woman. She had mid-brown hair and blue irises, and the skin beneath her eyes was currently stained like bruising on a peach. Other than that, her complexion was good, her figure pleasing … He cleared his throat. She had been talking to him, and beyond the words sat something he neither wanted nor needed.

  Kitchen knives and meat cleaver went into a top drawer. Was a meat cleaver suitable company for Philip, Robin and Albert? They had to learn what not to touch, how to behave properly, or their mother would never again give Keith the time of day. ‘God help me,’ he whispered. He couldn’t bear the memory of the expression he’d seen in Gill’s eyes. Nor did he wish to contemplate a life without a chance to be with Eileen.

  Should he talk to Gill? What might he tell her? She’d made no declaration, and what was he going to s
ay about a look on her face? Nothing. Gill would need to frame the words, and she wouldn’t, as she was a decent human being with a family to care for. Perhaps if Jay got balanced and a bit more sensible, she would learn to value him again, because he was a good lad underneath the daftness.

  Life was hard. Keith locked up Willows and went home for something to eat. Later on, he might go to the pub for a couple of pints. Sometimes, a man needed his comforts.

  Seven

  There was something terribly wrong. Whatever it was crackled in the air like undischarged lightning, and Mel wished with all her heart that it would show itself in a blaze of temper before going away and leaving in its wake a clearer atmosphere. This was a local war; the real one waited while Hitler entrenched himself in France. Only then would he be capable of bombing the north of England; he could get to London from Germany, but not much further. Yet it would come; oh yes, it would come. This quiet period was not to be trusted, and people should not become complacent, because the planes might already be lined up on the French coast. Meanwhile, the Battle of Rachel Street had begun.

  The three lads, whose recent brush with the law was being taken extremely seriously, were sleeping in Miss Pickavance’s house. They were unusually quiet, untypically clean, and they wore a corporate expression that might have sat well on the face of a hunted animal being chased towards unfamiliar territory. But that was not the problem. The awful truth was that Mam was not speaking to Gran, and Gran’s features were set in grim lines that spoke volumes on the subject of disharmony.

  They never quarrelled. Occasionally, there would be a small disagreement about the lads and their mischief, about when the family would go to the public bath house, about ordinary, everyday things that niggled and caused small amounts of tension in many households. This was different. This was enormously different. It was enough that her country was waiting with bated breath for the inevitable onslaught by a foreign power; that her mother and grandmother should be daggers drawn was ghastly. Ghastly was the favourite word at school these days; war, uniform and the creatures at the boys’ school were all too, too ghastly, and the vowel had to be a long, tall ‘ah’ rather than a flat Lancashire production.

  Mel stretched out on her bed after doing battle with the subjunctive mood in French. She had won, but small victories were suddenly meaningless, because all was far from well on the home front. There’d been an enormous, earth-shaking fight, but Mel had no idea of its subject. She didn’t need to know, yet she wanted all to be well before the imminent parting of ways. ‘It would be ghastly,’ she told the ceiling.

  Gran, having disappeared for several hours a few days ago, had returned with bruised knuckles and a visibly altered attitude. Since then, a cloud had settled over Rachel Street. It was heavy, black, and it promised to deliver a storm of enormous proportions, since Mam and Gran seemed unwilling to negotiate a peace treaty.

  Mel dared not interfere directly. Born with an innate sense of when to speak and when to hold her tongue, she had the intelligence to stay out of this. Whoever stepped into the field of battle would only make matters worse. Such an intruder might also get burned by the temperature in the arena. Homer’s Iliad screamed for attention, but Mel had bigger and British fish to fry. She had to make something happen while remaining outwardly detached.

  The whole neighbourhood was affected. Gran was doing a lot of hmmphing and Mam was walking about with a face like a bad knee, as Gran might have termed it had she been using language. Everyone was due to move in a couple of days, and it would be sad if the two adults in the family parted on bad terms, especially during a war. Not that there’d been many signs of conflict thus far, but men in uniform were marching and driving through Liverpool in their hundreds. This quiet time could not last for much—

  Ah. The front door slammed. Mam didn’t make such a noise, even when in a bad mood, so Mel identified the incomer as Gran. Minutes later, her mother came home. Latin could wait, Mel decided. She would visit her brothers and Miss Pickavance, as nothing would happen here unless all potential referees and linesmen had left the field of play. She jumped up, ran downstairs and called out her intention to visit number one.

  When Mel entered the house across the street, Miss Pickavance asked a question by raising an eyebrow, and Mel shook her head sadly. There was no progress. Everything was changing: Philip, Rob and Bertie sat at the table doing homework; that, in itself, was a rarity to be treasured. The quiet, gentle woman who was meting out their punishment had proved that she was a force to be reckoned with. Her deep disappointment was far more effective than a stroke from a cane or a cuff round the ear.

  Hilda led Mel into her kitchen. ‘It can’t go on,’ she mouthed.

  Mel nodded. ‘It won’t,’ she answered in a whisper. ‘Otherwise I’ll knock their heads together.’

  They drank tea while the boys giggled in the next room. Mel hoped that Mam hadn’t gone straight upstairs. She slept in the boys’ room now, leaving Gran the luxury of a mattress all her own in the downstairs front room. ‘Fingers crossed,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hilda. ‘May good sense prevail.’

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ Eileen ordered. ‘Kitty next door’s had enough trouble lately without having to listen to you roaring like a bull at a locked gate.’

  The older woman attempted to rein herself in. Her daughter was on the route to perdition, and Nellie was trying to set up a roadblock. ‘He’s married,’ she hissed. ‘You know damned well he’s a married man, because Mel’s his Gloria’s best friend. How can you even think of such a thing? You’re supposed to confess sins of thought, you know.’

  ‘Can you not play a different tune?’ Eileen folded her arms and tapped an angry toe against the floor. ‘You walk in there and try to take his eye out – did you know he had to be checked for a broken cheekbone? As for putting out the Dockers’ Word … I despair. He should sue you.’

  Nellie dropped into a chair. ‘You’ve seen him,’ she accused. ‘You’ve met him while you were supposed to be at work.’

  ‘Course I have. Somebody had to apologize for your behaviour. I saw him the day after you hit him, if you must know. His face was all the colours of the rainbow, and he’d been at the hospital after you punched him.’

  Nellie shrugged. ‘At least I told you what I’d done. And he daren’t bloody sue, because it would all come out. As for you, I am ashamed to death. Sleeping with a man who’s a father, a husband and a doctor? What about when you get pregnant, eh? Don’t come running to me with a bastard on board. Then there’s Mel. Do you think nobody’ll notice? You’ll stop her being top of the class, I can tell you that for no money.’ She paused for effect. ‘So you’ve made your mind up to ruin your little girl’s life. Give yourself a pat on the back.’

  Eileen inhaled deeply. ‘I will, Mam. Because when I went to see him, I said sorry for what you’d done, and I told him he’d get nowhere with me. What I object to is you trying to be in charge of a thirty-three-year-old woman. I shouldn’t have told you I had any sort of feelings for him. We’ve always been able to talk, you and me. It seems as if I can’t ever tell you anything again.’

  Nellie’s lip quivered. ‘Don’t say that, girl. You’re my world. You’re everything to me, Eileen. I just want to keep you safe.’

  ‘I know. But I promise you here and now that I’ll do nothing to hurt our Mel.’ She paused. ‘And I know well enough that I could come to love a man … perhaps a sensible one like Keith Greenhalgh. I’m not a fool, you know. I just have a lonely body. And Keith is very, very special. I had a dream about him last night. It was … lively.’ But she mustn’t make the hurry-up mistake, mustn’t develop war fever …

  When Mel returned from her unscheduled visit, she heard them both weeping. As prearranged, she bounded up the stairs, went into the front room, removed the blackout screen and held a lighted candle near the window. That was the signal for which Miss Pickavance would be waiting. The storm had passed and the air was clearer. It was Germany’s turn n
ow.

  The swelling had subsided somewhat, but Tom still looked as if he had gone several rounds with a champion boxer. Mrs Kennedy packed a fair punch, and she was hefty in the verbal department, too. How she had managed to produce a daughter as elegant and dainty as Eileen beggared belief. Even Eileen’s accent had improved, and her tendency to abuse English grammar seemed to be disappearing fast. But she was backing off, was becoming determined to concentrate on Mel, who was her sole reason for remaining in Liverpool. He wanted her more than ever. The war had enlivened her sexuality, and he was prepared to serve her in any way she might require.

  He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. A black eye did not sit well on the face of a doctor, whose prime concern was supposed to be the physical integrity of his patients. The official explanation was that he had argued with a door and had come off second best, but he’d seen a few glances that spoke of disbelief.

  The door opened. ‘Will you be long?’ Marie asked.

  He continued to look in the mirror, though his gaze now travelled past his own image and settled on her. She looked different. There was tousled, carefree and newly styled hair, and a rosy glow on her cheeks. ‘You look well,’ he remarked. The war seemed to be suiting women, then.

  Marie nodded, backed out, and closed the door. She crept into the spare bedroom and perched on the edge of a narrow, single bed. He must not be encouraged to find her attractive. She was having a wonderful time, and he was not going to be allowed to spoil it. The business she chose to name rape was now a thing of the past, and she intended to keep it that way. Tom and his pot of petroleum jelly could stay in the master bedroom, thanks very much, because she neither needed nor wanted more children, as she had done her duty by delivering two for the price of one. He wouldn’t come in here. He was too proud a man to chase her in order to have his way.