The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  He kept telling his mind to stop, but it wouldn’t be quiet. Had he opened a can of worms, or had he found a way of bringing peace to Tess’s haunted nights? Joe had kept all the details; Don didn’t want any written evidence in his house. No more was expected of him. The boss would do the rest alone; there were people in West Derby, Bootle and Waterloo, but Don had done his bit. The Waterloo people included Tess’s double, the one who had survived that terrible Cuttle fellow.

  He was sore. The walking had hurt, as had the reading of fading parish registers. ‘I’d better get my eyes tested.’ He glanced down at his dinner. Little bits of lamb fat were creating white globules in the gravy. Don felt sick. Would this day ever end? He ached all over his body – even his hair felt sore. That was daft. Nobody had sore hair, because it died as soon as it struggled through the skin. With his body aching from top to toe, he slumped in the chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘Don?’

  This time, his smile was real. The nasty, selfish wife had disappeared, had been replaced by a piece of magic by which he was fast becoming totally bewitched. She often bathed him. Some instinct born of ancestors who had been forced to self-medicate had come through in her engineering, and she owned miracle hands. His leg, a limb that had suffered the cruel ministrations of qualified doctors, had never been hurt by the new Tess. She knew how to handle it; in fact, she knew how to manage the rest of him, too. ‘Coming,’ he called. Oh yes, he would place himself in her hands any day of the week, because she owned a great gift. For her and only for her, he would climb the Everest that the staircase had suddenly become.

  He lay in the roll-top bath while Tess massaged his head. She wasn’t gentle, wasn’t harsh, since she seemed to know exactly how much pressure to apply in order to lower his level of tension. Gradually, he relaxed until he courted the edge of sleep while she began on his neck and shoulders. Even the pain in his beleaguered leg lessened as he gave himself up to the power of her fingers.

  The leg would remain untouched until the rest of him was dried, powdered, and on the bed. The leg didn’t get powdered, since she used oil on it. She was wonderful. Tess could do this job professionally, perhaps even as therapy within the health service, but she was happy with her dry-cleaning round, her football pools, the family and her famous birds and squizzles. She’d settled. Yet he had been sure for so many years that she would never be satisfied with her lot.

  In the beautiful bedroom, she worked on his leg. Although shrapnel had blown his knee to smithereens, Tess was aware of referred pain. It took several paths, and she traced each one, smoothing out knots in tissues, finally arriving at the injured joint. ‘Don?’

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘You know they’ve moved?’

  ‘Who’s moved?’

  ‘The bits of metal and stuff.’

  ‘Shrapnel.’

  ‘Yes. They’re trying to get out. It’s as if your knee finally recognizes them as foreign bodies. We’ve money saved. Rodney Street or Harley Street – let’s pay someone to have a look. Let’s beat the queues and go to the front for a change. It’s time somebody examined it to see can they get the pieces out.’

  Ah, there was her bit of Irish. Just occasionally, her words arrived rearranged by habits collected in childhood, during the hungry time when her siblings had stolen her food, when she had been cold in bed.

  ‘Don?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Shall we go private?’

  ‘On one condition.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Lock the door and lie down with me.’

  ‘But you’re tired.’

  ‘That’ll be why I’m on the bed, then.’ For some beautiful things, a man was never too tired.

  Seamus was like a flea trying to choose between two dogs. He couldn’t seem to keep still. Fortunately, his mother was out quite often, though when she did clap eyes on her son, she voiced the opinion that there was something up with him. ‘What is the matter?’ she asked after tea on Wednesday. ‘Come on. You know I’ll get it out of you before bedtime.’

  ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he lied, nose pointing downwards to his shoes.

  ‘Look at me.’

  He didn’t want to look at her. He didn’t want to look at her because he and Dad shared a secret of gigantic proportions. ‘What?’ he asked sullenly.

  ‘What? What?’ Her hands were on her hips. ‘You’re bright red. Have you got a temperature?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Then you’re hiding something from me. Like when you were going off to find your big brothers and we thought you’d be camping with school. I can always tell. That’s one thing in life you can be sure of, Seamus: I always know when you’re hiding something.’ It was true. The lad was completely transparent, and Maureen thanked God for that. Had her two older sons been as easy to read, she might have managed to keep them away from the corrupting element of London’s East End and its boxing clubs.

  He shuffled about a bit. Mam was the one person who made him shuffle more than Gran did. And she had a temper. Gran had been heard to declare that their Maureen’s temper could rip the skin off a rice pudding from a distance of forty paces. Then an idea lit up his mind. Pauline Critchley. Yes, he would tell her about Pauline. ‘Mam?’

  ‘What?’ Her arms were folded.

  ‘Pauline Critchley says she loves me.’ Well, at least it was a truth. ‘She kissed me.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Behind the air raid shelter on the playing field.’

  ‘That’s a terrible place to be kissed.’

  He nodded. ‘Makes me nervous. I never know when she’s going to jump on me. I’m not safe. I’m going to need eyes in the back of my head. She says we’re getting married and having two children, one of each kind.’

  Maureen straightened her face as best she could. ‘Did she kiss you on your cheek or on your lips? That was my question.’

  ‘Cheek,’ he answered. ‘And I got into trouble because I hit her. See, the way I look at it, if a person kisses you when you’re not expecting it, that is doing an assault. So I clouted her.’

  ‘Where? And don’t say behind the air raid shelter.’

  ‘In her stomach. And she goes running off to old Vera screaming and shouting and—’

  ‘Old who?’

  ‘Sister Veronica. The tall one with a face like a very wrinkled prune. I got a hundred lines. So that’ll be why I’ve gone all red, cos I am in a very bad mood.’

  ‘Right. Are you sure that’s all?’

  ‘Is it not enough?’ he asked. What did Mam want? Jam and whipped cream on top? ‘Mam, I don’t want to be kissed by Pauline Critchley. She’s got warts. When she grows up, she’ll get a black cat and a broomstick and hairs growing out of them. Her warts, I mean.’ Seamlessly, he carried on. ‘Is it all right if I go to Mark Tattersall’s house? He got a new train set for his birthday and he said—’

  ‘Off you go, then.’

  ‘Thanks, Mam.’ He left at speed, slamming the front door in his wake.

  Maureen sank into a chair. Everybody was a bit odd. No, not quite everybody. Mam was vague and in slow motion, but she’d been quite ill with bronchitis. She kept staring through the windows at Scouse Alley, as if expecting ghosts to walk towards her. Three ghosts? Was Mam waiting to be haunted by the men dispatched by her son-in-law?

  Dad wasn’t quite up to scratch, but he was probably reacting to his wife’s altered behaviour. He’d had a few bad nights, too, what with looking after Mam and being kept awake by her hacking cough. Reen and Jimmy were OK to the point of boring, as there had been no changes in their department. God love her, but there was no real evidence of life in their Reen. She had a new dining suite ordered, but there was no sign of pregnancy. At least she only had one subject to complain about now.

  Then there was Tom. Like Seamus, he was a bit jumpy, though he didn’t hop from foot to foot. Tom’s unease displayed itself in words, or i
n the lack of them. She couldn’t allow him to slide back into depression, so she’d agreed to go out with him tomorrow night. And she’d picked up a lovely dress and full-length coat from Dad’s stall, completely unworn and with all the shop tags still attached. It was a deep pink. She had to think about accessories. Yes, that would keep her occupied for half an hour.

  Seamus was not at Mark Tattersall’s house; no, he was freezing to death in the old prefab. He’d hung on to a key, and he came back from time to time just to remember stuff. Voices from the past seemed to echo like his footfalls in the empty space. All that remained here were shapes where pictures had hung. When he played his torch over the walls, he could pick out where the calendar had been, where photographs of himself, Reen, Finbar and Michael had occupied space for many years. They were like echoes, too, but he saw rather than heard them.

  Sister Olivia had told Seamus that he had a clever way with words, and that he might be a writer when he grew up. Or perhaps he could become a journalist. No. He wanted to drive trains or buses. Or he could join the RAF and learn to fly planes. But first he had to survive some very difficult days that would include a small irritation named Pauline Critchley.

  He lit a fire, and the smoke blew back at him. Mam would go mad if she saw him now, playing with fire in a house where he had no place. But he could think here, because no one was watching. He remembered Reen and her dolls, recalled being punished for drawing a Hitler moustache on a thing she’d named Emily. Fifteen years old at the time, yet Reen had hung on to those nasty, staring things with pot faces, posh clothes and real hair. Emily stood up on her own unless one of Seamus’s cars knocked her over. Yes. He nodded; his cars had knocked the doll off its feet repeatedly. More punishment. It was his fault, because Reen’s dolls were kept on shelves, and he used to lift them down and use them as targets. His family had endured its troubles, and he had contributed to their pain.

  Now this. Gran was going off to foreign parts tomorrow night, and his parents were intending to follow her. Well, Dad was, but Mam didn’t know yet. Gran had looked troubled when informed that she and Granddad would be looking after Seamus, but she hadn’t been able to say anything. Because once poor Granddad nodded off, she would be away to catch the London coach in Liverpool. All hell would be let loose. A missing mam would take the place of Reen’s complaint about dining-room furniture, while poor Granddad was going to be confused and hurt.

  He crept nearer to the fire and closed his eyes. In his head, he heard them all. Mam, after a night containing too many Guinnesses, screaming when her head was dunked in a sink filled with cold water, Gran berating her drunken daughter, Dad grumbling as he stood over his toolbox in preparation for dealing with breakages, Reen weeping because Mam had shown her up, neighbours grouping outside for a glimpse of the fun. Saturday Night Theatre, the locals had labelled Mam’s falls from grace.

  Dad making kites. He had made one for his son, then one for each child in Stanley Square. He was like that, Dad. He helped anybody and everybody as long as he could manage financially and time-wise. Kids came to him with broken bikes or broken hearts, and Tom Walsh dealt as best he could with every problem presented to him. Poor Dad. A two-hundred-mile drive with a shrieking wife in the passenger seat wasn’t going to be pleasant.

  In this very room, Seamus had listened while the Cooperative Society had been explained to him. In a way, the customers owned the shops and they shared in dividends at the year’s end. ‘That’s why, as manager, I get no perks, because we all share. It makes sense, especially for poor people.’ Dad was a good man, a brilliant man. And he had to go to London to stop Gran getting hurt while she did something about getting Michael and Finbar back.

  Seamus had found out all he could about the Kray twins. They were good at boxing, and they had an older brother named Charlie, and a nice mam called Violet. Reggie was in prison, Ronnie was at home. Did Gran know that? In spite of all their misdeeds, the two men were capable of acts of great kindness, while their mother was honoured by them at all times. Would Mrs Kray like Gran? Would Mr Ronald Kray like her? After all, Gran could be a bit sharp at times.

  The thing about Irish women was that they came in two sorts. Perhaps he was guilty of over-simplification, but he was only a kid. There were the loud ones like Gran, and they showed you up all over the place. Then there were the quiet ones. They went to Mass every day and kept a bowl of holy water just inside their front doors. Every time they went in or out, they blessed themselves against the evil world they were about to enter, or to sanctify the home to which they had just returned. They wore mantillas, dark clothes and flat shoes, and always carried big prayer books with holy pictures used as bookmarks.

  Nuns were the same. If they were loud, they tended not to use canes or straps, because they could shout you down; the quiet ones were more dangerous, as they said little and let their weapons do the talking. Given a choice, Seamus would opt for the loud ones every time.

  Gran was a loud one. He hoped with all his young heart that she wouldn’t shout at Mrs Kray. According to Seamus’s small amount of research, nobody shouted at Mrs Kray, because her lads wouldn’t allow it. But sometimes Gran couldn’t help herself. She climbed on her high horse and stayed there until she fell off exhausted, or until she became bored.

  However, the Kray household seemed to be on the side of Finbar and Michael. Months ago, Seamus had eavesdropped on a whispered conversation from which he had gleaned this fact. The Krays had helped Finbar and Michael escape from London. All he could do now was hope for the best. By tomorrow night, he’d be in Gran’s back bedroom, Gran would be on her way to London, and so would Mam and Dad. ‘I’ll be looking after Granddad when it should be the other way round,’ he told the space around him. Oh well. There was nothing he could do, so he had best go home.

  This was home, yet it wasn’t. ‘I miss you,’ he told the little house.

  He doused the fire, switched off his torch and walked into the kitchen, inserting the key into the back door. No light was needed to enable him to perform that small action, as he knew this place even in darkness. And he suddenly realized that this might well be the last time he would come here. The awareness of life’s transience, a concept that had taunted every poet down the ages, suddenly hit him. There were no certainties. Nothing stood still. Soon, there would be no prefabs.

  In the end, Rosh decided to have the celebration at home. She couldn’t just sit back and fail to celebrate the wedding of Mam and her new husband. So she recruited the residents of Lawton Road and cobbled together a plot that might just work with some luck and a good following wind.

  When Anna and Eric were dressed and ready, they were sent to the café for a meeting with the Collingfords about dry-cleaning and the possibility of opening a functioning unit with all necessary machinery in the rooms above café and shop. As soon as they had left, a mad flurry ensued; neighbours arrived with food and decorations while Roy, Rosh and the children ran upstairs to don their best clothes.

  By the time all five were ready, the ground floor of the house had been transformed. There were fairy lights on the walls, and plates of food with a wedding cake at the centre on the table. A huge sign wishing the couple well was hanging over the piano where Philly had sorted out music ready to play. Alice, pretty in yellow, wore a crown she’d saved from Christmas, while Kieran stood in the hallway ready to warn everyone as soon as he saw Gran and Eric returning. Rosh looked at him for a few moments. He was almost adult, and she ached as she realized that he was all but ready to move on in the world. Her son would be a great doctor, she knew it. Wherever Phil was, he would be proud of their boy.

  The kitchen was a drinker’s paradise, with three or four types of beer and several wines, white, red and rosé. It was going to be a great night apart from one small fly in the ointment. Anna didn’t like surprises.

  Neighbours rushed about applying finishing touches, while Roy simply stood and stared at his fiancée. God, she was beautiful. The dress, dove grey and deceptively s
imple, showed off every line, every curve of her body. She had no idea, had she? Or had she? There was a little devil at the core of Roy’s intended; she possibly knew that the eyes of all the men were on her.

  ‘They’re coming.’ This stage-whisper came from Kieran. With the rest of the neighbours jostling for space, he squeezed his way into the kitchen. ‘Quiet,’ he ordered before switching off the lights. Rosh and Roy waited in the doorway.

  When Anna arrived, she failed to notice that her daughter had changed into her finery. ‘They’ve given us over a hundred pounds’ worth of china. For a wedding present. Who told them we were married?’

  Rosh offered no reply. Roy coughed in an attempt to cover up a giggle from the darkened kitchen.

  Anna rolled on. ‘Bone china. Can you see this fellow here with his little finger sticking out while he drinks tea? And if he put a bigger finger through the cup handle, he’d need goose grease to get it out. Or surgery.’ She peered at her beloved Roisin. ‘You’re up to something.’

  ‘She’s always up to something,’ Roy replied. ‘In fact, the whole road’s been up to something. I tried, Anna, but there was no holding them back.’

  Light suddenly flooded the house while Philly played a wedding march. The Collingfords arrived with a dozen bottles of champagne. Mother Collingford wedged herself into a corner chair with her own bottle of bubbly and a glass, and there she remained for the duration. Alice, who had a fondness for her elders, kept the old lady fed and entertained. Had Alice not taken it upon herself to supervise and feed her, the poor woman would probably have suffered alcohol poisoning.

  Wedding presents were opened and exclaimed upon. Anna looked at a pretty figurine before turning to her husband. ‘Don’t hang your cap on this,’ she warned, ‘or I’ll hang you on my line.’

  For the first time ever in public, Eric swiped back. ‘Listen, you. That’s my house, and what’s mine is yours, but as I said before, that doesn’t make you the boss.’