Lime Street Blues

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Sweet sixteen!’ Lachlan remarked when he met Jeannie on the stairs. She was on her way up from the kitchen where she’d been getting something to eat and he was on his way down. ‘Old enough to be kissed.’ He smiled and kissed Jeannie chastely on her left cheek, stopped smiling and looked at her seriously for a minute, then kissed the other cheek, not quite so chastely this time. Then he groaned and his face seemed to collapse. ‘Jeannie! I’ve been longing to do this for years, but you seemed so young.’

  He slid his arms around Jeannie’s waist and the plate of miniature sausage rolls and vol-au-vents fell with a clatter and everything rolled to the bottom of the stairs while Jeannie Flowers and Lachlan Bailey enjoyed their first proper kiss.

  Maureen Lee’s award-winning novels have earned her many fans. Her recent novel, The Leaving of Liverpool, was a Sunday Times top 10 bestseller. Maureen was born in Bootle and now lives in Colchester. Find out more at: www.maureenlee.co.uk.

  Lime Street Blues

  Maureen Lee

  AN ORION EBOOK

  First published in Great Britain in 2002 by Orion Books.

  This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books.

  Copyright © Maureen Lee 2002

  The right of Maureen Lee to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978 1 4091 3236 3

  This ebook produced by Jouve, France

  Orion Books

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper St Martin’s Lane

  London WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  www.orionbooks.co.uk

  For Richard

  with all my love

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Part Two

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Part Three

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Part Four

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Many thanks to Phil Thompson whose fascinating book, The Best of Cellars, provided me with all I needed to know about the Cavern.

  The music for ‘Moon Under Water’ was written by Kevin McDowd and arranged by Wen Jeng Chen and Gemma Wale.

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  1939–1940

  ‘Rose!’ Mrs Corbett bellowed. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Up here, madam.’ Rose appeared, breathless, at the top of the stairs. ‘Making the beds.’

  ‘I’d have thought you’d be finished by now.’

  ‘I’ve only just started, madam.’

  ‘Huh!’ Mrs Corbett said contemptuously. She always seemed to expect her maid to have begun the next job, or even the one after that, leaving Rose with the constant feeling that she was way behind. ‘Well, get a move on, girl. I want you in uniform by eleven o’clock. The vicar and his wife are coming for coffee.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’ It was exceptionally warm for June and there were beads of perspiration on Rose’s brow when she returned to the colonel’s room and began to plump up pillows, straighten sheets and tuck them firmly under the mattress. Colonel Max was Mrs Corbett’s son, a professional soldier, presently home on leave. He was a much nicer person than his mother, very kind. She was always sorry when he had to return to his regiment.

  Mrs Corbett, on the other hand, was never kind. She apparently thought the more Rose was harried, the harder she would work. But Rose already laboured as hard as she could. That morning, she’d been up at six, as she was every morning, to light the Aga. On the dot of seven, Mrs Corbett had been taken up a cup of tea, two slices of bread and butter, and The Times. The colonel had been given his tea on the dot of eight, by which time his mother was having a bath, the coal scuttle had been filled, the washing had been hung on the line, the numerous clocks had been wound, and Mrs Denning, the cook who lived in the village, had arrived to make breakfast.

  While the Corbetts ate, Rose sat down to her own breakfast, although, more often than not, the bell would ring and she would scurry into the dining room to be met with complaints that the eggs were overdone, the kippers not cooked enough, or there wasn’t enough toast, none of which was Rose’s fault, but Mrs Corbett behaved as if it was.

  Breakfast over, she’d start on the housework; shake mats and brush carpets, dust and polish the furniture, which had to be done every day, apart from Sunday, Rose’s day off, but only after ten o’clock, when the Aga had been lit and, if it was winter, fires made in the breakfast and drawing rooms, the morning tea had been served and the beds made.

  Today, the housework would be interrupted because the Reverend and Mrs Conway were coming for coffee and she would have to change out of her green overall into her maid’s outfit; a black frock with long sleeves, a tiny, white, lace-trimmed apron and white cap. Thus attired, Rose would answer the door and show the visitors into the drawing room where coffee and biscuits were waiting on a silver tray and Mrs Corbett would rise to greet them, her big, over-powdered face twisted in a charming smile.

  Rose wasn’t required to show the visitors out. She would change back into the overall and get on with other things; cleaning the silver, for instance, or ironing, the job she disliked most. Mrs Corbett examined the finished work with a hawk’s eye, looking for creases in her fine, silk underwear and expensive crêpe de chine blouses. Even the bedding had to be as smooth as freshly fallen snow. Rose would be bitterly scolded if one of the pure Irish linen pillow slips hadn’t been ironed on both sides, something she was apt to overlook.

  ‘You’ll make some man a fine wife one day,’ Mrs Denning had said more than once.

  ‘I can’t imagine getting married,’ Rose usually replied. She did so again today. Both women were in the kitchen, where the windows had been flung wide open in the hope a breath of fresh air might penetrate the sweltering heat. A red-faced Mrs Denning was preparing lunch and Rose was sorting out yesterday’s washing, putting it into different piles ready to be ironed. Mrs Corbett was still entertaining the Conways in the drawing room.

  She picked up the iron off the Aga and spat on it. The spit sizzled to nothing straight away and she reckoned it was just about right. She put another iron in its place.

  ‘You’ll get married,’ Mrs Denning assured her. ‘You’ll not be left on the shelf, not with those big blue eyes. How old are you now, Rose?’

  ‘Fifteen,’ Rose sighed. She’d been working for Mrs Corbett and keeping The Limes spick and span for over two years, ever since her thirteenth birthday. Holmwood House, the orphanage where she’d been raised, wasn’t prepared to keep the children a day longer than necessary and Mrs Corbett had been to examine her and assess her fitness for the jo
b, which for some reason involved looking inside her ears and down her throat.

  ‘I want someone strong and healthy,’ she’d said in her loud, sergeant major voice. She was a widow in her sixties, a large, majestic woman with enormous breasts that hung over the belt of her outsize brown frock. She wore a fox fur and a tiny fur hat with a spotted veil that cast little black shadows on her dour, autocratic face.

  ‘Apart from the usual childhood illnesses, I’ve never known Rose be sick,’ Mr Hillyard, the Governor of Holmwood House, had smoothly assured her.

  ‘But she doesn’t look particularly strong. In fact, I’d describe her as delicate.’

  ‘We have another girl that might do. Would you care to see her?’

  ‘Why not.’

  Rose was sent to wait outside Mr Hillyard’s office and Ann Parker was fetched for Mrs Corbett to examine, but rejected on the spot. ‘She’s too coarse; at least the other one has a bit of refinement about her.’ Every word was audible in the corridor outside. ‘What’s her name again?’

  ‘Rose Sullivan.’

  ‘She’ll just have to do. When can I have her?’

  ‘She’ll be thirteen in a fortnight. You can have her then.’

  Two weeks later, at the beginning of May, a car had arrived to take Rose away from Holmwood House, a place where she had never been happy and where the word ‘love’ had never once been mentioned or felt. The driver got out to open the door and take the parcel containing all her worldly possessions. He was a handsome man, old enough to be her father, with broad shoulders and dark wavy hair. His skin was burnt nutmeg brown from the sun. She learnt later that his name was Tom Flowers and he was, rather appropriately, the gardener who doubled as a chauffeur when Mrs Corbett needed to be driven anywhere.

  He hardly spoke on the way to The Limes, merely muttering that if she was good and behaved herself, she’d get on fine with her new employer. ‘She’s a hard taskmaster, but her bark’s worse than her bite.’

  Rose was soon to discover the truth of the first part of this remark, but never the second.

  The Limes was a square, grey brick building with eight bedrooms set in five acres of well-tended grounds. Inside was comfortably furnished, though on her first day she didn’t see the rooms she would soon come to know well, as Tom Flowers took her round to a side entrance, through a long, narrow room with a deep brown sink, a dolly tub, and a mangle. A sturdy clothes rack was suspended from the ceiling.

  He opened another door and they entered a vast kitchen with a red tiled floor and white walls, from which hung an assortment of copper-bottomed pans, from the very small to the very large. Waves of heat were coming from a giant stove. The shelves of an enormous dresser were filled with pretty blue and white china and there was a bowl of brightly coloured flowers on the pine table that could easily have seated a dozen.

  ‘Mrs Corbett’s out for the day,’ Tom Flowers informed her, ‘and Mrs Denning, the cook, won’t be back for a while. I’ll show you your room. Once you’ve unpacked, perhaps you’d like to go for a walk around the village. Ailsham’s a nice place, you’ll like it. Just turn right when you leave the gates and you’ll come to the shops about a mile away.’

  ‘Ta,’ Rose whispered.

  ‘Come on then, girl,’ he said brusquely. ‘You’re on the second floor.’

  He marched out of the kitchen, up a wide staircase, then a narrower one, Rose having to run to keep up. The door to her room was already open, her things on the bed. Tom Flowers said something that she presumed was ‘goodbye’, closed the door, and Rose was left alone.

  She sat on the bed. It was quite a pleasant room with a sloping ceiling. The distempered walls, the curtains on the small window, and the cotton coverlet on the bed were white. There was a rag rug on the otherwise bare wooden floor, a little chest of drawers, and a single wardrobe. Later, when she opened the wardrobe to hang her too short winter coat, she found a black frock that was much too long and a green overall that would have fitted someone twice her size.

  But Rose felt too miserable to unpack then. Unhappiness rose like a ball in her throat. Tom Flowers’ footsteps could be heard, getting further and further away, and with each step, the unhappiness grew until she could hardly breathe. She lay on the bed and began to cry into the soft, white pillow. She wanted her mother. That could never be because her mother was dead, but she wanted her all the same. All she could remember was a blurred face, a soft voice, soft music, arms reaching for her as she toddled across the room, being cuddled by someone who could only have been her mother. Then one day the soft voice stopped and the music was no more. She had never been cuddled again. The voices since had been harsh, even when she was told that her mother had died. The birth certificate she’d been given with her things stated ‘Father Unknown’. She had no one. Now she didn’t even have the orphanage, where at least she’d felt safe. She was completely alone in the world.

  More than two years later, Rose was still not happy, but she had settled into The Limes. Mrs Denning was a cheerful soul and they got on well. She had two sons, one a year older than Rose, the other a year younger, and kept her amused with tales of their escapades. She would never grow used to Mrs Corbett’s sharp tongue and being told she was lazy and stupid, but it didn’t upset her as much as when she’d first arrived. Her favourite time was evening when she enjoyed the solitude of her room, her head buried in one of the books she’d borrowed from the library van that parked by Ailsham Green for two hours every Wednesday afternoon. She was supposed to have time off when lunch was over and before the afternoon visitors were due to arrive. It was wise to escape from the house, otherwise Mrs Corbett was liable to forget it was her free time and demand she get on with some work. Discovering the library van had been a blessing. She liked romances best, stories about men and women falling in love. Rose wanted someone to love her more than anything in the world.

  She had just finished the ironing when Tom Flowers tramped into the kitchen for his midday meal, followed by Colonel Max. Neither man was married and they were the best of friends. The same age, thirty-nine, they had played together as children. Tom’s father, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him, had tended the gardens of The Limes since the middle of the last century.

  The colonel was delighted to see her. ‘I swear this young lady grows prettier by the day,’ he exclaimed. ‘What do you say, Tom?’

  Tom glanced at her briefly. ‘Aye,’ he muttered. He was a taciturn man, though always polite. Rose found it strange that the gardener, with his tall, strong frame and square shoulders, looked far more the military man than Colonel Max, who was small, almost bald, and rather endearingly ugly.

  ‘One of the pleasures of coming home on leave is having my morning tea brought by the best-looking girl in Ailsham,’ the colonel enthused.

  ‘I was just saying, she’ll make someone a fine wife one of these days,’ Mrs Denning put in.

  ‘If I were twenty years younger, the someone would be me.’

  Mrs Denning grinned. She knew, they all knew, including the colonel himself, that Mrs Corbett would sooner be dead than allow her son to marry a servant.

  Rose’s cheeks were already burning and they burnt even more when she noticed Tom Flowers was looking at her again, not so briefly this time. There was an expression on his face almost of surprise, as if he’d never seen her properly before. She caught his eye and he quickly turned away.

  ‘Lunch will be ready in ten minutes, Colonel,’ Mrs Denning sang. ‘C’mon, Tom, sit down and take the weight off your feet.’ She and Tom were also friends, having gone to the village school together, though Mrs Denning had been in a lower class. In fact, everyone in Ailsham seemed to be connected in one way or another. Rose felt as if she was living in a foreign country and would never belong.

  ‘I suppose I’d better get changed.’ The colonel left the room with a sigh, from which she assumed he would much prefer to eat in the kitchen with the servants than with his autocratic mother, but that would have been almost
as terrible a crime as wanting to marry one.

  Was she really all that pretty? Rose examined her reflection in the mirror behind the wardrobe door before setting out on her afternoon walk. She had brown hair, very thick and wavy, a bit wild, framing her face like a halo. It seemed a very common or garden face, she thought, with two eyes, a nose, and a mouth. She smiled at herself to see if it made any difference and several dimples appeared in her cheeks, still pink as a result of the colonel’s comments. She shrugged and supposed she wasn’t so bad.

  The shrug reminded her that her brassiere was too tight and she needed a bigger one, size thirty-six. The black frock that had been too big when she first arrived would soon fit perfectly.

  The countryside surrounding Ailsham was too lonely to wander around on her own and a bit dull. Rose had got into the habit of walking as far as the village where she usually treated herself to a bar of toffee or chocolate, or a quarter of dolly mixtures.

  Ailsham was pleasantly ordinary, not the sort of village that often featured in the books Rose so avidly read. There wasn’t a thatched cottage to be seen, nor an ancient stone church with a steeple. She had yet to find a gurgling stream, a hump-backed bridge, or a pretty copse. There were no gently sloping hills, this part of Lancashire being very flat. There was a brook somewhere off Holly Lane, but to get there meant walking along the edge of two ploughed fields and perhaps getting lost.

  The village was served by a tiny station, from which trains ran hourly to Liverpool, fifteen miles away, and Ormskirk, only four. The Ribble bus ran twice a day to the same places, early morning and late afternoon, though not on Sundays.

  The shops were still closed for lunch when Rose arrived on this particular day; the butchers, where one of Mrs Denning’s sons, Luke, worked, the bakers, Dorothy’s Hairdressers and Beryl’s Fashions where Rose bought all her clothes, including the pink and white gingham frock she had on now and the blue silky one she wore on Sundays. Beryl also sold ladies’ underwear, wool, and sewing things. The biggest shop was Harker’s, which was actually five shops in one; a general store, a greengrocers, newsagents, tobacconists, and post office.